50 Book Challenge 2020 Part Four

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the fourth 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, the second one here and the third one here.

What are you reading?

Kate so sorry if I've put you off A Thousand Ships, it wasn't terrible just late to a saturated market. I went on a Greek retelling binge last year so that has affected my judgement. I liked the Silence of the Girls, but read it quite soon after Song of Achilles which I think was better. I would have benefitted from a longer break between them.

Indigo there are some brilliant books on the Women's Prize list. I have one left to go and will really struggle to whittle it down to 6 for my own shortlist. I try to read as many as I can every year for both this and the Booker but this is the first year I've been ahead of the official shortlist. I am really interested to see what the official list will be.

Nocti I really liked all of those, especially Saltwater I love having a run of very good books.

24. A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor

I wanted to like this, and I did enjoy it in parts - particularly the descriptions of the harbour, which are beautiful. But I felt as though the story of the harbour inhabitants was told from a distance, and even though one of the principal characters was a female novelist, the writing exuded no empathy for her or any of the others - and consequently I had no empathy either. I like to feel immersed in a book and this just seemed too artificial. The foreword by Sarah Waters (of whom I am a big fan) compares Taylor to Jane Austen, and I didn't get that at all because with Austen you root for the characters (or I did, anyway). I have one more by Taylor on my Kindle and I will read it, but if I feel similarly about that one I might give her others a swerve.

JollyYella you have reminded me that I have Merivel waiting to be read but am determined to fit in a reread of Restoration first.

Like you I loved Restoration - I am a Rose Tremain fan generally - so must get round to that soon.

14. The Well-Kept Kitchen – Gervase Markham Markham’s handbook for good housekeeping dates from the early 1600s and is, as to be expected, highly opinionated! This short book of less than 150 pages has taken me ages to read as I’ve needed to take it in small doses in order to cope with the chauvinistic prose – and a certain repetitiveness in the recipes. I grew fairly weary of hearing how raisins, sugar and nutmeg should be added to virtually every dish, whether sweet or savoury. Thank heavens it includes a glossary at the back with names of plants, meat, fish and cooking terms that have long since ceased to be used in Modern English. Many of the recipes made me gag! But it’s fascinating to see what the middle classes ate and drank 400 years ago.
    I particularly enjoyed the section about different ‘waters’ to be made with various plants and herbs for medicinal purposes. I would recommend this to anyone interested in cookery through the ages, or herbal remedies.

I read Restoration earlier this year too. Have yet to get my hands on Merivel though. I've enjoyed a few of Tremain's books in recent years. Which one would be your favourite @highlandcoo ?

@FortunaMajor definitely nice to have a run of such enjoyable reads. Especially now.

Nocti -

I've read both Stiff and Natural Causes. The former is much better imho. Natural Causes far too autobiographical - too much about him and not enough about the cases, I thought.

If you liked Stiff you'd probably like Smoke Gets in your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty. Also there's a book about The Body Farm, but can't remember off the top of my head what it's called. Val McDermid is a dreadful novelist imo, but I liked her non-fiction book: Forensics: An Anatomy of Crome.

Not that I can think of, Remus. I really enjoy most of what I read but none have the same pull, or leave me feeling the way The Stand does.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

Brilliant, Remus, thanks. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes is on my tbr list but I'll bump it up a bit. I haven't come across the Val McDermid one (or read anything else by her) but will add that on too, and will keep an eye out for the Body Farm one.

@nowanearlyNicemum

I would say definitely Music and Silence, just such an unusual subject and a period in history I knew very little about. I also enjoyed The Colour

One of the things I admire about RT is the range of themes and different time periods she tackles in her novels; she isn't one of those authors who churns out similar books again and again.

I thought The Road Home was a really nuanced exploration of the life of an economic migrant in the recent past .. although I do have an issue with one of the sex scenes in the book. Otherwise it was great and free from the usual cliches.

In my book group we recently read Sacred Country ; written in 1992 so an early novel about a transgender child before this was a widely discussed issue.

The Gustav Sonata was fine but not my favourite and the same goes for Trespass although I loved the French setting and might give it another go one day.

Music & Silence is very good and Merivel made me cry twice (in a good way).

Has anyone read Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber? Is it worth persisting with?

About 8% in and he's already annoyed me with a footnote claiming the word 'sheriff' is of Arabic origin (not from Medieval English 'shire reeve' then?), so not sure whether I'm in a safe pair of hands.

Idiom it sounds like he's done a bullshit job of it himself. I haven't read it but I don't think I could persist.

Just realised I wrote, An Anatomy of Crome. I meant crime, not chrome, crones or Cromer, in case this wasn't clear!

Pepe - I think It is the other one of King's that really does that for me. Few other writers really 'get' me like that, unfortunately.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I was going to say the exact same thing It is just brilliant - looking forward to getting to it in my Stephen King readathon, currently working my way through Thinner.

@InMyOwnParticularIdiom I started reading Debt by David Graeber when it came out a few years back & gave up in disgust. Same thing of too many obvious errors / made up ideas claimed as fact.

@inmyownparticularidiom saw Graeber speak about bullshit jobs at a festival and the talk itself made it sound terrible! Poorly researched ranting essentially. I then read a really awful review of it. I didn't buy it...

Thanks highlandcoo. I have read The Road Home, Trespass, The Cupboard and Restoration.

I'll be adding Music and Silence and Merivel to my list :)

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. (3/5) 19. The Dutch House by Ann Patchett. (3/5) 20. Red Ribbons by Louise Phillips. (1/5) 21. The Girl He Used to Know by Tracy Garvis Graves. (3/5) 22. The Other Us by Fiona Harper. (2/5) 23. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. (3/5) 24. The Crow Trap by Anne Cleeves. (3/5) 25. The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King. (3/5) 26. Guilt by Jussi Adler-Olsen. (3/5) 27. This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay. (4/5) 28. Just One Damn Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor. (4/5) 29. The Very First Damn Thing by Jodi Taylor. (3/5) 30. A Symphony of Echoes by Jodi Taylor. (3/5) 31. When a Child is Born by Jodi Taylor (3/5) 32. Roman Holiday by Jodi Taylor (3/5) 33. A Second Chance by Jodi Taylor (4/5) 34. Christmas Present by Jodi Taylor (3/5) 35. A Trail Through Time by Jodi Taylor (4/5) 36. No Time Like the Past by Jodi Taylor (3/5) 37. The Outcast Dead by Elly Griffiths (3/5) 38. How to Stop Time by Matt Haig (1/5)

39. Thinner by Stephen King. The story centres around a lawyer who is cursed by a gypsy after he runs over and kills a gypsy woman, and his journey to find said gypsy to convince him to remove the curse. The main problem with this book (and there were a few) is that there is no real redemptive arc for the central character who doesn't show any real remorse for the fact that he ran someone over due to his wife giving him, erm relief, while he was driving and blames the situation on everyone else. This is the last book that King wrote under his Richard Bachman alias and its definitely not one of King's best, in fact its not even one of Bachman's best. (2/5).

Continuing the Tose Tremain chat, I've got a particularly soft spot for The Way I Found Her.

I'm also very keen to read her memoir, Rosie.

Oh I like the look of The Way I Found Her ; hadn't come across it before Terpsichore. On the wish list now!

I heard her speak at Hay-on-Wye and she was very interesting, and enthusiastic about how much she still enjoyed writing, which was nice to hear .. and a marked contrast to Louis de Bernieres.

Rose Tremain obvs (iPad fail). It's a great book, highland, especially if you love Paris. And the central character is very appealing, imho anyway.

I just took a quick look at my library's ebook stock and they've got Rosie, hurrah! On loan at the moment, but I'll have it to read early next month.

That’s very interesting highlandcoo I’ll definitely put some of those RT’s on my list. Merivel for sure*.
I’ve actually got Gustav Sonata in my pile now, so it will be interesting to see what I make of it.

In the meantime I’m back into science books and Other Minds, The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life for a bit of non fiction fun!