50 Book Challenge 2019 Part Six

[southeastdweller]

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

I definitely could not do Ducks, although I have read that it is not really one long sentence.

I have just finished Love In Small Letters a Catalan book (in translation!) by Francesc Miralles. I bought this because I thought it would be like The Travelling Cat Chronicles. It wasn't. It's a very simple oddity of a book , rather like Convenience Store Woman (or even the 100 Year Old Man in that odd people keep turning up) in its tone and style. It does have points to make about living life, coincidences, the past and the present but it just isn't detailed enough to grip me. It is quirky but not enough cat in it for my liking!

I have Ducks Bought on a whim and wondering if I will ever get to it!!!

165. Take No Farewell by Robert Goddard

Listened to this on Audible. I have read this before but a while ago so couldn’t remember exactly what happened. This is set in the 1910s/1920s. An architect has an affair with a married woman, plans to run away with her, but then abandons her when he is offered a prestigious building commission. Years later, the woman is accused of murdering her husband but the architect knows it can’t be true so starts trying to help clear her name. It’s not my favourite Goddard book but it is a good one.

166. Holy Fools by Joanne Harris

Hadn’t read this before, not sure why. This is set in the 1600s and is based around a woman who has reinvented herself as a nun to escape her past, but then finds it catching up with her when someone from her past appears at the nunnery. As with Harris’s other books, this contains elements of magic and as always her writing style is fabulous. I did enjoy this, but it wasn’t as good as the Chocolat series.

167. Date Night by Samantha Hayes

Avoid! This was terrible. Libby finds a note on her car telling her that husband Sean is having an affair. They go out for a meal to work through this but come home to find their teenage babysitter has disappeared. Libby is incredibly annoying, and I just got more and more irritated with the way the book is written (can’t really say why without giving bits of the plot away). At least it only cost 99p.

168. After The End by Clare Mackintosh

Not what I expected at all. Her previous books have been psychological thrillers but this is completely different. Pip and Max’s son is terminally ill and they have to decide what to do. They disagree so it goes to court. The second half of the book then follows their lives after the decision. It’s obviously not an easy subject matter to read about and I found it very moving. However I did find the second half of the book a bit confusing to follow as it jumps between different perspectives. I understand that this is based on the author’s own experience hence the switch in genre. It is a good book but readers expecting similar to her previous work will be surprised.

I read that Ducks has 8 sentences rather than one 1000 page sentence.

I tend to get a bit twitchy about putting books down mid-sentence. I think I’d find it tough to get my head around reading a book with sentences averaging over 100 pages long each.

I've read 3 more Provincial Lady books. I dislike them and am only reading them because they're completely mindless and am still really struggling to settle to anything.

sttiches that would be my issue , too. Long as it is, War and Peace has (lots of) chapters...

How embarrassing... would like to clarify, I can spell stitches stitches!

stitches piggy having read a few reviews now they all headline the one sentence thing, then start mentioning “sections” so think you’re right and that is just what they’ve decided is the selling point. It sounds quite interesting actually and having read some of Ellman’s comments in various places I quite like her honesty and think watching her navigate the media could be quite fun. Will probably at least have a leaf through the book when I see it in the shop. Good luck with it splother!

remus @ you hate-reading the Provincial Lady. I’ve started my first audiobook as I’ve had a bad week for reading.

47. Fatherland by Robert Harris

An interesting scenario of what life would be like in Europe in the 1960s if Germany had won WWII. Xavier March is a German policeman who is working in Berlin as the city preparing to celebrate Hitler's 75th birthday. March is initially called to investigate a body that has been pulled from the river, which he soon realises has been staged to look like a swimming accident. He identifies the body as a retired high-ranking Nazi, and the Gestapo immediately sweep in and remove him from the case. March can't leave the case alone though and, with the help of an American journalist, continues investigating the case in secret. They discover that the dead man is only the latest of a series of deaths of high ranking Nazis who were at a secret meeting in 1942.

It's an interesting novel, fast paced and likeable characters.
Well worth the read.

Hate-reading - my new favourite phrase!

I read Solar Bones by Mike McCormack a while back, which was completely without punctuation. I found the lack of punctuation distracting, and although I quite liked it, I found it a struggle. It was only 200 or so pages long, the thought of which kept me going tbh. And yes Stiches, I found it hard to take a break as iirc, there were no chapters either. Despite not being a bad book at all, the experience has put me off trying Ducks.

49. Can You Tolerate This? – Ashleigh Young

An eclectic collection of essays loosely based around the challenge of feeling comfortable in our own skins. I quite enjoyed this. I thought it was consistently well written and lyrical without trying too hard to be literary.

Some of the essays are autobiographical and focused on her family; I liked these best. She describes her rather awkward adolescence in New Zealand with humour and compassion. The more abstract essays worked less well for me, for example the essay focusing on Japanese shut-ins – individuals who withdraw completely from life and maintain a completely solitary existence. I felt that when she moved away from the personal and directly experienced, the writing became a little more formal and self-conscious and didn’t shine as much.

Overall very good, and if you enjoy a decent essay collection, this fits the bill.

Piggy

Never doubted it

A few more books to update on - all better than Perfidious Albion (my last update) - am I the only person who has read this?

53. Earthly Joys - Philippa Gregory

This tells the story of John Tradescant, gardener first to the Cecil family, then the Duke of Buckingham (favourite/lover of James I) and finally Charles I. As well as designing and nurturing their gardens, he also travelled widely to bring back new plant species to the U.K.. I really enjoyed this despite not being a gardener. It’s not a period of history I know much about but it was a good mix of history and his personal life.

54. Conclave - Robert Harris

I think quite a few of you have read this. I found it a little confusing initially as I couldn't distinguish between all the cardinals but after I worked out who was who i enjoyed the process and politicking surrounding the election of a new pope. The election result was predictable and the end twist was completely unnecessary (trying to avoid spoilers) but glad I read it.

55. Ladder to the Sky - John Boyne

I read The Heart’s Invisible Furies last year and rated it as one of my books of the year. I am afraid I did not particularly like this as the main character, Maurice, lacked any redeeming features (except self-awareness) as he was selfish, arrogant, unscrupulous, dishonest - I could go on. Most of the other characters were also unpleasant (with the exception of Edith and Daniel). However, I did want to know what happened so notwithstanding Maurice’s unpleasantness the plot was quite compelling.

Not sure what to read next - could be back to A Dance to the Music of Time.

58. The Confessions of Frannie Langton - Sara Collins

1826: Frannie Langton stands accused of the murder of her London master and mistress, and the memoir she writes for her barrister provides the framework of the novel.

Frannie was born a slave on a Jamaican plantation, and the horrors of slave life are exceptionally well-depicted. Frannie gives us just enough to show what her life was, but she is determined not the provide the sentimental account of sufferings that abolitionists want to drag out of her. She also has black spots in her memory which are her way of coping with the most disturbing aspects of her past, and this dissociation structures her account as throughout the trial she claims not to be able to remember what happened on the night of the murders.

However, I didn't rate this novel as highly as I was hoping to. There was something off about the plotting: the truth about the murders seems to have been set up as the big plot driver, but the use of the trial as a framing device seemed a little half-hearted. What actually gripped (in a chilling don't-want-to-know-but-compelled-to-know way) was the hints of Frannie's unwilling involvement in her master's 'scientific' research on enslaved people. This is very grim stuff, and for this reason I don't think this book would be for everyone.

The novel was also overstuffed with other issues beyond slavery: the position of women in the early 19th century, laudanum addiction, prostitution and sadomasochism. Frannie's same-sex affair with her mistress and spell working in a spanking house were all a bit too 'Sarah Waters by numbers.' A stylistic quirk where everything had to be described by a very prosaic simile also got on my nerves (beds lined up in a row like dinner plates on a shelf, anyone?).

There was some very strong material in here, and as this was a first novel, I would definitely give Sara Collins another go.

71 The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother, by James McBride

The story of James McBride's mother, who was born Ruchel Shilsky in Poland, raised as a rabbi's daughter in North Carolina, then in the 1940s ran away to New York where she became Ruth McBride. With her black husband (and then after being widowed young, her second husband), she founded a church, brought up 12 children and put them all through college, and eventually went to college herself to become a social worker.

This is a gentle, lovely book - a tribute to the author's remarkable mother, but also the story of his own journey making sense of his mixed race background.

Gosh idiom, I read Frannie Langton this year and thought it was meh, too. But if I hadn't read your review, I would not have remembered one single thing about it!! Not even the basic set up...

So many Sarah Waters lite books about that they blur into one . and I don't even like Sarah Waters

I am currently reading The Conviction of Cora Burns, which is yet another one, but it is a better example, I feel.

15. Sweet Sorrow by David Nicholls. Meh. I thought this was overly indulgent, tbh. I know that Nicholls is soppy, but I didn't mind the other two I've read (Us and One Day). This spent far too much time in the teenage years - I think it would have worked better if the novel was more evenly split between Charlie as an adult, and Charlie as a sixteen year old. It was just too nostalgic, and nowhere near enough reflection. So many, many pages going on and on in minute detail about the stupid macho games he played with his friends. Also, Fran was so poorly written, entirely a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. That would be fine if it were acknowledged in the novel by adult Charlie - he makes a few comments about memory being a story, but it's not at all followed through. The dialogue that comes out of her mouth is stilted and entirely fake. The ending was the best thing about it.

I'm currently reading This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay and I am hating it. I need to find something decent for my next read, so I'm off to trawl the thread for recommendations.

I'm currently reading Frannie Langton and the piling up of crappy is similes is driving me as insane as an insane person with a very special reason to be feeling especially insane.

She's also obsessed with cheeks - as tight as a cheek, as smooth as a cheek etc etc. It all feels a bit creative writing class, and definitely needed somebody to be much more ruthless with it in the editing stage.

Oh, I do remember the similes! I think I might have mentioned that in my review.

Luckily I didn't spot the cheeks thing - was too busy wondering how a row of windows could be 'like iced buns in a baker's shop'

It sounds dreadful!

49. Range by David Epstein excellent and interesting book on the advantages of "being a generalist in a specialised world". Particularly liked the bits on why good teaching doesn't look like good teaching, especially as student feedback seems to be a big thing these days. Absolutely would recommend.

Tanaqui, thank you for the review of Range. I glanced at it in the bookshop the other day but am trying to be disciplined about buying new books so put it down. However, as a committed generalist who likes affirmation, it sounds right up my street - it’s gone on to my list!

75. The Woman in the Window by A J Finn

Another thriller with an unreliable narrator and a few well telegraphed twists.

This one, Anna, is agoraphobic and isolated, separated from her family, drinking heavily while taking prescription drugs that don’t mix well with alcohol, and spending large parts of her days watching her neighbours.

One evening, she witnesses a murder - or does she? There’s no evidence of a crime. Everyone says it’s all in her head. Is it?

A good read.

re Various
Ducks* - what is the full title?
Ellman - is that Lucy & which one?
Perfidious Albion - heard that mentioned on Open Book with Mariella Frostrup and someone was bigging it up. Might look in library or is it too bad?
David Nicholls is dire cliche ridden tripe I am sorry to say. The sort of thing female Daily Mail readers would take on holiday in their linen tote bag.
Frannie Langton sounds truly dire. Don't like Sarah Waters either.
The woman in the window A J Finn - substantial page-turning thriller which touches on a lot of recurring psychological thriller motifs but has an unreliable author for a change. Apparently he told everyone his family member had cancer for sympathy & then alienated everyone.
i may be name-changing again shortly but you may recognise my caustic style in future. Good reading!