50 Books Challenge 2022 Part Seven

For reasons I am not very clear on, I wrote to the (now) King and Queen, Consort when they got married to congratulate them and got a lovely response. I am
not a royalist and if asked would probably vote to become a Republic, but wouldn’t start a Revolution over it. I think I just had a really boring job at the time so had time on my hands.

This is my list:

1. The Women of Troy -Pat Barker
2. The Time Traveller’s Guide to Regency Britain – Ian Mortimer
3. Orphans of the Storm- Celia Imrie
4. All In – Billie Jean King
5. Cloud Cuckoo Land – Anthony Doerr
6. Miss Benson’s Beetle- Rachel Joyce
7. Rejoice! Rejoice! Britain in the 1980s – Alwyn Turner
8. The Year Without Summer – Guinevere Glasfurd
9. The Dark Lady – Akala
10. A Line To Kill – Anthony Horowitz
11. Everything You Really Need to Know About Politics : My Life as an MP – Jess Phillips
12. The Dictionary of Lost Words – Pip Williams
13. Songbirds- Christy Lefteri
14. Crippled : Austerity and the demonization of disabled people – Frances Ryan
15. The Sleeping Beauties – Suzanne O’Sullivan
16. Dead Famous – Greg Jenner
17. Why We Kneel, How We Rise – Michael Holding
18. Lamentation- CJ Sansom
19. Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell
20. Hard Times- Charles Dickens
21. Windswept & Interesting – Billy Connolly
22. Nala’s World- Dean Nicholson
23. Broken Heartlands – Sebastian Payne
24. Tombland – CJ Sansom
25. 21st Century Boys – Sue Palmer
26. The Girl With The Louding Voice – Abi Dare
27. When Women Were Dragons – Kelly Barnhill
28. The Only Plane in the Sky – Garrett M. Graff
29. A Net For Small Fishes – Lucy Jago
30. 21st Century Girls – Sue Palmer
31. How to be a Sociologist – Sarah Cant and Jennifer Hardes
32. Duskwood – Amelia Wolf
33. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo – Taylor Jenkins Reid
34. Maggie and Me – Damian Barr
35. The Twyford Code – Janice Hallett
36. Emily Noble’s Disgrace – Mary Paulson Ellis
37. The Maths of Life and Death – Kit Yates
38. Chums – Simon Kuper
39. Into Thin Air – Jon Krakauer
40. The Marriage Portrait – Maggie O’Farrell
41. An Utterly Exasperated History of Modern Britain – John O’Farrell
42. A Classless Society : Britain in the 1990s – Alwyn W Turner
43. The Devil and the Dark Water – Stuart Turton
44. The Decade In Tory – Russell Jones
45. The Heart’s Invisible Furies – John Boyne
46. Utopia For Realists – Rutger Bregman
47. Shrines of Gaiety – Kate Atkinson
48. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
49. Advent Street – Carol Ann Duffy
50. A Christmas Tree – Charles Dickens
51. The Whalebone Theatre – Joanna Quinn
52. Talking to my Daughter : A Brief History of Capitalism – Yanis Varoufakis
53. She Speaks – Yvette Cooper
54. Warrior Queens and Quiet Revolutionaries- Kate Mosse

It's more or less a year of 50/50s - 50% women and nearly 50% non fiction.

Not sure I read a life changing book but nothing too awful either.

Finished what will be my last book of the year , Kate Mosses' Warrior Queens and Quite Revolutionaries I think she was wise to focus largely (but not exclusively) on dead women because - honestly- there are gazillions of names already in here! She is careful to include as many cultures as she can, and interweaves the whole thing with the journey of discovering her own great grandmother's life.

It takes a bit of getting used to because it seems so breakneck but then I did settle into a reading rhythm.

If I were to criticise, she is overly influenced by her own history so religion and faith get a whole chapter, for example. This does become too much when you get to the end and sport ahs two pages and film zero. This despite actually repeating at least five women across the book, so she had room.

One is always going to find the oversights but given yesterday's events, there are no fashion pioneers, so no Westwood. And there is no popular/20th century music either. She mentions the Grunwick strikers but not Dagenham.

I like her style, especially her use of ellipses to capture a tone... usually of some disapproval...

I've never actually read a Kate Mosse! Feel like I have now as she does tend to plug her books... (see what I did there!?)

@SolInvictus that's a lovely story. I'm currently reading The Palace Papers by Tina Brown, which goes into great detail about Camilla's first marriage and her period of "purdah" (TB's word) following the initial disclosure of her relationship with Charles. You never know how much is true in books about the royals, but it certainly made me think more about what it must have been like for Camilla.

@MaudOfTheMarches I've been following the Reading Room for a couple of years. I love it. Huge aunty crush on Camilla anyway (have loved her since reading the book written by one of the Soham victim's father when he mentions the family being invited to Highgrove for a private tea and Camilla noticing the children were scoffing the biscuits so went and packed the rest into a tupperware box for them to take with them) and love seeing her reading corner and other fabulous bits of Highgrove.

@ChessieFL I've downloaded the breakfast book. Sounds right up my street.

Just finished Remarkable Creatures and will finish the Hygge book this afternoon. Then I'll move over to the PC to copy out my final lists. 48 which is a bit of a Brexit so near yet so far, but never mind!

I pondered buying Bourneville when I was in Mr B's and JC was in that evening doing a talk and signing but buying a hardback seems such an indulgence in these 99p Kindle days. Will probably get the paperback though his last book annoyed me (as I think I said last year!)

Just bought Burn by Patrick Ness. Also, Ordinary Monsters and A Child Alone with Strangers which had both been on my wishlist after good Guardian reviews.

Sorry, that link won't post - it should be https :// royalreadingroom.uk, without the spaces.

Sounds good, Remus, thanks.

End of year review:

I haven't counted properly, but this year I read roughly 75% women, 25% men. Nothing at all in translation, which is unusual for me, but it's just the way my reading went.

Top non-fiction:
The Moth and The Mountain - Ed Caesar
Black Diamonds - Catherine Bailey
Empire of Pain - Patrick Radden Keefe
Fall - John Preston

Top fiction:
Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell
Nine Coaches Waiting - Mary Stewart
The Mission House - Carys Davies
Free Love - Tessa Hadley
Moonfleet - J Meade Falkner
A Lady's Guide to Fortune-Hunting - Sophie Irwin

Finally, have just discovered the Queen Consort's Reading Room (royalreadingroom.uk), which sounds like a Regency romance novel but is in fact Camilla's online "book club". It looks like four books are recommended each month, mostly quite middle of the road but including classics and older books. I spotted Girl, Woman, Other, Atonement and The Woman in White. There's also a section on manuscripts in Windsor Castle Library, with videos, which looks good. Interestingly, the weekly pick for 15th December was Don't Touch My Hair by Emma Dabiri, which seems to address head-on the Lady Susan Hussey/Sistah Space incident.

Definitely no zombies. If anything, I'd class it as literary fiction. It's the story of two people who fell in love and then one went away and then their lives could never be the same again. I'd love to hear what anybody else makes of it.

60. Free Love - Tessa Hadley

This was my first Tessa Hadley book and I loved it. Phyllis is a forty year old housewife and mother to Collette and Hugh. A chance meeting leads to an affair with a much younger man, and Phyllis' stable, staid suburban milieu is contrasted with Nicholas' artistic, quasi-revolutionary set in Ladbroke Grove. All of the main characters and their motivations are beautifully filled in - unusually for me, I especially liked Collette's journey from an awkward young teen to tentatively stepping into young womanhood.

61. The Mystery of the Sorrowful Maiden - Kate Saunders
This was just pure fun. Laetitia Rodd is a Victorian amateur detective, and in this instalment of her adventures she investigates a murder in theatre land. An understudy is found dead after a fire, and suspicion falls first on the flamboyant theatre owner, then on his wife and daughters. I will definitely read the rest of the series when I need a comfort read.

@bettbburg. Glad to have raised a smile.

Thanks, Remus, I've put it back on my wish list. It sounded like that French tv programme where people went away and came back zombified - The Returned? Amazon have some very odd categorisation.

Very best wishes bett

It's absolutely not horror - no idea why it was categorised as such.

I also passed on Our Wives Under The Sea when it was a daily deal because of the horror label - maybe I shouldn't have.

Remus, I was interested in Our Wives Under The Sea until I saw it categorised as 'horror'. Definitely not for me then!

The Deals I'm seeing are from 12 Days Of Christmas which everybody else is probably already aware of, I got a few more when I realised, it's a good selection the likes of which hasn't been seen in a while

300 Chessie Crikey, Well Done!

bett

Yet again I have fallen behind with updates!

289 and 290 Did They Steal A Million Yet? and Wish You Were Here Yet? by James Crookes

More 80s time travel adventures. All very silly but very good fun!

291 The Secret History of Christmas by Bill Bryson

Audible only but others have counted it so I will too! Does what it says on the tin.

292 Christmas Days by Jeanette Winterson

A collection of Christmas themed short stories interspersed with recipes. I really like these stories and this is one I go back to regularly at this time of year.

293 Red Sauce Brown Sauce: A British Breakfast Odyssey by Felicity Cloake

The author cycles round Britain finding out about various breakfast food items. I really enjoyed this.

294 The Children of Green Knowe by Lucy M Boston

Another Christmas favourite!

295 A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Think everyone knows this one!

296 Bootcamp for Broken Hearts by Joanna Bolouri

Average chicklit about a woman who finds love on a romance retreat.

297 Santa Grint by Jodi Taylor

Short story that is part of her Time Police series. I did like this although it wasn’t very Christmassy!

298 Good Taste by Caroline Scott

Set in 1932, this is a novel about a woman travelling around England trying to find out about the history of English food. On her travels she meets a man who proves too much of a distraction - can she focus properly on her book? This was OK - I liked the period detail but the story was a bit slow.

299 The Story Of The Country House by Clive Aslet

I thought this would be about living in a country house but it was more about how the architecture of houses has changed over time. Still quite interesting though.

300 Barefoot Britain: A Running Adventure Like No Other by Anna McNuff

This is a woman who likes endurance tests - she’s previously run the length of New Zealand, cycled round all 50 US states and also cycled round South America. Here, she runs more than 2000 miles round Britain - barefoot. I really liked this although not quite as much as her USA cycling book.

301 The Christmas Chronicles by Nigel Slater

Lovely writing about winter, food and Christmas. Will definitely be coming out again next Christmas.

302 Bournville by Jonathan Coe

If this is my final book of the year I will definitely have finished on a high. This tells the story of the Lamb family who live in Bournville in Birmingham, linking their lives to various high profile events. Part family saga, part state of the nation novel. I loved this but I can see how the state of the nation stuff may annoy some people.

Not sure if I will finish another one before tomorrow night but will be back with all my stats anyway.

111. Last Chance Saloon by Marian Keyes

This was always one of my favourite Marian Keyes books, reading it in my early 20s, Fintan, Tara, Catherine and their friends seemed unutterably cool to me. I enjoyed revisiting this but there were definitely some aspects that had not aged well (the comments around weight, inc heroin-chic and bulimia / anorexia, in particular) and there was one instance where a 40 year old man has 'sexual contact' with a 16 year old girl, which was not condoned but would be handled very differently these days. The other issue I had was that I listened to this on audible and the narrator was all over the shop with their accents. This is a bit of a problem when none of the main characters are English. There was lots of the trademark Marian Keyes humour and I had forgotten that this book was where I got the phrase "I speak as I find" which I use quite often in a broad Yorkshire accent.

Popping back to say hello and send all good wishes and hopes to @bettbburg

Oh @bettbburg Sending you as many geeky bookish hugs as you can cope with and wishing you and yours much love.

@bettbburg glad to see you checking in, hope you're doing okay

(This post isn't meant to ignore your situation bett you have all our support )

For those who can and want to Check Your Wishlist

I've just managed to get from between 0.99-1.99 each

The Whalebone Theatre
Take My Hand
Furious Love
Sorrow And Bliss
An Immense World
The Night Ship

@bettbburg