50 Book Challenge 2020 Part One

So I'm still only halfway through A Christmas Card but in the meantime have read and enjoyed Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods and started The Heart's Invisible Furies. These threads are great for picking up recommendations, luckily I had Amazon vouchers for birthday and Christmas!

Oh, and now choosing between:

The Power by Naomi Alderman
My Antonia by Willa Cather
and This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett. Whom I absolutely love as a writer.

I think it'll probably be The Power this time.

Also reading Fierce Bad Rabbits but I think it's going to be a dip in-and-out kind of book.

1. The Friendly Ones by Philip Hensher.

I've always enjoyed PH's writing and I loved this book. It tells the story of two families living next door to one another in Sheffield. One family are English and the other of Bangladeshi origin having moved to England following the war of independence in 1971.

The story ranges backwards and forwards through time; we hear about what happened before Sharif and Nazia left Bangladesh, the divisions in the family during the conflict, their experience as immigrants trying to make a new life in the UK, and the varying reactions of their British neighbours .. some are "friendly ones" and others not.

The Bangladeshi relatives in my extended family, who also moved to the UK after the war, have never spoken about what happened in the country fifty years ago and to my shame I hadn't realised the scale of the genocide before reading this book, or that "the friendly ones" were how the collaborators described themselves during the conflict. As so often in war, families were split and unforgivable betrayals occurred, which stay in the background of people's lives for ever.

Next door, the English family consists of a fairly challenging retired GP, his very ill wife, and his four adult children plus various grandchildren. All very different, and the relationships, alliances and tensions between the siblings are well portrayed. Hensher writes very well about the powerlessness of children to influence the decisions adults take about their lives, and we see in Leo how a moment of teenage crassness can have a lasting negative effect on his future. The way in which children can reflect on and judge their parents' relationship once adults themselves was convincing. Hensher also sets the characters' individual stories against the background of current events, but this is done with a light hand.

The Independent describes the book as "reminiscent of an engrossing Victorian classic" and it reminds me particularly of Arnold Bennett and The Old Wives Tale. It's absorbing and subtle and intelligent. As in The Northern Clemency, Hensher writes about ordinary people extremely well.

Just popping on to update my list.

Book 1: 50 Shades of the USA - Anna McNuff
Book 2: A Long Way From Home - Cathy Glass
Book 3: Once A Pilgrim - James Deegan
Book 4: Any Witch Way You Can (Wicked Witches of the Midwest series)

I really enjoyed Once A Pilgrim. The author is ex SAS, writing about a character who is also ex SAS so he knows his subject matter. It focuses on time spent in Belfast during the Troubles and the fallout of actions there that have spilled over to the modern day. It was the first in the John Carr series. I might seek out some more.

Any Witch Way You Can was recommended to me on MN. It's an easy read that would best be aimed at the teen market. Fairly predictable, but I didn't have to work hard, which sometimes is all you want. I don't think I'll read any more in the series though

I've currently got two books on the go. I am Malala which is a stonking great hardback and The Pants of Perspective on my Kindle.

I started reading The Holiday and really enjoyed it, it felt a little slow at times but overall a really good read. I then read The family upstairs, again I really enjoyed this one read it really quickly for me and it kept me really intrigued! I've now started My sister the serial killer.
I did start Lullaby but I really couldn't get into it so I've put it to one side for now and hopefully going to try it again in a few weeks.
*1. The Holiday

1. The Family Upstairs
2. My Sister the Serial Killer*

I had to give up reading The sound and the fury. Not giving up on it 100%. I will start it again when I am a little less tired and have time to concentrate on it.

Not sure what I want to read next. I have a couple of books I want to read sitting on my bookshelf, lots I need to buy if I am going to get through my poster.
I shall decide tomorrow morning.

4. This Must Be The Place by Maggie O'Farrell

This was lovely. I started off not quite convinced by Maggie O'Farrell, but I think she gets better with each book. She writes so well and she writes people so well. Ostensibly about a marriage between a troubled chap and a disappearing film star, this is just about life, really. The reviews say structurally clever, but she does it all so beautifully you don't really notice.

1. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - brilliant. Really readable - I've read a few others including Alias Grace, The Robber Bride but this was excellent. Scary in so many ways.

Just started The Testaments and devoured the first 100 pages. Really enjoying it and glad I started it straight after finishing The Handmaid's Tale.

I have decided it’s time to reread the Harry Potter books again so 12 - Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone

11. Villette - Charlotte Brontë A young Englishwoman with no friends or family who falls down on her luck travels to the continent to seek a position and falls into teaching at a girl's school. Aloof and insular she reflects on the relationships of those around her with bitterness and passes judgemental comment on the different society and religion she now finds herself surrounded by.

Stream of consciousness ramblings of a sad and lonely woman who is a very unreliable narrator. Character driven with not much plot relative to the length, this presents a darker and more complex character than Jane Eyre, despite having some parallels. I found this a bit of a slog initially as there was not much going on and the main character is quite unlikeable and doesn't help the reader out with information until much after the fact. However, the writing wins out.

There is much debate over which is the better novel between this and JE. I think this is a lot less fluffy and certainly gives the reader more to think about and has the more accomplished writing. JE does win in terms of plot though.

12. Night Boat to Tangiers - Kevin Barry Two aging Irish gangsters spend the night waiting in a ferry terminal in the hope of finding the estranged daughter of one. She has been missing for 3 years. They spend the time reminiscing about their lives and how they came to be involved in drug smuggling and the effect it had on their relationships.

This was quite short, the writer is economical with language, however this does not detract from the lyrical nature of the prose. While I was not over-enamored with the plot or the characters I can appreciate the quality of the writing.

Book 5. All Points North by Simon Armitage This was a mixed bag: some reminiscenses - heightened for comic effect, I suspect - poems, a short story, documentary script, etc. All with a northern slant. Some of the sections were vaguely familiar so I suspect I may have heard some bits read on Radio 4 or similar.

I haven't read much Armitage, just the odd poem now and again. I picked this up mainly because he comes from the same part of the world as me and I was curious.
His take on things is quite often amusing and I laughed out loud a few times. I enjoyed some bits more than others but on the whole I liked it and will probably go on to read his Pennine Way book, Walking Home: A Poet's Journey and some more of his poetry.

9: North Korea Journal - Michael Palin

A very, very swift read - done and dusted within a day - because it's only 150 pages, some of those contain only a few lines of text, and others are largely taken up with photos.

I quite enjoyed Palin's TV documentary about North Korea a year or so ago, but felt it slightly skated the surface, and that this might be more revealing. Unfortunately it wasn't. Although it's gently amusing and quite interesting, it covers much the same ground as the documentary, and doesn't really elaborate on any of the deeper thoughts he might have had about the extraordinary country he visited. I'd have felt rather disgruntled had I shelled out and bought this (very) slender volume, but luckily it was from BorrowBox.

Oh I absolutely loved Ella Minnow Pea @Sadik and I remember it sparking a lively debate at my book club that month. For some reason I'm sure we ended up discussing Thatcherism!

I'm really lost with Rivers Of London I think I'm on The Hanging Tree but its been 5 years since I read any, and haven't got a clue what was going on anymore. I went nearly 3 years reading nothing, and suddenly, normal compulsive reading service has resumed. I think I might have burned out, in hindsight.

1. Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch

1. Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn

10. Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel Another 99p kindle deal - I picked this one up as I've heard her speak on the radio & found her interesting. It looks at sex and sensuality in committed relationships, exploring how things can work - or not - over the longer term. Really as much a work of sociology as self-help, but no less fascinating because of it.

1. If cats Disappeared From The World by Genki Kawamura. This is a sweet and quirky little book. It is similar on many ways to The Travelling Cat Chronicles, but not as affecting or satisfying but I still liked it.

The concept involves a young man who knows he is dying and makes a pact with the Devil which is all rather whimsical. I enjoyed the chapter about films, being a teacher of film. Ultimately it is ab book about life and death and reconciliation and not as superficial as it might appear. A slight book though at only 200 quick reading pages so that was relief after trudging through blooming Number One Chinese Restaurant!

Are there cats in all Japanese literature??

I can't remember when I last posted but so far this year:

1. the guilty mother , Diane Jeffrey
2. the little book of hygge , miek wiking
3. its too late now, Aa milne
4. the world I fell out of , Melanie Reid
5. the hunting party, Lucy foley
6. Christmas at Rachel's pudding pantry Caroline Roberts
7. the patron saint of lost souls, Menna Von praag
8. the octopus nest, Sophie Hannah
9. the 50 list Nigel Holland

The 50 list looked so promising but disappointed me, I didn't like his writing style nor the amount he wrote about his faith having said that he wasn't the sort of person who went on about his faith and then proceeded to do just that. The book got one star not my default three stars because of the religion.

Books 2 and 3 were dull, I expected better from AA Milne. Book 6 was the light relief I needed on a stressful day. Book 7 was a hug in a book, book 8 was an interesting short story.

I'll try to keep up but my laptop is broken so I'm on my phone.

1. The Yorkshire Shepherdess by Amanda Owen. Memoir about the author’s life with her husband Clive and their seven young children on a remote sheep farm on the borders of the Yorkshire Dales and Cumbria. It wouldn’t be the life for me, but she loves it and reading this gave me a calm, peaceful feeling.

5 China Court - Rumer Godden

It took me a while to get into this. The story jumps between three or four generations of a Cornish family and various periods of time within their lives, culminating in the reading of a will. It’s also written in the present tense and there’s little warning that it’s switching between the characters which I found confusing and intensely irritating for at least the first half of the book.
It also ends abruptly with a scene I didn’t much care for.

That said, the descriptions of the house, the garden, the food, the clothes and furnishings are gorgeous and there were a couple of characters I really warmed to. Mixed.

5 Fierce Bad Rabbits Clare Pollard. I think I should have seen the title as a hint as this wasn't quite what I expected. The author focuses on the darker, negative messages from picture books, starting with their origins in traditional moral tales. I found some of the images from them quite disturbing. I expected a wider ranging discussion but in fact she talks about relatively few books and authors and and quite a lot of the book is taken up with a description of her happy childhood and her experience(somewhat negative I felt) of living in Peckham,being pregnant and becoming a mother. For me some of the most interesting parts of the book were the short biographies of authors. Perhaps I should read more biographies!

1. Tony & Susan by Austin Wright

This was the book upon which the Amy Adams/Jake Gyllenhaal film Nocturnal Animals was based. Nocturnal Animals I really loved and it was one of by best films that year, but my understanding is that it is quite marmite not least because of odd stylistic choices in the opening credits.

The premise of the novel is that happily married mother Susan Morrow receives an unsolicited manuscript in the post from her ex husband Edward, who was always a frustrated writer. She finds this odd but reads the book anyway.

The book then flicks between Edward's crime novel and Susan's reaction to it.

It seems a bit blasphemous to say that this idea was far more successfully brought to life by its film adaptation which shows the novel visually.

The reason is, the "novel" portions aren't very good, particularly the last 3rd and are also too short to actually constitute a novel. And then Susan reactions to it, are almost like it's a different novel to that on the page and it's jarring.

As a psychological thriller, Nocturnal Animals particularly in its final scene, packs a punch, and I felt that novel lacked the same kind of "oomph" factor present.

Thank you for the recommendation EineReise!
Great to see a good review for Kathleen Jamie, bought some of her titles when I saw on here that they were 99p for Kindle (thanks noodle for flagging this up) and I'm looking forward to reading them.

Oooh Whippet I do like the sound of Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie
That’s going on my list.

@CluelessMama

Sorry, just reread your post and saw you haven't read ANY of their own stuff in which case Letters Between Six Sisters is an absolute MUST and you must rectify this TODAY if possible

It is one of my favourite books of the last decade

@CluelessMama

I didn't rate Take Six Girls, the best Mitford books remain their own with Letters From Six Sisters at the front of the pack.

I have been rather late with my updates too but have read:

3. The Offing - Benjamin Myers
I loved Under the Rock by this author, a work of non-fiction; it was one of my favourite books of last year but this didn't really work for me despite the rave reviews on Goodreads. I felt the story of Jack and Dulcie lacked both depth and insight and seemed too trite somehow. I didn't actually believe in it. However, I have to say, the descriptions of the countryside of post-war Britain were very well written. I am very much the minority in not liking this however!

4. Frankisstein - Jeanette Winterson
I enjoyed this a lot more despite the crazy storyline of the modern day sections and the very stylised and unrealistic conversations betweens characters. I felt the passages written from the point of view of Mary Shelley were the best but I generally enjoyed the book in its entirety and liked the development of the Frankenstein myth into the 21st Century and the implications of AI.

5. Beware of Pity - Stephan Zweig
This was not an easy read but I thought it was excellent. A young soldier makes an error that leads him to become almost fatally entangled in the lives of a wealthy family in Germany just prior to WW2 breaking out. A claustrophobic and rather disturbing novel.

6. Surfacing - Kathleen Jamie
Beautiful nature writing with long sections around a Neolithic archaeological dig on a Scottish island and a dig on an Alaskan shoreline amongst the Yup'ik people . If you like musings on nature and archaeology and how it informs life in the 21st century, this is most definitely the book for you.

7. Letter to My Daughter - Maya Angelou
This was too lightweight for me to enjoy, consisting of snippets and vignettes from Angelou's life, written as if to an imaginary daughter. This lacks the depth and seriousness of her earlier writing.

8. The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
Classic American civil war novella written in 1894 about a young soldier named Henry Fleming who is keen to prove himself in combat. Strong descriptions of the chaos, noise and fatigue of fighting and the emotional toll it takes.