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.

Clueless I read The Binding last year and although I quite enjoyed the early chapters it became quite deriative and it was easy to see where the story was headed. I wasn't surprised to see that this was the first "adult" book from a YA author as the "love story" was quite juvenile. I felt the author squandered some of the great "universe" building she had done and it didn't quite deliver.

Despite what I've written above I must say that I dislike the YA/Adult divide as many YA books are fantastic reads for an adult. No one ever indicated to me that I couldn't read the Brontes or Thomas Hardy etc as they were "adult books"

I was surprised to see Margaret Atwood jointly won the Booker for The Testaments. I found it lacking.

47. Europe in Winter by Dave Hutchinson Third instalment of the Fractured Europe sequence. Sci-fi of a near future Europe, which has splintered into many tiny states and polities, with the added complication of a created, and previously mostly secret, parallel world superimposed on it. It's certainly an interesting time to be reading such fiction, and when I reviewed book two recently, I said something along the lines of not comparing with the current situation. I've changed my mind about that, as in book three, without giving spoilers, the protagonists discover more of the murky background to how their own fractured Europe came about. This is written in a sardonic, noirish style which I've come to really enjoy. I presume it's a trilogy and there will be no more, though the author has left some scope to explore more avenues in this world. At some point I will probably go back and re-read the whole series, as it's so dense and complex, and I feel I may have missed some things.

48. The Overstory by Richard Powers Can't argue with the message of this book - the importance of trees and the natural world, and the arrogance of humans in accelerating its destruction. However, this was one of the most boring books I've read this year. I'm not sure why I finished it. There are a number of human characters, initially not connected, introduced in long boring stand alone sections. Despite having very different backgrounds, they all felt very samey to me, and I cared nothing for any of them. By the middle of the book, their lives are crossing over, and they mostly become involved in some capacity in ecology or environmental activism. To illustrate how past caring I was, near the end of the book, it was unclear to me whether a particular character had completed suicide, or had been prevented at the last second, and I honestly didn't actually care. There is a strand running through of how trees communicate with each other, and if this had been played up, and a few hundred pages cut, this would have been a better book.

49. Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny Sorry to be the one to plop on the thread love-in for this. I really didn't like it. On the plus side, it was a light frothy quick read, and I kind of liked the sassiness of it. I think the main character Audra is meant to be shocking or funny. She was a tiny bit, but not enough to sustain a whole plotless book about her comfortable no-problem-but-let's-make-everything-into-a-hilarious-problem life. Lots of hand wringing from her dull husband narrator about their son having autism. Said son seemed to be functioning perfectly well apart from having quirky interests, minor problems with friendships, and generally not having the personality his privileged parents ordered from the catalogue. Did I mention I didn't like this?

50. Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien Approached this with a weary, oh this is another one I've picked up because of the 50 book thread, can't remember why, doesn't look like my kind of thing. Well, it is a triumph. This is one of the best crafted and structured novels I have read in years. It builds up and then flows down intricately to its conclusions, like the music that flows through it. Marie has grown up in Vancouver, but after her Chinese father's death and the visit of a young woman escaping from the aftermath of the events centred round Tiananmen Square in 1989, she goes on a voyage of discovery into her family history. In places the writing is like a Brechtian folk tale, and in places thoroughly modern, depending on context. There is a big cast of characters across several generations, but it never gets confusing because the characterisation is so strong and sympathetic. I learnt more from this about 20th century Chinese history than many non-fiction accounts I have read, and also found it incredibly moving.

MuseumofHam Thank goodness you've just said that about The Overstory, I thought it was just me. I'm halfway through and avoiding it like the plague. I'm blaming it for my reading lull. I'm going to bin it off with no guilt now.

SapatSea Agree about the Booker. The Testaments really didn't cut it for me and I also think it unfairly takes the achievement away from Bernadine Evaristo.

I read this article last night about the Booker decision and still don't understand why the judges were allowed to have two choices when the rules say they should only decide on one? Call me cynical but I think this was a P.R move from the literary director to promote the Booker in a good light after all the criticism of the past few years about it being open to any authors who've written their books in English.

I was interested to see the comments about The Overstory. I feel like I've been reading The Time of Our Singing by the same author for ages, I'm only persisting because it was given to me by someone whose opinion I value. Some of it is very interesting, but much of it is seriously overwritten. Only another 300 or so pages to go, sigh.

Fortuna I would be so glad if my finishing The Overstory actually had some purpose, i.e. setting you free from it. Skip away without a backward glance, go and hug a tree, then read something better. While I was reading it I was musing (and I had plenty of time to do so) that if the outline for it had been given to Barbara Kingsolver it would probably have been a great book.
Boiledegg I won't be adding that one to my TBR either.

I only got to Chapter 2 of The Overstory and thought why, just why am I reading this? I mused that my lack of connection was that I started reading it when I wasn't feeling great. Life's just too short sometimes.

Yes, they're not supposed to split the Booker. They were told not to and did it anyway. Messy.

I haven’t read any of the Booker shortlist so have no skin in the game, but I thought it was a disappointing decision and it feels like it should have been Evaristo’s prize and they bottled it. I’d heard a lot more love and buzz for her book leading up to it in proportion to Atwoods, considering the massive sales drive the latter had anyway. If they really couldn’t choose between the books then the winner should have been the one who would have benefited most from the sales boost and exposure, as that’s really the point of a prize to begin with - it’s all arbitrary after all - who wrote the “best” book. Isn’t it up to the chair to make the call? I’m sure previous panels have had some right ding dongs but still made a choice.

And as a side note I’ve been ranked 10th and last at the library for Girl, Woman, Other for a bit; today I’m 10th of 27.

I am currently reading Longlisted The Water Cure and am bored. Just tell us what the fudge is going on, woman.

Oh no! I’m halfway through The Overstory and really enjoying it! I am surrounded by trees in real life though, and would happily live in a tree Perhaps that’s what makes the difference.

Have zero interest in either of the two Booker books, but ridiculous to not just make a decision and have a clear winner.

I've been a Richard Powers fan for decades, and have to say that Time of Our Singing is probably my least favourite of his, and The Overstory is harder work than many of his other books. He does tend to write around big themes, and trees and the environment are obviously subjects he feels strongly about.

I would recommend The Echo Maker, Gain or Generosity as good reads if anyone wants to try anything else of his.

The Testements is one of the most overrated (outside of this thread) books of the decade. It’s an ok thriller but I cannot believe it’s the best there is to the offer.

@SapatSea agree that negativity around YA is frustrating - to me it’s the same as ‘chick lit’ there’s good and there’s bad. Some authors can cross genres well, some can’t.

Still reading The Poisonwood Bible. It's getting better! Also started and nearly finished today The Haunting of Hill House Shirley Jackson. The writing in this book is amazing. It's incredibly unsettling reading and very well done.

Haven't read Girl, Woman, Other but agree with Satsuki that the less well established writer should have got it. I'm a huge Atwood fan but let's face it, her book will outsell all others regardless of the Booker.

Giraffe if you've made it to halfway and are enjoying it, you are unlikely to be disappointed, as I thought the second half was much stronger. I'm totally pro-tree, if anything I wanted more tree and less samey people waffle.

I agree on the Booker. Almost as if they decided if they had to give it to a woman, make sure there was a grandee of literature in there to offset the boldness of backing a black woman. I’m actually more cross about this than if they’d just given it to a man outright. I’m going off to buy a full price hardback copy of Girl, Woman, Other tomorrow in some kind of lame protest and won’t be reading The Testaments which everyone whose opinion I value says is a bit meh.

My husband read all the shortlisted books, finishing The Testaments just before the prize was announced, and his pick (pre-announcement) was Girl, Woman, Other. He didn't like any of the others. I think I might just read that one, like last year...

80. Get Lucky by Lila Monroe
    Romance - girl meets arrogant guy. They fall in love despite themselves. P&P is referenced a few times. Also included unexpected raunchy sex scenes. Light hearted fluff. I think I got it on a Kindle 99p deal

81. The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
    Interesting book about.... Trees. I want to read each chapter in the forest then walk around and see what he writes about in real life. What we (or at least I ) know about trees turns out to be false, or at the very least, simplistic

And I have finally finished To Kill a Mockingbird which I started in the summer. A slog. Slow and boring start. The middle part with the Court Case was interesting but uncomfortably racist, classist and misogynistic. The "n" word used liberally. The casual racism so jarring. The children attended the Court Case and ended up in the "coloured" section. Four black people gave up their front row seats without a murmur. That's a minor example but it sticks out for some reason.

The misogyny. Women can/can't do so many things and are expected to behave in a certain way.

The class ism - some people are "white trash" , some are "Negroes" , some are "coloured" , all are looked down on/ looking down on someone.

There's an implication of a father abusing his daughter certainly physically and emotionally and probably sexually but it's not even remarked upon.

The outcome of the court case was surprising to me even though it shouldn't have been.

I know it's a product of it's time (copyright 1960, set in 1935) but I really found it very jarring.

I can't say that I enjoyed it. I suppose it's important to read books like this so we can see how far we've come

Finished The Water Cure which I had been looking forward to. It was a disappointment. It's a dystopian novel, sort of in the vein of many other feminist dystopian works. The Lord of the Flies concept of some women stuck on an island is interesting enough but Mackintosh is so opaque that we never really understand why and how far things are true or real and I found that very annoying. She certainly writes well, but it is all too thin for me, and the ending is really rather nasty, although I am sure it is meant to be uplifting.

An all men are bastards work : I kind of would have preferred it if the girls had been utterly duped about the outside world, rather than partially. The idea of other women who have escaped and come to the island and then vanished is never really explained or developed.

The jury is out on Amazon about this one, too.

I should have know better , as I don't really like Atwood. If you do, give it a go.

A couple of random picks at the library that I've been enjoying (God, I love a good library):

Meet Me in the Middle, by Bella Pollen
A quirky memoir by an English writer - she starts looking back on her life when she finds herself haunted by an incubus. An early chapter when she describes her utter triumph at a photo where her parents are both looking at her and not her siblings is a funny and revealing sketch of middle child angst. It's not a particularly linear account - she talks about her first marriage (mainly her father-in-law, a Jewish mafioso), her life moving backwards and forwards between England and the US, the pull of domesticity and the wider world, and she spends a long time talking about her experiences with would-be migrants on the US-Mexico border, and then back to an affectionate portrait of her ageing father. It won't be everyone's cup of tea but I enjoyed it.

Currently on Warrior : a life of war in Anglo-Saxon Britain by Edoardo Albert. An account of an archaeological dig at Bamburgh Castle, focusing on the life of an Anglo-Saxon warrior. I like the digressions including one into the life of the archaeologist who originally dug the site (an interesting comment on the unacknowledged role of alcohol in archaeology). The fictionalised accounts of the warrior's life are a bit hokey, but it adds to the accessibility (like dioramas in a museum).