50 Book Challenge 2020 Part Seven

[southeastdweller]

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

What are you reading?

@bettsbattenburg

Certainly seems that way at times

Oprah has done two episodes of her Book Club about American Dirt and its controversy but I have yet to watch them.

Problems aside, it is extremely well written.

Piggy

Why has your DS chosen Turkish folk music, Best? Any connection with the country?

Talking of rackets, there is a (real) early woodwind instrument called a rackett - this one really is well named

Sully I also love the Pooh books, and I’ve read them over and over to my kids even when they weren’t little any more. Lovely witty, warm books.

Owl (WOL) is still one of my all time favorite literary characters.

Best - I feel for you! Zurna makes a high-pitched and frankly hideous sound even in trained hands. Why oh why did he get that instrument? As for saz - it doesn't look like a lute or a guitar. Do you mean ut (which does resemble the lute), like the instruments hanging on the wall in the background of your video?

It's a very niche interest. Why did your DS choose these instruments, our of curiosity?

Cote I may have the wrong name - yes, it does look like the instruments hanging in the background. It has 7 strings.

As to why, he’s always had an interest in unusual/folk instruments (hurdy gurdys, accordions, bagpipes) but anyway I asked him why Turkish folk music and he said it started with finding out more about microtonal music. I am not musical at all so this means little to me.

mackerella - The recorder is a great instrument. I love it in Baroque and even in Renaissance music.

That Lully video is brilliant! I love it when period instruments are used in performances. On the other hand, I couldn't figure out what that thumping sound was, until I saw that the conductor had a long conducting staff like Lully did (and with which he managed to kill himself! )

"I've got both Evening in the Palace of Reason and Music in the Castle of Heaven "

Of course, I have read both Here are my reviews of Music in the Castle of Heaven and here is Evening in the Palace of Reason. I absolutely love the Musical Offering.

Best - is saz and is ut (or ud). The latter sounds much better imho.

Finished Hamnet.
There were a couple of good paragraphs in this, but, overall, it's a no from me.

Overwritten, overblown, often boring.

The child who dies, and Shakespeare himself, are both bit parts - two dimensional and scarcely drawn. Shakespeare doesn't even get a name - he's just 'he' in an irritatingly Mantel-esque touch.

Various herbs and a few fleas take up just as much of the writing as the man and his son. The description is mostly just lists, which annoyed me from the start but grated on me more and more as it went on. I found it all a bit lazy and arrogant, as if she either couldn't be bothered to hone things, or as if she thought her every word smacked so of genius that she didn't need to tighten things up.

Not impressed, I'm afraid. With some really ruthless editing and in past tense, it could have been so much better.

Cote neither of them sound anything like those in DS’ hands at the moment

38. Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge.

Passionate arguments from this feminist, anti-racist campaigner and activist. The book covers race, gender and class issues, and their intersectionality, in short segments. I thought she offered paths for the future and suggestions of what I (white, middle-class, middle-aged) can do to be an anti-racist. I admired her hope and agitation for her ideals.

“We are all learning”

39. The Five by Hallie Rubenhold.

I listened to the audiobook on BorrowBox and thoroughly enjoyed it. The life of each of the women and Victorian London is described in such well-researched and evocative detail - what it was like to be a poor working-class woman, how slim your opportunities were of rising out of everyday drudgery. I respect her angle - championing these women dismissed as low-life prostitutes by a patriarchal society and the rabble-rousing media who continue to this day to set a certain limiting ideal on women.

40. The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton.

Given to me by a friend to read, as she wanted to talk about the ending, this historical novel set in Amsterdam seemed to be a tale of minority groups on one hand and a psychic/fantasy mystery on the other, the latter I felt was not satisfactorily concluded. I don’t want to give away any spoilers but I’m not sure a naive country girl of less than 20 years would have reacted to the plot lines as Petronella Brandt does. Looking forward to talking about it with my friend, though.

Thank you clueless mama - could not think at all what TTOD was and you saved me a lot of scrolling. Interesting to see not everyone is loving Hamnet - I started then abandoned, but thought it was just my mood at the time...will try it again but generally I think life's too short and there are too many books to plod on if you are not enjoying it.

53: Actress - Anne Enright

I'd been looking forward to this and was pleased when it showed up as a library ebook. The narrator is Norah Fitzmaurice, daughter of celebrated (and now long-dead) Irish actress Katherine O'Dell. As we discover, Norah's investigations into Katherine's life soon begin to lay bare the fictions she cloaked herself with - fictions about her origins, her name, and (most importantly) about the identity of Norah's mysteriously unknown father. The book expands into a retrospective exploration of the relationship between mother and daughter and, in parallel, the one between Norah and her unnamed husband, to whom the narrative voice is addressed.

I really enjoy Anne Enright's writing and I started this with great enjoyment, but somehow felt I lost my way - there's something unconvincing to me about the descriptions of Katherine's various acting roles and in particular the (totally invented) film that was her biggest hit, which is described in great detail as though it was a genuine film. It's probably just me but it simply doesn't ring quite true - though interestingly I felt the narrative mostly got back on track after that and overall the quality of the writing was superb. Ultimately I'm glad to have read it but for me, not her best novel.

This thread is so fast at the moment, it's like January! I am very unmusical- i am not sure my ears work properly as I only listen to music as background (I like a fast rhythm to work out to!), I can only listen to audiobooks or podcasts if walking so my eyes can't read anything (and even then I often drift off), I am rubbish at hearing accents and foreign languages, and if subtitles are on there is no chance I am listening to any dialogue! But I am not actually tone deaf, just very biased to text I guess!

50. (yay!) Meet Me in Malmö by Torquil McCleod. This is a fairly generic murder mystery (written with one eye on a TV series I reckon!), with a twist I didn't rate at the end, but, in a happy happenstance, I read it on a train while traveling through Malmö! So that was nicely synchronous.

43. Things Can Only Get Worse by John O'Farrell

A (what's the reverse of a romp? a) trudge? through 20 years of increasing disillusionment with the Labour party, ending on a misplaced note of hope following the 2017 election that has aged extremely badly.

This sounds like a bad review, but actually I really enjoyed this up to the final chapter. I liked O'Farrell's continuing journey towards compromise politics (or "middle age" as I now come to recognise it in myself!), picking up where Things Can Only Get Better left off. I particularly enjoyed the sections about Lambeth Academy, (O'Farrell was a co-founder and Chair of Governors), which is local to me. I also like his flippant style of writing, never letting the opportunity for an (often bad) joke slide. However, his complete mis-analysis of what the 2017 election result meant spoiled the book a bit for me. But I suppose that's the trouble with writing this kind of book - you have to end it somewhere and if you get your closing note wrong, it tends to make you look a bit silly.

PS to add to the musical discussion, I played the harp as a child/teenager and still regret giving it up. I also played the piano and we have a keyboard now that my eldest is learning. I have been messing about on it and trying to play a few things by ear during lockdown, as well as reassuring myself that I can sight read from eldest's grade 1 book (it's a start!)! I keep promising myself a full size piano (well, probably a clavinola type thing) and I will definitely get round to searching before long.

Any other string players for the virtual orchestra? I played the violin as a child then didn’t pick it up for about 20 years. I have now joined an amateur orchestra but am still very rubbish. I did also play the clarinet and still have that lying around somewhere.

Meant to add that obviously my orchestra hasn’t met since March, but there’s now talk that the strings might start meeting in September - too risky to have the woodwind or brass with all that spit flying around!

@Piggywaspushed

DS2 plays the euphonium which is Latin for pleasant sound. A very badly named instrument.

The mind boggles!

I have been learning the piano. My DS is very glad of his xbox headphones

Anyone who wasn't even trusted with a triangle is welcome to join me in the tone deaf corner.

164. A Burning - Megha Majumdar Told from 3 perspectives, a young woman from the slums in India is falsely accused of a terrorist attack after some unwise comments on social media. Two people could potentially save her from prison, but they have to balance what it in their own interests with what is right.

Shines a light on politics and social class, and the lives of young poor women in India. Debut novel with a lot of promise.

Thanks for the links to your reviews, Cote - I'm pleased to see that you rated both books very highly. (And I was amused to see the exchanges between you and Remus about fiction/non-fiction in 2014, which was long before my time on these threads. I love how long they've been going, and that people have got to know each other's tastes and personalities over that time .)

Hamnet is definitely on my TBR list this year, so I'm interested to see some less enthusiastic reviews to balance the more gushing ones I've already seen.

I've also added the John O'Farrell book to my TBR list, Welsh, as a middle-aged, "compromised" leftie. Not sure if I'll just find the last chapter dispiriting, though! I can't see how anyone could have predicted what a shitshow the Labour party would turn out to be (or how ineffective Corbyn would be), so I'm happy to give him a pass on that one.

@FortunaMajor

Anyone who wasn't even trusted with a triangle is welcome to join me in the tone deaf corner.

164. A Burning - Megha Majumdar Told from 3 perspectives, a young woman from the slums in India is falsely accused of a terrorist attack after some unwise comments on social media. Two people could potentially save her from prison, but they have to balance what it in their own interests with what is right.

Shines a light on politics and social class, and the lives of young poor women in India. Debut novel with a lot of promise.

I should be in the tone deaf corner, that's why DS is glad of the headphones. We've inherited a piano which I felt obliged to take in.

Definitely in the 'not to be trusted with a triangle' corner.

Love music though.

Can I just have a book related (kind of) moan. You know my father died earlier in the lockdown period. I choose a quote from a book which really summed him up well, I didn't take it from the book but found it online. It was from a book he loved reading to his grandchildren and I had it printed on the order of service and used it as the final sentence in the piece I wrote to be read out at his funeral in my absence.

I've just found out that it was a misquote which wasn't actually in the book at all and it's all awful. [cry]

I know you lovely book people will understand even if I am being silly.

Oh Betts that's really frustrating. It's not silly to be annoyed.

At least the words summed him up well, even if they weren't quite from the book.

I understand, but know this, your Dad doesn't mind at all