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.

37. The Comforts of Home by Susan Hill The literary world's most middle class detective took a bit of a bashing in the previous book, but his new prosthetic arm won't stop him from quaffing the sauvignon as he solves the cases that less well-heeled men have failed to. In fact, he even manages to throw in an extra off-duty detection while recuperating on a remote Scottish island. A guilty pleasure.

60. The Dark Tower: Dark Tower VII

I almost gave up after vol 5, but am so glad I didn't. I loved this final volume, loved the ending (however controversial) and am only sorry to be saying goodbye to characters who have become old friends. At least I still have The Wind In The Keyhole to look forward to.

Thank you so much to those on this thread who recommended the series to me. I probably wouldn't have read it otherwise and I've enjoyed it so much.

I finished A Room with a View E.M. Forster. Loved this book although I found it a bit hard to read at the beginning. I had to reread some pages. Near the end though, I had got used to the style and found it easier to read and keep up with. This book took me a whole 3 days to read! It is about a woman called Lucy who goes to Italy for a trip and meets a young man there. I won't say any more so as not to spoil it for anyone. I do think it's well worth a read though.

Now reading 84 Charing Cross Road Helene Hanff and Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell. Enjoying them both.

Sorry, The Wind Through the Keyhole!

WelshWabbit Yes, I think the controversial ending is the 'right' ending, much as this Lover of Roland might have wished otherwise.

Remus, I liked that he leaves you with a little bit of hope.

@Boiledeggandtoast yes I thought the black and white graphics worked so beautifully and unusually and agree the photograph was a jolt.

@TemporaryPermanent I’ve had that Ted Chiang collection since I watched Arrival, finally began it today thanks to your review. Mind-expanding.

62. The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal.
    This Victorian thriller tells of Iris a muse and would be painter who struggles to find her place in a society that discourages creativity in women. Silus an unusual taxidermist takes his obsession with her very seriously. This reminded me of Perfume and The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock although both were far superior novels. I found this a little messy and not nearly as creepy as it wanted to be. Also as mentioned by someone up thread the title is baffling.

63. The other Half of Happiness by Ayisha Malik. The sequel to one of my favourite books of the year so far Sophia Khan is not Obliged*. This follows Sophia’s navigation of her first year of marriage. I love Malik’s balance of comedy and tragedy again and there was a cosy familiarity of returning to these characters. I think it suffers a little from sequel syndrome of getting a bit lost on different locations and over dramatising situations. However, for me, it found its way back towards the end with less characters and one focus. I’d definitely read another if it came out - and I’ve just seen she has a new stand alone novel which looks interesting.

Interested to hear reviews of A Place of Greater Safety as I’ve stopped and started this a few times but always thought I would return to it.

The Confession by Jessie Burton
One day Elise, a 20 year old very beautiful young woman whose mother died from a brain tumour when she was young and who is estranged from her father is followed when she gets off the tube by a 38 year old, attractive, tall ,confident older woman called Constance. They have coffee at a cafe and very soon Elise is moving from a sofa in a bedsit to Connie's Hampstead house. Connie is a cult feminist writer with one successful published book and has just started work on a sceond. Connie's first book is picked up for a Holywood film a with an Oscar winning actress pencilled in for the starring role. Elise travels with Connie to LA where things start to fall apart. In the future, Elise's daughter, Rose who is feeling a bit lost and moribund in her mid thirties decides to try to find out about her mother whom she never knew (Elise disappears when Rose is a baby). Her father won't talk about her mother but gves her the only two novels written by Connie which Elise owned and tells Rose that Connie was the last person to see Elise. Connie has never published again and lives a reclusive life but is in need of an assistant and Rose uses deception to insert herself into Connie's life hoping to find out some answers.

I really enjoyed this book. You need to accept that Rose's deception is plausible.It jumps from the past to the present with ease. It takes a bit of concentration in the first few chapters to stick with the story, familarise yourself with the characters etc. but I felt the perserverance was well rewarded later. The story became engrossing and page turning. I didn't expect any big revelations or neat endings, it was the interplay between the characters and the exploration of what people want /need to receive from others and how we change and mature and the ways in which we need to receive love to make us feel supported that held my attention. Worth a read

Take it Back by Kia Abdullah
An easy fairly engrossing read. The narrative zipped along. An underge girl with a large facial deformity visits our protagonist, an ex city lawyer, disowned by her family after agreeing to a short lived disastrous arranged marriage who now works at a legal advice and help centre and is secretly addicted to diazepam.. The girl says she has been raped in a deserted warehouse by four slightly older Asian classmates. She didn't come forward following the gang rape as she was worried that she would not be believed because people would think she was too"ugly" to be raped. The youths all deny the accusations. Who is telling the truth?
We follow events through accusation to post trial and the effects it has on the individuals concerned and the wider community, as well as challenging the beliefs our lawyer holds. Not great literature but good for when in need of a "no brain" read. I could see it being an ITV drama

184. The Rosie Project- Graeme Simsion I re-read this as I wanted to read the new one and couldn’t remember much about the first two novels. It is essentially all the same joke (eg. protagonist has ASD but doesn’t realise) but I can relate to it.

185. Afternoons with the Blinds Drawn- Brett Anderson This follows on beautifully from Brett Anderson’s earlier memoir Coal Black Mornings, covering the period from Suede’s initial success to their split in 2003 (perhaps there might be a third memoir in the future to cover their reunion and more recent albums). For a rock musician, Anderson has an excellent vocabulary, but on the audiobook his pronunciation is quite often awry, bringing to mind the anonymous quotation ‘Never make fun of someone if they mispronounce a word. It means they learned it by reading.’ It was interesting to hear about some of Brett’s regrets, particularly his falling out with Bernard Butler but also the band’s tendency to hide some of their best songs away on B-sides like The Smiths did. He refers to his ‘addictions’ and ‘dependencies’ without giving much detail, as he was so keen not to write a standard rock autobiography. Both of his books are well written and original.

186. Confessions of a Bookseller- Shaun Bythell This was most enjoyable, but very similar to Bythell’s first book: I suppose bookselling doesn’t change a huge amount!

187. Stay Where You Are And Then Leave- John Boyne A children’s book which I found on BorrowBox. A nine-year-old boy makes a journey to rescue his father, returned from war and shell-shocked, from hospital. This was well done, but not in the same league as The Boy with the Striped Pyjamas.

188. The Bookshop Book- Jen Campbell A book about interesting and unusual bookshops around the world, including one in a cocktail bar, one on a barge, and one which also specialises in selling hats. There were also a few anecdotes about libraries: I learnt that, in remote areas, books are sometimes distributed by camels, donkeys or on bicycles.

189. The Self-Care Project- Jayne Hardy I found this book, produced by The Blurt Foundation, in my local library’s display for World Mental Health Day. It is reasonably short and I found it useful.

SapatSea Yes! So many characters and political viewpoints to keep track of. I keep falling asleep with my kindle in my hands!

I have A Place of Greater Safety on the shelf where it has been for at least 10 years. It makes me feel guilty every time I see it.

105 If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
A book club choice, loved by everyone (and that never happens). Tish is 19 and pregnant. Fonny is the father of her baby but incarcerated on a false rape charge. Their families fight the system and each other to try to clear Fonny’s name, as the background is slowly revealed. This novel about love and race and family bonds is short but powerful.

106 Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis
Mortgage bond trading in 1980s Wall Street. I don’t think Michael Lewis could write a bad book but this isn’t one of his best. I have a feeling it may be because he is a protagonist rather than observing from the outside and hence is a little less detached and clearheaded than he would usually be. That said, he is entirely self-deprecating about his own role and fairly critical of the greed and excess.

107 Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea
Slightly odd and frothy account of girls’ lives in Saudi Arabia, written as a series of emails from an “insider”. The tone is a little peculiar (a Middle East Carrie Bradshaw with less self-absorption) which I think may be down to it being a translation but the themes are recognisable - women trust men, who by and large let them down. The novel is largely uncritical of the Saudi power structures and the women accept for the most part the restrictions they face even while working around them and playing the system. There is a short but chilling section where one of the girls is arrested by the Saudi morality police but it is just a short blip in her life rather than a terrifying moment of change.

Welsh - Yep. Hopefully next time!

I've just bought The Confession - thanks for your review SapatSea.

43. Fierce Bad Rabbits by Clare Pollard

An interesting and satisfying scroll through the living history of all our favourite childhood books. Pollard does not pull apart stories for alternate interpretations, but lovingly places them in their contexts and and lets the reader consider how they add texture to their meanings. Pollard writes as both a child and a mother, and with a poetic sensibility which appealed to me. Thank you to the person who originally suggested this on the thread (please raise your hand) you sparked such a flurry of readers that I can’t trace you. It was a lovely book and I’m glad to have read it and recommend it also.

Sorry to sound overenthusiastic about everything at the mo but A Place Of Greater Safety is just spectacular. It was the modish read when I was younger (I thought I remembered reading it at school but it wasn't published until after I graduated - something odd there) so it is a long time since I read it (and I haven't re-read it) but I remember finding it so amazing. I hadn't read any other Hilary Mantel at that time, it was I think her first big hit. She is clearly crazy about Desmoulins the way she was about Cromwell when she wrote Wolf Hall. What a way to write a novel - just fall madly in love with your characters. I fell for him too.

A Place Of Greater Safety is hard work to start with, especially with Mantel's style of writing, but so worth it in the end. It takes a little time to get to grips with who is who. I was the idiot who decided the audiobook would be a good idea. Never again for Mantel.

I've barely read anything for ages. The library has just closed for renovation and were throwing away all of the DVDs the day before. I was the only person in so she asked if I wanted any before they went in the bin. I rescued a few and have been binge watching them for the past week. I don't have a tv (and usually watch very very little online) so have been glued to the laptop like a mesmerised toddler. Before the binge however...

119. There There - Tommy Orange The author takes a look at the urban based Native American community in Oakland, California and follows 12 characters and their reasons for attending a big powwow event. It looks at the modern day lives of those choosing to live away from reservations and the issues they face from politics, to poverty, drugs and alcoholism, history, being mixed race, seen as outsiders in their own country and so on.

A lot of passion and anger comes through from the author for obvious reasons. It is well written but for me the overall scope was too wide. He's tried to cover too many issues in one book and it was difficult to connect with any particular character as none were fully developed. Each gets their own narrative and they start to intertwine as the book goes on, but it does mean it is slow to start or go anywhere, but does get a lot better as the powwow approaches. Well worth a read and I would definitely look out for his work again.

120. Hearing Secret Harmonies - Anthony Powell (DTTMOT #12) Set in the late 60s/early 70s, Nick as usual encounters friends old and new, younger relatives start to come into play and a Crowley-esque cult gains sway over some. Various loose ends are tied up for most characters and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at Widmerpool, as ever (like me) popping up unexpectedly and unfortunately dressed.

Alas the Dance has come to an end and I feel quite bereft there are no more. This has been a thoroughly unique reading experience and I don't think anything else can truly compare. While this was a weaker volume in the series, the writing as always is sublime and the observations are spot on. - “To those familiar with the rhythm of living there are few surprises in this world.”
To avoid withdrawal, I will revisit the Backlisted episode and I've been debating Hilary Spurling's biography of Powell.

121. Tombland - CJ Sansom (Shardlake #7) God's blood this was long and wore the research more heavily than the others in the series. Still, I love a bit of Matthew and feel sad the series has drawn to a close.

Updating with my recent reads before I fall off the thread -

85. Isabel’s World by Roy Richard Grinker

Cross between a history of autism and the way it’s viewed in society, and a memoir written by a father about his autistic daughter.

86. Speak by Louisa Hall

A sort of story about AI, told via several different points of view - diary entries, instant messages, and letters (including from Alan Turing).
It’s rather too light on plot for my liking.

87. The Taking of Annie Thorne by C J Tudor

This was much more plot driven than the previous read.
The cover of the book compares Tudor to Stephen King, and the central premise of this book is certainly very reminiscent of one particular Stephen King novel, which I won’t name because that would be a massive spoiler.

It was still a decent read despite that.

88. The Wrong Chalet School by Elinor M Brent-Dyer

Re-reading boarding school books.

89. The Call by Peadar O’Guilin

YA dystopian fantasy.
The sidhe are back, and angry about being trapped in the nightmarish Grey Lands. And they’re going to get their revenge on the Irish, starting with calling every teenager into their lands and hunting them, something that only 1 in 10 survive.
Gruesome in places.

90. Mythos by Stephen Fry

A retelling of Greek mythology. I loved this and would recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about the subject.

91. Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch

Second of his Rivers of London series. Still not sure if the mix of magic and policing is working for me.

Finished Diary of a Bookseller
I had to get this book as I’ve had a fondness for epistolary novels since Adrian Mole. However, this book did not give me satisfaction. As a humour book it raised a couple of ‘hehs’ but did not make me laugh really. In fact, I found a lot of the ‘humour’ quite mean or worse, contrived. It was more interesting as an insight into the running of a bookshop but in that, it also fell flat. There was too little detail given. The writing of the book was acceptable, but I just think the content was extremely banal and the only reason I finished it was so I could count it in my yearly target.

Satsuki I think it might have been me that first read Fierce Bad Rabbits. I’m glad everyone is enjoying it!

Yes - thank you chessie. I’ve been thinking about it a lot and it made me dig out a few of our favourites again as I realise time’s moving on and before I know it we’ll have moved on from the Tiger Who Came to Tea. But not yet - she asked me to leave it off the shelf so she could read it again in the morning

66. Civilisations: How Do We Look / The Eye of Faith - Mary Beard

The accompaniment to Mary Beard's episodes of last year's BBC series Civilisations. It's a very short book and tries to cover a vast scope of the history of art, so it largely raises questions and issues rather than exploring them in depth. The first section is more coherent and focuses on how the Western way of viewing portraiture has been structured by the positioning of the naturalistic Ancient Greek nude as a cultural ideal. The second section covers the interplay (and frequently conflict) between religion and art, across many time periods and belief systems, and does not tie together so neatly.

My reading has almost ground to a halt, have finished two books in the past 8 weeks (and one of those was very short)...
30. Dream More by Dolly Parton
Listened to this narrated by the author on Audible. Short, light and frothy but with lots of Dolly wisdom. Teachers - Dolly's descriptions of how living in poverty can affect a child's educational opportunities was more vivid and striking than I have read in more serious texts. I enjoyed it and found it interesting.
31. The Binding by Bridget Collins
Life in an alternative historical setting where people can erase their memories by getting them bound into books, leaving them free of the pain or heartbreak they have lived through. I wouldn't have picked this myself but was lent it by a friend and really stuck with it as I felt obliged, and because I have been so tired and reading so slowly that I thought I might as well persevere rather than start another book that I couldn't focus on (honestly, I kept reading a page and a half of The Binding and falling asleep). I was intrigued to see where the story went as it is unlike any other novel I can think of, but this wasn't really my cup of tea.
Now have a week off work and a Scandi crime novel to get me back into reading :)

clueless I love Dolly and she has put a lot of effort into children’s literacy hadn’t she. Her achievements are incredible considering her background.