50 Book Challenge 2020 Part Eleven

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the eleventh (and final!) thread of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge was to read fifty books (or more!) in 2020, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, and it's still not too late to delurk and tell us your reading highlights and lowlights of the year.

Lovely to see another familiar face Bibliomania

FGS just had a message from my 89 year old mother, her vaccination appointment has been cancelled for "at least two months"
Not sure quite what to get drunk on tonight.

Middlemarch is great, Indigo, hope you enjoy it. I read it for the second time in 2019 after a 30 year gap and was amazed how much of the essence of it I had remembered. I may have seen the TV adaptation in the meantime admittedly ..

Welcome Maria and welcome back Sonnet, nice to see you again.

Today I just squeaked in with my 100th book - yay! An update on the final five:

96. Mrs Bridge by Evan S Connell
    This is a touching, sometimes sad and sometimes comic account of the life of Mrs Bridge, a suburban housewife in Kansas, married to a lawyer and basically a decent soul trapped, however, by convention and social expectations. She is never overtly unkind or confrontational but her limitations are conveyed subtly through her speech and thoughts. It's a really nuanced portrayal, cleverly done, and her unspoken struggles to get the better of her "spirited" son are very amusing.
    Mr Bridge is a shadowy character, as much to his wife as to the reader. I'm looking forward to reading Mr Bridge, the sequel, soon.

97. Cotillion by Georgette Heyer.
    The second of hers I've read. It was amusing but I'm not sure I'll be returning for more. Christoper Brookmyre is more my thing for an easy entertaining read.

98. Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher.
    I'd been saving this up to read over Christmas and whizzed through it in no time. More my late mum's kind of book (she loved Catherine Cookson, Miss Read, Jean Plaidy and similar) but quite comforting at the end of a really difficult year. Wouldn't it be lovely if the world was really like this? Teenagers with rosy cheeks wrapped in home-made scarves and speaking like characters from a 1940s morale-boosting film. Always a good-tempered attractve woman in the kitchen cheerfully whipping up a delicious supper for unexpected guests. Happiness and hope for the future at the end. Nothing to frighten the horses here and an ideal gift for someone who, as my mum did, has The People's Friend as their magazine of choice. I actually did enjoy it as a one-off; RP is good at what she does without a doubt.

99. The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
    This was good fun. I liked the author's depiction of the older characters in the book who were sharp, funny and nobody's fools. Tightly plotted and with some funny moments too.

100. V for Victory by Lissa Evans
     The third in the series. I enjoyed Old Baggage and Crooked Heart and this did not disappoint. Noel is a brilliant character with some excellent dialogue and Vee really grows on you as time goes on. I also liked the way Mattie lived on in several people's memories. Lissa Evans is fascinated by the period and captures the reality of the nightly bombing of London, the food shortages and the general feel of the time very well (as far as I can tell). There's a compassion underlying her portrayal of the various eccentric characters in the boarding house which I liked too.

I think my next book will be Shuggie Bain. Very different and I'm looking forward to it.

Oh that's tough betts I hope there's something to be done to sort things

Thanks.

Back to books, what different reading challenges are people doing - random read a set number, themes, fiction/non fiction etc?

My challenge to be honest betts is to slow down, not focus on numbers, not read outside of weekends, and knock a few classics out

I'm going for 100 again. Previously I've always stuck around 75 or so but 100 was a manageable number for me this year.

I'm planning to read a book in French every couple of months. I don't think I'd realistically achieve any more than that. I only managed one this year so six would be a decent step up.

And although I read very little non-fiction normally, I so enjoyed The World I Fell Out Of and The Five, both recommended on this thread, so I will look out for other non-fiction suggestions and give them a chance this year.

I really should cut back on buying new books and focus on the teetering TBR pile I already have. That's not a resolution though, just a slightly guilty feeling.

I want to not buy books, be more selective about what I read and rotate through the different genres I have on my Kindle.

Sorry to hear that, betts.

My challenge as ever is not to overthink things. The one thing I'm doing is to read through some of the vintage books I've bought in the past couple of years. I've picked out twelve, some ambitious and some very light, but they're all books I want to read or think will be fun.

So sorry @Betts. May this new year bring lots of vaccines for all that need it quickly and we get to hug family soon (and in my case raid my parents awesome book collection which I’ve missed this year!).

I’m going for 80 books. I’d like to read more classics and also more silly thrillers that keep me up turning pages (better then staying up scrolling news feeds as has been the case this year).

The big one for me with a 600 strong TBR is after a few last minute Amazon purchases from the favourites here (negative capability and the other americans) I’ve turned off one click and I’m going to go a whole year hopefully just purchasing from book shops / charity shops.

Completely random for me Betts.

I wrote a list of 50 books last January and I've read 41 of them. I still want to read 7 of those left.

Book club will account for 24 books as we are doing a planned extended list on top of the monthly choices.

I've very easily swayed by recs on these threads. I'll sit with a notebook and go though the bolds and see what appeals to start the year.

If the library ever reopens I'll also be swayed by what's available there.

I'm not making a number target this year. I'll go with the flow. I'm stupidly competitive (mostly with myself) but I have a few bricks to tackle.

My only plan is more print books, more non-fiction and the ever promised and rarely kept more classics pledge.

My last book of the year is

125. The Meg by Steve Alten

A diving expedition in the Mariana Trench goes wrong, and results in a giant megladon (prehistoric ancestor of the great white shark) being brought up out of the deeps to surface waters.

There’s a lot of action, as the giant Meg shark roams the Pacific, attacking plenty of ships and eating unlucky people as it goes. The main character is part of a group that’s hoping to trap the Meg in a man made sea loch for study, and there’s other groups wanting to kill the Meg before it causes more damage.

It’s not a taxing read, but it’s good action packed fun for the most part, if a bit gory in parts.

Disappointingly, the last 75 pages or so were a prequel novella. And really, no surprises in that, as the significant events in the prequel were covered briefly in the main story.

I'm ending the year on 57, I'm happy with that

Top six fiction:
Ducks, Newburyport - Lucy Ellmann
Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell
The Stand - Stephen King
Bel Canto - Ann Patchett
Normal People - Sally Rooney
Where the Crawdads Sing - Delia Owens

Top four non-fiction:
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory - Caitlin Doughty
To Throw Away Unopened - Viv Albertine
Mindfxck - Christopher Wiley
Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea - Barbara Demick

My stats:
68% female / 32% male
54% fiction / 46% non-fiction

Happy new year everyone and see you on the new thread!

Sorry to hear about your mums vaccination appointment betts. I hope things move more quickly than the letter suggests.

I know a few people who’ve had one dose of the Pfizer vaccine and were waiting for their second dose, goodness knows what will be happening with that now.

I think I'm going to try and not use Goodreads (it's so convenient though) and keep my own records so I don't focus on a number.

@WillYouStopNamingNutcrackers

BLEAK. HOUSE. START NOW IF POSSIBLE

Ha! I was actually thinking of that or Vanity Fair, to start the year off with a bang and to knock off one of the big ones.

They are both brilliant to be fair. I would still go Bleak House

Sold!

I'm not doing a whole list as have never mastered how to save and add to an earlier list - might try to work that out this year.

So just my favourites, not necessarily outstanding literary works but the books I most enjoyed this year, and in order of reading:

The Friendly Ones Philip Hensher
Visitation Jenny Erpenbeck
When Will There Be Good News? Kate Atkinson
Olive Kitteridge Elizabeth Strout
This Thing Of Darkness Harry Thompson
The World I Fell Out Of Melanie Reid
Doctor Thorne Anthony Trollope
The Restraint of Beasts Magnus Mills
The Five Halle Rubenhold
American Dirt Jeanine Cummins
The Dutch House Ann Patchett
The Color Purple Alice Walker
Old Baggage (trilogy) Lissa Evans
Hamnet Maggie O'Farrell
Restoration Rose Tremain
The Beekeeper of Aleppo Christy Lefteri
Leonard and Hungry Paul Ronan Hession
Mrs Bridge Evan S Connell
The Thursday Murder Club Richard Osman

Plus Ann Cleeves' Vera series and James Herriot's vet books. Nice escapist stuff.

I think that's me done for 2020. The All Creatures Great And Small Christmas special is saved up and waiting to watch with a glass of something nice. Thought I would end the year on a happy note.

All the best for 2021 - hopefully it will be a better year for everyone - and looking forward to lots more book chat on here. This has been a lovely place to spend time away from all the madness. I can't say how much I have appreciated it so thank you all

Remus "One of the characters fell over on his fanny at one point."

Didn't his Fanny mind awfully?

I'm going to carry on with reading Proust.

Otherwise, just keep reading generally

Sorry to hear about your DM's vaccination news, bett - it's such a worry.

As for my resolutions, I've got a long real-life to do list next year (sell house / move country / go back to work, all to be negotiated around the pandemic ). So I suspect I'll be reading a lot less in total, and more on the Kindle, as my physical books will be taking their time circumnavigating the globe. I only hit 100 books this year because of listening to so much on audio while doing housework and going on long walks, and that'll be out the window. I'm going to try really hard not to focus on the numbers and not be put off longer books just because they bring the total down.

Thanks to everyone for being such good company this year, it's great to have a crew of sympathetic ears who actually want to hear about what you've been reading!

I'll update some time before midnight as I'm still hoping to finish my last book and make it a pleasing 99 books for this year. It's a bit anti-social to sit reading on NYE when the rest of my family will want to party (quietly, at home, in tier 4), so this is unlikely to happen! Maybe one of my resolutions for next year should be to focus less on the numbers (once I've reached 50) .

Thanks for the heads up about The Way of All Flesh - I hadn't clocked that is by Chris Brookmyre and his wife, so that's going straight in the TBR list!

Middlemarch is one of my top 5 books of all time, Indigo - I hope you enjoy it!

I also read Magpie Murders last year and loved it - it's both a very tricksy narrative and a brilliant homage to golden age detective fiction. Hope you enjoy it, Sonnet!

Sorry to hear about your mum, betts - hope someone somewhere pulls their finger out and moves her up the list

Thanks for allowing us a last hurrah of 2020, @southeastdweller! Here's my final list, standouts in bold (no really stinking stinkers, but I wouldn't recommend Vox to anyone...).

1. Autumn Term – Antonia Forest
2. Mutual Admiration Society – Mo Moulton
3. Swan Song – Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott
4. This Must be the Place – Maggie O’Farrell
5. The Bookshop – Penelope Fitzgerald
6. A Place Called Winter – Patrick Gale
7. The Reunion – Guillaume Musso
8. Black Water Lilies – Michel Bussi
9. Wilful Blindness – Margaret Heffernan
10. The Last Painting of Sara de Vos – Dominic Smith
11. The Farm – Joanne Ramos
12. The High Window – Raymond Chandler
13. The Lady in the Lake – Raymond Chandler
14. The Little Sister – Raymond Chandler
15. She Lies in Wait – Gytha Lodge
16. The Last Anniversary – Liane Moriarty
17. Bitter Orange – Claire Fuller
18. The Lost Man – Jane Harper
19. What Red Was – Rosie Price
20. Keeping an Eye Open – Julian Barnes
21. Heartburn – Nora Ephron
22. Crooked Heart – Lissa Evans
23. Old Baggage – Lissa Evans
24. A View of the Harbour – Elizabeth Taylor
25. The Crow Trap – Ann Cleeves
26. Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects: Part 1 – Giorgio Vasari
27. Telling Tales – Ann Cleeves
28. The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion
29. Burial Rites – Hannah Kent
30. How the Dead Speak – Val McDermid
31. Idaho – Emily Ruskovich
32. After the Party – Cressida Connolly
33. Miss Happiness and Miss Flower – Rumer Godden
34. Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects: Part 2 – Giorgio Vasari
35. French Exit - Patrick DeWitt
36. Hidden Depths – Ann Cleeves
37. Expectation – Anna Hope
38. Silent Voices – Ann Cleeves
39. Girl, Woman, Other - Bernardine Evaristo
40. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont - Elizabeth Taylor
41. Warlight - Michael Ondaatje
42. Closed Circles – Viveca Sten
43. Things Can Only Get Worse – John O’Farrell
44. Guiltless – Viveca Sten
45. Cassandra at the Wedding – Dorothy Baker
46. The Glass Room – Ann Cleeves
47. The Loney – Andrew Michael Hurley
48. The Colour of Murder – Julian Symons
49. My Name is Lucy Barton - Elizabeth Strout
50. Tonight You’re Dead – Viveca Sten
51. Country Girls – Edna O’Brien
52. The Lonely Girl – Edna O’Brien
53. Girls In Their Married Bliss - Edna O’Brien
54. The Crossing Places – Elly Griffiths
55. Tell It To the Bees – Fiona Shaw
56. Harbour Street – Ann Cleeves
57. The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson
58. In the Heat of the Moment – Viveca Sten
59. Hag-Seed – Margaret Atwood
60. The Moth Catcher – Ann Cleeves
61. The Immortalists – Chloe Benjamin
62. Broken Greek – Pete Paphides
63. Vox – Christina Dalcher
64. Saints of the Shadow Bible – Ian Rankin
65. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Rebecca Skloot
66. In Harm’s Way – Viveca Sten
67. Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects: Part 3 – Giorgio Vasari
68. Now We Shall Be Entirely Free - Andrew Miller
69. The Seagull – Ann Cleeves
70. The Dark Is Rising – Susan Cooper
71. Black Narcissus – Rumer Godden
72. Human kind – Rutger Bregman

My final review. Human kind by Rutger Bregman is sub-titled "A Hopeful History" and it is indeed that - a race through notable events and psychological experiments in human history, with the aim of showing that human nature is inherently good rather than inherently bad or selfish. It's quite journalistic and chatty in style, and Bregman takes swipes at a few other popular authors of a similar type along the way (particularly Malcolm Gladwell). I don't feel I know enough about most of the civilizations or experiments discussed to know whether Bregman's thesis is convincing, but a positive view of human nature was kind of what I needed after this year so I was happy just to be drawn in. The parts I found most interesting were the section on war and combat, where Bregman convincingly explains that a vast majority of soldiers simply do not fire their weapons when there is a significant risk of hitting enemy combatants, and the "non-complementary" section at the end, particularly the parts about the most effective prison systems in preventing recidivism. Thought-provoking and worth a read.

My ultimate total of 72 is three less than last year, although I think I should be able to count at least three more because the final volume of Vasari was over 1000 pages by itself. And together with homeschooling, very busy work and staff management on top of my actual job (plus training to be a judge!), I'm pretty pleased with that total.

73% female, 27% male (I keep trying to get the male numbers up but I'm not doing very well). I've also done significantly worse than last year in reading books by BAME authors and translated works (other than some French and Swedish detective novels), which I suspect resulted from seeking the comfort of the familiar.

My favourite fiction book of the year was The Last Painting of Sara De Vos by Dominic Smith, closely followed by After the Party by Cressida Connolly, Swan Song by Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott and Warlight by Michael Ondaatje. I didn't read a great deal of non-fiction (and what I did was mostly Vasari) but The Year of Magical Thinking was head and shoulders above everything else.

Thanks to everyone on this thread for your company in this strangest of years; welcome to the new and returning members and here's to a much better 2021. I'm hoping to get to 75 this year which will make nary a dent in my TBR pile...