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?

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I agree with you about Lion, I read the book first and loved it. I read it the week after my dad passed away, who was also adopted and found his birth mother later in life, and it has really stuck with me.

@Tarahumara 11.22.63 remains the only Stephen King I have ever read but the others just don't appeal, but I would put this one in a top ten of the last few years,

I am on a roll now

2 The Hearts Invisible Furies by John Boyne
This was reviewed up thread, a gay man born in Ireland in 1945 and jumping seven years each part. Loved it.

10 Daisy Jones and the Six

I found the style this book was written in quite hard to follow at times but overall I did enjoy the book and the story was a good one

Thanks to the AIBU thread on Mills and Boom books, I gave one a whirl. Last read M&B books in my teens - result of raiding my Mum’s stash. Curious to see what the more recent offerings are like.

5. Marrying her Viking Enemy - Harper st. George
The title says it all really - girl hates the Danes but finds herself irresistibly drawn to a gorgeous warrior. Pure escapism and an entertaining read even though the ‘plot’ is a well-trodden one.

I used to have to add the new Mills and Boon books every month to the lending database when I worked in the library. It used to take me forever as i read the end of the books. Was very noticeable that they all went from millionaires to billionaires. Can i say it was my favourite day of the month

FiveGoMad, browsing the offerings on Amazon revealed a huge amount of millionaire/billionaire stories! The ‘Cinderella’ plot seems very popular!

I’m back to my usual reading pile and trying to decide between a fiction or non-fiction next.

bodily

I read the first line of your post as:

"Five go mad browsing the offerings on Amazon "

and thought - how very true - sometimes there is too much to resist.

I remember fondly the days of the great Betty Neels, one of M & B's most prolific authors. Her heroes were usually massively tall Dutch doctors, with complicated names (eg Professor Radinck Thoe Van Erckelens - I just looked that up at random but they're all very much like that), and the heroines are quiet, sensible and sturdy English nurses with huge appetites.

A lot of eating goes on. There's no naughtiness but generally a proposal of marriage involving a marriage of convenience.

I'm sorry to say that DH and I used to cry with laughter sometimes when I read them aloud.

I feel bad now. Sorry, Betty (but she must have made an absolute fortune)

1. The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley. Tiresome. Poor chic lit welded onto a locked room murder mystery, I finished it because I did want to know 'who dun it' but I should have just read the last few chapters and saved myself the bother!

3. Normal People by Sally Rooney.

All about the intense relationship between Connell and Marianne, from the end of high school through university; a time of growing up and experimentation. I really like Sally Rooney’s writing, she draws me into the characters (flawed personalities and not always likeable) and their story and her books feel more modern than most other books I read. Not perfect but I’m very interested to read what she writes next, to see her development as an author.

4. Taduno’s Song by Odafe Atogun.

This was a random pick from the library. A fable-type story set in modern day Nigeria. Simple but punchy and emotive, I’m still thinking about it now.

Hi. Just found this thread. I hope you all don't mind me joining.
Work colleagues bought be 100 books to read poster as I am an avid reader. Once you read one of the listed books you scratch it off. Perfect present for me.
At the moment I am reading The sound and the fury. I really want to enjoy it, but the writing is so hard to read. If any of you have read it, do you have any advice?
I read roughly a book every week and a half. I have been reading this book for a week now and I am only on page 55.
It would be great if I can scratch half of the books off this year!

I'm also a bit late to the party but would love to join in this year. Not sure I will be able to reach 50 but will give it my best shot!

So far I've finished one book - The Vegetarian by Han Kang.

On the go at the moment I have On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong and Names For the Sea by Sarah Moss. Very much enjoying both of them

I'd love to just go mad on Amazon and buy anything and everything.

I'm on Book 9 and have yet to buy one. And I'm going to try and keep going like that all year.

There are 3 I do want to buy in paperback though :

The Lady Glenconner book
The Megan Phelps book
The new Jackson Brodie

I otherwise have more than enough to keep going on with, can't justify it... sigh. 😩😭

I loved Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss and thought some parts of Night Waking were brilliant.
My books so far are:

1. Heroes and Villains by Angela Carter - I liked this, dystopian, dark and odd, set in a post-apocalyptic world where academics live in gated communities protected by soldiers and the rest of society are 'barbarians' who live in the forests.
2. Fingers in the Sparkle Jar by Chris Packham - this has been on my TBR pile for a while and I was looking forward to it but was slightly disappointed. Some of it was just too purple prose-y for me, but the bits where he didn't go overboard with adjectives were good. Not too keen on the imagined third person interjections.
3. All The Things We Never Said by Yasmin Rahman - book group choice. This is a YA book on the subject of teen suicide, some parts were moving but I felt the main plot device of a suicide pact website detracted from the issues the characters were facing.

I'm now reading Family Album by Penelope Lively, which is great so far. I love her children's books and read her novel 'Judgement Day' recently which I really liked.

@Idroppedthescrewinthetuna I read The Sound and the Fury for A-Level and I think the teacher gave us some kind of guide to accompany it as it's sometimes hard to know which section belongs to which narrator and what is actually going on. I really did end up enjoying it though but it did take quite a lot of work. I bet there's a lot of stuff available online to read with it. I'm having to do that at the moment with Crow by Ted Hughes as I am basically at nearly every poem.

Never read that one, Idropped. There are so many good books to read that I wouldn't persevere with one that wasn't rewarding me. I think in your shoes I would undercut the scratch system by just doing an x on ones I had attempted but not completed. At the end of the year, you can look back on honourable attempts as well as successes.

Book 4 was The Second Sleep, Robert Harris. The book opens on a clergyman riding his horse through a pre-industrial landscape, and the first impression is that we are in the past. It very quickly emerges that we are hundreds of years in the future. Our civilisation collapses in 2025 (start stockpiling tins) and the survivors cleave to older ways of living, including a central role for the Church of England. Our hero becomes intrigued by a quest to discover the past, but the powerful Church is determined to keep it buried.

It requires a hefty suspension of disbelief (I don't find it particularly plausible that the new version of society so closely mimics the past) but the author tackles the scenario with a great deal of relish and I found it rattled along very nicely, culminating in a very dramatic archaeological dig.

I read The Sound and the Fury as a student, it was one of our set texts. I remember finding it really hard going and just having to get through it!

I like the idea of recording honourable attempts. Haven't had to give up on any this year so far, but will bear this in mind!

5. Calmer, Easier, Happier Homework by Noel Janis-Norton

This is basically about techniques and tips to, as the title says, make it easier to get your children to do their homework.
My eldest in particular can be very challenging in this respect, so I’m hoping putting some of these techniques into place will be helpful.

6. Skeletons by Jane Fallon

Happily married Jen discovers a secret about her father in law, and the consequences of this are threatening to destroy her happy family life.
An enjoyable read.

7. The Wolf Gift by Anne Rice

Anne Rice does werewolves.
Unsurprisingly, the hero of this tale is a fine young man who spends a lot of time either tearing evil-doers from limb to limb or angsting about the morality of his situation.

@Kote, how did you find The Vegetarian?
I admit I struggled with it- very well written and disquieting but I can’t say I enjoyed it.

1. Lifespan- David Sinclair
2. The Van Apfel Girls are Gone - Felicity McLean

3. A Midnight Clear by William Wharton - recommended to me by a friend. I loved it. Set towards the end of WW2, a group of high IQ American soldiers are sent to recon a Chateau in the Ardennes valley. They realise their German counterparts are trying to communicate with them and face a dilemma as to how to proceed. I don’t pick up war novels ordinarily unless someone strongly recommends something but this was beautifully written, funny and poignant. All in all, heartbreaking. Think it was written in the 80s and the author had direct was experience.

4. Circe by Madeline Miller - took me a while to get into but then I was hooked. I found it so cleverly written and I felt the author thought carefully about every word she chose. Felt great empathy for the main players even though their situations are so particular.

Finished The Secret History - it was what you would expect from Donna Tartt, beautifully written, carefully plotted, emotive. Glad I reread it.

Am now reading The Sinai Tapestry by Whittemore. It is really different. The writing is quick and there is no reflection, fast. The author is not particularly concerned with his character's feelings or motivations, just imparting the facts of their lives and their actions. It is funny and interesting. It is the first in a series of 4, very old. DH has eulogised about for years - he read it when he was in his teens - so I'm glad I've got around to starting if. If if were published nowadays I think it would be classified as YA. Nevertheless, so far so fun, so I'll carry on with it. You need something lighter after Tartt I always find anyway.

SharnaPax I like Penelope Lively too - my favourites are The Photograph and Moon Tiger.

@JoeGargery Agreed! Found it quite disturbing and not a very easy read. If you like her style I would highly recommend Han Kang's other novel Human Acts. Again quite hard hitting but based on true events in South Korea.

4 The Immortalists Chloe Benjamin. The best book I have read in a long time. The story follows 4 siblings after they have visited a fortune teller as children, who tells each of them the date of their death The characters burst into life and their very different lives are described with insight and compassion. The family were Jewish and I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of what their faith heritage meant to each one of them. I was blinking back tears at the end which isn't like me at all. . My next book is completely different . Fierce, Bad Rabbits Clare Pollard.

I'm enjoying reading everyone's synopses, views, and thoughts!

2. Eve's Hollywood, by Eve Babitz: one of my final books of 2019 was Babitz' I Used to Be Charming, a long collection of her nonfiction published by the NYRB. I adored both it and Babitz, an LA native (about whom 'LA Woman' was reportedly written; yep, she and Jim Morrison were a thing, as were she and Harrison Ford.) who writes about the city, its people, and its cultures in a breezy, non-Didion manner. Eve's Hollywood was published in the early 1970s, I think, and has the same feeling, so much so that I found it a bit repetitive. However, her piece on surf culture and screening the classic surf film Endless Summer was wonderful. I also appreciate her stated, not-ashamed goal of becoming an 'adventuress'. Well done on that account, Eve!

On to Empire of the Wild, by wonderful Metis author Cherie Dimaline.