50 Books Challenge 2026 Part Five

@StrangewaysHereWeCome – Ba ha ha ha!! Yes! There was a VERY descriptive episode of Younger Brother masturbating that I could have done without. But then I never really want to read about men masturbating to be fair.

@MamaNewtNewt – The Dark Angel was a low point in the series.

I was very well behaved with the deals and only bought a 99p Jenny Colgan which was on my wish list and I went bananas and paid £2.99 for an Elin Hildebrand that I had my eye on.

Interestingly Lionel Shriver is in the deals today - I have not bought it! Did pick up The Director though and the new Janice Hallet.

@bettbburg if you go to the Kindle deals page and then scroll to the bottom, it should say see all deals.

I know what you’re saying @MamaNewtNewt Rob Delaney gave Alice Munro a rave on Between The Covers and so I bought Runaway then the news came out, no chance of me reading this now

@MamaNewtNewtA big part of the Neil Gaiman issue for me is that Coraline, The Graveyard Book & others used to be (& maybe are still) taught in schools, which I find really uncomfortable given the news reports about his behaviour. I took DS1 to the Jorvik museum last year and I can still remember that Odd & the Giants was a big feature of their display and the children’s book corner was otherwise quite limited re authors even though this was after the allegations. This I really find difficult and I don’t like the way this debate is framed as censorship. In reality, we do curate books for children and if we are including Gaiman, then we are excluding other authors as there is a limited amount of space in the curriculum or on library / book shop shelves.

It’s not that Gaiman is the only author who writes about Vikings or fantasy - the reason I was looking at the book corner as I was quite tempted to buy Kevin Crossley-Holland’s second Viking book (I bought the first for the DC several years ago but never go round to buying the second) but I can’t remember seeing that or any more of his work even though he really ought to be part of a childen’s Viking themed book selection. There’s a big difference between a child randomly coming across his works in say a library and in showcasing his works through teaching / displaying them.

On a related note, I do wish publishers would stop the cringy one line celebrity author endorsements on book covers as Neil Gaiman is quoted on most of my DS1’s Diana Wynne Jones collection. (I don’t mind longer endorsements on the back / inside where it is clear the authors etc have read and loved the actual book.

Your view re Alice Munro mirrors mine, @MamaNewtNewt. My immediate reaction on the ‘separate art from artist' topic (and I think I've mentioned it before on an earlier thread) is the almost visceral reaction I had on reading Valerie Grove's biography of Laurie Lee. Despite the popular narrative of Lee being some sort of magical Pied Piper, with his violin and storytelling, beloved by all, I found the details of his compulsive womanising throughout his marriage, invariably with very young women (some barely out of their teens) so grim that I never want to go near any of his books again. Not that I was ever a great fan of Cider with Rosie, or indeed any of his works.

68 The Dark Angel by Elly Griffiths

Continuing my journey through the Ruth Galloway books, this one set in Italy. Ruth is invited by an old friend / colleague / one time lover to consult on some bones at an archaeological dig in Italy and decides to get away from the ‘Ruth - Nelson - Michelle - Tim’ saga (can’t say I blame her for that) and make a holiday of it in Italy with Kate, Shona and Louis. Of course there’s a murder, and of course Ruth gets mixed up in it, and of course Nelson and Cathbad end up in Italy, somehow. This was just silly, too much infidelity (just call time on that marriage already), too many guns and barely a sniff of any archaeology. Not one of her best.

I’ve been looking for the deals link but I can’t find it, can anybody help please ?

Thanks for your thoughts on separating the art from the artist. I was actually thinking of Neil Gaiman when I asked the question as DH has the Sandman books and I was contemplating reading them but recent revelations have definitely made me reluctant. I’m not buying anything new by him, but I might read the stuff we already have. I’m just not clear myself where my line is, I know that I never want to read anything by Alice Munro as I find the revelations by her daughter so repugnant that I never want to read anything originating from her mind, but that’s easy as I was never that keen anyway, would I feel the same if it was one of my favourite authors? I just don’t know. Anyway no judgement from me on what anyone else decides, I think it’s a very personal thing, I’m just trying to figure out where I’m at on this.

Halfway through The Other Bennet Sister and… it’s one of those where the TV series is better, isn’t it?

Low point so far has been Mr Collins saying, ‘We have verbs to decline.’ No sir, you really don’t.

@TheDonsDingleberries- that’s a fair point re statistics. I was trying to think of something that was purely factual - I had in mind when writing a book on the geology of rocks - but perhaps readers just can’t escape the insidious influence of the author’s character.

@ÚlldemoShúl- I read one MZB as a teen - I can’t remember what it was but I didn’t like it as much as I thought I would (possibly because it was a sequel). Looking back, I had the ability to read adult books but not the critical reading skills to cope with sleazier / bad faith authors. I also don’t particularly want to know about authors’ characters but as well as some being irredemiable, I also find with misbehaving writers there’s a difference between those who have wider interests in their work (eg Dickens, Victor Hugo) & those who seem to draw on & reinterpret their private life (eg DH Lawrence). I much prefer spending time with the thoughts of writers from the first group.

@AgualusasL0ver- the translation lecture sounds wonderful. I was thinking about translation recently (probably due to thinking about Greek myths & French plays after reading The Odyssey) & that it’s hard to see European classic plays unless you live in London & that might be because we lack translations that have become classics in their own right.

That sounds utterly wonderful Agualusa. Lucky you (and cassandre). Thanks for sharing.

28 - How not to be a boy - Robert Webb

I listened to Webb narrate this himself, and I'd definitely recommend that format. His delivery adds an extra layer of humour and emotion to this funny, surprisingly moving, and at times brutally honest memoir, which explores masculinity, family, and growing up with vulnerability.

Oh, my paragraphs won't work. Not sure what the problem is, I have tried twice.I have tried to fix it with lines but have made it worse.

I haven't managed to totally catch up, but have a bit. Sorry to read about those having hard times with grief, health and other things. Wishing you all the best. ----------------@FuzzyCaoraDhubh as you can imagine I was delighted to read your review of Honour by Elif Shafak. It was one of her first books I read and had seen it in Turkey on a book stall, where interestingly the title is Iskender after the son. I thought it was a really interesting take on Honour (and associated crimes that come with that term), because it is usually a rebellious daughter who is the focus. The London setting is also where my GPs lived and so much of it was 'real' if that makes sense. You're review of Land has also convinced me to give O'Farrell another try after I hated A Marriage Portrait - plus I loved Friel's Translations so perhaps this will speak to me. ----------------@CornishLizard Obviously I am a fan, but I do see how Agualusa/Hahn can be all the things you described. He does seem to be a sort of weird writer, everything I have read is approached in quite different ways. I don't always get everything, but overall they seem to work for me, but I am definitely guilty of already being 2-3 stars along simply because I want to like everything they do. -----------------On the Hahn note, a review. If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation, by Daniel Hahn I saw Hahn speak at the Oxford Literary Festival earlier this year to a small, select crowd (including our own Cassandre) and it was just an utterly sublime geek-fest. His book signing was relatively short so we got to have a really lovely chat with him about Shakespeare (I am a big fan), translation (I'm pretty obsessed with words and languages) and general story-telling. We spoke about Agualusa obviously and he was just a really nice man who really cares about commas and iambic pentameter. The book itself I really enjoyed reading, some of it went over my head, some of it I didn't know how to engage with e.g. when explaining the rhythm of a Japanese sentence underlining the stress was interesting but also didn't really tell me a great deal since I cannot read Japanese. He has never translated Shakespeare and only translates into English but he has basically travelled around and spoken to other translators having a right old time. He speaks to Turkish translators a fair bit, which helped me. Overall, this felt like sitting next to someone who you discover has the same niche interests as you at a dinner party but is better informed and you just have a wonderful evening discussing, thinking, debating and learning new things.

I liked Ragtime. I quite like those meandering ensemble pieces that don’t necessarily have a strong narrative direction. It was definitely weird though - am I right in remembering that it was rather, for want of a better word, penisey?

76 Ragtime – EL Doctorow. I read this as part of an America 250 online book club. I’d never heard of it before and then it popped up on The Guardian’s Books You Should Read (or whatever it was called). Has anyone else read it? Its just…weird. Its based in New York City in around 1912/1913 and follows three families, a wealthy white American family, a wealthy black musician and a poor Jewish immigrant family. The plot also weaves in real life characters, like JP Morgan, Harry Houdini, Booker T Washington and the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. I had to google a lot of the characters to find out if they were real or fictional. Everyone in the book has names, except for the rich, white folks. They are referred to as Father, Mother and Younger Brother. This irritated me beyond reason. This has been adapted into a movie and also a musical. I cannot imagine either. I might try to track down the film, just to see what they do with the source material.

The book club discussed this the other night, but meetings are at 1am our time. I'll watch the online and see what everyone else thought. The ones based in the NYC area also went to see the musical, so will be interesting to hear them compare.

Thanks for that @Stowickthevast it was on my Wish List as well

I was just about to post about the Ben Lerner too!

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - JK Rowling
Just finished with DD. A re-read for me though I barely remembered any of it from when I first read it 20-odd years ago. I enjoyed it though, as did DD.

Forgot to say yesterday, loving all the pet pics. I lost my lovely dog a few years ago, still miss her. Lovely to see everyone else's.

I forgot about Marion Zimmer Bradley @ÚlldemoShúl I loved The Mists of Avalon as a teen but the things she and her partner did are unforgivable.

I picked up Transcription by Ben Lerner today. I didn't see it in yesterday's deals or today's but it was in my wishlist and is one that has been heavily backed as a potential Booker longlistee.

I can generally divorce the art from the artist- I don’t think we could ever read any classics without being able to do that- I mean who would actually want to spend time with the Brontes? And I love [edit for autocorrect to live- every damn time iphone] Virginia Woolf’s writing but she was a terrible snob and carried a lot of prejudices. (bet we’d all like Wilkie Collins though- and I don’t want to know of any bad things about him!)
Of course that’s easier when it’s distant in time than people who are alive today. I generally don’t know a lot about authors private lives (or celebs in general) but I will not read or engage with the work of child abusers or those found guilty of sexual crimes- for some reason that’s my red line. I loved the books I read of Marion Zimmer Bradley in my late teens and early 20s- especially The Firebrand which retells the story of the fall of Troy from Cassandra’s perspective but I can’t reread them now I know what she did (child abuse).
Ideas is a woolier one to come to terms with. If their work is not riddled with ideas I find abhorrent then I can read it. With Lionel Shriver I think her ideas leak into her work (after Kevin, and probably including if I read it again now) so I would tend to avoid.

I have finished another bold read for me The Keeper by Tana French. This is another book I had on preorder- though I see it was in the daily deals yesterday. In this third, and I would think final, Cal Hooper book, a local young girl is found dead from what is widely believed to be suicide. Or was it? Cal, Trey and Lena develop more widely as characters as does Ardnakelty itself and the men and women that make up the village. It’s a marvellous read, slow and atmospheric, adding even more layers to characters we already knew but now know better, and introducing some interesting new ones. This is not one to read without having read the first two I think, but it’s a tremendous finale to the trilogy- truly literary crime where the characters, the setting and the society are explored subtly but with even more emphasis than the crime itself. I'll read anything else she writes.

@Benvenuto I actually think non fiction from a bad faith author can be worse than fiction, depending on the 'facts' they chose to present or not.

It's more insidious because it often hides under the guise of unbiased science or statistics, but if you scratch the surface there's often more to the story, misinterpretation of the data, shoddy data collection, etc.

It's all lies, damn lies, and statistics! 😁

@Tarahumarayour black cat is identical to mine

61. The Hawthorne Legacy by Jennifer Lynn Barnes - I am reading this YA series at the insistence of my 14 year old. I enjoy a bit of YA occasionally - I loved the Hunger Games, The Firekeeper’s Daughter, and The Hate U Give for example - but this series is quite a bit more Y than those! Puzzles, twists, and thrills abound as do 4 billionaire brothers, each of whom is an archetype from a teenage fantasy. I can absolutely see why teens love it. It holds less interest for me but has been a perfect holiday reads with short chapters full of momentum.

Separating author from art - I would read more by writers whose politics I respect. I am more fuzzy on good books by bad people. I recently read a book by someone new to me. The book wasn't bad but on looking them up, I decided not to read more.

Loving the pet photos, none to contribute here sadly.

Book of Chameleons by José Eduardo Agualusa tr from Portugese by Daniel Hahn Scared to admit that I struggled rather with this. It was harder work than I’d expected a book narrated by a gecko to be. Set in Angola in the house of Félix Ventura, a professional seller of histories to those who want to buy a better past in life. Our narrator gives his gecko-on-the-wall perspective, alternating between encounters between Félix and his customers, and the gecko’s dreams of his own past as a human.

There are philosophical musings, most of which went over my head, but I did like the way the book justified incorporating dreams - which I’d normally run a mile from - ‘there is truth - even if there isn’t realism - in everything a man dreams’. Apparently the translator suggested the English title translation (the original was more prosaic ‘the seller of pasts’), and Agualusa was delighted with the idea. The ending was neat, unsurprisingly some of the characters’ pasts are shown in a new light, but I wouldn’t be minded to reread to understand better.