50 Book Challenge 2019 Part Four

[southeastdweller]

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

How're you getting on so far?

25. Middle England by Jonathan Coe

Well, I didn't think the last in the trilogy lived up to the first two - but I'm glad I read through to the conclusion. This felt a bit like Brexit-novel-by-numbers and if I hadn't already been invested in the characters I don't think I'd have thought much of it. But I enjoyed some of the character arcs, there were some good set pieces, the Jo Cox part really got me - and I liked where it all ended up. There was rather too much easy stereotyping along the way and I didn't understand the decision completely to abandon some characters (Paul and Malvina in particular). So could have been a lot better, but it didn't ruin the characters I had come to love and to be honest, with this sort of book sequence, that's more than you often get!

Woohoo! Halfway there!

I have read 16 from the list with a further 10 either on my kindle or my bookshelf.
I've just bought The Green Road so am disappointed to see that you wouldn't recommend Desdemona.

Just finished:
12. Becoming – Michelle Obama much reviewed on here already. I don't read many autobiographies but thought this was very good. Possibly unnecessarily long in places but overall well worth reading.

I listened to it on Audible NowANearlyNiceMum, maybe it's better in book form. it just didn't have enough plot for me and I didn't particularly take to the characters, but there it is in the list of the best 100 modern novels so what do I know, you'll probably love it 🤞

I've read 18 from that list, couple more in the TBR.

Today finished:
26. Closed Casket - Sophie Hannah

2nd of the 'new Poirot' novels. Poirot and his chum Catchpool are invited to stay at a dysfunctional family's country house, and are soon called upon to work out whodunnit. As so often with Hannah, it was a page turner as you went along, but had an underwhelming denouement with unconvincing motivations for major characters. The murder victim was the most interesting character but since he popped his clogs early on you never quite got a handle on what made him tick.

I'll keep on with these though as I like Hannah's writing style; already have Poirot #3 The Mystery of Three Quarters out from the library.

Just finished #30 Grass for His Pillow the second of the Tales of the Otori. I enjoyed it as it continues in the wonderful world set up in Across the Nightingale Floor although it's very definately part of a series and I don't think it stands alone.

Next up is a book which has been in my kindle queue for a while Naomi Novaks Black Powder War set in the Napoleonic Wars with dragons. It's the third in the series which has been a bit silly but fun so far. Not in the class of Uprooted which I love but I enjoy her style of storytelling so it should be good company on this weeks commute.

42. The complete poems of Rupert Brooke
Am in the middle of reading Vera Brittain's wartime letters and Brooke is mentioned throughout. The book is too heavy to keep lugging around so I downloaded Brooke's poems to read on the go.
I admit I haven't read closely but I my overriding feeling was that 'death' featured heavily with n his work even before the war. His own struggles with sexuality are quite apparent too.
Whether it is because it is the one I was most familiar with or whether it genuinely was his best work I wouldn't like to say, but The Soldier resonated with me the most.

The Green Road is one of the ones from the list that’s been on my kindle a long while. Let me know how you get on nowandnearly

I've bought The Green Road for 99p but I think it might sit on my kindle for a while.

FWIW I really loved The Green Road 🤷🏻‍♀️

(I've read 17 from that list, a surprisingly high number for me given that I tend to read 'odd' books that are a bit off the beaten track, and don't usually get round to current novels for months/years).

Catching up with myself.

17. Close to Home Cara Hunter as I said mid-read, superior detective thriller. Have downloaded some of her others.

18. Bookworm On Audible, but as I now have the understandable urge as a "carnal" reader to re-acquire more of my childhood favourites in paper form (the exact issues that I had as a child) I am also going to get the paper version of this for scribbles and annotations galore. (btw- found a brilliant ebay bookseller thecotswoldlibrary- literally millions of second hand books (oddly some come in from different countries) already have about 15 Puffin books on their way to me- at 88p delivery to Italy, brilliant!)

19. The Lost Words on Audible- nice and relaxing to listen to as I marked homework, the words and the readers lovely- the poems themselves a bit naff.

20. In This House of Brede Rumer Godden nuns! Love a bit of nuns and Catholics (am in deepest southern Italy so, go figure, it's been a baptism of fire for years!) I'd hesitate to call this a novel, as it reads more like snippets of Things That Happen in Convents or Nuns I Have Known. I read that the author was accepted into a convent to do a bit of research and though "all characters are fictional bla bla" some of the stories make you think "wtf? where did she come up with that?" that makes you think she pinched some of the nun's tales for her book.

I also keep reading it in my head in Vanessa Redgrave's rather wonderful voice and trying to remember it's not Sunday evening, I'm not in Poplar or Nonnatus house and Miranda isn't about to fall off her bike and say "jolly good" any time soon.

Catching up:

50. A thousand paper birds by Tor Udall
51. Race, ethnicity and crime
52. Identity in Question
53. The best ways to teach primary science

Have read 14 from the ST list, and I'm surprised it's so high, tbh - I normally steer clear of recent literary fiction. The absolute standout for me is The Underground Railway by Colson Whitehead, which has stuck to my mind. Not an enjoyable read (the horrors of slavery) but compelling.

I seem to be somewhere in the early chapters of large number of books at the moment, so I probably won't be reporting back any time soon.

23 from the ST list for me but I denounce the integrity of any list that includes the wrong Smith (Zadie and not Ali)

I do like a good list debate but there really are some very random choices on there and I suspect that the Sally Rooney and Leila Slimani will not make it to a similar list compiled in 5-10 years time. When they say "modern", was the cut-off publication date for the list 2000?

Yes, the headline was 21st century books.

Thanks @bibliomania and to @brizzlemint for the list!

22: ELizabeth II - The Life of a Monarch by Ruth Gowen
Audible freebie, easy listening, nothing I didn't know already apart from a few anecdotes from her childhood.

23: The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole - by Sue Townsend
A re-read for me, but a funny trip down memory lane. I am about the same age as Adrian, and though my family was less 'interesting' than his, the mention of events like the Falklands War and the Miners' strike take me right back. I also remember vividly the day the seat belt law came into effect.

Very funny in places. Love Adrian!

24: A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr
I picked this up as I had seen it recommended so many times on here.

It's narrated by Tom Birkin, recently returned to England after being a soldier in the trenches in World War I. He is employed in the rural parish of Oxgodby to uncover a hidden painting in the village church and spends a month living in the belfry, working in the painting and observing village life.

I struggled with it a bit, I can see its literary merit, it was well written and beautiful in places, but I just feel I didn't get into to it the way everyone else seems to.
It was a short read, so I did finish, if it had been 500 pages, I would have really struggled.

20. Girl Meets Boy - Ali Smith Part of the Cannongate Myth series that also includes The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood which I read last year and very much enjoyed. This one draws on the myth of Iphis from Metamorphoses- one I was unfamiliar with. It was very short and the story was both a little thin and also containing multitudes, but as with all Ali Smith the language was beautiful, clever and playful. I read the reviews at the back, one of which referred to the ‘effusive cascade’ of words which certainly sums it up.

Bookwitch I didn't get into A month in the country either. Unlike you, I didn't finish it

@brizzlemint - I'm glad I am not alone!

Finished 14 The Goldfinch. I mean, I quite like her style and I get the themes but Boris was so bloody irritating in the end that I found myself skipping whole pages of his dialogue (which rather meant I had to go back and read a whole chapter!!).

I feel the same as I did about her other books really : great openings ,leading to disappointment.

I do like the way she describes the painting!

Agree piggy. The beginning of the Goldfinch, and the end, where she writes about art and grief and beauty and loss are both so well written. Just the (few hundred pages in the) middle for me didn’t quite hit the spot.

I agree Satsuki

brizzlemint and bookwitch I love JL Carr's books, but of all the ones I've read A Month in the Country is my least favourite. (It's also the most conventionally 'literary' which is probably why!)

I’ve read 25 of the ST list, I think Middlesex and Stay With Me are my standouts on there. I just finished no. 19, The Night Circus by Erin Morgernstern which seemed to take me ages, it was so slow moving! I’d heard great things about it but was a bit disappointed.

1. Calypso by David Sedaris. this is a re-read but I found it much funnier this time. I think when I'd read it before I was having a Sedarisathon. this time I enjoyed it all.