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?

Thanks for the link, Tara.

I could happily get lost in any text that doesn’t feature Matt Hancock at the moment

I haven't seen Cote here recently, has she been about? (I feel like the "Jeff bin in?" man from the old Private Eye cartoons)

She was here a couple of days ago, Keith. Now someone has mentioned Cloud Atlas I expect the bat signal has gone out . (Don’t tell her I gave up with two chapters to go....I actually do like David Mitchell very much but that one just didn’t do it for me)

To be fair @SatsukiKusakabe it was The Greatest Lute Case In All The Land

Oh sweet Jesus and all his little pixies - don't get started on bloody Cloud Atlas again.

Just finished The Suffocating Night by Andrew Taylor. Okay thriller but nothing to sing or dance about.

I found Cloud Atlas a struggle but really liked Slade House I keep meaning to do Bone Clocks

I loved Cloud Atlas but I'm sure a lot of it went over my head!

Yes cote kicked off the Kindle convo Keith.

It would be wouldn’t it @EineReiseDurchDieZeit no less than he deserves. For slacking off at uni forever. Bone Clocks is much easier to get into than Cloud Atlas, rattles sling like Slade House but meatier. I took a couple of goes at Cloud Atlas but it was worth it.

I have mainly been reading proper books lately, but in normal live I travel quite a bit so love my kindle for that, and also for reading in the dark with the backlight. However, I do find that I struggle to recall details of books I’ve read on the kindle. I think this is because with a ‘real’ book you see the cover, title and author every time you pick it up which helps add it to your memory, and you don’t get that with the kindle. I’m forever looking up titles I don’t think I’ve read only to find I have read it on kindle.

@chessieFL, I remember a study which showed that people who read on e-readers do tend to remember less detail about the book than those who read hard copies, and I think it was for the reasons you mention - you need that physical feel and look of a book for it to imprint on your memory.

I have a newly purchased Kobo e-reader, and I am loving having so much access to books, but I do miss the hard copy feel of reading.

Updates

16. Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert.

I read this because I am a writer as well as a reader, and for the last few months have really struggled getting anything written. This book is a wonderful, idiosyncratic view of creativity: that there is something magical about it, but at the same time, as Elizabeth Gilbert's mother says, 'done is better than good.'

17. Trust Exercise by Susan Choi

I really struggled with this. It's set in the US, in an elite drama school in the 80s, focusing on a group of teenagers and their exploitation by some of the teachers. Without giving too much away, there are different narrators through the book who then make you question what you have read previously. I found this narratively very unsatisfying, but probably could have accepted it, if I hadn't found the rest of the book so unsettling. Of course, I understand that part of the premise is that this should be very unsettling, but I didn't want to be part of this world - there was not one character who had any redeeming characteristics, and the whole world created was utterly grimy and seedy.

I totally agree with the comments about not seeing the actual book lying around, and picking it up, seeing the cover, the title etc. I don't 'fix' the info in my brain so well when I'm reading on my kindle.

I generally have at least 3 books on the go. A hefty one, maybe hardback, that stays at home, a lighter paperback that can be carried around when I'm absolutely sure I'll have reading time, and then my kindle which is always on my person (!) so ideal for reading when you're stuck waiting for kids, or in my current life, when queuing outside the supermarket (!!) or when my husband is watching some form of *** on the telly and doesn't want the light on.

34: Rosie: Scenes from a Vanished Life - Rose Tremain

Short but very affecting memoir. The writer Rose Tremain grew up in a troubled family: her father, a not-very-successful playwright, abandoned his wife and two young daughters, who'd always perceived him as a distant, uninvolved figure anyway. Her mother was a brittle, unhappy woman who had herself grown up starved of affection, an unloved girl with two brothers who'd died young and were forever idolised by their parents.
Rose and her sister Jo looked instead to their beloved nanny for love and affection, and quickly understood that their mother was jealous of them and that their grandparents (whose house in the country was a place of magic and adventure) were too wrapped up in grief to really love them. Rose was exiled to a chilly boarding school and then, once she finally found a way to enjoy her time there, removed by her mother - an act that seems breathtakingly spiteful, to put it mildly - denied any chance to try for Oxford, and packed off to a finishing school in Switzerland, ostensibly to be moulded for marriage to a rich man.
In this memoir she writes evocatively and with perception about her childhood, her damaged parents and the ways people inflict their own emotional trauma on their children. She pays tribute to her adored 'Nan' for giving her the emotional resilience to be a mother to her own daughter and to cherish her two young grandchildren. A poignant, enjoyable read.

@Terpsichore, Rosie is a wonderful read. I am full of admiration for Rose Tremain's insight - it must have been really painful to revisit parts of her childhood, but it really shows how having unconditional love, even if not from your parents, can save you.

Thereply that really resonates with me, the love I had when growing up was very conditional and I fell far short of the required standard. I'm OK with it now, my parents were products of their own upbringing and so I don't think they knew any other way.

thereply and betty - it really is a book that will stay with me.

One of my favourite books The house at the end of Hope Street is 99p for the kindle at the moment.

It's about a woman called Alba who finds herself outside a house in Cambridge where she is invited to stay but only for 99 days. She has to use this time to follow in the footsteps of authors such as Woolf, and Christie who stayed there when they were going through had times. Alba finds her time at the house helpful and inspirational, no spoiler so I won't say how!

I read on paper & on phone using Kindle app. I know what you mean about reading imprinting less on Kindle. But, the one thing I do find now if I"m reading non-fiction in paper format is that I miss the option to highlight passages, and then easily pull them up to look at - lots of paper bookmarks just doesnt' work quite the same way.

I think someone was looking for places to buy books. I purchased Where the Crawdads Sing from an independent bookseller both recommended on the Clare Mackintosh book club. If you join the book club there is also a 10% discount code at Bert's books and the books come in much prettier packaging than amazon etc. I have attached a picture.
Not sure how extensive the range is but obviously helps places stay open and in business in this crisis. Or at least that's what I tell myself when ordering new books!

This is me - and I suspect many of us 50bookers

I’m pretty sure I’d make more effort with my kindle if I ran out of unread paper books

And then, there’s plenty I could re-read....

It's The Painting Of The Forth Bridge in this house

This news article gave me a giggle - a librarian went in to check on their library, and discovered that the cleaner had been reshelving books in order of size. Whoops.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-52412655

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I remember ploughing through The Wise Man's Fear thinking oh, it'll be interesting to hear how Kvothe became a living legend! Hmm, they must cover it soon and what happened during his uni years, it's near the end of the book! Ah, maybe not...

I imagine I will read book 3 if only because I've waited this bloody long to see if the author can finally tie up the loose ends. Although it depends if I can get it cheap on the Kindle/ at the library as no way am I paying around a tenner to hear more about ruddy lutes!

55. Mark Richards - Father, Son & Return to the Pennine Way
56. Mark Richards - Father, Son & the Kerry Way

More stories of the author's walks with his teenage son. Gentle humour, lovely descriptions of the walks and the people they meet, and an underlying bittersweet acknowledgement of the author's realisation that he's getting older and that his son is becoming the more 'responsible' one of the partnership. Just what I needed as a distraction at the moment.

Betty and Stitches

I think that cleaner used to work at my library. Fiction hardbacks are shelved by alphabet, fiction paperbacks are on rotating stands with no discernible logic, rhyme or reason. That's not taking genre specific shelf sections into consideration (eg vampire romance). It makes browsing interesting and searches for anything specific rage inducing. The website does not match the actual stock and they have got rid of the proper catalogue. It might as well be a jumble sale.

Ian Rankin can be found in any one of the hardback, paperback, crime or detective sections. The Rebus series is scattered to the winds.

Stephen King can be found in hardback, paperback, horror or classics. And most of his non-horrors are the ones in the horror section.

Thankfully it's a small library as finding anything is sheer dumb luck. It's as if the work experience kid had a very cunning plan. There's a lot to be said for qualified librarians and the alphabet.