50 Book Challenge 2019 Part Five

[southeastdweller]

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

Checking in as on my hols and just catching up with everyone.

Remus I don't know you and I'm not on the thread that often, but something I'm doing recently is just to ask people about their very favourite books. That way I'm reading really amazing stuff. I'm in that mood though; it may disappear. Nowt wrong with a change of culture for a while- visual art?

Been awol for weeks and this is likely to continue as am about to go to the UK and do 6 weeks' residential college.
I have abandoned The Northern Clemency at 300 pages. I will pick it up again in the autumn. I just haven't the energy for it at the moment. I like it. I understand what someone (sorry, can't remember who) said about it being wry observations rather than a plot. That's it exactly. It almost reminds me of Virginia Woolf at times with the more modern and less highbrow stream of consciousness musings.

I am rewarding myself for the hard work I am about to do by rereading my favourite light comfort reads. Neither Here Nor There Bill Bryson on Europe still is making me literally laugh out loud.

Thanks all. Have got samples of the ones you've all mentioned - eels, plague and insanity all sound right up my street. Some of you lovely lot 'know' me too well!

Just finished Silas Marner. It is extremely short for a Victorian novel and I can't believe George Eliot wrote this and Middlemarch really!

It actually took me a while to read because oft eh small print and the copious rural dialect. However, it is a sweet tale of the redemptive innocence of children and of love , with Silas as a king of benign and maligned Rumpelstiltskin.

Part 2 was better than the longer part 1, once Eppie comes into the plot. Too much other stuff before that really! Including the irritating Dunsey.

I agree , by the way, that Waterland is great.

Piggy (or any other 50 bookers) do you know why Mary Ann Evans is still referred to as 'George Elliot' when all the other women who wrote under male pen names (Probably most notably the Brontes writing as Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell) are now published under their actual names? I've always thought it was a bit odd but never been able to find a reason for it.

I read this somewhere recently and can't recall where. I'll get back to you!

I think Georges Sand is still called that, too, and Robert Galbraith - even though we all know it's JKR!

Found this which helps:

*A few other women writers are still known by their male pseudonyms: Isak Dinesen, for example, and George Sand. Perhaps the reading public has never much seen the necessity in "fixing" them. There are, after all, a lot of male writers who continue to be known by their pseudonyms: George Orwell; Voltaire; Molière; Lewis Carroll; Stendhal; O. Henry; Saki; Gérard de Nerval; and so on. It didn't take long for Boz to be known as Charles Dickens, but Marian Evans remains George Eliot. Could this be due to the circumstances of their lives?

There's some dispute to this day, for instance, as to George Eliot's birth name: was it Marian, Mary Ann, Mary Anne? Then, too, although the Victorians esteemed George Eliot, they may not have wanted to be reminded of Marian Evans, who was living with George Henry Lewes for decades but didn't (couldn't) marry him. She insisted on being addressed as Mrs. Lewes in real life, but this would have been problematic. Could reviewers have been comfortable with calling her Mrs. Lewes, knowing the facts of the matter? By the time of her death she was Mrs. John W. Cross; but this never caught on, either, even though she was Cross' wedded wife.

A question of habit? At the time of her death Marian Evans had been known as George Eliot for quite a while. The Brontës were known only briefly by their pen names; nor did Austen preserve for long her identity as "a Lady," as "The author of Pride and Prejudice," etc.*

desdemona I think we have to assume it was her choice to continue with the pseudonym, I think it was known to be one fairly quickly. I believe she took on the name of the man she was living with in her personal life and then later married another so perhaps she wanted to preserve the name for professional purposes.

X-post piggy!

Interesting question about George Eliot. I always just assumed it was because she chose the name, and it was the one she was always published under during her entire writing career, by her own wish - so George Eliot she remains.

Piggy's theory is persuasive though - she did have various names, or a choice of them, so it made sense to stick with 'George Eliot', especially after she became a known, popular author.

Jane Austen was never published under her own name during her lifetime, only after death, and the Brontës chose to break cover and ditch the 'Bell' pseudonyms.

Thanks for crediting me but it's not my theory Terpsichore : it was bold fail for a copy and paste

The stuff about Lewes (who was really a George!) is all so sad and Victorian if you read further.

I always like the sound of George Eliot : and for that reason I have always thought being a George kind of suits her!

Just bought The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs on kindle daily deal so I can keep one step ahead of DD

Thanks everyone who replied, it makes more sense to me now if she published as George Elliot her entire career by choice whilst the Brontes were unmasked relatively quickly 👍

19. The Hate U Give – Angie Thomas
YA début novel about a teenage girl whose world is shattered when a police officer shoots and kills her unarmed childhood sweetheart. Standing up for what you believe in and not being ashamed of where you come from are strong themes throughout this book.

35. Cursed (An Alex Versus novel) by Benedict Jacka.

Second in this urban fantasy series. Good fun and I will be continuing on to the next one.

36. The Legacy of the Bones by Dolores Redondo.

Atmospheric crime novel set in the Baztan region of Spain and the second book of The Baztan Trilogy. Crime is not really my genre but I liked this. Strong female lead, dark childhood, dysfunctional family, solves crime.

Here are the books I have read or listened to during June so far- not as many as usual, but real life has got in the way:

87. How Does it Feel?- Mark Kermode I had already read the book and loved it, so I got the audiobook. It describes Mark’s history of playing in bands, on a variety of instruments including the guitar, double bass, harmonica and even the theremin. There are some funny anecdotes and it’s essential reading for all fans of Kermode.

88. And the Mountains Echoed- Khaled Hosseini Having read Hosseini’s other two novels recently and loved them, this was a huge disappointment. The main story was quite moving, but there were far too many other characters and subplots who I just didn’t care about.

89. Coal Black Mornings- Brett Anderson This is a memoir of Brett’s life from childhood up to the point where Suede gained a record deal (a sequel is on the way). I particularly enjoyed it when Brett described the inspiration behind various Suede songs including fairly obscure B-sides!

90. The Boy with the Topknot- Sathnam Sanghera I found this disappointing in comparison to the film. The film is a cross-cultural love story, but the book dwells much more on the schizophrenia suffered by Sanghera’s father and sister (which I wasn’t really in the mood for). I did enjoy the amusing insights into cultural differences eg. the fact that Sanghera was in secondary school before he realised that eggs could be soft boiled.

91. This is Going to Hurt- Adam Kay I am probably the last person on earth to read this. It is an illuminating and moving diary of a junior doctor, but isn’t as hilarious as some people had described it.

92. The Children of Men- PD James This is one of the best dystopian novels I have read, and absolutely nothing like the film. It is mostly set in Oxford, a place I know well, and is all the better for it.

93. Swallows and Amazons- Arthur Ransome This was one of my childhood favourites and worked well in the audiobook format.

94. Vox- Christine Dalcher Another dystopian novel. As others have said, this is an interesting idea and the first half is excellent, but the second half is weak and I had really lost interest by the end.

Temeraire and Throne of Jade both my Naomi Novik. Audiobooks narrated by Simon Vance

I’ve been on the look out for a new fantasy series for ages since finishing the Robin Hobb novels and hurrah, I’ve finally found it.

Napoleonic wars but with an Air Force, and the Air Force is dragons. Not bullshit giant pointy teeth, I can decimate an entire city with fire dragons either but talking, philosophising multi-variety dragons that have a big crew WITH SWORDS that do battle with the evil and most foreign French with strategy and formations and flag signals.

It’s Master and Commander on dragon back and my God it was everything my frazzled brain has needed these past few weeks.

Welcome @PowerBadgersUnite

I've read the intellectually highbrow literature The owl who was afraid of the dark today and also recently read the ridiculously named Coconuts and Wonderbras* which was a freebie I got when I first bought my kindle years ago and haven't read - there was a reason for that but I decided to read the oldest book first so that was that.

I started Lionel Shriver's Property: a collection but abandoned it, maybe I'll try it again another time as I wasn't in the mood for it I think. That said I didn't manage to finish We need to talk about Kevin either. I'm currently intrigued by where Jill Child's Invisible Girl is going and really enjoying The Strawberry Thief by Joanne Harris. I'm 4 books behind schedule for the reading challenge but I've got a lot of work on - it's a busy time of year in schools.

17. Logical Family - Armistead Maupin. The memoir from the author of Tales of the City, this is exquisitely written, with wonderfully evocative and witty anecdotes about his life growing up in southern America and his life in San Francisco - I really did feel transported to those periods and I feel very spoiled now as I've read three fabulous memoirs this year - this, Another Planet, and The World I Fell Out of. Thanks to @noodlezoodle for recommending this book last year.

28. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones. Roy is wrongfully accused and sent to prison only a year into his marriage to Celestial. Will the marriage survive? Already mentioned many times on this thread, I can add my voice to the chorus of positive reviews. Superb.

29. The Sleep of Reason by David James Smith. Detailed account of the James Bulger murder case. If you’re interested in this kind of thing, A Mother’s Reckoning by Sue Klebold, about the Columbine shooting, is far better.

66. Five Children on the Western Front - Kate Saunders

Saunders takes the children from E. Nesbit's classic tales and brings them to the ages they would have been for the Great War and follows them through it. I am not a fan of people stealing borrowing characters from other authors, but I think she pitched this right and followed the war through the eyes of children. It was devastating in its simplicity.

67. The Valley of Bones – Anthony Powell (DTTMOT #7)

Jenkins has his commission and is settling into the routine of army life. Powell got this so spot on. He evokes regimental life, the characters (every regiment has the same cast), the routine, the bullshit perfectly. Overall not much happens, but it doesn't happen so charmingly that it doesn't really matter.

I also need to confess that I WIDMERPOOLed really loudly in the woods and it wasn't him, however it was a new character who out-Widmerpools the man himself. I look forward to you all meeting him.

38. A Column of Fire - Ken Follett Allegedly the third in the Kingsbridge trilogy. The link to the previous two is so tenuous one might cynically think it was a marketing ploy to get people to pick up a book they wouldn't have otherwise bothered with. Eff all to do with cathedrals and actually about religious turmoil in C16th Europe, largely set during the reign of Elizabeth with the action taking place anywhere but Kingsbridge all across Europe.

As promised, I did set out to see if the key plot point of 'women having breasts' noticed by ScribblyGum in Pillars of the Earth continues in this book. It did not disappoint. Women did indeed have breasts 55 times in 732 pages. That's on average once every 13 pages, or on 7.5% of pages in the book. In the interest of balance, one man had his nipples mentioned once and another clutched a letter to his bosom. Genitals of either sex were only mentioned a handful of times in equal measure and rape was mentioned, threatened or committed 16 times, more than there were combined mentions of genitals to commit it with. I thought this was a pile of tosh and if I hadn't been playing busty bingo, I don't think I'd have got past half way. Plus I had to explain why I had a tally chart of rude words out on the coffee table. If you enjoyed the first two, don't ruin it by reading this.

23. Post Office - Charles Bukowski

Absolutely one of the greatest writers ever, this is Bukowski's debut and a fine introduction if anyone hasn't read him. Visceral, punchy and impossible to ignore, it's the semi-autobiographical tale of his alter ego Henry Chinaski's years of brutal, dehumanising postal work interspersed with bouts of heavy drinking, womanising and gambling. It isn't pretty but it is darkly funny, honest and with its own moments of inner beauty.

@southeast I'm so glad you enjoyed Logical Family! I still think about it quite often, such a good book. A new series of Tales of the City is also on Netflix now and I'm looking forward to watching it.

Excellent Follett review @FortunaMajor, I'm sorry you had to suffer through it but you really made me laugh