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.

I listened to Big Sky on Audible and loved it. It was read by Jason Isaacs too!

Transcription by Kate Atkinson was disappointing. It's about a typist in WW2 who transcribes informants' interviews. There's also a timeline in 1950. It didn't grab my attention, I couldn't get into it at all.

The Lost Man by Jane Harper
A man is inexplicably found dead in the Australian outback. The noon tells of the week following his death. I really like Jane Harper, I recommend this one.

The *book

32. Bird Therapy by Joe Harkness Following a mental health crisis, Joe reconnects with the world through birdwatching. His no nonsense account of his own experiences in the Norfolk landscape, and his chapter by chapter exploration of the benefits are really uplifting and refreshing. A lovely book.

33. Never Go Back by Lee Child I needed a little bit of escapism, and although this is a later Reacher book, and therefore a bit Reacher by numbers, with slightly more emphasis on violence and less on morals, this is still a good one. Has the smalltown America plus Army vibes, which are always a winning combo in these books.

34. The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey The concept is that this is the transcript of various bundles of documents written by Ned Kelly himself and discovered concealed on his body after his death. I was engaged for about the first 10% and last 20% but the middle felt like a real slog, with Ned's voice becoming really samey and me getting past caring about characters or events. As an account of the hard scrabble life of immigrants in rural Australia in the 19th century, it was interesting, and made me think of Rush Oh! by Shirley Barrett which had a similar feel, but with more charm and whales.

35. The Dark Angel by Elly Griffiths Ruth Galloway #10. This series keeps delivering. Ruth and co had a little change of scenery to Italy for this one, and as it is so character driven, it was interesting to see how they all behaved and interacted in a different setting. The plot was a little bit silly but I'm just in for the characters now and they did not disappoint.

Boob Watch: Some mention of tits in Bird Therapy. Reacher observes that women have breasts but not obsessively so. Some weird breastfeeding scene in the Kelly Gang but I was past caring by that point. Boob mentions in The Dark Angel mostly restricted to Ruth typically comparing herself unfavourably to others.

72 Evening in the Palace of Reason by James Gaines

Bach and Frederick the Great met very briefly, but an extraordinary piece of music emerged as a result. This book (recommended here by, I think, Cote) is deeply unusual - it’s almost a biography of the two men plus a book about the early Enlightenment, baroque music, Luther, German history and military strategy. It’s funny and very erudite, and I felt smarter just reading it. Highly recommended, and no breasts in sight.

H(A)PPY by Nicola Barker

Set in a post-post-apocalyptic (whatever that might mean) future which has reached a sort of extreme state of mindfulness in which everyone is balanced and clean and new. This is a 1984 sort of dystopia in which Mila A starts becoming distinctly unbalanced and threatens to bring down the whole System with her stream of consciousness (or something like that).

I really only read this because I fancied something short and it was on borrowbox. I wanted to like it and I kind of did in places. It has some fun use of language and imagery which I liked in theory but I found as a whole it was rather unsatisfying. Maybe even a bit contrived. I did, however, zoom through it in a couple of days so it can't have been too bad.

Home Grown: How Domestic Violence Turns Men into Terrorists, by Joan Smith
Does what it says on the tin. I think it's an important perspective on terrorism - terrorism isn't just about the ideology, it's about the angry, desperate men who go in search of that ideology. Their partners and families are often their first victims. If the criminal justice system was better about responding to DV, that would be better both for the initial victims, obviously, but would also help the intelligence system identify individuals at higher risk of carrying out terrorist attacks later on. The author pokes into the background of those individuals responsible for attacks on the public (including mass shootings etc) and finds that a history of DV and misogyny is never very far away.

I enjoyed Kelly Gang and was irritated by Rush Oh iirc.

“Some mention of tits in Bird Therapy”

I really liked *Rush-Oh”.

28. Never Mind by Edward St Aubyn (audiobook)

I only borrowed this because it was available on BorrowBox, and I needed a new audiobook to run with, It's the story of a weekend spent at the country house of David Melrose, a horribly abusive husband and father, with his gang if upper class twit hangers on. I feel bad saying this, as I'm aware that the novel is autobiographical, but for me the attempted contrast between the significance of Melrose's abusiveness with the fripperies of the rest of his posh lifestyle fell flat. I won't be finishing the series.

Pepe my standout book of the year so far has been Evening in the Palace of Reason. I think about it (well about the Bach bits) frequently.
I’m currently listening to The Traitor and the Spy about the rl KGB agent Oleg Gordievsky who became an agent for MI6. He was an ideological spy and one of the factors in his decision to betray his country was his love of the western canon of music and in particular Bach. In the Soviet Union Bach’s music was considered bourgeois and therefore banned. Having read Palace of Reason that really tickled me. I’d love to have been able to hear how Bach might have responded to that put-down

Scribbly yes, quite. I'd imagine that having to compose a new cantata every week, in addition to all the other things you had to write/perform/conduct/organise, with a huge family to provide for - 10 surviving children out of 20 from 2 marriages - didn't feel particularly bourgeois to Bach. It probably felt like relentless bloody hard graft (as it would for his wives).

I must get round to Evening in the P of R, I bought it when it was in the Kindle sale

Damn you all, I've had to buy Evening in the Palace of Reason. I'm such a good little sheep.

Speaking of which (admire segue), I'm reading In the Days of Rain, by Rebecca Stott, a family memoir meditating on their experiences in a religious sect. Her writing is gorgeous. I love to read what women say about their lives, especially once they've lived a bit. Makes me think of that line by Muriel Rukeyser “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.”

I've requested it from the library - does that count?

41. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. I didn't enjoy this quite as much as Circe, but did find it an enjoyable retelling of the myth - unfortunately I never felt I really got a clear sense of Patroclus as a person rather than a narrator -and I suppose I knew the story better! A good read though.

42. Thinking, Fast and Slow hy Daniel Kahnmann. This is a very good accessible book by the Nobel winner, about how we think. I really enjoyed this; and Richard Thaler's Nudge - is there anyone who knows about this area that could recommend anything else similar but not too technical - I don't have an economics background and suspect academic work might be beyond me! I'm pretty sure I first read this after a thread on here a few years back, so a belated thank you to past 50 bookers!

@bibliomania I'm also reading, and enjoying In the Days of Rain - it's really good so far.
However, I'm still struggling though Acceptance, the third book in the Annihilation trilogy. Lord knows what's going in. Seriously. I do.not.have.a.clue. Not sure the author does either!

Finished 64. My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite and 65. The Woman Who Waited by Andre Makine. I agree with others upthread about My Sister - it was interesting and I enjoyed reading it, but it did peter out to an unsatisfactory conclusion to me.

The Makine is rather gorgeous and subtle fiction. A young man visits a remote village in the North of Russia during the 1970s or 80s and meets Vera, a middle aged woman who has spent her life waiting for her lover, reportedly killed in WW2. The young man, there to record traditional or lost cultural Russian activities gets to know Vera and speculates on her life, but is proved wrong at every turn. Not big on action but a gentle meditation on Russia, the legacy of the war and love.

Terpsichore, indeed. Palace of Reason does a really great job at helping the reader understand Bach's primary motivation at a composer. I was really surprised to learn that he wasn’t composing to create beautiful music that people would like listening to, instead he was trying to reveal the divine via the discipline of counterpoint. That came as such a massive revelation to me. I mean, the Soviets would probably have banned his music for that (subversive) reason but to accuse his music of encouraging small minded middle class materialism, it’s kind of hilarious.

Still trying to catch up with my reviews plus I have An American Marriage and The Doll Factory on the go via the library ebook app - I put a hold on both of them weeks ago and typically they both came through at the same time!

51. There There, Tommy Orange

Really enjoyed this. Set in Oakland, California, in the present day, the book has numerous narrators, who are interconnected in ways that are revealed as you read. One of the themes of the book is what it means to have Native American Indian heritage in the modern USA, and that was really interesting - not something I have read much about though we have learned a bit about Native American history and culture on visits to the US. Having visited Alcatraz last summer, I particularly enjoyed the chapters set during the Native American occupation of the island.

52. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, Stuart Turton

Loved the concept, but found the book too confusing to be enjoyable. Man wakes up to find he's at an Agatha Christie-style country house party and has no idea who he is or how he got there. It becomes apparent that someone will be murdered and that he will relive the same day over and over again as different house guests. The only way to escape is to solve the murder. As I say, brilliant concept and I was really looking forward to it, but there is way to much of
It was almost 11 which meant that Lord Sutcliffe would be on his was to the library for the meeting with the butler. If I was to place the candlestick there so it could fulfil its vital role, and get back to the stables in time to interrupt Isabella's liaison with Chalmers, I didn't have much time. I rushed to the corridor, only to feel a dull pain explode in the back of my head. The last thing I noticed as it all went black was footsteps, running away from me in the direction of the Duchess's sitting room....

53. All Among the Barley, Melissa Harrison

Thank you to the 50 Bookers for this recommendation. Set in rural Suffolk (?) in the early 30s (but written last year) it is essentially a coming-of-age story. Edie is a farmer's daughter - delicate in health and rather bookish but absolutely immersed in the practicalities and hard work of farm life. She befriends an older woman, Constance, who has come to the village to observe and write about country life, but Edie gradually starts to notice some of the darker things that have been there just outside her child's field of vision - from poverty and the losses of the First World War to rising nationalism and even witchcraft. The loveliest thing about this book is the utterly luminous way that Harrison writes about the English landscape and the way it can make you feel.

51. Half Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan

Another good'un! When I reviewed Washington Black, I paraphrased an interview I'd read where Edugyan said that she wanted to tell stories of black experience that were not the same old stories. And here, again, she has done it with great success.

Half Blood Blues is the story of a group of jazz musicians, drawn to Berlin by the vibrant music scene of Weimar Germany then stuck there when the Nazis rise to power. The interaction between the musicians is depicted so beautifully (there are shades of the Spiders from Mars here) and the originality of the story draws you in to a time of paranoia and terrible loss.

I've also reserved Evening in the Palace of Reason from the library :)

Tanaqui, I'd say Thinking Fast and Slow is the absolute classic in the area, and for good reason.

In terms of other things to read, I enjoyed The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver (don't be put off by the rather long early chapter about baseball...) for the why we predict things wrong / how to think about them logically side of things.

Cordelia Fine's A Mind of It's Own is a very easy read covering the neuroscience / psychology of why your brain behaves in ways you might not expect.

Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Taleb is kind of a terrible book, but I'd still say worth reading if you can get it from the library and skim the ranty / repetitive bits (and also worth realising he wrote this and other things on the subject before the 2008 crash)

I do have an economics background, but I'd say all the above are written for general readers, particularly the first two.

And a slightly random recommendation as you're a fanfiction reader - have you read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality? It's ridiculously long & repetitive, but I found the first few chapters very entertaining.

Our Friends in Berlin by Anthony Quinn has finally gone down to £4.99 on Kindle, so I've snapped it up. Lots of people liked his Curtain Call iirc.

Sadik I've just been reading a b interesting article in a back issue of New Scientist about how animals can be observed to follow the laws of economics.

Hi everyone. I'm glad to be back in time for all the Evening In The Palace Of Reason love It is indeed a surprising little gem of a book, not just for those interested in Baroque music in general or Bach in particular, but also as a rare beauty of a book that combines historical analysis, biography, and good writing. Again, I heartily recommend it.

Scribbly - re "I was really surprised to learn that he wasn’t composing to create beautiful music that people would like listening to, instead he was trying to reveal the divine via the discipline of counterpoint."

I believe that's the author's opinion rather than fact. Bach was certainly the king of counterpoint and his mastery of fugues in particular (where not only 2 but 3, 4, and sometimes even 5 voices play in counterpoint) but afaik there is no evidence that he was looking for God with his music. There is, however, ample evidence that he was driven to test the limits of musical complexity, even in Well-Tempered Clavier and Art of Fugue, where his stated aim was teaching the possibilities of composition, nothing to do with "the divine".

My very humble personal opinion: I'm not convinced that he was terribly religious at all. Of course, he would have to pretend, as did everyone else in that period, especially those in lucrative lifelong jobs with complete artistic freedom like Bach.

Re artistic freedom - The single most important reason why Bach's work is so complex, so utterly rich and complicated, is that this genius didn't have to please an audience or sell tickets. He wrote for nobody, just produced his art to the best of his outstanding ability.

(Posted this on a thread about the DUP by accident. Not sure they’d be fans of this book).

74 Against Nature by J-K Huysmans

This is one of the most unusual and odd novels I’ve ever read. I’ve read it twice before. I rarely go back to a book but this has so little plot and so much detail in the narrative that it merits re-reading. I’m going to recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone who is after something totally different, doesn’t mind a large amount of exposition and meandering reflections on literature and is up for a large number of “WTF” moments. It’s a masterpiece of artifice-drenched realism with lengthy reviews of Latin and Catholic writing and a diversion into French poetry. Bonkers.

Des Esseintes is a bored and wealthy French aristocrat. He’s a grumpy hypochondriac who gets fed up of anything that anyone else likes, and who hates everyone. He has no family and fills his days with increasingly elaborate plans to create artificial and extraordinary beauty. A less murderous Patrick Bateman, perhaps, given his obsession with spending money on stuff.

Nothing really happens - one day he decides to go to London but doesn’t, in the end. Something bad happens to a tortoise. He decorates his rooms. He creates a room full of real flowers chosen to look artificial, or like pieces of human flesh, which give him nightmares then die. He recreates the experience of being by the sea in his bathtub with some rope and chemicals.

You definitely wouldn’t go back to his insane over-decorated house for a second date. This man is not into minimalism but is into gory scenes of torture hanging on the walls in his boudoir and has gone to great lengths to create a replica of an austere monk’s cell out of lavish and expensive materials.

It’s also very funny. When I read this the first time I worried I was missing something because it didn’t seem like it was trying to be a funny book. I’m still not sure whether it is meant to be as funny as I find it, but am reassured by the episode of Backlisted about it where they seem convinced it is a comic masterpiece.

I love this book. I wouldn’t let a self-absorbed teenager anywhere near it, but for anyone else, I think it is genuinely wonderful.

Oh,I dunno. Maybe you'll get them all reading!

That's interesting Cote. I read Palace of Reason towards the start of the year but came away with the impression that the author believed Bach to be a deeply religious man and that, in addition to his dedication to the discipline of counterpoint, acted as the inspiring and driving force behind his work. That he might not have been a devout Christian is fascinating, is there much debate amongst Bach scholars about that? Are there any other Bach biographies you could recommend that give further insights into his personality, preferably as engaging to read as Palace?

11/22/63 by Stephen King
Audiobook narrated by Craig Wasson

High School English teacher from 2011 is shown a time portal back to 1958 and decides to attempt to prevent the assassination of Kennedy.

This was a big old listen, over thirty hours which took me all of June to get through but it was completely worth it. The mechanism of time travelling felt a bit sketchy and underdeveloped (I wanted to hear more about the Yellow Card Man) but I really can’t fault the rest of it. The characters and dialogue felt completely real and I just loved the deeply immersive experience of small town late 1950s/early 1960s America. I miss these characters and I’m missing that lovely feeling of settling down into a story at the helm of a great storyteller. Any other (non-horror) King recommendations would be welcome.