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?

MuseumofHam, will be interested to know how you get on with Children of Ruin. I keep going to buy it and remembering I’m not meant to be buying books. #TeamSpider

Betty - Might look out for New Zealand Calling, I'm planning to emigrate to the South Island next year!

MuseumofHam
Dogs of War was one of my favourite reads last year, and I’ve just started Children of Ruin I’m only a couple of chapters in, but already firmly #TeamSpider

10. Milkman - Anna Burns

A re-read for a book group I'm in. This time round I listened on Audible and would highly recommend the narration by Brid Brennan. This really worked as an audiobook given it's form - a meandering stream of consciousness.

I think you either love or hate this one; Milkman was my favourite read of 2019, which puts me firmly in the former camp. Interestingly, half of the book read struggled and gave up, but those who did finish, loved it.

I won't describe the plot here as there isn't really one. Instead Anna Burns creates a cast of brilliantly idiosyncratic characters to explore themes of community, fitting in, being young, being old, being a woman, being a man, just being human really against a backdrop of what we assume is 1970's Belfast, but could in fact be anywhere. Best thing about it though? The wonderful dark humour and sparkling optimism running all the way through it. A work of genius!

I've been dithering about reading Milkman and your review has really sold it to me, Indigo

I would second Milkman in audio format. It was really well done. Also one of my best 'reads' last year.

After all the Wolf Hall advice I decided to listen to the audiobook and have a few hours left. I think it was worth doing in the end if only to get back into the habit of Mantel's voice and get a reminder of the key players.

@InMyOwnParticularIdiom Might look out for New Zealand Calling, I'm planning to emigrate to the South Island next year!

Oooh, jealous! Whereabouts? (feel free to PM if you prefer)

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. (4/5) 13. Elevator Pitch by Linwood Barclay. (1/5)

14. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. I finally finished my first audiobook. This sweeping history of humanity through the ages was an interesting read / listen which gave me a lot to think about. I particularly enjoyed the early section about the other humans but felt it dragged and was a bit meandering after the agricultural revolution. (3/5)

13 The Diary of a Bookseller Shaun Bythell Moderately interesting and occasionally funny. I don't share his rather sarcastic sense of humour or his pride in being rude to most people he encounters. For me the most enjoyable part of the book were his stories of buying books from a wide variety of people.

PM'd you Betty!

20. Queen of Hearts - Rhys Bowen

About half way through the 'Her Royal Spyness' series - lighthearted detective series set in the 1930s. Good fun, not too taxing, I'm re-reading a few of these whilst I wait for my reserved copy of the latest instalment to arrive at the library.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I can't get the hang of the Philip Pullman books either! Often wondered if I'm missing out as most people seem to love them, but I didn't enjoy the films or BBC series particularly either

@JollyYellaHumberElla if you'd like to listen to the delightful Mr Cox, most series of the Infinite Monkey Cage are available for free on BBC Sounds

5 Burial Rites - Hannah Kent

Much reviewed on here and adding to the loved it group. Happily finished it in a hotel in Reykjavik. Can I just say that books in Iceland are extortionate but have a few to bring home.

I have fallen behind very badly but have 3 on the go

Oh thanks Ruby that’s a great idea! I do listen to the infinite monkey cage when I can catch it, but didn’t think of that.

Shame you didn’t rate Sapiens as I was eying this one MamaNewt. The Human Universe touched on some of the early human evolution theories and I’d like to learn more. Might give it a go if I get through some other TBR priorities.

@RubySlippers77

Hurrah! They seem so revered on MN that I thought I'd be shown the door!

Very underwhelming.

11. Ladder of Years - Anne Tyler

Life has been pretty hectic recently, and I always find Anne Tyler very soothing when I'm feeling a bit frazzled. This fitted the bill perfectly. A thought provoking but not overly so plot; a cosy, slightly dysfunctional extended family and Anne Tyler's assured prose all combine to lower my blood pressure and help me to regain my perspective on life.

During the annual family holiday, forty year old Delia goes for a stroll on the beach and decides to simply keep walking, hitching a lift with a stranger to a different town and a new life as a single woman with no responsibilities.

The plot stretched credibility at times, but as usual Anne Tyler pulls it off, capturing the absurdity of life with insight and humour. A very enjoyable read.

I don't like Pullman either! (Well he may be a very nice man, but his writing doesn't engage me).

12. The Unfinished Clue by Georgette Heyer I love Heyer's romances but the detective stories are (imo) weaker, but am on holiday and saw this on the hotel shelf- despite the fact that I am pretty sure I read it last year (and it was a reread then!) I still didn't remember whodunnit! A pleasant sunbathing read (though I overdid the sun a little!).

I definitely need to read more Anne Tyler I enjoyed the two I've read.

18. Literary Life by Posy Simmonds Oh, she's wonderful, isn't she? In this collection of cartoons - ranging from single, whole-page frames to a brace of short stories at the end - Posy manages to skewer the literary works and all its pretentions with quiet but deadly accuracy. I particularly enjoyed the recurring strips about the bookselling trade (Wintergreene's, the old-school bookshop that is under threat from Borders Boulder books and its exciting juice bars and net book agreement-smashing discounts, bears more than a passing resemblance to the lovely local bookshop that I was rhapsodising about above). Doctor Derek Troutley's casebook of literary afflictions and his treatments of them (the case pictured particularly spoke to me) was also entertaining.

19. Bach by Denis Arnold I'm a total Bach fangirl (DH has learned to live with the framed poster of JSB that has been in my possession since I was an undergraduate and is currently, er, on our bedroom wall ). I've got Music in the Castle of Heaven and Evening in the Palace of Reason waiting to be read on my shelves (incidentally, I'm a bit about those titles together) but was delighted to find this very short volume in a charity shop last week. It promises to be a "musical biography" for "the general reader who has a limited knowledge of musical terminology"; this was good insofar as it kept the narrative short and to the point (which helped cement the relative order of events in my head). It was less helpful when the author did actually engage with a piece in more depth: several times, I'd read his description without being able to call to mind the exact cantata or organ prelude ... only to Google the first few bars and go "oh, it's that one!" A few manuscript extracts would have gone a long way in these cases. I did appreciate his efforts to rescue Bach from the 19th-century image of him as a rather dull technician, motivated only by his Lutheran faith: Arnold makes it clear that he was influenced by new musical trends from France and Italy, even if he did then turn them into something completely idiosyncratic.

"Posy manages to skewer the literary world", that should say above.

25 Autonomous by Annalee Newitz
Biotech cyberpunk set in the 22ndC, when states have become corporate, AI bots are manufactured for indentured service, and most working class humans are also effectively stateless and have to sell themselves into indenture in order to get by. Big pharma provides drugs that can treat most illnesses, and extend healthy life for humans to 120 plus for those who can afford them.
The novel follows Jack, anti-patent pirate dedicated to making lifesaving drugs available to the masses, and human agent Eliasz & his bot partner Paladin, sent by the International Property Coalition (IPC) to track her down.

The writing is a bit pedestrian in places but overall this was a good read, looking at ideas of personal freedom & choice as well as the rights and wrongs of intellectual property law, with a pacy and not too predictable plot carrying it along.

30. Why I'm No Longer Talking To White People About Race by Remi Eddo-Lodge

Wow. Thanks for the recommendations on here. This book is vital, so, so important. I think it should be required reading from say Yr 11 onward. I was very glad she did an extra chapter to bring in Brexit and Grenfell.

As a minority, although white, this comment in the section on white privilege gave me a jolt.

“an absence of a lifetime of subtle marginalisation and othering - exclusion from the narrative of being human”

Though white, because I am disabled, I have experienced this all of my life and to see Remi acknowledge that shared struggle with :

I walk and talk like them and that is part of why I am taken seriously

Was a beautiful thing to me, that she had amidst her own central discourse given the reasons for the marginalisation experienced by disabled people thought and airtime.

I seriously will be recommending this to anyone I know who cares about being informed.

I knew about many of the things she referred to but to my shame other things were shocking and unknown to me.

5/5

12. The Closed Circle by Jonathan Coe.

Follow-up to The Rotters'Club and set 20 years later. We are now in Blair's Britain and the original teenage characters are adults with jobs, children, mortgages, broken marriages etc. The narrative moves between the characters' personal lives and an account of the political situation in the early 00s and this doesn't always work smoothly. I found it flawed but enjoyed it.

13. Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson.

One theme of MMATM is reflecting on life and the choices made when young, and this is convincingly handled by Anne Youngson, who was 70 when this debut novel was published.

It consists of a series of letters between Tina, a farmer's wife in East Anglia, and Anders, a museum curator in Denmark. Tina's first letter is triggered by her interest in Tollund Man, a body discovered in a peat bog on the Jutland Peninsula, and dated to the Iron Age. The friendship between them builds over time as they share more of their memories, feelings about their families, reflections on their surroundings .. it's a gentle book and apparently part of the new "Up Lit" genre which I hadn't heard of until this evening.

This was a book group choice and I approached it unenthusiastically, expecting it to be whimsical, along the lines of Harold Fry. The Hundred Year Old Man etc, however to be fair it was more interesting than that.

EineReise I've had Why I'm No Longer Talking To White People About Race on my TBR pile for months. I must get it read.

Highlandcoo it is such an eye opening book. It shouldn’t be, we should all know this stuff. Even the first chapter makes you go ‘wtf? Britain did what??’

Noah's Compass - Anne Tyler - book8. Really enjoyed this...as IndigoSalt said, such a comforting read. There is a plot of sorts, elderly man suffers amnesia following an assault, meets a younger woman and falls for her...but somehow the plot isn't the main thing, she just writes characters and day to day family relationships so well. A solid 4.5/5. Just started Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout which is another comfort author for me.