50 Book Challenge 2019 Part Seven

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the seventh, and possibly final, 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, the fifth one here and the sixth one here.

How've you got on this year?

Ooh snap original Fran! Wasn't it excellent - I couldn't put it down. I'll keep an eye out for your write up.

Welsh I know what you mean about Joyce Carol Oates. I read and enjoyed We were the Mulvaneys earlier this year, but I just don't feel tempted by any of her other novels. Odd, isn't it?

Slight name change...

28. Looking for Transwonderland by Noo Saro-Wiwa. I really enjoyed reading this - I know very little about Nigeria, and there were a few moments where the prose was more than workmanlike. But in general, she's a travel writer, and it rather shows. I liked the history the family stories, and the sense of the different cities and areas of Nigeria - I was googling 'visit Kano' as I was reading. The actual arc of the journey though was 'first I went here and then I went there' .

99. Lullaby by Leïla Slimani

A short but disturbing book about a nanny who murders the children in her care (not a spoiler - we’re told this right at the start).

Louise seems like the perfect nanny at first, and quickly makes herself indispensable, helped by her willingness to stay late, clean everything, and cook for the whole family. They even take her away on holiday with them. But Louise isn’t as perfect as she seems at first, which becomes increasingly obvious as we’re shown more of her past and the deterioration of her mental health.

100. Heroes by Stephen Fry

Tales of Greek Heroes retold by Stephen Fry. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and would recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.
In a happy coincidence, DS1 came out of school this week, and told me that they’d been learning about Roman legends and the Labours of Hercules. Although I did have to put a stop to his impersonations of the Nemean Lion

75: Spook Street - Mick Herron

The penultimate book in Herron's 'slow horses' series, and much enjoyed by me, even if I felt this was slightly less entertaining than the previous instalments. This is almost certainly because the plot is much darker, to do with the past life of River Cartwright's grandfather, ex-senior spook David Cartwright (known informally as the OB or 'Old Bastard'), and also because Jackson Lamb doesn't feature as heavily. But I'm still very glad to have discovered the series as it's enlivened my reading year no end.

213. The Little Book of Hygge- Meik Wiking This is a decent length book, not a tiny one like the Little Book of Calm etc. I read it just after the clocks went back and it cheered me up a bit. It turns out that there’s a lot more to hygge than I realised: even some outdoor activities can be hygge. But lit candles- which my landlord doesn’t allow in the house!- are essential.

214. A Ladder to the Sky- John Boyne I know the book has really divided opinion on this thread, but I thought it was outstanding. I found myself thinking about it a great deal when I wasn’t reading it, and also when I had finished. Even though the central character is really quite vile, I sometimes found myself sympathising with him, and I was pleased with how the story ended for him. The other characters are interesting and the plotting is superb. This was one of the best novels I have read this year: I think I may have enjoyed it even more than The Heart’s Invisible Furies.

215. Let the Right One In- John Ajvide Lindqvist I’d already read the book some years ago and had seen both films (the Swedish ‘Let the Right One in’ and the American ‘Let Me In’): this was the audiobook. The scenes between Oskar (the protagonist) and Eli (the vampire) are very touching and by far the most interesting- some of the other sections didn’t really hold my attention, even though Steven Pacey (who also narrated Empire of the Sun ) is a brilliant storyteller.

216. Winnie-the-Pooh- AA Milne I found this audiobook on BorrowBox and, even though I live in a childfree house, I couldn’t resist listening to it. Bernard Cribbins tells these classic tales beautifully and voices the different characters with great humour (Australian accent for Kanga etc). I’ve now reserved his reading of The House at Pooh Corner in addition.

Hearts in Atlantis - Stephen King
A re-read. It's a long short story and a funny little thing really. I loved bits of it, and couldn't see the point of some if it. Not his best, but some nice stuff about loss of innocence, and always good to remember the Tower for a while.

48. Heartburn by Nora Ephron. I think widely read on these threads and chosen by me because it was a) cheap on Kindle and b) short. However it's taken me quite a while to get through because when I set it aside I didn't feel particularly driven to pick it back up again, in retrospect I'd have been better off reading a longer book that I couldn't put down! (If only I knew which books fit that bill before reading them 🤔) Famously this is a thinly fictionalised account of the acrimonious ending of Nora Ephron's second marriage to Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein. The Nora character (Rachel), seven months pregnant with their second child, does an unedifying 'pick me' dance whilst her husband conducts an affair with the unfeasibly tall Thelma. The Carl character (Mark) is, of course, not worthy of one woman let alone two but Nora/Rachel loves him and even at the close of the book is only just starting to come to terms with living without him. Ephron has a great turn of phrase, for example her assertion that 'a child is a grenade. When you have a baby you set off an explosion in your marriage, and when the dust settles, your marriage is different from what it was' struck a chord. I would imagine this is a great book to read during or post a messy break up, her views on men would certainly chime, for example: “When will I ever learn? When will I ever understand that what’s astonishing about the number of men who remain faithful is not that it’s so small but that there are any of them at all?”

And her explanation of why men stray detailed by a minor (also unfaithful) character, Arthur, is chilling for those in long term relationships:
“You know how old you have to be before you stop wanting to fuck strangers?’ said Arthur. ‘Dead, that’s how old. It doesn’t stop. It doesn’t go away. You put all this energy into suppressing it and telling yourself it’s worth it because of what you get in exchange, and then one day someone brushes up against you and you’re fourteen years old again and all you want to do is go to a drive-in movie and fuck her brains out in the back seat. But you don’t do it because you’re not going to be that kind of person, so you go home, and there’s your wife, and she wears socks to bed."

So overall I thought it was worth reading, despite being a bit unsettling, but not a stand out for me, although I do intend to watch the Streep/Nicholson movie next time it's on TV.

Pleased to hear a glowing review for A Ladder To The Sky, FranK I've got it on my Kindle but a few lukewarm reviews have put me off starting it despite loving THIF. I'm a bit like that character in the pub on The Fast Show who changes his opinion depending on who he's listening to It's getting moved back up the TBR list as we speak!

I’ve completely lost track of my numbers but I think I’m somewhere in the 30s or 40s. My latest 3:
The Overstory - Richard Powers
Sunfall - Jim Al-Khalili
The Turn of the Screw - Henry James

The Overstory I loved this in places. The first half I really enjoyed, with the chapters moving between the unrelated characters, but all connected by trees, in some magical, often mysterious ways. The second half suffered from being much too long and repetitive, and while it was interesting to see how the lives of the characters came together there was far too much unnecessary waffle (I’m sure Patricia gave the same speech 3 times )
I ended up skipping a lot at the end, which felt a shame as I loved so much about the first half and the writer’s style.

Sunfall was a book I loved but probably shouldn’t have! Jim Al-Khalili is a physicist (and a bit famous on tv), and Sunfall is his first attempt at fiction. It’s set a little way in the future, when the Earth’s magnetic field has gone haywire, leaving it vulnerable to the sun’s radiation. Scientists are predicting the magnetic field will flip, but the reality is not quite what they expected. The science fiction (and science fact) parts are as brilliant as you’d expect, albeit slightly on the bonkers side of the bonkers-to-plausible scale. Some of the writing and characterisation is pretty clunky though, which I usually really really hate. For some reason though, I loved this to bits, through all the clunkiness, cheesiness, mad science and unfortunately irradiated bystanders.

The Turn of the Screw I thought this would be a good Halloween pick - a nineteenth century, Gothic inspired twist on a ghost story. A young governess is sent to a country house to take care of the adorable-seeming, beautifully behaved niece and nephew of her employer. The governess soon finds that the house is also home to the former governess, and a former valet who, despite being dead, have refused to move on. By far the most terrifying thing about this story though, is the 19th century grammar which, although its beauty is not without merit, eschews the common full stop for a more exciting range of punctuation - have a dash! A comma! A semicolon! - in constructions that may well be intended to twist one’s brain alongside the twists and turns of the story itself (for was what the poor governess saw a fact or a fiction?) in a manner akin to being flung down a semantic waterfall, for - and admittedly my brain has been weakened by the simplicity of modern texts (although surely not alone in this!) - one did tend to find that one would end a sentence without having the slightest blethering feck of a clue what happened at the beginning of it.

Giraffe, I love Henry James but it can be a slog. I have Sunfall lined up when I’ve got through a couple of books currently on the go. I was a little nervous about it but your review made me look forward to it, so thank you!

Desdemona, great review of Heartburn, thank you. Somehow I thought I'd already read it but I must have mixed it up with something else. Those bits you've quoted are uncomfortably sharp.

And thank you Giraffe for making me laugh!

Thanks Keith, I always used to get Heartburn and Ironweed mixed up (as both made into Streep/Nicholson films) but I won't now I've read one of them

216. The Yorkshire Shepherdess by Amanda Owen

I have no knowledge of farming and no desire to live such an outdoorsy lifestyle but still really enjoyed reading this. Amanda runs a remote sheep farm in Yorkshire with her husband and their 9 children. I’m in awe of how she manages this! I have one child and a desk job and I’m still knackered. She also (obviously) writes books - this is the first of three. I think I find this so interesting because it is so completely different to my lifestyle.

72. The Woman in the Window - A.J. Finn

Not exactly a stinker, but this psychological thriller is one of the books I have enjoyed least this year. Anna Fox is trapped in her home by agoraphobia, muddled by alcohol and prescription drugs, and has 'unreliable narrator' stamped on her forehead. Did she really see something terrible happen as she gawped at the new neighbours through her windows?

Hideously derivative but thinks it's being very clever with its film noir references. To be fair, it's an easy read, and one of the twists is handled very well. But the tone is ploddingly prosaic, especially in the slack middle section where Anna spends most of the time mooching round the house (since there's not much else she can do). 'I walk down the stairs. Find a glass of Merlot, drink it. Put the glass down again. One foot slides out, then the other, and I walk into the study. Oh look, some more merlot.'*

The ending was rushed and not very convincing (and I think I know what TV programme A.J. Finn had been watching when he created the villain of the piece).

So not really recommended, even on its own terms as a trashy page turner.

*this is parody, but only slight.

Oh, my attempted asterisk and footnote didn't really work there, did it?

Ha CartoonGiraffe well put, I feel your 19th century grammar pain. Currently reading Walden and every sentence is a word journey.

CartoonGiraffe

49. A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel. My knowledge of the French Revolution is limited to reading and loving The Scarlet Pimpernel many years ago. Obviously that is firmly on the side of the aristos, so it was fascinating to read a book with the opposite perspective. Mantel's characterisation of the three republicans Danton, Desmouilles and Robespierre, and their very different attitudes towards both the revolution and their personal lives, is simply amazing. I highly recommend this to anyone who loved Wolf Hall (I know this does not include everyone on this thread). Despite this, I can't give an unconditionally positive review, as I did find myself falling asleep over it many times. Maybe it could have been slightly shorter and easier to follow without losing any of the revolutionary fervour?

Fittingly for Armistice Day, I have just finished House of Gold by Natasha Solomons. This is a rather epic tale of a powerful European Jewish financial dynasty, who find themselves on opposite sides in the First World War. The central character is Greta, an Austrian Goldbaum, who is married off to a British Goldbaum and learns to love gardening, and him. This is a rather touching element to the story. The brothers and cousins are interesting, although some seemed rather more tagged on. I believe the family is loosely based on the Rothschlds.

Solomons is a wonderful writer who definitely does extensive research; some might find her books slow. Indeed , this one only gets going when the war begins, about halfway through the book. Some of the stuff about finance is a little over explained and my attention drifted.

I shed a few tears at the end and it's nice , at last, to have read a book that just tells a proper story.

I love the James parody! Well done giraffe. Have a

@ giraffe. I do enjoy Henry James, but know what you mean. Thomas Hardy makes me want to revoke his storytelling licence mid sentence sometimes. Ok the 3 men are brothers just say it!

@InMyOwnParticularIdiom have you googled AJ Finn? Unless I’m getting it mixed up I thought there was an intriguing backstory to the novel (and, specifically, the author)

I've read 41 of that BBC list but it's lucky they didn't ask me to summarise them. I could tell you how they made me feel though. I remember the huge sense of loss at the end of A Suitable Boy, I didn't want to leave them all.

Sadik, thank you for the recommendations. I like the look of them and have added them both to my tbr pile.

Satsuki, yes it was him with the backstory. The New Yorker wrote a long but fascinating article all about it which you should be able to read here - www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/11/a-suspense-novelists-trail-of-deceptions/amp