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?

I take the read books off my Kindle too but I can't find an obvious way to see how many are still on it. When I scroll to p2 of the unread books list, it says "2 of 49" and shows 6 books, so I am going to make a rough guess of 294 total.

So far I have more books on my kindle than any of you have said...I'm not even going to considr looking how many I have some of my kindle books in collections but recently I've stopped bothering to do it.

Just finished Period by journalist and presenter Emma Barnett. This is a book about periods. Duh!

It is entertaining and interesting and a quick read. She has a sort of manifesto/campaign. She ahs definitely done her research and the chapters on big companies and also on period poverty are the most interesting.

In some ways , it is a more niche and superficial 'Invisible Women. A good read; not ground breaking.

And she is another one who use reticent wrongly. Perhaps this is a journalist thing like the way they all use 'likely' these days.

I feel a little less guilty now. If I assume that I have all the ones I haven’t read downloaded (I think that’s a reasonable assumption) then it is “only” 98.

I liked Innocent Traitor. So there.

I bought 6 books in the sale, which is quite a big splurge for me.
Old Baggage
All Creatures Great and Small
Diary of a Somebody - Brian Bilston
To Be Taught, If Fortunate - Becky Chambers
Cage of Souls and Walking to Aldebaran - Adrian Tchaikovsky - actually think only one of these was officially in the sale, but got sidetracked and both were on offer. Currently about halfway through Children of Ruin and loving it.

Including the 6 above, I only have 30 unread books on my Kindle. But one of them is Infinite Jest.

On my Kindle, there are 339 books I've read and 48 I haven't, which isn't too bad.

And she is another one who use reticent wrongly.

How is she using it, Piggy? Just interested!

On kindle you can filter read and unread samples and books, as you finish a book it transfers to "read". You can therefore see how many you have at a glance. In my case way too many.

Ha! We had this conversation after Insivible Women. She writes 'reticent to ' which makes my teeth itch....

adding books 18 and 19 for me, both of which I would recommend
The Keeper by Jessica Moore is centred on a death of a young worker at a woman's refuge, and while it was a good read, it unnerved me a bit as it felt like it could be true, rather than fiction
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones is my book of the year, so far. Brilliant writing and the story of the death of a marriage and the rebirth of both parties afterwards. loved it

'Reticent to'? Oooooh.......noooooooo!

Feeling quite smug now - I've only got 4 unread Kindle books (not counting DNFs which I definitely won't read), and two of those don't really count as I bought them on daily deal mostly because I thought my Dad would like them. I do have a bit of a pile of unread paper books but they're nearly all ones I've been given. I feel I ought to read them, so hang onto them way beyond what is sensible.

50. How Not to Be a Boy by Robert Webb Like an OP, this was a 'what is there available in the e-library right now' choice. It's light in style but with more serious intention than perhaps the typical celeb autobiography, looking at the ways in which our culture brings up many boys to be emotionally inarticulate & see anger as the most acceptably 'manly' alternative to sadness, confusion & other negative emotions. Definitely a good read, I suspect perhaps more so if (unlike me) you don't have to google the author on realising it's a celeb book to find out why he is famous.

Finished this a week ago then forgot to post a review.

Book 28
Other Minds - The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life by Peter Godfrey-Smith

I got this having read and enjoyed a couple of other sciencey books this year. Also because I’m particularly fond of octopuses!
The book looks at how some organisms formed nervous systems and a brain through evolution in two main different ways, with the octopus being a bit of a maverick in its particular branch of development. Fascinating reading about what we think of as intelligent life on Earth. Also brilliant anecdotes of octopuses being uncooperative and mischievous study specimens. Such as those who refused to perform any activity for rewards, waited until the scientist left the lab, and then proceeded to unscrew all the lightbulbs from the tanks.
Enjoyable and entertaining reading, with added humour supplied by octopussy shenanigans.

Forgive me if I’ve said this to you before, JollyYella, because I know I’ve mentioned it on this thread, but there was a brilliant BBC doc called ‘The Octopus in my House’, which I seem to remember was repeated at around Christmas time. There were octopussy shenanigans galore in that and I absolutely fell in love with octopuses on the strength of it and now feel terrible about eating them in the past

I don’t think it’s still on iPlayer, sadly, but it’s available to watch on the internet because I found it when googling.

Oh thank you Terpsichore I’ll definitely look that up! Sounds right up my street.

I just think everything about them is fascinating and they are quite beautiful really. Sadly I have also scoffed a few in my time too!

50. Becoming by Michelle Obama (Audible)

Hmmm. A mixed bag of a book. I listened to Michelle read it herself on Audible. I think I understood beforehand it would be very "surface" and very "public face" indeed similarly to Good Old Theresa and her Fields Of Wheat, the closest thing you get to "dirt" is that Barack and Michelle once walked out of Les Mis because they thought it was shit

The book sags in the middle a bit so post her graduation and pre Barack's presidency, the "Young Professionals" years are a bit dull.

I found that surprisingly little of the book as a whole was given to the White House years, particularly the second term. I was also surprised by the very honest resentment of the impact of her husbands rising star on her.

There are also some eyebrow raising but passing moments of smugness.

I have to say that though it's good she is proud of her roots, I got annoyed, and then started to laugh everytime she said :

"Our little house on Euclid Avenue"

She must say it 100 times.

Like Michelle, we get it, you used to be poor.

Whoever taught her in 2nd Grade must have boasted about it later and must have wanted the ground to swallow them up though as they are repeatedly slagged as the worst example of a teacher in the history of teaching.

She doesn't hold back on Donald Trump, but otherwise nothing earth shattering.

3/5

Everyone's unread kindle book confessions have made me feel a lot better! (And Tara and Chessie I am glad to have been of service )

Keith I have a kindle paperwhite and when I click Home and Filter, that shows me how many books I have by total, read and unread. I can't seem to find that info on the kindle app on my phone though.

Can I join. I don't have a Kindle as I like to hoard books but I'm slowly reading them and then any that don't jump out I'm giving to charity/ selling on ziffit when this lockdown is over. I'm currently reading Jesus the son of man by Kahlil gibran. Next is the sensational baby sleep guide as I have a 2 month old and need to refresh on routines etc

Hi tina, and welcome. Congratulations! Babies are always a delight, even the non sleeping ones. I am impressed you are reading with a baby that small. I think it took me about 18 months to read anything other than the back of a baby food packet when DD was born. Perhaps if I had read a baby sleep book I could have sorted that sooner as she was a horror.

Hi tina - I am also impressed you’re reading at all. I lost several years of reading with small children.

22. Circe - Madeleine Miller

Much reviewed on here already - the tale of disgraced goddess Circe, daughter of Helios, and her love for mortals such as Daedalus and Odysseus. Really enjoyed this and highly recommended.

35: The Pulse Glass - Gillian Tindall

I'm a big fan of Gillian Tindall's approach to history - in-depth, very detailed explorations of quite small canvases, often with some personal connection - one of her biggest successes came about when, living in a small French village, she happened by chance to discover a cache of love-letters from and to a young girl called Célestine. She used these to explore Célestine's life and the history of the village in the 19th and early 20thc.

She writes about the story behind this discovery, and other aspects of history, in The Pulse Glass, which is a much more personal memoir, touching on the ephemeral nature of history and memory, but also on how closely-linked we can sometimes be to the past, through the random objects that inexplicably survive from generations long-dead, although we might not know any longer who they belonged to and what their significance once was (I especially enjoyed thinking about this, since I have quite a few family 'objects' that I'd dearly love to know more about).

It's a gentle and ruminative little book - and has nudged me to dig out my copy of Célestine.

18. Its not ok to feel blue (and other lies) by Scarlett Curtis. A compendium of essays on mental health. I would guess this had around 40 essays which was too many for me. At that volume there was always likely to be some that resonated but there were many others that felt very surface level. There was a big focus on what not to say to people with mental health problems which is for a fairly over done topic and very little on living with someone with MH problems which I’m particularly interested in. There were a few really badly written pieces but my favourite were those from unknown authors. It did get me thinking a lot about how all the authors are coping right now.

19. Adults Emma Jane Unsworth. A woman obsessed with instagram validation copes with her slowly unraveling London life. Of course there were dark secrets under the Instagram heavy focus and I get that the narrator was supposed to be self indulgent but she was not very likeable and I skim read the last 100 pages.

20. Bridget Jones’ Diary Helen Fielding. Ah a comfort re-read when Adults* didn’t fill the hole i was hoping. Fielding does the self indulgent single woman in her 30s so well and I laughed a lot. I’d forgotten Bridget’s obsession with dealing 1471 and how different dating was then.

21. Bring Up the Bodies Hilary Mantel. Reread. I loved it.

Continuing to enjoy The Stand but may put it aside for The Mirror and the Light neither will be quick as they are physical books and I’m doing much more audio at the moment (puzzling and audiobooks are my wind down of choice).

I think I’ve about 2-300 books on my tbr. I’ve stopped looking daily at the Amazon deals as I’m trying to only purchase independently this year. A few slip ups naturally. I’ve also stopped worrying too much. I like books. I buy books. I get overwhelmed by the amount of books. But I really enjoy looking at my book case or staring at my kindle list. My work is quite stressful right now as I work in the charity sector. Thankfully I can work from home and have a make shift office in our tiny spare room that’s full of laundry and crap. A bit knobby but this week I made a book shelf on the window ledge so I have something nice to look at when work is particularly draining.

I've got 788 books on my Kindle app, I've just checked, but a lot of those are books I buy for my elderly DM to read (she has a Kindle I bought her, which I technically own, so I can get things for her too, all on my account). She likes easy reads and I never pay more than 99p for her books - but tbh I rarely pay more than that for mine either, because I wait for things on my wish list to come down in price skinflint

A lot of my books are unread, but I did recently discover how to mark books as 'read', so I'm going to split them up into collections now I've got a bit more time.

Luckily my library's still doing loans of ebooks too, which has been very useful in lockdown.

My Kindle app says 599 books, 441 unread, 320 read.

Not sure what’s going on there. Like Terpischore my DM and DF have Kindles linked to my account. DF downloads lots of samples, usually sporting biographies so that might account for some of it.

Bel Canto - Ann Patchett follows a group of terrorists and their hostages, politicians, executives, a translator, a priest and the only woman hostage, an opera singer.

It took me a while to get into this and I didn’t particularly like it but as the story built and relationships between the terrorists and hostages developed there were some nice bits.