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?

I've done The Stand - final third rubbishy and drags on

However, once you've read it you realise the majority of run of the mill dystopias are heavily influenced by it, some to the point of plagiarism.

RubySlippers I don’t think I could be married to someone who thinks books are ‘clutter’!

@RubySlippers77 Indeed. We never had Famous Five levels of freedom (which we aspired to) but we did used to go off for hours during the holidays and, as long as we were back for tea, nobody seemed unduly worried.

I'd forgotten all about Masquerade. I'm pretty sure I've got a copy somewhere, I definitely had one years ago. The Bamber Gascoigne book sounds really interesting.

I love The Stand. There are some undeniably tiresome sections and the ending is the stupidest ending ever, even for a writer who seems to find not-stupid endings hard. But still, what a great great book. Must be time for a re-read, under the circumstances.

Great reviews mackerella and satsuki

Thanks @Tarahumara**

The Masquerade story is fascinating, @mackerella I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of it before now, which is amazing to me.

18. The Lost Man by Jane Harper

I really enjoyed this third book by Jane Harper. As with all her novels, the harsh Australian climate features as a central "character" - the book opens as Cameron, one of three brothers, is found dead by the isolated stockman's grave, apparently killed by dehydration and exposure to the hot sun. Also like Harper's other novels, this is really more an exploration of character and human relationships than a crime novel. The character arc of the central protagonist, Cameron's brother Nathan, who was ostracised by the town for reasons that are slowly revealed, is more important than why Cameron ended up dead and whether anyone else was involved. The other characters are also interesting and well drawn. The reveal of family secrets came at just the right pace for me and although I wasn't wholly convinced by the solution, it didn't spoil the story for me. Much, much better than Bitter Orange!

Loving all the unusual books people are reading.

Very quick update:
23. Long Bright River, Liz Moore
Picked up due to this thread and I thought it was great - it's a crime novel set in drug-ravaged Philadelphia, but it's also the story of one family and how they've suffered. It works on both levels. The main character is a police officer patrolling the mean streets, and trying to find her sister, an addict living on those same streets, as well as identify who is killing young women like her sister. Who can she trust? Shows that genre fiction can tell stories that matter.

15. Nine Perfect Strangers, Liane Moriaty

Picked this up because I wanted a comfort read. Nine strangers arrive at a luxury health spa. Knowing Liane Moriaty I was expecting that at least one of them would be hiding a big secret, and possibly someone would get murdered but in a Sunday-night-TV cosy-intrigue kind of way.

My expectations about the comfort read went out the window when the book opens with Frances, a middle aged author, arriving at the gates of the spa. It's in the middle of nowhere, its the middle of Australian summer, and no-one answers the door. She stands by the intercom at the gates getting hotter and more frustrated and at this point it was clear to me that I wasn't going to get a fluffy book of people swanning around in bathrobes.

It was pretty catchy - I did find myself picking it up in spare moments to see what happened next - but the plot was a mess. Too too much going on, every character has an emotionally fraught back story, the events are extreme, the ending unsatisfying.

I did like the humour. Moriaty has a good laugh at the expense of wellness gurus and romance novels/the publishing industry - with the latter she plays subtly with the fourth wall. I think a writer this clever could write a much better book than this one!

10. The Pied Piper by Neville Shute

I really enjoyed this - the kind of book they just don’t seem to write any more, a simple, gentle adventure story, told deliberately and with delightful detail, with no embellishments, so that when fear and tension penetrate the quiet, the reader feels them. An elderly man goes for a fishing holiday in the South of France in the Spring of 1941. As the German forces close in on mainland Europe, he decides to make a return home to England, and finds pressed upon him the two young children of some other guests. Taking responsibility for their safe return, he jeopardises his own safety, and soon finds himself the reluctant, yet stoic and determined guardian of others who need his protection. The “problem” I have found with Shute, as I can say loftily having read only two, is that he does not accurately conjure the emotional life and reactions of his characters, so that people react almost nonchalantly to extreme situations. He is not elaborate and does not lay bare all the interior motivations of his characters, but tells a story with great care and understatement that nonetheless becomes quite moving in its own dignified way. Also his premises are quite far-fetched, but he then goes on to explore them with such fine-toothed attention to the intricacies of how the situation is resolved that you must suspend your disbelief thereafter, and I did quite happily. There is much stereotyping of nationalities as is perhaps to be expected perhaps in a novel set in (and written during) war time, and one jarring moment of antisemitism, offhand and delivered without malice, giving an insight what was in the air then in Europe generally and how what came to happen was able to progress so far. I’m looking forward to reading Trustee after a break perhaps.

That's a great review Satsuki

Trustee from the Toolroom - loved it. A gentle, old fashioned book, with gentle, old fashioned and kind characters. Just what I needed.

Same here. I'm struggling with books that mention death but not in the way that Trustee did for some reason. I've mainly read non fiction since my father died as it's easier but I do miss a cracking story.

That is hard bettybattenberg. Generally older fiction seems to be more understated and more manageable in that regard. I agree with you and remus - great to read about kind people doing the decent thing.

Inspired by you all, I've picked up Neville Shute's Requiem for a Wren from the library. Will report back in due course.

Just finished The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea , which someone else reviewed rather negatively on here quite recently.

I didn't like it either. Overwritten in places (ravens feeling ravenous... well I never) and too much dialogue with a rather clichéd dual narrator technique. I didn't care much about anyone and actually lost track in places. I am finding LGBT plots rather shoehorned into plots these days. I am all for better and more representations but it just feels a bit , for want of a better word, trite in this book.

As the PP said Burial rites is the gold standard for this kind of book but, also, the recently written The Mercies is far far far superior.

Just finished
14. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

DS2 (12) has just read for school and I decided to read it after him. Really well written, fast paced plot. Highly recommend.

He reads very little fiction (loved HP but nothing has grabbed his attention since) but is currently reading the sequel to the Hunger Games by choice,

I quite enjoyed Clarissa - you need your Daftness Toleration Gauge turned up pretty high though.

Any more recs for gentle and kind books, which are cheap on Kindle? Sick to death of the news, and need something to cosy up with.

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. (2/5)

18. In the Woods by Tana French. This is the first book in the Dublin Murder Squad series, which I read a few years ago when it first came out. I did enjoy it but not as much as I remember enjoying it the first time round. (3/5)

Inspired by you all, I've picked up Neville Shute's Requiem for a Wren from the library

That's my other favourite of his, it's due a re-read soon I think.

I've managed to get in to The very picture of you by Isabel Woolf, it's engaging enough and not demanding.

Wow! I'm not sure i'll get to 50 but here's my list so far:

After the end
The man who didn’t call
Bill bryson the road to little dribbling
Dont go there
A rockstar ending
The Stationery Shop of Tehran
The Beekeeper of Aleppo
Rachel’s holiday

I've enjoyed them all apart from don't go there.

I am just starting Annabel Scheme by Robin Sloan. I have enjoyed all Sloan's books so far, though Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore remain my favourite (it's always the first book by an author I enjoy which is my fave - why is that?); I like his imagination, Sourdough was hilarious!

These are easy books to read, so great when I'm feeling a bit under the weather, as I do atm, and they always cheer me up. Hoping for similar with this one.

Hi all, not been on the thread yet as have been reading a couple of books at once in between work and life busyness so will need to catch up!

Anyway just finished:

1. Reach For The Ground - Jeffrey Bernard

A collection of Bernard's columns from his later years as an increasingly unwell, but unrepentant Soho boozer. Poignant without being self-pitying, also very funny and a window into a London milieu that's now gone.

Between the Stops: The View of My Life from the Top of the Number 12 Bus is 99p for the kindle today.

Naturally, as a book much recommended on here, it's exempt from my self imposed book buying ban.

10. Himself by Jess Kidd on Audible. Mahony sees dead people and has returned to the tiny Irish village where he was born to solve the disappearance of his teenage mother, who we know from the prologue was brutally murdered 27 years earlier as her infant son lay beside her. Having listened to and enjoyed The Hoarder by the same author I was looking forward to reading this but it was a bit of a disappointment, by the end it was all sort of washing over me. When it came to the big reveal of who had done the dirty deed I was hard pressed to remember anything about the character.

Oddly enough, I was just thinking about Sourdough which is a bonkers book. I haven’t read any other Robin Sloane so might give another one of his a go.

33. The Wings Of The Dove by Henry James

Aware she is dying, two narcissistic arseholes with social standing but no means, conspire to prey upon a wealthy vulnerable teenager in the hopes of obtaining her money.

This is a good concept but it is completely and utterly ruined by verbosity and waffle, it drags on so much with endless description ( why express in a sentence what you can go on at length with for 5 pages)

Nearly DNFd several times but I wanted to be able to say:

Yes, I've read Henry James

And now I can also add :

Really not a fan

Also, I didn't think (like a lot of male writers) he had a clue how to write women.