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.

That's interesting Tanaqui, I read Wonder when my girls did at around 11 years old but I was never quite sure where Auggie and Me fitted in because it didn't look like a sequel. I might give it a go at some point. I believe there's a third book too...
Thanks for the graphic novel heads up.

63. Vox by Christina Dalcher

I bought this ages ago and it didn't download so slipped off my time-of-purchase order reading list. One of a number of "The Handmaid's Tale"-alikes put out there over the past few years, I'm afraid this was probably the worst of the genre I've read. I quite liked the initial premise (women and girls are fitted with a counter that only allows them to speak 100 words per day before they get an electric shock), but right from the beginning the set-up felt implausible. The subjugation of women is achieved very quickly; it's only in the US; no-one seems to get out of the country even though it seems that initially at least that would have been possible. And then halfway through it morphs into a rollercoaster thriller that again all happens far too quickly, is virtually impossible to follow (are they trying to use a serum? A toxin?) and again totally implausible (how on earth do these people under close surveillance get all over a government building?). And to top it all off the ending is ridiculously trite and unrealistically neat. Having said all that, I read it quickly and occasionally found myself enjoying it, but never got properly immersed because it was just all so silly.

84: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower - Marcel Proust trans. James Grieve

Book 2 of À la recherche du temps perdu which I'm (slowly) working my way through in the company of a few reading friends. Young Marcel finally travels to the seaside resort of Balbec and is enraptured by the gang of young girls which includes Albertine, who is to become his great love. We also meet Baron Charlus for the first time in this volume.

This is generally regarded as a weak link in the canon and tbh I found it rather hard going, as Marcel (who is wet and a weed) obsesses never-endingly about les girls and their rosy cheeks and impudent behaviour

Hoping Vol 3 turns it round again.

I've also recently had to increase the font size on my kindle. Sigh. Feeling old!

I felt the same @Welshwabbit

Interesting start, followed by illogical world building and the ending of a cheap over the top thriller.

Got a bit more used to the glasses, although they are a nightmare at work because of a constant need to keep refocusing and moving my laptop about!

Anyway, finished CJ Tudor's most recent one , The Other People. They are easy read mysteries. All a bit silly with some supernatural stupidity flung in. (It's like low rent magical realism, I guess) but readable enough. She has dropped the annoying Americanisms of previous books, at least!

I picked up a paperback from the 1980s this week. There’s no way I can read the font even with taking my varifocals off and holding it two inches from my nose.

I'm the opposite, I have to take my varifocals off to read the very small print as they don't work and I can't read it. If I need to read the very small print on medicine bottles and things like that they are useless.

For complicated reasons there is no electric light in my bedroom so I rely a lot on the light on my kindle (and charge it up a lot!)

I see Douglas Stuart has won the Booker Prize with Shuggie Bain. Well done to him!

241. Leave the World Behind - Rumaan Alam A family with teenage kids rent a remote luxury home for a holiday. They receive a knock on the door late at night from a couple who claim to own the home. They were in the city when a black out occurred and all cell signal is down. Unsure what is going on they return home to a strange dynamic of who has a right to be in the house.

This is a study of race and class, the difficulty of being a parent and who to trust in moments of crisis. This had the potential to stray into trashy thriller territory, but stayed firmly as a character study and look at relationships.

242. The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman A band of meddling pensioners in posh sheltered accommodation work on cold cases, but after a death on site they involve themselves in the police investigation.

An easy fairly lighthearted read, but towards the end I felt a bit lost as to who was who and what was what and ultimately I didn't care.

Hello everyone, I dropped off the threads a while ago and never managed to catch up. I'm still reading though!

Just finished book number 66:

Apeirogon by Colum McCann. Oh my goodness. What a read. It took me a month. Absolutely fabulous and I thoroughly recommend it. It's not an easy read though. Based on the true story of a Palestinian father and Israeli father whose daughters are both killed as a result of the Occupation. It's a book that is really, really worth persevering with.

Hi EmGee, welcome back!

164. The Crown In Crisis by Alexander Lerman

I've been watching The Crown recently, and I was curious to know more about what led to Edward VIII's abdication.

I think the thought that comes to most people is that "it was because of Wallis" but the truth is more complex.

The reality was that Edward was a louche, spoiled, selfish, dilettante with zero interest in the job and even less aptitude.

It is quite something and apparently true, that his fathers courtiers, during George V's reign, prayed that he would fall on his horse and break his neck, thus making Bertie the heir, and solved the issue.

His own father didn't think he'd last a year as King.

Considering the reverence with which the Royals were then held in the early part of the 20th Century, Edward must have been quite the dickhead.

Dense, and slow in parts, I wasn't riveted to it and struggled in part, but still worthwhile.

I think I am both politics and Royals fatigued until 2021 though

(not including my current Audible, the dulcet tones of Barack Obama)

Has anyone read Shuggie Bain? Is it good?

73. The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie. Rather sub par imo, but again, would be good filmed- I vaguely think it was on TV recently ish, but I didn't see it.

My DM is reading it and loves it tanaqui.

I've read Shuggie Bain recently and thought it was very good.

85: In a Summer Season - Elizabeth Taylor

First published in 1961. Widowed Kate, mother to 20-something Tom and 16-year-old Louisa, has married Dermot, ten years her junior, and together they live in the comfortable, well-tended home, complete with cook and gardener, which she shared with her late husband in the moneyed stockbroker belt. Dermot is a consciously-charming drifter, always claiming to be on the lookout for work though well aware that Kate's funds mean he can continue to idle away his time. Taylor's very good at skewering their co-dependent relationship, driven by sex, and the age disparity that means Kate often seems more like Dermot's mother than an equal partner.

Over the course of a summer, tensions grow when a widowed neighbour, Charles, an old friend of Kate's and her late husband, returns to the neighbourhood with his daughter, Araminta.

I'm very fond of Elizabeth Taylor's subtle, well-crafted novels and this one is no exception - the supporting characters (Kate's children, the elderly Aunt Ethel, who lives with them, and the wonderful cook, Mrs Meakins) are also beautifully drawn. There are moments of dry humour to cherish but for me the whole novel was shot through with deep sadness. Still enjoyable, though.

Thanks Piggy and Fortuna, I will put it on my list. If I ever manage to read a proper book again!

74. Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie. I like this Poirot, and would recommend - there is one shocking racist moment (and I generally will adjust for attitudes of the time), so maybe just be aware of that.

85. Surrounded by Idiots - Thomas Erikson

Behavioural workplace psychology based around four personality types (red, blue, yellow and green - basically Basil Fawlty, Eeyore, Tigger and Piglet). I'm not sure how much validity it has, given that it's ultimately based on the ancient Hippocratic personality profiles, and most people are a mixture of types anyway - but it was very amusing spotting people you know in the descriptions of the types. And it does help you understand how clashes with others often arise from fundamentally different priorities and preferences. I'm certainly going to try to be a slightly less terrifying red-blue to the greens in my life

You are awful (but I like you): Travels through unloved Britain by Tim Moore.

Moore travels through some of the more unpopular/unattractive places in Britain. He stays in less popular places and visits less salubrious establishments though he does take the time to go to an award winning hair dresser in one of the towns he goes to. I wondered how accurate his descriptions were until he went to a place where I used to live and portrayed it extremely accurately, if anything he was too nice about it as the reality was much worse. Everything he said about it was true as it he discussed aspects of the place that I know to be the case having seen it myself first hand. The book was written 7 years ago now but it has stood the test of time.

The title might make you think it's a depressing book but he has a good sense of humour which comes through in the books. Bill Bryson readers might well like this one. 4 stars.

Sad to hear Jan Morris has died. I loved her books.

Coronation Everest is the only Jan Morris I've read. It's excellent.

Yep I loved Everest which I think I read on your recommendation, Remus. I wasn't aware of much of her life story, though - it sounds fascinating.

Anyway I'm racing towards the halfway point

24. Careless Love - Peter Guralnick

Second volume of this incredible Elvis Presley biog, covering his return from military service to his death. It's equally fascinating, horrifying and sad - his behaviour was awful in many ways but he was clearly very unhappy and insecure and unable to escape from the life he found himself in.

The Everest book was great and I’ve read much of her other travel writing. Most of all I loved her book on Wales, The First Place - she was very special here in Wales, a bit of a National Treasure to many.

165. Devolution by Max Brooks

A bunch of thinly drawn intensely unlikeable woke hipster numpties are cut off when a natural disaster compromises their elite community and they deservedly become prey to hidden danger.

Bad. Bad and really hard to give a shit about. I believe Remus also hated it but I already had bought it then.

Shame as World War Z was one of the highlights of my year the year I read it.