50 Book Challenge 2020 Part Eleven

So sorry @Betts. May this new year bring lots of vaccines for all that need it quickly and we get to hug family soon (and in my case raid my parents awesome book collection which I’ve missed this year!).

I’m going for 80 books. I’d like to read more classics and also more silly thrillers that keep me up turning pages (better then staying up scrolling news feeds as has been the case this year).

The big one for me with a 600 strong TBR is after a few last minute Amazon purchases from the favourites here (negative capability and the other americans) I’ve turned off one click and I’m going to go a whole year hopefully just purchasing from book shops / charity shops.

Sorry to hear that, betts.

My challenge as ever is not to overthink things. The one thing I'm doing is to read through some of the vintage books I've bought in the past couple of years. I've picked out twelve, some ambitious and some very light, but they're all books I want to read or think will be fun.

I want to not buy books, be more selective about what I read and rotate through the different genres I have on my Kindle.

I'm going for 100 again. Previously I've always stuck around 75 or so but 100 was a manageable number for me this year.

I'm planning to read a book in French every couple of months. I don't think I'd realistically achieve any more than that. I only managed one this year so six would be a decent step up.

And although I read very little non-fiction normally, I so enjoyed The World I Fell Out Of and The Five, both recommended on this thread, so I will look out for other non-fiction suggestions and give them a chance this year.

I really should cut back on buying new books and focus on the teetering TBR pile I already have. That's not a resolution though, just a slightly guilty feeling.

My challenge to be honest betts is to slow down, not focus on numbers, not read outside of weekends, and knock a few classics out

Thanks.

Back to books, what different reading challenges are people doing - random read a set number, themes, fiction/non fiction etc?

Oh that's tough betts I hope there's something to be done to sort things

Middlemarch is great, Indigo, hope you enjoy it. I read it for the second time in 2019 after a 30 year gap and was amazed how much of the essence of it I had remembered. I may have seen the TV adaptation in the meantime admittedly ..

Welcome Maria and welcome back Sonnet, nice to see you again.

Today I just squeaked in with my 100th book - yay! An update on the final five:

96. Mrs Bridge by Evan S Connell
    This is a touching, sometimes sad and sometimes comic account of the life of Mrs Bridge, a suburban housewife in Kansas, married to a lawyer and basically a decent soul trapped, however, by convention and social expectations. She is never overtly unkind or confrontational but her limitations are conveyed subtly through her speech and thoughts. It's a really nuanced portrayal, cleverly done, and her unspoken struggles to get the better of her "spirited" son are very amusing.
    Mr Bridge is a shadowy character, as much to his wife as to the reader. I'm looking forward to reading Mr Bridge, the sequel, soon.

97. Cotillion by Georgette Heyer.
    The second of hers I've read. It was amusing but I'm not sure I'll be returning for more. Christoper Brookmyre is more my thing for an easy entertaining read.

98. Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher.
    I'd been saving this up to read over Christmas and whizzed through it in no time. More my late mum's kind of book (she loved Catherine Cookson, Miss Read, Jean Plaidy and similar) but quite comforting at the end of a really difficult year. Wouldn't it be lovely if the world was really like this? Teenagers with rosy cheeks wrapped in home-made scarves and speaking like characters from a 1940s morale-boosting film. Always a good-tempered attractve woman in the kitchen cheerfully whipping up a delicious supper for unexpected guests. Happiness and hope for the future at the end. Nothing to frighten the horses here and an ideal gift for someone who, as my mum did, has The People's Friend as their magazine of choice. I actually did enjoy it as a one-off; RP is good at what she does without a doubt.

99. The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
    This was good fun. I liked the author's depiction of the older characters in the book who were sharp, funny and nobody's fools. Tightly plotted and with some funny moments too.

100. V for Victory by Lissa Evans
     The third in the series. I enjoyed Old Baggage and Crooked Heart and this did not disappoint. Noel is a brilliant character with some excellent dialogue and Vee really grows on you as time goes on. I also liked the way Mattie lived on in several people's memories. Lissa Evans is fascinated by the period and captures the reality of the nightly bombing of London, the food shortages and the general feel of the time very well (as far as I can tell). There's a compassion underlying her portrayal of the various eccentric characters in the boarding house which I liked too.

I think my next book will be Shuggie Bain. Very different and I'm looking forward to it.

FGS just had a message from my 89 year old mother, her vaccination appointment has been cancelled for "at least two months"
Not sure quite what to get drunk on tonight.

Lovely to see another familiar face Bibliomania

And yes, single mum of 5 here! But reading is my escape!

Thank you! So nice to join others with the love of reading. At the moment I'm reading
His wife's sister by a j wills. It's a cracker of a book so fa

Hello Maria5Kids, everyone is very welcome in 2021, although if you really have 5 kids I take my hat of to you if you have time to read! See you on the next thread x

I’m excited about joining the 2021 thread soon. Thanks for the warm welcome on the previous thread. I love this idea.

Happy New Year to you all and a huge thank you to Southeast for diligently keeping the thread going during this most difficult of years.

I have fallen off the thread spectacularly as result of taking on a new role at work which has been much more demanding than I anticipated. I'm determined to achieve a better work life balance in 2021, and hoping this thread will keep me on track. I hope everyone is well, and that you've all had a peaceful and happy Christmas!

I've really enjoyed reading everyone's highlights and have added many titles to my 2021 TBR list.

Although it has not been a classic year for reading for me, I've still come across a few gems. I've posted my full list below with highlights in bold.

1. Anatomy of a Scandal – Sarah Vaughan
2. Childhood: The Copenhagen Trilogy 1 – Tove Ditlevsen
3. Persepolis – Marjane Satrapi
4. Animal Farm – George Orwell
5. Hazards of Time Travel – Joyce Carol Oates
6. Ghost Wall – Sarah Moss
7. Florida – Lauren Groff
8. This is Pleasure –Mary Gaitskill
9. Only Killers and Thieves – Paul Howarth
10. Milkman – Anna Burns
11. Ladder of Years – Anne Tyler
12. Youth: The Copenhagen Trilogy 2 – Tove Ditlevsen
13. Motherwell – Deborah Orr
14. The Nickel Boys – Colson Whitehead
15. The Five – Haillie Rubenhold
16. Slack-Tide – Elanor Dymot
17. Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel
18. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
19. A Thousand Moons – Sebastian Barry
20. The Garden of Evening Mists – Tan Twan Eng
21. Down and Out in Paris and London – George Orwell
22. Trust Exercise – Susan Choi
23. Amnesty – Aravind Adiga
24. Hurricane Season – Fernanda Melchor
25. The Gathering – Anne Enright
26. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
27. Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys – Viv Albertine
28. Lost Children Archive – Valeria Luiselli
29. Slouching Towards Bethlehem – Joan Didion
30. Dependency: The Copenhagen Trilogy 3 – Tove Ditlevsen
31. On Chapel Sands – Laura Cumming
32. Norwegian Wood – Haruki Murakami
33. Invisible Women : Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men – Caroline Criado Perez
34. My Face for the World to See – Alfred Hayes
35. Girl, Woman, Other – Bernadine Evaristo
36. After Midnight – Irmgard Keun
37. Blue in Chicago – Bette Howland
38. Homage to Catalonia – George Orwell
39. The Poet X – Elizabeth Acevedo
40. Shane – Jack Schaefer
41. Saltwater – Jessica Andrews
42. Slaves of New York – Tama Janowitz
43. Segu – Maryse Conde
44. A Luminous Republic – Andres Barba.
45. American Dirt – Jeanine Cummins
46. On the Plain of Snakes: A Mexican Journey – Paul Theroux
47. A Clergyman’s Daughter – George Orwell
48. Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga
49. The Accidental Tourist – Anne Tyler
50. Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency – Olivia Laing
51. The Lying Life of Adults – Elena Ferrante
52. The Road to Wigan Pier – George Orwell
53. How Much of These Hills is Gold – C Pam Zhang
54. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
55. Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me – Kate Clanchy
56. Human Acts – Han Kang
57. The Book of Not – Tsitsi Dangarembga
58. The Missionaries – Norman Lewis
59. The Outrun – Amy Liptrot
60. The New Wilderness – Diane Cook
61. The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story Kate Summerscale
62. This Mournable Body – Tsitisi Dangarembga

Fiction highlights

it's a tie between two trilogies. I loved Tove Ditlevsen's Copenhagen Trilogy and Tsitisi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions Trilogy equally and couldn't choose between the two.

Non-fiction highlights

I've read some really excellent non-fiction this year. My top 5 below.

Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys – Viv Albertine
The Five – Haillie Rubenhold
Invisible Women : Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men – Caroline Criado Perez
On the Plain of Snakes: A Mexican Journey – Paul Theroux
Down and Out in Paris and London – George Orwell

I've been catching up on my OMF so I can re-join the readalong thread tomorrow and I also plan to finally make a start on Middlemarch as my first book of 2021. I'm ashamed to admit, I've never read it! .

Happy New Year to you all

Welcome Sonnet and Maria

Betts it was so good I read it again as soon as I finished it.

I'm another hasn't read Kes since I was 15. Should give it a go.

@highlandcoo

Bridgerton - you know BAFTA worthy it is not, but absolute perfection in terms of festive viewing.

For the second year I've noticed that I have a high hit rate for stand out non-fic. I'll aim to read more next year.

Top 5 non-fic standouts were

Our Bodies, Their Battlefields - Christina Lamb
Guest House for Young Widows - Azadeh Moaveni
Our Women on the Ground - Zahra Hankir
Reading Lolita in Tehran - Azar Nafisi
The Five - Hallie Rubenhold

Top 5 fiction

Actress - Anne Enright
My Dark Vanessa - Kate Elizabeth Russell
Bring Up the Bodies - Hilary Mantel
Homeland Elegies - Ayad Akhtar
The Other Americans - Laila Lalami

I had about 20 DNFs, but I'm too lazy to list them.

Everyone welcome, new and old (hi again, Sonnet!)

There's no shame if people need to to duck out of the threads for a bit, or don't read many books, or don't feel they read the 'right' kind of book. If you've read something (or abandoned it in disgust) and you want to talk about it, just hop on board!

@Maria5kids Join us! Welcome. No need to do anything except read a book and come and share how you felt about it

A few stats from me - I won’t post my whole list.

I read 105, which is the highest total I’ve ever managed. This feels like a big achievement, especially since I lost my mum in October and had a period of not really being able to read much. And to be honest the books since then haven’t been all that taxing, but at least I managed to start again.

Favourites this year:

The Missing Ink - Philip Hensher
A Very Private Eye - Barbara Pym
The Greengage Summer - Rumer Godden
Bring up the Bodies - Hilary Mantel
On the Plain of Snakes - Paul Theroux
Nothing to Report - Carola Oman
Somewhere in England - Carola Oman
Rosie: Scenes from a Vanished Life - Rose Tremain
Nine Pints - Rose George
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
The House by the Thames - Gillian Tindall
The Man in the Red Coat - Julian Barnes
Walking With Ghosts - Gabriel Byrne

Of my 105, 63 were by women writers
19 were library e-books
42 were non-fiction

Here’s my list for 2020:

1. The Subtle Knife - Philip Pullman
2. The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman

1. Tombland - CJ Sansom
2. Hercule Poirot’s Christmas - Agatha Christie
3. White House Farm - Carol Ann Lee
4. The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson

1. The Last Tudor - Philippa Gregory

Very pleased with this number as 10 more than last year although some of them were pretty short (Malory Towers) but balanced by some longish ones.

I have read lots of new authors, read some classics I had never previously read, re-read some old favourites (still going with the Dick Francis re-reads) and enjoyed some series which I have yet to finish (the Cazelets, Slow Horses, the Chronicles of St Mary’s).

Thank you all for your reviews, recommendations, good humour and company.

Happy new year and a better 2021 to you all. See you on the 2021 thread when I finally finish A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel - 500 pages in and about 400 to go!

I've just done my stats. Despite good intentions, my tally chart got abandoned months ago. I was originally tracking how many books in translation and how many classics, but I lost count. I had toyed with the idea of only reading women this year,

Fiction 87%

Non-fic 13%
Female 83%
Male 17 %
BAME 19%
Print 3%
Ebook 3%
Audio 94%

I've compared to 2019 out of curiosity.

Fiction 90%
Non-fic 10%
Female 68%
Male 32%
BAME 13%
Print 22%

E-book 8%
Audio 70%

I need to start picking up actual book again as I have a house full of them.