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:

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8

Rebecca is a favourite here too! Haven’t got Netflix so haven’t seen the latest version - from what I’ve read I’m not missing much though! I’m hoping it will become available on another platform at some point as I would still like to see it for comparison purposes.

The Remains of the Day is 99p, if anybody fancies a boring book about a boring butler.

Have you considered a career in marketing, Remus?

What a bargain! The Remains of the Day is one of my favourite novels, and the film is also wonderful. Ishiguro is such a divisive author on these threads!

Remains is One of the few times I preferred the film but I did quite like the book.

He’s no Jeeves though it has to be said.

@bibliomania

Have you considered a career in marketing, Remus?

😁 I suggest that Remus should be Trump's PR officer when he leaves office.

The book is okay but the film is wonderful!

152. Corregidora by Gayl Jones

Ursa is a singer, moving from unhappy relationship to unhappy relationship, haunted by her past, her namesake, a slave master, his abuse to her ancestors and yet her grandmothers urge to keep his line alive.

Very similarly themed to Their Eyes Were Watching God I thought it was good but I doubt I'll remember it in a few years time.

DP's parents gave him Remains of the Day one year - he generally reads long historical epics with plenty of battles or spy/ thriller type books. Listening to his commentary as he read it was a great deal more entertaining than reading it myself 😆. (Continuing the theme, he got an Ian McEwan last Christmas - his view was 'at least it's not as dull as Remains of the Day...)

I have bought Remains of the Day. I did read it a while ago and thought it was boring, but then I read one of those articles that suggests the best age to read certain books and if I remember correctly it suggested 40s might be a good age to read it, so I’m hoping I’ll enjoy a reread more now I’m a bit older!

I have many things I could say about Trump. He wouldn't enjoy any of them.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

I have many things I could say about Trump. He wouldn't enjoy any of them.

Good, good. Remus for Trump PR Officer in 2024 then.

After a slow month or so, I've picked up a bit on reading. I've finished two books, and got another two good ones on the go (The Uncounted, and Lady in Waiting for light relief).

92. Ask the Fellows who Cut the Hay by George Ewart Evans Classic social / oral history, and I'd recommend it (and his other books) unreservedly to anyone with an interest in how rural lives were lived in the late 19th/early 20th century. This was Evans' first published book in the early 1950s, based on interviews with his friends and neighbours in the village of Blaxhall in Suffolk. He caught the village at a point where most inhabitants had lived there all their lives, and when older people had worked in an age of pre-mechanised agriculture. (There's also a BBC archive radio programme available of the same name, using many of the recordings that he made.)

Okay. I'm on it.

Slogan One: Are you thick and white and overweight? Then vote for Trump and spread the hate.

Slogan Two: Did Jesus leave you short of brains? Then vote for Trump to lead again.

Slogan Three: He's evil, orange and has no brain. Trump will make America shit again.

93. If Then by Jill Lepore

The story of the Simulmatics Corporation, founded in 1959 with the aim of building a 'people machine' - a computer simulation of voter behaviour, that would allow political campaigns to use precisely targeted messages and advertising.

Unfortunately for the founders, Simulmatics was very much the Apple Newton to Cambridge Analytica's iphone. The data didn't exist in the quantity that they needed, the computers weren't fast enough, and as social scientists they didn't have the skills to really make the most of what computing power they did have. Very much like Christopher Wylie of C.A. they started out selling their wares to the Democrats, and after some lack of success ended up working for the Defence department, including conducting (very unsuccessful) psychological warfare experiments in Vietnam.

This was a bit of a mixed bag. I listened to it on Audible, read by the author, which was a mistake I think. She reads all the quotes (of which there are many) in a strange high-pitched gabble, and I didn't find her voice easy to follow. The early part of the book is rather slow, and she spends rather a lot of time on side issues. There's a lot about the wives of the Simulmatic Corp researchers - I think in an attempt to avoid writing a story in which 99% of the players are white men - but realistically that's 1950s America for you.

It picks up from about 1/3 of the way through, once she reaches the 1960s, and the later sections are really interesting. I particularly enjoyed the final part, which covers the early days of ARPANET and the coalition of libertarians, conservatives and anarchists/hackers/geeks who fought for an internet entirely free of regulation or oversight.

Overall I felt it was well worth reading, if only to be reminded that our current political woes are not uniquely bad (there's a great quote from Nixon talking about how we need to stop listening to experts so much), and definitely thought provoking.

Remus sold, you've got the job!

I'm reading Homeland Elegies - Ayad Akhtar and it's VERY VERY good. I cocked up with my library reservation for this and cancelled it rather than suspending it, so had to wait all over again. Definitely worth the wait.

80. The Night Listener - Armistead Maupin

This was a charity shop buy which had been sitting on the shelf for years, so I thought I should give it a turn. Gay San Francisco author Gabriel Noone (a fairly transparent copy of Maupin himself) befriends teenage Pete over the phone, after receiving a copy of his soon-to-be published memoir detailing his horrific abuse at the hands of his parents. Gabriel becomes a surrogate father to the boy, but from early on it's clear that Pete may not be all he seems...

This was an excellent exploration of father/son relationships, with Gabriel's spiky interactions with his own father forming a counterpoint to his bond to Pete. However, there wasn't quite enough plot development for a 350 page book, and it did start to disappear up its own orifices at the end (the character 'Gabriel' is a fictionalised version of the 'real' Gabriel who writes the novel, who is of course a doppelgänger of the actual author Maupin...) Passed the time, but will be soon forgotten.

117. The Whole Five Feet, by Christopher R Neha
I suppose you could classify this as a literary memoir. Young man sets of to read the Harvard Classics, a vast anthology of classic writing from the Greeks onwards. It's all a bit superficial and he ends up telling the reader more about his aunt"s and his own medical history than he does about the books. As he was in his early 20s and hadn't done much with his life, he might have been better advised to live a bit longer before he starts issuing memoirs.

*Beha, not Neha

153. I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith

Cassandra and Rose Mortmain live in genteel poverty in a crumbling castle.

Their lives are changed when two American brothers come into the area.

I had been aware that this book had quite a warm following, but I thought they were all insipid bellends to be honest, especially Rose and the Dad.

If Only They Could Talk by James Herriot
Nothing that I hadn't read before, but it's always a pleasure to spend an hour or two in the Dales with James.

"Insipid bellends" - had to laugh at that description Eine! Agree, though I did enjoy the book overall. Found it made a pleasant change from the (sometimes gory) crime novels that I tend to read a lot of. Speaking of which, I'm halfway through Robert Galbraith's Career of Evil but not finding it as addictive as the first two in the series.

Just listened to Ken Follett talking to Graham Norton. No boobs were mentioned afaik, but he did admit that his books often involve 'underwear'

Idiom I'm surprised he managed to keep it in. I have visions of him as a Father Jack type character with obscene tourettes.

234. Homeland Elegies - Ayad Akhtar This is another American child of immigrant parents experience, but written with a level of insight and intellect that goes than much deeper than many of this ilk. It's a blend of fiction, memoir and essay that looks at the treatment of Muslims after 9/11 and the social and political situation that led to the election of Trump as well as telling of a young man struggling to make it as a writer (and then with his success) and dealing with ageing Pakistani parents.

I feel a little bit weary of the genre as I have read a glut of them recently and that's a reflection on me not the books, but they do start to feel a bit samey after a while. This blows the rest of them out of the water in terms of content, reflection and writing. Incredibly engaging and thought provoking.