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?

I had also never heard of Curly Locks, but reading the description it seems to be just a short story featuring Dr Carr rather than being about Katy or any of her siblings. I’ve already got all the others so interested to hear from those who have bought it whether it’s worth the 49p just for that short story!

Scared to out myself as a disliker of Katy. It's portrayal of disability is of its time, obviously, but not a good message for the modern disabled girl

To be clearer, I was the modern disabled girl reading that a woman with a disability shouldn't burden a man with her shit. Not a great experience as a read.

I agree very much re. What Katy Did EineReiseDurchDieZeit - not just that, but the moral of rebellious Katy getting her just deserts & learning to be a 'good girl'. What Katy Did at School & What Katy Did Next are very different though.

See also, you had better be a good, virtuous invalid or even your family won't love you message. To be honest, my family was a bit hostile to my having a disability, and haven't changed, so it all hit quite a nerve

DM always says the accident was the adults’ fault for not telling Katy why she couldn’t use the swing.

13. To Throw Away Unopened by Viv Albertine

This was recommended by several people on last year’s thread, and I’m glad they did. Albertine’s second memoir is a searingly honest account of her dysfunctional family (with the tensions coming to a head at her mother’s deathbed) and her feminist anger, covering topics ranging from her mother’s lack of opportunities to dating in middle age. It is fluently written; her love for her mother and her daughter shines through; she can be very funny, particularly discussing her misadventures with a string of useless boyfriends. Highly recommended.

In other news, I got divorced today (via Skype, in ten minutes).

Plornish - are congratulations or comisserations in order?

Remus XH initiated it, but I’m glad it’s all over, tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my life etc. I am reading Kate Atkinson for comfort.

Piggy it's not fiction but Sarah Wise's (excellent) Inconvenient People is a study of asylums and the mad-business in the 18th and 19th centuries, mainly. I don't want to cross over too much with the David Copperfield thread but Mr. Dick really made me think of that book....

Sending hugs, Plornish.

Inconvenient People sounds right up my street. I've read and liked her Italian Boy.

Plornish

It is a Jackson Brodie? They are a good comfort read

It's good, Remus (I thought, anyway!)

Plornish 📚📚

I have not read that Terpsichore so that's not what I am thinking of but will look it up! The end of the Kate Summerscale book gives a fascinating insight, too.

Sending hugs to Plornish. Sorry, new to this and haven't learnt how to namecheck yet.

1. Peter Lovesey - The Vault

I enjoy Peter Lovesey's Peter Diamond books. Not gory or gruesome as such, but a good police procedural. I guessed part of the whodunnit, but it didn't spoil the story.

Had a good start to the year, reading wise in January, but have succumbed to social media and staring at a screen instead of reading. I want to get back to reading more.

24. Small Island by Andrea Levy

In Post War Britain the Windrush generation arrives from the Caribbean in search of a better life only to encounter extreme levels of racism and impoverished living conditions due to systemic rejection from tenancies and employment.

I have always been aware of racism in this country, but the racism depicted here is the heyday of British racism and is truly shocking compared with 2020, with Brits who didn't care that the men they were abusing had also fought for the country.

The novel focuses on two couples one British and one Jamaican before, during and after the war.

I was enjoying the book, but didn't really see it as a stand out, having read others with similar themes, and then, without spoilers, the end happened, and I was absolutely fucking devastated by it. As endings go, I'll remember my heart breaking at the close of this book for quite a while. I cried.

Did anyone see the series and is it worth me hunting or will I be disappointed?

5/5

Thanks, everyone. Yes, I’m taking advantage of the new one coming out in paperback to reread all the Jackson Brodies. Not that murder is entirely comforting, especially when the victims and those grieving them are so nice.

13. Female Chauvinist Pigs by Ariel Levy

Subtitled “Women and the Rise of Rauch Culture”.

This book (first published over 10 years ago) looks at how the idea of women being empowered and being sexy have become intertwined together in modern raunch culture.
Levy’s argument is basically that wide spread expectations that women should aspire to be “sexy” is proof that we still have a long way to go in terms of equality.

Thought provoking, and a very accessible writing style.

Plornish

Plornish I was one of the 50 Bookers who favourably reviewed To Throw Away Unopened. So glad you enjoyed it! I've just started listening to Motherwell by Deborah Orr, which also explores the mother daughter dynamic. So far it's very readable.

Sorry to hear about your divorce I went through it some years back and although I did have my tough days, I don't have a single regret

Oh my God!!!! You mean there were more Katy books than the three I read (over and over) as a child????

11. The Life and Loves of Eleanor Fitzsimons
A literary biography of an Edwardian children's writer won't be everyone's cup of tea, and there were a few dullish patches - descriptions of apparently every visitor who passed through their household. On the whole I enjoyed it, though, and longed to waft around my Bohemian household in a Liberty dress, waving my cigarette holder and lavishly entertaining husbands, friends, lovers, children and passing poets and playwrights.

12. The Girl With All The Gifts - M.R. Carey 3.5/5 I think the headline of "Most original thriller you will read this year" on the front of the book was a bit misleading, this is absolutely nothing that hasn't been done before. Doesn't mean I didn't thoroughly enjoy it though :) I will watch the film when I get the chance.

@Jux I have to agree about Tombland - I read it when it came out, and I am a massive fan of the Shardlake series, this one was just too much, so, so disappointed :(

Yesterday seems to have been a bitch of a day, my father died yesterday.

for @Plornish

Name changing after this post and taking a few days break from social media.

@bettybattenburg so very sorry to hear that. Take care of yourself xx