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 am finding The Year of Living Danishly quite amusing remus.

I enjoyed that as well.

Do you still want easy to read Rebus ? What about Swallows and Amazons or - more adult - Monica Dickens?

You can never go wrong with Swallows and Amazons.

I never really fell into the Swallows and Amazons world.

Don't fancy any of those others, sorry.

I tried reading Swallows and Amazons last year as people had been raving about it, but I just couldn’t get into it at all.

Perhaps it’s one that you have to read for the first time when you’re a child?

I saw an advert for the CBBC version of Malory Towers recently, and now I’m wondering what I did with my old Malory Towers books. I’m not getting far with my grown up books right now, too many distractions.

I'm resisting the urge to reread my Enid Blyton books as it's a rabbit hole I won't emerge from for a while. I also have the St Clare's series, but I loved Malory Towers so much more, even though they both contain essentially the same characters.

I keep digging out The Borrowers Omnibus, but its brick like size is putting me off.

66. A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II - Sonia Purnell Details the life of Virginia Hall who joined SOE and set up vast networks in aid of the Resistance. Despite her prosthetic leg and being undervalued as a mere woman, she became the spy the Gestapo were most keen to stop.

I found this absolutely riveting and couldn't put it down. It's a biography that reads more like fiction and while it takes a few liberties in ascribing thoughts and feelings to people that the author can only guess at, it works within the context. At times I would have liked more details, but as the woman herself was particularly secretive and unwilling to discuss her work even after the war there was only so much the author could do despite meticulous research. I've read so many novels about female SOE operatives but feel they've all paled in light of this. An extraordinary woman who deserved better recognition at the time.

67. A Good Neighborhood - Therese Ann Fowler A feud between neighbours over a tree takes a nasty turn when the parents realise the two teens have feelings for each other and are keen to keep them apart.

Explores attitudes to race and class in the US in a well woven plot. I really enjoyed this and thought it was very well written.

I'm another person who enjoyed The Year of Living Danishly.

Mama, I seem to recall that Adam Kay referred to obstetrics as 'brats and twats'. It didn't bother me hugely (as I've never had children), but I can imagine that some people might find that joke misogynistic.

I think with Kay it was more the way he played for laughs at the expense of his patients and their ailments and it seemed often disliked them , especially iirc if they were a bit fat or a bit demanding etc. Because of his role, these were often women at whom he aimed a lot of scatological humour. I am fairly 'woke' , I guess so read this as having a faint whiff of misogyny. Not full on misogyny but a lack of kindness and respect for his patients. Give me Christie Watson and Leah Hazard any day.

remus A Stitch in Time by Penelope LIvely is 1.99 on kindle at the moment if you’re still on children’s literature.

14. My Wild and Sleepless Nights by Clover Stroud

A memoir of motherhood. Stroud is very honest about all the different shades of feeling she has about mothering and the pull between the person you were before children and the one you become as a mother. I found it a little slow to get through and it didn’t offer me a huge deal, but there were moving moments as she captured the differing relationships she has with her preschool children and her teenagers, as she simultaneously prepares a nest for a new baby and for her eldest to fly off into adulthood.

Thanks, Satsuki. I fancy something old fashioned, although it doesn't have to be children's. Can't remember if I've read Stitch - will look.

What about something like Rumer Godden Remus? China Court maybe.

What about the One End Street series @Remus? I always find those lovely. Or some Margaret Mahy?

A thousand paper birds by Tor Udall or The dress shop of dreams by Menna Van Praag perhaps Remus ?

Or Elizabeth Cadell - I read the The Corner Shop the other day and it was daft fun in an old fashioned way.

book 15 was I Thought I Knew You by Penny Hancock.
was quite meh about it for the first couple of chapters, then it totally had me gripped. It's about 2 best friends and the ramifications for them and their relationships when the teenage daughter of one accuses the son of the other of rape.
a good domestic drama

Hey all. Coming back to the threads. Just getting back into reading this past week. So far...

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen. Obviously this was great and I enjoyed reading it but it took me longer than usual as I couldn't read it as fast as I normally read because I couldn't take it all in otherwise. So had to read it slowly, and that's OK.

1. My Name is Lucy Barton - Elizabeth Strout. Pretty decent, short book.

1. The End of the Affair - Graham Greene. Absolutely loved it. Amazing book which really made me think about things and I thought it was exquisitely written.

Currently reading - My Dark Vanessa - Kate Elizabeth Russel. Story about someone having some sort of affair with a teacher when she was 15. I've only just started it and it's very good so far. Easy to read.

40. The Name Of The Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

Someone else has read this and I can't think who, @ me

A Chronicler (storyteller) follows a rumour of the hidden whereabouts of the equally famous and infamous Kvothe; and seeks to record his adventures.

Fantasy isn't generally my bag, but I heard Lin Manuel Miranda was involved in adapting it and thought I'd give it a go.

The third book is due in 2020 and each book is one night of storytelling, so this covers his childhood and his university years.

It struck me as being in a bit of a no mans land audience wise. Not adult enough to be adult fantasy, not YA enough to be YA. It felt like the kind of book a teenager who likes fantasy and has read all the standards moves up to.

That said it was really readable and I found it passed the time quickly enough even at over 600 pages.

Whilst it isn't amazing, I liked it well enough to be invested enough to buy the next but I won't be getting straight on it as there's another book calling my name

30: Nothing to Report - Carola Oman

An old-fashioned, deliciously funny book chronicling the day-to-day round of Miss Mary Morrison, an unmarried 40-something living in the little English village of Went.

Comfortably settled and seemingly emotionally self-sufficient in her picturesque cottage (though still, at heart, missing the stately manor house that used to be her home and is now a girls' school), Miss Morrison deals capably and calmly with an assortment of posh titled friends, neighbours, servants, annoying relatives and the women in her Gas Waggon training group, as the prospect of war draws ever closer.

In fact, there's a great deal to report in this apparently-mundane life, and by the end of it - with the war into its second year - Miss Morrison may be about to see surprising changes taking place in her personal affairs.

This was just the sort of read I needed at the moment: nothing too taxing for the brain, but with lots to keep me diverted. I've just discovered there's a sequel which continues the story further into the war, and have snapped that up too.

20. Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading, Lucy Mangan

Read and reviewed by many on here. Lovely. This has added lots of books to my tbr list. Mangan is older than me and we had slightly different taste in books as children, so we have some overlap but there were plenty of books mentioned that I haven't read, and some I haven't heard of at all but sound worth making my way to at some point.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit

I read The Name of the Wind and had a minor breakdown over it. I found my review:

This is the first in a proposed trilogy called the Brainkiller Kingkiller Chronicles. This first one was nearly 700 pages and no Kings are yet dead. I have NO IDEA why this book is so popular. It is irritating as hell.

When you get to 80 per cent of a really long book and come across the phrase "her smile was like the sun peeping from behind a cloud" honestly you want to inflict some pain on the guy.

He invents a whole new religion and has everyone using oaths like "Tehlu blacken!" and you go along with it, but then after 600 pages of this he suddenly has someone say "it's a goddamn dragon", making an utter waste of time of the whole enterprise and your life and time.

At every point where something should happen, or something significant should be said, it is clear he does not actually have the writing skills to tackle it, so he just glosses over things. "I won't tell you what our conversation was, but it was earth shattering and deep" "I won't tell you the song she sang, it's not your business but it was so wonderful" and "I don't know what I'm going to do next so I'm just going to pawn something/sell something/buy something/borrow money/buy a lute/break lute/buy new lute/break that lute/borrow money". AAAAARRGGHH.

The main character comes from a tribe of people that are apparently alternatively known for both lying and honesty, depending on the requirements of the story. It has some good writing and turns of phrase, but it all amounted to unforgivable smartarsery in the face of so much smug dullness and stupidity.

I finished it but I felt like giving myself a sharp slap at the end. I did at first enjoy the promise of a rich fantasy world with an intriguing story, but he abruptly abandoned the kernel of an idea he had and embarked on a long willy-waving coming of age tale that was Harry Potter-esque with a lute in place of a plot, and instead of any believable female characters, a lute, and in place of Quidditch, a lute-off, and in place of adventure, losing a lute, playing a lute, buying a lute, losing a lute.

I apologise, no one needs to read all that, it's sent me a little crazy, and I'm just getting it out. I have so much more I could rant about too! Did I mention it was nearly 700 pages? The sequel is around 1100 pages long. I mean come on, you're not bloody Tolstoy. But I need to move on.

I do sometimes still toy with the idea of reading the second one

@highlandcoo Enjoy This Thing of Darkness. It's wonderful.

Have got the sample of Nothing to Report.
OH has recommended a book called The Citadel by somebody Cronin - anyone know it?

Love that review, Satsuki

I read it because of Lin-Manuel Miranda too, and who am I kidding, will probably watch the adaptation.