50 Book Challenge 2020 Part Eleven

I need to throw in my last few reviews before the year ends!

1. Native Tongue - Suzette Haden Elgin
2. If Cats Disappeared from the World - Genki Kawamura
3. Frankenstein in Baghdad - Ahmed Saadawi
4. Lies Sleeping -Ben Aaranovitch
5. The History of Bees - Maja Lunde
6. Severance - Ling Ma
7. NOS4A2 - Joe Hill
8. Choose Your Own Apocalypse
9. Before you Sleep - Adam Nevill

World War Z Cracking start, lots of very human reactions to a burgeoning pandemic. However, halfway through the voices of the different characters start to get pretty repetitive, which takes the edge off the intensity. Still a good mid-pandemic read though.

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet About a third of the way in, I really thought this wasn’t for me. A space drilling crew (human and alien) make their way through dodgier ends of space, facing mild peril and generally hanging out. I like SF/fantasy, but hadn’t previously read anything that focused so much on relationships and feelings and issues (the navigator is two “people” in one body, the chef is multigendered, humans and aliens fall in love...) But about halfway through, the whole thing just won me over. It’s so damn warm and lovely and caring and open minded, and everybody’s just nice If you like mild peril and gentle acceptance in space, you’d enjoy this.

Mammoth was my absolute favourite of the year. Narrated by the fossil of a 13,000 year old mammoth, the story covers his history, extinction, and journey round the world as fossils, Irish revolution, a bit of Nazis, the rise of early man. Ably supported/heckled by a Tyrannasaur Bataan, a pterodactyl, the severed hand of a pharaoh, and a bitter prehistoric penguin. I wasn’t prepared for the ending to make me cry, but it did. A great, unusual read.

Three Hours much reviewed on here. A fast paced take on an English school shooting, told from the perspectives of the police, teachers, students and parents and loosely centered around 2 young Syrian refugees. Gripping, and interesting to read the (too brief!) Macbeth/Syrian conflict parallels.

Man vs Nature I was expecting to really enjoy this. A short story collection with either nature or supernatural beings/events getting the better of humans - and a fair pinch of human nature getting the better of humans. Well written, but the characters were so (deliberately) unlikeable, and in such emotionally grinding situations that reading the stories back to back was not a pleasant experience! It would have been a much better read if I hadn’t read them all in one go, but I can’t really fault the author for that!

The Unexpected short horror anthology. Nothing groundbreaking, but a decent enough cheap spooky read in the dark.

And halfway through but not finished:
28. Early Riser - Jasper Fforde
29. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
30. On Writing - Stephen King

Only 27 this year, down from 40-something last year but I have a fantastically huge and exciting tbr pile so I’m very excited for next year!

I'm still catching up with reviews before the chimes of midnight!

92. Flesh Wounds by Chris Brookmyre
The third (and final) book in the Jasmine Sharp series. Most of the plot hinges around some long-buried secrets, including some that are very close to home for Jasmine and her family. There’s some enjoyable business with gangsters double- and treble-crossing each other and the whole series is tied up very neatly (if a bit too predictably).

93. The Children of Green Knowe by Lucy M. Boston
Seasonal re-read after a VERY long interval. This was wonderful, of course – there is some beautiful descriptive writing and the children of the house are drawn vividly but with real lightness of touch. I ached to be in Green Knowe and see them when I was a child, and I still do now (and I’ve just found out that the actual house is about 20 miles away from where I live, so this is a real possibility post-covid!). I saw a few reviews on Goodreads complaining that it’s the most boring book ever, and that nothing happens – which I suppose is true in one sense, but for me it’s such an inspiring book that the action isn’t really the point!

It did make me think, though: many of my favourite books as a child were a) really short (this Puffin edition is only 158 pages long – compare that with JKR and David Walliam’s doorstops); b) set in the past – there seemed to be a real fashion for time-slip and historical books between about 1965 and 1985; c) much more subtle than the books that my kids read today – less reliance on flashy action and wackiness, more poetic language (generally better writing, actually), more sophisticated vocabulary. I don’t think this is just me getting middle-aged and thinking that everything from my childhood was necessarily better! I’m sure that there are still books like that being published, but they tend to get drowned out by the noisy, attention-grabbing, celebrity-authored books that fill up supermarkets and bookshops and school libraries these days. (And which my children love, so I’m not being snobbish!)

94. The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper
I was obsessed with this series (and with this book in particular) when I was a child, and I’m pleased to report that it hasn’t lost one bit of its power for me! I suppose this is partly because my own childhood (I was Will’s age in the mid-1980s) was still close enough to the childhoods of children from the 1950s-1970s that books from that period seemed realistic to me. I grew up in a village, where we often had proper snow and floods, and where I sang in the church choir for 10 years (so I spent much of my time in candlelit stone buildings listening to people singing ancient carols). There was also not much in the way of TV (and no internet, of course!), and I had a lot more freedom than my own children do, so books like this successfully bridged the gap between “normal” life and “what might be” – if my day-to-day life wasn’t so far off Will’s, then maybe the rest of it could plausibly happen to me too…?

95. An English Murder by Cyril Hare
Classic English country house murder mystery, which I’ve re-read because it’s set at Christmas. Lord Warbeck (no relation to Perkin) assembles his family and hangers-on for what is likely to be his last Christmas at Warbeck Hall. The ill-assorted guests include his son, Robert Warbeck, who leads the fascist League of Liberty and Justice (and is meant to be Oswald Mosley but comes across more as Roderick Spode), his cousin Sir Julius (Chancellor of the Exchequer in the then-Labour government), two women who are old family friends/relatives, and Dr Wenceslaus Bottwink, a Professor of History of central-European origin who has evidently spent time in a Nazi concentration camp, and who is staying at the house while he researchers the family’s papers. There is also, needless to say, a butler and a detective. The book rattles along quite fast, and the portrayal of Britain in a fast-changing post-war society is interesting, but the main mystery (which is based on an obscure point of constitutional law – Cyril Hare was himself a lawyer) hasn’t worn that well.

Just slipped in another one before the end of the year, and an excellent read to finish off with:

111. Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson I was inspired to revisit this after reading Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal, no review needed I'm sure, but it's really so very good.

I got it from the online library after first trying Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan - inspired by Cote - loved the idea, but oh he is so very, very annoying, just unbearable. JW on the other hand I just want to kidnap and take home to tea and make her tell me stories

Oh definitely with the non fiction

2020 seems to have awakened me to non fiction and I think if I had to narrow and do a top 10, at least half but probably more of that 10 would be the non fiction.

REALLY slim pickings in my fiction for 2020. The one discovery/highlight eg not something I would have read without this thread would be the Lissa Evans trilogy.

Should've said at least 21 minutes a day...looking forward to those moments when a book is just too compelling to step away from or an audiobook actually makes me want to walk further or clean the house more just to keep listening!

My reading resolution is to read 21 books that I already own in 2021. I can read as many new buys/library books/books I've been lent as I like but I'm hoping the 21 target will dent my TBR as honestly I'm a bit fed up of looking at the same titles on the shelf unread. Rereads can also be included, don't reread much but have a few in mind to revisit this year.
Gretchen Rubin's challenge on her podcast Happier is to read for 21 minutes a day every day in 2021. I'm going to give it a whirl - think I do this most days anyway but it might encourage me to find some more minutes in my day instead of waiting until I'm tired in bed at night and might encourage me to keep reading when work gets busy and the habit can slip.

Finished 78 books. Not a round number but worked for my collages of all the books by dividing by 6.

1. The Dilemma - B A Paris 
2. Dangerous Crossing - Rachel Rhys
3. The Testaments - Margaret Atwood
4. A Wedding in December - Anita Shreve 
5. The Other You - J S Monroe 
6. To The Lions - Holly Watt 
7. Here to Stay - Mark Edwards 
8. The Bigamist - Mary Turner Thomson
9. The Other Wife - Claire McGowan 
10. Finding Cupid - Bridget E Baker
11. All the Rage - Cara Hunter 
12. The Donor - Clare Mackintosh 
13. Who Did You Tell - Lesley Kara
14. I Wanted You to Know - Laura Pearson 
15. The Recovery of Rose Gold - Stephanie Wrobel
16. I Did It For Us - Alison Bruce
17. Half a World Away - Mike Gayle 
18. The Suspect - Fiona Barton
19. War Doctor - David Nott 
20. Tell Me Your Secret - Dorothy Koomson
21. My Dark Vanessa - Kate Elizabeth Russel
22. In Safe Hands - J P Carter 
23. Anything You Do Say - Gillian McAllister 
24. The Flatshare - Beth O'Leary
25. Keeper - Jessica Moor
26. Blood Orange - Harriet Tyce 
27. Where the Crawdads Sing - Delia Owens
28. How to Marry Your Husband - Jacqueline Rohen
29. The Chain - Adrian McKinty
30. Just My Luck - Adele Parks 
31. Strangers on a Train - Patricia Highsmith
32. Daisy Jones and The Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid 
33. Little Disasters - Sarah Vaughan
34. The Craftsman - Sharon Bolton 
35. His & Hers - Alice Feeney
36. Missing Pieces - Laura Pearson 
37. Little White Lies - Philippa East
38. The Ice Cream Girls - Dorothy Koomson 
39. Pretending - Holly Bourne 
40. Seven Days - Alex Lake 
41. Those People - Louise Candlish
42. We Know You Know - Erin Kelly
43. All My Lies Are True - Dorothy Koomson 
44. The Dead Line - Holly Watt 
45. Just Between Us - Rebecca Drake
46. If You Could Go Anywhere - Paige Toon
47. The Volunteer - Jack Fairweather
48. Invisible Girl - Lisa Jewell
49. Last Lesson - James Goodhand
50. American Dirt - Jeanine Cummins
51. The Angel - Katerina Diamond 
52. The Promise - Katerina Diamond
53. Truth or Die - Katerina Diamond
54. Woman in the Water - Katerina Diamond
55. Missing, Presumed - Susie Steiner
56. The Switch - Beth O'Leary
57. Blurred Lines - Hannah Begbie
58. My Everything - Katie Marsh
59. The July Girls - Phoebe Locke
60. The Seven Sisters - Lucinda Riley
61. In Case You Missed It - Lindsey Kelk
62. The Heatwave - Katerina Diamond
63. The Seven Husband's of Evelyn Hugo - Taylor Jenkins Reid 
64. The Other Passenger - Louise Candlish
65. She Lies in Wait - Gytha Lodge
66.Lockdown - Peter May
67.Troubled Blood - Robert Galbraith 
68.Seven Lies - Elizabeth Kay
69.Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier 
70.Three Hours - Rosamund Lupton 
71.Fifty Fifty - Steve Cavanagh 
72.Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors - Piers Paul Read
73.Just Like The Other Girls - Claire Douglas 
74.Truth Be Told - Kia Abdullah 
75.The Lies You Told - Harriet Tyce 
76.One More For Christmas - Sarah Morgan
77.The Twelve Dates of Christmas - Jenny Bayliss 
78.Playdate - Alex Dahl

Top 5

1. Troubled Blood - Robert Galbraith
2. My Dark Vanessa - Kate Elizabeth Russell
3. The Flatshare - Beth O'Leary
4. Daisy Jones and the Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid
5. The Seven Husband's of Evelyn Hugo - Taylor Jenkins Reid

Next year I just want to continue enjoying reading and try get my TBR pile down. Have also got a Pre-ordered for each month from now to July as a wee treat while I try save for a house.

Hope everyone has a lovely new year and I hope it's a better year.

Reading resolutions are pretty loose but mostly revolve around recognising what brings me comfort - and that is definitely a character driven series or two. So, for early 2021 I have lined up the first few volumes of A Dance to the Music of Time - I know, I know, you were all reading them about two or three years ago, I'm always behind, I don't care. I'm also going to make sure I continue with series I have been enjoying - Vera, Shetland, Dr Ruth Galloway, James Herriot and a few Reachers. My first book of 2021, will be Crooked Heart to continue with the much loved Old Baggage series.

I also used to be a big reader of sci-fi (and to a lesser extent fantasy) but it only made up about 10% of my list this year. I definitely want to explore some alternative realities next year, and with my series completion thing going on, am going to make sure I finally get around to the last book in the Fractured Europe sequence.

And finally I'm going to make sure non-fiction continues to feature heavily in my diet, and I'm going to try to quality control it better. Some of the absolute outstanding reads of this year have been non-fiction, and also some of the most complete dross (ooh, this book about trees / walking / by that bloke I like off Twitter is only 99p! Click! - THIS WILL STOP)

Thank you everyone for your outstanding company in this crazy year. See you all, old and new, next year!

I hope your Mum gets the vaccine soon @bettbattenburg it must be a worrying time for you.

I'm going to aim for 70 books next year and want to limit the number of books I buy so I can work my way through my TBR pile. This includes my hard copy books as I have neglected them in favour of the convenience of my kindle. I also want to read more classics and fewer easy reads that I end up not enjoying. Hopefully I'll find it easier to concentrate next year.

Thanks for allowing us a last hurrah of 2020, @southeastdweller! Here's my final list, standouts in bold (no really stinking stinkers, but I wouldn't recommend Vox to anyone...).

1. Autumn Term – Antonia Forest
2. Mutual Admiration Society – Mo Moulton
3. Swan Song – Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott
4. This Must be the Place – Maggie O’Farrell
5. The Bookshop – Penelope Fitzgerald
6. A Place Called Winter – Patrick Gale
7. The Reunion – Guillaume Musso
8. Black Water Lilies – Michel Bussi
9. Wilful Blindness – Margaret Heffernan
10. The Last Painting of Sara de Vos – Dominic Smith
11. The Farm – Joanne Ramos
12. The High Window – Raymond Chandler
13. The Lady in the Lake – Raymond Chandler
14. The Little Sister – Raymond Chandler
15. She Lies in Wait – Gytha Lodge
16. The Last Anniversary – Liane Moriarty
17. Bitter Orange – Claire Fuller
18. The Lost Man – Jane Harper
19. What Red Was – Rosie Price
20. Keeping an Eye Open – Julian Barnes
21. Heartburn – Nora Ephron
22. Crooked Heart – Lissa Evans
23. Old Baggage – Lissa Evans
24. A View of the Harbour – Elizabeth Taylor
25. The Crow Trap – Ann Cleeves
26. Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects: Part 1 – Giorgio Vasari
27. Telling Tales – Ann Cleeves
28. The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion
29. Burial Rites – Hannah Kent
30. How the Dead Speak – Val McDermid
31. Idaho – Emily Ruskovich
32. After the Party – Cressida Connolly
33. Miss Happiness and Miss Flower – Rumer Godden
34. Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects: Part 2 – Giorgio Vasari
35. French Exit - Patrick DeWitt
36. Hidden Depths – Ann Cleeves
37. Expectation – Anna Hope
38. Silent Voices – Ann Cleeves
39. Girl, Woman, Other - Bernardine Evaristo
40. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont - Elizabeth Taylor
41. Warlight - Michael Ondaatje
42. Closed Circles – Viveca Sten
43. Things Can Only Get Worse – John O’Farrell
44. Guiltless – Viveca Sten
45. Cassandra at the Wedding – Dorothy Baker
46. The Glass Room – Ann Cleeves
47. The Loney – Andrew Michael Hurley
48. The Colour of Murder – Julian Symons
49. My Name is Lucy Barton - Elizabeth Strout
50. Tonight You’re Dead – Viveca Sten
51. Country Girls – Edna O’Brien
52. The Lonely Girl – Edna O’Brien
53. Girls In Their Married Bliss - Edna O’Brien
54. The Crossing Places – Elly Griffiths
55. Tell It To the Bees – Fiona Shaw
56. Harbour Street – Ann Cleeves
57. The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson
58. In the Heat of the Moment – Viveca Sten
59. Hag-Seed – Margaret Atwood
60. The Moth Catcher – Ann Cleeves
61. The Immortalists – Chloe Benjamin
62. Broken Greek – Pete Paphides
63. Vox – Christina Dalcher
64. Saints of the Shadow Bible – Ian Rankin
65. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Rebecca Skloot
66. In Harm’s Way – Viveca Sten
67. Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects: Part 3 – Giorgio Vasari
68. Now We Shall Be Entirely Free - Andrew Miller
69. The Seagull – Ann Cleeves
70. The Dark Is Rising – Susan Cooper
71. Black Narcissus – Rumer Godden
72. Human kind – Rutger Bregman

My final review. Human kind by Rutger Bregman is sub-titled "A Hopeful History" and it is indeed that - a race through notable events and psychological experiments in human history, with the aim of showing that human nature is inherently good rather than inherently bad or selfish. It's quite journalistic and chatty in style, and Bregman takes swipes at a few other popular authors of a similar type along the way (particularly Malcolm Gladwell). I don't feel I know enough about most of the civilizations or experiments discussed to know whether Bregman's thesis is convincing, but a positive view of human nature was kind of what I needed after this year so I was happy just to be drawn in. The parts I found most interesting were the section on war and combat, where Bregman convincingly explains that a vast majority of soldiers simply do not fire their weapons when there is a significant risk of hitting enemy combatants, and the "non-complementary" section at the end, particularly the parts about the most effective prison systems in preventing recidivism. Thought-provoking and worth a read.

My ultimate total of 72 is three less than last year, although I think I should be able to count at least three more because the final volume of Vasari was over 1000 pages by itself. And together with homeschooling, very busy work and staff management on top of my actual job (plus training to be a judge!), I'm pretty pleased with that total.

73% female, 27% male (I keep trying to get the male numbers up but I'm not doing very well). I've also done significantly worse than last year in reading books by BAME authors and translated works (other than some French and Swedish detective novels), which I suspect resulted from seeking the comfort of the familiar.

My favourite fiction book of the year was The Last Painting of Sara De Vos by Dominic Smith, closely followed by After the Party by Cressida Connolly, Swan Song by Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott and Warlight by Michael Ondaatje. I didn't read a great deal of non-fiction (and what I did was mostly Vasari) but The Year of Magical Thinking was head and shoulders above everything else.

Thanks to everyone on this thread for your company in this strangest of years; welcome to the new and returning members and here's to a much better 2021. I'm hoping to get to 75 this year which will make nary a dent in my TBR pile...

I'll update some time before midnight as I'm still hoping to finish my last book and make it a pleasing 99 books for this year. It's a bit anti-social to sit reading on NYE when the rest of my family will want to party (quietly, at home, in tier 4), so this is unlikely to happen! Maybe one of my resolutions for next year should be to focus less on the numbers (once I've reached 50) .

Thanks for the heads up about The Way of All Flesh - I hadn't clocked that is by Chris Brookmyre and his wife, so that's going straight in the TBR list!

Middlemarch is one of my top 5 books of all time, Indigo - I hope you enjoy it!

I also read Magpie Murders last year and loved it - it's both a very tricksy narrative and a brilliant homage to golden age detective fiction. Hope you enjoy it, Sonnet!

Sorry to hear about your mum, betts - hope someone somewhere pulls their finger out and moves her up the list

As for my resolutions, I've got a long real-life to do list next year (sell house / move country / go back to work, all to be negotiated around the pandemic ). So I suspect I'll be reading a lot less in total, and more on the Kindle, as my physical books will be taking their time circumnavigating the globe. I only hit 100 books this year because of listening to so much on audio while doing housework and going on long walks, and that'll be out the window. I'm going to try really hard not to focus on the numbers and not be put off longer books just because they bring the total down.

Thanks to everyone for being such good company this year, it's great to have a crew of sympathetic ears who actually want to hear about what you've been reading!

I'm going to carry on with reading Proust.

Otherwise, just keep reading generally

Sorry to hear about your DM's vaccination news, bett - it's such a worry.

Remus "One of the characters fell over on his fanny at one point."

Didn't his Fanny mind awfully?

I'm not doing a whole list as have never mastered how to save and add to an earlier list - might try to work that out this year.

So just my favourites, not necessarily outstanding literary works but the books I most enjoyed this year, and in order of reading:

The Friendly Ones Philip Hensher
Visitation Jenny Erpenbeck
When Will There Be Good News? Kate Atkinson
Olive Kitteridge Elizabeth Strout
This Thing Of Darkness Harry Thompson
The World I Fell Out Of Melanie Reid
Doctor Thorne Anthony Trollope
The Restraint of Beasts Magnus Mills
The Five Halle Rubenhold
American Dirt Jeanine Cummins
The Dutch House Ann Patchett
The Color Purple Alice Walker
Old Baggage (trilogy) Lissa Evans
Hamnet Maggie O'Farrell
Restoration Rose Tremain
The Beekeeper of Aleppo Christy Lefteri
Leonard and Hungry Paul Ronan Hession
Mrs Bridge Evan S Connell
The Thursday Murder Club Richard Osman

Plus Ann Cleeves' Vera series and James Herriot's vet books. Nice escapist stuff.

I think that's me done for 2020. The All Creatures Great And Small Christmas special is saved up and waiting to watch with a glass of something nice. Thought I would end the year on a happy note.

All the best for 2021 - hopefully it will be a better year for everyone - and looking forward to lots more book chat on here. This has been a lovely place to spend time away from all the madness. I can't say how much I have appreciated it so thank you all

Sold!

They are both brilliant to be fair. I would still go Bleak House

Ha! I was actually thinking of that or Vanity Fair, to start the year off with a bang and to knock off one of the big ones.

I think I'm going to try and not use Goodreads (it's so convenient though) and keep my own records so I don't focus on a number.

@WillYouStopNamingNutcrackers

BLEAK. HOUSE. START NOW IF POSSIBLE

Sorry to hear about your mums vaccination appointment betts. I hope things move more quickly than the letter suggests.

I know a few people who’ve had one dose of the Pfizer vaccine and were waiting for their second dose, goodness knows what will be happening with that now.

I'm ending the year on 57, I'm happy with that

Top six fiction:
Ducks, Newburyport - Lucy Ellmann
Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell
The Stand - Stephen King
Bel Canto - Ann Patchett
Normal People - Sally Rooney
Where the Crawdads Sing - Delia Owens

Top four non-fiction:
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory - Caitlin Doughty
To Throw Away Unopened - Viv Albertine
Mindfxck - Christopher Wiley
Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea - Barbara Demick

My stats:
68% female / 32% male
54% fiction / 46% non-fiction

Happy new year everyone and see you on the new thread!

My last book of the year is

125. The Meg by Steve Alten

A diving expedition in the Mariana Trench goes wrong, and results in a giant megladon (prehistoric ancestor of the great white shark) being brought up out of the deeps to surface waters.

There’s a lot of action, as the giant Meg shark roams the Pacific, attacking plenty of ships and eating unlucky people as it goes. The main character is part of a group that’s hoping to trap the Meg in a man made sea loch for study, and there’s other groups wanting to kill the Meg before it causes more damage.

It’s not a taxing read, but it’s good action packed fun for the most part, if a bit gory in parts.

Disappointingly, the last 75 pages or so were a prequel novella. And really, no surprises in that, as the significant events in the prequel were covered briefly in the main story.

Completely random for me Betts.

I wrote a list of 50 books last January and I've read 41 of them. I still want to read 7 of those left.

Book club will account for 24 books as we are doing a planned extended list on top of the monthly choices.

I've very easily swayed by recs on these threads. I'll sit with a notebook and go though the bolds and see what appeals to start the year.

If the library ever reopens I'll also be swayed by what's available there.

I'm not making a number target this year. I'll go with the flow. I'm stupidly competitive (mostly with myself) but I have a few bricks to tackle.

My only plan is more print books, more non-fiction and the ever promised and rarely kept more classics pledge.