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.

77. My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
    This book has been reviewed here already. Older sister has to help clean up younger sister's murder victims. Easy quick read. Not amazing but it was interesting to read about life in a modern culture different to mine (as in, not historical fiction)

78. Past Tense (Jack Reacher) by Lee Child
    Newest Jack Reacher book. As good as the others

79. Under the Hawthorn Tree by Marita Conlon McKenna.
    A children's book really. Heart breaking story of three children during the Irish Famine trying to make their way to their aunts' house after their parents (presumably) die. A real tear jerker. I read it as a child and it stayed with me. Even more sad to read as an adult

Bought The Five which I've been watching since it came out. Still very much enjoyingMeddling Kids.

Junespoon I also love Under the Hawthorn tree. I read it to my eldest DD when Channel 4 showed the series on Schools TV. There are 2 follow up books that follow the children, one to America and the others in Ireland (Widflower Girl and The Fields of Home)

AKIN by Emma Donoghue
I enjoyed this tale of an "odd" couple. An (almost) octogenarian ex professor and an 11 year old great nephew whom he hadn't met but undertakes (manipulated really) to foster temporarily. The boy's mother is in prison for drugs offences, his father (the Professor's nephew) died from a seeming drug overdose despite "being clean"and with his maternal grandmother's death there are no near relatives to foster him. Either the professor takes him in or the boy will have to go into care. The professor is about to set off to NIce where he was born (he came to the USA to join part of his family during WW2) to connect with his homeland but also to try to discover the story behind some haphazard photographs taken by his mother (who always took excellent considered photos as her father was a famous photographer) from the time when she was in NIce on her own during the Nazi occupation (without her husband or son) ostensibly looking after her ailing father before following the rest of the family to New York.

The narrative zips along, the culture shock of being in France compared to NY is explored somewhat humourously. The aches and pains of aging, the flippancy of youth, the worry that your family history was not what you had thought and that things are not always as they seem (both for the boy and his great uncle). are core to the narrative, The professor is a "teacher devil" (can't stop explaining every little thing to the boy) and sometimes I wanted to cry "shut up" at him. I thought the boy, for a supposed "difficult" child was remarkably restrained and patient. This was a bit of departure in writing for Emma Donoghue but like all her novels (my favourite is Slammerkin) well worth reading.

Satsuki, lovely review of The Accidental Tourist. Anne Tyler is such a good writer.

I've just finished a book by another author that reminds me of her as it also tackles serious topics but with a great lightness of touch - Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane. Will post about it properly when I get a bit more time.

The Accident Tourist was my first Anne Tyler too, Satsuki. Love, love, love her books.

Great reviews, thank you SapatSea. Both the Alice Hoffman and the Chevalier sound like books I would enjoy - adding to my TBR list.

noodle & nowanearlynicemum I’ve passed her over so many times on the shelves thinking she wasn’t for me for some reason but I’ve read such a lot of modern fiction recently on similar subjects that just isn’t terribly well written and doesn’t know how to tie up a story or a build a character that she was a breath of fresh air. So much edgier and funnier than I was expecting too.

noodle I’ve seen that book around so look forward to your review

Just finished the pursuit of love Nancy Mitford which I started this time yesterday. Ohh it was so wonderful. What a great book. Well that’s my 4th book finished this week!

Ah The Pursuit of Love is possibly my all time favourite book!

Eventually made it through The Wych Elm by Tana French. it's OK but a bit of a chore to get through. The first 160 pages appear not to lead anywhere and then it does pick up. The climax is very silly but does then provide a clever sort of twist of justice.

It's a psychological thriller without an awful lot of thrill and the central younger generation characters are all obnoxious , over privileged and self absorbed (to be fair,this is the point)and the soppy wet perfect girlfriend is annoyingly, soppily, wetly perfect.

I often got characters confused and gave up caring.

Some of French's stuff is soon to be televised I believe. We'll see how that goes.

Meddling Kids - I enjoyed this, although I thought it got rather lost towards the end, and the ending itself was a bit silly. It's essentially Scooby Doo/Blyton with swearing, real monsters rather than a geezer in a costume, lesbians and silver/clever meta moments.

65. The Mermaids Singing - Val McDermid

The first in the series of gory crime thrillers starring forensic psychologist Tony Hill. I thought I would try this after 'enjoying' McDermid's non-fiction book on forensics. She is incredibly skilled at creating page turning tension, and this the only book I picked up this week (which is rare as I usually have a few on the go). That said, it's only for those with a very strong stomach, and includes attitudes on gay men and trans people that I am not sure would be published now (written in 1995). I also guessed at least one element of the twist very early on. I bought the second in the series when they were all on kindle 99p deals, so probably will read that when I'm in the right mood.

Have been enjoyingCity of Sin from the monthly deals.

Here's a poem from it, which some of you may be amused by.

I rise at eleven, I dine at two
I get drunk before seven, and the next thing I do
I send for my Whore, when, for Fear of the Clap
I come in her Hand and I spew in her Lap.
Then we Quarrel and scold till I fall fast asleep;
When the Bitch growing bold, to my Pocket doth creep;
She slyly then leaves me – and to Revenge my Affront
At once she bereaves me of money and cunt.
I storm and I roar and I fall in a Rage,
And, missing my Whore, I bugger my Page.

By the Earl of Rochester, no less.

😂😂😂 Good old Earl of Rochester

How very droll. Poor Page.

Is that Earl the poet "John Wilmot" who died in his early 30's of the clap?

I don't know why but the Mitford name and the sisters being so upper class has always put me off reading their books but I might hold my nose and give The pursuit of love a go.

Yes, that's the naughty Earl, Spa. He was quite a card, to put it mildly

Aaanyway, moving on.....

67: Goodbye to Berlin - Christopher Isherwood

Essentially a loose collection of short stories, these impressions of life in Berlin in the early 1930s - in the first ominous stirrings of Nazism - are semi-autobiographical and contain the appearances of Sally Bowles which were later hugely amplified and turned into the musical (and film) 'Cabaret'. Isherwood writes limpidly and beautifully, noting what he sees with pitch-perfect detail - the line 'I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking' gave its title to the subsequent Broadway adaptation (and called forth the notorious review 'Me no Leica'). I enjoyed this a lot on what was a second reading - I first read it years ago and it's a book group choice this time round, so a pleasure to come back to.

I've got Travellers in the Third Reich on my kindle so that might be a good (though admittedly not very comforting) one to go with next.

I also thought "poor Page" - hope he was into it too.

I'm currently reading Fasting and Feasting: The Life of Visionary Food Writer Patience Gray by Adam Federman I found her book Honey from a Weed to be odd and beguiling, if not very practical for those of us who don't live on a Mediterranean mountainside, and I'm enjoying reading about her life. She really became fully herself from her late 40s onward when she headed off to live in remote regions of southern Europe along with her Belgian sculptor lover. I'm 45 and, for unsubtle reasons, this narrative appeals. I can't say that they have a straightforwardly good time in their picturesque Bohemian life (we are definitely not in Eat Pray Love territory), which is rather consoling too.

Palegreenstars, I also watch less films than I used to and for me it’s about time and energy. By the time I get the children to bed, I’ve barely got the time or energy to watch anything lengthy or hard-hitting. Also I think there has been an upsurge in the quality of television and the volume of shows you can watch at any time that vie for my attention thanks to Netflix, Iplayer and all the rest.

These are my recent reads:

53. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.

Audiobook. Reverend John Ames, elderly with potentially fatal angina, writes a letter to his young son at the behest of his wife. The story starts slow but really grew on me. Deeply contemplative and philosophical, the author manages to portray human flaws and thoughts on faith and life seamlessly. Worth all the accolades.

54. The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer.
A throughly modern novel. I liked it, as I liked the other novel I’ve read of hers - The Interestings.

55. The Girl in the Tower (Bk 2) by Katherine Arden.
Second of this fantasy fairy-tale inspired trilogy set in Russia featuring a central heroine trying to find her place in life amongst the humans, demons and sorcerers. I’ll definitely read the third.

Just in a coffee shop, rain beating down outside with a cappuccino, cream scone and EM Forster's A room with a view. Am I living my best life or what...

Yes you are, Roz!

I've finally reached the 50 mark!
I have been in a bit of a reading rut and have fallen off this thread a bit, but I am going on a bit of a reading push for the rest of this year now the nights are drawing in, still hoping to reach 80 by New Years Eve!

50: A Wounded Realm by KM Ashman
I enjoyed the first in this series last year, and this was a worthy sequel, with the story moving on at quite a pace, with a number of good characters but not so many that it was hard to keep track of.
I prefered the story of Nesta and Gwladys, and found the portrayal of the young Henry I quite intriguing.

I don't know a huge amount about Welsh history of the time, so I am not sure how much of it is true, but there are enough true historical references to keep it real and interesting.
I will definitely read the third volume at some point.

@ShakeItOff2000 but we have the energy to read 50+ books.

I can’t keep up with shows you are right, by the time I get round to something everyone’s moved on and it’s far nicer when you can chat with others about it.

I fell off the thread for a bit, and work has been mental so I've fallen a bit behind with the reading. Anyway, here's my two from the last few months:

16. City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert. Vivian Morris looks back on her life in 1940s and 50s New York City, having moved there at 19 to live with her aunt who owned and ran a theatre in the city. I really, really liked this. I had always given Gilbert a hard swerve thanks to Eat, Pray, Love, but this was great. The glamour of NYC in the 40s is beautifully done, and the characters are nicely developed. It's a story of sexual liberation and womanhood and friendship, and is really touching in places. I would recommend, I think.

17. Melmoth by Sarah Perry. A gothic horror novel about guilt, shame, punishment, and bearing witness. The central character is Helen Franklin, an Englishwoman living in Prague, who is given a manuscript from a terrified friend, containing a series of testimonies about Melmoth, a ghostly figure who witnesses humanity's cruel acts, and tries to lure those who have committed them into wandering the earth with her into eternity. Helen also starts to be tormented by Melmoth, as a result of a terrible act that she has kept hidden for years.

I liked this a lot. I enjoy gothic horror, and this ticked all the conventions - unreliable and multi-layered narration, menacing figures that may be supernatural but may equally be in the mind, the return of the repressed, a grotesque cast of characters and so on. It felt like a period piece, even though it was set in modern-day Prague, and that sense of timelessness was really well done. The supernatural elements, especially the figure of Melmoth herself and the way she manipulated time and space, were fantastically rendered, and Perry's writing is visceral and very visual (in fact, I felt like I was seeing it rather than reading it at times - it would be an amazing film). I also read The Essex Serpent and I think on some levels I liked this more - it felt like less hard work. But that's the genre element, I think.

Less good points: gothic fiction is generally very tightly plotted and I think she played a bit too fast and loose with the Melmoth mythology. It wasn't very clear what particularly summoned Melmoth. Sometimes it seemed to be the act itself which brought her into being, but then she seemed to be watching some people even before they committed the act. For some, it seemed to be just the act of reading the testimonies. And I'm not sure I was fully convinced by the connections that she was drawing between shameful and cruel acts, which ran from genocide to the Holocaust to the modern refugee crisis to letting a friend take the punishment for your own crime. They were all individually awful, but something didn't sit quite right with me. Maybe I need to think about it a bit more.

But still, I really enjoyed it and would definitely, definitely recommend.

I have returned home from my expedition to Beverley. I had a great time trawling the book shops and charity shops. I got three leather bounds - Lady Chatterley's Lover, Shirley and A Passage to India. Also got loads of other books. 13 in total! The most expensive was 'My Name is Lucy Barton at 8.99. It better be good! Well I better get on with A room with a view or I will never get anywhere near the target of 50 books October - December!