50 Book Challenge 2020 Part Six

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the sixth 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, the fourth one here and the fifth one here.

So, we're now almost half way through the year - how's the first half of the year gone for you, reading-wise?

I read W&P the other year and I also liked the Pevear translation though I’ve seen some be sniffy about them for other texts I found it very readable after comparing a few. It is well worth tackling, and you soon discover when you don’t have to pay quite so much attention.

I read it in around 2 weeks or a bit over, chugging through solidly 100 or so pages a day and didn’t find it too bad at all. I thought I’d lose heart if I stretched it out.

I'd be up for a W&P readathon too.

I tried Tristram Shandy about a decade ago but really couldn't make head nor tail of it. I've read it only in the sense that my eyes have perused every page. I can generally manage late 18th century novels, but it felt like I might as well have been reading Dutch. I think I would need some sort of personal tuition (and possibly therapy) lined up to even consider approaching it again.

I haven't read TTOD as I don't generally get on with lengthy spells at sea and can't face the ignominy if I were to have a negative opinion of it...

Thank you @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

I feel as if I've re-ignited something with TTOD

I'll report back once I've read it.

Thanks for the Tristan Shandy feedback, Inmyown.. I watched A Cock and Bull Story and felt maybe I could tackle it.

Yes that's why I tried it, because I enjoyed Cock and Bull Story too. Hope I haven't put you off too much - it could just have been me...

I suspect not....

148. Red Dress in Black & White - Elliot Ackerman Set in Istanbul, an American woman seeks to leave her Turkish husband and take their son back the the States with her lover. The husband is an influential man and enlists his diplomat friend to block their departure. Takes place against the backdrop of a period of civil unrest in Turkey.

I quite liked this, decent prose, well woven plot, a few issues with pace but compelling enough to keep my interest.

149. All My Mother's Lovers - Ilana Masad When Maggie's mother dies unexpectedly she returns home for the funeral. Amongst her mother's things are 5 letters addressed to men who Maggie does not know. She decides to hand deliver them and find out who these men were to her mother.

This is a book that Sally Rooney's characters would enjoy. Good idea for a plot, reasonable enough writing, but so determined to be super inclusive and shoehorn in every LGBTQI++ identity that it started to read like a guest list for a pride event. Sadly this agenda overrode any attempt at character development as each was a sum total of their identity. If an author uses a novel as a vehicle for their own agenda then this one has a rainbow paint job and blows glitter out the exhaust. No subtlety, no subtext, no sophistication. I am too old for this and now debating about ignoring authors more than 5 years my junior.

I've never read War and Peace would join in a thread though!

85. Agatha Christie - Poirot Investigates

Short story collection. I wish there were more Christies that I haven't read but will have to settle for re-reading some of the best ones!

86. Anthony Horowitz - Alex Rider: Skeleton Key
87. Anthony Horowitz - Alex Rider: Eagle Strike

I've read the first couple of books in this series but thought I'd keep going after watching Alex Rider on Amazon Prime (which I really enjoyed, by the way). Good fun.

88. Olivia Harvard - Confessions about Colton

YA fiction; a teenage boy finds his best friend dead and is given a series of clues by the murderer whilst he tries to work out whodunnit. Sounds like a really interesting premise, however, the conclusion seemed massively unrealistic and pointless. And all the characters have lifestyles way beyond what I'd imagine Australian teenagers with no jobs can afford. Disappointing!

@RubySlippers77

Also enjoying Alex Rider but what the hell have hair, makeup and wardrobe done to poor Vicky McClure

Many thanks EliotBliss, that sounds great; I'll give it a go. I also love Anne Bancroft.

I always think Tristram Shandy sounds like it should be Cockney rhyming slang for something rude, but I don't know what. Never read it, and probably never will.

45. Black Water Rising by Attica Locke Set in Houston in 1981, Jay is a struggling black lawyer with previous involvement in the civil rights movement. This opens with a great and memorable scene, where Jay takes his pregnant wife for a birthday trip on a shabby pleasure boat on the bayou, when they hear a woman screaming for help followed by gunshots. The plot quickly becomes embroiled with possibly too many issues, including Houston's oil industry and its shady financing, impending labour strikes which reveal workforce tensions along racial lines, local politics, real estate and Jay's personal and family life. As a result the book becomes a bit overlong, but is otherwise enjoyable and well written. There is a follow up which picks up with Jay's life 15 years later in the mid 1990s, and though I wouldn't rush to read it, I'd definitely pick it up sometime.

I can’t think of Tristram Shandy without hearing the phrase “She writes well, this Bodley Head”

What's that from, Best?

Jilly Cooper’s Imogen Biblio. I have a very soft spot for it. I might have to dig it out and read it again.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I know!! I had to look twice! Why the oversized glasses too?!

86. The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things by JT LeRoy

So, after my saying I needed a break from brutal books, I started on this as a short story collection, though it is more of a novella, to find one of the most brutal books I have read in years.

It is so troubling and dark that I don't know if I have the right words

The first story recounts a very small child becoming increasingly distressed after he is removed from a loving foster family and given back to his extremely abusive mother. It is a very well written story but if it doesn't give you severe anxiety reading it....

The stories go forward, and contain ever increasing horrifying tales of abuse, sometimes at the hands of his mother Sarah, sometimes her boyfriends, and sometimes his ultra religious grandparents who he lives with from time.

Had it not been only 280 pages, I don't think I could have completed it.

This is the trouble

Did I think it was well written?

Yes

Did I finish it?

Yes

Would I ever read it again?

Not a chance

Would I recommend it to a friend?

Due to graphic abuse content, not a chance

And then there is the troubling story of JT LeRoy itself. JT LeRoy is a big literary fraud story in America. JT LeRoy does not exist and was an "avatar" aka a pseudonym used by the actual writer Laura Albert. Whilst pseudonyms and such are not uncommon in the literary world, what is uncommon here is the sheer lengths Laura Albert went to to perpetuate the myth that these stories were authored by a young gay male with significant experience of the events depicted, and use this idea to generate hype, buzz and celebrity attention for the book. Though I was aware of this backstory having read the work, and the seriousness of the content I find the way she went about attracting attention for the piece quite amoral and exploitative and as it goes she was eventually successfully sued for fraud.

I mean, she and her sister in law went about for quite some time under false names claiming JT LeRoy was a real person deliberately lying to everyone who took an interest in "his" work

Disturbing and weird on every level.

@RubySlippers77

Horrendous glasses and hair which make the show look like they had no wardrobe budget.

Can I join in? Do I have to review my books or just list and highlight the ones I've enjoyed the most? I'll do the list first - sorry if this is wrong. I'm glad to have found this thread, I love book recommendations.

My list to date for this year.

1. Year of Wonder – Geraldine Brookes
2. 1984 - George Orwell
3. Into the Water – Paula Hawkins
4. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold – Jon le Carre
5. Nutshell – Ian McKewan
6. The Secret Life of Bees – Sue Monk Kidd
7. The Girls – Emma Cline
8. A Little Life – Hanya Yanagihara
9. Love’s Executioner – Irvni D Yalom
10. Beside Myself – Ann Morgan
11. Too Close – Natalie Daniels
12. The Silent Patient – Alex Michaelides
13. Little Fires Everywhere – Celeste Ng
14. Educated – Tara Westover
15. Lowborn – Kerry Hudson
16. The Woman in the Window – AJ Finn
17. The Hearts Invisible Furies – John Boyne
18. Different Class – Joanne Harries
19. The Family Upstairs – Lisa Jewell
20. The House we Grew Up In – Lisa Jewell
21. A Town Like Alice – Neville Shute
22. The Institute – Stephen King
23. A Nearly Normal Family – M.T Edwardsson
24. A God in Ruins – Kate Atkinson
25. The Binding – Bridget Collins
26. Something in the Water – Catherine Steadman
27. Mr Mercedes – Stephen King
28. My Lovely Wife – Samantha Downing
29. The Familiars – Stacey Halls
30. Transcription – Kate Atkinson
31. The Tattooist of Auschwitz – Heather Morris
32. Big Little Lies – Lianne Miriarty
33. The Beekeeper of Aleppo – Christy Lefteri
34. Blood Orange – Harriet Tyce
35. The Narrow Bed – Sophie Hannah
36. Cilka’s Journey – Heather Morris
37. Just My Luck – Adele Parks
38. The Thirteenth Tale – Diane Setterfield
39. Where The Crawdads Sing – Delia Owen
40. My Brilliant Friend – Elena Ferrente
41. Brooklyn – Colm Toibin
42. Love is Blind – William Boyd
43. The House of Spirits - Isabelle Alende (re-read)

Great stuff Spirit

Of course you join in, welcome, I'm the resident Night Owl, and we seem to have similar taste!

I mean Slightly

Yay. I'm going to do a 'back-trawl' now through previous threads and add to my already ridiculously long books to read list.

Maybe this thread will persuade me to give Wolf Hall and Captain Corelli another go. The only two books I have ever abandoned because I just couldn't get into them even thought I KNOW I would enjoy them if I persevere....

The problem with Corelli IMHO is that the first 3 chapters are disjointed confusing and ultimately irrelevant so I think it has a built in "false start"

A 'false start' is exactly what the beginning feels like. I was waiting to be drawn in but wasn't. So even though I knew that if I persevered, it would happen, I was irritated that I had to 'plough' first.

I'm now wondering if I should scrap my current reading list and just get on with 'This Thing of Darkness' which I downloaded ages ago.....

I am not ready to make a commitment to a 700 page historical at present

I'll get the taste for one soon though