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?

73: The Soul of Kindness - Elizabeth Taylor

Years ago, when Virago began publishing all of Taylor's novels and she was 'rediscovered' (as she's kept on being ever since) a friend and I got very into her books - but for some strange reason we seem to have missed this one. I listened to the 'Backlisted' episode about it on a long car journey recently and was inspired to seek it out.

The 'soul of kindness' is beautiful, stately Flora, who's spent her whole life being worshipped and facilitated by others - her mother, her lifelong friend Meg, and later her housekeeper Mrs Lodge, are all pressured (whether willingly or not) into making sure Flora is kept happy.

Around Flora orbits a small cast of characters, including her harassed husband Richard, her hypochondriac mother, her writer friend Patrick - who's in thrall to a petulant boyfriend - and the hopeless Kit, Meg's brother, who's been under Flora's spell since he was a small boy. Now he can't settle and drifts under the pretence of trying to be an actor, while Meg - in a dreary office job - has to do the adulting for both of them. The only person who can see clearly how things stand is a blunt outsider who gets to know Kit, the unconventional painter Liz, who's never met Flora but sizes her up with impressive speed and accuracy.

I was drawn into this and ended up being gripped by it, although there's really no plot - but the interplay of characters is fascinating. It also reminded me very strongly of Barbara Pym - but a Pym novel through a sort of distorting looking-glass, with the undercurrent of mischievous humour replaced by something infinitely more acidic and despairing (I was interested to then find that Taylor and Pym knew each other and were friendly).
It won't be to all tastes but I'll definitely be going back to my Elizabeth Taylors now.

Iirc from On Writing Stephen King said he was reluctant to even publish Pet Semetary because he thought the idea too horrible with the death and then the adult’s desperation and grief, but needed to fulfil a contract so took it out of his drawer and sent it in. I read it as a teenager and enjoyed it but I wouldn’t want to read it again though now I don’t think (got too soft)

Cote
Stitches has it - and not only the part where Gage dies, but the aftermath, watching the dad break down and lose his mind. And wondering what you would do in that situation, if you had access to your own pet semetary. What I didn’t realise the first time I read it was how closely it was based on King’s own life. He lived in a similar small town, temporarily, in a similar house next to a similar busy trucking road, with a “pet semetary” in the woods (albeit not seeming to have any supernatural powers). He lost a cat to a truck, and nearly his own son too. In the foreword he describes “Pet Semetary” as a “what if?” book, and it’s not surprising that of all his books, it’s the one he considers the most frightening.

Satsuki I also read it as a teenager and didn’t find it too awful, but knew I would really struggle with it after having kids. I’ve had to wait until my kids were much older than the kids in the book to re-read it and even then it was hard! The newest film on the other hand, has so much less impact as they don’t focus anywhere near as much on the emotions behind the actions.

39. Blackberry Wine by Joanne Harris

I bought this from the charity shop by mistake, wrongly thinking it was the third Chocolat novel. It is partially set in Lasquenet, but is not part of that series. Jay is a writer struggling for inspiration, having written one successful novel some years ago, and not much else since. Dissatisfied with life he makes a spur of the moment decision to buy a farm Chateau in France. Jay is haunted by his friendship years back with Joe, an old neighbour of his grandparents, whose strange home-brewed wine that Jay still drinks has some unusual effects.

This was very mediocre. The plot zips between present day France and 1970s Yorkshire but neither setting had any real drive, and there was then a bit of a rush to tie up loose ends.

Happily Peaches for Monsieur Le Curé, the book I thought I had bought, is on the Kindle monthly deal.

Pet Sematary was my first ever King when I was about 12/13 and is the one that has stayed with me the most. I remember sleeping with the light on convinced Gage was coming to get me. I think it is one of his most memorable works. The idea of would you bring a loved one back even if they weren't quite the same is fascinating.

I don't like Pet Sematary. I find it mawkish and silly, which detracts from the fact that it should be sad. Zombie Gage is cartoonish and not sad or scary at all.

Am cross because Feral is 99p today and I literally ordered it as a book from Amazon yesterday, for dp for Christmas!

60. Sleeping on Jupiter – Anuradha Roy

An ambitious novel, really well written but imo there were too many characters and the ending felt rushed. Nomi returns to the temple town of Jarmuli, where she lived as a child before being adopted and moving to Norway, in an attempt to reconcile herself to the abuse she suffered in a religious community there, and the consequences of her own choices.

This was an interesting story in itself, but the book is also about three elderly women pilgrims who encounter Nomi on the train, Nomi's assistant who is battling his own demons, and the troubles faced by one of the temple guides in Jarmuli. The writer connects all the stories admirably; this was long listed for The Booker some years ago and it is easy to see why. The book sets out to reveal the appalling way that women are treated and the hypocrisy of Indian society which ruthlessly polices the suitability of women’s clothing while turning a blind eye to blatant and horrific child abuse. Although it succeeds in this respect, I felt some of the minor characters detracted a little from Nomi’s story and at times I was rushing through the other sections, impatient to get back to her. I enjoy Anuradha Roy’s writing very much, but I wouldn't rate this as highly as All the Lives We Never Lived.

I am not sure I feel strong enough for The Cat Chronicles! I read a book at school when I was about 11, about a woman accused of being a witch, and in the end a cat saves a baby from drowning by avoiding getting its feet wet, and I cried and cried! I hope the title will come back to me!

55. Endless Night by Cassandra Claire and Sarah Rees Brennan. I'm a Brennan fan so I enjoyed this novella, set in the Shadowhunters universe (I quite liked the super trashy TV show too!), but doubt it would have widespread appeal.

56. Curtain Call by Anthony Quinn. I noticed this recommended a week or two ago, by Remus and others, and it came through quickly on Overdrive! I enjoyed this 1930s set murder mystery/romance, it was sad in parts but I found the ending satisfying and the historical setting convincing (but I like a 1930s murder mystery!). Did someone say his other books are not as good though?

68. The Confession Jessie Burton. I thought the plot for this sounded great so picked it up despite not loving The Muse. A young woman in the 1980s Elise begins a passionate love affair with an older, illusive author Connie. This is paralleled with Elsie’s daughter Rose in 2017 trying to find out why her mother disappeared shortly after she was born and what the now elderly Connie May have had to do with it. This was unsatisfactory to start with. Mainly because Elsie and Rose are such whingers- I just wanted to shake them both. I also felt particularly with Rose that the author used the character to show case her many judgements of other people’s lives. I’m also sick to death of supposedly strong female characters being with sappy men at the start of books.

Burton definitely enjoys describing art and literature in her novels and this isn’t really something I get on with very well.

Having said all that I enjoyed the final third of the novel very much - and some decisions made at the end of the book were very uncliched and it saved it for me.

213. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres

Finally finished it! Found it quite a slog. There were funny bits and bits I enjoyed, but too many chapters about politics and what was going on with the war that I found really boring. The ending left me with too many questions. Not one I will want to read again, sorry to all those who love it! At least I can cross it off my ‘books I feel I should have read’ list now.

125. Before the Coffee Gets Cold, by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Sit in a special seat in this Tokyo coffee-house (although you'll have to wait for the resident ghost to take a toilet break) and you can go back in time.

I liked the concept behind this. It can be quite hard to work out the literary merits of a novel in translation, but my impression is that the author was making unsubtle attempts at a tearjerker. It didn't move me but I did like the different cultural perspective.

126. Station Eleven, by Emily St John Mandel
Desdamona reviewed this book well and I understand her reservations, but I still fell into the camp of loving it. I found it pleasurably atmospheric and rather beautiful (although come the apocalypse, I think we'll all spend a lot more time brewing alcohol than is depicted here. I know what I'll be doing!) I did like the way it moved backwards and forwards between the pre-apocalypse past and the present, partly because of the contrast and partly because it seemed a credible echo of the thought patterns of a survivor, and it showed what survived and what was disrupted. A thumbs up from me.

127. The Scholar, Dervla McTiernan
Galway-set police procedural. Fine as these things go, but part of it is set in a university research centre. It's an area I know something about, and it all seems very unlikely to me. I studied in a sister university, and I can't see them letting an undergrad do a 4-year course in 2 years. Irish universities aren't set up to be so flexible about the number of credits you can take at any one time. And a very young person with limited formal training solving a particular research challenge and putting the solution in their PhD proposal ? Brilliance isn't enough - you need time to learn information, engage with existing research, learn technical methods, use trial and error, and so much more. I realize I'm being a bit ridiculous by chuntering away about university regulations and judging it on something that it doesn't set out to be, but nah, couldn't suspend disbelief.

70. Grendel - John Gardner (1971)

Retelling of the Beowulf legend from the perspective of man-eating monster Grendel. This is a very strange, philosophical novel in which Grendel's emotional development is traced via the ideas of Sartre... Central is the figure of the Shaper (ie bard) and the question of whether the structuring myths we create have any real validity. Short but intense and beautifully written, the sort of thing you'd have to read at least twice to get half the meaning - and impossible to give a rating out of five!

*71. The Elements of Eloquence - Mark Forsyth
*
Exploration of literary figures of speech by the author of the Etymologicon. More technical and less amusing than his other books (although probably makes the subject as entertaining as it could be). It was a mistake to listen on Audible as it would have been easier to grasp the specifics in print, I think.

79. The Sentence Is Death , Anthony Horowitz. These books are whimsically meta but not in a taxing way. The concept is that Anthony Howrowitz puts himself in these books as a rather incompetent author and would be sleuth working alongside a detective who wants to have books written about him. There are references to Foyles war and real books and people. He even keeps this up by writing acknowledegements about fictional and real people.

As I said, this doesn't tax the brain. But he could never make it into a TV series. because then he would have to play himself, playing a version of himself in something fictional...or someone would have to play 'the famous author Anthony Horowitz' whilst not being the famous author Anthony Horowitz.

I couldn't decide if he was having a dig at JK Rowling in a bit about an established author who writes shit potboilers under a pseudonym. But then I decided that Harry Potter wasn't a serious literary work.

As for the actual whodunit, it's OK. I did work it out but I enjoyed the clues and red herrings scattered about. It's a silly conclusion in many ways. But the book is quite silly, so it works just fine.

Terpsichore you’ve piqued my interest - have ordered that and another Taylor from the library.

Oh good, Alias - what's the other one?

I read Pet Sematary in my teens and can't say I found any part of it sad. It seems my teenage self was even more immune to sentimentality in books than I am now

Terpsichore It’s Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont

Smoke Gets in your Eyes is on Daily Deal today. Recommend.

I have Mrs Palfrey lined up to read at some point soon. Just need to work my way through the stack by my bed first.

And must stop being distracted, most recently by my first (the first!) Jack Reacher novel which I picked up in a holiday cottage over half term.

111 Killing Floor by Lee Child
Terrific fun with a great plot and set pieces. I will certainly read more of these.

61. The Falconer - Dana Czapnik

Coming of age tale set in 90's New York and billed as a feminist Catcher in the Rye. I think I said a few threads back that I was too old and jaded to consider re-visiting Catcher in the Rye but I actually quite enjoyed this.

I experienced compassion spiked with a little irritation as 17 year old Lucy, a talented basketball player tries to establish herself in a world where beauty and popularity reign supreme. I love books about New York and this really sets the scene vividly. Reading this also made me want to read philosophy again, something I probably haven't done since I was 17 myself which I suppose is no bad thing.

Another list on the BBC today :

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/494P41NCbVYHlY319VwGbxp/explore-the-list-of-100-novels-that-shaped-our-world

I've read 49 from that list (although in physical books it's obviously more because things like all of the Discworld novels only count as one) and have started but given up on around ten more.

Long term lurker here. I am so impressed by how much you all read. I have read 60 books this year so far. My favourite was a hit on here The Salt Path. Thank you for the recommendations. I haven’t read much in the past week but hope to get back into it tonight. I was thinking of getting Netflix but feel it would be my downfall. I also work full time and have a family and aging parents who are in reasonably good health. Maybe I will start the 50 book challenge here next January. Thank you all. These threads are very inspirational.

Two short enough books that I bought very cheap on Amazon

92. Death by Honeymoon by Jaden Skye
    Groom is murdered on honeymoon. Bride investigates despite everyone insisting it was an accident. Not great. Simplistic plot. Poorly written hard-to-believe characters. Clunky writing.

93. Next Door (Chloe Fine#1) by Blake Pierce
    Worse. FBI agent in training handles a case where 1) her identical twin sister is the prime suspect and 2) it becomes enmeshed with the murder of her mother years previously
    Give me a break. Like they'd let a trainee be involved to the degree she was involved anyway, never mind when points 1&2 above are included. So weak. She bursts into the interview room and says "Tell us what you did. Admit to it, you twisted bitch!
    Yeah, I don't think so. Wasn't worth the 99p