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

70. It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet - James Herriot

My brother bought me a box set of James Herriot books, so my cosy winter reading is sorted. Here, young Jim learns more about the vet trade, largely fails to extract fees from Yorkshire farmers, and begins to court his future wife Helen (who he likes walking behind due to the daring new fashion of women wearing trousers).

71. Quirkology: the curious science of everyday lives - Richard Wiseman (Audible)

Overview of the psychology of curious corners of human behaviour, including superstition, altruism and deception, and a quest to find the world's funniest joke. A nice easy, unchallenging listen, without any real surprises - common sense would lead you to most of the same conclusions. The most interesting section was on how the body's reaction to infrasound (very low frequency sound) could lead to the sensation of ghostly goings-on.

I finished Girl last night. Powerful and difficult reading; it gave me nightmares and that almost never happens.

And oddly enough, have Silence waiting for me at the library. I think I may have a short break from harrowing fiction after that and try some Marian Keyes or similar.

Love and Other Thought Experiments by Sophie Ward

Spoiler - possibly - I actually don’t know?! But in case

This had an original premise, a portrayal of non-nuclear family that isn’t a plot point in itself, and was obviously carefully worked out and plotted, using the lives of a married couple, Rachel and Eliza, to illuminate various philosophical theories. See? That was nice. For the first few chapters this was reasonably compelling and I enjoyed thinking about how the philosophical epigraph to each chapter might relate to the story, and it had a bit of a sliding doors quality as it showed different possible futures, and, you know, other things happening in the past, but then it got harder to really see what the links were with all the philosophy, harder to care about the different pasts and possible futures, and then I had finally to accept that I was reading a book about an ant entering someone’s eye, an ant which may or may not be a supercomputer from the future (this may be a spoiler but I honestly haven’t a clue whether it is or not, or even if I’ve made it up, or not, or completely misunderstood it) and that a book about an ant entering an eye and maybe being a supercomputer is just as shit as it sounds. I took no leave of it, and sent no compliments to its mother.

I have silence on my shelf and have for a while, it's not a long book either.

I much preferred the nickel bogs to the underground railroad, both were really good but I felt the nickel boys had more heart personally.

pepe nightmares?! Maybe I’ll have a break before I read it. Nickel and Silence are both very sensitively written for the subject matter.

That’s interesting badspella. I was attracted to Nickel more for some reason. Silence is short and some of it takes the form of letters and historical records so it is an easy read in a formal sense.

Yes, satsuki - it really got under my skin. Which is as it should be, given the subject matter. As my half written review of it says, the women whose lives this is based on don't have the luxury of putting what happened to one side, so I don't think I should either.

I know that there have been suggestions that O'Brien shouldn't have taken on the issue (essentially, accusations of cultural appropriation) but I think she has every right given her past record to speak up on behalf of vulnerable groups of women in her fiction, and there's no doubt that the Boko Haram crimes are particularly despicable.

It's graphic and brutal, though, and some of it was really tough to read, even though it's actually a very accessible novel in many ways. I do think part of the reason I found it so disturbing (if a reason is needed) is that I had just finished Christina Lamb's book about rape as a tool of war, and she spends time on the Boko Haram abductions.

While the juxtaposition of fact and fiction was interesting and impactful, it was already something I was having difficulty processing, as Lamb's book really does not hold back on some deeply disturbing details about what goes on in these situations. I'm not a big fan of trigger warnings, but this is a really difficult novel to just read as a work of fiction.

Book 52
The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See

I Loved this. A great story that is closely based on true events.

Follows the lives of two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, who are best friends but come from different backgrounds. During the occupation of Korea, one is the daughter of a Japanese collaborator but is accepted into the village as a hard working baby diver.

Both girls work in the village's all-female diving collective, a highly respected but dangerous occupation that allows the women freedom and authority.

The Island of Sea Women is set over many decades, beginning during a period of Japanese colonialism in the 1930s and 1940s, followed by World War II, the Korean War and aftermath. The women dive in icy conditions with only cotton suits and no breathing equipment or protection. They become the subject of scientific study, tourist visits and the push for modernization.

A brilliant and vivid story of friendship and the forces that test it. I’d highly recommend.

I wasn't as blown away by The Underground Railroad as I anticipated I would be but you've made Nickel Boys and Silence sound brilliant @SatsukiKusakabe

Thanks pepe, a really thoughtful and considerate post. I appreciate your insights. O’Brien is a very good writer and I agree I think she is well placed for a subject like this.

I much preferred Nickel Boys to Underground Railroad too Spella I found UR really strange, I had zero emotional reaction to it. I don't know if he wrote it in a deliberately detached way.

Pepe I also found Girl very powerful. I thought it was very well done. I find the controversy about who is 'allowed' to write what very concerning and I know authors like Lionel Shriver get a lot of flak for defending the freedom to write about anything. JKR gets grief for not having diverse enough characters, but then authors who don't 'stay in their lane' get pilloried too. Can't win.

HumberElla that sounds really interesting, so will put it on my list.

The Unraveling of Cassidy Holmes - Elissa R Sloan
At 17 years old Cassidy is the runner up in a TV talent show. She is then chosen to be the replacement member of an all girl group who go on to be the biggest stars of the early 2000s. 15 years later she's found dead, probable suicide.

Multiple timelines and POV that chart the rise and fall of the group and looks into the seedy underbelly of the industry. This is aiming to have a Daisy Jones vibe, but lacks the pace. Much more of a slow burn, it explores the issues facing young women thrown into the limelight. Overall well done and an interesting read, but would have benefited from a bit more energy.

I also had no emotional reaction and was worried I was heartless Fortuna

Eine books about slavery usually make me feel angry, or make me cry. I got nothing from that. Nothing at all. I'm blaming the author.

That’s a much better review than mine Pepe

Yes, Girl is definitely one that gets under your skin.

Satsuki I loved your review of Love and Other Thought Experiments! It was one of the few Booker longlisted books that I actually wanted to read (my undergraduate degree is (half) in philosophy, so I've usually got a high tolerance threshold for this sort of thing). But your cross reaction (and especially channelling Lady CdB) made me howl with laughter .

I also very much appreciated karma's reviews above - I really admire anyone who can sum up books as pithily as "Christ I hated JP. What a sniveling little xenophobe."

@highlandcoo I haven't picked up the latest Lissa Evans yet, although I definitely will at some stage. My huge TBR "pile" glowers at me from the Kindle every time I pick it up and for the moment I am being good and trying to avoid buying more books!

65 The Familiars Stacey Halls
A story inspired by the 17th century Lancashire witch trials. The main character is the 17 year old pregnant mistress of Gawthorpe Hall. I felt the author did a good job of portraying an authentic adolescent girl, but that did mean that she came over as petulant and needy rather than sympathetic. I wasn’t convinced by her transformation part way through into a strong, determined woman and I felt that the author let her down just before the end. The pace was quite slow and at times strained credulity- could anyone cover so many miles on horseback through a seventeenth century landscape? As a fictionalised account of this period I preferred Mist Over Pendle by Robert Neil.

I found Nickel Boys didn’t work for me. I thought the protagonists life justified something more epic and it was so sleight.

palegreenstars I felt that the non-epic treatment magnified the sense of tragedy, and the limiting of an individual’s potential and ultimately I was impressed with what he managed to do in the space, it made me think a lot about the assumptions I’d made throughout. But I can see that point of view. I’ve definitely been in the mood for short and hard hitting at the moment, a lot of current fiction is often on the baggier side.

Thanks mackerella I was really open-minded to begin with about the philosophy but unfortunately my brain fell out somewhere towards the end. I think the problem with it - for me - was it was trying to be different things, a meditative, literary exploration of philosophy, but then it took a speculative turn, and it didn’t really work that well. I think it is a genre some people like, in fact maybe it’s what underpins the Station 11 Never Let Me Go division.

Slightly back to front, as I've been discussing books I haven't reviewed yet, and have only just got round to bringing my list across...

1 Guest House for Young Widows by Azadeh Moaveni
2 Little Women by Louisa Alcott
3 Homegoing by Yaa Gyasin
4 Lady in Waiting by Anne Glenconner
5 The Institute by Stephen King
6 Dracula by Bram Stoker
7 The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend
8 Snowblind by Ragnor Jónasson
9 Chernobyl Prayer by Svetlana Alexievicho
10 A Little Book of Language by David Crystal
11 Rewild Yourself by Simon Barnes
12 Smashing Physics by Jon Butterworth
13 Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor
14 Over The Top by Jonathan Van Ness
15 Rosewater by Tade Thompson
16 Imogen by Jilly Cooper
17 We Are Made of Diamond Stuff by Isabel Waidner
18 You’re Not Listening by Kate Murphy
19 Natural History of the Hedgerow by John Wright
20 Letters from an Astrophysicist by Neil deGrasse Tyson
21 Christy Malry’s Own Double Entry by BS Johnson
22 Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman
23 Maid by Stephanie Land
24 The Familiars by Stacey Halls
25 People Like Us by Caroline Slocock
26 Bad Blood by Colm Tóibín
27 Ghosts of the Tsunami by Richard Lloyd Parry
28 The Future We Choose by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac
29 Unpacking Queer Politics by Sheila Jeffreys
30 Unreliable Memoirs by Clive James
31 Octavia by Jilly Cooper
32 The Visitor by Lee Child
33 A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
34 Under The Skin by Michael Faber
35 The Women’s Room by Marilyn French
36 The Stand by Stephen King
37 Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer
38 The Five by Hallie Rubenhold
39 Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir
40 The Journal of a Disappointed Man by WNP Barbellion
41 Excitements at the Chalet School by Elinor M Brent-Dyer
42 The Chalet School and Barbara by Elinor M Brent-Dyer
43 The Coming of Age of the Chalet School by Elinor M Brent-Dyer
44 Just For One Day by Louise Wener
45 Notes from an Apocalypse by Mark O’Connell
46 You People by Nikita Lalwani
47 The Iliad by Homer
48 The Tale of Troy by Roger Lancelyn Green
49 First Term at Malory Towers by Enid Blyton
50 Second Form at Malory Towers by Enid Blyton
51 Third Year at Malory Towers by Enid Blyton
52 Until The End of Time by Brian Greene
53 Frost in May by Antonia White
54 My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
55 Pet Shop Boys, Literally by Chris Heath
56 The Friendly Ones by Philip Hensher
57 Patience by Toby Litt
58 Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton
59 The Plague by Albert Camus
60 Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
61 Natives by Akala
62 Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell.
61 The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker
62 The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste
63 Mindf*ck by Christopher Wylie
64 The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombard
65 Action Park by Andy Mulvihill
66 The Evenings by Gerard Reve
67 Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran
68 Our Universe by Jo Dunkley
69 Slow Burn City by Rowan Moore
70 Murderous Contagion by Mary Dobson
71 Magda by Meike Ziervogel
72 The Universe Speaks in Numbers by Graham Farmelo
73 Clothes and Other Things That Matter by Alexandra Shulman
74 Pale Rider by Laura Spinney
75 Magpie Lane by Lucy Atkins
76 Sula by Toni Morrison
77 My Name is Why by Lemn Sissay
78 Corregidora by Gayl Jones
79 My Last Supper by Jay Rayner
80 The Dead Zone by Stephen King
81 Leonard and Hungry Paul by Ronan Hessian

82 House of Glass by Hadley Freeman
This is on track to be my book of the year. I like Freeman’s journalism but this blew me away. She’s not a historian and that makes what she has achieved even more impressive in my view. She tells the story of her grandmother and her siblings who left Poland for Paris only to find themselves confronted again with anti Semitic policies and practices even before the German invasion. Each sibling’s story is distinct and lovingly told using a combination of diaries, letters, family lore and research. This is intensely personal and yet also a really good insight into Jewish lives in mid century Europe and America, as well as a profoundly warm and sensitive exploration of family dynamics, love, trust and betrayal. I listened to this as an audiobook and while narration isn’t her forte it made it all the more powerful knowing she was telling her own story. I will be buying copies as gifts for everyone I can think of who will appreciate this.

83 Dept of Speculation by Jennie Offill
Short, clever and thought provoking account of a relationship in crisis. I raced through this and will probably revisit it. It's very knowingly "literary" but a lot of it rang very true.

84 The Planets by Brian Cox and Andrew Cohen
I really enjoy a popular science book and there was a lot here to enjoy though I found the latter half - the gas giants and the outer planets - much more interesting than the inner ones. I will confess to skipping over some of the detail of the missions to Mars and Venus although the story of how we think they came to be where they are, and Jupiter’s role in shaping all of our solar system is fascinating. I had no idea just how important Jupiter is believed to have been in contributing to there being any life on earth at all. Kind of mind blowing when you look up and see it in the sky to think that, in my view.

85 Our Bodies Their Battlefield by Christina Lamb
I think someone here read and reviewed this on the last thread, and apologies as I never keep track of these things. Christina Lamb is a foreign correspondent who has reported from conflict zones for years - this is her attempt to give a voice to the women and girls (and men, as she acknowledges more than once) who have been the victims of rape as a tool of war and conflict. There is history and political context to frame the narratives, as she tells the story of a range of different conflicts all of which have made the news but where the use of sexual violence to terrify and subjugate has been largely absent from the headlines. From the Soviet abuse of German women, Boko Haram's abduction of school girls and the torture of women and girls in the DRC and Rwanda, to Serbia and the Phillipines and Argentina, this is genuinely horrifying. It's not at all sensationalist and she is sensitive in what she tells, but she doesn't spare any of the horrifying detail of how men deploy sexual assualt in pursuit of political ends. This doesn't make any real attempt to explore why or what they achieve by this - it's not that she ignores this entirely, but her focus is on the women, their stories, and the work of those people who have tried to help them. At times I had to put this down and walk away, but I was very conscious throughout that this is not a luxury that the women whose stories are told here have. This clearly isn't an easy read but it does feel like a really important one. And did lead me to Girl, even if that wasn’t exactly fun either.

86 Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
I have a bit of a crush on Joan Didion, without being particularly interested in anything she has to say. I think she has a beautiful style and her prose is like poetry, but the actual contents of these essays from the 1960s aren’t the point, in my view. Although some of them are diverting enough, particularly those which dive into the counter culture in San Francisco, and some of the weirdnesses of the California hinterland, I read this for its language and style, rather than what it told me about the world. But still, Joan Didion…she’s pretty cool. And The Year of Magical Thinking is one of the best books I read last year.

87 Without Fail by Lee Child
When things get bleak – and they are bleak at the moment, personally and in the world outside – I do find Jack Reacher a source of great escapist fun. He is just so solid. Not particularly likeable but just reliably tough and no nonsense. This is a particularly good example, in my view, telling the story of an assassination attempt on the Vice President elect. As ever, tonnes of complicated and slightly confusing detail (maps would really help, just like a MN parking thread) and some loose ends that may or may not have been tied up satisfactorily, plus some enormous leaps of logic by Reacher that lead to an impossible case being solved. What’s not to love?

88 Girl by Edna O’Brien
Most of what I want to say, I said above. Coming shortly after the Christina Lamb book - which has a chapter on Boko Haram and its kidnapping and raping of Nigerian girls - this felt appropriate as a companion while also being like a punch to the stomach. O’Brien is a very talented storyteller and writes beautiful clear prose but Maryam’s story is brutal and shocking at each turn, even after her escape and reunion with her family. There’s dreams interspersed with reality, and other narratives woven in, but it’s a very simple and straightforward telling of an incredibly difficult story. My only small criticism is that the cover blurb – I don’t think it does talk about forgiveness in any way, or if it does I missed it completely. I think it’s about surviving and learning to live with horror, rather than anything else. And a little about love and joy and finding the moments of redemption in sadness.

Great reviews pepe I have the Hadley Freeman book ordered from the library, looking forward to it.

I also have House Of Glass on TBR could be a while though.

Wow! Flurry of fab reviews

The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See in particular sounds right up my street.