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.

Piggywaspushed my colleague and I both read The Water Cure last year and our joint feedback was that we had no idea what the book was about!

20. Two by Two - Nicholas Sparks - completed yesterday. Took a while to get into but loved it in the end.

Now onto 21) Behind Closed Doors - Ba Paris ....only a few chapters in but hooked so far

MuseumOfHam your suffering was not in vain, I have duly hugged a tree and moved on.

122. Girls Burn Brighter - Shobha Rao Harrowing tale of two childhood friends in India living in poverty. Separated after one is forced into an abusive arranged marriage and the other is tricked into prostitution and trafficked. Their friendship is the thing that gets them through their difficult situations and they are determined to find one another again.

Some really beautiful writing and very evocative of place. It doesn't go into explicit detail but enough to make it a difficult and fairly horrifying read at the plight of these two young women. The ending for me was rushed and a bit of a cop out, but well worth the read if you can face it.

123. Exit West - Mohsin Hamid A young couple fall in love in an unnamed Middle Eastern city against the backdrop of an insurgent uprising and the fall of the corrupt government. It follows them as migrants as they struggle to settle and be accepted around the world.

Short and shit. This was so disappointing after a strong start. Their escape takes place through the medium of a magic door that transports them instantly to Mykonos, then after a short while another magic door takes them to an almost dystopian London and later another to San Francisco. Who knew it was so easy? I get the symbolism of the doors, however I think it missed a trick. The author concentrates on the reception of refugees in different places and ignores the journey to get there. This could have been brilliant and sadly threw away the most interesting parts for a poorly executed literary device.

Glad it's not just me emmaw!

MuseumOfHam there is a fourth Fractured Europe book, Europe at Dawn, which rounds off the sequence. I didn't like it quite as much as the others, but still a very good read.

I've dropped off the thread for a while, so a few to update:
80. Snowspelled by Stephanie Burgis
81 Thornbound by Stephanie Burgis
Light fantasy/romance set in a Regency-esq era where magic exists, and Boudicca drove the Romans out of Britain. Politics is the domain of upper class women, magic of upper class men. Our heroine has no interest in politics, and wants to practice magic. Enjoyable fluff, but one was probably enough, I doubt I'd bother to read another sequel.

82. Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
    The classic exploration of rationality, decision making, and why we act the way we do. Not the most sparkling of prose, but the content more than makes up for it - this must be my third or fourth read, and I get more from it each time.

83. What we really do all day, ed. Jonathan Gershuny & Oriel Sullivan
    One of the new Pelican books, but uncharacteristically disappointing. This draws on large scale time diary research, and could have been absolutely fascinating, but it's written in a very dry academic style with endless tables, and descriptions of the tables, and really very little meaningful analysis of the data. Some of the chapters are better than others, but a wasted opportunity overall.

84. Organic Vegetable Production, A Complete Guide ed Gareth Davies & Margi Lennartsson
    Does what it says on the tin, good thorough and well written survey of the topic (though unlikely to be of interest unless you want to produce organic vegetables on a commercial scale).

85. Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch
    Re-read. Much reviewed on here, I think this first book is the best in the series.

Thank you Sadik I am so pleased there is a fourth Fractured Europe instalment. Incidentally is it you that's responsible for Nothing Like the Lightning being on my kindle? Just started it. Not a single clue what's going on.

Enjoying lurking on this thread now. at ‘short and shit’ Fortuna. I also thought Exit West was rather shit, but had nor remembered its shortness.

I attempted Too Like The Lightning twice and have failed to get beyond a few chapters twice. It’s on my reproachful bookshelf now.

Maybe Nothing Like The Lightning is a different book, and nothing like Too Much The Lightning?

Guilty as charged to Too Like The Lightening Museum. Things do become clearer if you persist though!

Palegreenstars - yes, you’re right - I always make time for reading. Films - not so much..

boiledegg - I will definitely read Lila and Home at some point.

I loved The Overstory and, in a timely fashion, Girl, Woman, Other is waiting for me in the library.

It’s on my reproachful bookshelf now.

I suspect everyone on this thread has a reproachful bookshelf - excellent description!

61. Restless by William Boyd

My second Boyd, after I really enjoyed Any Human Heart. I enjoyed this too, although not quite as much. It's a very different sort of book, telling the story of a WWII spy as she tells it to her daughter, with the daughter's story intertwined. The spy story is pacy and exciting, and I quite liked the device of interspersing the daughter's much more mundane existence, along with sparks showing how similar she was to her mother - two spiky, intelligent, not particularly likeable (and all the better for it) female characters. It's well written with some lovely descriptive passages. But it didn't have the emotional depth of Any Human Heart. I don't think it was meant to, as it's not really that sort of book, but it meant I liked it slightly less. But anyway, a good and absorbing read.

I've just realised the above should have been 62, as I missed out book 55, which was WTF? by Robert Peston. I was sure I'd reviewed it but maybe I forgot to press post! It may be apt that I didn't review, actually, as whilst it was an enjoyable read, I didn't feel it told me much I didn't know. I think I agree with Peston generally about reasons for disenchantment with the EU, the current political system et al, and so it felt a bit like reading my own echo chamber.

25. Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl A classic. Very measured account of the author's time in Auschwitz, deliberately avoids some of the horrors while their nature remains absolutely clear.

26. The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien
Read this for book club and it's a corker. I thought it was more symbolic and surreal than others did. I even wondered privately if Mr Gentleman was a figment of Caithleen's imagination. Anyway, the coming of age story of two Irish teenagers/women in ?the 50s (one of the surreal aspects was how tricky it felt for us to date the action accurately, even though we knew of course when it was published etc). Above all, beautifully and fluently written. I've bought it as a trilogy so will read the sequels I think.

Sorry, yes, Too Like the Lightning. I got to 11% last night and I'm on top of it now, I even know what it's called.

35. Regeneration - Pat Barker
Vivid depiction of the lives of those who escaped death in the trenches of WW1 to end up being treated for shell-shock at Craiglockhart hospital near Edinburgh. It wasn't until I read the Author's Note at the end of the book that I had any idea it was based on real lives.
Not an easy read, can't say I enjoyed it.

Finished The Haunting of Hill House Shirley Jackson. Was very scary! Reviews I read said it is tame but I am easily unnerved!

33. Substance: Inside New Order - Peter Hook

Not a reread this time - this is an outrageously entertaining read about life in one of my very favourite bands. It's proper warts-and-all stuff with all the sex, drugs and rock'n'roll you want from a rock book.

Two books to report which, on the face of it, should have absolutely nothing in common, but which in fact turned out to share quite a lot of interesting themes.

68: The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things - Paula Byrne

69: The Five - Hallie Rubenhold

Of the explosion of books about Austen in recent years, Paula Byrne's biography must be one of the most successful - told through chapters that explore objects relevant to Austen's life or work: a portable writing desk; a card of lace ribbon; a piece of jewellery; a silhouette of a beloved relative, etc. The research is impressive, the style highly readable - and most importantly, I came away feeling I really knew what Austen was like as a living, breathing, funny and much-loved person.

The Rubenhold book sets out to do something very similar for the five victims of Jack the Ripper who are, time and again, dismissed as merely forgettable trash; prostitutes whose horrific deaths are titillating fodder for the ranks of (mostly male) obsessive Ripperologists. She's done an incredible job in giving lives and dignity back to these women, who've mostly been ciphers up till now. And what a grim tale it makes....as she points out, just being women pretty much doomed them from the outset. Add in the weight of expectation - that their lives as working-class girls would be ones of unrelenting work, then constant childbirth, grinding poverty, hardship.....it's nothing short of heartbreaking. That almost all of them took to drink is hardly surprising, but that was, almost always, the terrible path to their downfall.

Rubenhold's research is incredible and reveals the lives and back-stories that make them real people - not 'just prostitutes' (only the final victim, Mary Kelly, was actually known to be one) but mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, people in their own right. It's not the world's most elegantly-written book but my goodness, I really felt grateful that she'd done it.

Just realised that when I say above ☝️'the five victims of Jack the Ripper who are, time and again, dismissed as merely forgettable trash' etc etc, I don't mean it's Hallie Rubenhold saying that in her book, obvs - I mean the Ripper 'industry' which commodifies the five and reduces them to nothing but faceless victims.

Have got The Five waiting for me but not feeling very emotionally strong right now and not sure I'm up to it.

I really liked the Austen one.

nowanearlyNicemum I don't know whether you have read the others but this is the first in a trilogy (Regeneration, The Eye in the Door and Ghost Road)

She has also written The Life Class Trilogy (Lifeclass, Toby's Room and Noonday). Also about the War but centre around friends from the Slade School of Art which I highly recommend!

My second batch of reviews:

34. Nora Ephron: The Last Interview And Other Conversations - Nora Ephron. This is a short collection of interviews with the late writer and just as funny and witty as I expected.

35. The Good, the Bad and the Multiplex - Mark Kermode. Musings on the current state of cinema, this was unfocused in places and I think his writing is better suited to film reviews.

36. We Should All Be Feminists - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. This is the Ted talk she did about the authors view on contemporary feminism and was very short book. I'm only counting it as I DNF'd four books in a row - A Natural, Too Close, Lethal White, and Stage Blood. Pretty good as far as it goes.

37. Common People: An Anthology of Working Class Writers - various. Mixed bag of essays, some great, some very samey. This needed a more discerning editor but it's worth a read at the current kindle price of 99p.

38. Heartstopper: vol 1 - Alice Oseman. YA graphic novel about two gay teenagers getting together, nicely told and I'm going to buy the second instalment.

39. The Sound of Laughter - Peter Kay. The first memoir from the comedian, this was very funny a lot of the time but some of the stories were a bit dull. I don't know if I'll read the follow-up, Saturday Night Peter.

I thought Toby's Room was, frankly, dreadful. The Eye on the Door was pretty awful too, imho, but I did like Regeneration. The Ghost Road was mixed for me - some very powerful sections but didn't quite work as a whole for me.

124. White Oleander - Janet Fitch A narcissistic poet is convicted of murder leaving her 12 year old daughter to the mercy of the Los Angeles foster care system. As one navigates a series of placements and the other prison, their complex mother daughter relationship is revealed. A dark and difficult coming of age.

This is quite disturbing and throws out all of the worst possibilities of abuse in the system. It starts very strongly but peters out a little in the second half and is tied up too easily in the end. The characters are largely unlikable and for me the daughter is not developed enough as she casually accepts the abuse and seems to move on too easily. It's fairly slow moving, however the writing is exquisite and it's worth a read for the prose alone. Despite the criticism, this will stay with me for a while and may well be one of my top reads of the year.