50 Book Challenge 2018 Part Three

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the third thread of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2018, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, it’s not too late to join, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

The first thread of the year is here and the second one here.

What are you reading?

Corrects spelling of kréyòl

Interesting points Scribbly.

Lionel Shriver speech on the issue of cultural appropriation:
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/13/lionel-shrivers-full-speech-i-hope-the-concept-of-cultural-appropriation-is-a-passing-fad

The views of some authors on cultural appropriation in fiction in response to the speech:
www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/01/novelists-cultural-appropriation-literature-lionel-shriver

13. Everything I Never Told You Celeste Ng - I enjoyed this on the whole, a look at a family dealing with loss, race, secrets and things unsaid. My sympathy with the parents wavered and at times disappeared altogether, I mean they were pretty shitty parents really. I think the author intended that, but it did make me quite angry/frustrated at times, whilst wondering if they could be quite that oblivious to the damage they were doing.

I think if you can have cultural appropriation in music and art, you can have it in literature too. And yes, what I'm talking about is also bad research/writing, but it isn't necessarily. I mean, JK Rowling got into a lot of trouble for nicking Native American stereotypical beliefs for her American magic in Fantastic Beasts. The criticism wasn't that she was a poor writer. Just that those beliefs weren't hers to play with.

is it ethical that Harris, with her position if privilege (white, previously published and successful British author, with the backing of book deals/publishing house and promotion) should be the one telling and profiting from this story. Do writers from Grenada have the same opportunities to write, publish and make money from this story?

No, they don't. But I don't think it makes Harris unethical for wanting to tell that story. (Though it might make publishers unethical for publishing her version and not a black writer's, presuming such a thing to exist, and society unethical for creating a world where a white writer felt able to tell that story and a black writer didn't, presuming it not to exist).

I'm white, so I don't know what this debate feels like to a black reader. But I know what the lack of female writers/female-lead stories in film/television feels like as a female viewer. Which is that ideally I would rather have more female writers telling female-lead stories. But that I also value and appreciate male writers writing more and better female characters, because that's a good in itself.

(Although, interestingly, while I'm an enthusiastic cheerleader for a female-lead show like Buffy, which had a male show runner, I'd be pretty vociferously annoyed if they gave, say, Call the Midwife to a male show runner. Because that's such a female show, I feel like it needs and deserves a woman at the helm. Which, er, isn't very logical.) #contradictsselfwildly #um

26 - The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell

This was...fine. Victorian gothic ghost story that never quite caught my imagination. I thought there was a great story in there trying to get out but for whatever reason I just couldn’t get excited about it.

27 - The Novel Cure by Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin

This was fun. An A to Z of ailments (“divorce”, “job, losing your”, “sex, too little”...) and novels that address them. I loved reading about the books I’ve read and have a whole lot more to add to my list. I was given it as a gift by a friend who loves books and shall be giving it to other people.
What with this thread, and this book, I’m going to be busy for ages - definitely not going to be wondering what to read any time soon.

Good post Cheerful - I agree.

1. Gut Symmetries by Jeanette Winterson. An age old tale - a husband (Jove), a wife (Stella) and a lover (Alice) - told in Winterson’s unique style. We meander through the narrative leading up to this situation - the characters and family backgrounds of the protagonists, the history of the marriage - with a little quantum physics thrown in for good measure (Jove is a physicist). I think this might be a bit of a marmite book, but I loved it. Winterson is the kind of writer able to produce a sentence of such perfection that you read it again and again, savouring it.

Skimming the points about Jane Harris' latest book , Jessie Burton does the same in The Muse with her dialects. I must admit it grated on me.

But the Yaa Gyasi uses some vernacular and dialect in her book for all her settings and yet can't time travel for true autheniticty. She uses standard English for the tribal characters on the whole. It's a bit of a mire, this debate!

Kikashi thanks for sharing those articles. The second one is partly interesting. And interesting points from Cheerful too.
I do feel that at it simplest form, if an author writes well, with good research and compassion behind them then most areas should be accessible to all. After all interpreting and telling all manner of stories is what has happened in literature for years. If we say Harris isn't entitled to tell the story of the slaves then where does it end? Was Beecher Stowe not entitled to write Uncle Tom's Cabin? If we all write about only the things we experience we will produce one dimensional stories and risk a lack of empathy.
Yes I think there is cultural appropriation, I just worry it might be another politically correct flag that gets waved, and people start being outraged on behalf of other people. I agree about censorship too. Literature and art has always pushed boundaries, it can divide but equally it educates and unifies. Putting in place restrictions about when people can and cannot write about seems to threaten this.

On the cultural appropriation, I think what a reader can do is not boycott the "appropriating" voice, but seek out authentic voices too (a pp mentioned Sherman Alexie on the lives of indigenous Americans).

Read 23. My History, by Antonia Fraser. I liked her wry affection for her younger self. My goodness, when you're well-connected, a lot of things fall into your lap. Not for reading while in class warrior mode (except for ammunition), but I'm interested in people's perception of their lives, so I rather liked it.

29-32. The Vampire Diaries books 1-4, LJ Smith. Ahem. Silly but fun.

33. Eye of the Tiger, Wilbur Smith. Talking of cultural appropriation...still, flawed and colonialist as it may be, the only reason I know anything at all about African history and politics is from reading Wilbur Smith in my teens. This isn't a particularly bad example as it's more of a thriller - dashing hero on a treasure hunt against the clock pursued by gangsters. Good rattling plot - good description of St Marys and particularly nail-biting episodes involving sharks. I've just seen it's shelved as testost-tosh on Goodreads - that describes Wilbur Smith's work perfectly! Although I borrowed most of them from my granny, so go figure.

34. Temeraire, Naomi Novik. Napoleonic Wars with added dragon regiments. Loved it. Good concept, could do with a bit more period detail, but I like the Navy stuff. Already downloaded the next one. I actually own book 3 - bought it for DH without realising it was number 3, so neither of us read it.

41. Perfect by Rachel Joyce Set in the 1972, when two seconds were added to time. This is was because the leap year had apparently take time out of step with the movement of the earth. The story centre around an upper middle class family, whose's seemingly perfect existence is changed forever by one brief incident.
In keeping with other works I have read by Joyce this is a story of tragedy and mental health issues. Lonely, unhappy people seem to find their resolutions, or at least the beginnings of them through opening up their lives to other people. This isn't a bad book, and at times it is a very good book. I always just feel I am reading Joyce's work through a head full of cotton wool if that makes sense.

11. The Netherworld - George Gissing. This is a comfort re read. I am a massive George Gissing fan. His work is sadly under rated. This book (along with The Odd Women and The Whirpool by Gissing) is one of my favourite books of all time. I read it many years before The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist (which it pre dates) and felt Tressell had likely read it.
Gissing was once called the "English Zola" and this book does have parallels with Zola's work especially L'Assomoir. Gissing was incredibly frustrated by the "Mrs Grundy Laws" which censored writers from using swear words, describing sexual acts etc basically anything that would offend public decency.He still does a great job of conveying the daily grind and stress of living in the Netherworld despite the constraints.

The book is about Jane Snowdon who is abandoned by her father in a squalid rooming house in Clerkenwell at the age of 8. The landlady, Mrs Peckover keeps her as basically a slave and Jane is hideously bullied and abused by the landlady's daughter. Only one person, Sidney Kirkwood, has shown her a modicum of kindness but he is in love with the striking but capricious Clara Hewett whose family once also roomed at The Peckovers. The narrative follows their interconnected lives around Clerkenwell and Islington and the trials and tribulations of living on barely sufficient and totally insufficient income. Jane's grandfather returns from Australia and we follow her life and those of the people she is connected to over the course of 4 years. There are intrigues and machinations aplenty in the book, an acid attack (common in Victorian times and called "vitriolage"), a raucous wedding, happiness and tragedy as well as some social commentary. For example, some single rich ladies run a soup kitchen and are shocked at the complaints and ungratefulness of the recipients. Gissing comments that the underclass are well aware of the system and class that is holding them down and that the benevolent ladies should be grateful that the underclass do not rise up and rend them apart.

Great Victorian doorstop read

kikashi I like George Gissing too. Loved The Odd Women, but am too fragile to read New Grub Street just now. The Netherworld* is going on my list though.

15% into The Immortalists. The first section concerns Simon, the youngest of the four siblings and his journey from the imposed role of companion for their mother and taking over the family business once he graduates. This begins by his running away with his sister to San Francisco and his plunge into early 1970s gay culture. I’m really not convinced by this character. He does not have an authentic inner life and reads as he was written by a late twenties, ‘woke’ and educated middle class, white woman. I wanted depth, insight, a sense of connection with someone radically different from me. That’s one of the reasons that I read. The author’s research paid off as the descriptions of the atmosphere in San Francisco at that period are convincing. The characterisation fails, and this is a book about people.
I also have a horrible feeling that we’re going to have to endure the onset of, what at the time was called ‘the gay plague’ and his death will be AIDS related.
So far, I’m bemused that this novel is so successful and hyped by the NYT. Let’s hope that becomes clear as it progresses.
Please let me know if this kind of -as I’m reading - post isn’t how this thread works.

My goodness, when you're well-connected, a lot of things fall into your lap. Not for reading while in class warrior mode I’m afraid that my tolerance of this kind of book is well below a lot of peoples. I sometimes get mad at Desert Island Discs for this reason too - the recent one with Jack Whitehall was unbearable!

I am conflicted. Rise up, Wonen is £3.47 on the Kindle at the moment. I really want the hardback though... What to do?

Corvus I agree - would be nice to have that sort of book in a hard copy

My goodness, when you're well-connected, a lot of things fall into your lap. Oh yes I also agree.

Iris great to meet another Gissing fan

Tried to start reading One Fine Day by Mollie Panter- Downes recently and just couldn't go on. It is set post WW2 and the main character is a SAHM ( Kids at boarding school)and has 2 char women to "help out" but simply can't manage her Middle class house. Grr....

I agree that New Grub Street is shockingly bleak. I'm not sure I could face any more Gissing.

@bibliomania The Odd Women is really worth reading. It has a feminist theme and some strong female characters. I didn’t find it at all bleak, actually very uplifting.
Is New Grub Street as bleak as Jude the Oscure ?

@Corvus I am a fan of hardbacks - but only for my really special, want to keep for a lifetime books. Although have to confess that I keep most books and have many 40 year old paperbacks bought with my pocket money.

@kikashi - I feel your pain, although The Diary of a Provincial Lady was very funny and I do reread it. I also love the Mapp and Lucia series, although they are privileged too.

You lot have been busy since Saturday- I popped down to Eastbourne without internet and have just caught up! I think it is possible to appropriate other culture in a negative, patronising or insulting way; just like how some male authors write terrible women (and no doubt vice versa), but well researched or taken seriously then I think it is fine- otherwise we could only ever write our own stories, or allegorical fantasy I suppose.

Have borrowed Hiroshima and Sugar Money based on above recommendations, but I just started Cryptonimicon so I may be a while with that!

Thank again Remus!

I am conflicted. Rise up, Wonen is £3.47 on the Kindle at the moment. I really want the hardback though... What to do?

I caved and bought it. Too good a price to resist.

Thank you Kikashi for linking those articles. Really interesting reading, particularly the second one. Thanks to everyone on here and their thoughts too, they have certainly helped me understand the issue better and form some of my own opinions on the issue in general and about Sugar Money specifically.

I would have bought the hardback but too late now for my advice!!

The Kindle is a lot less heavy though - both on the hands and the pocket!!

I don't think New Grub Street is anywhere near as bleak as Jude the Obscure. I think Gissing is more "realistic" and much less melodramatic than Hardy. It is a bit "life's sh*t and then you die" but the narrative makes a lot more logical sense than Jude.

The Odd Women is a good book and an unusual one, especially since it is written by a man.

I didn't get on with New Grub Street.

Agree that saying, "You can't write this story because you are: a white woman, a man, not a slave, don't speak in the 'right' way etc etc' smacks of censorship.

29 The Masqueraders – Georgette Heyer – This was a joy. Chapter One was confusing, but it’s supposed to be and once you’re into the swing of things it all makes sense. This is a wonderfully funny, swashbuckling story of cross-dressing siblings, with lots of sword fights, mild peril, banter and the occasional swoon thrown in for good measure, and a rogue of a father figure who’s worthy of Wilkie Collins at his best. It’s also got my favourite Heyer hero yet, in the form of the magnificent Sir Anthony Fanshawe. Highly recommended.