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?

Betty and Plornish, I'm so sorry to hear both of your news

Has anyone been reading the controversy on American Dirt I thought the story sounded good and always tempted by a modern Steinbeck so would be interested in Latinx recommendations to check out instead.

I have also been wondering this as it sounded like an interesting story. If you hear of anything good please let me know

Catch and Kill, Ronan Farrow's book about Weinstein, is 99p this morning. Have been wanting to read this for a while.

How lovely that you had answers to your letters, biblio! I hope that children's authors today would be as kind and courteous to their fans.

I hadn't heard of Catherine Fox, but the description of the Lindchester series as "the twenty-first century answer to Trollope’s Barchester" has sent it straight towards the top of my TBR pile! Please do report back from the talk next month. I think I like pretty much all of the authors named, but I hadn't thought much about their relationship with Anglicanism - beyond noting how many curates form the love interest in Barbara Pym novels! I think DLS spent her post-Wimsey years writing religious plays and essays, but I'd always thought of those as completely separate from the detective fiction (is there any evidence of Anglican influence in the latter?!) and have always slightly resented the fact that they stopped her from giving us more Wimsey and Harriet, even though I know she considered them to be the more important part of her work. Anyway, please so report back from the talk!

Fortuna, I'm very lucky that my small town has a truly wonderful independent bookshop that organises dozens of author events every year! I saw Shaun Bythell last year and Elly Griffiths this year, but have nothing else planned yet. I'll report back when I do but will probably give the Valentine's Day event with John Bercow a miss.

Could any of you kindle/amazon savvy readers tell me what a Wishlist credit is and how it works? Thanks in advance!

Ooh I had one of those last year @now I think it’s something to do with an offer / deal Amazon have with a publisher of a book you’ve added to your wish list. Do you can only spend it on certain books. I could never work out what book I’d added but I seem to remember getting a few free or very cheap books from it. There was a time limit.

mackerella your bookshop looks amazing and the list of events is impressive!

We also have an independent bookshop and it's such a great part of the village. I do try to buy a fair number of books from them as wouldn't want to lose them.

Do you go to the reading group in your local shop?

I'll report back in due course, mack. The Lindchester books are fab. I loved her earlier books when I was younger, but I attempted a reread recently and had the impression that they haven't aged that well.

I had a dream last night I was running an independent bookshop. It was a problem as we only stocked tea and stationery and people were cross there were no books.

21 Christy Malry’s Own Double Entry by BS Johnson

Where to start? This novel is wonderful. Inventive, playful, really dark, funny and jaw dropping. Christy Malry bears a grudge and devises a system to settle his accounts. In creative and alarming ways. I loved everything about this from the narrative voice to the jokes. It reminded me a little of A Confederacy of Dunces but way lighter (in ease of reading not content - the ending is very sad), more engaging and with a much higher body account. My only complaint was it was far too short (and it really is a very quick read). I absolutely loved this and was delighted to find there is an episode of Backlisted devoted to it. I shall borrow their description of this being “American Psycho as if written by Noel Coward”. It’s just a wonderful book, on all counts, and I would include it in the category of “books I want everyone to love but won’t recommend to friends in case they don’t and I have to question whether we actually have much in common”.

New name to replace Betty.
Thank you for all the lovely good wishes, they mean a lot. It's difficult days but much easier than the three days before when I knew it was imminent if that makes any sense. It was the right thing for him as prolonging his life would have meant more pain and misery for him which he wouldn't have coped well with.

I haven't been in the mood for reading so have been dipping in and out of QI: The second book of general ignorance which is an easy read with amusing and interesting snippets but doesn't require great effort or concentration.

go easy on yourself betty / 85notout

thanks for that info @Palegreenstars - bit of a bonus but not sure how, why or where!!??! . Off to add more titles to my Wishlist, just in case

mackerella having that bookshop is just showing off You can keep Bercow though

30. I Am, I Am, I Am - Maggie O'Farrell
    Much reviewed already and marvellous.

31. Candide - Voltaire
    A jaunty young man sets about in the world believing that everything happens for the best, only to find life slaps him upside the head at every opportunity. A humorous and satirical take on the horrors of humankind.

I love how people alert to good Daily Deals on here, I never think to look and its a massive saving on the Ronan Farrow!

Laughing at Pepe's dream, although in fact people are probably more likely to spend money on tea and stationery than on full-price books...

I'm sorry to say that the first I do when I wake up in the morning is check the Kindle Daily Deal. Usually I don't succumb, so I can walk around feeling pleasingly frugal.

Snap Biblio

High five, Keith. At least the blue light on my phone wakes me up in the morning (excuses, excuses).

Snap biblio.

I am no longer feeling guilty about buying books when I said I wouldn't - I just accepted a job

Congrats, 85!

No books and people shouting at you? That sounds like the worst anxiety dream imaginable, Pepe

Congratulations, 85! You'd better buy some books to celebrate

I'm feeling surprisingly pleased about the love for my local bookshop! I'm used to feeling disgruntled and ungrateful when people tell me how lucky I am to live in this town technically a city, but it's really very small and I'd rather live in the eye-wateringly expensive city down the road where DH and I actually work so this has given me a bit of a kick up the backside and some much-needed perspective. Yes, that shop is amazing and I love going there just to fondle all the lovely books and have a complementary cup of coffee (ok, that's just showing off). I haven't been to any of the reading groups, but am tempted by April's one for Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead...

@nowanearlynicemum

I've got one as well, I get 3 quid off a book on my Wish List, it gets used at purchase point

I bought The Starless Sea with mine, got £4 off

7. The Stalker by Alex Grey The 16th book in the Lorimer detective series & the weakest I've read. I think I'm going to give up reading crime series when they reach about book 10.

8. Sweet Little Lies by Caz Frear. A good debut crime thriller, with Cat Kinsella as the chief character & DI.

9. First on the Rope by Roger Frisson-Roche

Published (in French) in 1942, this is the story of a family of Alpine guides and their hard lives. Very much about climbing & resuces in the French Alps & overcoming disability. I thought it was outstanding, loved all the details of the climbs around Mont Blanc & the detail of the technivalities of that era. Frisson-Roche was an Alpine Guide himself & you can really fell that this was written by someone who knows about the mountains & climbing. My best read so far this year.

How funny @PepeLePew last night I dreamt I went to my favourite bookshop in Lyme Regis and someone's had modernised it and they were even selling clothes, I woke in a bit of a panic 😅 wonder what's causing the bookshop dreams 😆

My local library is doing a 'blind date with a book' for valentine's Day. They've wrapped the book up so you don't know what you're getting. I've got so many books to read but I may have to pop down there tomorrow, I love the idea of a surprise!

Squiz is that the second hand bookshop at the bottom of the hill? I love that shop too! Love all the little curios round the shop as well as the books.

I've just got The Brain that Changes Itself on a Kindle Daily Deal -- 59p. It's a few case studies of people whose brains are damaged but who have managed to get it 'working'. I was always interested in brain function anyway, became v interested in the plasticity of the brain when I was at Uni and since the last big ms attack where I felt my whole self shut down I have been doing everything I can to get myself back to working order, both mentally and physically. Anyway, that's why I've spent 59p when I swore I wouldn't buy any more books!

I have finished the Pym; it is a sweetly old fashioned book and, as I said in my last post, reminds me so much of many of my relatives, lots of whom are living that very sort of life even as we speak.

Started The Epigenetics Revolution. So far A+++++++++++++++++!

I've just bought a copy of Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry (thank you Pepe ) and going to buy First on the Rope for my dad's birthday next week (thank you magimedi ). Fortunately I didn't make a no-book-buying resolution!

20. In the High Valley by Susan Coolidge

Final book in the Katy series - not quite as delightful as Clover, but still a sweet little story.