50 Book Challenge 2020 Part Eight

[southeastdweller]

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

What are you reading?

I remember now, Eine. Your review made me laugh. It is not the most thrilling plot line ever but I don't want every thing I drink to be a PanGalactic Gargleblaster. Sometimes I just want a cup of tea

pepe I gave up on Leonard but agree about the depiction of friendship. I just wasn’t in the right place probably.

Also Corregidora I believe was only republished last year by Virago after being out of print a long time. I think it came out after the Backlisted episode as it was hard to get hold of when I listened to it. Great that it’s being rediscovered.

That's interesting, Satsuki, I didn't realise it had been out of print. It deserves to be on all of those "books by people of colour" reading lists that are floating around, but I have never seen it mentioned. I picked it up purely by chance in a small bookshop because I thought it was something else.

Yes I just checked and Virago bought it in 2019 after hearing the Backlisted episode according to the Bookseller. It was acclaimed on first publication, it’s amazing how things can get lost like it.

64 The Ninth Child Sally Magnusson
I loved The Sealwoman’s Gift and had looked forward to the next novel by this author. This is a very different story, and to begin with I found the variety of voices and supernatural elements slightly off putting, but as it unfolded and the threads of the plot came together I enjoyed it very much. There is a lot of gentle humour here but this story also shows us how healing can come even when the worst has happened and how finding a purpose can transform a life.

Did you have the hardback with the beauty of a cover black?

@PepeLePew

I remember now, Eine. Your review made me laugh. It is not the most thrilling plot line ever but I don't want every thing I drink to be a PanGalactic Gargleblaster. Sometimes I just want a cup of tea

😂😂😂😂😂😂 I needed that laugh.

@Piggywaspushed
Yes, the cover is gorgeous isn't it?

I have fallen waaaaay behind on reading book reviews (and posting my own) but loving the PanGalactic Gargleblaster reference

I expect to be reading more soon as (a) Amazon have replaced my broken Kindle after a couple of, er, heated conversations about it, and (b) their offer of £5 credit if you spend £15 on Kindle books, which makes it a bargain, right?!

It's the DC's birthday soon and I have asked for books for them too some of which I shall also be reading

(I posted on here before as Ruby by the way, new username!)

I've just finished Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively and that has a dislikable heroine narrating the novel, but she is also compelling and funny (sometimes unintentionally). It is all about history and time and how we carry our own and all our forebears experience forwards so we never escape history, which is circular like a moon tiger mosquito coil. The central part is set in WW2 in Egypt, as remember by Claudia Hampton as she lies dying in a hospital bed. It won the Booker in the 80s and I read it then as a callow youth. It was well worth revisiting as a more mature woman with the weight of lived experience.

Never Let Me Go is 99p on the Kindle today. I didn't like it but if you haven't read it, you should so that we can have another NLMG bunfight

In other news, Ian McEwan's Machines Like Me is also a Kindle Deal today. It's definitely worth a read at £1.99

No! Please don't read Never Let Me Bloody Go anybody. I couldn't stand to have to go through it all again.

It's shit. The end.

cough it's quite good cough

53. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb. I do like a book written by a psychologist and have read several in the past (Tanya Byron, Oliver Sacks, Irvin Yalom, Kerry Danes, Nathan Filer). This one is excellent, partly because it includes a strong autobiographical element via the author's visits to her own therapist. I think this angle makes the stories about her patients more interesting. I also like the way that, rather than spending a chapter on each patient, she takes a few sample cases and carries them through the book in parallel, so you feel that you are on their journey with them in each case. Gottlieb quotes the theories of a few famous psychologists, and I found myself down a couple of fascinating rabbit holes after googling people like Viktor Frankl and Erik Erikson. Highly recommended if you like this kind of thing.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

Is that recommended reading for those who have read Never let me go ?

Well I've read both and I'm still more or less sane

Thanks for the recommendation Tarahumara, I like all the other psychologist authors you mentioned so I've added it to my Audible wish list.

I'm still limping from the Station Eleven wars.

Fear not. I can settle the Station Eleven crisis too.

It's shit. The end.

[whimpers and runs away]

I wasn't here for the Station Eleven discussion - I really enjoyed it. Certainly worth reading to make your own mind up.

Latest update. I started with a couple of domestic thrillers. Both decent enough page-turners.

104. Little Disasters, by Sarah Vaughan
Woman brings small child into hospital with head injury. The doctor is suspicious - but the woman is her friend. What really happened? A sympathetic look at how hard early motherhood can be.

105. The Other Child, by Lucy Atkins
Single mother falls for attractive American doctor and moves self and child to the US to be with him and have a baby together. But strange things keep happening - has she made a terrible mistake?

106. The Courage to Care, by Christie Watson
Sequel to The Language of Kindness, which was great. More tales of nursing. She recounts the story of some truly admirable people, and only a person with a cold dead soul would criticise, so here we go: at times she risks slipping into self- parody. Para 1 terrible situation. Para 2 and 3, enter nurse, who looks around, does something with cool competence and a look of love in her eyes, and para 4, things are better. Not every nurse is Florence Nightingale reincarnated and nor should they have to be.

203. Spring - Ali Smith
204. Summer - Ali Smith These are not for me. I've tortured myself with them. I have a sense that these will be the kind of book that you 'had to be there' for as they capture a specific mood and time. I don't think they will date as such, but that they were intended to be best enjoyed as close to publication as possible. It's a shame because some parts I have really enjoyed, but *I have no patience for her form/ I am a bit too thick to understand them.

*please delete as applicable

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

Fear not. I can settle the Station Eleven crisis too.

It's shit. The end.

I'm with you Remus.