50 Book Challenge 2020 Part Five

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the fifth 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, it's not too late to join, 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, the third one here and the fourth one here.

How're you getting on so far?

I think the Kindle people are trolling us. I swear they put those books on sale periodically just to watch it all kick off here again.

Ha Cote I read Darkmans so you don't have to. It honestly wasn't that bad, but yes it would have annoyed you .

And I'm Team NLMG but can't be bothered to rehash my arguments of why.

I'm indifferent to NLMG but will fight anyone who praises Station 11

NLMG and Station 11 both crap. The end.

32. Private Papers, Margaret Forster

I don't think Margaret Forster has ever written a bad book. In this one, a daughter finds her elderly mother's writings (not a diary, written after the fact - basically an account of her life, written to herself) and as she reads them she argues with her mother in her head and writes spiky notes ("All of that is absolute rubbish", "An utter lie"). The story begins in 1915 with an abandoned baby and covers much of the twentieth century in its scope.

The story is undistinguished - it's the story of a family. People die, babies are born. Boring holidays are taken in English seaside resorts in the rain, unsuitable young men come and go, sisters fall out or simply fail to get on. I really enjoyed reading this, it was entertaining, funny and substantial, though I felt it petered out rather towards the end.

I hadn't seen that, Kensal! I've seen Peter Parker's books in my local Waterstones and will have a look when they reopen.

Glad I'm not the only Station Eleven hater on here. I only read the first couple of chapters before wanting to hurl it against a wall.

A couple of quick & easy reads - new books by two authors I always enjoy.

54 Defy and Defend by Gail Carriger
Dimity is the War Office's best fixer. Sir Crispin is her best backup man, but would like to be more - a mission to deal with a potentially rogue vampire hive gives him the opportunity to show off his talents (including at one point interpretive dance)

55 Slippery Creatures by KJ Charles
Pastiche 20s pulp. Will Darling is back from the Great War and looking forwards to a quiet life taking over his late uncle's bookshop. But then strange visitors start arriving making threats, followed soon after by the War Office, and he discovers that his uncle was mixed up in some nasty things. The charming Lord Arthur 'Kim' Secretan turns up in the bookshop- and at first seems to be a friend to help him find out what is going on, but soon it seems that disentangling who is on which side can be difficult.

106. We Must Be Brave - Frances Liardet
     A woman takes in a lost child during the war. Schmaltzy home front cry bait. I've seen glaciers move faster than this plot.

107. All the Birds, Singing - Evie Wyld
     A woman lives alone in a remote community with only her dog and a flock of sheep for company. Something is stalking her and killing her sheep which brings back memories of the past she tried to escape in Australia when she was younger. This is very tense, two story lines in alternating chapters building up to what I found to be very confusing end. The writing is very literary and competent, but I just didn't feel the love for it overall.

108. Know My Name - Chanel Miller
     The very powerful and moving memoir of a sexual assault victim, recounting her attack, the subsequent trial, how it played out in the media and the toll it took on her and her family. The attack took place on a college campus and was interrupted by two other students. Her attacker was a talented athlete and the whole focus was on how the events would affect him and his promising future career. I remember this hitting social media in the immediate aftermath and then the later shock of the sentencing and the judges comments around the case. Her victim statement went viral. She remained anonymous throughout. I was very pleased to see she had written a book as I was disgusted with the handling of the case from start to finish. She is a very eloquent writer and narrated the audiobook very well herself. Her bravery is astounding. I can't say I enjoyed it, but I admired it very much. It could have withstood a bit of editing, but I recognise the importance of her finally having her own say.

I have Darkmans on my Kindle and don’t like the sound of it not really going anywhere.

Don’t put cote off books she might not like as we all reap the benefits when she reviews them.

I've seen glaciers move faster than this plot - Fortuna!!!!! 😁😀

A couple more for my list:

26. Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby. Annie lives in a small seaside town with her boyfriend Duncan, a music obsessive, but their relationship seems to have run its course. This was okay, not Hornby's best. He is good at a women's perspective though.

27. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. Reviewed several times upthread. A beautifully written story of love and loss.

Today I've finished:

32. Buyer Beware: a New Zealand Home Buyer’s Guide - Maria Slade

Does what it says on the tin, a bit niche!

33. The Five: the lives of Jack the Ripper’s women - Hallie Rubenhold (Audible)

Outstanding exploration of the lives of the five canonical victims of Jack the Ripper, exploding the myth that they were 'merely' prostitutes. Three of them do not seem to have been sex workers at any stage in their lives, and only one was definitely in the trade at the time of her death. Rubenhold has managed to unearth an astounding level of detail of the lives of these women, and this book has given me a real sense of the physical hardship of being a working class woman in late Victorian England (as opposed to just an intellectual understanding of it). Books that achieve this are amongst my favourites, and it reminded me of the novel The Crimson Petal and the White which does something similar in making you feel what is like to inhabit the physical body of the Victorian prostitute Sugar. Highly recommended.

Thanks for all the Audible chat earlier this week. I've now switched from monthly to the 24-books-a-year subscription, which is much better value!

21. The Island by Ana Maria Matute

Set in Majorca under the shadow of civil war, this is an atmospheric, claustrophobic coming of age story in which a young girl with a lonely life and a rebellious nature the loss of her innocence. Matia is sent to live with her restrictive, unloving grandmother on the island when she is kicked out of a convent school. Here she forges a fractious friendship with her cousin Borja, whom she dislikes and slightly fears, yet on whom she depends for company and solace. He possesses a knowingness about the adult world she merely professes to have, and for most of the novel she is teetering on the edge of an awareness she does not want. Her remaining childhood is guarded like a precious possession; Matia holds onto toys like talismans against encroaching adulthood, reciting passages from Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland like spells to ward off experience. It is in her forbidden friendship with a boy from the wrong family, Manuel, that she is able to be most freely herself, but which tumbles her further towards harsh reality. The serpent is already in the garden, but she dares not look at it head on. This is a strange little book, I wasn’t overwhelmed by it whilst reading it, but Matute creates a tangible world, lurid, close and menacing that felt unusual.

I am reading (quite slowly) a book of David Mitchell newspaper columns at the moment but have diverted my attention today to:

29. Blood Sport - Dick Francis

This book follows the hunt for abducted stallions across the US taking in Kentucky, the Rockies, California and Nevada. The sleuth suffers from depression and an interest in a 17 year old girl - despite being 20 years older - which thankfully is not acted upon beyond one chaste kiss but presumably was acceptable in the 1960s. A good story otherwise and actually quite contemporary in some parts with its focus on his struggle with his mental health.

Thanks for The Island review Satsuki, I bought it recently too, so glad you didn't hate it, it's on my tbr pile.

Can't add much to the NLMG versus Station 11 debate, didn't rate NMLG and couldn't get past the first chapter of Station 11. As for NLMG probably didn't help that I'd recently read a YA novel, Nancy Farmer's The House of the Scorpion which deals with similar themes but in a way that I found far more entertaining/persuasive.

Thank you for The Island review, Satsuki. I bought it on a whim last week (Penguin Classic? 99p? Don't mind if I do!) so glad to hear it's readable.

28. Sushi & Beyond - Michael Booth
Recounts the author's travels in Japan with his family. It's amusing and has a lot to say about Japanese food and food culture that I hadn't heard before.

29. Metropolitan Stories - Christine Coulson
This is a series of interlinked stories and vignettes, rather than a novel as billed on the cover. The author is a curator at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the stories are told from the viewpoints of various employees, visitors and sometimes the artworks themselves. It stayed just the right side of whimsy, for me. For example, when the museum's director hears Karl Lagerfeld is bringing his muse to a meeting, he decides to audition the muses in the Met's collections, who troop (rather stiffly) into his office for his inspection. Sometimes it does have the air of a project written by someone on their sabbatical, which I think is how the book came about, but her love of the museum shines out and she articulates how the curators and the collections become interdependent. It's a light, short read and I would recommend it to any museum-hound.

Just bringing my list over so I don't lose the thread:

1. Missing by Karin Altvegen
2. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
3. A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
4. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Attwood
5. To the Land of Long Lost Friends by Alexander McCall Smith
6. The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
7. Circe by Madeline Miller
8. Girl Woman Other by Bernadine Evaristo
9. Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie

10. Those People by Louise Candlish 11. The Stationery Shop of Tehran by Marjan Kamali 12. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Duerr 13. Tidelands Philippa Gregory 14. To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 15. Song of Achilles Madeline Miller 16. The Storyteller Jodi Picoult 17. I Capture the Castle Dodie Smith 18. Rebecca Daphne du Maurier

19. My Cousin Rachel Daphne du Maurier

Orphaned in babyhood, Philip Ashley is brought up in an all-male environment by his idolised cousin Ambrose. One winter Ambrose travels to Italy for his health and a few months later writes that he has married his distant cousin Rachel, the widowed Contessa Sangaletti. His letters become less frequent and more incoherent culminating in a frantic plea for Philip to come to him and implicating Rachel in his illness. By the time Philip arrives in Florence Ambrose is dead and Rachel disappeared. Weeks later Rachel arrives in Cornwall and Philip invites her to stay, seeking revenge. Instead he is captivated by her but cannot put out of his mind the suspicion that she killed Ambrose. As in ' Rebecca', du Maurier creates in Rachel a woman who does not conform to expectations of the time and eventually pays the price. ' Rebecca' is the better known book but I actually thought this was better.

book 21 for me was Raven Black by Anne Cleese's, the first in the Shetland series. lots of people on here seem to have read this recently, and it's worth it. Really good, transported me away from covid lockdown to island live

book 20 was Expectation by Anna Hope, which was described as being like Normal People but about female friendship. I was a bit meh about it though, didn't really like any of the main characters

30. Forfeit - Dick Francis

A racing journalist uncovers a criminal ring nobbling horses who go to some efforts to stop him from revealing everything. The journalist ploughs on at great personal risk to both himself and his disabled wife. Another page-turner. Francis does manage to make his protagonists very human - even though they are short books they are not one-dimensional.

Still enjoying my re-reads but probably back to David Mitchell or something else now.

59. Derby Day by DJ Taylor

Victorian tale about the Epsom Derby and a disreputable gentleman's horse dealings.

There is a good book in here somewhere but it doesn't quite come off. It wishes it was Vanity Fair

For me, this has been on my Kindle TBR for NINE years and I'm just glad to be rid if I'm honest

Book 31
Homesick For Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh

Well, this was unexpectedly... erm ... bracing! I hadn’t read any reviews so came to it completely cold.

This is a collection of 14 short stories that span a range of intimate worlds, loosely themed on making connections and the vagaries of human relationships.

Each one is a vivid little portrait, understated but brilliantly crafted. It’s the style of writing that appears so simple and totally effortless. Until you realise how much detail is included and how it has drawn you in.

But they are grotesquely dark in places and lurch from banal to disturbing in a blink. The literary equivalent of being invited to peep into someone’s personal space, only to have them poke a fork in your eye! I haven’t read any other books of Moshfeghs, although I know My Year Of Rest and Relaxation has been reviewed and liked on here.

Talented short story telling. Packs a punch. Not for everyone I expect though.

HumberElla I chuckled when I saw you mention you were about to start Homesick as I wondered what you would make of it. It's one of the most WTF books I have ever read. I was mildly disturbed by some of the stories and very put off by others. My Year of R&R is a very different feel but still with excellent writing.

I started 4 books today before settling on 109. The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters I know it has been much discussed in the past and I'm last on the planet... I found it very compelling and stayed up late to finish it. A ripping good yarn.

Just realised how long it is since I updated!

90. The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow

The story of Mary Bennet from Pride & Prejudice. This follows the events of P&P from Mary’s POV but only up to the end of Mr Collins’s visit. Then it jumps to after the end of P&P and follows Mary making her own way in the world. These sort of books don’t always work but I enjoyed this, although it could have been a bit shorter.

91. Mack The Life by Lee Mack

His autobiography. Good if you want to know the journey to becoming a stand up comedian, less good if you want to know much about his personal life or behind the scenes info about Would I Lie To You or Not Going Out.

92. Plan For The Worst by Jodi Taylor

Latest in the St Mary’s series. More of the same so if you like the series you’ll like this but if you don’t this won’t change your mind. More madcap time travelling adventures.

93. The Love Child by Rachel Hore

Two stories told together. One follows Alice who becomes a doctor after having to give up her illegitimate baby for adoption after WW1. The other follows Irene who is adopted as a baby. It’s predictable but I enjoyed it more than I expected as the writing drew me in.

94. A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro

I have mixed feelings about Ishiguro. I loved Never Let Me Go, but was meh about Remains of the Day and thought The Unconsoled was the most bonkers thing I’ve ever attempted to read. I was therefore ambivalent about this one, his debut. It’s about a Japanese woman reflecting on a friendship she had as a young woman in Nagasaki. For most of it I didn’t think much - the prose is sparing which doesn’t help me engage with the characters, plus the characters aren’t really that likeable. However, towards the end I realised what Ishiguro was doing and it made me want to reread to put it all into context.

95. Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

I never read this as a child. I loved it although it obviously is very much of its time in some of its views. It must have been a very lonely lifestyle, doesn’t appeal to me at all but I’m very impressed how self sufficient they were.

96. Robin Ince’s Bad Book Club by Robin Ince

This was a recommendation from this thread but I forget who, sorry! In this he talks about all the terrible books he’s found in charity shops. I was sniggering at some bits but other sections weren’t quite so funny, but still overall a good read.

As a few people have it languishing on their Kindles, maybe I should add to my Darkmans thoughts. It is absolutely true that it doesn't go anywhere and has no proper resolution and believe me, normally that would really annoy me. I hate books with duff endings (have never forgiven Louis de Bernieres for the end of Captain Corelli). But for some reason I loved the ride so much with Darkmans that I didn't care (actually, it seemed quite fitting). I thought it waa a joyous, crazy riot. I read it on holiday, which I'm sure helped, as I think it needs to be read in chunks and not in small segments. But I appreciate 800 pages without a resolution may not sound tempting.