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?

Sorry, the above should say great-grandfather, not grandfather!

Oh good Welshwabbit I have that Patrick Gale waiting on my Kindle. Never mind random number generators, I've just decided my next book for reading on my phone while hanging around the sports centre on the basis of how much storage space it's taking up on my nearly full phone. So Black and British by David Olusoga it is, at a whopping 41.2 MB. It's a good method, and I'm pleased with this outcome.

NowANearly, thanks for that. I did look at how far into Olive Kitteridge I was, after being so negative about it, and found I'd only read 5%, so feeling like I hadn't really given it much of a chance a read some more this afternoon. I'm now into the third story and it is growing on me, I don't think it's going to blow me away, but I'm going to persevere to the end.

Pepe, I read Ragnar Jónasson's Whiteout a couple of years ago and found it very underwhelming. Haven't read any of the others since.

Terpsichore, if another title is Whiteout then it's hard to imagine it as a radical departure from Snowblind. Without googling I would guess also at Avalanche, Blizzard and Bit Slippy Underfoot.

I’m in!

Currently reading Never Mind the Quantocks by Stuart Maconie.

Next - the Testaments - Margaret Atwood

Followed by - The Five Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper - Hallie Rubenhold

Then - Mythos - Stephen Fry

Then - Lean In - Sheryl Sandberg

So a bit of a mixed bag!

Cheers for the new thread, southeast. Here’s my list:

1. My Name is Why- Lemn Sissay
2. Damaged- Cathy Glass
3. Wonder- R.J. Palacio
4. Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race- Reni Eddo-Lodge
5. Lost at Sea: the Jon Ronson Mysteries- John Ronson
6. Gotta Get Theroux This: My Life and Strange Times in Television- Louis Theroux
7. Birdsong- Sebastian Faulks
8. Lord of the Flies- William Golding

These are the latest ones:

9. The Beatrix Potter Collection- Beatrix Potter A charming audiobook which was only 99p on Audible just before Christmas. I’d forgotten lots of little details about the stories, e.g. that Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny were cousins (and later, brothers-in-law!). It is voiced by Andrew Scott (who plays the priest in Fleabag) and he does a lovely job. It’s just a shame (from an educational point of view) that the traditional tunes of the nursery rhymes (e.g. ‘Tom, Tom the Piper’s Son’) aren’t used. In the audiobook format, I did slightly miss the illustrations, but overall this was quite delightful.

10. The Cold War: a History from Beginning to End- Hourly History I disagree with the poster (on the last thread) who said that Hourly Histories are a waste of time. I’ve read several and they generally give a pretty good introduction to each topic: there’s nothing to stop people going on to read about a subject in greater depth later. This one was very informative, covering many aspects of the Cold War such as the arms race, the space race, the Civil Rights movement, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War .

11. The Subtle Knife- Philip Pullman I read the book last year: this was the audiobook. Philip Pullman reads it incredibly fast- at one point I thought the app was on the wrong speed- but at least that adds to the excitement. The boy who voices Will is excellent: very sensitive indeed.

12. The Amber Spyglass- Philip Pullman Again this was the audiobook, as I read the book last year. Unfortunately it seemed to be a different young man playing Will this time: he and Lyra were fine, just not as gifted as the previous Will. The bit near the end (you know the bit I mean) was suitably tearjerking.

As usual, I have several books on the go. I think I’m about 75% of the way through Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty, 60% through The Great Gatsby, 25% through Brazil by Michael Palin (audiobook) and I’ve just started Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith (or ‘the octopus one’ as I always think of it). I’ve read the first nine chapters of David Copperfield for the readalong and I also got My Name is Why by Lemn Sissay out of the library and read the bits I missed before (you may possibly recall that the documents from his childhood came out far too small on BorrowBox, which irked me greatly).

I’ve also got a few things on the go, Elton’s biography, Invisible Women and Sense and Sensibility. One of them is getting more attention than the others though.

Checking in with my reads so far, sorry I missed thre NLMG conversation on thre first thread. I loved it and didn't really see as si-fi, my si-fi loving husband very much disagreed.

1. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

Can see why this has been such a best seller, obviously in a short book things can't go into huge detail but enjoyed the questions it threw up.

1. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

There was alot packed in this one from a love story, blog posts culture shock followed by reverse culture shock etc etc. Hard to dislike and I got alot from it.

1. The confession by Jessie Burton

About a woman who tracks down a reclusive author who was the last person to see her mother before she disappeared. Well written and was a quick read but some of the events were abit convoluted, i didn't care and the ending was meh

1. Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

Starts as a light story about a woman in her twenties living and working in south London but then you realise that Queenie is actually self-destructive and it's all fun and games until suddenly it's not. I found this very touching by the end and the parts on anxiety were done quite well.

Thanks for the new thread South! I'll bring my list over later in the week. For now, here's my latest review.

7. Florida - Lauren Groff

I don't usually go for collections of short stories, but this was a good one. Unsurpisingly, these all feature Florida in some form or other, although they are not all set there ( two are in France).

There is a slightly sinister, dangerous feel to each story, represented either by extreme weather be it oppressive heat or life threatening storms, or lethal wildlife in the form of alligators, big cats etc. Snakes feature quite heavily.

I enjoyed the writing, which was wonderfully vivid. My only slight reservation would be that sometimes the stories seemed to stop rather abruptly, leaving the reader hanging. I think this is an issue common to all short stories and reminded me why I don't read them very often.

Pepe 🌨🌨🌨🌨

13. Friendly Fire by Patrick Gale

Now this was a toughie for me.

Set in the 1970s, disadvantaged children's home resident Sophie gets a place at elite boarding school Tatham's (shades of Eton) develops a close friendship with two boys and the book chronicles 3/4 years of her time there.

This is my fifth Patrick Gale after Notes On An Exhibition, A Perfectly Good Man, A Place Called Winter, and The Whole Day Through

Of these I loved Notes On an Exhibition and which has for @Welshwabbit 's reference a brilliant companion piece in A Perfectly Good Man and was more lukewarm on the others

Initially, I enjoyed Friendly Fires only to find my interest waning in the middle a little. Though the book is only 15 years old, it did feel like the book that Gale really wanted to write was a deep look at gay love and gay experimentation within boarding schools but instead employed a sympathetic female character as a protagonist and conduit to make it more accessible to a wider readership.

A specific insult word I despise is used several times which threw me out of the book a bit. I was aiming it for the charity bag when I saw it was a signed copy from when I met him 

The final third massively picks up only for the book to cut off dead as she studies her A Levels and without a rounded proper ending.

A flashforward postscript of about 4 pages follows which is really jarring and adds exactly nothing to the story.

A middling book overall, with a really odd choice in conclusions.

Thanks for the new thread, South. Here is my list and two recent reads.

1.The Go-Between by LP Hartley.
2. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn.
3.Normal People by Sally Rooney.
4.Taduno’s Song by Odafe Atogun.

5. 23 Things they don’t tell you about Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang.

Informative and persuasive discussion about moving the world economy away from free-market capitalism but remaining with capitalism as the organisational economic structure. Well laid out, Ha-Joon Chang even suggests ways of implementing this new world order. Only time will tell...

6. Girl Woman Other by Bernadine Evaristo.

So disappointed by this book. Multiple short stories about women; I felt “issues” shoe-horned into each of them. Men were, for the most part, adulterers, rapists, weirdo no-hopers. I quite liked the flowy, poetic writing but where was the balance, the nuance? I can understand and support wanting to address LGBT politics and race issues but, on the latter, I much preferred Akala’s non-fiction from last year and George The Poet’s excellent podcast Have you Heard George’s Podcast? and for identity issues Grayson Perry and Maggie Nelson. By the end I was bored and annoyed. 😒

@DesdamonasHandkerchief I'm enjoying it but as yet I'm not hugely blown away. Hoping to finish it today (signed off sick at the moment so lots of time on my hands) - I'm finding the characters interesting but finding it hard to see how credible it is for Olive to keep getting involved with all the towns residents and their dilemmas!

14 - fat girl slim again

This was one of those books I couldn’t decide if I enjoyed or not, or if it was all just that bit too odd! Easy read through so ideal for while I’m full of a cold

That's kind of how I feel cake, its not what I'd call 'a page turner'.

I tried to find my review of A Place Called Winter because I remember being a bit disappointed with it, but not why. Couldn't find it, but laughed a lot at so many of the conversations on old threads.

I don't know if it's any good but the ten thousand doors of January is 99p

Description
'A gorgeous, aching love letter to stories, storytellers and the doors they lead us through... absolutely enchanting' Christina Henry, bestselling author of Alice

EVERY STORY OPENS A DOOR

In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored and utterly out of place.

But her quiet existence is shattered when she stumbles across a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure and danger. Each page reveals more impossible truths about the world, and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own.

'One of the most unique works of fiction I've ever read' Tamora Pierce, New York Times bestselling author

'A gorgeously written story of love and longing, of what it means to lose your place in the world and then have the courage to find it again' Kat Howard, author of An Unkindness of Magicians

'Devastatingly good, a sharp, delicate nested tale of worlds within worlds, stories within stories, and the realm-cracking power of words' Melissa Albert, author of The Hazel Wood

'The Ten Thousand Doors of January healed hurts I didn't even know I had. An unbearably beautiful story about growing up, and everything we fight to keep along the way' Amal El-Mohtar, Hugo Award-winning author

4. Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly

I loved this, I would say it is my stand out read of the year so far. I saw the movie Hidden Figures last year and really enjoyed it, and wanted to read more about these women. I do also have a bit of an obsession about reading about the Space Race, so it was a natural title to end up on my TBR list.

It's an inspirational, but little known, story of the female black mathematicians who did much of the calculations that enabled the USA to be the first to put a man on the moon. In the USA of the 1950s and 1960s, these women faced prejudices on two fronts - being black in an America still segregated by race, and by being women in a completely male-dominated environment. Being able to read from the comfort of today, it seems incredible that these women were not able to use the same toilet as their white female colleagues, or sit at the same table in the staff canteen, but still worked with accuracy, diligence and above all passion.
In the days when computers with less computing power than a modern mobile phone filled entire rooms and tooks hours to make calculations, these women did maths in their heads that put astronauts into space and brought them safely home again. It was also a fascinating look in to their lives, they were also daughters, wives, and mothers.

There were many of these women, the author focuses on three of them - Katherine G. Johnson, a widowed mother of three who worked on the John Glenn flight, Mary Jackson who was the first black woman to gain the status of Engineer rather than "computer" and in her "spare" time made soap box cars to race with her son, and ran a girl scout troop and was a key figure in ending segregation within the US GirlScouts, and Dorothy Vaughan, who worked for years and years at NASA and recognised that computers were the future and made sure she and her black colleagues were able to programme them, so they didn't lose their jobs.

Very good read, would highly recommend.

Still also plodding through Anna Karenina - enjoying it, but it's been a long haul and looking forward to something a bit lighter next

Just started STATION 11!!! up to Ch 6. So far it's nicely written and the first para of this chapter has told.me something I didn't know before - that fuel degrades in a few years. So actually unexpectedly favourabl e. So far

7. The Reunion by Guillaume Musso

Translated from the French, I initially found the writing of this crime thriller so clunky I almost gave up about 30 pages in. But I persevered and I did end up enjoying it. Centred around an elite high school reunion, 25 years on from the disappearance of a beautiful student, the revelations come thick and fast as layer upon layer of deceit is revealed. The story itself and the solution are fantastically silly and over the top (which I found quite fun) and there are lots of French cultural references to enjoy. A quick, light read.

@bookwitch I'm reading Anna Karenina too. According to my Kindle I'm 76% through it. I thought I was going to struggle with this book, but I've actually really enjoyed it (I'm even eyeing up a fancy leather bound edition on Amazon 😅)

Book 9:
My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

Supporting her sister the serial murderer, the patient, fastidious elder sibling acts as cleaner, councillor and protector. Until her serial killer sister starts dating one man, who holds a special place in the elder siblings heart.
I loved this and found it over too quickly. The characters are all perfectly drawn and alive (well, at least most of them!) and the story fizzes along but has darker depths below.

I’ve ordered Wilding from my library.

"Just started STATION 11!!! up to Ch 6. So far it's nicely written "

Jux - I used to like you