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.

68. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

This is a step outside of my usual genres, I don't read a lot of psychological thrillers, but I did enjoy this one and raced through it - definitely a page turner.

It's the story of Theo, a psychotherapist who gets a job at The Grove, a psychiatric facility where the infamous Alicia is held. Alicia is a well-known artist who shot her husband and hasn't spoken a word since. Theo is determined to get Alicia talking, even though his private life is a mess (His wife is cheating on him).

The story is fast-paced, well written and easy to read. There is a big twist at the end, for which you have to suspend belief a little bit, but I enjoyed it.

I didn't get on with A Fine Balance. Liked it to begin with but in the end found the misery mawkish and cartoonish.

Eine - I only managed a few pages of The Diary Of A Provincial Lady before deciding I'd rather eat it than read any more of it.

264. The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories by Various

Well, this was an disappointing start to my Christmas themed reading. I only liked one or two of this collection - most of them are really depressing! Not one to get you in a nice Christmassy mood.

@BookWitch I love staying up late to read that sort of thriller in the Christmas holidays thank you - sounds perfect.

The Unknown Ajax by Georgette Heyer
Another of hers which has escaped my notice. Great fun, and I think Hugo might now be my favourite Heyer hero.

102 Chain of Gold by Cassandra Clare
First in yet another Shadowhunters trilogy - this time set in Edwardian London & sequel to the Clockwork Angel series. Great literature it ain't, and it suffers a bit from Issues Bingo, but overall lots of fun & definitely ticked the boxes for angst ridden romance / rollicking adventure / engaging characters. One for fans though - I'm not sure it would make a lot of sense if you hadn't read most of the preceding books including the short story collections.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

I didn't get on with A Fine Balance. Liked it to begin with but in the end found the misery mawkish and cartoonish.

Eine - I only managed a few pages of The Diary Of A Provincial Lady before deciding I'd rather eat it than read any more of it.

Remus - also DNF'd A Fine Balance felt it was piling on misery for misery's sake, oddly, didn't have that reaction to A Little Life though I can see why that argument could be made

Fortuna and NowANearly I hope you both enjoy A Fine Balance, or at least find it memorable, because it's not really a book that you 'enjoy'.

I see where you're coming from Remus it does lay on the misery I'll grant you, but on the other hand it's a book I'll never forget and the quality of the writing carried me along.

I did finish it, but was increasingly irritated. Like Tom and Jerry beating each other over the head with spades: diverting enough for a while, but ultimately wearing.

I thought exactly that about A Little Life, Remus - cartoon-like misery and gratuitous insults piled upon insults for that poor man whose name I have now forgotten (Jude?). But A Fine Balance was much more human and nuanced, in my view.

I'll certainly give it go Des. I bought it about 12 months ago, without realising I'd be almost all audio this year. It's firmly on the serious shelf though.

256. Lullabies for Little Criminals - Heather O'Neill Stream of consciousness coming of age of a very young teen in Montreal. Born to two teenage junkies, Baby lives with her heroin addict father but bounces in and out of a children's home when times get hard. The immature cheery chatty voice hits you in the guts as more and more terrible things happen to a girl too young to understand the implications of her actions. She lives on the fringes of the drug scene and is groomed by a pimp at the same time as having a very innocent and normal teen relationship with a school friend. The lightness of the characters voice versus the heaviness of the subject matter is in very stark contrast and the author pulls off a bleak humour while covering some really serious issues. The writing is excellent but this faded out for me after a really strong start.

Yes agree re a little life it was rather intense with how graphic it was sometimes. Although I was somewhat expecting the ending to go the way it did after that plot twist. Poor Jude

94: Moon Tiger - Penelope Lively

Claudia Hampton lies dying in hospital, her mind crowded with vivid images from her long life as a daughter, mother, sister, writer, and - most importantly - lover of a man she met in Egypt in wartime and whose death she has mourned in secret grief ever since. We learn her story as she drifts through her own history inside her head, in a tumbling freewheel of memories.

This won the Booker in 1987 and is beautifully, poetically written. It was a book club read but to be honest, given the premise I found it a difficult one in the wake of my mum's death. Probably not the right book for me at this point, but it's certainly worth reading.

@PepeLePew

I thought exactly that about A Little Life, Remus - cartoon-like misery and gratuitous insults piled upon insults for that poor man whose name I have now forgotten (Jude?). But A Fine Balance was much more human and nuanced, in my view.

Totally agree Pepe, I found ALL hard going, I could have done with more hope mixed with the despair in AFB particularly at the end, but having demonstrated the evils of the Indian regime so thoroughly Mistry was never going to let his readers off with a 'happy ever after' ending.

A Fine Balance is one of our book club books that has stayed with all of us who read it - we are sort of a club within a club of Fine Balance survivors It is one of the most affecting books I have ever read, but boy is it grim - it makes Thomas Hardy seem like a chuckleathon. I think it is in a different league to A Little Life - the period and hstorical detail makes you feel you are living it. It is an experience as much as read.

Good to see someone else on here has read Moon Tiger - I think it is an underrated Booker win, porbably because it is privileged white woman rather than privileged white man looking back on their life. But Claudia was so awful, sometimes I loved it for that reason but other times she annoyed me too much.

118. The Killer Next Door by Alex Marwood

A woman on the run from mobsters rents a bedsit in a rundown London house (one of those old houses that used to be a big family home and has been converted into 6 bedsits). Most of the residents have something to hide. And one of them is a serial killer.

A pageturner, but it does get quite gruesome in places.

I'm afraid I thought A Little Life was a truly terrible book. I only read it because it was given to me as a leaving present by someone whose opinion I valued. She wrote to me a few months letter apologising that she had relied on reviews and had given up on it when she tried reading it herself!

A few months later....

A Little Life was one I had avoided due to its reputation and ended up reading as a Book Club.

I had so many reservations beforehand that I ended up pleasantly surprised.

My main criticism was the repetitive nature of annual rituals and the extreme sidelining of JB & Malcolm til they felt redundant as characters at all.

Snap, Terp - book 126 was Moon Tiger, by Penelope Lively. Well written - I particularly liked the evocation of Egypt during WWIi.

127. The Land of Maybe: a Faroes Island Year, by Tim Ecott.
Mainly nature writing - there's a lot about birds. As modern nature writing goes, there's an unusual amount about killing it: whales are speared, sheep slaughtered, birds have their necks broken and hares shot. Not always the most soothing of bedtime reading.

128. The Tidal zone, Sarah Moss
Nice safe middle-class family have their lives thrown into dismay when they teenage daughter has a health scare. A really good read. The narrator is a SAHD on the fringes of the academic world, and I enjoyed his views on modern life, marriage, the NHS and academia.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit, I felt the same about JB and Malcolm - it needed a heavier editor.

83. The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud. Borrowed this on the strength of the review upthread (I am sorry I can't remember who and am on my very creaky and un search friendly fire), I thought this sounded like my kind of thing and it was! YA, ghost hunting - despite being set in an alternative present, I felt it had a bit of a Victorian/steampunk kind of vibe. I think I would have really liked this as an early teen.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie, I adore Hugo, and that fabulous set piece with Claude at the end is so so funny. Definitely one of her best.

Yes, Tanaqui. The Claude bit is just brilliant. Love the way that Polyphant rises to the occasion too. Definitely one I'll re-read. Off now to look if there are any others that I've missed.

I have A Little Life sitting unread on my Kindle - not sure it’s going to rise up the TBR list on the basis of the views expressed.....

79. Dead Lions - Mick Herron

This is the second of the Slow Horses series. I wasn’t blown away by the first but had bought the rest of the series in a Kindle offer so thought I would persevere. I enjoyed this one much more. There are two new Slow Horses (M15 agents who have been sidelined because they have cocked-up or have “issues” (such as a drink problem)) and M15 actually want their help in keeping an eye on a Russian oligarch who could prove useful to the UK. Separately, the Russians seem to be implicated in the death of a former low-level agent who worked in Berlin during the Cold War. Things start to get quite busy, the Slow Horses escape from their desks to some action and it all turns quite dangerous.....

Looking forward to the next one now.

I also loved Moon Tiger.