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?

Seen as we've had a little "I know the author" side chat going on here @lastqueenofscotland, I know Marian Partington quite well. I was friends with her daughter at school and still see Marian when I go home. To my shame, I still haven't read her book! This might be the spur I need to buy it.

Oh wow! It’s been on my list for a while. I’ll let you know how I get on with it

I have just finished The Handmaid's Tale. Wow. I thoroughly loved this book and finished it in 2 days. Unputdownable. I wish it had ended with some resolution. I'd love to know what happened to the characters of Offred, Moira, Nick and Luke. If Offred survived did she ever get reunited with her daughter? Was she actually pregnant with Nick's baby? Also I'd love to know of the state of the world. Was it only America that was under this quite terrifying regime? Actually its really scary because in some ways it doesn't seem that far fetched. I'll be thinking about this book for a long time.

I still need to bring my list over and update it but my phone with the list is being repaired after an incident with a plant pot.

I'm about 2/3 of the way through book 25-
We Need to Talk About Kevin. Enjoying it so far.

I was doing really well not buying any books and reading from my paperbook TBR pile (plus a library book). Took a walk to the library today but it was closed, so to cheer myself up I went to the nearby charity shop for a browse. They had a book sale, 5 books for £1. It wasn't the easiest walk home, but now I'm the proud owner of another 19 books.

@AnUnlikelyWorldofInvisibleShad I read The Handsmaid's Tale a couple of weeks ago, I had the same questions as you and borrowed The Testaments from the library and finished it yesterday. I think THT was slightly better, but I thoroughly enjoyed TT and it answered some of my questions.

Sorry nowanearlyNicemum - but I hope you'll love Road to Oxiania and forgive me.

I haven't read Handmaid's Tale for years - would have been late 80s I guess - but I thought the lack of resolution was a great ending and fitted the book's atmosphere perfectly. I haven't read Testaments just because I don't want all those loose ends nailed down.

6 - Wakenhyrst by Michelle Paver. I enjoyed it but it wasn't what I expected at all.

betty thanks for the heads up about the two free prime books!

noodle and biblio, I look forward to your thoughts on Long Bright River. One aspect I neglected to mention was Moore’s evocation of certain neighbourhoods in Philadelphia, particularly those that teeter between gentrification and obsolescence. I found it quite moving.

I also recommend Moore’s previous book, The Unseen World. Quite a different work, but underrated IMO.

Chrissysouth I have just pre ordered a copy of The Testaments for when it comes out in paperback later this year. I look forward to reading it.

How on earth are people hitting 25 already? I'm a really fast reader but that's insanely quick! It's only January the 30th!

Remus

Wanted to ask

What sort of thing meets your criteria for "an easy read" ?

What's your "sweet spot" ?

Book 12
Milkman by Anna Burns

This one has been reviewed a few times here I think. I’m on the fence. I will say that despite finding it an original and interesting read, it took me ages to finish (started it in late 2019). The format, for me, was quite tough going. Almost suffocating in its format as well as the subject matter. I know the ‘stream of consciousness’ style and anonymity (everyone is called names such as third brother, maybe-boyfriend and wee sister) is such an important part of the book and the character, but I could only read for so long before coming up for air. Tough going but I like a challenge so was glad to have persevered.

I thought I was doing well with 16!

AliasGrape Lovely news, hope you get your concentration back soon though.

15. Middlemarch - George Eliot A study of provincial life in 1830s England. Follows the lives of a set of interconnected characters in a fictitious Midlands town, touching on the politics of the time and social changes. Full of unsuitable marriages, gossip, drama and resistance to changing times. The author has a keen eye for relationships between characters and details these beautifully.

I enjoyed it, but it was still a slog to get through. It's a book I'd like to read again, but not for a very long time.

16. Galatea - Madeline Miller An Ancient Greek sculptor has one of his pieces brought to life by a Goddess. Expecting the sculpture to be an obedient wife, he does everything to control her while she fights against him to save her daughter.

A short story that shouldn't really count, but since Middlemarch must be worth at least 2 then I'm adding it! I like Miller's writing and would have liked to see more done with this, but it worked well as a short story.

17. The Country Girls - Edna O'Brien Coming of age story set in late 1950s Ireland, as two young women move away from their country origins, escape from convent school and hit the big city, learning to navigate life, love and friendships along the way.

I don't quite know what to make of this. The first part was heartbreaking. The author captures the pure misery of being repressed by a patriarchal and religious society for young women who want to live life to the full. I'm half Irish with parents from that era and it rings very true.

18. The Running Hare: The Secret Life of Farmland - John Lewis-Stempel A farmer documents the charges to nature in a field he cultivates and harvests using traditional methods. He explores the effect modern farming methods have had on wildlife and the declining numbers of species of different insects, birds, animals and flowers and how quickly nature rebounds when given the chance.

A joyous read, although a little cliched in places. I will definitely be seeking out more of his books.

I've started David Copperfield and I don't hate it.

19. Touch by Claire North

Now, I read, loved and raved about The First Fifteen Lives Of Harry August when that first came out, so I had expectations....

In Touch an entity called Kepler, jumps from host body to host body, spending moments, days or sometimes years, taking over someone else's life, but could the past catch up?

I did not love this like Harry August, in fact I found it to be a fairly run of the mill, scifi thriller with I felt some plot holes, and generic movie-esque action pieces.

I also felt that another novel about a shadowy group of people among us who are not like us was too similar.

My other thought was that the author had spent some time travelling in Europe, taking descriptive notes of places and wanted to shoehorn in as many as possible 😂

It's by no means a total dud, but nor is it a "must buy this/recommend this" the way its predecessor was

3/5

1. Me by Elton John. Like someone else up thread this took a while to get into. But I loved it. Lots of gossip and celebrity anecdotes (Lennon and John ignoring Warhol at the door for fear he’d photograph them on coke was a favourite). John genuinely understands his life is crazy but tries to anchor it in reality. His journey to sobriety was facinating and evidence that addiction does not see wealth.

1. Black Car Burning by Helen Mort. Four interwoven stories. Pete an ex-cop suffering PTSD long after Hillsborough. Alexa his estranged daughter who is in a struggling Polyamorous relationship and negotiating this and her policework deescalating community struggles. Also Leigh - Pete’s friend who has relationship struggles too. The fourth is Sheffield, it’s mountains, crags, history and current struggle for identity. This was beautifully written and reminded me of Milkkan in its ambition. I wouldn’t say it worked as well in execution and the huge amount of threads didn’t really pull together for me. Towards the end it was structurally very messy. However, it has incredible sense of place and scenes in the mountains (running,climbing, just being) were gorgeous.

6. The Holiday by T M Logan. I listened to the audiobook version of this. I have to say I was a bit ambivalent to start with and it took me a while to get into the characters. I couldn't shake the feeling that they were all a bit too obviously middle class and self-righteous (not helped by the aggravating and affected public schoolgirl drawl given to the character of Rowan).

It grew on me but I did find myself getting a bit frustrated with the 'will she?', 'won't he?', 'what if?', 'is it now?' nature of the storytelling. Kate, the main protagonist, veered from being an empathetic figure who's trying to get to the bottom of her husband's affair, to a complete idiot who can't see things that are at the end of her nose.

By the end, however, I thought it found its groove a bit more and the plot twists and reveals were interesting and engaging. There were a couple that I really didn't see coming.

A pacey and enjoyable read, though. I'd be interested to hear what anyone else thinks of it, or any others by the same author.

25. A Spoonful of Jam by Michelle Magorian

Children’s book - the story of Elsie who avoids getting bullied by joining a local theatre group. I did enjoy this, but it’s not as good as Goodnight Mr Tom or Back Home. I liked the postwar setting though, and I learnt a lot about hop picking!

26. Tea By The Nursery Fire by Noel Streatfeild

It’s not really clear if this is fiction or a memoir. It’s about a real person - Emily, who was the nanny for Noel’s father - but it’s clear that it’s mainly based on hearsay so must be fictionalised to an extent. Still very interesting to read about what it was like to be a nanny in the late 1800s and early 1900s. I was shocked that Emily was sent away to work in a ‘big’ house’s nursery when she was just eleven. I knew they went into service relatively young but eleven?!

27. Black Eyed Susans by Julia Heaberlin

This is told From Tessa’s point of view in two timeframes - seventeen years ago following the aftermath of a traumatic event, and the present day when the man found guilty is due to be executed (it’s set in Texas) and is appealing against his conviction. It was ok but left too much unexplained for my liking.

I'm enjoying Nicholas Parsons: with just a touch of hesitation, repetition and deviation. I'm enjoying...oops.

Anyway, it's a good book, I'm about a quarter of the way through it having started it yesterday and looking forward to the next bit later tonight. I didn't realise what his background was before he went into entertainment, very interesting reading.

I can’t find a pen so have resorted to taking photos of posts of books I would like to read.

12 Smashing Physics by Jon Butterworth
Rambling account of particle physics, academic life inside a large multinational scientific collaboration (CERN and the LHC) and a lot of irrelevant anecdotes about Bulgarian hotel breakfasts and the like. This was a bit of a disaster because the physics didn’t lend itself to the audiobook format (I have a real problem with taking in spoken information compared to written) and it wasn’t entirely without complexity, and the anecdotes were just dull. I persevered because I have family and friends who work in similar fields and I’ve always been oddly interested in experimental physics.

13 Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor
This must have been a recommendation from here because I cannot think how else it would have ended up on my Kindle. Mrs Palfrey is elderly, genteel and living at the Claremont hotel when she strikes up an unusual relationship with a young man. This was gentle and funny and sad. I loved it.

20. A Year Of Marvellous Ways by Sarah Winman

Post war demobbed soldier Francis Drake encounters Cornish wise woman Marvellous Ways whilst fulfilling the last wishes of a dying comrade,

Several years ago, after being long put off by the godawful title, I finally read If God Was A Rabbit and from memory really enjoyed it, though I barely remember it now.

This however, is almost unbearably twee, instantly forgettable and I was completely emotionally and intellectually disengaged throughout.

I seem to be having a bad run.

15: The Greengage Summer - Rumer Godden

Five English children are stranded at a small French hotel when their mother falls ill on their arrival and is taken to hospital. Barely tolerated by the owner, temperamental Mlle Zizi, and her sidekick, Madame Corbet, they find a protector in Zizi's lover, charismatic Englishman Eliot, who takes them under his wing. Tensions blossom as the emerging beauty of the eldest, 16-year-old Joss, drives Zizi into jealous rages, not helped by Eliot's obvious (though chaste) admiration. Watchful second daughter Cecil narrates this beautifully-told tale, which soon develops into a much darker story as Eliot - loved by all the children - starts to act in puzzling ways.

Dh and I watched the film of this the other night - we'd recorded it months ago - and I remembered that I had the book somewhere. The film was good, but reading Godden's wonderfully evocative descriptions of the French hotel and countryside, and her astute character-drawing, was immeasurably better....not least because 22-year-old Susannah York played 16-year-old Joss, and a rather middle-aged Kenneth More was the glamorous, handsome Eliot.....!

Got my numbers muddled already - The Body was number 7, and so:

8) Homesick: Why I Live in a Shed, by Catrina Davies
Does what it says on the tin. There's a puff quote from the author of The Salt Path, and a similar underlying theme: anger at the injustice of the housing market, particularly down in the south-west, where salaries are low and locals are priced out by second home owners, set against pleasure in the natural world. The author wants to live a creative life of writing and making music, but it doesn't pay, so she sets up home in a shed, with plentiful references to Thoreau in Walden.

This will divide readers, and managed to divide me against myself. On the one hand, what makes you so special that you're above the dull grind of an office job and a mortgage? The world doesn't owe you a living. And spiders and rats and a garden that smells of wee - not living the dream. On the other hand, she's right that we shouldn't waste a lifetime pursuing material goods - the world would be a better place if we slowed down and were satisfied with less. Not everyone will like this book, but it does ask some genuinely interesting questions.