50 Books Challenge 2022 Part Seven

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is my favourite Bronte. And The Bronte Myth, by Lucasta Miller is my favourite book about the family.

Have read 140 books and close to finishing three more: The Christmas Chronicles, by Nigel Slater (tooth-grindingly tweet but the Christmas Eve parsnip loaf was an unexpected hit); A Year of Wonder, by Clemency Burton-Hill, which suggests a piece of classical music for every day and has expanded my horizons - a tip of the hat to Fuzzy for keeping the thread going; the fourth Quantum Curators book, hokum but fun.

Of the 140 completed, 74 were non-fiction and 66 fiction, mostly crime, with 16 by Agatha Christie, as well as series by Alison Joseph and Colin Cotterill.

Favourite fiction:

O Caledonia, by Elspeth Barker
The Sentence, by Louise be Erdrich
Hurdy Gurdy, by Christopher Wilson (not at the time, but it's stuck with me).

Favourite non-fiction:
Hidden Hands, by Mary Wellesley (about medieval manuscripts, so cassandre,* loved your link and I look forward to the future book that someone undoubtedly will write)
The Button Box, by Lynn Knight
Lost Japan, Alex Kerr
The Dancing Bear, by Frances Faviell.

I'm proudest of having finished Tristram Shandy and loved visiting Shandy Hall back in May. It worked well to tackle it a couple of pages per day and I'm going to try this with a couple of Simon Schama books I have on hand. Other than that, my aim is to read at least two physical books I own each month - I prioritize library books and read Kindle when on the move, so the physical books I own rarely make it to the top of the pile.

On a separate note, any recommendations for a favourite Hardy other than Jude & Tess which I've read in the long-distant past?). A conversation in a pub persuaded me I should re-visit him, but only gave 'all of them' as the answer to which one. Farming and countryside content a plus

I love how differently we all feel about books like Jane Eyre, one of the joys of this thread (along with discovering books like Meetings With Remarkable Manuscripts which I would never normally have picked up, and is currently my gentle bedtime read). Lowood was absolutely my favourite part, and I love how you can see the influence on children's books like The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and Thursday's Child.

51. Christmas is murder by Val McDermid

Quite liked these short stories but pretty sure only one was set at Christmas which is a bit disappointing given that's why I got it!

I know quite a few of you lot really like her full novels and will probably read one in 2023, it's not a genre I read much so quite looking forward to something new!

I LOVED Jane Eyre (and Wuthering Heights). But I read (and re-read, many times) both as a teenager and haven't revisited them since, so I'm not sure how well they would work for me as an adult. Never read Wide Sargasso Sea.

Austen is pre-Victorian.

Here’s a more balanced review of Jane Eyre:
The Jane and Rochester stuff is great. The rest is boring and shit. And totally agree with whoever said that the ending is sexy.

But the school stuff is so boring that I can’t even care when whatshername dies. And the StJohn stuff makes me want to vomit from boredom and fury.

What a great literary debate for the Christmas holidays! I do like Jane Eyre and see Jane as a heroine, though I read it very young and was bored rigid by the last third when she left Rochester's house. I saw a wonderful stage adaptation of it a few years ago as well.

But a family friend lent me Wide Sargasso Sea as a teenager which definitely changed my views. Then I did a module at university on women and the gothic, where Jane Eyre really is a seminal text and you start to see the motif of the hidden, bad wife appear over and over again (Rebecca most notably of course). Since then I'm afraid I've seen Rochester as one of the great malevolent figures in literature.

68. The Heron's Cry by Ann Cleeves. Second in her newest Two Rivers detective series. As someone said recently, these have a really cosy and neat feel to them. I enjoy her descriptions of various country pubs, beach cafes and art centres as much as the murder mystery.

I'm generally not a fan of Victorian novels (bar Jane Austen) and have managed to avoid the Brontes other than Jane Eyre at GCSE. Maybe I'm due a reread as just remember finding her rather dull.

Love the medieval Twitter spat @cassandre. It sounds fascinating and deeply suspect. I've taken a bit of a step back from Twitter since Musk seems to have thrashed the algorithm and politics has become far less bonkers, but things like this remind me why it's addictive.

I'm nearing the end of The Dark is Rising and wading through Glory slowly on my Kindle so hope to finish at least one of those before the year end.

New Vera book or the Lucy Foley sound like nice easy reads as an incentive to getting through Glory.

I enjoyed Jane Eyre. I have Wide Sargasso Sea but haven’t read it yet. Perhaps I will reread JE and follow up with WSS next year.

The medieval manuscript shenanigans sound fascinating!

And agree with Pepe that Gavin and Stacey is fabulous!

Team Jane Eyre here. I had a very abridged version as a child that I loved and so I think that carried over into adulthood. I love the complexity of the characters and the building suspense of Jane's time at Thornfield Hall. I was completely underwhelmed by Wide Sargasso Sea when I read it this year although I can see it's an accomplished novel. It was just that I wanted a Jane Eyre prequel and I felt it stood in its own right as a story.

I don't think I'm going to finish another book this year although I have just started The Paris Apartment which doesn't seem as if it will take long. I planned to spend yesterday afternoon reading but got sucked into reruns of Gavin and Stacy on tv and suddenly it was 9pm and the day had gone. Was worth it, though - the writing on that show is just so good.

And a summary in a separate post because I was sure that last one was going to crash before I finished sorting out the bolds!

There was only one absolute stinker, which I feel was good luck as I got a lot of books from the library purely on the basis that they were available in English (although I did a bit of review-reading in advance so as to try to avoid the real dross...it seems that English readers in this part of France have very different tastes from me!).

I've been generous with the bolds, but the real standouts are:

The Betrayals
Possession
Hamnet
Empire of Pain
Cloud Cuckoo Land
The Goldfinch

I read 7 non-fiction; 66 fiction - should try to read more non-fiction next year!

7 of the books on the list were ones that I read to my DDs.

5 of them were in French.

And finally, 42 were by women, 29 by men (and 2 were by multiple authors so count as both/neither). So that's 59% by women, 41% by men.

I don't think I'll finish another book before the end of the year so here is my final list for 2022:

1. Snow - John Banville
2. First Class Murder - Robin Stevens
3. Jolly Foul Play - Robin Stevens
4. The Betrayals - Bridget Collins
5. Possession - A S Byatt
6. The Wee Free Men - Terry Pratchett (read to the DCs)
7. Seventy-eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness - Rachel Pollack
8. Officers and Gentlemen - Evelyn Waugh
9. A History of the World in Twelve Maps - Jerry Brotton
10. A Summons to Memphis - Peter Taylor
11. Alias Grace - Margaret Atwood
12. Where are you now? - Mary Higgins Clark
13. The Brass Verdict - Michael Connelly
14. Girl with a Pearl Earring - Tracy Chevalier
15. An Instance of the Fingerpost - Iain Pears
16. Les Cahiers d’Esther: Histoires de mes 10 ans - Riad Sattouf (in French)
17. Mistletoe and Murder - Robin Stevens
18. A Moment of Silence - Anna Dean
19. Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage - Alfred Lansing
20. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone - JK Rowling
21. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - JK Rowling
22. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - JK Rowling
23. The Hobbit - J R R Tolkien (read to the DCs)
24. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - JK Rowling
25. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - JK Rowling
26. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - JK Rowling
27. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - JK Rowling
28. The Hours - Michael Cunningham
29. Destination Unknown - Agatha Christie
30. Entry Island - Peter May
31. The lady and the unicorn - Tracy Chevalier
32. The Potter's House - Rosie Thomas
33. Mrs England - Stacey Halls
34. Killers of the Flower Moon - David Grann
35. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome (read to the DCs)
36. A Beautiful Spy - Rachel Hore
37. Five Star Billionaire - Tash Aw
38. The pursuit of happiness - Douglas Kennedy
39. The Maze of Doom - David Solomons (read to the DCs)
40. The Prague Cemetery - Umberto Eco
41. The Lighthouse Witches - C J Cooke
42. Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell
43. The tea girl of Hummingbird Lane - Lisa See
44. The Prince of the Marshes: and other occupational hazards of a year in Iraq - Rory Stewart
45. The Blame Game - C J Cooke
46. Glass Houses - Louise Penny
47. Just William - Richmal Crompton (read to the DCs)
48. Polo - Jilly Cooper
49. I know my name - C J Cooke
50. Lonely Planet: Explorer la Région Alpes - various (in French)
51. Winter Holiday - Arthur Ransome (read to the DCs)
52. Vango: Entre Ciel et Terre - Timothée de Fombelle (in French)
53. Exposure - Helen Dunmore (audiobook)
54. Les Cahiers d’Esther: Histoires de mes 11 ans (in French)
55. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
56. The Picts and the Martyrs (read to the DCs)
57. The Axeman’s Jazz - Ray Celestin
58. The Midnight Watch - David Dyer
59. Chanson Douce - Leila Slimani (in French)
60. Empire of Pain - Patrick Radden Keefe (audiobook)
61. Country Lovers - Fiona Walker
62. Anatomy of a Scandal - Sarah Vaughan
63. Cream Buns and Crime - Robin Stevens
64. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - Taylor Jenkins Reid
65. Little Disasters - Sarah Vaughan
66. Magpie Lane - Lucy Atkins
67. The Bullet That Missed - Richard Osman
68. Cloud Cuckoo Land - Anthony Doerr
69. Creepy Stories: A Classic Collection - Various
70. The Lamplighters - Emma Stonex
71. The Winemaker’s Wife - Kristin Harmel
72. The Railway Children - E Nesbit (read to the DCs)
73. The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt

73 The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt I absolutely loved this! A huge, sprawling novel about a teenage boy hit by tragedy, and a 17th-century painting which changes his life (although phrasing it like that doesn’t capture the essence of the book…). Looking online, there are very mixed reviews - a lot of people hated it, although the same is true of The Secret History, which I also loved.

I really enjoyed having a proper book to get my teeth into, after a few very average picks from the library - with this one I couldn’t wait to get back to reading it. It’s bloody depressing in places, but don’t let that put you off 😂

Staggered by all the Jane Eyre hate! I can never forget, aged 12 or so, retrieving an old (Victorian) copy of it from a box of books someone had given my Mum for a jumble-sale, and reading like a maniac until I emerged hours later totally obsessed with all things Brontë. Life membership of the Brontë Society and everything. Yes, St. John Rivers is an unbearable God-botherer, but….Jane and Rochester! 👩‍❤️‍👨

I’ve read Villette but it doesn’t deliver the same emotional punch, for me (and, as Charlotte’s own attempt to deal with her tortured experience of falling for M. Heger in Brussels, feels more like disguised autobiography).

@cassandre - I’m agog at the manuscript shenanigans. Must investigate.

I did Jane Eyre at GCSE and have re-read it at least once since - I can see both viewpoints, there are lots of good bits but also some elements that are very dated and uncomfortable. A thousand times better/less problematic than Wuthering Heights though! I think I made it to the end of Agnes Grey, and possibly Villette, but can’t remember much about either of them…

I love Jane Eyre, although not as much as I used to, and I suspect some of that is to do with reading The Wide Sargasso Sea. I was lucky enough not to study Jane Eyre at A level and have read it quite a few times, taking different things from it each time.

Might have to do a reread of both next year.

Fellow Jane Eyre fans, have you read Villette? I absolutely loved it.

I am also a Jane Eyre hater...

Ah thank you, PermanentTemporary, it was a bit self-indulgent of me to post that, but it’s strangely gripping once you start following up on all the links.
BTW, I don’t want to be stalkerish, but I think we live in the same city. I really appreciated your posts on a recent MN thread about traffic in our city.

Sheesh, Janina. Believability is just so retro and passé. Cough cough. I refer you to The Woman in White for example!

Sheesh, Janina. Believability is just so retro and passé. Cough cough. I refer you to The Woman in White for example!

Agnes! Not Anne, d'oh!

Yes. A shade more plausible ;)
Poor girl called Anne has to go earn her crust by teaching some rich bratty kids, meets nice dull man and marries him. The End.

@cassandre many thanks for that glimpse into an unfolding scandal...

What you saying @IsFuzzyBeagMise , is Jane Ayre turning up in her long lost cousins' village and then having a dream where Rochester spoke to her not entirely believable?

I had to study wide sargasso sea at sixth form. I hated it! To be honest I hadn't read Jane Eyre and that book put me right off doing so.