50 Book Challenge 2020 Part One

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the first thread of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2020, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

Who's in for this year?

Sployher. Will look out for them & add to wish list!

2 Festive Spirits - Kate Atkinson

Collection of three short stories so very quick read. They were okay, but very slight. I was disappointed by Big Sky last year despite being a Kate Atkinson fan, but very much enjoyed Transcription, which I read just before Xmas.

Ghost Wall was one of my top three books for 2019. Night Waking...was not.

1. Trust Exercise, by Susan Choi : this book won the National Book Award in the US. To discuss the plot specifically would require spoilers, but broadly, it focuses on the students and faculty in a performing arts high school’s theatre program, specifically the power and sexual dynamics at play. These dynamics are further complicated when an English theatre group visits. Structurally, the novel is a lopsided triptych, each section titled ‘Trust Exercise’ and shorter than the previous one. The second section plays throughout with POV, shifting from first to third often, sometimes in the same sentence.

Choi treats this novel as a formal exercise in many ways, and this treatment only adds to the ways in which she complicates a study of sex and truth and power and desire. It’s at times uneasy reading; I’m very glad I read it.

@VanderlyleGeek - that's a lovely summary of Trust Exercise. You've made me want to read it.

I have just counted and I have 20 books on my to be read pile so I am going to resist buying any more until that is down to single figures!

@estherfrewen Transcription is my favourite Kate Atkinson too. I did pick up Festive Spirits in Waterstones but wasn't sold on it... currently reading A God In Ruins which, so far, isn't quite Transcription but on par with Life After Life & worth a punt if you enjoy her writing.

vanderlyle I really want to read that ‘Trust Exercise’ book now. It sounds just my kind of thing.

Hi @BayHorse - yes wouldn’t bother with Festive Spirits. I loved Life after Life - my favourite Kate Atkinson

toomuchsplother I unsubscribed from daily deals emails to stop me doing this - just when I think I’m out they pull me back in - but thanks for Ghost Wall I’ve been waiting for it

I've got Life after Life on my TBR pile, looking forward to it now, after those comments. The only book I've read of hers is Case Histories.

1. One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexandra Solzhenitsyn. A great book to start the year with this tells of one prisoner serving 10 years in the Gulag and how he gets through a particular day. This was as bleak and cold as you would expect but as with the best prison stories there was also comedy, kindness and hope. The intricacies of how one might survive on so little and how important your few positions and gang members become were fascinating as was the unnecessary ways the guards make life worse for these prisoners. It’s very short if you are looking for something to ease you into Russian literature and I’d really recommend it (although maybe in warmer months!).

I'm now onto book 3, which is Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens.

Last year I just read trash so am (like others) trying to break it up. I was close to giving up on this, as the first 100 pages are really hard work, but I'm about 180 in and am getting into it.

palegreenstars, I absolutely loved One Day in the Life.... It was one of my highlights of 2018 and I was planning a re-read soon. It really is extraordinary and such a visceral and thought provoking read.

millie and Nuff, I do hope you’ll read Trust Exercise : often uncomfortable but worth it.

I really enjoyed many selections on the National Book Awards’ long list, particularly Julia Phillips’ Disappearing Earth, a novel of linked short stories about the lives of girls and women who live in Kamchatka; Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Fleishman Is in Trouble ; and Collin Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys.

1. Respectable: Crossing the Class Divide by Lynsey Hanley

One of my book token purchases, not a particularly easy or sparkling read, but definitely interesting. It's a bit of a funny mix of autobiography and sociology, and tbh I thought the former worked better. It's great to hear someone talking explicitly about class, and what social mobility means in practice. She's a similar age to me and a lot of her experiences were very familiar (though fortunately for me my parents had already done some of the class-shifting as both went to grammar school).

1. The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite

I needed some easy reading after that one, & this has been on my wish-list for a while. It's a sweet Regency f/f romance with a feminist slant.

Lucy Muchelney has grown up assisting her father with his work in astronomy, taking on more and more of the mathematics as he ages. Catherine, Countess of Moth has acted as wife and most diligent supporter - particularly financially - of her husband's scientific projects. Now Lucy's father has died, and Catherine is a widow. Lucy's brother wants to marry her off - and to sell their father's telescopes & equipment, while the Polite Science society wants Catherine to direct her fortune their way, but certainly doesn't want to contemplate taking any women into membership. This did a good job of feeling accurate to the period, with a good romance and satisfying ending. I'll definitely read the sequel when it comes along.

1. Why Mummy doesn't give a fuck by Gill Sims

Third in the Why Mummy series, and just as funny and spot-on as the others (with a few weepy moments along the way). Ellen's children are now teenagers, her career is doing nicely, but her marriage, not so much.

One of the joys of these books I reckon (much like Bridget Jones I guess, though I never really empathised with her so much) is that Ellen has all the problems that the rest of us do, and we get to feel that actually, we're doing a better job than she is of coping with them.

Given that, this was the best of the three for me, as a not-long-divorced mother of a teenager with delinquent pets, elderly parents, and a house that could definitely do with some tlc. (MN gets a few side mentions, including a parking thread - with diagrams.)

Just finished 2. Whose Story Is This?: Old Conflicts, New Chapters: Essays at the Intersection - Rebecca Solnit

A good collection of short essays on a variety of mainly feminist subjects including the #metoo movement, the fact that most towns and cities have roads/places almost exclusively named after men and some thoughts on the climate change protests. Really very well written and intellectually stimulating content from the writer who brought the concept of mansplaining to the wider world.

Now on to The Offing and am still reading Beware of Pity on my Kindle, which is very good indeed. I'm really enjoying the thread and have already got some good things to add to my enormous TBR list including Conviction and Trust Exercise.

1. Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr

A children’s classic that somehow bypassed me when I was a child! Marianne has an unspecified illness which means she has to stay in bed for weeks on end. She amuses herself by drawing but then discovers her drawings come to life in her dreams. I think I would have found this quite disturbing as a child but found it intriguing as an adult.

1. Literary Landscapes by John Sutherland

A collection of short essays about various books and the (real) places they’re set. I was really looking forward to this but each essay is to short to really convey anything much about either the book or the place. I did add a few books to my wishlist though!

Hi! Just stumbled on this thread and very interested to get some new book recommendations! I'm using the 'Bookly' app to track my reading this year. When I have time to spare (ie on holiday) I can easily plough through a book a day but have been too easily distracted by social media, Mumsnet etc recently so am keen to read more this year.

@ChessieFL interested in Literary Landscaoes - John Sutherland was actually my tutor at university but haven't seen much from him recently!

Number 1 book for me this year was I am I am I am by Maggie O Farrell. An interesting memoir told in short chapters each relating to a potential near death experience. Some of the subject matter (miscarriage) touched me personally and I found it a thought provoking read overall.

Whippet will be really interested to see what you make of The Offing

chessie I loved Marianne Dreams - the film they made of it is odd and disturbing too but one I rewatched a lot - I think it is called Paper House.

palegreenstars good review of One Day. So bleak but offers so many quiet lessons in how to live.

Early start tomorrow so I should be sleeping, but I can't put The Handmaid's Tale down

Another big fan of both Life After Life and Marianne Dreams here

I've got Transcription on TBR but I didn't realise the new Jackson Brodie was out so I'm thrilled about that.

Still sitting on my hands to be good and stick with my frankly huge TBR pile (at least 50) and not buy

But it's soo hard (sob) 😭😂

@Chrissysouth

I didn’t enjoy The Rosie Effect anywhere near as much as The Rosie Project. Which I did enjoy a lot.

My main feeling about The Rosie Effect was irritation.
Don unwittingly makes some pretty serious mistakes with potentially disastrous consequences, and the whole thing gets more and more out of control.
But not in a funny way.
More of a WTF is Don doing? Why are his so called friends encouraging his outrageous and almost certainly doomed attempts to solve this? You’d almost think they wanted to see Don behind bars, or screwing things up so badly that Rosie leaves him!
And there’s not much of Rosie in The Rosie Effect.
Disappointing, as the developing Rosie - Don relationship was one of the things I liked best about The Rosie Project.

So, basically, not one I’d recommend.

@StitchesInTime thank you for your reply, I think I'll give it a miss, atleast for now.

1. Don’t stop me now - Vassos Alexander It’s basically a book about why he likes running. I love running so I liked it but there was a bit of technical training language which might make it a bit tedious for a non runner.