50 Book Challenge 2020 Part Three

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the third 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 and the second one here.

What are you reading?

Interesting - I'd probably like the kids version!

23: Bring up the Bodies - Hilary Mantel

Having started reading this at least a year ago, put it to one side and somehow never picked it up again, I belatedly realised that I ought to polish it off before The Mirror and the Light came out. Then I saw I'd more or less forgotten everything I'd read, despite being about halfway through, so had to start again from the beginning.

Anyway - superb. I don't read a huge amount of historical fiction, probably because history is my thing and I can't cope with feeling let down if/when fiction gets it wrong in some way...however, Mantel creates a 16thc world so hyper-present and believable that I could virtually feel myself standing there within the action, just watching it all unfold, often with heart in mouth. All hail to her. I now can't wait for TMATL (which is on order...)

25 People Like Us by Caroline Slocock
Slocock worked as a senior civil servant in number 10 under Margaret Thatcher. Although their politics were different, they developed a close working and personal bond. This is an odd book that floats between political memoir and reflections on power and feminism, while also being very personal in places. I found it hard to get hold of, for that reason, but was drawn in by the portrait of Thatcher as a woman and a leader. She comes out of this as a more sympathetic character than I’d ever thought, albeit one with many flaws.

26 Bad Blood by Colm Tóibín
Tóibín walks the Irish border just after the Anglo-Irish agreement signing. He meets farmers, paramilitaries, priests and business owners as he goes. This doesn’t pretend to give a history of the Troubles and requires a fair amount of background reading from elsewhere to make sense of it as history if that is what you are after. But with some context it brings to life the oddness of a divided country and the impact of conflict on a region.

27 Ghosts of the Tsunami by Richard Lloyd Parry
This is the saddest book I have read in a long time. It’s about a small communtiy that was devastated by the 2011 tsunami and the way in which it tried to recover. Parry spent a lot of time with the families and pieces together the story of what happened to a group of school children who drowned as a result of poor planning. The language is beautiful and precise and the descriptions of the tsunami and its aftermath are horrifying. But it’s also very moving in the way it talks about love and grief and anger.

40. The Illness Lesson - Clare Beams Late 1800s, an experimental school for girls is set up to prove that they are capable of being educated to the same standard as boys. All seems to be going well until an illness breaks out. Judged as mass hysteria a doctor is called in to treat them with dubious methods.

I'm struggling with this one and finding it hard to separate my feelings about the events in the book from the writing. I enjoyed the first two thirds and was furious about the end. I can't help but feel it was a cheap plot device that wasn't really fully amalgamated into the overall story. However the writing was sound. Shame to see a good premise poorly executed.

Melanie Reid's fabulous book The World I Fell Out Of is just 99p in this month's Kindle sale.

Thanks for the heads up southeast

Empty Cradles about enforced transportation of 'orphans' to Australia is also 99p on the monthly sale, it's well worth a read.

Quite tempted by A honeybee heart has five openings too. But as you know I'm not supposed to be buying any more books

15 All the Hidden Truths Claire Askew A male student at an Edinburgh college carries out a mass shooting and the story explores the impact on 2 mothers and a female detective. This was a brave attempt to bring a different perspective to this scenario . I thought the description of the women's thoughts and feelings got a bit repetitive and some events strained credulity. Would you really invite a boy who had given damaging information to a muckraking reporter to be a pallbearer? The resolution was uplifting and I'd like to think it would be possible, but I wasn't totally convinced.

10. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee.

Audible. I love this kind of book. Slow-paced but passionate saga of a Korean-Japanese family across four generations, integrating historical events and important themes that don’t feel forced - I’m looking at you Girl Woman Other. The narration is excellent too.

11. The Patient Assassin by Anita Anand.

Non-fiction account of the life of Udham Singh, the man who murdered Sir Michael O’Dwyer for his part in, and continual defence of, the Amritsar Masacre and colonial rule in India. Sir Michael O’Dwyer had been the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab during the Amritsar Masacre. Udham Singh was hanged as a terrorist in Britain in 1940 and hailed as a hero in India, where his remains were repatriated to in 1974. As well as the story of Udham Singh there are also briefly mentioned asides as to what was going on in India and Britain at the time.

The book reads as narrative non-fiction and although I admire the research that has clearly gone into preparing this book, I think there was too much supposition and it was a bit meandering. A 3 out of 5 kind of book for me.

Keith and Tara, my friend recommended Say Nothing as well. It’s on my list to buy the next time I’m in Waterstones.

Everyone's book choices seem much more highbrow than my latest two to add to the list:

26. Enid Blyton - The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage

I liked the Five Find-Outers a lot when I was young, but I don't think the books have aged well, unfortunately. There's too much in there about 'Fatty' and the general 'amusement value' of him being tubby. Having said that, I'd still like their lives; they all have a cook! They all have enormous gardens with summer houses! Their parents let them go out all day with no supervision and give them delicious picnics too!!

27. Terry Pratchett - Witches Abroad

Some of my favourite Discworld characters. Enjoyed this, it's a snappy read (unlike some of the later ones, which I found too long winded) and I've got another Pratchett on the go too.

As expected, DNF Bill Bryson - The Body. The library wanted it back before I was even half way through! Found this one a bit of a chore to read though, all his others have mixed interesting/ entertaining anecdotes with the facts, but this one seemed to be mainly factual.

15. The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

I would say this was my top read so far this year. I really enjoyed it.

It is the story of a brother and sister, Danny the narrator and his older sister Maeve. The story switches back and forth from their childhood and Danny and Maeve as adults. As children, their family live in a grand old house, the "Dutch House", named after the original occupants. They have a good life with staff to look after them and everything they might want. Their mother has left before the story begins and Danny has no memory of her. When their father remarries and brings their new stepmother Andrea, and her two daughters to the Dutch House, it would appear the story is going down the Cinderella route. In some ways it does, Danny and Maeve in particular start to be pushed out bit by bit, and when their father dies suddenly, Andrea throws them out of the Dutch House soon after the funeral.
It is far more complicated than a straightforward Cinderella/evil stepmother story. Maeve and Danny make their way in the world, build relationships and careers, but cling to each other and continue to sit in the car outside the Dutch House, where Andrea and her daughters still live. The effects of the unexplained absence of their mother, their father's death and the loss of their home makes their relationship intense and complex, and has ramifications on every other aspect of their lives. Although mainly about relationships, I did find it a real page turner. The switching of timelines, give just enough information about what is to come to keep the reader interested.

It was well written and the characters were well drawn and likeable, mainly because they were flawed and imperfect. Very good read.

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. (3/5) 15. The Talisman by Stephen King & Peter Straub. (2/5) 16. Ayoade on Top by Richard Ayoade. (3/5)

17. Black Ice by Michael Connelly. A Det Harry Bosch book covering the investigation into the suicide of a cop, and a couple of seemingly connected murders. The first half was pretty dull but picked up a bit once the action moved to Mexico. An interesting enough twist that I didn't guess. All in all it was ok, I just think I have gone off this kind of book a bit recently. (2/5).

20. Skint Estate, by Cash Carraway
Having said I want a break from women's sensitive portrayals of their lives, I made an exception for this, which is quite different in tone from others I've read. Written by a working-class woman, it's a cry of rage against poverty and abuse and stigma. She doesn't prettify things - a stench of shit, semen and blood pervades - but it's a voice you don't often hear, and worth listening to. I don't agree with everything - as someone who lives outside London, I'm bemused by her insistence that being rehoused outside London is death to the soul. I can understand that it's a problem to be moved away from support networks, but she has insisted up to that point that she doesn't have any proper support network. Her claim that her friends from London can't visit her in Kent because they'll undoubtedly be subject to a racist attack is somewhat unconvincing. But overall it's a strong portrayal of what her life feels like, and there's value in that.

21. Reasons to be Cheerful, Nina Stibbe
It's 1980, and our 18-year-old heroine moves to the bright lights of Leicester to work as a dental nurse. We get an account of her everyday life over the next year or so, particularly her relationships with friends, work colleagues and family. Stibbe writes in the vein of Sue Townsend and Victoria Wood - that delight in banal detail that accumulates to create plangency. She won me over, although I suggest proceeding with caution if you're squeamish about dentistry.

The Amazon monthly deals are certainly worth a scroll through this month.

17. The Outrun by Amy Liptrot Autobiographical account of how Amy returns to Orkney to recover after a decade of slipping into alcoholism in London. This was much more robustly written than I was expecting, with lots of detail about her experiences in London, as well as how she reconciled with being back on the edge, immersed in the windswept open spaces. It's as much about addiction as it is about nature, and the whole narrative works really well together. I spent quite a lot of time on Google and OS map apps due to this book, so was certainly engaged with it. A nice surprise, as I thought it was going to be all wafty nature writing, which, though I have no objection to, I have quite a lot of on my TBR and have to strike while in the right mood for it.

Gah! I have bought loads of books from the Monthly Deal despite trying to make a resolution not to buy any more til I'd made a dent in my TBR pile (well, virtual Kindle TBR pile).

If anyone is interested, I picked up:
Hold by Michael Donkor
Lonely Courage by Rick Stroud
Everywoman by Jess Phillips
Sunburn by Laura Lippman
Perfect by Rachel Joyce
You Left Early by Louisa Young
The World I Fell Out Of (as above)
The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo
Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha

I am very, very bad.

Currently reading Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller which I am finding less gripping than I'd hoped.

there aren't any books I want in the kindle monthly sale.

I wasn't particularly tempted either, betty. We can be outcasts together.

Not a good Kindle sale - The only things I was interested in, I've already read.

I highly recommend Into Thin Air and Across the Nightingale Floor though, if anybody hasn't read them.

I'm still plodding on with a not great but okay enough to keep me going, Dean Koontz, sitting firmly in his position as a third rate Stephen King.

Yeah normally there's loads I want in the kindle sale but there was hardly anything this month.

Second the recommendation for Into Thin Air - was hugely popular on these threads a while back so if you haven’t read it well worth picking up.

I got The Pied Piper by Neville Shite as keep meaning to give another of his a go as enjoyed Town Like Alice

• Shute!!!!

Doesn’t bode well...

Neville Shite

12. Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss. Teenager Silvie accompanies her parents (abusive father and downtrodden mother) on an Iron Age re-enactment holiday, involving building fires, finding food etc. I'm a big fan of Sarah Moss and have read nearly all her books, but this was a bit of a disappointment. I found it a less satisfying read than any of the others.

I wan't initially that impressed with the monthly sale but in the end bought loads of things:

Your House Will Pay
A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings
The End of the Wasp Season
The World I Fell Out Of
The Impossible Climb

I'm not sure why because I have so many library books out that I haven't looked at my kindle properly in ages!

Neville Shite

41. A History of Britain in 21 Women - Jenni Murray Jenni chooses a personal selection of 21 women she thinks helped shape Britain. Interspersed with personal anecdotes of why she chose them. Each woman is only covered briefly, but she offers a decent enough overview in her own very distinct voice.

Initially a reticent re-read for IRL bookclub, but I realised it was her History of the World that I wasn't as keen on and this one was ok. I enjoyed this again. Book club is tomorrow night and a quick show of hands on FB to see who is going has revealed most haven't finished/hated it. I think it's going to be a short discussion!