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?

93. Another Day In The Death Of America by Gary Younge

I think it was Remus among others recommended this, and I have to say what a recommendation. A heartbreaking, depressing, but utterly compulsory book.

I felt that it really complimented Reni Eddo Lodge's Why I Am No Longer Talking To White People About Race because of the way it debunks racist beliefs about gun violence and shows the issues are more systemic and institutional.

It also really reminded me of The Five in the way it took nameless faceless statistics and painted a portrait of the real young man behind the latest gun death.

5/5 Vital

Wait? There’s a new Alan Bennett?

at Ross on Wye. Hay is my favourite place.
.

I have so been desperate to go to Hay On Wye for years but I am not a car owner and from where I live the public transport route would be massively convoluted.

And for anyone noticing that there is six hours between my late night post and my morning post, welcome to my insomniac hell - sleep pattern improvement book recs welcome and positively begged for.

Yes, it’s not easy without a car.

I’m finding 1927 good for my 3am insomnia. Half a page about baseball stats and I’m nodding off again.

eine sympathy here from a fellow-sufferer. There’s a free podcast on audible by David Baddiel where he investigates different theories about insomnia and I found some of it useful.

Recently the only way I can get to sleep is listening to an audiobook, it is infuriating though because I’m missing loads of it - in patches because I wake up a lot - and having to rewind in the morning.

Also I have longed to go to Hay too.

Recently the only way I can get to sleep is listening to an audiobook, it is infuriating though because I’m missing loads of it - in patches because I wake up a lot - and having to rewind in the morning

Same. Solidarity.

I abandoned audiobooks in the middle of the night for that reason. Podcasts are better. I like In Our Time to drift off to. I know a little about a lot of things as a result.

I like The Lost Words as a night time audiobook. Quiet, calming and no need to rewind to the right spot to figure out what I missed when I fell asleep.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit

I have so been desperate to go to Hay On Wye for years but I am not a car owner and from where I live the public transport route would be massively convoluted.

And for anyone noticing that there is six hours between my late night post and my morning post, welcome to my insomniac hell - sleep pattern improvement book recs welcome and positively begged for.

I'd welcome those recommendations too - I went to bed at 10pm and woke up at midnight thinking it was morning and didn't get back to sleep until gone 4am.

You just start to be permanently frazzled betty don't you?

Has anyone ever read Master And The Margarita ?

Is it as I suspect, whispers, ?

It's on my TBR but I don't have the energy for dense but it keeps looking at me from the shelf.

Just finished my second Arudhana Roy which was An Atlas of Impossible Longing. This is a really delicate and lovely book , told in three parts (the second and third of which are stronger) : essentially a love story, but also a story of part of modern India. Not as sweeping as A Suitable Boy or Midnight's Children and not as tragic as The God of Small Things but really lovely nonetheless and she captures voices exceptionally well : you feel like you can hear them. Like a lot of Indian literature, it is very lyrical, involves a house and a river, secrets, and a couple of mad old ladies!

Arudhana Roy seems to be better known in the US which is a shame (for us) as she is excellent.

The font is nice but it's very small!

It's Anuradha. Oops.

We have two nights booked in a hotel in Hay on Wye in late August just hope all the bookshops are definitely open by then...

Inadvertently read two books by the same author back to back....
book 28 was Maybe In Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid which was very formulaic Sliding Doors style chic lit, nothing special at all.
But book 29 Daisy Jones and The Six was fabulous, hedonistic seventies rock. a story of love, loss, hope and redemption. loved it

Chessie

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit

You just start to be permanently frazzled betty don't you?

Has anyone ever read Master And The Margarita ?

Is it as I suspect, whispers, ?

It's on my TBR but I don't have the energy for dense but it keeps looking at me from the shelf.

Yes, I wouldn't mind if it was the occasional night but it's just about every night.

On the plus side, I started and finished Guilty not guilty by Felix Francis and very good it was too. The twist in the tale was good.

Piggy the Roy sounds excellent have added it to my list.

Eine I remember racing through The Master and Margarita when I read it, but whether you like it partly depends on whether you can cope with the whole magic realist/fairy tale aspect. I keep meaning to reread it.

I've read The Master and Margarita, don't remember it being hard work, and those were the days when I mostly used to read on the bus/tube. It's one of those books that I remember really enjoying, but can't actually recall many specifics. The best joke was about Pontius Pilate and trousers, but beats me what it actually was...

I bought it recently on a 99p daily deal and mean to revisit it soon.

I listen to the New Yorker fiction podcasts when I can't sleep; there is one I must have heard 30 times but still don't know what happens in the middle, so it definitely works as a sleep aid!
39) Full Dark House by Christopher Fowler. The first Bryant and May story, I thought this would be right up my street- 1940s theatre murder, v Ngaio Marsh; 2 elderly detectives looking back from modern times, v New Tricks - but it didn't ever quite hit the spot. Maybe me, maybe Covid- but annoying!
40) Blue Moon by Lee Child. This was much better! Reacher doing his usual thing. I did feel he was a bit too trusting a bit too quick of his band of helpers; and what happened to the second of the two computer nerds at the end is a mystery to me, but I picked it up and couldn't put it down which is exactly what I wanted. Curious to see how the series goes when his brother takes over.

Not me, Eine - I haven't read Another Day.

I DNF The Master and Margarita - just found it silly and irritating, but admit that I didn't give it much of a chance.

@BestIsWest I'm also listening to 1927 on Audible. Not Bryson's best - have not laughed out loud yet at nearly 40% in, and yes to the endless baseball zzzz

Hmmm🤔 who was it?

It's a really good book though highly recommend.

Yes somebody else definitely did a good review of Another Day... as I remember buying it on the strength of that, plus coincidentally seeing Gary Younge coming across really well on some TV programme about some other subject, and rather insightfully for me, putting two and two together and thinking, that's that bloke that wrote that American shootings book.

I'm a big fan of Gary Younge and have recommended the book but I heard of it from someone on here so I'm not the original.