50 Book Challenge 2019 Part One

[southeastdweller]

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

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2019, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

Who's in for this year?

3 The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

I think probably everyone on this thread now knows the premise of this book - it's what the author describes as a time-shifting, body-hopping murder mystery. I really enjoyed it. Turton says in the end note that his inspiration was essentially having read all the Agatha Christie novels from the age of eight onwards after they were given to him by a kind neighbour called Doris, who sourced them at car boot sales. Basically that was my pre-teen and early teen life, apart from the agency of Doris. I read all the Agatha Christies I could get my hands on, from the library, and from second hand bookshops (I spent my pocket money on them and had a rule that I wouldn't pay more than £1, then £1.50 (inflation)). So this book was basically made for me. I realised halfway through that there was no way I was going to guess whodunnit or why - although I did work out one piece of the puzzle, albeit not where it fitted in - so I just let it wash over me and thoroughly enjoyed all the intricate little parts of the mystery as they revealed themselves. I think I will probably go back and read it again to see if I can spot more of the clues and workings, much as I have done with all my Agatha Christies over the years. Which is a big compliment.

book6 - Tastes like Fear by Sarah Hilary. Good thriller which I had to power through in a couple of sittings although it was way too long at 400 pages. Don't these writers have editors? It was also recommended on the front by Alex Marwood mentioned above so I think they all band together in mutual admiration and support club.

For children's "time-slip" surely the original & best (except for Alice in Wonderland) was Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce. I also remember Charlotte Sometimes and Marianne Dreams Catherine Storr was another good one.
I have also pulled in 7 Joyce Carol Oates - some short stories (can't remember title) which are easy reading and I can't believe I haven't read her before.

1. Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Retelling of the Trojan War from the perspective of Achilles' childhood friend and lover Patroclus.

Easy and quick enjoyable read. It moves along at decent pace. Accessible if you don't know much abut the Trojan War/Greek mythology.

I'd forgotten what this thread is like in January - turn your back for 5 minutes and it's three pages longer and you've missed all sorts of interesting discussions!

1. The Good Immigrant, Nikesh Shukla (Editor)

Bit of a cheat to add this one as I actually read it in December 2018 but I forgot to add it to my 2018 list.

Like all anthologies, this had stronger and weaker chapters, but there were more good'uns than bad'uns and the overall effect of the compilation was very strong. I'm white, and although I read a lot of BAME writers, follow them on Twitter etc, it was an eye-opener to me to see just how much our society excludes people of colour and treats them as "other". Readable and thought-provoking.

2. Everyone Brave is Forgiven, Chris Cleave

Chris Cleave wrote The Other Hand , a 2008 bestseller about a young asylum seeker from Nigeria. This is a very different book, set during WW2 and based on the wartime experiences of his own grandparents.

It centres around two sets of friends: Mary and Hilda, Tom and Alasdair. Mary ("handsome, clever and rich") signs up as a teacher at the start of the war and finds herself moving into social circles that would never have been open to her in peacetime. Tom is the head of the local education authority (and exempt from having to sign up), and he and Mary meet and fall in love. Meanwhile Alasdair volunteers for the army and ends up stationed in Malta, under siege and bombardment.

I wouldn't have been convinced, before reading this, that a writer could come up with any new or interesting things to write about the early years of WW2 but both Mary's story and Alasdair's felt fresh and fascinating to read. Cleave's descriptions of both settings (Blitz-torn London and the dry, hungry island of Malta) are vivid and affecting. The only downside for me was rather weak characterisation - if the characters had been as vibrant as the settings, this would be a five-star book.

3. Bitter Orange, Clare Fuller

Another goodie. It's 1969 and Frances, in her late 30s and reeling after the death of her mother (with whom she has shared a claustrophobically close relationship), arrives at a nearly derelict abandoned country house to survey the gardens for its new American owner. She finds there a beautiful and bohemian young couple, employed to do a similar task in the house itself. They have the house and gardens - beautiful, wild, decaying and possibly haunted - to themselves.

There are loads of great tropes brought together here - the country house, the love triangle, the long hot summer, the is-there-isn't-there ghost story - and Fuller balances them with skill. There are numerous mysteries, and while there isn't a twist exactly, I didn't foresee how things were going to end. Fuller's writing increasingly reminds me of Shirley Jackson and I've enjoyed reading her blog about the books she reads herself and where her research for the book led her.

PS I meant to say that the Chris Cleave book has inspired me to find authors who wrote about the Blitz from first hand experience. I know Elizabeth Bowen ( The Demon Lover etc) but would love other recommendations if anyone has any.

And googling for Elizabeth Bowen lead me to another couple of good "100 Books" lists

www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/17/the-100-best-novels-written-in-english-the-full-list

www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/03/the-best-novels-in-english-readers-alternative-list

Harry Potter makes the second list, as does Infinite Jest - how are the IJ readers getting on so far?

Amazed how fast this thread is moving. I've got flu which is a good excuse to read all day. So moving on from 1. Birdcage Walk I've now read

1. Devil's Day by Andrew Michael Hurley

A quite creepy story of a man who brings his wife home to the isolated farm where he grew up.

1. Ghost Walk by Sarah Moss

A young girl is taken on an archaeological dig by her abusive father and helpless mother. Good but ended rather abruptly.

1. Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver

Takes place in 2 different time periods and revolves around a house that's falling down. Lots of comment about life in America, then and now, and a sub plot featuring a female botanist in correspondence with Charles Darwin.

@lastqueenofscotland I loved The Pearl. I read it maybe 4 or 5 years ago now but I remember vividly reading it which is something I don't really think about it. It really touched me

Thanks for that review Keith i've added Bitter Orange to my wish list

Nest three of my books. They have all been fairly 'easy reads' as I've had the lurgy & a one day hospital procedure (all fine) & have needed books I can pick up & put down with ease.

No 3: The Comforts of Home by Susan Hill

Latest in the Simon Serrallier series. I really enjoyed this as the book is as much about the characters who have featured in all 9 of the series as the actual crime(s). But I do wonder if I would like them as much if it wasn't for the fact that Susan Hill writes so well. Some of the characters are not very endearing!

No4 : Day of the Dead by Nicci French

The final book of the Frieda Klein series. Quite good (a bit predictable) but engrossing enough to keep me occupied during a day stay in hospital so it fulfilled a need there. As an aside, Nicci French is two people - I'd love to know the intricacies of writing a novel with someone else!

No 5: First Bite: How We lear to eat by Bee Wilson

DH is a Times subscriber & this was the free e book of the month. It was quite fascinating to read about how we learn to eat & how many geographical & cultural factors affect our taste & how we can learn to change our tastes. Worth dipping into.

Book 4 - Swing Time by Zadie Smith The novel tells the stories of two girls: An unnamed Narrator from whose viewpoint the whole tale is told, and Tracey, her childhood friend whom she meets at a dance class in the 1980’s. The story dips back and forth in our narrator's life taking us through her childhood in London, her job working for pop star “Aimee” where she travels between New York, Europe and an “unknown” African country where she becomes involved, through Aimee, in setting up a School for Girls. (A classic case of imposing western values on a developing country; the school is not what the community needs but it is what they are going to get!) I found the part about the Narrator and Tracey growing up in London and her Mother’s educational and political growth fascinating, but I didn’t like Aimee ( she didn’t listen and carried on her own way regardless). I found the book dull towards the end and stopped caring about the characters. So all in all a mixed bag for me.

learn to eat

fat fingers!

I enjoyed the Simon Serrallier series Magimedi - think I've only read 7 though. They used to form part of my holiday reading list each summer. I'll have to look out for the final 2.

I loved Everyone Brave is Forgiven, and said so in a Twitter thread on the best reads of 2017/8, the author popped up and thanked me which made me very happy indeed

1. Touch by Claire North

A convoluted, winding tale of an entity - whose self /soul / ghost - can jump from person to person and inhabit their bodies following a brief skin-to-skin contact. When he leaves to move to another body, the person's mind returns with no memory of what their body has done.

The story itself is a complicated crime / spy novel with the hero trying to catch the bad guy - a psychopathic entity, whilst trying not to be caught by the secret organisation that is chasing him and his kind for scientific experiment or execution.

As ever with Claire North, the novel is long and tends to get a bit bogged down in description, especially of the many places they travel to and (I think) could do with a bit harsher treatment by the editor, but overall it was a good story that asks what makes you "you", when all the confines, expectations and limitations of a body are taken away. What becomes valuable? Who becomes valuable?

I'd recommend (especially if you've read any of her other novels in the same genre)

Magimedi I listened to First Bite as an audiobook a couple of years back and found it absolutely fascinating. Any audible users, I'd definitely recommend it, a good reading as well as an interesting book.

As part of my plan to intersperse new books with re-reads from my shelves my latest read is:

1. The Missing by Andrew O'Hagan

This is a mix of autobiography, fairly straight reportage and meditation on the nature of missing people in our society. O'Hagan grew up in Irvine, one of the Glasgow satellite New towns in the 1970s/80s. In the first section of the book he writes beautifully about his childhood, about the hopes and actuality of the dispersal of deprived urban communities into the new towns, and about the ways that children roam and play, and how that can shade over into violence. He also writes about disappearances from his community, particularly a 3 year old boy who went missing when O'Hagan was around 8 or 9, and was never found.

In the second section he writes about missing people - particularly on their lives before they became 'mispers'. Writing a year or so after the Fred/Rosemary West murders had been discovered, the final part of the book looks at the early lives of some of the murdered girls, and how they had come into the West's orbit.

I've read this a number of times in the past, but not for many years. I hadn't realised how hard I'd find it to read about the missing children and especially the interviews with their parents now that I have a teenager myself. Still an excellent read though, and captures a sense of place and time perfectly (I suspect particularly if you were mid 20s at that point in the 1990s!).

The missing sounds facinating! That’s going on my list

Keith and Murine I also read and enjoyed Everyone Brave is Forgiven. A great story, however I too thought the characterisation let it down a bit. They were so relentlessly cheerful and witty! It jarred a little with the intensity of the plot. But on balance a good read.

(1) Twelve Years A Slave by Solomon Northup
(2) The Magdalen by Marita Conlon McKenna
(3) The Biscuit Girls by Hunter Davies
(4) Altitude by Dean Crawford

I really enjoyed this. Told onboard a flight due to land in Iceland when a volcanic cloud causes major problems, plane low on fuel and all local airports closed due to storms. Basically everything that could go wrong went wrong. Very fast paced and the kind of book where you just have to read one more chapter.

I'm about 350 pages into Lethal White and am losing the will to live. Feel like I might as well push through to the bitter end now though. There's a decent enough story in there somewhere, but by gawd, she's trying to hide it. Needs to be cut by at least 30%.

Keith, for Blitz books I'd recommend Nigel Balchin's Darkness Falls From the Air, if you haven't read it. His style is quite clipped and of its period but I thought it really captured the essence (and horrors) of the time. My review of it is somewhere on the enormous previous thread

3 Empire of Storms - Sarah J Maas
Part of the Throne of Glass series. It's like sweeties, you keep reading even though it makes you feel sick! Witches, magic, love, simmering lust, betrayal, lost children. All that.

I loved Lethal White but you are right Remus, she always does need more editing than she gets.

*1. Norse Mythology - Neil Gaiman

1. New Boy - Tracy Chevalier*

3. Harry Potter & Cursed Child - Rowling, Forde, Tiffany *

1. The Song of Hiawatha- Longfellow *

A wonderful nostalgic re-read. I first heard this epic poem when I was 7. It was an Indian Summer and my class teacher read this to us over a couple of days. Every time I read it or hear it I am taken back to the warm golden days of late summer/early autumn.

I love the infectious rhythm of the poem and am always immediately transported to another world. I find the folklore the poem is based on fascinating which helps increase my enjoyment.

It's definitely a poem to be read out loud - just like Dylan Thomas's works. Now off to re-read Catch-22 (which is the fault of the thread about books that have defeated you - lots of people have been beaten by the wonderfully irreverence and illogical logic of Heller's masterpiece)
*

@lastqueenofscotland I haven't read Little fires everywhere so you certainly aren't the last.