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?

Yes, you may, Eine! In fact, I've not only just bought Weight, but I've also had a rush of blood to the head and bought The Bone Clocks, The Stranger Diaries, The Fens by Francis Pryor and Slow Horses (which is on my "to read" list following a recommendation by BestIsWest), all on my Kindle (egged on by a £3 voucher promotion). I think I'm a danger to myself and need to go to bed before I get even more out of control

Bone Clocks was the first audiobook I ever listened to. I don’t think I did it justice as I kept losing track of the plot but it did make a big impact - I can still recall incidents from that summer very clearly because of the audio narration. Perhaps it’s due a revisit. I do really like him as an author even though (whispers) I abandoned Cloud Atlas with around three chapters to go.

Loved The Bone Clocks. Probably not a popular opinion but IMO better than Cloud Atlas, which was a bit too self-consciously clever to be a proper good yarn. The Bone Clocks is far more traditional in structure.

Just finished books 28 and 29.

28. Between the stops by Sandi Toksvig (Audible, read by her). Chosen due to recommendation on here, so thank you. Was really lovely and a great mix of her life and historical trivia.

palegreen ah, sorry if I dissed one of your favourites I just cannot get on with that title, though. I read a synopsis and decided it probably wasn't for me, but in any case my book group has decided to read the first volume of À la recherche du temps perdu, so I'm feeling slightly panicked now...

mackerella thanks for review of the Anne Tyler, was one of the last books I picked up from the library before they closed. Am off to read your review of Nymph as I’ve just picked it up cheap on Kindle as thoroughly intrigued after Backlisted. Also Bone Clocks is an extremely accessible and page-turning read, not as difficult to initially get into as Cloud Atlas.

I till need to read Thousand Autumns keep putting it off for some reason even though I like David Mitchell. He has a new one out in July for fellow fans.

@Terpsichore not a fave but again sometimes these stupid covers, titles, marketing things hide the reality of the book. Although that one is a bit marmite so you are probably right to follow your instincts

sometimes these stupid covers, titles, marketing things hide the reality of the book.

Absolutely yes to this.

I think that a little with Anne Tyler - she always had quite wishy washy looking covers and I ignored her for years. She is actually very sharp. They wouldn’t package Updike in the same way.

Eine if you’re looking for a book in the vein of In Cold Blood, have you tried Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song? It’s a similar exploration of a true crime and I thought it was surprisingly well written – Mailer’s a bit of a weird writer and usually too stereotypically ‘macho’ for my taste, but I rated this one highly. It’s also very readable, lent it to someone who only reads true crime and hates anything literary but they were gripped by it too. Gordon Burn’s true crime books, recently reissued, are also excellent but a little too graphic/downbeat for me.

I read Thousand Autumns last year and it was one of my highlights of the year - really highly recommend it. Although Cloud Atlas is an amazing achievement I find it a little 'style over substance' - Black Swan Green I absolutely adored.

Not got to Bone Clocks or Slade House yet but looks like I should!

17. Charles Hawtrey - The Man Who Was Private Widdle - Roger Lewis

A counterpoint to Lewis' tremendous (and huge) biography of Peter Sellers which I read and loved (last year I think?), on a great comic actor who was ruined by success, this much smaller but no less compelling biog deals with one who was ruined by failure, unable to escape the Carry On typecasting and squandering his talent, ending up an alcoholic recluse on the Kent Coast. As with the Sellers book Lewis makes no attempt to be objective, but tells the dismal tale with compassion as well as black humour.

I loved Slade House and immediately started Bone Clocks but then my health fell by the wayside for a while and it was abandoned & I'd have to start again to have a clue what was happening

@YounghillKang

Thanks!

Gordon Burns as in Krypton Factor?

This one Eine

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Burn

Here's some info on him that might give you a sense of his work

granta.com/interview-gordon-burn/

www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jul/20/gordon-burn-obituary

His book on the West murders is very impressive, he uses repetition and devices drawn from oral story-telling - like Homer and aspects of fairy tales - to give a sense of the ways in which murders of this kind take on mythic qualities because of the difficulty of processing this magnitude of evil without translating it into some other form of narrative. As well as highlighting how we often understand murderers of this nature as somehow a form of evil beyond the human - like the idea of the bogy man. He writes beautifully and, probably not clear from what I've said, very accessibly. He also wrote an excellent account of the Yorkshire Ripper murders 'Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son' but although he doesn't dwell on violence, he doesn't shy away from the facts. So the nature of the material does mean they're quite sombre, slightly disturbing books.

The only other literary true crime books I can think of are Maggie Nelson's The Red Parts which I thought was really good, Richard Lloyd Parry The People who Eat Darkness also pretty good and vintage ones like Emlyn Williams's book on the Moors murderers, which was fascinating despite the old-school style.

meg I think you’d gobble up Slade House - I had a real return to childhood, got to keep reading experience with it - and Bone Clocks although longer and loses its way in parts is equally good fun.

Fun to read, not necessarily in subject matter

I had actually heard of Happy Like Murderers but don't know if I have the stomach for it

Thanks, Younghill

Cloud Atlas was breathtakingly clever, and a book to admire, whereas Bone Clocks was a book you could get emotionally involved with (I remember actually sobbing pretty much throughout the last section). Loved Slade House too. I'm also still to read Thousand Autumns.

42. Handstands in the Dark by Janey Godley As per discussions above, this has a cover and marketing that indicate a genre I would totally normally actively avoid - the misery memoir. However, I like Janey Godley and, knowing snippets about her impoverished and abusive past, was intrigued to read her own story. She endures circumstances and life events that would have finished most people off, but in her hands it is more a resilience memoir than a misery memoir. This was published quite some time ago, and leaves several key issues hanging without closure (although the 'what happened next' is freely available to read on the internet, and she alludes to it often herself). If she brings out another volume I would read it.

So many great reviews here - need to drop off the thread for a bit as my TBR list is exploding ;)

I too am convinced that I ought to read Bone Clocks & I also like the sound of Annabel Scheme as a light read. Currently reading Slow Horses which started slow (as advertised, I guess) but is beginning to pick up the pace, but diverted by a re-read of Henchmen of Zenda after discussing it with a friend.

I've also just finished The Unthinkable on audio which I'll review later (thanks Stitches ), & planning to see if Kick is available for my next credit (thanks Eine for the suggestion).

It's there @Sadik ! Read by Antonia Beamish

Gave up on both Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas. Quite liked Black Swan wotsit.

Eine, one of the classics of the genre is The Best We Can Do by Sybille Bedford - you might have read it, though? She anatomises the trial of Dr John Bodkin Adams, who was accused of murdering several of his elderly (rich) female patients. Brilliantly done.

I'm a big admirer of Bedford's writing, fiction and non-fiction - her memoirs are great. Definitely recommend her to anyone who hasn't discovered it yet.