50 Books Challenge 2026 Part Eight

On Rachel Cusk, I was really intrigued by her first novel Saving Agnes (1993) which I think I must have read when it was still fairly new, as I was spending a lot of time in London not far from where it's set (near the old Arsenal football ground in Highbury?) but not actually living here - in paperback, but I'm not sure it was published as a hardback by googling. Then I bought The Temporary in hardback (it might have been quite discounted, as although I had more disposable income that I'd been used to by the end of that year it wasn't very much, and I waited for paperbacks after that.

I bought most of her novels and her memoir about motherhood, mostly secondhand, but think I've only actually read the first 3, two memoirs about a holiday near the end of her 2nd marriage and about that marriage breakup, and the first of her trilogy about creative writing and an island. I'd acquired a lot of her work in Kindle deals and have bought the rest apart from her newest book in the first of two Kindle daily deal promotions.

It seems her writing has got more experimental, but I am quite interested in the topics she writes about in her fiction, and even more so by her essay collection, Coventry.

Best wishes to all feeling not well.

After just feeling incredibly sad until a few days ago, my mood seems to be lifting. The sad news hasn't really stopped, and the change in weather has been a shocker, and the clocks go back tonight so it will be dark earlier (plus London actually gets darker earlier than Yorkshire). I am sleeping better and feel a litlte more hopeful and able to deal with things a bit better.

off topic

I was though particularly sad to hear that the Irish musician and producer Donal Lunny, who was a legend of Irish folk music especially but worked with lots of musicians in Ireland and beyond and across genres, has died aged 79. He worked with Christy Moore at various times from when they were both still at school, and on CM's first album, later with bands including Planxty, Moving Hearts and the Bothy Band. CM was a favourite of my mum's and I went to see him in/near Leeds with her and my stepdad several times, so I would "borrow" records but my brother and I bought her some on CD that she didn't have, later.

Donal Lunny played/produced on records by people including U2, Sinead O'Connor, Kate Bush and Elvis Costello. He and SOC had a child together, who sadly was found dead (believed suicide) aged 17 a couple of years before SOC's death.

I'm sure he is mentioned in lots of music memoirs including Christy Moore's, another book I've owned for years that is still TBR.

I've still only finished reading a couple of books this month, but should manage one or two more even if I don't pick up a bit of speed, and I will have more shiny new library books in current reading piles or TBR, but less outrageously overdue ones, early next week.

108. The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova - read for the Bulgaria prompt of my around the world challenge. God this was a slog. Historical fiction is my favourite genre and I enjoy learning about the history of countries I am not familiar with. But if I wanted to visit every town, village, monument, and roadside stone in Bulgaria, I would have read a travel guide. And if I wanted to listen to a bunch of pensioners telling me their back stories, I would have found a lecture series. The best part of this book was when a character is sent to the labour camp. You see how things affect him on a daily basis, what he experiences, the tricks he plays on his mind to stay sane.

But the rest is to much history and not enough humanity. Which is a shame because the raw materials are fascinating. Even the base characters are interesting. They just needed a different writer to tell their story.

Kindle Unlimited is now Kindle+ and honestly that feels like a confusing development

Very best wishes Stowick, hope all goes well.

Sorry to hear you’ve been feeling down elkie.

I’ve reserved Free, Permanent, thanks for the review, sounds intriguing.

The Cutting Place by Jane Casey - really enjoyed this, more so than the last couple. Thanks to everyone who has recommended this series.

65 Excellent Women - Barbara Pym Told from the perspective of a 30-something spinster in 1950s London, nothing much happens except lots of churchgoing and helping neighbours and acquaintances with their problems. There were some amusing bits and a few strangely familiar moments (I particularly liked the jumble sale - the experience was much the same when I used to help my granny with the village jumble sales as a kid in the early 90s 😄), but the overarching feeling was one of dull futility, especially with the ending. I’m not sure if Mildred was meant to be a slightly unreliable narrator (was she actually secretly hoping for romance with any of the three potentials, or was she really as pragmatic and self-possessed as were led to believe?) but either way, the way she resigns herself to a life of dutiful service is pretty depressing. Turns out Pym is not really for me!

57. The Director by Daniel Kehlmann
    This was oe of my favourites this year. Magnificent by about an Austrian film film Director, returning to Austria at the start of WWII, and forced to remain and produce film for the third reich. It vowe together pieces of personal ambition, family dynamics, and the mundane evil of nazi Germany. It's also very human; how we perceive situations differently, how we justify actions to ourselves, how we think of our legacy. Big recommendation

58. Foster by Claire Keegan
    My third Keegan this year, a short novella f a girl sent to live with unknown extended family. Again, huge recommendation; short but beautifully formed. I love how Keegan can say so much with such few words

I have completely fallen off the thread recently and I've been busy with work so haven't been reading much so it's taken a month to read my latest book.

Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng‑zǐ. Translated by Lin King

Winner of this years International Booker prize, this is a English translation of a Taiwanese novel mascarading as a translation of a Japanese novel based on the fictional Japanese's author's 'real life' experiences in a Japanese colony in the 1930s. As is to be expected with the International Booker, this novel explores translation: one of the main characters is a translator and, at least in the earlier chapters the writing feels slightly foreign, like you're reading an old fashioned literal translation of a Japanese novel. There are footnotes and multiple forewords and afterwords. It is also about colonialism and the impact of that on the power balance in personal relationships and a love story where nothing much happens, just some shared meals and stilted conversations. Haters of the Bloody Boring Butler should look away now. It was a novel that I admired as I read it, loved the ending, and suspect I'll be thinking about for a while.

Instead of something sweet and old-fashioned, I've bought a Stuart McBride crime book. Has anybody read any of his? So far I'm finding it readable, though irritatingly misogynistic in places (every female's legs or bust described).

I used to read his books but I gave up on them when the woo parts got tedious. Never went back.

I thoroughly enjoyed the first few McBride books @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie but they got increasingly more stupid, far fetched and lazily written. It was the Logan McRae series. Roberta Steel is a marvellous creation, at first, but then her burping, farting, leering at women and perpetual adjusting of her bra gets very tedious.
Early ones are good, gritty, nasty crime entertainment. Think he ran out of ideas.

Thinking of you @Stowickthevast.

50 (yay!) North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. This is my second Gaskell after reading Ruth for our readalong in 2024. I enjoyed both, possibly this one a bit more. I liked Margaret as a character and I found it interesting to read about the industrial backdrop of Milton (a fictional mill town in the north of England). At the end of the day Gaskell is not a patch on Austen though.

51 Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty. Reviewed yesterday by @NotWavingButReading (and lots of you in the past). A woman on a delayed flight to Sydney startles the other passengers by predicting their age of death and cause of death. It becomes even more worrying when her predictions start coming true. This is my third Moriarty (the other two were Nine Perfect Strangers and Big Little Lies) and I have found all three very enjoyable.

Thanks. I'll stick to just the first few then. I guess, like Mick Heron, they come to rely on the same lines rather too much.

Haven't come across any woo yet. Plenty of bodies being cut up, and plenty of vomit and breasts, but no woo.

Give it time!

Thanks for this review @FruAashild, this sounds right up my street and I have added to my wish list!

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I've read one or two of Stuart McBride's early books. I actually love his writing but they are so graphic and gruesome I gave up. Never read any with woo which would be an immediate DNF.

@elkiedee sorry you're feeling down. I don't know Donal Lunny but I really like Christy Moore. On a similar topic I've been reading the odd extract from Alice Cooper's latest autobiography. School's Out was the anthem the year I left school and so I have a soft spot. I saw him interviewed on a promo tour and he came over as an interesting guy. A tee total family man rather than the hell raiser of his stage character. I have an eccentric friend who goes to obscure punk gigs and met him recently to her great delight. It's on my Christmas list.

I don't know who Rachel Cusk is but @elkiedee's mention of creative writing and an island have piqued my interest.

86. Anita Brookner: Art and Life - Hermione Lee

This has been a bit of a commitment, at 450 pages, but worth it, I feel. Lee has done proper justice to a complex subject: a woman of profound seriousness and purpose, never taking the easy option, and holding to exactingly high standards for herself and others.

This could often make her intimidating and, at times, downright terrifying, but a certain facade was in place - Lee reveals much about Brookner's rarely-talked-about family background and the difficult emotional ties that kept her obediently - if not always happily - caring for her elderly mother well into her 40s, long after she'd made her reputation as a distinguished scholar of art history and criticism, and she often said she'd have loved to have a family and children of her own.
While I've never been a dedicated Brookner fan, I feel inspired to read much more of her fiction now, feeling I understand so much more about her and what impelled her to write - I have huge admiration for the dignity of her dealings with often venomously misogynistic criticism (largely from male writers - what a surprise). It was hard to read about her very sad final years.
If there’s a small niggle for me here, it's that Lee details the plots of maybe a few too many Brookner novels - but the 'Life' element is never less than engaging and readable, whatever some of the more sneering reviews have said. Definitely a must for any diehard Brookner lovers.

DH has just reminded me that I'm getting confused with the also-Scottish, also-crime fiction writer James Oswald, who does always have a woo element in his books.
So, as you were - but my point remains that I gave up on Stuart MacB when he got a bit silly and, as others have said, very even more violent.

The Naked Light by Bridget Collins
Perfect for stormy Autumn afternoons and evenings.
It is a couple of years post WW1 and the plot mainly centres around three women. Florence is one of the millions of ‘surplus women’ of the time, who lives with her vicar brother-in-law and spiky, mean niece, Phoebe. A nearby cottage is rented by an artist, Kit, who scandalously wears men’s clothing and gives zero fucks, suffering ptsd from making masks for disfigured soldiers in France. She can no longer bring herself to draw portraits of any kind and finds the villagers rather silly, until Florence breaks through her frosty carapace and a love affair ensues.
Up on the hill a basic chalk face slowly fades into the grass. The Vicar has written a dry and scholarly book about it and the local legend of the Thurlath, a folk horror entity that has no face and so must steal those of humans. The local church has no stained glass or effigies of any kind because of this, but the Vicar humours such nonsense for a quiet life.
It’s very female-centred but a generous and poignant amount of it is given to explore the consequences of the War on the men, particularly those who did come home but not as they were. It also turns a clear eye on the reality of being a lesbian in those times, let alone one that refuses to compromise or pander to male whims.

I have had The Binding on my kindle for a while but this is a more recent book by Collins. I must have read a short story or two by her in anthologies and chanced a novel on the strength of them. Glad I did, it’s well paced and well researched. I read a review that said none of the characters were likeable but I disagree - Kit, Florence and Phoebe don’t owe the reader Nice, Pretty or Amenable and are all the more interesting for that.

I should have been reading this up in the wilds of the Scottish Borders but thanks to Storm Boelo I had to make do with lamplight and a blanket at home. It’s perhaps as well, for some of the more Jamesian bits!

Well, I'm the idiot who set myself the 70 book challenge and I'm only on 55.

Actually I remembered wrongly. Outline, published 2014, read by me in 2015, is first in a trilogy, followed by Kudos and Transit. Outline has a first person narrator who is teaching creative writing in Athens, Greece, but I thought it was one of the Greek islands. I am realising that even with the books I can remember reading more than about 8 years ago without having to look them up, I don't necessarily remember the details very well. I think this is me, not the books. And it's not age, I forgot a lot of plot details very fast in my teens.

You can do it!!!

pick some shorties

Oh, I don't wanna just pick short ones because that's a cheat!!