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?

Thanks for the new thread southeast. Belatedly bringing my very short list over and adding my latest read:

1. The Subtle Knife - Philip Pullman
2. The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman

3. Once upon a River - Diane Setterfield

I have just finished Tombland - CJ Sansom. I am generally a big fan of the Shardlake books so buy the actual book rather than reading it on my kindle. This was a mammoth 800 pages and I now have backache from lugging it on my commute. Was it worth it? Possibly not. It’s some time since I read any of the others but the balance between the mystery and the history seemed to have swung towards the history in this book and the mystery aspect was almost incidental. I enjoy history and historical fiction and this was a period I knew nothing about so whilst it was interesting to learn about the uprisings during the reign of Edward VI, I guess the book just didn’t match my expectations.

Will be picking a shorter book next and catching up on the new thread.

My phone never got repaired so I've finally got round to re-typing up my list. January was a great month for reading and I enjoyed the majority of the books so far.

1. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
2. The Girls by Lisa Jewell
3. I am, I am, I am by Maggie O'Farrell
4. The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
5. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
6. I Found You by Lisa Jewell
7. The Sister by Louise Jensen
8. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

9. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng 10. The Lost Man by Jane Harper 11. In a Dark, Dark, Wood by Ruth Ware 12. The Dry by Jane Harper 13. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson 14. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 15. Deju Death by Kathy Reichs 16. Now You See Her by Heidi Perks 17. Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay 18. A Proper Family Christmas by Chrissy Manby 19. The Last Thing She Told Me by Linda Green 20. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde 21. The Death Sculptor by Chris Carter 22. One by One by Chris Carter 23. China Lake by Meg Gardiner 24. The Testaments by Margaret Atwood 25. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver 26. Vox by Christina Dalcher

The romp is called The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue. It'll probably be dreadful, but it looks fun.

Fortuna, I had the same experience with The Little Friend. I stopped reading it.

1. A Lady’s Guide to Selling Out Casey Pendergast is 28 and has traded her dreams to become the creative director at a PR/Ad agency. Her boss’s newest venture has Casey approaching authors to convince them to partner with companies and write copy for oodles of cash. Can Casey keep her integrity and friendships and blah blah blah while greasing the wheels of capitalism? Who knows? Who cares? TBF, while the writing was uneven, it’s certainly not the worst thing I’ve read. But I read a lot of stuff, so.

Hope you like it Remus - I bought it a while back but couldn't deal with the wildly anachronistic dialogue (and I'm big on silly-but-fun reads).

I'm reading The Epigenetics Revolution which I bought ages ago when everyone else was reading it (on Cote's recommendation I think). For some reason I couldn't get into it then, but I'm a little ways in & finding it really good this time.

I'll give it thirty pages or so and return if it's not working for me.

Thanks Vanderlyle and Eine. I'll bin it off.

For those of you who enjoyed A Greengae Summer the autobiography of Rumer Godden's childhood, co writeen with her older sister, Jon Godden would be an interesting read.

Two under the Indian Sun tells of their childhood in India during WW1.

Fascinating to see where some of the relationships of Joss & Celia, in Greengage Summer, came from and a good read in its own right.

8. Wilful Blindness by Margaret Heffernan

This is an updated new edition of the original book from 2011. A really interesting look at the human desire to gloss over and ignore problems with our familiar routines, work and way of living that are staring us in the face. Heffernan strings together academic studies and case studies from all walks of life and workplaces to make her points. For me the most interesting section was about the way in which monetary incentives can make people less inclined to behave in socially helpful ways - it looks counter-intuitive but seems to be proved time and time again that if you offer people payment to do something they already do altruistically (e.g. giving blood) they are less likely to do it. Also some interesting stuff about why we are less likely to offer help to someone in trouble when there are others around. An engaging and thought-provoking read.

I loved the southern gothic feel to The Little Friend. However, it didn't half ramble on and needed a much more ruthless edit. It would have been twice as good if it had been half as long. It's my least favourite Donna Tartt and not in the same league as The Secret History imho. Having saying that, I still enjoyed it.

I haven’t posted for a while as I had a DNF that I’m not counting. It was Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi. A real shame as I think she’s an interesting writer. She’s lost her way here. It’s had some high praise from highbrow critics however. The characters were flat and there were too many impenetrable sentences. So dull. If you want to try one of her books, Mr Fox or Boy, Snow ,Bird are much better.
I have finished:
11. The Glass Woman - Caroline Lea. I was sucked in right royally by the cover on this one. The good thing about it was the Icelandic setting. A woman called Rosa has to marry this guy who seems bad - gothic historical mad wife in the attic type thing. The bad things were:

• the constant ‘her heart pounds’, ‘her breath tremors’, ‘her chest tightens’, ‘her stomach twists’ on every single page.
• characters always referring to each other by name ‘no, Rosa’ ‘Rosa, you mustn’t’, ‘Rosa! No!’
• the lack of contractions. Obviously no one used contractions in the olde worlde days
• too too much figurative language. Everything is like something else. Nothing just is. Extended overblown metaphors.
• virtually nothing happened.

Tbh, I think it just isn’t my cup of tea - lots of people feeling the love for it online. 12. The Quickening Maze - Adam Foulds. Wow - brilliant. About the ‘garden poet’ John Clare, who is living in an asylum, Matthew Allen who runs it and many other characters, including Allen’s family, other inmates and Tennyson. Fabulous third person narration from many different POV. Convincing. The characters were brilliantly realised. I loved John Clare’s narration as everything in nature was seen through his eyes, a poet’s eyes. As his health deteriorates he sees things differently. Poor John Clare. Beautiful language. Brilliant how the difference is shown between the two poetic geniuses. Clare’s poetry just comes to him like magic, but it’s too much for him at times, Tennyson works hard and wrestles with language at times - the 99% perspiration type. Then I saw in the author notes that the author is a prize winning poet so no wonder he could get in their heads so well. Loved it.

Remus I had a hunch it might be that - I read it a while back and really enjoyed lots of things about it, especially the joyous queerness and the roguish fun of it all. I hope you like it!

Chrissysouth that's an amazing list. I've only read nos. 5, 20 and 25 but enjoyed all of them in different ways. Are you a very fast reader or do you have an unusual amount of time for reading?

The Little Friend is my least favourite Donna Tartt too.

I’m now rereading Wolf Hall plus some Seamus Heaney - District and Circle.

I seem to recall I didn't mind The Little Friend but it's clearly been a while since I read it as it my mind it did have a clear ending. It's rare that I like an ambiguous ending so I would've thought that would stick in my mind. I definitely remember it bring nowhere near as good as The Secret History but then again there are not many books that are.

The random number generator has selected The Devil's Teardrop by Jeffrey Deaver for me to read next which suits me. I haven't read it for years but seem to remember I liked it. Also keeping on truckin' with* the Sapiens audiobook and I treated myself to one of the Penguin clothbook classics so will start Frankenstein* too.

That sounds really interesting @welshwabbit and I've just added it to my wish list.

1. Thrust: A Spasmodic History of the Codpiece in Art by Michael Glover. A short toilet book I bought at Christmas because the title was so irresistible. Delightful read with great illustrations but it's about the length of a long article and it cost £9. A little more historical analysis wouldnt have gone amiss.

My read list so far:

1. Giver of Stars - Jojo Moyes
2. Vinegar Girl - Ann Tyler
3. Me - Elton John
4. First Lady - James Patterson
5. Wakenhyrst - Michelle Paver

Am now about to start Bring up the Bodies and am listening to The Five on audiobook at present, thank you to all those who recently recommended this.

28. Birds, Beasts and Relatives by Gerald Durrell

Book two of The Corfu Trilogy. Another collection of stories about his family. I particularly enjoyed Margo’s dabble with spiritualism! Listened to this on Audible.

29. The Sudden Departure of The Frasers by Louise Candlish

A couple move into their new house and discover that their predecessors disappeared unexpectedly and something odd is going on with the neighbours. Started well, but was too long with not much happening and I didn’t really care in the end why they left!

11. The woman who died a lot, Jasper Fforde
The seventh and last in the Thursday Next series. You need to have read the previous 6 books in order to make any sense of this! I quite enjoyed it and some story arcs were finished off nicely. These books are a bit bonkers and I did find them a bit much at times.

1. Blood on the tracks railway mysteries
2. Smile of the wolf, Tim Leach
3. The case of the constant suicides, John Dickson Carr
4. Beneath a scarlet sky, Mark Sullivan
5. The things you find in rockpools, Gregg Dunnett
6. The Lorne's island detective club, Gregg Dunnett
7. The rabbit girls, Anna Ellory
8. Limelight, Emily Organ
9. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

10. Mightier than the Sword, Clare Bevan

@DamnItsSevenAM they have probably been my favourites so far, alongside Sarah's Key and The Lost Man.

I'm not a fast reader, I had a lot of free time in January, not watching any tv helps. Also I have tried to limit the amount of time I spend on my phone. I expect my reading will slow down now though.

Blimey that really is a random collection of kindle monthly deals. I always try and work out the theme each month and I think this month's must be the justice system because there are lots of true crime, judge & prison books on the list, which don't appeal to me at all.

I did find a few interesting things - When I Hit You which was on quite a few prize lists in the last couple of years; A Girl Called Justice which looks to be a children's book but I'm going for it because I love Elly Griffiths and am ready for a very easy read, and The Library Book which is partly about the burning of the Los Angeles main library in the 80s but more generally about libraries and what they mean to us.

Nuffaluff I thought Gingerbread was crap too, but I stupidly finished it. I was also sucked in by the cover of The Glass Woman. I thought it might be more of a Burial Rites type book than a bad Nordic rip off of Jane Eyre.

MamaNewt I read Frankenstein recently and loved it. The clothbound books are gorgeous.

19. The Janus Stone (Ruth Galloway #2) - Elly Griffiths Archaeologist gets called in to help police investigation round two. Entertaining enough easy read.

Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life- Peter Godfrey-Smith

I've got this on my KIndle, thanks for the review, it's now moved right up my TBR list.

I bought *The Sealwoman's gift" as well, I'm also not supposef to be buying books

The PD James books are all 99p, I read those as a teenager but have resisted temptation. One of the Ken Follett books is also 99p if anybody fancies a bit of breast mention counting.

@FortunaMajor I've been meaning to read it for years, glad that it seems to be as good as I have heard. I have tended to focus on kindle books over the past few years due to space issues but decided to treat myself to a cloth bound book each month - War of the Worlds arrives tomorrow!