50 Book Challenge 2020 Part Nine

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the ninth 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 still not too late to join, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

The previous threads of 2020:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

I got to your meaning, Satsuki!

I need to go back to The Corner that Held Them, terp. I got distracted and never went back to it.

Museum, I really liked Piranesi. It's quite odd and dreamlike. Quite different to her previous book.

I'm glad some of you enjoyed the jigsaw. I'm doing another book one now, the Bodlian library one (the one without the door) which is all books about women/school books. I can recommend it.

I got this jigsaw last xmas. Me and DD did it on Xmas day afternoon. It was lovely and some funny puns on well known titles.

@BookWitch

I got this jigsaw last xmas. Me and DD did it on Xmas day afternoon. It was lovely and some funny puns on well known titles.

The puns are great aren't they?

I'm still not making much headway with reading so here's a book I finished a couple of months ago and never got round to counting.

78: Set to Partners - Ruth Adam

I loved Ruth Adam's A House in the Country (a Furrowed Middlebrow) and snapped this battered 1947 hardback up on eBay a while ago. It appears to be the only copy available anywhere and there are no reviews of it that I can find. At the end of WW2, young friends Elizabeth and Joan contemplate Joan's imminent wedding, and rather smugly congratulate themselves on how much more realistic and practical they are than their mothers, brought up in an age of dreary bourgeois respectability.

The rest of the book then tells the story of the those mothers from childhood, middle-class Linda and wayward, neglected Hazel, whose varied experiences of life and love might surprise their daughters. Over a lifetime their uneasy friendship has ebbed and flowed through marriage, abandonment, pregnancy (wanted and very much not) and all the emotional upheaval common to everyone who's ever lived. We understand by the end that all women face the same dilemmas, even if Joan and Elizabeth, with the careless arrogance of youth, think they're the first to navigate these treacherous waters.
I enjoyed this - it was thoughtful and unusually frank, I thought, especially in its treatment of Hazel's unwanted pregnancy and her terrible, desperate attempts to get a doctor to 'help' her. This scenario was a bit of a crusade for Ruth Adam, I think, as it also features in her 1938 novel I'm Not Complaining, which I also got hold of (a Virago reprint) and will try and read, if I ever get my mojo back.

terpischore it took weeks for my reading mojo to come back, when it did it was for light weight fiction I normally wouldn't have given the time of day

91 Headingham Harvest by Geoffrey Robinson
I'm trying to do some clearing out during the lockdown fortnight here & either read or ditch some of the more random unread books on my shelves.

This is billed as 'Victorian family life in rural England', and I was expecting oral history & farming from the cover. In fact it's the very rambling story of the author's forbears from his great grandparents downwards and other inhabitants of their Lincolnshire village (including a fornicating vicar ). I usually rather like these sorts of books, but this wasn't a particularly good example of the genre, sadly.

Anyway, one for the charity shop pile, and I've ordered a replacement copy of the George Ewart Evans book that I really wanted to read but can't find.

Just caught up with the thread, and sorry to hear so many 50 bookers are going through difficult times.

So sorry for your loss Terpsichore .

Thank you so much Indigo

141. The Alienist and
142. The Angel Of Darkness by Caleb Carr

Books 1 and 2 of the Kriezler/Moore series of detective style shenanigans in 1890's New York. Now showing as a TV series on Netflix.

Lazlo Kriezler is The Alienist- a very early psychiatrist who runs an institute for disturbed children.

His friend John Schyler Moore is a reporter.

They are both members of the wealthier classes and friendly with Theodore Roosevelt, a classmate from Harvard who is now Chief Of Police.

Child sexual exploitation laws at the time being non existent, boys paid for sex, are exploited by ongoing businesses which allow abuse for hire. The children are often made to dress as the opposite sex and referred to as "boy whores"

When some of these boys start dying, no one really cares, and Kreizler and Moore begin investigating on the own terms. They are assisted by Moore's friend Sara Howard, the Isaacson brothers, and Kreizler's odd band of household servants.

Angel Of Darkness follows the same crew investigating another child killer, and the disappearance of a baby. Both books are written as "when we were young" retrospectives, The Alienist from the POV of Moore and Angel Of Darkness from the POV of Stevie, Kriezler's houseboy.

Both books are solid yarns if nothing earth shattering and it does annoy me that there doesn't seem to be a third.

This is my next jigsaw project

60. The Accusation: Forbidden Stories from Inside North Korea

I've read a few North Korea accounts, mostly non-fiction from people who have now escaped from the regime and are now writing in freedom. I do find them fascinating.
This was a bit different, Bandi (a pen name of someone still in North Korea) writes short stories, almost like parables. which are highly critical of the regime, some are incredibly sad.
Like all short story collections, I preferred some stories to others. My favourite was the longest one - The Red Mushroom.

Mog I now have a jigsaw wish list to go with the book wish list.
Bookwitch I've read several of the NK accounts too, they are indeed fascinating. A relative of mine has been there and had some interesting stories to tell.

I just got a call from my mother, she's been summoned to the hospital as they are doing her cancer check up today that should have been done in the spring. They phoned her this morning and said 'come now'

40. The Foundling by Stacey Halls. This novel, set in 1750's London, opens with a young mother giving up her illegitimate baby, Clara, to be looked after by the London Foundling Hospital until such time as she can afford to raise her. Six years after leaving her daughter Bess Bright returns to reclaim the child she has never known. Dreading the worst, that Clara has died in care, Bess is astonished to be told she has already been claimed - by her, on the day after she was left. Her life is turned upside down as she tries to find out who has taken her little girl - and why.

This came across as Sarah Waters lite. I was reasonably intrigued whilst in the midst of reading it, but ultimately I found it a curiously insubstantial melodrama. Very little analysis of Clara's POV was apparent. I kept wondering how a child would react to the happenings in the novel, which would surely have been terrifying for such a young girl, but Clara didn't seem to have any agency or voice of her own, other than to service the plot and the ending was all a little to conveniently neatly wrapped up and cosy for my liking too.

I moved on to a BorrowBox loan The Confession by Jessie Burton, but I think this is going to be a DNF I'm an hour and a half in and it's not grabbing me, I don't think I want to devote another ten hours to it, and come to think of it I DNF The Muse by the same author so maybe she's not for me!

Betts hope all is OK with your mum. When my mum was ill, every phonecall used to make me feel anxious.

I enjoyed The Foundling as an easy read, but agree with you about the ending- bit too chocolate box lovely for me. (I'm too dark and cynical )

Sending a handhold betts

75. Shockaholic - Carrie Fisher (Audible)

Second volume of memoirs from the Princess Leia actress. This was more narrowly focused on a few long anecdotes and I didn't find it as amusing as Wishful Drinking, but it was worth it (for me) for the Liz Taylor titbits.

76. Diary of a Provincial Lady - E. M. Delafield

A favourite on this thread, it was charming and amusing but ultimately a little too insubstantial and I did find myself tiring of her upper middle class 'problems' before the end - possibly I read it too quickly given that it was originally published in instalments. Wouldn't seek out another one, but would read it if it fell into my lap.

Open Secret by Stella Rimington. I wasn't quite sure what to make of this book if I'm honest. At the start she came across as a not very ambitious person who wanted a job until she got married and then had the view that she would never work again. She married somebody (I'd say the wrong person from what she said) and off they went to India because of his job. She picked up some part time work which led to a full time role with MI5 which she stopped when they went to Brussels, again with his job, and their marriage broke down and she came back to England with her two children who were looked after by a series of au pairs. Somehow she got promoted into what was then a job only previously open to a man and ended up being the MI5 Director General.

I wondered if the book was by a ghost writer but if it was then I think they are in the wrong job. It was interesting because of the information about MI5 and the security services and was quite realistic from what I could see from knowledge gained from my old job (this thread will self destruct in....) back in the era of the cold war. Her views on Peter Wright (Spycatcher) were interesting as I remember all the furore and court cases around his book's publication.

There were some things that she didn't mention which I thought she would as it'd interest the general public and are not things which would be confidential nowadays. Maybe she didn't know about them

68 The Adventures of Maud West Susannah Stapleton
A mix of biography, social history and detective story. The author’s love of golden age detective stories prompts her to investigate the life and work of Maud West, who worked as a private detective in the early part of the twentieth century. The author tells us in detail how she goes about her research and includes some of Maud’s own writings about her cases, which owe as much to imagination as they do reality, A lively, gossipy read which I enjoyed.

69 British Nannies and the Great War Louise Heren
The nannies referred to in the title are women who trained as Norland nannies,This book has a wider scope than is suggested by the title,as it gives a detailed account of how the organisation grew, its workings, and the women who devoted their lives to creating the Norland “brand “. Woven in are many stories of women caring for the children of elite families who showed courage and great commitment as they faced difficult and dangerous situations during the war years. I learnt a lot about how different parts of Europe were impacted by the effects of war.
I had not realised that the Norland organisation also ran nurseries in the End End for children of mothers doing war work in factories. We also hear the voices of nannies through their letters and contributions to the newsletter distributed to nannies. I found it a fascinating read.

Hope your mum is ok betts

mog great puzzle, like betts I am compiling a puzzle list too.

Hope it all goes ok for your Mum betts.

I got about halfway through a puzzle in April and then abandoned it. Didn't have the patience to finish!

I have now finished Owen Jones' The Establishment, in which he rails, rather self evidently, against the Establishment. I don't really follow economics, so skimmed those bits, although feel that is probably where he makes his most persuasive - politically speaking- points. I found chapters on the police, institutional racism, and the media most interesting and most shocking and depressing.

This book was written pre Brexit and pre Trump so the end bits now seems a bit naively optimistic! Arguably, Brexit was a great revolt against the establishment. Owen would not be conivinced and I would welcome an update to this book.

Some great rebuttals of glib capitalist thinking in this book which I'd like to memorise for some 'but the economy' type posters on MN sometimes...

Good news thank goodness - quite out of character for 2020!

Just finished A Town Like Alice - not quite sure what to make of it really. Felt very dated and the dialogue was very old fashioned but I enjoyed it overall, especially the first third set during WW2. Interested to hear what others think? Abandoned I am an Island around half way through, self indulgent over- written nonsense which was a shame as I would like to read more about the practicalities of Island Life. I'm sure the islanders and her husband have a slightly different take on events.

Great news betts

roseharper I found it a good read, but there are certainly parts of it that haven’t dated well.