50 Books Challenge 2026 Part Five

Just dodging back to John Lanchester for a moment, I recommend his memoir Family Romance. It’s quite jaw-dropping - his mother was a nun (in fact she became a nun twice), left the convent, fudged her age, got married, had children….he didn’t discover any of this until after her death. Properly gripping stuff.

I’m a total modernist but I do like Janina Ramirez. She is just a really great writer, which in turn makes her an accessible historian. I very much consider her stuff popular history, which might seem like a criticism, but it isn’t, a writer has to make money and a £120 monograph is not it.. I listened to Femina last year and I enjoyed it a lot, but cannot remember anyone - but that sort of anthologised history is like that. Overall, I think with a handful of others she has done great things for the discipline and she has real presence and cares about history outside the hallowed walls. Ditto Mary Beard who I first saw at a history teachers conference many many years ago (I have never been a teacher or had an adjacent profession but somehow spent a pleasant weekend here).

Maybe I will have to hang up my feminist credentials here, but I am irrationally irritated by books (largely non fic) that start with ‘women stories are missing, I’m putting them back…’ Rationally I know we are still not where we need to be with equality and equity but I find it weirdly dumbing down - and I dislike that I feel that way.

But maybe I am just particularly grumpy and irrational at the moment.

@AliasGrape I thought I'd read How to lose a lord in ten days but it was actually the similarly named How To Catch A Lord by Emma Orchard.

A Fatal Austen Affair Anna A Armstrong
This is the final book in the FitzMorris Family Mysteries, cosy crime stories featuring 3 generations of fabulous FitzMorris women. They somehow always find themselves caught up in a crime mystery wherever they go, and this time they're at a Regency fair in Bath. It's just lighthearted crime, if crime can be lighthearted that is, with a side order of romance. Good fun and easy reading.

Hmm, that's interesting @elkiedee. What makes you think Janina Ramirez is conservative I wonder?

Mary Beard fell in my estimation a little when she didn't support the Rhodes Must Fall movement at Oxford (in other words, she didn't support the idea of Cecil Rhodes' statue being removed from Oriel College on Oxford High Street).

I still think she's a person of integrity, however. I just see her as an old-school liberal who wants to steer clear of identity politics.

Politically I feel that Mary Beard (70+) is less conservative than Janina Ramirez (c45). Both are academic historians, TV presenters, authors of books and feminists, and have their own very clear style which doesn't always conform to expectations of clever women on TV. That's what I like. If you haven't guessed I think I am rather to the left of both.

Janina Ramirez has a Polish grandfather and degrees in English Literature and History of Art so she works in several disciplines, which I also like. Her husband is Spanish and in her teens she had to choose academia over touring with a female punk band. So she's even more Gothy Girl than I realised.

The two people in the media I can think of who are alive and closest to my views are all men - Alexei Sayle followed by Mark Steel, and the slightly younger Gary Younge - not a deliberate pun - (journalist and now professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester, which seems to be one of my family's favourite redbricks

Also, Hamnet and The Wedding Portrait are both historical novels set in the 16th c. Land is set in a less distant historical era and so maybe the background is trickier for that reason. Lots of Irish people presumably have lots to say about the novel's theme...

It's been a very literary week for me as last night I got to hear Maggie O'Farrell being interviewed about her new novel Land. She was a very good speaker but I wasn't blown away.

I went to the event with an Irish friend, who thought that maybe O'Farrell hadn't immersed herself sufficiently in Irish culture to write a novel about Ireland. However neither of us has read the book yet so we're withholding judgement!

I'm an O'Farrell fan (loved both Hamnet and The Wedding Portrait) but I suspect O'Farrell is a bit of an introvert and doesn't love public speaking. Which is OK. It seems a bit unfair that all novelists now are compelled to go on the public speaking circuit. She just came across as quite careful and restrained - not wanting to take any risks with what she said.

Land is about the British Ordnance survey conducted in Ireland after the Great Hunger. I have read Brian Friel's play Translations, which is also about the Ordnance Survey, but is set in 1833 before the Great Hunger. The Friel play is fantastic. I'm planning to reread it before I read Land.

thanks @Southeastdweller for the new thread. I have loads of previous chat to catch up on...

@elkiedee it's a coincidence that you mention Janina Ramirez, because I'm a fan of hers and actually just got to hear her being interviewed tonight in real life. She was fabulous and I'm a fan.

She's very good at making academic medieval scholarship accessible to a wider public (a bit like Mary Beard in Classics). But she's less traditionalist and conservative than Mary Beard.

I'm a medievalist academic, and I liked her so much, I'm thinking of sending her a fan email. She's a great public speaker, and has that mix of being both rigorous and down-to-earth. A breath of fresh air amidst the lingering stuffiness of Oxbridge.

I thought she was Spanish because of her surname, but I think her ancestry is primarily Polish.

@AgualusasL0ver you recommended her to me at one point as well - thank you!

Will come back onto the thread ASAP to catch up on all the other billions of posts I have missed 🙄

Not a writer, but so much part of our popular culture, and another woman my age, has died. Kanya King's death was announced today. She founded the Music of Black Origin (MOBO) music awards over 30 years ago, as a single mother. And she's from North London, and of Irish and Ghanaian descent. It's sad that she didn't have time to write a memoir, and the only thing about her on Amazon is a paperback composed of old newspaper articles (that is self proclaimed, to be fair). I was doing a LibraryThing post which is for a virtual literary graveyard group. LT members have catalogued some of Kanya King's favourite music along with their books - she loved both Beyonce and Solange, and Robert Elms interviewed her earlier this year in a lovely piece, part of a series on BBC Radio London, where I caught no hint that she must have known she was dying (grrr at bowel cancer). A bit like Radio 4's [My Cultural Life] which is coming soon.

Make it stop, I'm now reading obituaries rather than my books!

Her books are very varied but for me I need to just go along with it to enjoy it. She's a very amusing writer sometimes.

I have this and others TBR. I think my mum enjoyed another of his non fic or memoir type books years ago on holiday, but I started reading the new stuff and forgot to go back.

26 Death Of An Ordinary Man - Sarah Perry

A beautifully written account of the death of the author’s father-in-law from cancer - honest and moving, yet somehow uplifting. This resonated a lot with me having supported DH through losing MIL in recent years.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit John Lanchester's Fragrant Harbour is probably in my top 10 or 20 books of all time and one of my regular-ish re-reads. (I've also read Capital and enjoyed it, but not as much.) My impression is that all his books are very different to each other.

Only just checking in to the new thread - thanks @Southeastdweller - 6 pages in so won’t bother bringing my (rather underwhelming) list over.

Been away for a week to a wonderful family wedding and then stayed on a bit longer in the south west where it was held. It’s been really busy so I’ve just been reading a couple of very lightweight romances, neither were particularly brilliant though I got more into the second one as it went on:

21 Fever Dream - Elsie Silver
Ive inhaled most of her books (sort of cowboy romances, or cowboy adjacent) over the last year or so whilst not reading much else other than kindle unlimited romance. I’m not sure if this one was just objectively not as good as previous, or whether I’m getting pickier now I’m reading a bit more widely (was going to say ‘properly’ but trying not to be snobby about the books I enjoy!) again, but I wasn’t particularly into this one. Still a pleasant enough disraction.

22 How to Lose a Lord in Ten Days - Sophie Irwin
Ive enjoyed both her previous regency set romances, but as with this latest, it does take quite a force of will to suspend disbelief and enjoy them for their own sake. They have a very modern sensibility and, though the stakes are always established as scandal and ruin at the start, the fact that these feisty ‘feminist’ Regency ladies crack on knowingly doing things that seem guaranteed to bring that about, but everyone decides to find it charming and admirable anyway, tends to undermine the story somewhat. Still, this was fun and an easy read that passed the journey home today pleasantly enough.

40. That’s Not My Name by Megan Lally

Thriller.

The book starts with “Girl”, who wakes up by the side of a remote forest road battered, bruised and missing her memory. A passing police officer takes her to the small local police station, where a frantic man, Wayne, soon appears, declaring that she’s his daughter Mary, and he has photos, birth certificates etc to prove it.

And then the action cuts to the second narrator, Drew, who feels like he’s the only one still looking for his missing girlfriend Lola. Everyone else has Drew down as the prime suspect in her disappearance.

It’s clear at this point that “Mary” is not Wayne’s daughter, and that something much more sinister is going on. The real question here is whether “Mary” will regain her memory and escape, and / or Drew will track “Mary” and Wayne down before things take a serious turn for the worse.

It’s fast moving, quite tense at the end and a quick read, although some of it was a bit hard to believe.
Especially Lola’s friend Autumn. She’s initially convinced that Drew’s a murderer, but when he confesses that he’d broken up with Lola the night she vanished, Autumn’s suddenly equally convinced of Drew’s innocence to the point where she’s willing to help him break into the local police computers and go on road trips to interrogate potential witnesses.

Quite aside from the mental whiplash there, I’m really not seeing the logic behind her change of heart. You’d think the breakup confession would have made Drew look more guilty if anything.

35 Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson

I read Oranges are Not the Only Fruit when I was young (in my 20s I think, although possibly earlier) and absolutely loved it, so I bought loads more Jeanette Winterson books and, er, didn't love them. I can't remember whether I ever actually got to the end of this one; I suspect not. Given that I have recently come round to the genius of Virginia Woolf, and someone compared this to Orlando, I thought I'd give it another go.

Well, it's not really like Orlando (or anything else, for that matter) but I did like it much more this time. I suspect that, after Oranges, I made the mistake of thinking there would be some kind of plot. Which there really isn't, but it doesn't matter. The narrative comes from the Dog Woman - physically huge, literal and innocent - and her adopted son, Jordan. Both loosely travel through the ages, which I think is where the Orlando comparisons come in; Jordan searching for a dancing princess, the Dog Woman just because she's always there, like a rock. There is all sorts of stuff in here; travels with John Tradescant, the civil war, fairy tales, murder - but the reason I found it such a delight to read this time round was Winterson's sparkling writing. Just as I was thinking this really has jumped the shark now, where did that come from, she would come up with a beautifully hewn little gem. And she's very funny; the twelve dancing princesses (from whom we hear in the middle of the book) are by turns tragic, wise and hysterical. A short, colourful, tumbling riot.

Book Lovers by Emily Henry

Leant to me by a friend after I whinged about the heavy books I had got stuck in. I devoured this in three days and it was exactly what I needed. Lightweight but well written, fun characters and set outside Asheville which I actually visited last year so that was fun.

I have apparently not learned my lesson though,I have had East of Eden on my kindle for ages and I am going in as my next book, I want to read it before the TV show. I liked Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row, but my actual favourite Steinbeck is Travels With Charley.

Thanks, I bought this as I've read several of his books and want to read the others, including Lanchester's, non-fiction too. It sounds very different but possibly light relief, valuable in breaking up a reading slump.

I've just been telling DS2 about Marjane Satrapi as she wrote his favourite picture book, about a kid who is afraid of the dark and the monsters it brings... written by a refugee child who became a refugee woman living in a country which isn't always kind to migrants. The more I think about it the more this little picture book, a lovely story with a happy ending, makes me wonder what she actually thought as she produced it.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit the 911 book is really good, as good as The Only Plane In the Sky.

I just came on to talk about Marjane Satrapi. I loved Persepolis and it’s one of the books that got me into graphic novels as I’d really seen them as comics before that. Such sad news.

I think "chagrin" in this specific tragic case may be sorrow for Satrapi's country, her people, as much as for her late partner although of course this is speculation. Just a few weeks ago, my cousin's ex-dp's friend, an Iranian Kurdish guy, said that "we can survive a bad government, we can't survive no government" - perhaps a reference to what has followed forced regime change elsewhere in the region. Imagine following news from home and missing her dp at the same time. Not to mention the impact of war. Soldiers too. Mental health is a huge theme in refugee stories, fiction and non-fiction, and it doesn't just stop if you become successful in a safe place.

42 . Look What You Made Me Do by John Lanchester

I’ve previously read and liked The Wall and Capital by the same author. Picked this up in the recent deals. Needed something to be extremely different from Grapes Of Wrath and this delivered that.

Phoebe has written the latest Netflix hit

Kate thinks it’s about her marriage.

This was quite slight, less than 300 pages, and sometimes it felt like plot development was missing, and it also had a tendency to go off on irrelevant tangents, it could have done with more substance.

That said it was easy, done in one sitting reading with some good twists, though I didn’t necessarily buy the end.

Diverting enough but not unmissable.

I think "morte de chagrin" implies more than dying of sadness, somehow. Something stronger. Her husband of some years died last year, and it must be a hard time to be an Iranian abroad, particularly if you don't entirely embrace Iran's enemies as allies....

But whatever, today it feels like a tragic loss.

Ah another thread I am in danger of missing.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I did technically miss out on Of Mice and Men at school as the second half of our year did that and my side did To Kill a Mockingbird but I made sure to read OMAM too as I had FOMO :-)