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?

Just checking in to say that if anyone has any even small amounts of spare cash, Galley Beggar Press is crowdfunding on GoFundMe. They printed a special edition of Ducks, Newburyport for the Book People’s Booker shortlist offer that happens each year, and are now £40,000 out of pocket after the Book People went into administration and told them they won’t be paid. This is the difference between survival and failure for a small business (speaking from bitter experience) and so if you’re able to help, I’d encourage you to think about it. The link to the appeal is here: www.gofundme.com/f/galley-begging. I’ve also gone out and bought a copy of the book, which has been on my TBR list for a little while, so shall report back on that in due course.

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated in any way to Galley Beggars. I just like the books they publish, and think that small and independently minded publishers and media owners are so incredibly important.

Sylvia by Leonard Michaels In 1960 Leonard, a young writer, meets Sylvia at a friend's bohemian Greenwich Village appartment and is immediately infatuated with her. They start a relationship but her mental health is very fragile and their life together heads towards self-destruction. This was beautifully written and I would probably have loved it in my late teens/early twenties, but at the grand old age of 58 I found myself increasingly exasperated by Sylvia.

Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh Recommended to me by my son, who has just read Gary Younge's Another Day in the Death of America where it was referenced, and had also read it as part of his Sociology course. SV was a naive student who went into one of the worst ghettos in America and asked some gang members "how does it feel to be black and poor?". They took him hostage at gun point, but he later returned and started to hang around with them. The book is a fascinating and eye-opening account of his time with them over the following decade. It explores the world of the gangsters who controlled much of what went on in the housing projects, but also the community living in such desperate and difficult conditions (and they were particularly difficult for the women).

My Name is Why by Lemn Sissay Already reviewed upthread. This was such a beautiful but heart-breaking account of his childhood and the care system that he grew up in that I had to keep taking a break as I found it emotionally overwhelming. (I have worked in a school with children in care). One of my outstanding reads this year.

boiledegg, Sylvia really is a young person’s novel isn’t it? I spent a long time rolling my eyes while knowing full well I’d have been enchanted twenty years ago.

Pepe Glad it wasn't just me! Have you read anything else by Leonard Michaels? This was recommended and lent to me by a friend whose judgement I normally trust, (although he meant to lend me a different one).

No. That really put me off, so I wasn’t inclined to go seeking out more. That said, most of his other work seems to be short stories which aren’t really my thing.

238. The Prison Doctor- Dr Amanda Brown This was great, but too short! It describes the author’s years as a doctor in a young offenders’ institution and then two prisons, after her conscience wouldn’t allow her to continue as a GP in the new bonus-based culture. Some of the people she helped included a woman who had just given birth alone in her cell, a male prisoner who slit his own throat, a diabetic who found it very hard to keep his blood sugar stable on a diet of prison food, and many prisoners wanting to get off drugs. She coped with teenage boys exposing themselves to her, and also with not being allowed to send prisoners to hospital (even in an emergency) if the prison was too short-staffed. The book is very illuminating.

239. The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole- Sue Townsend The book was always a great favourite of mine in my younger years, and I really enjoyed the audiobook (and could remember some sections of Adrian’s diary almost verbatim!).

240. So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed- Jon Ronson I’d read the book before but listened to the audiobook this time, which I found on BorrowBox and enjoyed about a hundred times more than the book. Even though the subject matter isn’t quite as interesting (to me) as some of his other books, Ronson's reading really brought it to life and made his very likeable character shine through. I particularly liked it when he referred to himself as ‘tweedy and owl-like’ and also the way he described the photos in the book for the benefit of audiobook listeners.

241. Twas the Night Before Christmas- Adam Kay This was also too short: for some reason, I enjoyed it more than This is Going to Hurt.

242. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin- Louis de Bernieres I bought this on a Kindle Deal earlier in the year and had been putting off reading it, but I loved it. Yes, it is unnecessarily long, but I didn’t think the beginning and end were as weak as I’d been led to believe. As a lover of Greece, I enjoyed all the references to the Greek landscape, food, culture, the Greek alphabet and language, Greek mythology and the Orthodox Church. And as a musician, I loved all the sections about the mandolin (although it’s not an instrument I know much about). The plot was fairly strong too: I’m really glad I finally read this.

243. Them: Adventures with Extremists- Jon Ronson I’d already read this but snapped it up in the Audible sale. In it, Ronson describes the time he spent with various people with extreme viewpoints, such as Omar Bakri, David Icke, Ian Paisley and members of the Ku Klux Klan. It’s much funnier than you might expect (especially when Ronson admits he is Jewish at a jihadi training camp) and very enjoyable.

244. Frank- Jon Ronson A short book (in this case, audiobook) telling the story of Ronson’s time in Frank Sidebottom’s Oh Blimey Big Band and ending with Chris Sievey’s untimely death. It is very entertaining and much better than the film.

Thanks for the link Pepe - I've just donated.

Another person to add to the CCM fan club FranK 🥰 such a good book.

Indeed, Desdamona- I wasn't expecting to enjoy it quite so much!

Just read a ghost story by De Bernieres in my Christmas book which I rather liked.

Thanks Tolstoy.

245. The Girl with All the Gifts- MR Carey This is one of the best post-apocalyptic/zombie books I’ve ever read. It doesn’t deviate hugely from the usual script, but it is an intelligent novel which is very well handled. I’m looking forward to reading The Boy on the Bridge.

246. What Maisie Knew- Henry James I really enjoyed the watching the modern film version of What Maisie Knew on Netflix and decided to go back to the source. Very soon, I remembered why I hated doing Washington Square for English A-level: Henry James’s work is just so mannered. On the plus side, though, this 1897 novel does foreshadow modern issues such as divorce, stepfamilies and shared custody arrangements.

Fran - If you thought The Girl With All The Gifts was good, you will be blown away by World War Z and The Passage. Both are far superior to TGWATG which I personally thought was a badly-written novice YA about the feeeliiiinggss between a child zombie and her teacher, full of cheap truisms like "Like Pandora, opening the great big box of the world and not being afraid, not even caring whether what's inside is good or bad. Because it's both. Everything is always both" and "You can't save people from the world. There's nowhere else to take them."

It's that same type of SF-lite as Station 11 - inexperienced author, light read, focused on feeeelinggs rather than worldbuilding and scientific accuracy. They are targeted at female readers, too, which annoys me.

There are some fantastic Apocalyptic books out there written by SF giants that are incredibly realistic and well thought-out, without pretty covers and cutesy "The Girl Who..." titles. Try Seveneves or Flood, for example, and I guarantee that you will be shocked at the low-quality, teenagey stuff marketed at women as the next big thing in SF.

Just checking in and catching up with recent recommendations. i have been shamefully neglecting to read much recently, but now have 10 days off work, so am hoping to add another couple. Am on Love for Lydia by HE Bates which is fine - a bit Asda-price Nancy Mitford I guess.

44. The Terror by Dan Simmons

Wow This was the 946-page fictional story of Sir John Franklin's 1845 expedition in search of the rumored North-West Passage, whose ships Erebus and Terror were trapped in Arctic ice.

As Remus said, it is very long (perhaps too long in parts) but I enjoyed every page. Even the detailed descriptions of daily life on the ships or the ice ridges around them were well-written and interesting to read. The author has obviously done a lot of research about not only the two ships and the people on them, but about the sailing technology and conditions of the time.

The supernatural element creeps up on the reader so slowly that at first you don't even realize it's there. Gradually it comes to take over the story line but by then the reader is so immersed in the atmosphere of the book that it does not feel out of place. The ending was one of the best I have ever seen in such books, and left me thinking that it could not have resolved any other way.

I would definitely recommend this book to everyone here.

239. Confessions Of A Bookseller by Shaun Bythell

More diaries from the man running a second hand bookshop in Scotland. I love these books - nothing much happens but I love the anecdotes about customers and staff and some of the insights into the bookselling trade.

240. Christmas Days: 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days by Jeanette Winterson

A collection of Christmas themed short stories and recipes. Many of the stories have a magical or supernatural element to them. This is the first book I’ve read of hers and I enjoyed her writing.

241. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

A classic of the crime genre but I didn’t like it. I could live with the sexism etc. as a product of the time it was written, but I didn’t like any of the characters and thought they were a bit cardboard cut out with no depth. I found the story hard to follow too. It was short though - I would have given up on it otherwise.

242. The Children Of Green Knowe by Lucy M Boston

One of my regular Christmas rereads, a lovely children’s book.

Cote, some interesting thoughts there. I've read World War Z and enjoyed it, but I'll try the others you mentioned. I wasn't mad on Station Eleven either. I'm not a big science-fiction reader in general, so maybe that's why I seem to prefer the ones aimed at women or youngsters. I did enjoy reading Anna, The Road and Bird Box this year.

Having enjoyed Station Eleven, I'm going to respectfully disagree with Cote - I like my science fiction with the emphasis on the fiction, including the feeeelings. If I want to read science, I'll read non-fiction science books, and I do - there is some wonderful science writing out there. I'll drink my water and my whiskey separately, thank you.

I'll probably be offline for the next two weeks. I've finished book 143, which was the Nikolai Tolstoy biography of Patrick O'Brian. It won't appeal to everyone - it's only for you if you already like Patrick O'Brian and you already like writer's biographies.

My holiday ambitions are to tackle the immense (880 pages) Empire of things : how we became a world of consumers, from the fifteenth century to the twenty-first, by Frank Trentmann and Medieval bodies: life, death and art in the Middle Ages, by Jack Hartnell. Both have enthusiastic blurbs. I may get distracted by fluffier reads along the way.

Damn. biblio's post has just reminded me that I meant to bring Medieval Bodies with me to where we're spending Christmas, and I forgot to pack it

Oh well. It's not as though I haven't got a thousand other things to read, though, I suppose.

Sorry, Terp! I can report back!

It's been a while since we've had a good Station 11 bunfight

"I like my science fiction with the emphasis on the fiction, including the feeeelings."

Nothing wrong with feelings as such, but it's annoying when they are what the author relies on to sell a SF book that pathetically lacks any real world building - "Let's tug on some heart strings and have some female characters who go on about their feeeeeliiiingsss, and see the female audience (who just wants to read chick-lit as the whole world knows ) lap it up and push it into the bestseller lists." It annoys me to no end.

"If I want to read science, I'll read non-fiction science books, and I do - there is some wonderful science writing out there. I'll drink my water and my whiskey separately, thank you."

Likewise, I like reading non-fiction science books (notably about Quantum Mechanics and pure mathematics) when I want to learn about scientific topics.

I don't read SF to learn about science but the underlying science still has to make sense. If not, the book doesn't make sense. Station 11 failed in this and in other aspects as well, which meant that it made no sense at all. A viral disease that becomes symptomatic in a few hours is not only impossible (as is obvious who knows anything about how viral infections and human immune system function) is the easiest disease in the history of the world to contain and eradicate, especially if it kills in 24 hours. You just make sure that people remain indoors for 1 day & isolate those who don't.

The post-apocalyptic world rings completely false, as well. All of it falls apart too quickly, and the author has given no thought to what such a world of few survivors would actually be like. "Schools" where kids are taught about the lost world and its comforts made me laugh. Surely, you would try to preserve knowledge of math, chemistry, physics, biology etc rather than stories of past comforts.

And the people left alive somehow manage to find food, shelter, and clean water very easily which leaves them free to procrastinate and whine all day long. It's quite funny actually, and most probably worlds apart from what would really happen - what DOES happen wherever civilisation breaks down anywhere in the world due to war, natural disaster etc.

I'm not saying that every SF should be a scientific text book but a minimum level of scientific accuracy, rational thought, and consistency is required to create good SF. Otherwise it's just stupid.

I think what you say is legitimate enough - no energy to throw buns today.

I might possibly disagree a bit with this:
"Schools" where kids are taught about the lost world and its comforts made me laugh. Surely, you would try to preserve knowledge of math, chemistry, physics, biology etc rather than stories of past comforts.

I've visited a few refugee schools in my time, and they don't just hunker down and STEM subjects - people in exile from their old familiar world do prioritise memorialising and transmitting their culture.

I agree with both of you!

I am able to suspend disbelief to an extent, so it doesn't bother me too much if the science element of sci fi isn't watertight, but I think it does need to meet a certain level of credibility. I agree that Station Eleven was a bit silly.

My favourite sci fi books in recent years have been The Power, The Bone Clocks and The Martian.

I thought Station 11 was ridiculous and didn't finish it.

I agree though, that if the world as I knew it had ended, I'd probably want to talk about the old times/old stories.

Book 40 something was the magnificent Dogs of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Here’s the blurb as I don’t know how else to explain it.

“Rex is a genetically engineered Bioform, a deadly weapon in a dirty war. He has the intelligence to carry out his orders and feedback implants to reward him when he does. All he wants to be is a Good Dog. And to do that he must do exactly what Master says and Master says he's got to kill a lot of enemies.

But who, exactly, are the enemies? What happens when Master is tried as a war criminal? What rights does the Geneva Convention grant weapons? Do Rex and his fellow Bioforms even have a right to exist? And what happens when Rex slips his leash?”

Even better than I was expecting from the blurb. Brilliantly written, you can’t not sympathize with Rex. He and his multiform team (Honey, Dragon and Bees) and their journey from war tools to... something else is gripping and emotional. One of the best of this year.

Also finished Dr Sleep by Stephen King, and the follow up to The Standing. Loved this, and thought it worked so well as a sequel, tying up some loose ends .