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?

@milliefiori
Looking back at what I read last year, the other books I gave five stars to were:
Here I am by Jonathan Safran Foer (brilliant ambitious novel about what it is to be Jewish. I’d be interested to know what Jewish people who’ve read it think of it).
Devil’s Day by Andrew Michael Hurley (he writes literary folk horror, Wicker Man-ish - his third novel is just out - I want to read it)
Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (short stories - about being American and black - darkly funny and very clever - brand new writer- can’t wait to read more by him)
Americanah by Chimanda Ngozie Adichie
The Trip to Echo Spring - Why Writers Drink by Olivia Laing (fascinating non-fiction about Ernest Hemingway and other alcoholic writers)
Lanny by Max Porter (my absolute favourite from last year - wish it had made the Booker shortlist)
Beloved (reread) and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
That list has more male authors, but generally my favourites are female writers. I’m a massive Ali Smith fan, and have recently got into Nicola Barker. I like arty farty you see, but I don’t get on with Eimear McBride too well or Lucy Ellman (I finished Ducks, Newburyport, but Lordy lord, I got bored).
Best ever is Jane Austen, of course.
What were your five starrers last year?
I write too, but I read so many brilliant authors it puts me off!!

Remus, I tried to read an early Val McDermid crime novel and only managed a couple of chapters; it was so poor. In fact it was hard to believe anyone had agreed to publish it. Something to do with an art theft as far as I can remember.

Having liked her in interviews, and especially on Christmas University Challenge, I gave her later crime novels a go and enjoyed them. The Karen Pirie series, starting with The Distant Echo, is very readable.

It's been a slowish start to the year reading wise but I have a quiet weekend coming up so plan on reading lots. But the first book was a standout and I expect will make it onto my end of year list.

1 Guest House for Young Widows by Azadeh Moaveni

This is the story of thirteen women from Europe, the Middle East and North Africa who found themselves, either by accident or design, in ISIS-occupied Syria and Iraq. Some went with husbands, some went to find husbands, and some were caught up in the fighting by accident. Shamima Begum’s story is one of them, and although it’s the most familiar it’s by no means unique. The book is based on extensive interviews and research, and interweaves the women’s stories over a period beginning with the Arab Spring until very recently with more factual, journalistic accounts of the timelines and events. I was gripped by this – Moaveni provides what I thought was a balanced and thoughtful examination of why women (although she would say the reasons are not unique to women) make decisions that we may find incomprehensible, and is clear-sighted about their expectations, aspirations and hopes, as well as the disappointments they faced. She sets the personal decisions firmly in the broader geo-political context, and gives a lot of time to thinking about the socio-economic factors that drive what we see as radicalisation, as well as reflecting on why it doesn’t seem to work and the role that personal responsibility as well as institutional failures played in driving people to Syria in search of something they couldn’t find at home. This was such a good book to start the year’s reading with – well written, well researched, and with real humanity and passion. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

2 Little Women by Louisa Alcott

I don’t expect the plot of Little Women needs much recapping. I was inspired to go back to this after watching the film, which is largely true to the original (although the book has a strictly linear timeline that the film does not). I loved this book as a child and a teenager and must have read it at least a dozen times, which made the reread comfortingly familiar. Nonetheless, I realised how much I missed or didn't fully understand when I was younger, particularly in terms of the nuances of the language, which is rather beautiful.

HighlandCoo - this one has a female protagonist who dresses for a party with a rockstar in 'tight terracotta leggings' at which point I surrendered to my better judgement and reclaimed my 99p from Amazon. Her later books may well be works of genius, but I will never know.

1. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (Gail Honeyman) - 4/5
2. Good Samaritans (Will Carver) - 3.5/5

1. Woman on the Edge (Samantha M. Bailey)

I liked this book. Started with a bang, well paced, constant action throughout. Easy, quick read.

Morgan is waiting on the platform for her train home when a woman shoves her baby at her, tells her to keep the baby safe and then jumps in front of an oncoming train. Morgan becomes a person of interest in the police investigation and tries to find out her connection to the woman and the baby to clear her name.

I’d give it 4/5 just because I figured out who the villain was fairly early on and I thought the ending was a bit blah.

1. Pet Semetary by Stephen King (2/5)
2. The Outsider by Albert Camus (5/5)
3. Somebody's Mother, Somebody's Daughter by Carol Ann Lee(3/5)

4. Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor. This is the first book in the Chronicles of St Mary's series about a history department who can time travel as they lurch from mishap to disaster. I love time travel books and really enjoyed this one, although it could have stood to be a little shorter and I tend to like my science fiction a little heavier on the science. (4/5)

Just finished book 2 - feel like a slow-coach compared to many here but I do have another one on the go on audio, one reading with/to DC1, and another couple I’ve started...

Anyway!

1. Festive Spirits - Kate Atkinson

2. Shopaholic’s Christmas - Sophie Kinsella

Now, I LOVE a bit of fluff. So this was 5/5 satisfying, sparklingly light and I did indeed laugh out loud at points. But I love the character in this series, so your mileage may vary. If you’re familiar with the Shopaholic books it’s pretty self explanatory from title alone. If not ... endearingly kooky and consumerist Becky agrees to host her family Christmas, despite not having a practical bone in her body and prone to grand schemes and flights of fancy. Cast of eccentric and equally kooky family and friends. Hilarity ensues.

Honestly, it was a lot of fun. January needs fun!

In the last 3 hours I've read :

1. Lincoln In The Bardo by George Saunders

It was amazing, I loved it. Once you get used to the strangeness of the format it is beautifully written and heartbreaking. Didn't quite cry but was misty eyed several times.

Wonderful.

1. The Secretary by Renee Knight

Christine is a very loyal PA who devoted her whole life to her boss, and things turn nasty when that loyalty isn’t reciprocated. This started well, but there’s a court case section in the middle that drags a bit, the ending is meh, and the book never really explains just why Christine effectively gives up her life for her job. An ok read but not a keeper!

1. Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West

I read this because it was mentioned in Confessions of a Bookseller as one of that author’s favourite books. It is apparently a classic of American literature according to some reviews. Goodness knows why. Miss Lonelyhearts is a man who writes the advice column for a newspaper during the Depression. This job makes him depressed so he goes out and gets drunk a lot and has sex with some random women. That’s pretty much it. I didn’t feel any connection with the main character and there’s never any sense of what he’s really feeling - it’s just ‘he did this’ then ‘he did that’. It is very short otherwise I probably would have given up on it.

Greetings all!

Currently reading "Travelers in the Third Reich" which I got from DD3 for Christmas. Really good, very sobering read.

Next up -
The Miniaturist, by Jessie Burton
Austerlitz, by W.G. Sebold

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit always happy to see a bit of Lincoln appreciation!

At the risk of being hounded off the thread the utterly divisive Never let me go is on Kindle Daily deals today. I really enjoyed it
Scuttles off...

4. Marie Antoinette: A Life from Beginning to End - Hourly History Also Meh. These Hourly Histories are not really worth an hour of our reading lives, far too shallow and lack of source material or references. Good for giving a general overview, but anyone with a genuine interest in the subject would do better with a more thoroughly researched work.

1. Easily Distracted by Steve Coogan

Trouble is that I judge all comedian autobiographies by Frank Skinner's, which is brilliant (thoroughly recommended btw). Which is ironic as Frank is one of the comedians SC compares himself with. I didn't like the structure of this or the writing - it's done in two halves with the first being contemporary (Philomena, Trip etc) and the second childhood to success. Not unusual for a celeb biog but somehow it just didn't work - there was no reason to care about the contemporary stuff until I knew the previous story, but I'd forgotten it by the time I read it. Odd, staccato writing style with very short paragraphs. Keeps his current private life absolutely under wraps which is his right but means it's all about his parents, who are of less interest than he thinks to other people (Frank Skinner did this better, he was able to write his parents as fallible people whom he loved desperately, SC is less skilled at this). I'm spending ages on celeb fluff but i find books that don't work brilliantly interesting. I still finished it...

Pepe, Guest House for Young Widows sounds fascinating, have added it to my TBR list

3. Airhead, Emily Maitllis

Very readable and interesting account of how news gets made - by the BBC at least. This is a collection of short chapters, each focussing on a particular interview or story that Emily has covered (from Simon Cowell to Bill Clinton via the Dalai Lama), giving some of the context on the decisions that were made on how to cover it, what angle to take, what to put in and what to leave out. Maitlis is funny, clever, thoughtful and compassionate, and she writes well (I'm not sure I can forgive her for being friends with Piers Morgan though if I am honest), which makes this account both easy and fun to read. It's thought-provoking too, especially in the context of the recent election and subsequent BBC-bashing: you get an insight into how carefully the team plan each interview, the reasons why they might not ask a question even though they REALLY want to, the ways in which an interview can go wrong. I also have renewed respect for how hard journalists and their teams work - lots of long flights, nights of no sleep, and the eternal working mum dilemma of a really important work crisis rearing its head on the day when your child really needs you to be there for a thing. There are a couple of slightly duff notes where the personal and professional balance isn't quite right (NOT the chapter about her experiences of stalking, which is personal and moving - I'm looking more at the chapter about Grenfell), but interestingly she identifies this herself, asking how much of themselves journalists should bring to a story. Definitely an interesting read.

1. Francis Plug: How To Be A Public Author - Paul Ewen

As recommended by the Backlisted podcast, a ludicrous and very funny read. I'm not that into outright comic fiction but really enjoyed this, in which the eponymous hero drunkenly gatecrashes London literary events in a mission to get Booker Prize-winning authors to sign books for him while examining the phenomenon of the modern celebrity author. If you're a fan of A Confederacy Of Dunces I'm pretty sure you'll love this.

Keith, it is fab. I hope you like it as much as I did. Also, glad you enjoyed the Emily Maitlis book. I’ve bought it for DD’s birthday but hope to borrow it very shortly.

PermanentTemporary I’m also fond of a comedian’s autobiography, and I agree that, out of all the ones I’ve read, Frank Skinner’s is by far the best.

@Nuffaluff

Thank you for those. I fancy Friday Black and already have Echo Springs and Americanah.

My favourites last year were

1. Educated by Tara Westover - about working on her Mormon father's scrapyard in lieu of getting home educated, and ending up with a degree from cambridge. Riveted by that one. Memoir with a lot of fictional narrative shaping.

1. The Little Red Chairs by Edna O'Brian. A 'What if?' novel based on the truth that the war criminal Radovan Karadzic hid in plain sight for years, working very successfully as a faith healer! She moved his healing clinic from Belgrade to Ireland for the novel. Grim but also beautiful and riveting.

1. Handmaid's Tale - Atwood. Ashamed to say I'd not yet read it, so caught up and loved it.

1. Notes made While Falling a book of essays by Jenn Ashworth loosely centred around PTSD following harrowing childbirth. It's beautifully written and I love the essay form.

1. Station Eleven Emily St John Mandel - Futuristic dystopia in which the majority of mankind dies from the flu and those left live in shanty towns in mall forecourts and airports (I never worked out why they didn't stay in houses) told through the viewpoint of a travelling player who tours Shakespeare plays by horse and cart with an orchestra. Beautifully written and fluid as it flits from pre-flu epidemic to post.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit - Lincoln in the Bardo in three hours? Wow! It took me weeks to plough through that. I loved it but I couldn't read it quickly and I am a great fan of Saunders' work.

Hi All, jumping in a little late to this thread. In latter years I've often been a lurker, hoping to pick up some inspiration, but thought I might join in this year.

1. Subtle Knife, Phillip Pullman.
2. Lies Lies Lies, Adele Parks 3/5.

Wanting something light and easy to read to help me through a cold I picked this up on an offer. While it met the brief, by the end I was reading to get it finished tbh. The book basically hinges on multiple people misreading situations and, rather than communicating, deciding an extreme course of reaction is more reasonable. There were also a few glaring inconsistencies like the character wearing trousers one page and a "smoothing down the skirt of her dress" the next and a Jaguar people carrier, which I struggle to forgive. It's also a surprisingly bleak read, starting with both alcoholism and infertility struggles and moving onto other dark topics (no spoilers!)

@milliefiori

I didn't think it was dense at all, little vignettes and quotes like a play. I was addicted couldn't stop page turning.

I just had to pause to keep reminding myself who was speaking - Oh that's the ex-priest etc, as their voices weren't always as differentiated as I'd have liked. Quite a few were pompous ramblers. But I did love it.

Oh I loved how they all had their own voice! I was doing their voices in my head.

Ha @toomuchsplother so funny! You're playing a risky game mentioning Never Let Me Go - which I also liked. I think we were the only two though. Let's not go there again or Cote will come and tell us off