50 Book Challenge 2020 Part Two

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the second 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.

The first thread of the year is here.

What are you reading?

She was the hero in our house last night, I was feeling really down and she made me laugh with this gem:

They told me that they would send the cat social workers round the next weekend to check out the house and see if we were appropriate adopters. I was terrified! What if I wasn’t approved for more cats? It would be like telling Piers Morgan that he wasn’t allowed to be a wanker.

She is funny! Bless her!

1. Long Bright River, by Liz Moore : Mickey, a Philadelphia police officer, has moved beyond the most difficult parts of her rather hardscrabble upbringing, shaped largely by her parents’ addictions and death/abandonment to build a life for herself and her son Thomas. Her sister Kacey has not been so lucky: she works in the sex trade and is addicted to opiates. Just as a series of vulnerable women are found brutally murdered in Mickey’s district, Kacey goes missing. The novel moves between past and present, tracing how the sisters ended up where they did (at least in Mickey’s view) and how Mickey’s personal and work lives are increasingly in conflict. I appreciate that the novel takes a longer, nuanced view of family and class. Also, I enjoyed the melding of the literary and mystery genres.

1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

This was a mammoth read, and it had been in my to be read pile for a while, mainly because I was put off my it's length. I have read it before, and large chunks of it in Russian, I even wrote an extended essay on Tolstoy's portrayal of women many many moons ago at university, but I honestly couldn't remember that much about it beyond the bare bones of the plot - Russian high society lady has affair and ruins her life. I remember enjoying it though

Re-reading it twenty five years, a marriage and three children later, I enjoyed it again. There were a lot of inter-related characters to get to grips with, and two main storylines - that of the doomed love affair between Anna and Count Vronsky and the courtship and subsequent marriage of Levin and Kitty. (The link between them being that Anna's brother is married to Kitty's older sister). There was a fair amount of talk about Russian peasantry, agriculture and philosophising, which did drag a bit and I did skim, but I found the writing about Russian family dynamics, society's expectations and Anna's increasingly impossible situation very engaging and readable.

I've just finished James Acaster's classic scrapes I'll let James review the book for you himself as towards the end he states : I hope that there isn't a second book. So do I James, so do I.

Oh God the maggots. Horrendous. I loved The Wasp Factory otherwise. DH had read it years earlier and warned me to stay away from it because it was so horrific. However, while Iain Banks was ill I'd been following his online conversation with his fans, and after he died I set about reading my way through all his books. I thought it was amazing. Very dark and funny. The conversation between Frank and Eric about the dogs is an absolute classic.

Love The Crow Road too, and I agree with Piggy that the TV adaptation was excellent. Bill Paterson as the dad was perfect.

My favourite IB novel is probably Espedair Street though. I always imagine Danny as an extra member of Deacon Blue for some reason.

Does it help to be Scottish to enjoy Iain Banks as a writer? It shouldn't but I suspect it might.

@highlandcoo @Piggywaspushed

I don't know about Banks, but I'd say it was true of Irvine Welsh, years ago tried to read Trainspotting, was like trying to read a book in a foreign language I had a faint grasp of 😂

PegHughes I've been meaning to read the Barchester Chronicles for several years now. It feels like a good winter project. But other books keep cropping up and getting in the way! I enjoyed The Eustace Diamonds and How We Live Now when I read them at university and would really like to read more. The Warden is pretty short; I should make a start with it soon.

Just looking at the Trollope Society it seems he wrote 47 books and didn't he work full time in the Post Office too? Amazing.

EineReise

To fully understand the problematic nature of the Scottish accent I recommend the Burnistoun "11" sketch, readily avaliable on YouTube

Ah sorry Remus.

Glad to see so much Crow Road love on the thread though. It really was a fantastic TV series as well, what a cast. Piggy and Eine I read The Wasp Factory as my first Iain Banks and it utterly traumatised me, so I've no idea why I read any more of them. Fortunately none of his other books proved to be quite so damaging and since then I've read most of his books and a couple are in my top ten.

Highlandcoo I don't know if it helps to be Scottish to enjoy Banks, but reading him certainly makes me want to be Scottish!

Vanderly I have Long Bright River on hold at the library, sounds like it will be worth the wait.

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth is 99p in today's kindle daily deal.

I read it about 10 years ago & enjoyed it - but would have enjoyed it more on a kindle as it is a massive tome!

@bettybattenburg, oh no, I bought James Acaster's Perfect Sound Whatever after seeing him live in October. - He obviously forgot he wasn't going to write a second book

6) The Body, by Bill Bryson
A few chapters in, I did warm up to this and started reading it properly rather than just skimming. He does like an anecdote about a genius polymath scientist whose contribution has been unfairly overlooked by posterity, and so do I. I can't say I'd heartily recommend it - it somehow manages to be both overly-detailed and curiously lightweight. Not bad if you're in the mood.

Have reserved Long Bright River to my library reservations, Van. I'm trying not to be too swayed by reviews on here because there are already so.many.books i want to read, but that one did sound good.

Omg, Highlandcoo, I am crying with laughter at the Burnistoun 11 sketch. It’s totally true, my DH is Glaswegian and on holiday abroad so many people have difficulty understanding him, I don’t really know why, I love the accent.

I gave up on the first page of Trainspotting, and I had to put on the subtitles when I watched ‘Rab C Nesbitt’. My apologies to all Scottish Mnetters.

1. Killing Dragons: The Conquest of the Alps by Fergus Fleming
2. My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
3. The Illustrated Police News: the Shocks, Scandals and Sensations of the Week, 1864-1938 by Linda Stratmann
4. Cause for Alarm by Eric Ambler
5. The Five: the Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
6. Guts by Raina Telgemeier
7. Blood on the Tracks: Railway Mysteries ed. by Marin Edwards

1. I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination by Francis Spufford

This is a history, not of British polar exploration itself (although you do learn a lot about it), but of the idea of polar exploration in British culture. It ranges widely, from the Romantic conception of the sublime, to gender, empire and the ‘primitive’ way of life of the Inuits, via insightful discussions of well-known and less well-known books, plays etc. and vivid sketches of individuals. The final chapter is a brilliant and moving evocation of Scott’s final, disastrous expedition; the previous chapters show how he and his party came to think and therefore to act the way they did.
Not a quick read, but absorbing.

Dear 50-bookers, it's been some time since my last confession...

This morning I strayed from the path of gainful employment and found myself in my village bookshop where I stumbled unwittingly upon the secondhand book section. I forthwith succumbed to devilish temptation (for my TBR pile is currently probably taller than the Tower of Babel) for what joy was mine when I discovered the full 12 books from the Dance to the Music of Time series fortuitously squeezed into 4 (mahoosive) volumes and therefore affording me the pleasure of choosing yet one more pre-loved book and exiting triumphantly with my haul of 13 books for the meagre sum of 10 euros (5 for 10!!)
I fully accept my penance of 3 Hail Marys and 2 Our Fathers, but first let me finish my chapter...

I think that merits a Glory Be to the Father, now

I'm either going to have to give up work or sleep to make a dent in to TBR pile. Possibly both.

When I was 20 I went on a 3 month trip travelling around the states. For some reason I decided to pick up the wasp factory at Heathrow and then read it on the plane over. What a way to start my trip

Book 5. The secret barrister - I follow the secret barrister on Twitter so thought id borrow the book from the library. I found it very interesting and there were some shocking cases of miscarriages of justice in there. However I would have liked it to be a bit more anecdotal and sometimes it did get rather dry.

oh no, I bought James Acaster's Perfect Sound Whatever after seeing him live in October. - He obviously forgot he wasn't going to write a second book

I hope it's better than the first now

Normally I find him really funny but I came away thinking that he was better off sticking to the day job.

I seem to be reading really slowly so far this year and the thread is still moving fast!

5. Alchemy
YA by Margaret Mahy. I absolutely LOVED her as a teen (The Tricksters was myfavourite) and hadn't come across this one before. I picked it up mistakenly thinking it was a book for adults.

This has some of the elements of the books I love - realistic family dynamics, sexual awakening going hand-in-hand with growing awareness of supernatural goings-on, and a light hand with the explanations (she definitely chooses to show not tell) but I couldn't feel much more than meh about it if I'm honest.

6. My Midsummer Morning: Rediscovering a Life of Adventure , Alastair Humphreys

Humphreys is an adventurer and travel writer, probably most famous for cycling around the world and writing a book (two I think?) about it. This book finds him older, married and a father, and really struggling with the tension between his desire to keep adventuring and his love of, and duty towards, his family.

He agrees with his wife that he will take a month out, and chooses to follow in the footsteps of Laurie Lee, travelling across Spain, sleeping outdoors and paying his way by busking on the violin - an instrument he has never touched before! Humphreys is a good writer and a thoughtful man (even if you really do feel very sorry for his wife at times reading this!), and I enjoyed reading his thoughts about travel, growing up, the nature of adventure, vulnerability and how to be happy.

@PegiHughes I also thought that Home Fires was a novel that stayed in my thoughts for a long time after I'd read it. Have you read anything else by Shamsie? I'm going to search out the Burial at Thebes now --oh no I cant as I've resolved to buy no more books until the TBR pile has completely disappeared --

I'm not intending to read just books by comedians having just read two by Susan Calman and James Acaster but I've just spotted Nicholas Parson's autobiography is half price for the kindle so I've treated myself to a (very early!) birthday present.

now you sound like my twin

I have been on a TOTAL book ban, because I have so many unread.

Purchases for January : 2 audibles and 2 hardbacks 😂

It is a compulsion