50 Book Challenge 2018 Part Six

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the sixth 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, the second one here, the third one here, the fourth one here, and the fifth one here.

How're you getting on so far?

Sorry to parachute in, but I seem to have fallen off the thread. I've been discarding most books I pick up and am very blah about books lately, but I did very much enjoy the latest one:

31. The Uncommon Reader, by Alan Bennett. Much reviewed here and quite charming.

Biblio will bear in mind comments re: Stagg when it turns up. Lewis-Kraus has its flaws but read a while ago so can't pinpoint. I didn't know anything about two of the shrines he features, so I do know found reading about them and how they figured in the local culture really illuminating. Also have long-standing fantasy about having time/freedom from obligation to do long pilgrim-style walk so a bit of vicarious living involved I think!

Vanderlyle maybe it's the weather I keep starting things but can't finish or just can't be bothered to read on...Have library book staring at me but know it will be a very gruelling book and can't quite face it. Think the heat has fried my brain, am turning into a fugitive from a Tennessee Williams's play - sadly without the comfort of an endless supply of mint juleps.

31. Educated by Tara Westover. Thanks so much to everyone who recommended this. It’s the truly incredible memoir of a girl growing up in rural Idaho. Her father is a strict Mormon who doesn’t believe in schooling, so Tara educates herself to get to university. He is also very likely to be suffering from an undiagnosed mental illness, blighting the lives of his family. I was engrossed and humbled by this.

I haven't got anything to read. :( :( :(

I like Hallows a lot, and think it is more tightly controlled than a couple of the earlier whoppers.

Order is great fun once they get to the ministry, but takes to long in the build up. Is it also the one with pages and pages and pages of SPEW, or is that another one? That drove me bat-shit!

I'm also checking in having fallen off the thread - too much RL, not enough book reading time. I'm currently about 1/3 away through kindle cheapy "How Much Is Enough?" which started well, but not gripping me right now.

Dottie, the heat is definitely a contributing factor. It's so gross here.

Also, to be perfectly honest, I'm a bit weary of literary fiction. But most of the books on the pile are lit fic, so.

matilda my ds is the same age - I am reading a bit aloud then he is reading a chunk to himself. I think though we will take a break at the end of 3.

Yes SPEW. All that time spent at the house why didn’t someone make it stop?

Vanderlyle know what you mean about lit fiction, I want something frivolous but well-written like Diary of a Provincial Lady or similar - but have lots of worthy literary stuff on my pile too. Have also got a lot of non-fiction waiting, which I know is going to be decent, but too distracted to take anything complicated on board. I'm going to go back to watching things like Glow - the second season is much better and funnier than the first - and try again after that.

27. The Essential Lewis and Clark - edited by Landon Y Jones

Edited highlights from the journals of Meriweather Lewis and William Clark, who crossed North America from 1804-1806 in search of a trading route to the Pacific. On the way they had encounters with native American tribes both friendly and hostile; were attacked by grizzly bears and mosquitoes; and recorded the pristine plains and mountains they travelled through. In hindsight there is a bitter edge considering the devastation of the native people and wildlife that was to follow, but it's hard not be awed by the descriptions and impossible to ignore the courage of these early explorers.

Dottie, exactly. Also, I want well-written genre fiction. I'm tired of its dismissal in literary culture.

Thank you for reminding me about GLOW! I enjoyed the first season, and I'm happy to hear that the second season is even better (and funnier).

107. G is for Gumshoe by Sue Grafton

Seventh in the series featuring female PI Kinsey Millhone. This series is never going to win any literary prizes but they’re good fun to read and I like the character of Kinsey. In this one she’s hired to track down someone’s mum who hasn’t been seen for months, and discovers she’s on someone’s hit list so hires a bodyguard. Enjoyed this. Coincidentally, having just read a book about the Brontes, one of the characters in this is called Agnes Grey!!

42. Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead. OK read about Winn, a 56 year-old family man whose daughter is about to get married. He's obsessed with joining country clubs. Also has a thing for his daughter's friend, sex bomb Agatha. Definitely going through a mid-life crisis. Nothing memorable here but quite enjoyable account of family life and its intrigues.

Dottie, if you want something along the lines of Provincial Lady, have you tried "Provincial Daughter" by R M Dashwood? The author is the real-life daughter of E M Delafield. She copies her mother's style so it's quite derivative, but it fits the bill when that's the sort of thing you're looking for. From a social perspective, her take on 1950s domesticity is an interesting contrast to her mother's take on the 1930s version.

Finished Salley Vickers The Librarian. It has a slightly ill-advised modern update when we find out what happened to everyone - would have been better to leave it more open-ended. I wouldn't say it's heartily recommended, but it's enjoyable enough.

Harking back to the pilgrimage, Dottie, I've done the last section of the Camino and I'd absolutely love to walk the old pilgrimage paths in Japan. I'm possibly one of the last generation in Ireland to have grown up with pattern days and climbing Mount Brandon for the annual mass (have never done Lough Derg or Croagh Patrick). I'm not a practising Catholic, but I do think we benefit from ritual. When I was a teenager and we felt anxious about exams, you could get a sense of control by lighting a candle in the church. While it may have been spurious in practical terms, I still think there was a psychological value. I'm not calling for a return to religion, just saying that as meaning-making animals, we've lost something and we don't quite know what to replace it with.

(Going a bit off-piste there - ironically enough - so apologies).

The SPEW thing - what exactly is JKR trying to do there? Slavery is good? A lot of the respected characters eg Fred and George, Hagrid etc refuse to buy badges, and everyone sniggers at Hermione, despite Harry's friendship with Dobby and his horror at his enslaved state. The whole point of abolition is that yes, there were 'happy' slaves who were well-treated (such as the Hogwarts house-elves) but there were also slaves who were treated like dirt, like Dobby! That's the whole point - some slaves thought they were fine as they were, but those who were really not fine had no way to escape. It's a really weird message to be sending to kids, IMO - I'm surprised JKR's not been slated for it.

I don't read it like that. I read it as showing that it's not a simple matter of Voldemort arriving to corrupt the Wizarding World, but exploiting an existing flaw, ie. contempt for those who are not witches and wizards.

Although to be fair, you could take home the message that it's fine to have slaves, once you treat them nicely.

Biblio Thanks for the recommendation I haven’t seen the Dashwood book, will definitely check it out.
I envy you for the Camino, the closest I’ve come is the Martin Sheen film! And I’ve also thought about the Japan pilgrimage sites. Although I’ve done walks in England, it’s not the same thing. I agree with you about the place of ritual, it’s particularly noticeable when it comes to dealing with loss and bereavement, perhaps why ‘mourning’ memoirs are so popular now. I’m not ‘practising’ in any way either (but like you had a more religious upbringing) I too think there is a space for some form of ‘spiritual’ experience/dimension in life, I think it’s one of the reasons why I love to listen to religious music like Byrd or to composers like John Dowland, it creates a sense of peace that it is increasingly rare in everyday life.

Biblio sorry about the Vickers, I remember reading one of hers that was quite good, possibly Miss Garnet's Angel? If you're interested in spiritual pilgrimages then you might like the Tobias Jones's book I mentioned, he's definitely a practising Christian, and although some of his views are not ones I would endorse, I admire his attempts to live a 'meaningful' life and to find/think through ways of creating constructive communities.

Prisoner of Azkaban is definitely the best.
I'm finding the 1000 books you must read list posted upthread quite good for well-written but easy to read. It's a surprisingly non-literary list, but everything on it is competent.
And Persephone, of course.

I am also wearied of literary fiction, Vanderly, so instead I am re-reading a Brandon Sanderson fantasy epic (before reading the third instalment) and Poverty Safari, the non-fiction winner of the Orwell Prize this year.

My legs have been too distractingly hot to read Vanity Fair (but not to have a very nice gentleman read it to me in the car) so I had to read Ella Enchanted this weekend. Like a balm to the sweating extremities it was.

SPEW = don't take house elves for granted, and try to be kinder = Harry will be ultimately nice to Kreacher and therefore find out stuff that he wouldn't have found out otherwise - but it takes SUCH a long time out of whatever book Hermione is making badges for pages and pages in, and is so boring.

I think the SPEW thing might be a political nod to champagne socialists who think they know how to deal with the underprivileged, without actually listening to them or really thinking of them as actual people. Maybe?

And I agree once OoTP actually gets going it’s great, but so much of it drags. There’s an awful lot of Harry dreaming about the corridor in the Department of Mysteries with nothing actually happening.

Looking forward to reading your review of Poverty Safari Shakeitoff

33. The Crossing Places - Elly Griffiths
First in the Dr Ruth Galloway series. I'm a bit late to the series, although I know it normally gets recommended when someone asks about murder mystery types. Ruth is a late-30s overweight single woman with cats who lectures on archology at a Norfolk university - about as unglam as you get. She is called in to date some bones found in the hunt for a girl who is currently missing, that possibly is linked to another girl who went missing 10 years before. The bones aren't of the missing girl, but are bronze age, but she's consulted again by the policeman involved as there are some letters supposidly from the killer with archeological terms in them, and then life gets more complex.

I liked this, and will probably read some more of the series - I do love it when I'm certain I know who the killer is and then am wrong, but clearly the real killer is signposted when you look properly!