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?

That's sad Eine :(

Eine my was similar.
However, as well as jumble sale-ing loads, she did give my Narnia books, Ramona books and Please Mrs Butler to my niece. Niece is 12 years older than my DC and gave them back when the DC were born, so now at least I have a couple.

Am I right in thinking that "Yeats, the wine lodge" is from a very, ahem, educational play?

betts, more information needed about the kindle! Has it been through the washing machine?!

The last film I saw with my grandmother. Swansea Odeon 1984. We both cried.

Sadik I have the same editions of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books I remember getting them for Christmas as a box set circa 1984. They're still going strong. Dd aged 12 read them not so long ago. Happy memories!

Yes! The other day I used Ds's duvet cover not mine and then bunged it in the wash, he went to use it tonight and found my kindle wrapped up in it. amazon do say it's waterproof, luckily it's been on the cool, 15 minute wash as I put his duvet cover in my duvet but then mine dried in time so I swapped them over, hence the quick wash. I must have pick the kindle up with it

Here's dad's books, not normally with an amazon package behind them, it's hiding a photo of me with my dad.

Noodle -

Oh those books and glasses, Betts.

Blimey betts, that is a real tribute to the kindle's quality waterproofing

'What's that book you're reading?'
'Oh, Of Human Bondage'
' My husband's got a lot of books like that.'
'What, Somerset Maugham books?'
'No, bondage books.'

And my favourite line:
"There's no suppose about it. Look at those tits."

@noodlezoodle

Blimey betts, that is a real tribute to the kindle's quality waterproofing

Amazon claim that the paperwhite is waterproof for 30 minutes in plain water, I think I got lucky that the screen didn't smash. I didn't think it'd turn up.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

And my favourite line: "There's no suppose about it. Look at those tits."

That has got to be the best.

I like "To pass examinations, you're going to have to suppress, perhaps even abandon your uniqueness"- Frank - now I know where I went wrong!

@Sadik, we must be of a similar age- those are all the same editions as mine!

@Welshwabbit, did you know the Sandhamm Murders was televised in Sweden and is on Amazon Prime, with subtitles? Its quite good although Nora bobbing up everywhere does get a tad annoying! However, I haven't read the books so don't know how faithful an adaptation it is.

And of course, Do it on the radio.
Gods, I bloody love that play!

Betts that photo is lovely but poignant

Sadik I've just counted and I think I have 30 of the books in those photos (from what I could read of the titles) . Most of them are in the same editions so I deduce that you are probably within 10 years of my age forty-cough-ahem

I still have three boxes of books from my childhood under our bed, but have lost others when they were handed down to my younger brothers, who didn't keep them. Others still are back at my parents' house because they were my mum's childhood books (almost all of them cloth-bound hardbacks). I can't wait until my own DD is old enough to read some of them (although she'd better take better care of my childhood books than she does of her own!!! I'm not entrusting my precious Susan Coopers and Barbara Sleighs to her until she learns to pick things up off the floor And especially not the Antonia Forest books, some of which I had to buy at vast expense from eBay 15 years ago because I'd borrow d them from the school library originally and they were then out of print.)

Bettsbattenburg Thanks for the review of Queens of the Kingdom, another one for the wishlist.

Sadik I loved the Carbonel books! And I had all those Laura Ingalls Wilder books, lent them to someone last year who claims I didn't (!), so have had to replace them with modern editions. Bitter, moi?

Sadik that could literally be the bookshelf in my old bedroom in my parents' house!

I've got The Secrets of Filming Swallows and Amazons on my Kindle, it's written by Titty (AKA Sophie Neville), anyway just mentioning this in case anybody is tempted after reading the S&A thread - she also has The Making of Swallows and Amazons which seems to be a rewrite but is £7 more expensive. Buyer beware!

As well as S&A, Narnia, Noel Streatfield and Durrell, I loved the Carbonel books too!

betts In your photo, that's the edition of Swallows and Amazons I read - my Dad's copy :)
Pleased to hear your Kindle has turned up...and survived the wash!

betts I’m impressed that your kindle survived the washing machine!

32. The Beethoven Medal by K M Peyton
    A rediscovery from long ago. KM Peyton did YA fiction before it was a thing. Ruth Hollis is a fantastic character, the kind of girl I wished I were when I was a teenager, totally horse obsessed in her earlier novels but in this one, at first infatuated with, and as time goes on, completely in love with the difficult, taciturn, aggressive and musically talented Patrick Pennington. The novel describes his preparation for a concert, important for his budding music career, and the various problems and difficulties (largely self-inflicted) he goes through. It is swooningly romantic reading for a teenage girl and still has that as an adult due to KM Peyton's forensically accurate and surprisingly deep writing, but I have to say I was screeching at Ruth to walk away this time I'm now busy finding the sequels though (the prequel, Pennington's Seventeenth Summer, I don't want to bother with because it's Ruth that interests me more). If you ever enjoyed Flambards, don't miss this.

33. The Volunteer by Jack Fairweather
    The barely believable true story of Witold Pilecki, a soldier in the Polish underground who volunteered to be arrested and sent to Auschwitz to report back on the fate of prisoners there.
    
    It's a fairly conventional historical retelling but extremely well done, especially with the careful use of pictures which helps to bring the large number of people involved to life. It's a period that is starting, finally, to seem very distant - we're not far off a century since the rise of the Nazis, after all. Which of us, I wonder, would have the courage and the stamina to do what Pilecki did?

I'm definitely going to carry on reading my kindle in the bath without fear!

I loved the Flambards books because of the aeroplanes.

Useless information time:
KM Peyton was born in 1929 and one of her middle names is Wendy. Now Peter Pan was written as a play in 1904 but wasn't in print until 1929 and is widely credited with being the source of the name Wendy.

@InMyOwnParticularIdiom

I'm definitely going to carry on reading my kindle in the bath without fear!

Only if it's the Paperwhite!