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?

Hi have fallen off the thread in recent weeks and like many others, have lost my focus for reading. Currently reading The Dilemma by B A Paris and The Foundling by Stacey Halls which are books 13 and 14 for me. I'm currently off work following abdominal surgery so had ordered a few books from my childhood and teen years to read during this time. Dont think I will get through half as many books as I originally anticipated during this time though!

Hello all, hope we’re all coping in these difficult times.

The Corner Shop - Elizabeth Cadell exactly the kind of vintage lightweight frothy stuff I needed. Owner of a secretarial agency goes to a remote house to find out why none of her secretaries have lasted more than one day working for a distracted professor.Throw in some missing paintings and jewels, a hat shop in Paris and an unsuitable fiance - all very daft but enjoyable fun.

I like the sound of that Best, it's now been added to my reading wish list.

I finished the two lives of Lydia Bird last night (number 33) and enjoyed it but struggled to concentrate with it.

Now on the family upstairs and really enjoying it

17. A pocket full of rye, Agatha Christie . Nothing like a gentle murder mystery featuring Miss Marple. The rich manager has a fit in his office and dies. It is quickly confirmed as a poisoning. Suspects abound as no one likes him very much (his son and heir, his estranged son) or stand to benefit from his death (his much younger second wife, her lover, his sister). The culprit seems obvious until there is a second murder, or was it the third? Timing is everything and the final twist is kept to the end.

15. Slow Horses - Mick Herron

This was recommended to me. The story is about a group of spies who have been sidelined by MI5 for various misdemeanours but get a chance to get back in on some action. Not sure whether it was wrong timing for me but it didn’t really draw me in. I didn’t hate it and am prepared to give another one in the series a go but disappointing.

Reading Bookworm - Lucy Mangan next.

Oooh yes I fancy a good Agatha Christie Taswama and that one is a good choice.
I remember watching it on tv with my parents when I was young. Marple was Jane thingummy ...

I’ve started reading some teen fiction nicked from DS! Small Steps by Louis Sachar.

Well I completely fell off this thread with everything that's been going on and it's taken me 2.5 weeks to read a young adult book. The Extinction Trials Its a reread and I love it. An easy read set in a dystopian world I think that includes dinosaurs. Kind of along the lines of The Hunger Games.

Not much reading happening here as work is crazy plus trying to keep my elderly dad supplied, cheerful etc. Just one 'proper' new read (actually a listen)

36 Queens of the Kingdom by Nicola Sutcliffe
Interviews with a wide ranging selection of Saudi women, looking at what it is like to live in the kingdom. I got this after it was reviewed on a previous thread, and it's very good. Unfortunately the audio version wasn't ideal - I think there must be lots of section headings / pulled out quotes in the paper book, and these are read in the same tone of voice as the main passages, making it feel rather repetitive. Once I realised what was happening it made more sense, and overall a really interesting listen.

Beyond that I've just had light re-reads
37 Band Sinister by KJ Charles - the strapline 'Heyer but Gayer' nails it
38 Cotillion by Georgette Heyer - gave me a yen for the real thing, and this is one of my favourites
39 Romancing the Inventor by Gail Carriger - steampunk f/f fluffy romance
40 Romancing the Werewolf by Gail Carriger - same but m/m

Hope nobody minds me popping back out of hibernation, now my head is in a better place. A few days off SM, plus knowing that I'm now W from H for a week or 2 have done wonders for me!

I'm reading The Stand - it just felt the right thing to do.

Hi remus! How's teaching from home?!

Only heard from one student so far! It's nice to have some thinking time though.

Isn't it? I feel a bit human. What is really nice is no behaviour management issues !

Am also now reading three books at once : The Five (interesting), The Mirror and the Light and David Copperfield .

God yes, re behaviour!

I've got The Five but haven't been able to get into it as of yet. Must give it another go.

It's nice to feel human, isn't it?

Vaguely human, yes!

The Benefit of Hindsight Susan Hill. Tenth in the series of mysteries featuring an unusually cultured detective solving crimes in a cathedral city and following events in his extended family. This was exactly what I needed whilst current events swirl around us. Susan Hill writes with compassion and in a non judgemental way which I find soothing. Warning that the death of babies and pets are themes but are dealt with sensitively .

Glad you sound happier remus and can be at home. It’s an awfully hard time and maintaining your mental health is important especially is you are being asked to support others.

Tried reading Less thinking it might be a funny diversion but was present tense and urgh couldn’t do it.

Thanks, Satsuki. I wasn't worried about my mental health, as such, but I was feeling a low level sense of fury every time I logged in on here!

Looking forward to keeping up with everyone's reviews again.

34 The family upstairs

This was a great distraction from the world as it is at the moment. A real page turner

Hello everyone, can I belatedly rejoin this year's challenge?

I had a lot going on at the beginning of the year, and the first thread was moving so fast that I couldn't keep up. But life has slowed down a bit recently, for obvious reasons, and I hope I might be getting more reading done, if only as a way to stop myself constantly checking twitter and the news.

My list so far this year:

1. The Lido - Libby Page
2. The Female Persuasion - Meg Wolitzer
3. The Art of Not Falling Apart - Christina Patterson
4. Herzog - Saul Bellow
5. Everywhere I Look - Helen Garner
6. The Fox and Dr Shimamura - Christine Wunnicke
7. Austerlitz - WG Sebald
8. Swann in Love - Marcel Proust
9. Happiness - Aminatta Forna

10. Meet Me At The Museum - Anne Youngson 11. Offshore - Penelope Fitzgerald 12. This Book Will Save Your Life - AM Homes 13. Quartet In Autumn - Barbara Pym 14. The Cactus - Sarah Haywood

I won't bother trying to catch up with reviews, but my favourite so far this year is Happiness by Aminatta Forna (not a bad read for current times, with themes of resilience in the face of trauma), and the stinker so far was The Cactus: very much in the Eleanor Olliphant mould, with a plot so clearly signposted I could have told you what was going to happen from about 50 pages in. Meet Me At The Museum was also a little predictable, but better written and a bit more thoughtful with it.

Currently reading Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively, a long-overdue re-read of a classic by one of my favourite authors, as I haven't read it since it was first published in the late 80s.

Well equally important to maintain fury levels at a reasonable rumble too remus

Hi exexpat I recently downloaded Moon Tiger but couldn’t get into it at the moment so look forward to seeing your review.

My reading, which was going great guns, has also slowed dramatically. However, I picked a random volume off the shelf hoping it would be a lightish bit of diversion, and finally managed to stay the course.

28: The Town in Bloom - Dodie Smith

Actually this is a funny (as in odd) little book. It was published in 1965 and is blatantly autobiographical: the narrator, 'Mouse', is a wee slip of a girl from the North who comes to London hoping to be an actress. Anyone who's read Dodie Smith's (very entertaining) autobiographies, or Valerie Grove's biog of her, will recognise the self-portrait immediately. She moves into a sort of hostel, makes friends with theatrical types, finds work at the historic Crossway theatre and falls hard for the owner, actor-manager Rex Crossway.

It then suddenly becomes a hotbed of sex and gets quite eye-popping, as Mouse learns various life and lurrrrrve lessons. The whole thing's framed by the older Mouse looking back at her younger self. Quite near the end I became convinced that Elizabeth Gilbert must surely have read this book and decided to blatantly rip it off for her much-less-successful City of Girls (one of the clunkers on my 2019 list). But good old Dodie got there first, and better. Strange, but worth a read.

Good to see you back Remus

54. Sometimes I lie - Alice Feeney

• pinched from Goodreads My name is Amber Reynolds. There are three things you should know about me:

1. I’m in a coma.
2. My husband doesn’t love me anymore.
3. Sometimes I lie.

Amber wakes up in a hospital. She can’t move. She can’t speak. She can’t open her eyes. She can hear everyone around her, but they have no idea. Amber doesn’t remember what happened, but she has a suspicion her husband had something to do with it. Alternating between her paralyzed present, the week before her accident, and a series of childhood diaries from twenty years ago.

Book club read. This is quite a good distraction book as there is a big twist in every chapter and absolutely no resolution at the end, leaving you ripe to buy the sequel guessing. It will make for a brilliant book club chat, sadly now via FB and not in the pub. I wouldn't say the writing is anything more than typical thriller fare, but it's an easy read that makes you think you know what's going on and then blindsides you again and again. I don't think I'd have picked this up otherwise, but I enjoyed it for what it was.

55. The Confessions of Frannie Langton - Sara Collins A former slave, now servant is on trial for murdering her master and his wife. She recounts her childhood on a sugar plantation on Jamaica, her life as a slave and her time in London as a servant.

I don't really have much to say about this and I know it has been much reviewed by many last year. It has many pertinent points to make about slavery etc. I wanted to like it more than I did but I found it quite dull. It got me through a day of deep cleaning the kitchen and a full cupboard inventory, which was slightly less dull. Does anyone want a Curly Wurly that went out of date in 2015?

Also waves to exexpat and Terps

Hello old 50 book buddies!
Remus, you’re brave reading (re-reading) The Stand. I love that book with a passion but always in a “glad that’s not real life” way. The bit where the evil half of humanity get the lights up and running while the well intentioned posse sit around working out the meeting protocols always felt a little close to the bone for comfort...