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?

"How old do you have to be to read Remains Of The Day ??"
About 150, I'd say.

I'm an unrepentant DNF-er, with the occasional exception when I'll finish a real stinker purely so that I'm able to slate it on here. Fortunately my most recent books don't need that treatment:

21 The Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch
PC Grant returns to London for this installment. Lots of laughs, and I'm enjoying the gradual modernisation of the Folly & introduction of new characters. I've got the novella The Furthest Station out of the library & looking forward to that, but will probably wait a bit then to read the next book, I reckon they benefit from a bit of time between them.

22. Extreme Economies: Survival, Failure, Future by Richard Davies, listened to on Audible.

This was really excellent. The author visits nine different places as per the subtitle. The three examples of 'survival economies' are Aceh in Indonesia post-tsunami, two Syrian refugee camps, and a high security prison in Louisiana. 'Failure' is covered in Darien in Panama, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Glasgow's shipbuilding industry. 'Future' looks at Akita, the city with the oldest population in ageing Japan, the embrace of technology in Talinn, Estonia, and extreme inequality in Santiago, Chile.

Through these extreme examples, he explores how the world's economy might develop over the next decades, and what contributes to success and failure. I thought he did a great job (unusual amongst economists) of being balanced, in many cases he'd say something and I'd think 'yes but', only for a qualifying case to come up in a page or so. He looks a lot at the importance of social capital (trust, mutual aid etc) as well as more traditional forms. Overall I'd recommend this to anyone, it's totally accessible to a non-specialist, with any economic terms he uses explained briefly but clearly, but doesn't sacrifice depth in the sake of clarity. The individual stories of the people in interviews really shine through as well, whether retired Glaswegian ex-shipbuilders or Syrian children who've had to drop out of school to trade or work in the fields.

1. Pet Semetary by Stephen King (2/5)
2. The Outsider by Albert Camus (5/5)
3. Somebody's Mother, Somebody's Daughter by Carol Ann Lee (3/5)
4. Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor. (4/5)
5. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. (5/5)
6. 4321 by Paul Auster. (4/5)
7. Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann. (3/5)
8. The Devil's Teardrop by Jeffrey Deaver. (1/5)
9. A Symphony of Echoes by Jodi Taylor. (3/5)

10. What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge. (4/5) 11. A Second Chance by Jodi Taylor. (4/5)

12. A Trail Through Time by Jodi Taylor. I absolutely loved this book, it's a mark of how much I'm enjoying this series that I bought a kindle book priced higher than £1.99 for the first time in years. I think I'm going to have to pace myself now and read some other books in between the Chronicles of St Mary's* though. (4/5)*

I'm a recent convert to the DNF school of thought, life is too short and I'm getting too old to waste time on a book I'm not enjoying when there are so many books to read.

85notout

Thank you, tonight is tough.

I've never understood the 'must finish' school of thought. Makes no sense to carry on, if it's not doing anything for you.

11. Before I met you by Lisa Jewell. I think Lisa Jewell seems quite likely to have been a MNer at some point. So I'm a bit nervous of writing this, really. Another book I enjoyed and raced through. But oh dear, books set in two time periods have to do a lot of work, and only by suspending any semblance of belief or knowledge about the earlier time did this stay readable.

Elizabeth and her mother go to live with an elderly relative in Guernsey. The elderly relative takes to the young Elizabeth and the closeness that results sets the direction of Elizabeth's life. Years later she will piece together Arlette's past as a young woman in the 1920s.

I enjoyed the plot and I liked Elizabeth who became Betty. But Arlette and the other 1920s characters fail to come to life at all because of the awful dialogue. I've tried to write dialogue set in the past and I know how difficult it is- jewell is a lot better than me at it. But the result makes all the characters into wooden ciphers. Nothing they do is natural or believable. Their lives have no details that ring true except clothes, but even those are not well done - only socialites of truly fabulous richness like Diana Guiness had so many new clothes then. These are women who supposedly live in flats and have jobs - well,women did that then,that's true. But the texture of their lives was so different. The physical business of living took up so much time - keeping yourself, your clothes, your living space clean and presentable took so much more time than it did now. There were few fridges so buying food and making meals was much more frequent.

Jewell says she doesn't do much research so that's fine, it's just fluff. But I think she used to be a better writer than this. I liked the 90s sections much more even though she's visibly writing by numbers and can't be bothered making the male leads even faintly desirable. She even ducks writing a 'big reveal' scene which I'd been looking forward to. Betty is charming enough to carry it, just about.

I have started to realise that there won't be enough time in my life for me to read all the good books Same here, Keith, and it was a sombre moment to be honest. Although I'm aiming to increase my total to 100 books a year starting in 2020 so having a good try

Thanks too for the heads-up re audiobooks on BBC Sounds. I'm particularly interested in Frankenstein, Cranford and also Middlemarch, which I reread last year but would enjoy revisiting.

Sadik I've just ordered Extreme Economies as a late Valentine's present for DH. Sounds just up his street.

Boiledeggs I thought Visitation was excellent when I read it recently. The quality of the translation meant it read so fluently; not always the case. Go Went Gone sounds equally good and very current in its theme.

85notout thanks for the link to the list. Interesting; I do like a good book list. Hope tomorrow is a better day

19: Our Friends in Berlin - Anthony Quinn

Really quite absorbing WW2 spy drama. Jack Hoste is secretly cultivating a network of fifth columnists in Blitz-battered 1940s London. Amy Strallen runs a marriage agency. Their paths cross, then recross with increasing urgency. I can't say much more without spoiling things for anyone who fancies reading this, except to think that Kate Atkinson might have been a bit cheesed off to find, when Transcription was published in 2018, that when it came to certain aspects of the plot, Anthony Quinn had been thinking along uncannily similar lines.

I’ve fallen off the thread, so clambering back on to add my list:

1. The Five - Haillie Rubenhold
2. All That Man Is - David Szaly
3. The Carer - Deborah Moggach
4. Mothering Sunday - Graham Swift

5. Evil Eye - Joyce Carol Oates

1. The Garden of Evening Mists - Tan Twang Eng
2. Wilding - Isabella Tree
3. Reading Reconsidered - Doug Lemov
4. When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi

10. I’d Rather Be Writing - Marcia Golub 11. The Glass Woman - Caroline Lea 12. The Quickening Maze - Adam Foulds Have now finished: 13. Grit - Angela Duckworth An interesting non-fiction read about how people who want to achieve their goals require ‘grit’. Kind of says the same thing over and over again, but I feel that I need this in order to force myself to achieve my goals. Bang me over the head with a mallet and I’ll finish that novel. Interesting research to back up the ideas in the book. 14. Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel A reread. I loved it even more than the first time I read it. Six stars out of five. As soon as I finished it I wanted to pick it up and read it again (except I need to read Bring Up The Bodies before my library reservation on The Mirror and the Light comes throughout). I keep grabbing it and opening it to random pages. Love it so much. I want to live in this book. I’ll be one of Cromwell’s wards if he’ll have me. Does anyone else on here love this book? 15. The Hunting Party - Lucy Foley I only read this because of people on here saying it wasn’t very good! Curiosity got the better of me. I enjoyed it. The perfect rest novel after Wolf Hall. At the end I did think ‘really?’ but I didn’t mind the slight preposterousness. Well written, fun and page turnery. I devoured the last third. 16. The art of Rest - Claudia Hammond Extreme case of meh. So dull I listened to it at twice speed on BorrowBox so not very restful. I’m now reading The Tidal Zone - Sarah Moss as well as some poetry I have on the go. Also listening to The Field of the Cloth of Gold- by Magnus Mills.

Extreme Economies added to the list - thanks Sadik.

I'm trying to get into After Me Comes the Flood, but not really feeling the love. I'm only a few chapters in but not particularly engaged, despite the supposedly intriguing situation. I've been looking forward to reading this for a while, so I'm a bit disappointed . Anyone else felt the same? Should I persevere, or put it on one side and come back to it when I'm in a different frame of mind (it's a library audiobook, fwiw)? I don't think it's quite a DNF, although the discussion above is making me feel better about the prospect of ditching books that I'm not enjoying or getting anything out of!

Hope others like Extreme Economies as much as me!

23 Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Much reviewed on here. I loved this, I read it yesterday evening and ended up staying up too late to finish it. The interview format worked perfectly for me, and the fact that you could sympathise with pretty much all the characters. I'll be interested to see how it works on TV, I suspect it may lose a lot of its charm - but hopefully there'll be a fabulous soundtrack to make up.

24 The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch
More Peter Grant adventures. This doesn't really count being more of a short story than a full novel, but I figure it balances out overall so I've given it a number.

In fact I thought the format worked well - it's a nice peg for the mix of humour and police procedural. It's a long time since I read the Saint books, but IIRC a lot of them have 3 or so long-ish stories and again it's a good length for the material.

Don’t bother mackerella. I read it recently and also struggled to get into it but kept going as it wasn’t that long. However nothing much happens and at the end I thought ‘I’d that it?’. If you’re not enjoying it I would pack it in now.

25. Unfollow by Megan Phelps-Roper (audiobook)

Like many, Megan Phelps-Roper and her sister Grace were brought to my attention by the Louis Theroux documentaries about their family church and its egregiously offensive exploits. Like many, I was delighted when I heard they had found the courage to leave its oppressive, cultish, life.

I was looking forward to reading this but didn't want to buy this year, so used an Audible credit, and the book is read aloud by Meghan itself.

I found it frustrating in that its most heavy focus seemed to be on that which was already known about the Westboro Baptist Church rather than anything new, with both her childhood and teen years skated over.

It is very heavy on scripture as she tries to illustrate the roots of her beliefs, and this sometimes became wearisome. In these paragraphs there was sometimes a tone of pomposity or self righteousness that I didn't care for.

Ultimately it left me with a sense that Megan, who left the church 8 years ago now still has a long way to go with processing her childhood and still lives in a lot of denial.

The book is dedicated to her parents whom she frequently describes as both loving to her, and loved by her. Yet, her whole narrative about them contradicts this. They were demonstrably not loving and in fact incredibly abusive; from standing over her battering her if she got a single note wrong at the piano, to withholding another sister from school after she threatened to disclose serious physical abuse, to at ages 20 and 26, not being allowed to leave the house until after a statement of exact whereabouts and duration and consent being given, to surrendering phones on demand.

Megan and Grace upon leaving, were dumped in a local motel by their father and pretty much abandoned to their fate.

Overall, interesting, but she still lacks some insight and that is quite sad.

26. Fates And Furies by Lauren Groff

Hated and DNFd by @FortunaMajor I can say I can see why. There's a pervasive pretentiousness to it.

Lotto and Mathilde marry after 2 weeks acquaintance. The book splits itself into his narrative 'Fates' and hers 'Furies'

Lotto is an egotistical man amongst the creatives of the New York theatre scene, he came from wealth, but was disinherited for the transgression of his marriage. Lotto is frankly, an arsehole as are most of his friends, but something about the prose style kept me engaged and kept me reading.

Frankly none of the "revelations" from the Mathilde section came as a surprise and only succeeded in reinforcing how self absorbed Lotto was.

I must say that both in the US and the UK there are way too many London/New York set "luvvie books" and it's tedious.

Having said this I stuck with this because I liked the lyrical way it
was written so there's definitely something in there worth giving time to. IMHO.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I’m just starting Unfollow and I have to say I put it down with little inclination to pick it up after reading the dedication I sort of assumed exactly what you’ve reviewed. I felt a little similar with Educated which was amazing but I found the author far to forgiving of her parents.

If anyone’s given up checking the daily £3 audible deals because they’ve been terrible, it’s worth another look today. I got The Waves by Virginia Woolf and would thoroughly recommend Smoke Gets In Your Eyes. Lots of decent stuff today.

Not that I’m finding any time to read at the moment!

Sorry for your loss 85. My DF passed away suddenly last year and after initially not being able to pick up a book for three weeks, I found afterwards that reading was a great comfort.

DNF Demi-gods by Eliza Robertson. Would it be worth picking up again at some point?

1. Kingdom By The Sea - Paul Theroux

Picked up as a Backlisted recommendation and as usual it hit the mark. Described by the podcast as basically Theroux traveling around the coast of Britain complaining about stuff, and that's pretty much what it does but it's very funny, readable and an interesting insight into the country in 1982 (which hasn't changed that much really).

Nuffaluff 🙋‍♀️ me, I love Wolf Hall and I've just reread Bring Up The Bodies! which I'll review when I have more time, but I adore her characterisation of Cromwell, he's warm and funny and intelligent, which makes it all the more jarring when he does terrible things he please Henry or avenge the Cardinal!

@Palegreenstars

Obviously its hard because even abused children love their parents still..but she is still trapped psychologically in how she relates to them, and deeply defensive of a woman who was by any standard an appalling parent; but she has yet to realise this for herself. I wonder if when her own daughter reaches the age her mother would beat her black and blue with whatever was to hand, if this no doubt distressing revelation will eventually come.

35. Grown-Ups by Marian Keyes

Love Marian Keyes. This wasn’t one of her best (nothing will top the Walsh family books) but I still really enjoyed it. It did take a little while to work out who was who, but there was a handy family tree at the front. It’s about a large extended family - three brothers and their wives and children, and their various issues.

36. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Listened to this on Audible. I have read it before but not for years and I had forgotten just how funny it is.

37. That Girl From Nowhere by Dorothy Koomson

Chicklit about a black woman adopted by white parents, who tracks down her birth family. Not bad but nothing special.

38. Rogue Lawyer by John Grisham

I’ve never read Grisham before, but someone gave me this so though I’d give it a go. I actually really enjoyed it and raced through it in a day. It’s more a collection of stories about different trials the lawyer undertakes, rather than having one overarching storyline. Interestingly on goodreads a lot of the higher ratings are from people who are also new to Grisham, whereas others say this isn’t one of his best, so maybe I’ll have to try another to see if I agree!

28. Aztec Civilisation: A History from Beginning to End- Hourly History I seem to have got into the habit of reading an Hourly History every month or so. I thought this one was above average, as it had some quotations from ‘proper’ historians, although these occasionally felt shoehorned-in. I found the section on trade particularly interesting.

29. Cannery Row- John Steinbeck I bought this in the Audible sale a few days ago and listened to it the same day. I found it quite charming: there is not much plot to speak of, but it has interesting characters and locations.

30. La Belle Sauvage- Philip Pullman Finally it was my turn to read this on BorrowBox! I enjoyed discovering more about Lyra’s early life and, as usual, I loved all the references to Oxford (a place I know very well). I may have been missing something, but I thought that perhaps it didn’t have quite as much depth as the original trilogy.

31. War Doctor: Surgery on the Front Line- David Nott I didn’t know much about David Nott’s inspirational humanitarian work before listening to this (read beautifully by the author). For 25 years, he has regularly taken unpaid leave from his NHS post in London to volunteer in war and disaster zones such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, Syria and Haiti. He has put his own life in danger on countless occasions and has saved hundreds of lives. His story is inspirational, but a strong stomach is needed at times. The Afterword from his wife is quite cheesy.

32. The Bookshop that Floated Away- Sarah Henshaw The memoir of a woman who leaves her boyfriend to spend six months travelling on her narrow-boat-cum-bookshop, trying to keep afloat (literally) by selling books or bartering them with locals for food, drink or even a haircut. Predictably, I enjoyed reading about the books more than about canal boating, but overall this was quite fun.

17. Finale - Stephanie Garber

The last in the Caraval trilogy; I loved Caraval, quite enjoyed the second book, found this one a bit tedious TBH. Perhaps it was starting to grate on me a bit with all the plot twists/ changeable characters/ wildly descriptive language, but I thought you could easily lose a third of the book and it wouldn't make much difference. Also there were a couple of silly mistakes in the details, which put me off. I'm glad I read it and found out what happened, but equally if I'd finished after Caraval I don't think I'd have missed much.

18. Five on a treasure island - Enid Blyton

A bit of light relief after ploughing through Finale! Found loads of Famous Five books in a charity shop and was straight back to my childhood, when I loved them. Obviously re-reading them as an adult I saw quite a few bits that didn't add up, plus glaring sexism etc (but then FIL's attitudes haven't changed since the 1950s and he is just the same, so presumably it wasn't out of place then...) but such fun for me to revisit.

19. Rewild - Simon Barnes

Some lovely reviews upthread and some great ideas for getting back to nature. Sadly a lot of them involve being quiet and listening, and as I'm usually out and about with small DC who never shut up, his suggestions will have to wait a while...

@KeithLeMonde thank you for the BBC Sounds recommendation, I had no idea it even existed!!

@MamaNewtNewt can't remember if I've said this before, but do find the St Mary's Facebook group, very entertaining!

@RubySlippers77 you did tell me about the St Mary's group but I don't have Facebook. It's a shame as I'd love to gossip about the books. I'm trying to hold off on buying book 5 but not sure I'm gonna last

I just finished Bosh! How To Live Vegan. This was a fascinating read and has really made me think. I'm not fully decided on transitioning to veganism but definitely plan to do a lot more research into it. This book is really inspiring. I'd highly recommend it.

14. The Scent of Shadows by Vicki Pettersson

Supernatural fiction. Joanna Archer discovers that Las Vegas is hosting troupes of superpowered beings, Light vs Shadow, and she’s one of them.
Required a bit of suspension of disbelief, but entertaining for the most part.

15. The Silver Dream. Story by Neil Gaiman & Micheal Reaves, written by Michael Reaves & Mallory Reaves

Meh. World walking people face perilous situations in a not very interesting way.