26-ish books in 2020

[drspouse]

A thread for those too busy or otherwise not able to aim for 50 books in a year!
I'm aiming for 12 from my shelves and 12 from a reading challenge

thebrokenspinedotnet.wordpress.com/2019/12/14/reading-classic-books-challenge/

There are loads of reading challenges here too

www.girlxoxo.com/the-master-list-of-2020-reading-challenges/

We are very laid back here, join any time, I imagine this thread will be open till Dec as it doesn't move too fast!

Welcome Charley50.

1. Who Am I, Again? - Lenny Henry. Absolutely loved this, looking forward to further memoirs as this only goes up to the Tiswas years.

1. Afternoons with the Blinds Drawn - Brett Anderson out of Suede. Cheer the fuck up, man.

1. To Throw Away Unopened - Viv Albertine. I loved this and found it hard to finish at the same time. Reflections on your parents' death and the rawness of your upbringing are never going to be an easy read. Lots of her feelings about relationships with/antipathy towards men and the joy and pain of solitude I can identify with though!

1. Blood Orange - Harriet Tyce. Really enjoyable, whizzed through this pretty quickly for me. Enjoyed the barrister setting and was hooked until the end.

Welcome to the thread @Charley50

I'm already picking up some good recommendations from this thread to add to the ever increasing tbr pile!

6. Exceeding My Brief - Barbara Hosking
Another memoir. This one of an ordinary woman who lived an extraordinary life. From Cornish working class school girl to senior civil servant, this was readable, warm and fascinating. Would recommend it.

5. Normal people by Sally Rooney - I enjoyed it more than conversations with friends.
6. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce. This is an absolutely lovely book...I properly sobbed but it has such a warmth to it - it very much reminded me of A Man Called Ove, which is one of my favourites of recent times.
My next book will be my book club read - unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver. It looks quite hefty.

Well I thought I was doing pretty well on the 50 book thing but then I realised it was already March . How time flies.

So far I have read:
'1947' by Elisabeth Åsbrink
'Travelers in the Third Reich' by Julia Boyd
and 'Bringing Up Bébé' by Pamela Druckerman (very thought provoking, actually)

Next in mind are:
'The Miniaturist' by Jessie Burton
'Austerlitz' by W.G. Sebold

Don’t want to complain about getting work but it means all my reading is spent on that! Just boshed through A Girl In 3 Parts (coming of age novel set in Australia) and If I Had Your Face (really interesting multi narrative Korean novel) which will both published in April, brings my total up to 13 so far

Am now reading for pleasure A Fist or a Heart, first novel of Kristin Eiriksdottir to be translated into English, which an Icelandic friend bought for me (she used to work in publishing and has introduced me to so many amazing Icelandic authors over the years), half way through and it is dark and beautiful and poetic and written in a very non traditional manner

I haven’t posted since January when I had read two books.
I’ve now got another seven to add.

A Study in Scarlet - Arthur Conan Doyle.
Dream master - Teresa Breslin
The Boy Between - Susan Stairs
The Vicarage Children - Noel Streatfeild
The Diary of a Tudor Boy Spy - a National Trust book
The Town in Bloom - Dodie Smith
A Year Without Autumn - Liz Kessler

The Noel Streatfeild and Dodie Smith books came about because there are a couple of children’s authors I loved but never realised had written for adults. (I have I capture the Castle but yet to read it). L.M Montgomery is another one. I thought if I’d adored the children’s books so much, I should give the adult fiction from them a go. It’s working out well. Enjoying the books a great deal.
Dream master and A Year Without Autumn are books for young teens. Part of my mission to try and engage my 11 yo Dd more with reading. Dream master was odd, although she enjoyed it. Autumn was excellent. She hasn’t read it yet, and I am trying to persuade her because I think she’d love it.
The Boy Between I picked off the swap shelf in our village hall. Really, really enjoyed it, trying to work out the links between the characters.

Takes my total to 9 for this year. Not bad.

A thought I have been pondering.
I don’t count the books I read to my kids. If I did, I could add:

2 of the Faraway Tree series
Gobbolino the Witches Cat (read to 6yo Dd)

The Grey King (No. 4 in The Dark is Rising Chronicles by Susan Cooper)
Beezus and Ramona
My Family and Other Animals
all read to Dd1 aged 11).

I read to them both every night. So why don’t I feel like these books really count??!

Totally up to you whether you make them count @babybythesea I personally do count the novels I read to my DC - Harry Potter is a tome and half!!!

I have no idea why it feels like I’m cheating if I include them. It’s
Not like there’s a massive cash prize waiting! I just can’t work out why it ‘feels wrong’. Maybe because the Faraway Tree is a bit lightweight and if I can’t include the books I read to one child, maybe I should treat them both the same!! Maybe because I’m not reading them ‘for me’. Maybe because they are all books I know well so I feel it shouldn’t count. I don’t know, just wondered if anyone else feels similar or if I’m just weird I my own way!

I have rediscovered reading after promising myself to read the book club books - last year I was not very successful! So since Christmas I have read:
The night circus- Erin Morgenstern
The guilty one - Lisa Ballantyne
When we believed in mermaids - Barbara O’Neal
Where the Crawdads sing - Delia Owens
Then she was gone -Lisa Jewell
What Alice Forgot - Liane Moriarty
The Lost Man - Jane Harper
And am currently reading An American Marriage by Tayari Jones.

For a long time I lost myself in supermarket books and thought I only liked books that normally involved a woman running a cafe and falling in love with an unlikely man. What these past couple of months has shown me is that I was jaded and not enjoying reading. I will always have a soft spot for those books but I am loving reading at the moment.

@babybythesea I feel that way about the shorter books I read to DD (the ones that take maybe only a week of bedtimes to finish) but I count the longer ones I read to DS

FinishedA Fist or a Heart last night and it was wonderful, I really love Icelandic literature, has inspired me to revisit some of my other books. It’s always so dark and non linear and non traditional but with beautifully wrought characters. I love Iceland generally and not really surprised it’s literature appeals to me!

Finished off Roxanne Gay’s Bad Feminist which I started listening to a month or so ago and then took a break a third of the way through then bought the paperback and have just finished reading. It is brilliant - chosen as a book club book and deals with elements of cross sectional feminism and racism brilliantly. I actually highly recommend the audiobook as I’ve worked with the narrator and she’s brilliant at bringing it to life (much better than Gay was at narrating her own book - which she did with Hunger, I do wish authors would leave it to the professionals) but also found it very readable ( it easy to read emotionally but so well written you can return to it gladly like an old friend)

So here’s my list this year so far with my favourites (or books I’d count as excellent) in bold:

1. When You Were Everything - Ashley Woodfolk
2. Emerald Boy Gold Girl - Yi Yun Lee
3. My Meteorite - Harry Dodge
4. Five Go Caravanning - Enid Blyton
5. The Return - Rachel Harrison
6. All Adults Here - Emma Straub
7. Girl, Woman, Other - Bernadine Evaristo
8. Hunger - Roxanne Gay
9. Strange Situation - Bethany Saltman

10. Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpar Laihiri 11. Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates - Brian Kilmeade 12. A Girl in Three Parts - Suzanne Daniel 13. If I had your face - Frances Cha 14. A Fist or a Heart - Kristin Eiriksdottir 15. Bad Feminist - Roxanne Gay

But no fear, if this was just books I’ve read for pleasure I’d actually only be on 7 but would hope that if I didn’t have to read so many for work I would have squeezed in a couple more!

Should say WASN'T easy to read emotionally

7. Lying in Wait by Liz Nugent - another easy read. Unbelievable characters, very dramatic - a good escape read.
8. The Dilemma by B A Paris - fast paced easy read. A bit repetitive in places and I don't see how it's a "thriller".
9. Skin Deep by Liz Nugent - just started this.
I really need some 5 book recommendations.

Ok haven't posted for ages , because book number 4 took forever . Definitely picking shorter books for my next picks

1. My name is why - Lemm Sissay . Heartbreaking story , but needs to be told.

4. A little life - Hanya Yanagihara. Took me forever. Has had great reviews but I found it too long, deeply disturbing in some places ( gave me nightmares) was happy to finally finish . A much lighter read next!!!

I need to catch up with you lot!!!

I agree about books we read to our children (I count the longer ones) so am going to add

1. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K Rowling. Just finished reading this to DD. The first time I’ve read this since first reading it in 1998. I’d forgotten just how magical this first book is as she creates the whole wizarding world.

1. Mentoring Mr Singleman by Kim Sancreed. This is a light comic romance written by a friend and former colleague of mine and set in a Cornish school suspiciously like our own. I must admit that I bought this partly out of duty but I thoroughly enjoyed it and can honestly recommend it, especially to fellow teachers. Very well-observed and nicely plotted.

I’m now enjoying Wolf Hall as number 7. I know, I’m very late to the party on this one...!

@Chickoletta I listened to Wolf Hall eons ago but never read Bringing Up The Bodies, thinking of doing the trilogy back to back now the third one has been released

Hi everyone! Feel I'm cheating somewhat this year by re-reading HP

1. The Secret Barrister by anon
2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by JK Rowling
3. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
4. Space Boy vol. 2 by Stephen McCranie
5. The Irish Princess by Elizabeth Chadwick
6. Serpent and Dove by Shelby Mahurin
7. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling
8. Queen of Nothing by Holly Black

Currently reading Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo which I'm loving, and listening to Goblet of Fire. I'm finding Goblet of Fire a bit of a slog to be honest which surprised me as I remember loving everything about Harry Potter!

Haven't been on for a while. Three to add:

10. The Widow by Fiona Barton. This was interesting - about the wife of a man on trial for the kidnap/murder of a child (not based on a true story). It was told from the perspective of the wife, a reporter trying to get her to tell her story after the husband dies, and a detective investigating the crime. I've read one other Fiona Barton, The Child, and liked it too.

11. Wakenhyrst by Michelle Paver. I LOVED this. It's a gothic novel, about a reclusive woman in the 60s who finally decides to tell the story of her father, who was committed to an asylum after brutally murdering someone, seemingly at random and for no reason. Possession, haunting, demons, supernatural elements a-plenty. It was FANTASTIC.

12. Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid. This was a book club read, and is about a nanny who is challenged in a shop one night while looking after her charge, because she is black and the child is white. Lots about race and class, and interesting about 'white saviours' etc - her employer and her boyfriend (both white) are extremely 'woke', and it's a really good challenge of that. Things I was less keen on: the dialect narrative style used when the young female characters spoke (lots of 'Imma goin to give you that, girl' etc); the voice of the three year old (not like ANY three year old I've ever encountered - very self-consciously and inauthentically 'savant'); an irritating judginess around the mother and her relationship with her kid (she's an influencer and the author very clearly portrays her as a bad mother for employing a nanny for 'lifestyle' purposes).

9 Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman
Read this because I wanted to read it before watching the TV series. A story of forbidden young love in a segregated society 50 years after the abolition of slavery, the twist being the Africans have the power and the Europeans are the slaves. I thought it would be a bit like the Kevin and Sadie series by Joan Lingard I loved as a teenager (anyone else remember those books) but black/white instead of protestant/catholic but this was much more violent and depressing. Some of the small details early on are powerful and are based on Malorie Blackman's own experiences and there are plot points that are based on real events from America and South Africa's past. Very powerful.

Forgot to say, historically I always read about 26 books a year but since I got my smartphone it has dropped and dropped until last year I read just 8 books. So thankyou all for making me read more again, I've now read more bloksin 3 months than I did in all of last year.

1. Dark Side by Belinda Bauer

Quite enjoyable this one but the characters weren't particularly engaging. the twist was very interesting but completely unbelievable!

7. Long Road to Mercy - David Baldacci
American action-packed thriller. Baldacci's style is similar to Lee Child. Fast-paced and easy to read. High-brow literature this is not. But I do enjoy these. This is the first in a new series featuring a strong female lead. I'm not sure Baldacci writes his female characters any differently to the male ones, so it sometimes felt like her voice lacked authenticity. I'll read the next one when it comes out though.

9. Skin Deep by Liz Nugent - I enjoyed this more than Lying In Wait. Quite dark, I loved the different settings and the Irish legend stories.
10. The Foundling by Stacey Halls - really enjoying this, only half way through.