50 Book Challenge 2020 Part Ten

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the tenth (and final?) 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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2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

I've just checked and these threads this year have moved more quickly than any other year since they started back in 2012! We'd never reached ten threads in any other year.

I can't immediately recall any sledding (which surely wouldn't be at Michaelmas, which is in late September - unless you mean Michaelmas term like wot the posh unis call it). Peter's Room is set in the Christmas holidays but I'm pretty sure there's no sledding, just Twelfth Night parties and hunting and Roundheads v Cavaliers and Catholicism and intense games of make-believe inspired by the Brontes' fantasies in Gondal . Do you remember anything else about those books, Eine?

Also, those books by Denis Thériault sound bonkers, but potentially in a good way!

Sadly mackerella literally all I remember about this book, was that it was an old fashioned sort of YA, posh children were involved, boarding, sledding, someone had come down or gone up for Michaelmas.

For some reason I associate it with or being similar to Erich Kastner's The Flying Classroom but it can't be that because it's German, and Michaelmas was definitely involved. Suspecting its the Forests because they go on to Oxford don't they?

But the PRICES. I think I'll only be chancing them if I get lucky in a library. I couldn't pay it for them to be the wrong books.

254. Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson

I think I got the recommendation for this from an earlier version of this thread. It was lovely. A story of love found late in life. Feel good and funny which was just what I needed.

I'm reading Proof which I'm sure I've read before but don't remember. Thanks.

114. House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones

Last of the Land of Ingary books.
Charmain is house sitting for her great uncle William, the Royal Wizard Norland. Various magical adventures ensure, with Sophie and Howl making an appearance.
It’s ok. I preferred Howl’s Moving Castle.

115. Fun and Games at Malory Towers by Pamela Cox

One of the non-Blyton sequels.
Darrell’s sister Felicity is now in the 5th Form. There’s conflict between games captain June and new girl Millicent, who’s started a school orchestra to try and win a music competition. And things keep going missing - is there a thief in the class?

89: The Cricket Term - Antonia Forest

More Kingscote. I have to admit that I prefer the school-based AF books and this one is comfortingly up to scratch. Nicola captains the Lower IV. A cricket team and faces up to the intimidating Lois Sanger, while her twin Lawrie strops on an epic scale because she doesn't want to play Ariel in the end-of-term production of The Tempest. All good stuff.

Not for the first time, I wanted to shake the infuriating Lawrie, who seems to get away with murder far too often. AF is so good at capturing the unfairnesses of life and our realisation that sometimes we do just have to suck it up.

246. The Mere Wife - Maria Dahvana Headley A modern retelling of Beowulf set in the suburbs. Herot Hall, a gilded gated community is plagued by small wild boy from the mountain called Gren. One of the mothers calls in local cop Ben Woolf to capture this dangerous monster child, but by goodness, you don't want to upset Gren's mother, an Iraq War veteran. Most of the action centres on the two women and what they will do to protect their children.

This plays a little bit fast and loose with the original, but is a gloriously good read. I had to restart it 3 times because I didn't have the headspace it needed, the prose is poetic and profound. The writing is stunning. There is a Greek chorus element throughout with the disapproving gaggle of female relations being a favourite. It's a really interesting look at an old tale that places the women as the most significant characters. It's very well done and manages to be a critique of modern times as well as retelling an epic story. Marvellous stuff.

247. Stories from Suffragette City - MJ Rose and Fiona Davis A series of short stories from authors such as Kristin Hannah and Christina Baker Kline about a single day in 1915 when thousands of women joined a march in NYC to gain the vote. Solid writing but nothing earth shattering.

Fortuna, The Mere Wife sounds great. I’m reading Beowulf at the moment and I’ve enjoyed a lot of these kinds of retellings recently, so this has gone into the list.

Planning on spending this afternoon finishing a couple of books. I seem to have three or four on the go, which is unsettling. Time to go back to a more linear approach I think.

175. The Vegetarian by Han Kang

I have come to realise in the last 2 days that if you want to read a novel that is COMPLETELY FUCKING INSANE - read a short one.

So tempted to write a full plot summary of the weirdness of this. Won the International Booker in 2016 so I assume many of you have read this.

In South Korea Yeong-hye, plagued by bad dreams, becomes a vegetarian, and later, still not satisfied tries to become a tree.

Her story is told through the eyes of her husband, her brother in law and her sister with varying degrees of WTF?!

Cheong her husband only married her because he thought she was unremarkable and would iron his shirts and be quiet about it.

Her BIL, knowing full well her mental state has deteriorated, films her naked numerous times and then films himself having sex with her

Her sister tries to have them both sectioned but it only succeeds with Yeong-hye who stops eating because she only needs sunlight because she is actually a plant.

That's it. That's the book.

I LOVED IT.

Pepe I really enjoyed it. The same author has also recently released a modern translation of Beowulf which is very 'street', but I'm not sure if it is available in the UK yet. It's well worth a read too. She's a phenomenal writer.

Fortuna, thanks for your review of The Mere Wife. I've had it on my TBR for ages after hearing an interview with the author - glad to hear it's good and I will continue to hope it arrives either in our library or in the Kindle 99pdeals at some point.

Clara, Charlotte Sometimes was one of my favourite, favourite books as a child. Apparently there was an edition published in the mid80s with the last chapter missing - I wonder if you might have read that when you were young, and that's why you don't remember the sad ending?

George Orwell's books are all 99p on the kindle today.

Thanks, Bett. Bought Down and Out in Paris and London which I've read before but don't own. Have got all the others in physical form.

That's completely possible @KeithLeMonde as it would have been about that time that I read it!! I mean I haven't read it for many, many years so it's also possible I've buried forgotten the trauma...

156. MC Beaton - Agatha Raisin: Hot to Trot

The last (probably ever?) Agatha Raisin book, and entertaining despite being less 'in depth' than the previous ones - most people except Agatha and Charles seem to be only 'sketched in' by this point. That said, it didn't end the way I thought it would, which was actually a pleasant change.

@StitchesInTime what did you think of the Pamela Cox Malory Towers book? I actually quite enjoyed the ones I read although I seem to remember them still being more modern in outlook than they were probably intended to be!

36. Firestarter by Stephen King

This was great, every bit as good as I thought it was when I read it as a teenager. A government experiment produces psychic abilities in its test subjects, most of whom don't survive the effects. However, two of them get married and have a little girl with powerful abilities, one of which is pyrokinesis - she can set things and occasionally people on fire just by thinking about it. Of course, the government is after them all.

It is hard to believe that this is the same Stephen King who then went on to write rubbish like Mr Mercedes and Cell. I had vowed never to read another SK book after those but now I might revisit some of my earlier favourites such as The Stand and The Dead Zone.

"Yeong-hye, plagued by bad dreams, becomes a vegetarian, and later, still not satisfied tries to become a tree"

Oh Cote please read it, I feel like I need proof it isn't just me it really is that odd!

90. If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho - Anne Carson

Sappho was an ancient Greek poet of the 7th-6th centuries BC, who provides a very rare female voice from antiquity, and who is the origin of our words lesbian (she was from the island of Lesbos) and sapphic. Although she was a prolific composer, only one of her poems survives complete and the rest are in fragments, sometimes only a word or phrase. This translation by Anne Carson pulls together all the known fragments at the time of publication, presenting the Greek text on the left-hand page and the translation on the opposite. The poems are replete with invocations of Aphrodite, imagery of flowers and garlands, and an aching sense of loss for the girls Sappho has known and loved. They are made all the more poignant by the layout which deliberately draws attention to their fragmentary nature. I am very lucky to have received the beautiful Folio edition as a present, which just adds to the sense of awe as you turn the heavy pages. Definitely a 5-star read for me.

(Because it's fragmentary, its also quite short ...)

@ClaraTheImpossibleGirl

I’ve quite enjoyed the Pamela Cox Malory Towers books that I’ve read, but I do prefer the Enid Blyton ones. I’m not sure how much of that is down to nostalgia from having read the Blyton ones as a child.

And TBH I was struggling a little with the orchestra element in the story. New girl starting a school orchestra and entering Malory Towers in an orchestra competition? It all seemed a bit of a stretch for me - no staff help with any of it, not even with admin stuff like organising transport to the competition.

However, I’m not the target audience. I expect I’d have loved it if I was 10 years old.

254. Pigeon Post by Arthur Ransome

Continuing my run through the Swallows and Amazon’s series on Audible. This is another that I had never read before. In this the usual gang go searching for gold in the Lake District. Fine but not one of my favourites if the series.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I loved it, so odd but it was very unpopular with my book club.

still not satisfied tries to become a tree"

That's me after a long day at work After 12 hours last week I would have welcomed being a tree.

I agree Firestarter is one of his best, Cote. I have enjoyed many of the newer ones but they do go on. The earlier ones have a punch and speed that the later King books really lack.

76 All the Lonely People Mike Gayle
Aimed at readers in the market for something uplifting and heartwarming the story moves between the experiences of Hubert , who comes to London as part of the Windrush generation and his life in the present day . I found the historical sections informative and insightful but the contemporary story, which focuses on the problem of loneliness,less so. Hubert’s efforts to make friends made for a pleasant enough story but the way that was developed was improbable and seemed like a vehicle for the author’s own opinions on the subject.

Eine - I like odd but not ridiculous odd, and that tree book looks like an example of the latter