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’m due an update

137. One, Two, Buckle my Shoe – Agatha Christie
     Cheeky bit of Poirot for an easy read as I couldn’t really concentrate on anything else at the time.

138. Invitation to Die – Lyndsey Davis
     Novella that slots into the timeline of the Flavia Albia books. Albia’s two senator uncles are invited to a banquet held by new and unstable Emperor Domitian where none of those attending think they will come out alive.

139. Mouthful of Birds - Samata Schweblin
     Short stories by an Argentinian writer. These are very dark and unsettling, but incredibly skilfully written. She conveys a lot with very few words and leaves you to put things together. The imagery is outstanding and I will not get the title story out of my head for a long time. I’ve been waiting for her latest novel in the library queue for ages and now I’m really looking forward to it.

140. McGlue – Ottessa Moshfegh
     What shall we do with the drunken sailor? Lock him up and transport him for trial. Late 1800s McGlue wakes imprisoned in the hold of the ship with one hell of a hangover and a head injury. He can’t remember what happened to him and doesn’t understand why he is held prisoner. During his journey he starts to hallucinate and doesn’t know what is real. One to be admired rather than enjoyed. I like her writing but this was quite dark and confusing. I have her newest novel ready to go, but need a day when my head is ready for it.

141. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
     I was naughty and finished this ahead of the last month of the readalong. I won’t say anything as others will no doubt review it much more skilfully than I next month. As a lifelong Dickens hater, I am now converted, or at least willing to try another of his.

142. Disgrace - JM Coetzee
     A university lecturer has an affair with a student and when found out is quietly let go from his job. He doesn’t see the problem in what he did. He goes to stay with his daughter in a rural area in post-apartheid South Africa where his opinions are moulded by events affecting his daughter. I picked this up as something recommended for book clubs and worthy of discussion, but I found it a bit flat and dull. There is a lot to talk about if you could get a whole group to stick with it to the end.

143. Room Full of Bones (Ruth Galloway #4) – Elly Griffiths
     Fourth in the series of a Norfolk archaeologist who finds herself embroiled in police investigations as part of her work.
     I like these as a bit of mindless entertainment.

144. Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain
     Memoir of an Oxford student who enlists as a nurse during WW1. Relates to her time in Malta and on the Front and recounts her loves and losses along the way. Bold this, then go back over the bolding with a permanent marker, underline it a few times and shower it with stars. Beautiful, brutal, devastating.

145. Crooked Heart – Lissa Evans
     An orphan is evacuated during the war after losing his elderly godmother. He ends up embroiled in crime with the family who take him in. A lighthearted and unusual take on the usual war tropes. Enjoyable read.

146. Ithaca – Patrick Dillon
     Retelling of the Odyssey from the viewpoint of Telemachus, son of Odysseus. Framed as a coming of age. It was a quick and enjoyable read, but deviates from the accepted ‘canon’ in a way that will probably enrage purists.

147. The Mothers – Brit Bennett
     Recently reviewed upthread by Satsuki. Readable, but nothing special. The writing reminds me of Jennifer Weiner. I’m now 13th in the queue for her new one, The Vanishing Half down from 29th, I reserved it off the back of the review on Splother’s blog and I am looking forward to this one as the plot sounds a lot more interesting.

I've been having a tidy up read of part finished books and it feels good to only have a few left that are 'lingering' for a reason. I've had a terrible habit of startitis recently as I have found it hard to find the right book for my current mood.

@FortunaMajor

The problem with Dickens I think is

Great Expecfuckingtations

It's shite and I hated it. But it has become the "default Dickens"

Read Copperfield, LOVED IT.

Bleak House is wonderful
So is Hard Times

Less keen on Tale Of Two Cities, found it hard to concentrate on and not well plotted, but there is an extremely funny chapter early on.

I agree and yet *Christmas Carol aside) Great Fuckingtations is the one that lurks on GCSE specs.

My DS did it for GCSE and hated it.

I love Miss Havisham but her portrayal does not make up for the rest of the turgidity (is that a word??)

Ding ding ding, we have a winner!!!

I was Great Expectations that put me off. Did Twist in the first year and there was a Dickens piece in the GCSE anthology about some bloke with a moat and a cannon, but GE was the one I read as a pretentious 6th former as a 'tick off the list book' to look intelligent. I'd seen the black and white film at some point so it seemed like a good place to start.

A couple of things I like about Great Expectations - the social mobility storyline/mysterious benefactor. It was truly wonderful the first time I realised who had sponsored Pip’s rise, and I do think Dickens captured very well that feeling of being forever stranded between your old life and new.

I prefer Copperfield though, it really opened up Dickens for me. I cried like a baby at the end of Two Cities.

Would anyone be interested in doing an Our Mutual Friend thread after you’re all finished with Copperfield?

I haven’t been on this thread for a while so it’s been lovely to sink into it and have a long read

1. Native Tongue - Suzette Haden Elgin

1. If Cats Disappeared from the World - Genki Kawamura
2. Frankenstein in Baghdad - Ahmed Saadawi
3. Lies Sleeping -Ben Aaranovitch
4. The History of Bees - Maja Lunde

6. Severance - Ling Ma

1. NOS4A2 - Joe Hill
2. Choose Your Own Apocalypse - Rob Sears
3. Before you Sleep - Adam Nevill

10. Recursion - Blake Crouch 11. The Hot Zone - Richard Preston 12. Hotel Iris - Yoko Ogawa 13. Bazaar of Bad Dreams - Stephen King 14. Friday Black - Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah 15. Pastoralia - George Saunders 16. The Diving Pool - Yoko Ogawa 17. Pachinko - Min Jin Lee 18. Children of Time - Adrian Tchaikovsky

I think most people know of George Saunders for Lincoln in the Bardo (which I loved). Pastoralia is one of his short story collections, which are always weird, wonderful and weird again. Saunders takes everyday American life and turns it sideways into something bizarre, skewed but very human. If you liked the weirder bits of Lincoln in the Bardo, you’ll like this.

The Diving Pool by Yoko Ogawa - 3 short stories, all quite surreal and detached. In one story, a lonely teenage girl is obsessed with her foster brother and seeks an outlet for her frustration. In another, a woman revisits an old dormitory and it’s disabled caretaker and stumbles across a mystery. Beautifully written, in a detached, often creepy way.

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee - if you like epic family sagas spanning generations, there’s a lot to love here. It covers the life of a Korean immigrant to Japan in the early 19th century. However, I found that there were often more events than emotions, and some parts that should have had more emotional punch fell a bit flat. It was a fantastic insight into life for Korean immigrants in Japan though, and the hardships not just for the parents but for the children with their mixed identity and struggles fitting in.

And my absolute favourite for a while, Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Space! Spiders! 2 legs bad, 8 legs good.

Earth has undergone a catastrophic ending, and the last of humanity, on an increasingly battered ark ship, is on a mission to find a livable planet for humankind to start again.

And find a planet they do, but unfortunately for them it’s watched over by a strict human-satellite hybrid that is determined to protect her planet from humans at all costs.

Meanwhile, the 8-legged residents of said planet are undergoing a rapid evolution of their own...

Fabulous stuff. #TeamSpider

@SatsukiKusakabe

Definitely me. It's one I have not done.

30. Machines like Me by Ian McEwan Set in an alternative 1980s Britain where Alan Turing survives and technology is much more advanced. The protagonist takes delivery of one of the first human robots commercially available. 'Adam' needs to be charged, programmed and then lived with - if there's time while the protagonist seduces his neighbour Miranda. Adam will both trigger and change relationships and lives around him.

I have history with McEwan. The last novel of his I read all of was Saturday which I thought was meretricious, then gave up on Solar. I feel that he really wants to write nonfiction but for some reason keeps on with novels. Having said that, I liked the sound of the alternative history timeline. In the end i really enjoyed reading this, it was gripping and full of ideas but it's got a lot in it that doesn't always hang together in retrospect. I'd still recommend it.

Great eine - I keep meaning to get to it and could probably do with some discipline and company. I’ve got out of the habit of reading classics this last year or so.

taxtheratfarms I liked a lot about Pachinko but felt it got weaker as it came to the present day, and agree about the lack of emotional punch.

permanenttemporary good review - McEwan got quite a hard time for Machines when it came out but haven’t actually seen many review it. I stopped reading him a while ago and can never quite start again.

I'd be up for a joint reading of Our Mutual Friend too.

I didn't take part in the DC thread as I've read it several times, and fairly recently, however OMF is my favourite Dickens novel and it's ages since I read it. Good choice!

Fortuna agree with you about Schweblin’s style though not sure about the substance, but will be interested to read her next book too. I found Disgrace very powerful when I read it but it came up in relation to being a key text in an area of animal studies I’m interested in, so came at it from a different angle straight after reading his The Lives of Others. And yes Testament of Youth is totally wonderful, reread it recently and very little that covers the period comes close imo.

Great Expectations my least favourite Dickens too, and the BBC adaptation left me totally cold, but love the David Lean version.

26. Swallowing Mercury, Wioletta Greg, trans. by Eliza Marciniak – Set in rural Poland during the turbulent last decade of Communist rule, this consists of episodes in the childhood/early adolescence of Wioletta. It’s very compressed more novella than novel, but it’s also incredibly evocative. I found Greg’s style very seductive – reminded me a little of The Street of Crocodiles - she has a poet’s ability to construct vivid scenes with a few words or lines. The writing is lyrical but visceral, smells, sounds, sights surrounding Wioletta on her family’s farm all beautifully conveyed but with a realism that stops her narrative from sliding into sentimentality. Wish I’d read this one sooner and that the sequel was in already out in paperback!

Fortune the extract from Dickens re old bloke with cannon and moat is from Great Expectstions, it's the lawyers apprentice and his elderly dad. Who nods a lot. Its peak caricature and humour inserted for laughs rather than narrative drive.

I like the readalongs do I'd be up for it .

EliotBliss Thanks for the review of the Penelope Mortimer.I read The Pumpkin Eater years ago, but saw the film recently on television. Going off at a slight tangent, are you a regular reader of The Paris Review and would you recommend it? I've not come across it before (and I loved the pictures under their "History" heading).

Satsuki I'd also love to do Our Mutual Friend. I think it's his masterpiece (just my own view obvs).

Nelly thank you! It has been some time.

I would be interested in the read along too. I probably won't have much of value to say but I enjoy the joint journey.

I'm willing to give another Dickens a go. I've really enjoyed DC, admittedly enhanced by watching the film at the start of the year.

We did Hard Times at school, which isn't exactly the best introduction for 15-year olds.

In my day, during the war etc. The absolute bog standard set texts were Of Mice And Men and Animal Farm. Didn't touch Dickens til uni.

At least you didn't do Peig Sayers in Irish. It starts off as promisingly as it goes on: "I'm an old woman now, with one foot in the grave and the other on its brink, and if I'd known all the misery ahead of me, I wouldn't have been half as cheerful starting out".

I did Bleak House for A level (no Dickens for O level) and haven’t read it since. Ashamed to say the only Dickens I have read since then is A Tale if Two Cities which I did enjoy. Perhaps I should try again....

40. April Lady - Georgette Heyer

Nell is young and has recently married the older Earl of Cardross - he fell in love with her but thinks she married him for his money. Nell has also taken on the unenviable task of chaperoning the Earl’s seventeen year old half-sister who has fallen in love with an unsuitable man (respectable but middle-class and poor). As if this wasn’t enough, Nell also has a disreputable brother with a gambling habit who borrows money off her meaning she can not afford to pay her dressmaker. All sorts of confusion and deception follows with a happy ending. I am a big fan of Georgette Heyer as her books are full of humour, her women aren’t simpering misses and I love the period detail and whilst there was nothing wrong with this one it’s not as good as some of her others (in my opinion).

Hello, sorry to barge in, but I've just been reading this thread for inspiration, and am intrigued what book TTOD is, as mentioned by

@Terpsichore and @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I've had a quick look through people's reading lists to try to work it out but haven't been able to.

Boiledeggandtoast I’d recommend subscribing to Paris Review newsletter - links are on the site - and then dip in and out of issues to see what you think. I also listen to their podcast, sometimes buy an issue or back issues…(you can buy an issue digitally or a printed version); they have an amazing archive of really in-depth author interviews going back to the fifties – they’ve interviewed so many of my favourite writers from Dorothy Parker, James Baldwin (his interview’s open to read on the site at the moment), Joan Didion, Alice Munro and so on…Also they’ve published collections of some of The Paris Review interviews in book form. I follow the book reviews and the staff picks too.

Think the film of The Pumpkin Eater is wonderful, but also a big fan of Anne Bancroft.

SkepticalCat TTOD = This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson

If you read it and don't like, nobody will be cross, just very disappointed.

There are also some very underrated Dickens's novels, imo, Barnaby Rudge very enjoyable, and really like Dombey and Son which I'm planning to re-read soon. But Our Mutual Friend is brilliant...

fortuna

skepticalcat remus picked it up years ago and we all obediently read it and (mostly) liked it, and await her bestowing another. It’s one of a few books that there’s been a consensus of (mostly) approval and I’ve found the same when I’ve recommended it outside the thread too.