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 didn't like Frannie Langton at all and it was very nearly chosen for my book club recently. You couldn't pay me to read it again. I still have Things in Jars, The Mermaid & Mrs Hancock and An Almond for a Parrot knocking around plus many others, but can't face them. I am a sucker for a pretty cover but was burned with The Essex Serpent.

Lockdown has definitely changed my reading habits. I've just abandoned All Among the Barley by Melissa Harrison. I'm about halfway through but I got it from the library and figure if I'm still reading it 2 pages at a time 10 weeks later then something's up.

highlandcoo I had a lovely time at virtual Hay. I didn't think the Hallie Rubenhold chat was as good as it was shared with Lisa Taddeo, but still worth a listen. I'm going to subscribe to the Hay Player for next year. I've just picked up one of HRs other books about Lady Worsley which I am looking forward to.

I'm now on the third St Clare's book and all the lacrosse haters will be pleased to know it's summer term and all about the tennis. I could do without the tuck box I've been obliged to bring for the fully immersed experience.

Thank you, @highlandcoo. I'll seek that out.

Indigo, I listened to Ministry of Truth on audible earlier this year, good book but I was unimpressed with the narrator - I wished overall I'd bought it in paper.

I'm a big Orwell fan, but his essays are where it's at for me - I've read most of his novels, & I agree they can be hard going. (Having said that I read a lot more non-fiction in general, so maybe just me)

Any recommendations for short, fun (but not too fluffy)reads that will help me catch up?

I'd recommend Nora Ephron's last two books, and a couple from Alan Bennett - Smut and The Uncommon Reader.

Thanks Sadik. Agree that a good narrator can make or break a book!

fortuna I really liked The Essex Serpent but found Mermaid not as well written and abandoned it. Also abandoned All Among the Barley.

I loved An Almond for a Parrot - not Victorian iirc, and much more fun than most of the pretty cover brigade.

I'm currently in the Fifth at Malory Towers, and just starting to get a pantomime together.

Satsuki I thought the writing in Serpent was very good, but overall I was annoyed the plot didn't go anywhere. I felt cheated.

Glad it wasn't just me with Barley, it should have been right up my street and I enjoyed her non-fic book about walking.

Remus I tend to lump all of those sort of books together but will look at Almond more seriously. I feel a lot of these are trendy at the time and you had to be there.

All of these school stories are making me want to get the Trebizon books as well. I remember reading a few of those. I was never into the Chalet School though, I read a few but never felt the love.

46. Evil Star by Anthony Horowitz

Second in his supernatural young adult The Power of Five series.

14yr old Matt Freeman finds himself embroiled in another adventure to try and stop ancient evil forces entering the world.
Lots of action, and fairly undemanding.

47. Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig

Miriam Black can foresee how someone will die with one touch, but she can’t do anything to stop their deaths.
So she’s spending her life drifting along the roads, exploiting her talent to get by.
And then one day, she shakes a truckers hand, and sees a vision of him being brutally murdered while calling her name. She’s never been able to save anyone before, but maybe this time will be different...

This book has lots of swearing and lots of violence - there’s drug dealers and hit men causing all sorts of bloody havoc, and Miriam gets beat up a lot by a variety of different people.

I found it hard to warm to this book, but it was a quick read.

for everyone finding things difficult at the moment. In the last week I've found myself getting inexplicably irate, but pretty sure I didn't shout at anyone today at least...

39. Wishful Drinking - Carrie Fisher (Audible)

Based on her stage show of the same name, Fisher leads us on a sharply observed and very funny romp through her career, relationships to Hollywood royalty, and battles with addiction and mental illness. It's only three hours long but I don't feel bad about spending a credit on this because I know I will be listening again.

40. Savage Breast: one man's search for the Goddess - Tim Ward

I had a complex relationship with this book, but was absolutely enthralled and spent every spare minute on it. I feel like I need to write a long form piece to get to the bottom of my reaction to it, but I'll try to be brief!

This is a spiritual travel memoir (?) - recognising the difficulties in his relationships with women, Ward decides to get to the bottom of this by exploring the archetypes embodied in ancient goddesses. His travels to Greek, Turkish and Central European sites and discussions with archaeologists are fascinating. But the sections on his personal issues were sometimes disturbing and reminded me of the Germaine Greer quote: 'women have very little idea of how much men hate them.' Ultimately though, I felt he was brave in exposing so much of himself to the reader, and being willing to acknowledge and work through his issues. I didn't need to know so much about his sex life though.

almond is different. Smutty and good fun. God, her second book was dreadful though.

72. Kick by Paula Byrne

A biography of Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy, younger sister of JFK, and the second eldest daughter.

Turning 18 just as her father did a short lived and failed stint as US Ambassador meant that she was launched as a Deb into British High Society and invited to all the "right" parties and weekends away.

A twist of fate that would permanently change her life.

This was brilliant actually. I knew the story in summary due to her connection to Deborah Mitford, but there is plenty of story to tell here. Strongly recommend as "undemanding non fiction" Sadik

Reading the story reminded me of the dark tale of oldest sister Rosemary Kennedy who is described here as "brain damaged at birth" . I will certainly read more about her. I've never read anything in full but I've always felt that her level of disability was exaggerated after the fact, and the shameful act of her father, to justify his choice, and nothing I have read has changed this notion. She was considered capable and presentable enough to be presented to the Royal Family at Court with the other Debs, in the not exactly disability inclusive 1930's so what changed?

The much talked of Kennedy Curse as well, when you think there were 9 children and how so many of their lives turned out, it's hard to see there wasn't one.

Strongly recommend

Book 34
The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Out of my usual stamping ground here with future based, space travel Sci-fi. Rosemary joins the crew of a ship as a clerk to escape her past. We get to know the rest of the multi-species crew as they travel, encountering adventures on the way and revealing that her colleagues are also not quite who they seem.

Some interesting concepts, such as the idea of a virus becoming your permanent conjoined twin. I had expected more from the plot, as the story had lots of potential but skimmed over much of the action. There was just enough interest in the characters and their relationships to keep me reading nonetheless.

18. Carrie’s War by Nina Bawden (1973) – reread after watching the 2004 adaptation. Picking this up after the Lively was probably a bad idea, Lively’s writing is so impressive that the inevitable comparison highlighted Bawden’s uneven prose style. But this well-known story of two children evacuated to a remote Welsh mining village during WW2 was still pretty engrossing. BTW the earlier 70s TV adaptation is on YouTube.

19. Autumn Journal by Louis MacNeice (1939) – This autobiographical piece, in verse, is MacNeice’s meditation on his life, thoughts and feelings over the course of 1938. I thought it was a wonderful mix of the impressionistic and the contemplative, so many powerful lines and passages: moving from thoughts about the world and what it is to live in it, to anxieties over a war which seems ever closer, wrestling with longing for the woman who’s abandoned him, and memories of his past from school and a classical education at odds with the contemporary, to visiting Spain during the Civil War. It’s a marvellously evocative piece creating a vivid picture of the period and the landscape: descriptions of London and Birmingham, a train ride across country, losing his dog out on a walk, London slowly being transformed into a space that can withstand the coming onslaught, Hitler’s hectoring voice on the radio. This is one I will definitely return to in the future.

It’s also available online here:
archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.184237/2015.184237.Autumn-Journal_djvu.txt

In the Fifth is my favourite MT Remus - enjoy!

35. At Bertram's Hotel, Agatha Christie
Slightly odd 1960s Miss Marple - deliberately rather meta I think. MM is on holiday at Bertram's, a hotel in London which deliberately cultivates an Edwardian atmosphere. Beloved by its guests, it feels like a little slice of a lost world, but for some of the guests, the excellent fakery feels a bit off. What is really happening at Bertram's and does it have anything to do with the very 1960s crime wave involving train robbery and glamorous racing drivers? MM only appears fleetingly, which is a shame.

36. No-one is Too Small to Make a Difference, Greta Thunberg
A collection of Greta's speeches from the last few years. Powerful and thought-provoking, without a doubt, though by their nature quite repetitive.

37. A Rising Man, Abir Mukherjee
Set in 1919 Calcutta, where the British Raj is still very much in effect. A high-up white government official is found dead on the street in "Blacktown", and the detective sent to investigate is our protagonist, Sam Wyndham. Sam is recently arrived in India, seeking a new start after his experiences in the war and the loss of his wife in the flu epidemic. His naivety about "how things work out here" allows the author to give him the ability to see and question many of the injustices of British rule, although the tone zigzags a bit between convincing of-its-time chauvinism and an anachronistic modernity which makes both feel a bit uncomfortable.

The idea and setting were excellent, the mystery probably not strong enough to stand on its own, so read one this for its multi-faceted depiction of India under British rule. I've heard Mukherjee talk about this on the radio and he's an interesting and thoughtful guy.

38. The Diary of a Bookseller, Shaun Bythell
Many of you have already read this real-life account of the day-to-day running of a large secondhand bookshop in Scotland. Bythell, it seems, has quite a social media following for his acerbic posts slagging off Amazon and customers who ask stupid questions in the shop, and I wasn't particularly convinced by the "Ooh, I'm so rude to people I am" schtick which seemed more performative than genuine. I did enjoy the book talk and the insight into the book trade, and this is an absorbing but gentle and unchallenging read for anyone needing one right now.

Some of you will have seen this already but there is an AirBnB in Wigtown (Scotland's "Book Town", where Bythell's shop is located) which you can hire for a week or more and run a secondhand bookshop. For real. You stay in a cosy flat above the shop, set up window displays, run events, buy and sell stock and basically live the unrealistic dream of a cosy little shop with a woodburning stove and the Scottish rain falling outside. Before Covid-19 it was fully booked out as far ahead as AirBnB would allow.

For the person looking for short and undemanding books (Olly _ think?): Greta T's book is definitely short and a quick read, and the Bythell, being written as daily diary entries, is a fairly quick read. Both interesting enough to be worth it.

Eine, the Kennedy book sounds very interesting thank you.

Younghill, what a great review of the Louis MacNeice - one of those people whose names is familiar to me without being able to tell you anything about him (or indeed her?!). Your review of the Autumn Journal certainly makes me want to read it and will send me to Wikipedia to inform myself about the author, so thank you.

Agree keith lovely review younghill. I’ve read bits and pieces of MacNiece but you’ve made me want to go and take a fresh look.

Song of Achilles by Madeleine Miller Much reviewed. Much enjoyed.

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson Another book that has languished on my shelves for decades which I have finally got round to reading. This was a ground-breaking work when it was published in 1962, exposing the devastating environmental effects of pesticides. It mostly focuses on the United States, where in the late 1950s there was widespread and indiscriminate crop dusting, with lethal consequences for wildlife and often people themselves too. It is somewhat dated in that many of the chemicals she highlights, such as DDT, have since been banned (although not until 1986 in Britain and it continues to damage ecosystems). But it is still an important and prescient statement of man's terrible impact on the world.

A Month in Siena by Hisham Matar This is a most excellent book in all respects. It is a small Penguin hardback printed on high quality paper with beautiful illustrations. It is also a profoundly moving account of his visit to Siena to study its paintings, and reflects more widely on art and its relationship to "the human condition". (There is also a chapter on the Black Death in 1348 and its effects on Siena both at the time and in the aftermath, which is interesting to read in the current Covid crisis.) It follows on from his previous book, The Return, a memoir in which he tried to find out what had happened to his father who was kidnapped and taken prisoner in Libya. Both are superb. I have only just finished reading A Month in Siena but am going to read it again straight away.

Another thank you to Younghill for the Louis MacNeice review which I shall definitely follow up.

Thanks Keith thought it was brilliant, particularly his observations on his surroundings, views, people, sounds, colours. And Satsuki and Boiledegg the online edition is free so worth a look. It’s not particularly complicated verse but I’m not used to reading much poetry so it took me a short time to adjust to the sentence structure but did end up reading it straight through – and that’s not been happening much lately, like everyone else I’m in a constantly, distracted frame of mind.

And Keith second the Thurnberg, increasingly important ideas. Also read the Bythell, it slipped down easily and thought Bythell had that sort-of curmudgeonly charm that can be very entertaining, although I’m not sure I’d risk ordering a book from him!

Boiledegg thanks for the Matar review, I've been eyeing that one up, but was waiting for a cheaper edition, in another world would have ordered it from the library...

Younghill I know what you mean, luckily I was given the Matar as a present and it is a beautiful thing. Have you read The Return?

Following on from the discussion around Square Haunting, I've just noticed that next week's Poetry Extra is about Hilda Doolittle. If anyone's interested, it's on Radio 4 extra on Sunday 14 June at 12.00pm and repeated at 5.00pm.