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?

That’s wonderful keith I haven’t read any Iris Murdoch, I picked up a copy of The Sea The Sea once from the library and didn’t get far and never tried again. I heard someone say she was unlocked for him when he realised she was a funny writer. She apparently used to serve awful food up for guests on purpose as a joke and put the same food in her books.

Keith, you have reminded me that I had a phase of really liking Iris Murdoch (some of it, anyway) many years ago and that The Bell was one of the best. I should re-read as I suspect I’d get a lot more from it now than when I was younger

I wandered off for a few pages, so just had a massive catch up. Thanks for the Furrowed Middlebrow link, I can see myself getting lost there for a while.

155. The Vanishing Half - Brit Bennett Twin girls grow up in a black rural community, both run away to escape aged 16, but with very different outcomes. One realises she can pass as white and goes on to live a life fearful of discovery of her deception and the other after failed opportunities, returns home. Their lives continue to intersect as their daughters lives begin to cross paths even thought they are from very different worlds.

Explores issues of race and family. I liked this a lot and much preferred it her first novel The Mothers.

156. Caveat Emptor (Gaius Ruso #4) - Ruth Downie
     Roman army doctor turned investigator wanders into another case.
     These are pure shite but good for a bit of mindless entertainment.

157. The Gathering - Anne Enright
     Nine siblings gather at the wake of their brother who had gone off the rails. One sister in particular bears the weight of what happened to him as she kept the secret of what happened in their grandmother's house decades before. Now returned to the family home she meditates on what it is to be family and what keeps them together and tears them apart. Meandering family portrait.

Anne Enright is now one of my favourite writers. Her books are very slow moving but very deep. She captures the essence of being Irish and all that comes with it. She writes with a beauty and lyricism that steals you away. Absolutely stunning.

158. The Truants - Kate Weinberg A student downgrades to an East Anglian university to follow a lecturer and falls in with a tight knit group of mis-fits. After tragedy strikes she turns to the lecturer for help.

Poor The Secret History rip off. Readable, but nothing special.

159. Watching You - Lisa Jewell
     I don't have it in me to review this. A v-e-r-y slow moving thriller largely about boring people's lives. A book club choice. This week was the return of Book Club in the Pub, actually taking place in the pub. Only the hardcore band of lockdown video chatters attended and we have a pact to manipulate better choices, we've had three dire "thrillers" in a row. Enough! A rebellion is afoot.

160. What's Left of Me Is Yours - Stephanie Scott
     Set in modern day Tokyo, a young woman takes a phone call meant for her grandfather that reveals her mother's murderer is due to be released from prison. She was a small child when the murder took place so she sets out to discover what really happened. The murderer was a professional adulterer hired by her father to seduce her mother to gather evidence to give grounds for divorce.

A fascinating look at Japanese culture, which I know next to nothing about. This is based on a true case. Follows two timelines of the daughter and the mother. Slow paced, but not in a bad way. I really liked this.

161. Little Eyes - Samanta Schweblin Kentukis are the latest tech craze, small remote control 'pets' that you can buy to live in your home. With cameras for eyes they are remote controlled by an anonymous person and you can't turn them off. Will you become a watcher or consent to be watched.

Explores the dangers of the internet and human nature.
This was a really interesting concept and follows several watchers and owners with differing situations and motives. Heart warming in places and horrifying in others. I enjoyed this a lot, but did feel it could have done more with the idea. Towards the end it jumps forward so much with a few of the storylines, that I thought I must have fallen asleep and missed a big chunk of it. I hadn't. Good but could have been a lot better in different hands.

I read The Bell when I was about 16 (some 45+ years ago) & was entranced by it. Not so sure how it would resonate with me now.
And I have just turned to my shelves & found the copy - tiny print, but am going to have a go at it again.

The 'blurb' on the back (Penguin 1974) is:

When a group of well-meaning neurotics and perverts come together in a lay religious community to try to forge a new and better life, the situation calls out all the humor for which Iris Murdoch is famous.
The theme of her novel is the dark conflict between sex and religion, symbolized by the new and the old bells of the abbey convent across the lake.
Here is a story which again demonstrates this writer's unusual sensitivity and her talent for creating character.

From what I remember that is somewhat of a toned down description of the book.

magimedi

Goodreads underplays it even more as
A lay community of thoroughly mixed up people.

at well-meaning neurotics and perverts

I really want to read it now.

Is it wrong to want to make "well-meaning neurotics and perverts" the title of our next thread?

biblio

Well there was that obsession with the wanking vicar a few years ago...

It's slightly ambiguous whether the perverts are well-meaning too, or just the neurotics...

51. An Orc on the Wild Side - Tom Holt

Parody of Lord of the Rings by the prolific comic fantasy writer. Enticed by the low property prices, humans from our world are moving into the Hidden Realms, where King Mordak, Dark Lord of the Goblins, is trying to introduce a series of reforms under the banner of 'New Evil', and a nameless force keeps popping up in people's mirrors in the guise of a malevolent red eye...

I used to lap these up when I was a student, but this was more complex and had fewer gags than I was expecting, and started very slowly. There were far too many characters, and the ending, while not exactly deus ex machina, had the unsatisfying feel of being resolved without the main protagonists' agency. That said, I still enjoyed reading it as the affectionate take-off of Middle Earth was often very funny, especially the set piece where an Aragorn-alike plumber turns up to deal with the rumblings coming from beneath the disused mine a human couple have purchased:

"There are worse things than air pockets in the dark places of the earth."

Oh, I like well-meaning perverts.

Not a sentence I planned to write today.

I would be interested in a book about "well-meaning neurotics and perverts" but I don't think I'll make it through a story with such procrastination as that part on whether she should give her seat to an old woman.

Oh sweet Jesus and all his little pixies - NOT the wanking vicar again!

20. This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

This was interesting! Two rival female agents of an epic war that rages in various times and places secretly correspond and slowly fall in love. Their letters are in a ripple in the sea, in a seed, in the sting of a bee. Two warring factions represent two vastly different versions of the far future: One a highly technological one led by Commandant where agents are "decanted", and the other led by Garden where everyone is part of a whole and grown from seeds to be weaved into time threads.

I enjoyed this book for its expressive prose as much as its unusual premise, although I would have preferred a bit less on the love letters and more on the time war.

The wanking vicar Wasn't that in a book by the author of Crimson Petal and the White?

Agree @CoteDAzur I reviewed it a couple of threads back not enough Time War, too much linguistic showing off. I would have liked much more world building.

My username is from the German TV series Dark. Honestly, it's pretty much the most perfect time travel story ever done in my eyes as there are in the end no plotholes (that I can think of)

It is on Netflix, do check it out if you haven't x

Fortuna If you enjoy books that capture Irish life, I can't recommend highly enough Foster by Claire Keegan. Don't be put off by the trashy cover. It is a truly beautiful and deceptively simple novella about a girl from a large family going to stay with her childless aunt and uncle while her mother has another baby. I have probably read it a dozen times, but have never met anyone else who has (apart from friends who I buy it for). I understand it is a faithful representation as my husband's family are from rural Ireland and he loves it too.

remus you can’t shake him off, so to speak.

Satsuki!!!

Cote - yep, that's the one.

I missed the wanking vicar but Taylor Swift will never be the same again - thanks Satsuki

Thank you for the Claire Keegan recommendation, Boiledegg, that looks really interesting. I don't know where you are, you might already be familiar with it, but The Irish Times website regularly publishes short stories by Irish writers and there's quite an archive on there.

52. Women of the Dunes by Sarah Maine Archaeologist Libby has reasons linked to her family history, which she initially keeps to herself, when she applies to lead a dig on an estate set on a remote headland on the west coast of Scotland. With the main strand of the story taking place in the modern day, and strands set in the Victorian era and in the 7th century AD woven through, this has elements of murder mystery and family drama, with themes of paternity, hereditary rights and good/bad male sibling pairings common to all of them. It took me about the first quarter to get into it, because I didn't really know what type of book it was trying to be, but then I decided to just go with it and suspend disbelief when it tended towards the melodramatic. This would probably be an enjoyable read for anyone who also likes the Elly Griffiths Dr Ruth Galloway series, which I'm a big fan of. This probably won't end up in bold at the end of the year, but for something I no doubt picked up on a chance when it was 99p, definitely exceeded expectations.

99. Milkman by Anna Burns

So, on the one hand I can see why this won the Booker Prize because of the innovative way it presents the Northern Irish Troubles as a nightmarish futuristic dystopia.

I also think that if I'd fully processed the idea that it was a monologue stream of consciousness type thing beforehand I would have done it as an Audible. I think this is the exact sort of thing Audible is perfect for. I still might listen to it.

Unfortunately I felt I endured this more than I enjoyed it. I understood the reasoning for depersonalisation but found the total lack of character names tedious and hard to follow.

Some of the very verbose vocabulary seems unsuited to the teenage protagonist. I also found much of her monologue waffling and pointless.

I do think that this is the kind of book students will be set to analyse as to how it works and what she did, and it is an achievement from that point of view.

I did think the overall theme of female agency and socially conditioned acquiescence to male authority was well done.
I just didn't sync with it in the sense that I felt removed from and never immersed in it.

Respected but not loved.

Eine it was wonderful as audio. It really worked.

BoiledEgg Thank you very much for the Claire Keegan recommendation. I will definitely look that up.

Oh then that IS a shame, but I don't want to use a credit when I have read it. So many books....

eine I didn’t listen to it but I found once I imagined the character talking it flowed really naturally for me. I found it really funny and was quite moved by it, loved the narrative voice. I’d hate to sit and analyse it though!