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?

Why is it on the Kindle Daily Deals when I search, I just see utter shite I'd never read??

@bettybattenburg

Honestly betty you don't feel the heft of that as you read at all

Having found a better way to search I would recommend American Wife and The Art Of Racing In The Rain which is apparently a dreadful film but the book was really good.

Eine if you bought THIF on Kindle you can, I'm sure, return your full price one and buy again now it's on offer.

Very many thanks to I think Remus, and someone else for recommending 20) Trustee From the Toolroom by Nevil Shute. An excellent comfort read - perhaps a little over researched with an awful lot of details of model mechanics and sailing - but it was a really lovely read, full of the kind of men that sort things out, fix things and get things done without batting an eyelid. I really loved it.

@DesdamonasHandkerchief

I added the Audible to it, so I'm not sure if I's lose it

Raises a glass to kind men who sort things out.

I can't remember who originally recommended Trustee but it's lovely. I even forgave it the detail about model machines! How lovely to think of a world where people are connected by a geeky hobby and therefore ready to support each other in times of need. I now think I need a geeky hobby that will ensure rich people are willing to support me wherever I might go.

I can't remember who originally recommended Trustee but it's lovely

I think it might have been me, it's one of my all time favourite books.
Happy to share the credit with you Remus, anybody recommending Trustee is a lovely person in my book (did you see what I did there?)

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit are you looking at the monthly deals as well as the daily deals?

Gosh, this thread has started moving quickly again!

Life and Fate is a terrific book, although it did take me quite a long time to read.

Speaking of which, I have just finished Ducks, Newburyport by LucyEllman, which comes in at nearly 1,000 pages. It's narrated in one continuous sentence as the thoughts of an unnamed middle-aged woman, often worrying about her baking, four children and husband, but drifting into the state of the USA and other more universal matters. There is also a secondary, occasional (and punctuated!) narrative from the perspective of a female mountain lion, the purpose of which becomes clear at the end. This is an extraordinary book, a stream of consciousness marrying the prosaic with more profound meditations, interspersed with lines from literature, poetry, popular songs and other fragments - it's hard to describe what it is really. I think you either have to be extremely erudite (which I'm not) or prepared to look things up (which I am) to get the most from the text, but it is certainly worth the effort. There is much I could identify with but I also learned a huge amount particularly about the history of America, the civil rights movement, gun control and the environment. I loved it!

I have also been reading The Patron Saint of Schoolgirls by Liz Berry. Beautiful and clever poems, I shall be looking out more of her work.

@Matilda2013

Not sure what it is I'm doing or not doing, but if I search on the main site, I get a lot of stuff that is really not my scene and never buy. So I put it in as a search to google and then got a lot more varied list

Weird.

www.amazon.co.uk/kindle-monthly-deals-books/b/ref=amb_link_2?node=4363389031&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_p=e94f588b-ab0c-406b-8425-3b54acfa9d36&pf_rd_p=e94f588b-ab0c-406b-8425-3b54acfa9d36&pf_rd_r=69H5MASX79FH467SQSNK&pf_rd_r=69H5MASX79FH467SQSNK&pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-leftnav&pf_rd_t=101&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&ie=UTF8&pf_rd_i=341689031

This is where I look. Changes on the 1st of the month but can be hit and miss.

Betty - thanks for the rec. The credit is all yours.

I've bought Madhur J's Easy Vegetarian Curry, and an Andrew Taylor. easy read. DP has bought Fahrenheit 451 on my recommendation, and Just William!

20. My Lovely Wife: A Memoir of Madness and Hope by Mark Lukach. I've read quite a few books about mental illness, but usually from the point of view of either the patient or the healthcare professional. It was really interesting to hear the partner's perspective. Worth a read if you're interested in this kind of thing.

Just William is a great recommendation, I think it might even surpass Trustee Can I add Jennings to the recommendation if we're doing old book recommendations - my Dad would have recommended it to you all.

Betty

Jennings and Darbyshire and Mr Wilkins and Mr Carter! I loved these books. And Just William too. It's been a long time; I wonder how they would stand up to rereading?

Molesworth is also fab .. as any fule kno

Jux I like Zola but have never read Balzac. Where do you recommend starting?

I looked on Wikipedia and it mentions the Comedie Humaine series however it seems to consist of 91 works. Even during lockdown that seems a bit much to tackle ..

I've never read Just William - dp has been nagging me to do so for years, so it looks as if I've got no excuse now!

I loved Just William years ago Remus. Definiitely worth a try.

I remember being surprised Richmal Crompton was a woman. Have never heard the name Richmal before or since.

Yes only quite recently I found out Richmal was a woman. I’ve bought my son a kindle for his birthday so am going to download it for him. Howl’s Moving Castle and Wolf Brother also only 99p.

I bonded with my 6th form tutor over Just William. He seemed very aloof and then one time I mentioned something from it and he lit up and said he was reading it to his children and was very chatty with me after that. And those children are adults now Books are magic.

Books are magic

What a nice memory Satsuki. They are!

I used to have to go along to some pretty boring dinners because of DH's job. His world of work was very different from mine. To be fair, I probably wasn't the only one who'd rather have been at home watching telly or reading a book.

I don't know why it took me so long but eventually it occurred to me that instead of feeling obliged to make small talk about holidays and local schools, I should just ask "What sort of stuff do you read?"

Lots of interesting conversations followed and I even made some friends

Hello everyone, hope you are keeping well.

Like some of you, I've had a real struggle with my reading recently. I think it's all the upheaval. In search of something unchallenging I listened to the audiobook of Twas the nightshift before Christmas by Adam Kay. I really enjoyed his previous book but this, frankly, left me cold. It didn't have the humour or emotional connection of the first one, and felt a bit like an appendix to it. That said, there were a couple of laugh out loud moments.

I've just started on The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley so I'm hoping that goes down a little better.

highlandcoo that is a good idea, I always long to talk about something interesting at those things but never kick start it myself. It reminds me of The Uncommon Reader where the Queen starts asking people what they are reading instead of how far they’ve come and suddenly enjoys her meet and greets a lot more!

The Abbey Court Murder by Annie Haynes
A Golden Age whodunnit. I liked this - it was overblown and a bit daft, a little reminiscent of Wilkie Collins (not Willie), in that women weep a lot and faint and the villains are cartoonishly cruel and obvious. All good fun, and yours for a grand total of 49p on Kindle with a handful of other novels thrown in too.