50 Book Challenge 2019 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 2019, 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?

Just to add on Vertigo and Ghosts, it made me revisit the stories in Greek myths, some of which I could half remember and others of which I was completely ignorant. I had no idea that Medusa was originally a beautiful priestess in Athena's temple and as such was required to remain a virgin; after she was raped by Poseidon, she was punished by Athena who turned her into the monstrous form with poisonous snakes for hair.

TheTurnOfTheScrew I’d agree with Chessie that an 8 yr old who’s a good enough reader to enjoy Five Children and It would probably be fine with Five Children on the Western Front.

There are some bits in the trenches and some soldiers badly injured / killed, but none of it is graphic. It’s not a happy ending for everyone though.

Fortuna - I hadn't seen Off the Deep End. Thanks for thinking of me, although I do worry that A History of Madness at Sea makes 'strangers' on the internet immediately think of me! It does sound exactly my sort of thing, but is a stupid price on Kindle right now, so will have to wait.

Cote - I think it was 30p very well spent!

I'll bring the tone back down a bit with

18: After the Crash - Michel Bussi

Reviewed by a couple of previous posters upthread so I won't labour the plot - is the baby found alive after a plane crash the child of the wealthy de Carville family or the working-class Vitrals? 18 years later, the race is on to find out.

This was a fast and easy read, not great literature but it passed the time engagingly enough. I feel I now know a lot more about French railway stations, which the author seems determined to name-check at length. Also, fans of the Archers might feel slightly disorientated by important parts of the action taking place in Montbéliard, ancestral home of Helen's cows

Remus I do worry that A History of Madness at Sea makes 'strangers' on the internet immediately think of me!

Well I had people dealing with adventure and extreme circumstances in mind, but if you want to pick up on the madness...

21 Terms and Conditions: Life in Girls Boarding Schools 1939-1979 by Ysenda Maxtone Graham

Reviewed a few times on these threads before. Interesting read - the varieties of the schools is what really struck me, in some ways I was more surprised to hear about the delightful (ponies, tree climbing etc) than the cold/glum/hideous.

Also a reminder to be grateful of the times we live in, I think actually quite a lot of the grim-ness was pretty standard for any 1940s/1950s school. I know my dad (working class boy who went to a typical London grammar school in the 40s/50s) always says the one good thing about school was that everything he has done in life since from his first job onwards has been so massive an improvement.

15. The Moon’s a Balloon by David Niven.

David Niven’s autobiography. Born in 1910, an eventful life (multiple boarding schools, Sandhurst and a spell in the Highland Light Infantry) leads him to Hollywood where some graft, luck and lots of charm gave him a very successful acting career. After I read the book, I watched a couple of YouTube videos of Parkinson-Niven interviews - he really does come across as a very charming man.

Sally Rooney advice required please.
I have Conversations with Friends on my Kindle and just picked up Normal People at the library. Is there a particular order I should be reading them in?
Many thanks in advance!

No order as the stories are unrelated but depending on your mood now you might like to know that Normal People is a bit darker than her first book. I adored both of them.

22: The Key – Patricia Wentworth – Needed something easy, as am crazy-busy with work and feeling a bit miserable with Brexit and the news generally. This was fine – the usual Miss Silver stuff: she doesn’t do an awful lot but miraculously sorts things out and everybody loves her. I've bought another one to keep me going for a few more days of busy-ness and lack of head-space!

I remember laughing out loud while reading the David Niven book.

13. My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite. I'm currently reading a couple of non-fiction books, which I find a bit heavier going than fiction, so I took a break to read this. Set in Nigeria, Korede receives a call from her younger sister one night saying that she has killed her boyfriend (in self defence) and needs Korede's help to dispose of the body. The thing is... this is the third time this has happened. This is quirky and good fun - I enjoyed it.

Thank you Chessie and Stitches.
10. The Ghost by Robert Harris
In which our protagonist, a jobbing ghostwriter, is commissioned to write the autobiography of a recently retired, not entirely uncontroversial former Prime Minister who absolutely, definitely bears no resemblance to Tony Blair. Our hero gets this extraordinarily well-paid gig after the last guy hired for the same job accidentally falls off a ferry and drowns, shortly after contacting one of the PM's adversaries about something he's uncovered in his research.

I won't reveal any more about the plot, as much of the fun in this slightly silly (in the best way) thriller is in the revelations that follow. Lighter in tone than Fatherland but still gripping.

Thanks southeast. That is very helpful. I will see how I'm feeling after I've finished Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees.

Very little time for reading this week due to ridiculous amount of work. Probably shouldn't have popped into the library while I was waiting for DD1 this afternoon!! Was excited to see Normal People on the shelf, and also William Boyd's collection of short stories that I've seen a fair amount of love for on here recently. Too hard to resist :)

There are many parts of The Moons a Balloon that made me laugh out loud, I read this and Clive James autobiography at the same time

14. Snap by Belinda Bauer. Agree with pp. A good crime romp and very readable but can't see why it was man booker prize worthy...

I haven’t posted for weeks, so apologies for the long catching up post!

13. Silhouette in Scarlet by Elizabeth Peters cosy, easy read crime adventure. This was book two in a series and would have made more sense if I’d read the first. Pleasant enough but wouldn’t seek more out.
14. Kayak the Kwanza by Oscar Scafidi really interesting account of the first source to sea kayak expedition of the Kwanza river in Angola, a country I knew little about prior to reading this.
15. The True History of the Elephant Man by Michael Howell a bit dry in places (the extensive life histories of several peripheral figures was definitely skim read!) but overall interesting and not sensationalised history of Joseph Merrick’s life.
16. I Found You by Lisa Jewell my first ever audiobook,which did a good job keeping me entertained and distracted from running and hoovering! Alice finds a man sat on the beach in the pouring rain, who has completely lost his memory. She takes him in, much to her children and friend’s disapproval, and becomes embroiled in his attempts to rediscover his identity and the secrets connecting him to the village he has appeared in.

Ooh snap Tarahumara I just finished My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite too. I agree with your review. I really enjoyed this book too. It’s a quick easy read but the writing is really bright, sharp and clever. The story of the two sisters could happen anywhere but the setting in urban modern day Nigeria added another layer of interest for me. Instagram references sitting next to descriptions of the traditional way a Nigerian future fiancée formally greets her prospective father in law were great.
A good pick by the judges for the Women’s Prize long list.

11. The Green Road by Anne Enright. This was really dull - given it was shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2016 and the 2015 Costa Novel Award, Longlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize and Won the Irish Novel of the Year 2015 - I expected so much more. The blurb states: Hanna, Dan, Constance and Emmet return to the west coast of Ireland for a final family Christmas in the home their mother is about to sell. As the feast turns to near painful comedy, a last, desperate act from Rosaleen - a woman who doesn't quite know how to love her children - forces them to confront the weight of family ties and the road that brought them home. Unfortunately the characters are pretty unlikeable and the plot is practically nonexistent, if there was 'comedy' in there it completely passed me. I may have given up on it if I hadn't already devoted several hours of my life to listening to it and some reviews said it improved in the second half, it really didn't. (Although the narrator did a good job with what she had to work with, and had a lovely lilting Irish accent.) I seem to be going through an Irish phase at the moment as the novel immediately preceding this one was the excellent The Hearts Invisible Furies and I've also downloaded the audio book of Milkman on the latest two for one deal, but I'll wait a while to listen to that, and let the memory of this dud recede.

P.S. Meant to say in mitigation for The Green Road Enright's writing is excellent it's a pity she didn't have a better plot and more fleshed out characters to work with

11 All that remains by Sue Black

12 Brothers in Law by Henry Cecil

Didn’t think much of this. Humorous stories about embarking on a career at the bar. And stringing two girls along. DH had found it funny, but it’s thin stuff. It turns out that DH hadn’t read any PG Wodehouse, wasn’t a Hitchhiker Guide man and was unaware of Spike Milligans war memoirs. He possibly hadn’t appreciated what’s actually possible in terms of comic writing.

Update from me:

20. The Winter Book, Tove Jansson
I've been reading this in fits and starts since December. They're good short stories, and for me reading short stories is like eating little morsels of rich food - each one is a meal in itself, and if you try to read (or eat) more in one sitting, it detracts from the pleasure rather than adding to it.

This isn't a collection that Jansson herself put together - they were selected by the writer Ali Smith from a variety of Jansson's writings. I wasn't convinced, personally, by the way they were organised in the collection - it's a bit of a mishmash of different themes, switching from childhood to adulthood, city setting to deserted island. That's another reason why (for me) the stories were better as standalones rather than read as a series.

Jansson's voice is strong and many of the stories are at least semi-autobiographical. Her voice is practical and unsentimental but I was disappointed to find it cold. I have loved Jansson's Moomins since I was a little girl but found little of their charm or warmth here, although the writing and the things described have the same luminous beauty - this book is tough and lonely and while it lets you in, it seems in two minds about accepting your company.

21. Long Road from Jarrow, Stuart Maconie
A few books back I read John Higgs' book about walking the length of Watling Street at the time of the Brexit referendum. This turns out to be a similar project - Maconie retraces the route of the Jarrow crusade, tying together the 8th anniversary of the march and the summer of the EU referendum. He stops in the towns where the marchers stopped to eat and sleep and explores each a little, commenting on its history and its modern feel, sampling pubs, curry houses, and a variety of gatherings from comedy nights to political meetings. This is a gentle and amusing travelogue, a bit Bryson-y if you like that sort of thing, with strong additional ingredients of politics, class war and north-south-divide. Very educational too about the march itself if you're a bit hazy about the details (which I was - may my Geordie mother forgive me).

22. The Forgotten Hours, Katrin Schumann
I think this was a Kindle First Read - it was an easy read-on-the-plane choice. When Katie was a teenager, her best friend accused her father of statutory rape, and he went to jail. Now he's about to be released and Katie has to take herself back to "that fateful summer" to question some of the assumptions she made about what exactly happened. The story and characters had potential - there's a very interesting issue here around consent and power - but sadly failed to deliver.

23. Circe, Madeline Miller
Much reviewed here so I won't say too much. Lots to love in this intelligent, readable, feminist book including the most heart-stoppingly true chapter describing the frustration, joy and bone-breaking tiredness that comes when you're a first time mother.

1. The Doll’s House by Rumer Godden.

I have never read this although I watched Tottie when I was a child. I read it to DD (8) over a few nights and she was transfixed, and at the end said it was her favourite ever book. I think it may be mine too.

Is it very spooky Jennifer? I remember Tottie as being very strange and uncanny.

The Diddakoi was a favourite book of mine as a child, and I loved In This House of Brede (one of her adult books) a few years ago. I should read more Godden.

I loved The Doll's House and Little Plum as a child but sadly DD has never been keen.