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:

1
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.

Stitches, being dissatisfied with a book because the characters don't pay sufficient attention to admin is definitely an adult POV

Pepe - I agree. The last SK book I liked was Duma Key.

Keith

I’m still scared of tennis balls.
I did enjoy The Institute but it was far too long.

Idiom I see what you're up to!

99. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson

DD is reading Oranges for A level English, & I borrowed this (JW's 'proper' autobiography if you like to put it that way) from her. I'm not sure why I'd not read it before, but I'd forgotten just what a good writer she is and how she can nail an idea or a feeling so perfectly. Spot on and a strong contender for my best book of the year.

I quite liked Cell (although it does sometimes feel like I'm the only one who did ). The ending is a bit crap silly, I'll grant you, but I really enjoyed the opening and half-decent zombie novels are few and far between.

@Sadik

My favourite Jeanette book is Weight - it's gorgeous, reinterpretation of Atlas myth

King's endings are often silly. I actually enjoyed Cell more on second reading.

49. Before the Coffee Gets Cold - Toshikazu Kawaguchi

I read this because someone up the thread recommended it (and because of the Caboodle quiz) but it really was not for me. It seemed like a poorly written Hallmark greetings card - very conservative messages delivered in a laboured way. I read that the author is a playwright and I think he wrote like a scriptwriter - lots of visual detail but the characters would need good actors to bring them to life, because the author didn't. On the plus side it was short.

Shame. I liked it. Reading the sequel now.

Christmas Days by Jeannette Winterson.
What a lovely read in the run up to Christmas! A collection of twelve short stories interspersed with a personal chapter about how she celebrates Christmas including a seasonal recipe.

I'm inspired to read more Winterson - I recall reading Oranges are not the only fruit as a teenager but can't remember much about it. Anyway, thoroughly recommend this if you haven't read it. I can see myself reaching for this every winter henceforth.

I have Christmas Days on my shelf EmGee - I got it as a present last year but didn't open it til mid Jan as I was away from home, so I've saved it for this December, glad to hear it's a good read!

Sorry for the delayed response, Eine - this thread moves too fast got me! I'm pretty sure that your mystery series wasn't the Forest one because nobody goes up to Oxford (except the eldest girl, Kay, and she only sticks it out for a term). The rest of them are still at school for the whole series! (Also, I don't remember any sledding at all. Falconry, yes. Sledding, no!)

I'd love to know what your series was, though, if you ever remember!

A Death at Fountains Abbey
Third in the series and my favourite of the 3. They're essentially a poor man's Shardlake, but diverting enough.

@mackerella

I'd love to know what your series was, though, if you ever remember!

Could it be Angela Brazil ?

The Thomas Hawkins books are currently very cheap on kindle. Worth a shot if you like Shardlake.

I like the Thomas Hawkins books too Remus and just fancied a bit of that, but that third one (which I've read) seems to be the last one. I hope she writes some more.

Sorry, the fourth one is out - The Silver Collar - but is currently £9.99 on Kindle. I'll wait.

Finally I finished my latest dull read:

32. Jeremy Hutchinson's Care Histories by Thomas Grant
Biography of a defense silk and his most infamous cases, including Christine Keeler and Lady's Chatterley's lover.

I think in a quest to make this accessible much of the legal detail was quite superficial, making this not nearly as interesting as it could have been. As well, there was not enough biographical information about Hutchinson, who by all accounts as a descendant of the Bloomsbury set had a charmed and interesting life. At one point he inherits a Monet, the sale of which funds a house purchase.

This book took me all bloody month to read, as it wasn't bad enough to DNF, but not good enough to keep me away from watching The Bridge. I think I need a trashy, plot-driven thriller to get me back into the nightly reading habit again.

65. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

I know this has been reviewed on here many times before. Henrietta Lacks was a black American woman who died in 1951 of cervical cancer - but not before a biopsy sample taken from her cervix had been used to culture cells which (unlike previous attempts) reproduced indefinitely. The HeLa cell line has been the basis for many of the medical developments we take for granted today. It is an astonishing story, and Skloot writes well not only about the science but about Henrietta and her family, who had to endure more than their fair share of hardship and tragedy without, for many years, knowing the extraordinary fate of Henrietta's cells. The issues of consent and compensation (or the lack thereof) were well explored. However, I feel there is too much of Skloot in the story. I get that this became something of a personal crusade but at times the narrative tipped over into being all about her, which felt particularly inappropriate given that this is what people have been doing to the Lacks family since Henrietta died.

55. A Spell of Winter, Helen Dunmore

Set mostly in the years leading up to the First World War, this is the story of siblings Cathy and Rob, who live in their grandfather’s secluded and slowly crumbling house in the countryside. They were abandoned by their mother at a young age, resulting in their father being placed in an asylum, and their grandfather, who can barely look at Cathy as she resembles her mother so much, leaving them mostly to their own devices. Isolated and co-dependent, Cathy and Rob present a united front, clinging to one another for comfort, love, and security, so much so that over one winter, their relationship takes them down a dangerous path that threatens to upend their lives.

The writing in this is beautiful. Rich and compelling without being too sumptuous, Dunmore creates a claustrophobic, tight sort of intensity, evoking the house, the countryside and the winter wonderfully, as characters in their own right. Cathy’s love of winter, and the way its cold harshness feels bright and safe and alive to her was particularly well done, I thought.
I loved it.

the ten thousand doors of january and the phone box at the edge of the world which I really enjoyed are both 99p

I was writing out my Christmas book wish list for my husband this morning, including Alexandra Harris's Romantic Moderns reviewed on this thread (I'm sorry I can't remember who by), when I discovered she was on Radio 3's Private Passions at lunchtime. It was a really interesting discussion and music selection, link here if anyone would like to listen too.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000pvbg