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?

@PepeLePew At 41 I wonder if that's my issue too. I detested Conversations with Friends

Remus, those books say nothing to you about your life! I have no interest in them either.

Fran - glad somebody can speak Morrissey! Meet you at the cemetery gates?

'Keats and Yeats are on your side/While Wilde is on mine'. That's one of my favourites, Remus!

26 The Museum of Broken Promises Elizabeth Buchan A young women's first love affair in 1980's communist Prague and the impact it continues to have on her life as a museum owner in present day Paris. I enjoyed the Parisian sections and felt that that the descriptions of young people growing up and expressing themselves under communist rule were thought provoking and evocative although long winded at times. However a section set in the mid 1990s where she and the man she worked for meet up felt like a vehicle for imparting information and a bit cringeworthy and didn't work for me at all.

Fran - mine too.

Sorry for the derail, everyone else!

Not too much of a derail- I mentioned three literary giants 😉

Satsuki Lovely to hear of somebody enjoying Trustee. heaven knows I'd be miserable now if somebody said they hated it.

High Stakes was a good DF book, if I remember correctly it was the one with the toy maker?

Betty - you're in! There's a club, if you'd like to go...

'There's more to life than books, you know/But not much more'...

I'm trying to think of another w itty reply, but these things take time.

Yes betty it was the toy maker and the switching of the black horses

betty I am human and I need to read Neville Shute like everybody else does

Funnily enough I just read Strangeways by Neil Samworth. I'll post a review soon.

Betty - you're in! There's a club, if you'd like to go...

Thanks Remus. I hope the lights never go out.

betty I am human and I need to read Neville Shute like everybody else does

Glad to hear it Satsuki

It's been fun, but I'm tired, and I want to go to bed. Anyone care to sing me to sleep?

There is a (reading) light that never goes out...

11. The Mirror And The Light - Hilary Mantel

Ah, I don't know where to start with this really - the final part of Thomas Cromwell's story and one of those where you know how it ends but are somehow willing events to turn out differently right up to the final page. It's subtle, and brutal, and beautiful and utterly brilliant.

26. Lives of the Painters Sculptors and Architects: Part 1 by Giorgio Vasari

This is my lockdown project- 1 life per night - and I'm tweeting each of them as I go. And yes I am damn well counting each Part as a single book because even this first shorter one is 237 pages long. The translation is in deathless turn of the century prose and I would struggle to read more than one Life per night as some of the sentences are 11 lines long. But I am thoroughly enjoying the tweet-along and there are some gems in some of the lives. Vasari didn't hold back with his criticism and the Lives are full of gossip. Might actually be learning something as well.

10. Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney (2017) – this has been lying around the house for quite a while, but after watching the BBC adaptation of Normal People I decided to finally try it. I didn’t find Normal People particularly compulsive viewing, I felt that the narrative was too slow and drawn-out to no great end. I felt the same way about this one too. And from reading through the thread seems I’m not alone. It’s got some compelling passages, and Rooney’s very adept at representing aspects of female alienation particularly in the student demographic she seems to have as her focus. This novel is less overtly dealing with issues of class, although it does deal with issues of power, and finding a place in the world: although it deals with a number of overlapping issues and the main character, Frances, seems, in many ways, a prototype for Marianne from Normal People. The plot, which hinges on a destructive affair with an older, married man, is a familiar one, although there are some interesting observational elements. I’ve seen this compared to The Bell Jar and it does feel as if Rooney is channelling Plath in some ways, but it doesn’t have, at least for me, the rich texture or the narrative drive of Plath’s novel. It also reminded me at times of Rachel Cusk’s work, particularly her earlier books such as Saving Agnes - another writer whose fiction I find less than enthralling.

11. Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff (2016) - I really enjoyed this one, literary fiction is leaving me cold at the moment but well-written genre novels seem to be hitting the spot, at least so far. This, features African-American Atticus Turner, after fighting in the Korean War, he’s been travelling around the U.S. doing odd jobs, and dodging the racist elements that threaten to engulf him. The only constant in his life is his obsession with SF writers like Ray Bradbury. A mysterious summons from his estranged father leads to a road trip with his uncle George and old family friend Letitia, that takes them into the depths of Lovecraft Country, for them a far from comfortable place to be – clear to anyone familiar with H.P. Lovecraft’s white supremacist leanings.

Socially-conscious (yet light and entertaining) horror that explores the racist culture of 1950s America through the experiences of its African-American characters, although Ruff references SF writers/novels as much as he does horror fiction. The style reminded me of crime writers like Elmore Leonard or Walter Mosley in his early Easy Rawlins’ narratives. The structure deliberately mimics shows like The X-Files, so the opening chapter is essentially the pilot episode, establishing the main figures and themes, then each subsequent chapter is an adventure or scenario that befalls one of them such as buying a house in a white neighbourhood which comes complete with a racist ghost – not surprised that this is being turned into an HBO series by Jordan Peele and J.J. Abrams. It’s not a brilliant book but a fairly satisfying one. Something that did intrigue me was the way in which genre fiction is still judged by different standards, if this were labelled as literary, I can’t see Ruff, a white author writing about African-American social and cultural history, escaping inclusion in recent debates over fiction-writing and cultural appropriation.

The Five by Hallie Rubenhold
The lives, not the deaths, of the five women agreed to have been murdered by Jack the Ripper.

This is just extraordinarily good. Meticulous history, so well written. It is not at all easy to write history like this. Not grisly or hopeless but gives an amazing detailed picture of the grind and desperation of real poverty between the 1840s and 1888, but also the range and fullness of real people's lives. There is also a common theme of alcohol as a destroyer even of modest hopes, which makes more sense of the temperance and, in the US, the Prohibition movements which became more prominent around the turn of the century. A poignant endpoint is the lists of personal possessions found on the bodies. Warm, human history of immense quality.

betty, I think the Kate Clanchy book about teaching has the potential to grate if you are an experienced teacher. One of the reasons for this is the mismatched ratio of mistakes to success stories. I’m not a teacher but dislike books about my own profession which I do not feel are truly representative. Would I recommend this book to an experienced teacher? No. Would I recommend this book to a new teacher? Yes, particularly if they are young to inspire and remind them of the potential of all children.

I seem to be going against the grain, first liking Slaughterhouse 5 and now by liking the Sally Rooney books - Normal People more than Conversations with Friends. They weren’t stand out reads for me but I thought there was definitely “something” about them as I ripped through them, very much caught up in the story she created.

Oh now I need to go back and read Dick Francis. Another favourite of my teenage years.

Currently reading Bel Canto - Ann Patchett and not really liking it.

Best is West I'm also reading Bel Canto, I've been waiting for it I on kindle for ages and I'm definitely underwhelmed...I love Ann Patchett usually but I'm 50% through and it seems a bit flat...

Bel Canto is my least liked Patchett. I much preferred Commonwealth and State of Wonder.