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?

Whippetwoman I think it is very important to be clear that one person who does not break out in cold sweats is Prince Andrew. At least he didn't in 2001.

An English Murder by Cyril Hare. Came up in a Grauniad thing about the best Golden Age crime, but must admit I was a bit underwhelmed by it, especially by the grand reveal.

Now reading and so far liking The Library of Ice

I think others have read Once Upon A River by Diane Setterfield. I liked this. I liked the meta sort of storytelling thread and the mystery and quite likes its kind of Gothic magic realism because it isn't silly or overdone. There was rather a silly Luke Skywalker moment at the end which I can imagine in a bad telly adaptation but, overall, I really enjoyed this,

I know she wrote The Thirteenth Tale and am pretty sure I saw that on TV but I really can't decide if I have read that or not, even though part of it is at the back of this copy!

148. In the Woods - Tana French Murder mystery set in Dublin. The body of a young girl is found in the middle of an archaeological dig in the same location where the lead detective lived as a child. One summer he was found covered in blood and his two friends were missing presumed murdered. He has no memory of what happened and doesn't know if the two cases are related and fails to disclose his past.

I wouldn't rave about it but it was ok for this sort of thing. I'd read the rest of the series for a bit of mindless distraction.

149. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - Anne Brontë A young woman moves into a dilapidated property with her son and sets local tongues wagging. Presumed to be a widow, a steady stream of nosy neighbours and suitors plague her while she is trying to hide from her abusive husband.

I've never really bothered with the Brontës after a failed attempt at reading Wuthering Heights as a teen. I read Jane Eyre earlier this year and liked but didn't love it. This knocked my socks off. I was gripped. Tame by today's standards this would have been scandalous on release. Interesting to read something outside the typical romance novel and to see the attitudes to women at the time and how difficult it was to be independent. Well worth a read.

whippet I liked the dispassionate prose of Stories as think some of them might have seemed too over the top with more colourful writing, but do see what you mean.

And welshwabbit I haven’t broken into a cold sweat since a car backfired once and surprised me in Woking.

Can't recall at the moment where I am with my numbers but here's some recent reads:

Afternoons with the Blinds Drawn - Brett Anderson. The Suede frontman's second memoir, I think you need to be a fan of Suede to get the most of this. I like the band but I only bothered with one of their album's and thought this was worth a read because I loved his first memoir. I missed the observations on his family and relationships that he wrote about beautifully in Coal Black Mornings, and felt his prose in this book was at times florid. I think the book would have been more enjoyable with a little less emphasis on the music.

Ian McKellen - the biography - Garry O'Connor. So-so biography of the acclaimed actor with too many boring analyses of plays and the mixed-up chronology was distracting.

I'm now reading a Julie Andrews book which is a bit flat so far.

Fortuna I'm also a big fan of Tenant. Anne's other novel Agnes Grey is also really good if you've not read it.

Thanks Sadik I haven't read it yet, so will bump it up. I am woefully ignorant of most of the greats of English Literature and this was the year I was supposed to be catching up and have failed which is all the worse considering my total. I have no excuse. I promised myself every third book would be literature but instead I have wandered down a path largely influenced by this thread. Not many regrets though, it's been an epic reading year.

@bibliomania - I was determined not to add anything more to my book pile this year, but Rosewater sounds right up my street! It was on Apple Books (iBooks?) for 99p so I’ve snapped it up. It’s now number 8 on my tbr list, which is (allegedly) giving me quite the cold sweat.

I too have Rosewater lined up after it was in the Daily Deal a short while ago and am looking forward to it.

And to go back to the Fierce Bad Rabbits discussion, it is certainly more of a history than Bookworm tried to be. But it is also a memoir of sorts albeit with a light touch, and that for me was the bit that didn’t quite work. However, I am more than happy to say that is probably me rather than Claire Pollard’s fault!

pepe thanks - I haven’t been sure whether to pick up Bookworm (so many others to read!) as it seemed from reviews here that it was a bit more dependent on whether you shared the author’s reading memories. With Fierce Bad Rabbits I found I didn’t need to know or like a book or author to find the chapter interesting so I liked that aspect of it. You’re right the memoirish aspects aren’t that necessary to it a lot of the time, but I did find the love letter to her dad and childhood bedtime stories that it culminated in quite moving.

Hope you like it, Giraffe! I'm a bit wary of sci fi because I find it can be quite impenetrable, but I'm enjoying the Rosewater books (in true sci fi style, Rosewater is the first of a trilogy, although the second only came out this year). I think it's good intelligent writing. "Why would I try to kill you? Cui bono, motherfucker!"

I'd almost forgotten the memoir bits of Fierce Bad Rabbits For me, the most compelling bits were around Ruskin asking Kate Greenaway to draw him naked girls, and the idea of the Holocaust as a backdrop to the work of Maurice Sendak. I'm always interested in what people are yearning for when they create fantasy worlds.

Tenant is my favourite Bronte - I was reading somewhere (Samantha Ellis' biography of Anne Bronte?) about the portrayal of the dissipated husband owing a lot to the experience of sharing a house with a drunken Branwell, which makes a lot of sense. It feels like there is real lived experience underlying it, unlike the books embodying the fantasies of her older sisters.

I'm going to have to read this rabbits malarkey now to find out what's going on. Damn rabbits.

biblio totally agree, that was what really pulled me into it too. I had no idea of the historical context of Kate Greenaway’s work and yet her name has become synonymous with excellence in children’s literature. Also the life of Margaret Wise Brown and the man who wrote Owl Babies and other things I hadn’t been aware of like David McKee writing Elmer because of his daughter’s experience of racism. There was lots of fascinating background stuff that made me want to read more around it. (Sorry whippet!)

Adding to the Tenant love - it is a great read, and agree with all things said. I only think the structure is perhaps not as controlled as Emily and Charlotte were able to achieve, but it has a searing emotional honesty the others don’t quite reach. It was the Branwell element and personal nature of the narrative that led Charlotte to resist its publication (remembering from last time it came up here). Reminds me I must get to Agnes Grey! I haven’t read any classics I don’t think this year Fortuna yet started with the same intentions as you.

I have a stack of library books to get through but am currently moving quite slowly through Jim Henson’s Biography because non-fiction always slows me down, and it’s quite a big one, but I’m enjoying it very much.

64. Godsend - John Wray

Found this one hard work tbh. Aden Grace Sawyer and her friend Decker leave California for Pakistan obstensibly to study Arabic, although they secretly plan to travel over the border to Afghanistan and join the Taliban. To achieve this, Aden cuts her hair short and disguises herself as a man.

The writer builds the tension up well in the first half of the book. However the second half lost its way and left too many questions unanswered. Why does Aden go in the first place? The difficult relationships she has with her separated parents, not fitting in...somehow don't cut it as explanations for such a drastic, life changing decision. It didn't feel authentic, which broke the spell for me.

For a book where so much happens this was a dull read. For example, 9/11 happens off screen and barely raises a flicker of emotion. Perhaps this story was too subtle for me. Overall a bit disappointing.

218. It Started With A Tweet by Anna Bell
219. The Good Girlfriend’s Guide To Getting Even by Anna Bell

I needed some mindless chick lit to take my mind off work and these fitted the bill. Light and predictable but good fun.

220. Everything You Know About England Is Wrong by Matt Brown

Collection of debunked ‘facts’ about England. Probably aimed more at those who don’t live here but I still found it interesting.

221. The Body: A Guide For Occupants by Bill Bryson

I listened to this on Audible read by Bryson himself. This was brilliant - full of interesting facts but still funny and easy to read.

222. Friends: A Reading Of The Sitcom by Simone Knox and Kai Hanno Schwind

This was very hard work. I thought it would be a fun analysis with some background information but it was a proper scholarly analysis of the show, full of sentences that made no sense to me at all (sample sentence: if we accept the concept of behavioural humour as a fundamental characteristic of sitcom, we can theorise its humour as a volatile and ever-changing notion reflecting the debates revolving around a variety of society’s most controversial topics). Probably great if you’re a media studies student, rubbish for a casual fan.

The Body is on my Christmas wish list.

I also really want to read Fierce Bad Rabbits but still too £££ on Kindle.

94. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
    A thriller about parallel universes -what would happen if you could take the other fork in the road? And what would happen to the you that did when you arrive in the parallel universe? Entertaining, fast moving

95. Atlantic Shift by Emily Barr
    I kept waiting for something to happen. It didn't. Protagonist with a dark secret and unpleasant personality decides to divorce her husband. The entire book was me feeling uncomfortable at her poor decision making. Not good.

96. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
    Tough thriller. A child is found murdered in the home town of reporter Camille. She's sent to find the story and goes back to her childhood home. Secrets from the past and present arise. Good but very unpleasant in parts

97. Heavenfield (DCI Ryan#3) by LJ Ross
    Third book in the series. The Circle strikes again. I was beginning to wonder how many more people could actually be involved in the Circle 🙄 . Ok book. I'd give the 4th one a read if I was bored.

Three away from my goal of 100

78: Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi

My first foray into graphic novels. Marjane Satrapi was born in Iran, the only child of liberal, enlightened parents. In this memoir she recounts how her little family lived through the Islamic Revolution of the 1980's onwards, with its ever-stricter controls on freedom of expression, on dress (primarily for women) and on movement, with terrifying persecution and execution of political prisoners. Then there followed long, terrible years of war. For her own protection, Satrapi was sent away to school, in Vienna, where she was desperately lonely and friendless, and finally she returned home, unable to bear being separated from her parents any longer.
I loved the graphics, and Satrapi's story is compelling, often horrifying but also leavened with humour. I haven't seen the film that was made later but I'd like to - having looked up the trailer, I can see that the striking monochrome of the drawings translated really well onto the screen. Definitely recommend the book.

103. Winter of the Witch by Katherine Arden

Final part of the Winternight trilogy set in medieval Russia. I enjoyed reading this.

49. The Visitor by Lee Child

You don’t need me to tell you whether to read the Jack Reacher stories or not. In this one, the FBI underestimate Reacher. As you absolutely shouldn’t.

223. A Year In The Life Of The Yorkshire Shepherdess by Amanda Owen

Nice easy read about the large farming family in Yorkshire.

119 Three Women by Lisa Taddeo
I didn’t and cannot see why this has been feted to the extent it has. But clearly lots of people have found it revelatory so I would be really interested to know what I missed.

It didn’t feel daring or insightful or much of anything other than a slightly too long telling of three women’s sexual and emotional histories. Men generally don’t treat them well (and very badly in some cases), women try hard to please, fail despite their best efforts, blame themselves. This spent so much time focusing on the three women but I didn’t see anything extraordinary in any of their stories, and I didn’t pick it up with any enthusiasm. I wish, if it were an exploration of women’s sexuality, it had gone deeper and in more interesting ways.

@PepeLePew completely agree with your review - I didn’t get the hype at all.

Yes I agree as well pepe. I did find it very readable in that she made it quite novelistic but the substance was really about three women dancing to the tune of men, and I found it depressing and not really expressive of “women’s desire” and didn’t offer much real original insight when all was said and done.