50 Book Challenge 2018 Part Seven

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the seventh 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, the fifth one here, and the sixth one here.

Published together here as *Bed-Knob and Broomstick:
70. The Magic Bed-Knob by Mary Norton – Published 1943 illustrated by Erik Blegvad
71. Bonfires and Broomsticks by Mary Norton – Published 1957 illustrated by Erik Blegvad. Mary Norton is famous for her Borrowers’s series but before this she was known for these charming tales of magic. In The Magic Bed-Knob Carey Wilson with her brothers Charles and Paul have been sent to stay with their aging aunt in the heart of Bedfordshire. Restless and homesick they can’t imagine how they will ever survive the holidays then one day they meet the mysterious Miss Price. Miss Price lives alone, with her sensible clothes, Liberty scarf and bicycle she looks like the quintessential village spinster except that she’s a trainee witch. In return for keeping her secret Miss Price gives the children an enchanted bed-knob which will take them anywhere they want in the present and even back in time. This, with the sequel Bonfires and Broomsticks, charts the adventures of Miss Price and the Wilsons: travelling to faraway islands (slightly awkward depiction of the inhabitants) to adventures with a necromancer from the time of King Charles II. Both books are beautifully illustrated.

72. Talking to Women by Nell Dunn – Published in 1965, republished 2018 with an introduction by Ali Smith. Nell Dunn is best known, if she’s known at all, for her early novels Up the Junction and Poor Cow, both became films. Dunn’s focus is on women’s everyday experiences. Talking to Women is a non-fiction work that builds on Dunn’s preoccupation. She cracked open bottles of wine and sat down with friends to talk about their lives, their work, their relationships, their dreams of the future. She recorded these as interviews and transcribed them for publication, one woman per chapter, each with a photograph and a potted biography at the end of the book. This is how Dunn explains her choices:

“If these women have anything in common it is a belief in personal fulfilment – that a women’s life should not solely be the struggle to make men happy but more than that a progress towards the development of one’s own body and soul.”

Altogether there are nine women’s voices here from artist Pauline Boty, writers Edna O’Brien and Ann Quinn (also recently being republished) to factory worker Kathy. Written before the spread of the women’s liberation movement, these free-flowing conversations take on men, motherhood (or not), work, sex, bodies, even abortion (a taboo subject because it was still illegal). Despite novelists like Penelope Mortimer or Margaret Drabble (also a friend) and playwrights like Shelagh Delaney, this period’s still most often referred to in terms of ‘the angry young men’: playwrights like John Osborne or the male-centred kitchen-sink realism of films like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Dunn’s project brings women back into frame, almost an oral history of their time: from social attitudes to the shadow of the ‘bomb’, since this was the time of CND and the famed Aldermaston marches.

BUT this needn’t be read for anything I’ve mentioned, it’s no dry historical document, it’s more like overhearing a series of fascinating, vivid discussions across the aisle of a train, the ones where you’d rather miss your stop than miss what’s said: funny, insightful, intimate and sometimes tragic.

29. Influx by Daniel Suarez

This was a great SF story that is based on the premise that huge scientific advances happened in the past 3 decades but a US government agency created for this purpose abducted the scientists who made these discoveries and covered up the groundbreaking discoveries, in order to "protect" humanity from abrupt changes - if cold fusion and hence abundant energy was given to the people and all cancer could be cured, global population would quickly pass 10 billion, etc.

What of course ends up happening is that this government agency becomes extremely powerful. Can a handful of imprisoned scientists fight against this agency which has technology and weapons beyond our wildest dreams?

I recommend this book to anyone interested in what the future can look like. It is written by the author of Daemon and its sequel Freedom, both of which I read and loved last year.

And bringing my list over:

1. Would They Lie To You? by Robert Hutton
2. High Crimes by Joseph Finder
3. A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale
4. Killer Instinct by Joseph Finder
5. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
6. Bach à Son Temps by Gilles Cantagrel
7. Deep State by Walter Jon Williams
8. Music In The Baroque Era - From Monteverdi To Bach by Manfred f. Bukofzer
9. The Harpsichord and the Clavichord by Raymond Russell

10. Extraordinary Powers by Joseph Finder 11. The Midnight Line by Lee Child 12. An Evil Eye (Yashim the Eunuch #4) by Jason Goodwin 13. The Forgotten by David Baldacci (John Puller #2) 14. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill 15. Light by M John Harrison (Kefahuchi Tract Trilogy #1) 16. The Escape (John Puller #3) by David Baldacci 17. Johann Sebastian Bach, His Life, Art, And Work by Johann Nikolaus Forkel 18. Daughter of Eden (Dark Eden #3) by Chris Beckett 19. No Man's Land (John Puller #4) by David Baldacci 20. Evening In The Palace Of Reason by James Gaines 21. The Devotion Of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino 22. House Of Cards by Michael Dobbs 23. Jack and Jill James Patterson 24. The Crysalids by John Wyndham 25. One Few Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey 26. The Innocent (Will Robie #1) by David Baldacci 27. The Spy Who Came In From The Cold by John le Carré 28. Pale Rider - The Spanish Flu Of 1918 and How It Changed The World by Laura Spinney

Oh, and last night I read Not a Star by Nick Hornby. Not counting it on my list as it's a short story not a novel, but I thoroughly enjoyed it so thought I'd recommend. It's about a woman who discovers that her son has an enormous penis and has been working in porn (on the side while trying to get an NVQ in leisure and tourism.) Her reactions to it are just lovely though - you start out thinking she's going to be a stereotypical naive middle-aged mother, and actually she ends up being rather tickled by the whole thing.

Another vote for Tenant & Agnes Grey as two of the best Brontë novels (Shirley would be my third)

I have a massive soft spot for Jane Eyre though and it will always be my favourite.

keith I like a made-up-person crush, me.

dottie HOW did I not know Mary Norton also wrote Bedknobs and Broomsticks?!

Wuthering Heights is my favourite Bronte novel. Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a close second.

I've only read Jane Eyre (love) and Wuthering Heights (no love, but that was twenty years ago so probably time for a reread) so looking forward to see how I get on with Anne.

I can recommend The Madwoman Upstairs for those who are fans of the Brontes work, as a good read for those trapped in an airport departures lounge/nursing a child with d&v/on jury duty. It’s a sort of DaVinci code without a psychopathic albino monk combined with . It an absolute load of preposterous bobbins but was good fun to read. I sensed that the author had done her research on the Brontes if nothing else. The love in it for Tenant and Agnes Grey is strong.

Jane Eyre will always be the one for me, possibly because I read it as an impressionable 12-year-old after rescuing the book (a 19thc copy with inscription inside) from a pile someone had given my mother to go to a jumble-sale.

I'm quite fond of Villette too - even if it is essentially a very thinly-veiled bit of autobiography from Charlotte's Brussels days (as is The Professor - was interested to read that when someone chose it for book group recently). Can't abide Wuthering Heights, I'm afraid!

My vote goes to Tenant of Wildfell Hall, although I haven't read all the Bronte books, just one per sister.

95. Mirror, shoulder, signal, by Dorthe Nors
Translated from the Danish. I think this was a recommendation from Dotty. Not much happens - a woman in her 40s in Copenhagen takes driving lessons. She's also trying to orientate herself in her life - how did she get here and where does she go next? I enjoyed it, but I think it's one of those books where you have to be at the right stage of life to "get". It works for me in my 40s, but if I'd read it in my 20s I wouldn't have got it at all. Who knows in my 60s - I might look back indulgently at all that angst as a life stage that seems major when you're in it, but reduces in importance looking back.

On Shakespeare, the Globe has come to my town, so I've been a groundling at Richard III, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Macbeth, and I still have Romeo and Juliet to go. By now, I have a favoured spot right up at the front, arms leaning on the stage, feeling right at the heart of the action, even if sometimes my view is of the backs of the actors' legs. It's been an absolute treat.

Fond memories of the £5 standing tickets at the Globe when I was living in London in my 20s.

And I love love love Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

I saw Titus Andronicus at the Globe - people were passing out! Fabulous, definitely one to see. For pure reading pleasure I love Hamlet and The Tempest and have seen and read both lots, memorably Patrick Stewart as Prospero, though I should probably fill my massive History Plays gap - I’ve read one of the Richards

Wuthering Heights is and always will be my favourite, I read it when I was too young to understand more than the odd word, and every couple of years since, I think it imprinted on me at that tender age. I was put off Jane Eyre at a similar age, but 25 or so years later I reckon I’m due a reread!

Jane Eyre for me, though I've never read any Anne.

I always feel like I've read/seen a lot of Shakespeare, as I've seen all the ones that come round on regular rotation. But my knowledge of the more obscure plays is pitiful. Saw Julius Caesar for the first time this year, for example.

The film version of Titus is brilliant - really gets across that you aren't supposed to take the bloodbath too seriously.

biblio - I think you got Mirror, Shoulder etc from me - I'm just out of my 40s, so it kind of clicked with me in the same way, but I agree that it probably wouldn't appeal to much younger readers.

Sorry, exexpat, I think you're right. Thanks for the recommendation - glad to have tried something beyond my usual ready.

Thanks for the shiny new thread South.

Am falling a bit behind with my reviews, so before I post my revised list, here's a round up of my recent reads.

44. Cosmopolis – Don Delillo

A rather strange book, I think someone gave me this years ago and it’s been sitting neglected on my bookshelf ever since as it didn’t really appeal to me. Feeling brave, I decided to give it a go. The book chronicles 24 hours in the life a multi-billionaire being chauffeured round present day Manhattan in his state of the art limousine. He gets caught up in an anti-capitalist rally in Times Square and a famous rapper’s ostentatious funeral among other things. The central character was unremittingly unpleasant and self- absorbed. He talks about his prostate a lot. The female characters of the book were relegated to one dimensional potential sexual conquests.

I didn’t like this one very much. The deeper meaning, which is probably lurking in there somewhere, eluded me. I did manage to finish it as it quite short at only 209 pages. One for the charity box unfortunately.

45. Heatwave – Penelope Lively

I haven’t read anything by Penelope Lively before and as I sat in my extremely hot living room melting and longing for rain, was tempted by the apt title and the beautiful cover. A very satisfying read. On the strength of this, I would read more by her and quite fancy reading Moon Tiger next. She has quite an old fashioned very English style, crisp and quite precise which I enjoyed.

Pauline is spending the summer in the countryside in an isolated cottage with her daughter and grandson. Her daughter’s husband Maurice also comes to stay from time to time. As Pauline starts to suspect the Maurice is having an affair, she reflects on her relationship with her ex-husband. Everyone is very restrained and polite, Maurice is suitably irritating, and as the heatwave gathers pace, so does the dramatic tension. A satisfying read.

46. Olive Kitteridge – Elizabeth Strout

A series of stories about small town American life connected by the eponymous central character Olive. After reading My Name is Lucy Barton and Anything is Possible last year, I was expecting flawed, but interesting characters and an unflinching exploration of life’s more challenging moments. This book exceeded my expectations and is my favourite novel by Elizabeth Strout to date, although it was a tough read at times, with many sad and profound moments. I love the way Elizabeth Strout writes and am now rationing her remaining novels.

47. There There – Tommy Orange

Was really looking forward this this one as Margaret Atwood and Louise Erdrich both endorsed the cover. The initial premise was interesting – an exploration of urban, contemporary Native American life and the book started well. The narrative was made up of a series of individual stories which it becomes clear are actually all connected to each other. For me, there were just too many characters and too much going on. This meant that not enough time was spent developing and exploring their stories and I felt the world he created didn’t feel real enough to me. As the book progressed I cared less and less about how it would all end as yet more characters were thrown into the mix. A bit disappointing.

And finally

48. Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

I've decided to have a Western binge over the summer, so this seemed like a good novel to kick off with. Not quite sure what to make of this to be honest. It's written in a very beautiful, atmospheric style but the subject matter is unremittingly violent, to the point of being horrific at times. And yet I couldn't seem to stop reading it, the story kind of pulled me in despite myself. The descriptions of the landscape are completely convincing and really convey the desolate nature of all the protagonists lives. A hard read, but worth it.

Have just started Larry McMurty's Lonesome Dove for book 49. At 843 pages, I may be some time!

My fully updated list. Highlights in bold, ones I really haven't enjoyed in italics.

1. All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr
2. Closely Watched Trains - Bohumil Hrabal
3. Women and Power: A Manifesto – Mary Beard
4. The Road Home – Rose Tremain
5. No is Not Enough: Defeating the New Shock Politics – Naomi Klein
6. Home Fire – Kamila Shamsie
7. The Blackwater Lightship – Colm Toibin
8. Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: A Brief History of Capitalism – Yanis Varoufakis
9. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine – Gail Honeyman
10. Thin Air – Michelle Paver
11. The Beet Queen – Louise Erdrich
12. Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels
13. Testosterone Rex: Unmaking the Myths of Our Gendered Minds – Cordelia Fine 14. Gillespie and I – Jane Harris
14. Run – Ann Patchett
15. Men Explain Things To Me: and Other Essays – Rebecca Solnit
16. Sugar Money – Jane Harris 18. Elmet – Fiona Mozley 19. Stay With Me – Ayobami Adebayo
17. Digging to America – Anne Tyler 21. Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race – Reni Eddo-Lodge
18. The Lost Daughter – Elena Ferrante
19. Exit West – Mohsin Hamid
20. Conversations With Friends – Sally Rooney
21. Homegoing – Yaa Gyasi
22. In the Days of Rain – Rebecca Stott 27. Midwinter Break – Bernard McClaverty
23. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant – Anne Tyler
24. Last Night at the Lobster – Stewart O’Nan
25. Lean In – Sheryl Sandberg
26. The Trick to Time – Kit De Waal
27. Educated – Tara Westover 33. The Magician’s Assistant – Anne Patchett
28. Mind of a Survivor – Megan Hine 35. Sing, Unburied, Sing – Jesmyn Ward
29. The Burning Girl – Claire Messud 37. The North Water – Ian McGuire
30. When I Hit You – Mena Kandasamy
31. Troubling Love – Elena Ferrante
32. Future Home of the Living God – Louise Erdrich 41. What I Loved – Siri Hustvedt
33. Sight – Jessie Greengrass 43. The Round House – Louise Erdrich 44. Cosmopolis – Don Delillo
34. Heatwave – Penelope Lively 46. Olive Kitteridge – Elizabeth Strout
35. There There – Tommy Orange
36. Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy
37. Lonesome Dove – Larry McMurty

Loved reading comments on the Brontes, finally feel safe to come out and say I hate Wuthering Heights although it did produce the Kate Bush version!

I didn't find Titus Andronicus shocking but just a bit dull (sorry), I'm more with the Greeks where tragedy is concerned give me the Oresteia or Medea or Iphigenia in Aulis over Shakespeare in general. Also love Jean Anouilh's version of Antigone. Although relish a good revenge tragedy The Duchess of Malfi is brilliant.

Indigo thanks for the reviews have been thinking about Tommy Orange and the Delillo but will bury them again; Olive Kitteridge is a great book also thought Frances McDormand was just amazing in the mini-series. But love her in pretty much anything. I haven't read Lonesome Dove but again saw the mini-series, which was a bit cheesy, great, compulsive story though. If you like Westerns have you read Riders of the Purple Sage? Penguin reissued it a while back, mad classic Mormon Western! Am a huge devotee of John Ford Westerns but haven't read very many, tried the McCarthy and was a bit demolished by the relentless grind of it, brilliant writing.

I love Riders of the Purple Sage. The Son is quite a good modern western (as in written recently). I have just picked up a book called The Brittle Star which might be of interest to you Indigo, it came to me very well recommended. I’m currently reading Days Without End so also on something of a Western lean. Have had Lonesome Dove on my shelf for ages waiting for the right moment. I also really love True Grit.

Dottie no Titus wasn’t shocking, it was great fun - but there was much fake blood spurting everywhere and combined with standing up in the heat it was felling groundlings everywhere. Not a great tragedy, but an entertaining theatrical experience.

Satsuki that sounds fun, staging makes all the difference sometimes, saw a very trad version and was just bored. Will look out for a more inventive version.

Another Stetson tip for True Grit. I listened to Donna Tartt narrate it earlier this year (its her favourite book) and she does an excellent job.

I've put my current read aside to start Tenant.

Yes dottie I think as it was my first trip to the Globe - husband had just bought “Shakespeare” tickets for me - the atmosphere probably added a lot to it. I’m not keen to see the play again but enjoyed it.

Belatedly bringing my list over...

1. Van Gogh's Ear - Bernadette Murphy
2. Sleeping in the Ground - Peter Robinson
3. No Fond Return of Love - Barbara Pym
4. What She Ate - Laura Shapiro
5. The Home-Maker - Dorothy Canfield Fisher
6. The Blackest Streets - Sarah Wise
7. Searching for Caleb - Anne Tyler
8. Two Kinds of Truth - Michael Connolly
9. The Party - Elizabeth Day

10. Sunday Morning Coming Down - Nicci French 11. A Very English Scandal - John Preston 12. The Time Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain - Ian Mortimer 13. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day - Winifred Watson 14. What Dark Clouds Hide - Anne Holt 15. Into Thin Air - Jon Krakauer 16: A Life of my Own - Claire Tomalin 17: The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst - Nicholas Tomalin & Ron Hall 18: A Life in the Day - Hunter Davies 19: Adult Onset - Ann-Marie MacDonald 20: Doctor's Children - Josephine Elder 21: A Life in Questions - Jeremy Paxman 22: An Academic Question - Barbara Pym 23: Still Waters - Viveca Sten 24: A Talent for Murder - Andrew Wilson 25: The Pedant in the Kitchen - Julian Barnes 26: Mother Country - Jeremy Harding 27: The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau - Graeme Macrae Burnet 28: The Fact of a Body - Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich 29: Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard - Sara Wheeler 30: Closed Circles - Viveca Sten 31: A Glass of Blessings - Barbara Pym 32: The Small Back Room - Nigel Balchin 33: All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers - Larry McMurtry 34: Force of Nature - Jane Harper 35. Scissors, Paper, Stone - Elizabeth Day 36. The Story of Alice - Robert Douglas-Fairhurst 37. Jane and Prudence - Barbara Pym 38. Darkness Falls from the Air - Nigel Balchin 39: Serious Sweet - A. L. Kennedy 40: Less Than Angels - Barbara Pym 41: Tess of the d'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy 42: The Expendable Man - Dorothy B. Hughes 43: Ma'am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret - Craig Brown 44: The Fields Beneath - Gillian Tindall 45: The Green Road - Anne Enright 46: Cheerful Weather for the Wedding - Julia Strachey 47: I'm Travelling Alone - Samuel Björk 48: Canal Dreams - Iain Banks 49: Standard Deviation - Katherine Heiney 50: The Italian Boy - Sarah Wise 51: Love Like Blood - Mark Billingham 52: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine - Gail Honeyman 53: Daddy's Gone A-Hunting - Penelope Mortimer 54: The Gastronomical Me - M. F. K. Fisher 55: The Pumpkin Eater - Penelope Mortimer

Just finished The Pumpkin Eater. Separate review to come as this is long enough already!

Just finished 36. The Fairies of Fryfam by MC Beaton An early Agatha this one but full of dark humour. Going to start H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald .