50 Books Challenge 2022 Part Seven

I wasn't planning to post a list but as @PermanentTemporary has stepped splendidly into the What We Bolded breach, here are my bolds for 2022.

The Dark Hours, by Michael Connolly.
Dava Shastri's Last Day, by Kirthana Ramisetti.
1979, by Val McDermid.
The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music, by Dave Grohl.
Before The Ruins, by Victoria Gosling.
Smile: The Story of a Face, by Sarah Ruhl.
Revival Season, by Monica West.
Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro Memoirs, by Beth Ann Fennelly.
Rachel's Holiday, by Marian Keyes.
French Braid, by Anne Tyler.
The Unheard, by Nicci French. (I've gone back and forth on this one but it's staying as bold because it was very compelling and I still remember it, unlike some of the thriller-type stuff I've read!)
Sister Stardust, by Jane Green.
House Arrest, Pandemic Diaries, by Alan Bennett.
Again, Rachel, by Marian Keyes.
Friends and Dark Shapes, by Kavita Bedford.
The Paris Apartment, Lucy Foley.
The Book of the Most Precious Substance, by Sara Gran.
The Year I Stopped to Notice, by Miranda Keeling.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin.
Nona the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir.
Shrines of Gaiety, by Kate Atkinson.

Thanks as always to @Southeastdweller for keeping us organised, and all the lovely 50 bookers for such a wonderful thread.

Posting my final list for 2022 before moving over:

1. Vaxxers - Prof Sarah Gilbert and Dr Catherine Green
2. Wintering - Katherine May
3. A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Towles
4. Atomic Habits - James Clear
5. Fortune Men - Nadifa Mohamed
6. The Highly Sensitive Child - Elaine N Aron
7. The Appeal - Janice Hallet
8. Did I Say That Out Loud - Fi Glover and Jane Garvey
9. Learning To Swim - Clare Chambers
10. The Russian Revolution - History in an Hour - Rupert Colley
11. Stalin - History in an Hour - Rupert Colley
12. A Man Called Ove - Fredrik Backman
13. Sorrow and Bliss - Meg Mason
14. In Black and White - Alexandra Wilson
15. The Bookshop - Penelope Fitzgerald
16. Catholicism - A Short Introduction - Gerald O’Collins
17. The Converts Guide to Roman Catholicism - Keith Nester
18. Why Be Catholic - Patrick Madrid
19. Still Life - Sarah Winman
20. War Doctor - David Nott
21. Lessons in Chemistry - Bonnie Garmus
22. Stasiland - Anna Funder
23. Small Things Like These - Claire Keegan
24. Rome Sweet Home - Scott Hahn
25. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day - Winifred Watson
26. The Twyford Code - Janie Hallett
27. Quartet in Autumn - Barbara Pymn
28. A Comedian’s Prayer Book - Frank Skinner
29. The Accomplice - Steve Cavanagh
30. Old Baggage - Lissa Evans
31. The Cold War in One Hour - Rupert Colley
32. Remainders of the Day - Shaun Bythell
33. The Great Christmas Knit Off - Alex Brown

55% fiction / 45% non fiction
58% female/ 42% male
Only 6 audio books this year, I much prefer proper reading, but helps squeeze a few extra in.

My final stats for the year:

59 books
58 by female authors

Books in French 5
Books in German 4
(rest in English)

Non fiction 22
Fiction 37

2 audible, rest paper.

Just posting my final stats before moving to the new thread

Managed 42 books this year
32 fiction/ 10 non-fiction
36 kindle/ 6 paper
35 female / 6 male / 1 unknown
25 new / 17 re reads

Managed to finish another book this afternoon so just sneaking in a final review

42. Katherine Howard: A New History by Conor Byrne Another terribly written history non-fiction. As I was reading it I kept thinking it seemed like a badly written undergrad essay, with incessant mentions of Byrne's main "themes" and the painful repitition. Turns out at the time of writing Byrne was a history undergrad! So it basically is a very long undergrad essay, no idea how he got this published! The "about the author" blurb at the back of the book states "some of the conclusions reached are controversial and likely to spark considerable debate". I'm not sure who he imagines will be debating this as it's not likely to have made much of an impact on historians who are considerably more qualified and experienced than him. And in terms of his "controversial conclusions"... Well they're not particularly controversial and in all honesty he makes some truly humongous leaps in the inferences he draws from his source material that he quite frankly doesn't adequately back up in his argument. A bit sad to have ended my years reading with such a disappointing book but at least it's off my tbr

Fell off the threads a while ago but have kept reading, managed more than last year but still way off. Might aim for 35 next year.

1. You. Caroline Kepnes
2. The Only Plane in the Sky. Garrett Graff
3. Bill Bryson for the Love Hearts appeal. Audio
4. The Gilded Ones. Namina Forna
5. Gossip Girl. Cecile con Zeigesar
6. D.O.G.S. M.A. Bennett
7. The girl with the curly hair.l, Asperger’s and me. Alis Rowe
8. Labyrinth. A.C.H. Smith
9. Unorthodox. Deborah Feidman

Just finished one more. A friend bought this for me when I had my first child (now 16) and it’s been on the shelf. I started reading it earlier this year and then left it on a boat! I bought the revised edition and have finally managed it.

Genghis Khan: Life, Death and Resurrection, John Man

Part history, part travelogue, I enjoyed this. As a modernist, I sometimes take for granted sources etc. the conquests were interesting, but what I found even more fascinating is his legacy, which is just astounding. I could have done without the author’s long descriptions of climbing mountains his balancing of the evidence seemed solid.

Hello 50 bookers. I’ve had a ridiculously slow reading year, so you will pleased to see my list is very short indeed:

1. No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
2. Merivel by Rose Tremain

1. The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper
2. How to Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie
3. The Only Plane in the Sky: The Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett M. Graff

1. When Will There be Good News by Kate Atkinson
2. The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson
3. Travels with My Aunt by Graham Greene

23. Year of Wonder by Clemency Burton-Hill As noted by several of us already, this takes the format of selecting a piece of classical (in the very widest sense) music for each day, accompanied by a few paragraphs of introduction. Sometimes this gives a nod to historical context, other times it looks briefly at musical features or just suggests something appropriate for a particular occasion.

For me this was a successful book. I don’t think Burton-Hill sets out to provide in-depth analysis of pieces, but rather seeks to help the reader to explore the genre more widely. I found that if I enjoyed an extract I would listen to the whole work, and sometimes then do a little of my own research on structure and/or context. Although I have some knowledge of classical music I’ve been thrilled to be introduced to a couple of dozen new pieces that are now firm favourites. Recommended. And I will start the New Year with Another Year of Wonder.

I have read so little that any stats from me would be pretty meaningless. My favourites are bolded above, but I would also like to draw attention to my stinker of the year, The Finkler Question. Just bobbins.

Thanks as ever to all the 50 Bookers for making this a great place to hang out. And a special thanks to @Southeastdweller for running the show so marvellously. I’ll look forward to seeing you all the other side of midnight on 2023’s thread.

Here we go then …

1. Hercule Poirot’s Christmas - Agatha Christie
2. Golden Hill - Francis Spufford
3. The Heart’s Invisible Furies - John Boyne
4. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World - Elif Shafak
5. Sorrow and Bliss - Meg Mason
6. And Away - Bob Mortimer
7. Excellent Women - Barbara Pym
8. Moonflower Murders - Anthony Horowitz
9. The Man In the Brown Suit - Agatha Christie

My bolding has been different every time I’ve posted my list I think - but this is what I’m going with for now. With a question mark over the bold for Still Life which I had quite mixed feelings about but actually in terms of a lovely story that I got engrossed in (the ‘lovely book’ I found myself craving later in the year and so many of you offered good ideas which I will continue to work through in 2023) I think it was one of the better reads of the year. I just wish there wasn’t that parrot ….

I haven't kept a list and can't remember most of what I've read, but two real standouts were:
Dreamland by Rosa Rankin Gee
and
the final read of the year, Our Wives Under the Sea
Totally coincidentally, both of these were lesbian love stories.

Here’s my list, the usual highlights in bold and things I really didn’t enjoy, or struggled with, in italics (well….one):

1. Forever Young - Hayley Mills
2. Mr. Bowling Buys a Newspaper - Donald Henderson

I’m pleasantly surprised by the number of bolds.
I kept up my 50:50 fiction/non-fiction policy.
33 male, 67 female authors.
I'd hoped to finish with slightly more than 100 but large parts of the year were spent being over-involved with increasingly bonkers current events and hence doomscrolling…….

As ever, this thread was a refuge and a joy. Thanks to southeast and a Happy New Year to all.

Jst managed to get one more in before the end of the year.

I've enjoyed reading everyone's reviews and comments on their books this year.

Happy New Year everyone.

120. The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson The story of brothers Arthur and Jake growing up in small town Canada in the 1930s-40s and of Ian a teenaged boy who works on Arthur's farm in the 1950s. It's a quietly devastating novel about family, betrayal, friendship and the effect of World War 2 on the community.

My stand out reads of the year:

Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett
Shakespeare inspired story of witches, kings and intrigue. This might not objectively be the best Discworld novel but it's the one I love the most.

The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas trans. Elizabeth Rokkan
Unsettling yet poetic Norwegian coming of age story.

The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey
Beautifully written story if a mermaid caught by fishers on a Caribbean island.

The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan
Sisters, Chinese-American culture clash and a touch of the supernatural.

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa Trans. Stephen Snyder
Mysterious story of vanishings and memory loss.

Paradoxical Undressing by Kristin Hersh
A memoir of music and mental health issues.

Astonishing the Gods by Ben Okri
A poetic novel of a man on an island of invisible people.

Mockingbird by Walter Tevis
Beautifully told story of a humanity close to extinction that is both sad and hopeful.

I can’t do my list but read around 60 this year. The only standout was really Mark Lewisohn’s Tune In - The Beatles
I liked Jo Browning Wroe’s A Terrible Kindness and Marian Keyes Again Rachel

Lots of dross (Looking at you Val McD) and lots of light easy reading most of which I enjoyed.

I might just finish Alan Rickman by midnigh.

I was about to post my list and then realised I've already posted my bolds

I think I am going to stick to books and TV on MN next year, I know I'm not alone in noticing quite the uptick in unkindness and picking fights.

t's been a bad year for me - I have had significant problems, but a good year for this thread, and I was so happy to have this thread as a place of calm and refuge and Books.

Thanks to SouthEast and everyone for your recommendations, condemnations, and banter.

Off to plan January's Reading

Happy New Year

Thanks @PermanentTemporary for your heroic efforts - I love seeing these stats in the new year.

And a couple of curious flags thrown in there for good measure.

Thanks to SouthEast too for keeping the threads going - it's been fun.

In that case...(thanks Permanent)

1 The Railway Children by E Nesbit
2 State of Terror by Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny
3 Rachel’s Holiday by Marian Keyes
4 Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason
5 Three Twins at the Crater school by Chaz Brenchley
6 The Awakening by Kate Chopin
7 The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
8 The Victorian Chaise-Longue by Marghanita Laski
9 Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar
10 Wildlands by Evan Osnos
11 The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper
12 Trials for the Chalet School by Eleanor M Brent-Dyer
13 Empire of Pain by Patrick Radnan Keefe
14 It Must Be Love by Caroline Kiiwii hihoury
15 Ghost Wall by Sarah oss
16 Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld
17 A Dark Adapted Eye by Barbara Vinen
18 The Bo hi ok of Margery Kempe by Margery Kempe
19 A Fatal Inversion by Barbara Vine
20 How To Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie
21 Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev
22 The Boy Who Loved Books by John Sutherland
23 The Human Cosmos by Jo 🇧🇧
24 Red Famine by Anne Applebaum🇧🇿
25 The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazlewood
26 On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder
27 Priestdaddy by Patrica Lockwood
28 Butler to the World by Oliver Bullough
29 Real Estate by Deborah Levy
30 South Riding by Winifred Holtby
31 Hello World by Hannah Fry
32 All the Devils are Here by David Seabrook
33 Peggy of the Chalet School by Eleanor M Brent-Dyer
34 A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka
35 Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmos
36 To the Island of Tides by Alistair Moffat
37 The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
38 Are We Having Fun Yet by Lucy Mangan
39 Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov
40 Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
41 Again, Rachel by Marian Keyes
42 The Deception of Harriet Fleet by Helen Scarlett
43 A Brief History of Crisps by Steve Barry
44 The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
45 Ghost Signs: Poverty and the Pandemic by Stu Hennigan
46 Extraterrestrial by Avi Loeb
47 My Fourth Time, We Drowned by Sally Hayden
48 Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith
49 Everything You Really Need To Know About Politics by Jess Phillips
50 Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
51 Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne du Maurier
52 Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
53 Angels by Marian Keyes
54 Schindler’s Ark by Thomas Keneally
55 The Bloater by Rosemary Tonks
56 Watermelon by Marian Keyes
57 Cult Classic by Sloane Crossley
58 After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz
59 Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer
60 Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera
61 Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid
62 Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
63 The Palace Papers by Tina Brown
64 People Person by Candace Carty-Brown
65 Fatherland by Robert Harris
66 Faith, Hope and Carnage by Nick Cabe and Seán O’Hagan
67 War Doctor by David Nott
68 The Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith
69 Everything is Washable by Salí Hughes
70 The Escape Artist by Jonathan Freedland
71 Supping with the Devils by Hugo Young
72 We All Hear Stories in the Dark by Robert Shearman
73 Substance by Peter Hook
74 The Day the World Came to Town by Jim DeFede
75 Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
76 Apollo Murders by Chris Hadfield
77 Climate Justice by Mary Robinson
78 Ice Rivers by Jemma Wadham
79 Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing by Matthew Perry
80 Feminist City by Leslie Kern
81 Theodora and the Chalet School by Elinor M Brent-Dyer
82 Red Sauce Brown Sauce by Felicity Cloake
83 Names for the Sea by Sarah Moss
84 The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
85 The Silent Corner by Dean Koontz
86 Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari
87 A Christmas Cornucopia by Mark Forsyth
88 Forever Home by Graham Norton
89 Rubbernecker by Belinda Bauer
90 Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
91 A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
92 The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley
93 The Christmas Chronicles by Nigel Slater

Hand up, I'm doing the list of What We Bolded 2022. Plan was to get it finished today but life has got in the way plus there's loads more info to look at on the thread! I hope to get it finished on Monday x

No problem, @CoteDAzur - and I suspect the text's probably been edited to make it sound as transatlantic as possible….

Last reviews for 2022 from me. I didn’t think I’d hit 100 but I have!

98: Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind - Sue Black

A detailed and all-encompassing survey of the skeleton and what it can tell us, by this eminent forensic anthropologist. This was great and absolutely fascinating. I’m also very much enjoying her Royal Institution Christmas lectures (only seen the first so far and I’m rationing the others)

99: A Modern Family - Helga Flatland, trans. Rosie Hedger

The author was billed on the cover as 'the Norwegian Ann Tyler' but sadly - no. This was a dull tale of the effect on adult children when their 70-something parents announce they’re getting a divorce. It’s Tyler territory but unleavened by any discernible speck of humour, and with endless screeds of agonising from uptight Liv, childless-and-desperate Ellen, and the youngest, Håkon, whose determination to avoid being trapped in conventional relationships goes awry when he falls for beautiful free spirit Anna. I’m mystified as to why this came garlanded with gushing reviews.

100: These Wonderful Rumours: A Young Schoolteacher's Wartime Diaries - May Smith

Picked up in a charity shop on a whim, but this turned out to be a splendid way to round off my year. May Smith was a young teacher in the small Derbyshire town of Swadlincote and chronicled her life in an arch style slightly reminiscent of her heroine, the Provincial Lady. So obviously this isn’t one for EM Delafield refuseniks, but I was charmed by May's tales of wartime life with lugubrious Mother and Dad, dodging air-raids, her endless quest for fashionable clothes, her gloom at having to go to work ('Noxious and loathsome!'), and especially her hilariously reluctant dealings with boyfriends Doug (in another town waiting to join up, so kept at bay with letters) and Old Friend Freddie. Spoiler: she married Freddie. Great fun.

It's been a lovely year on this thread. I’ll be back with my list later but not now, for fear of going on forever!

Terpsichore - Sorry about that. I assumed she was American because she lives in the US and "sounds" American in the book which is full of casual Americanisms.

Happy New Year everyone and hugs to Bett in particular!

I loved seeing so many Jane Eyre fans come out of the woodwork, despite all the reservations.

This is just a quick review dump so that I will have caught up on the year.

62. Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami, trans. Philip Gabriel 4/5
    A book group choice. Quirky and compelling. The characters are fantastic and were the real highlight of the book for me, even when I got a bit lost in the Oedipal plot strands. Reading this has made me want to reread The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which I read and loved many years ago.

63. A Glass of Blessings, Barbara Pym 4/5
    Not my very favourite Pym, because the heroine seemed quite self-centred and privileged, but then I slowly came to realise that that was the point… An excellent read, not least for the rather matter-of-fact portrayal of a gay relationship in 1958.

64. Une femme, Annie Ernaux 5/5
    At some point I will probably find an Ernaux novel that I don’t want to give five stars to, but this wasn’t the one! A moving portrayal of how the author comes to grips with the death of her mother, and a reminder of how terribly unjust dementia is.

65. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy, trans. Pevear and Volokhonsky 5/5
    What can I say, this was amazing. Reading a chapter a day of this novel in 2022 was one of the highlights (the highlight?) of my year. I haven’t read a book so slowly before and I really
    loved the experience. The characters will stay with me for the rest of my life.

66. East West Street, Philippe Sands 5/5
    This is a one-of-a-kind book, a personal memoir/biography/intellectual history. The stories of both perpetrators and victims of the Holocaust converge in the city of Lemberg/Lwow/Lviv. Read at my husband’s recommendation. Extraordinary. It’s hard to believe how recent the Holocaust was, and the vast number of human lives lost. It is the lawyers at the Nuremberg trials who emerge as the unsung heroes.

67. The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins 5/5
    I missed out on the MN reading group but read this anyway over the Christmas hols (and also read the full MN thread about it, which was wonderful). Marian Halcombe and Count Fosco are quite simply some of the best characters in Victorian literature.

I started The Year of Wonder thread but dropped off in Mar h when I hit a busy period at work. I was really enjoying it so am going to try it again in 2023. Good work @FuzzyCaoraDhubh and everyone keeping it going and making it through the full year.

I've not read The Year of Wonder so can't comment specifically on that, but I know Clemency BH used to be on Radio 3 and suffered a serious brain haemorrhage a couple of years ago.