50 Book Challenge 2021 Part One

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the first 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, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

Who's in for this year?

Happy New Year 50 bookers!

I was active on this thread in 2017 and then fell off the wagon. I have so many happy memories of discussion and debate (Margaret Atwood being one I recall) that I feel I would love to join you all again.

I can’t promise to get anything near 50 but the reviews and discussion are so wonderful I hope that you don’t mind me jumping in.

I have completed two so far

1. Val McDermid - Christmas Murder
2. Christopher Brookmyre- Siege Mentality

I so enjoyed the Val McDermid one. It was perfect Christmas holiday reading with a range of short stories which were funny, dark and thoughtful in turn. Highly recommended but wait until next year now.

I finished the last few pages of the Christopher Brookmyre short story - not really a book in fairness so I will probably take it off my list.

I also trialled a short story on audible which I have never used before. It was a Ben Aaranovich one called A Rare Book of Cunning Device and I enjoyed it very much. The narration was perfect and it kept me properly engaged which is something I worry about when listening to audiobooks. I am not convinced that o will pay the monthly cost but maybe I will treat myself to the odd book for the car.

This year I have done something I have NEVER done before and that is so gave two books on the go at once. I was gifted The Historian by
Elizabeth Kostova and while I feel I will enjoy it, if just feels huge and a big of a marathon. I was chatting it round the house and never opening it so I decided to start something else as well - previously I would have spent months feeling guilty and making no progress with anything. Since making a decision to allow myself to hop in and out I have read more of it that I was managing previously and finished a whole other book. It’s a revelation!

So my current reads are

The Historian

And

A Song for the Dark Times by Ian Rankin

I am gleefully whacking books into my kindle - zero limit book purchasing! Well, if it is 1.99 or less i am not counting

Just popping in to keep up to date.

Sonnet so sorry about your cat.

50% in to Ducks, Newburyport and it's brilliant so far. It's quite an experience. The audiobook is wonderfully narrated.

Having an early night with a cuppa and Lupton's Three Hours

I would like to join please...I'm a newcomer! Not started yet, but hoping this will get me reading something other than aibu again!!

Hi everyone, first timer here looking forward to a year of reading ahead. I'm starting with The Body - Bill Bryson, it was a Xmas gift.

1. Behind The Scenes At The Museum by Kate Atkinson

Before I start I will say that I love the Jackson Brodie series and Life After Life is genuinely one of the best books I've read in the last 10 years.

The narrator of this tale is Ruby Lennox, who for the majority of the book is a young girl confused by the adult world around her. We are also given the stories of her grandmother and great grandmother as footnotes.

And I hated it. Hated everything about it. Ruby is IMMENSELY irritating and no one in it is remotely likeable

Not a world I enjoyed immersing myself in at all and nearly DNF'd it twice.

I expect to be disagreed with though, because it has won things and seems to have a good reputation, but I have now read 10 Kate Atkinson's and this is easily my worst.

just finished book number 3. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor. I've never read her work before but heard her mentioned on Backlisted and got a couple of her books based on that. I'm glad I did as this was a brilliant book but dear lord did it ever hit me in the heart at the end.

Another de-lurker for this year. I spent last year stealing book recommendations from this thread, so seems only right to take part.

Although my resolution is not to buy any books (except for book club reads) and re-read the hundreds of books I've already got. I think it was @Piggywaspushed that did this a couple of years ago - stick them in Excel and randomly generate one. I did it for most of last year, and really enjoyed reading books I'd completely forgotten or never actually read in the first place

So in that spirit, book number once is The Count Of Monte Cristo. Actually started it last year, but as I didn't get very far, I'm counting it as a 2021 read. I've got a few classics on the TBR last so doubt I'll make 50, but I'll have fun trying!

karmatsunami, Mrs Palfrey really is so good, isn’t it? My heart is still broken by it, a year later.

Hello, signing in for the year. Started first book last night bookworm by Lucy mangan - a book about children's books.

1. The Silent Patient by Alexis Michaelides*. A thriller in which a psychotherapist tries to learn why a female patient murdered her husband and stopped talking. This was very silly. I didn’t see the twist coming but there was a ridiculous number of red hearings and unfinished threads. The book didn’t give a great impression of therapy, medication, illness or women. However, it was a page Turner and distracted me from the crap news the last few days.

Hello 50 boomers, I don’t think I’ve ever joined a thread this late in January and forgot how quickly they moved. Had a rough end to the year and have missed you all, good to see old faces and new. Having a slow start to this year too I expect but happy to be back in the game.

Thanks as ever southeast and eine might as well kick off by saying Behind the Scenes at the Museum is my favourite Kate Atkinson I didn’t find the characters likeable either but just loved the concept of connecting objects to lived history and thought she executed it brilliantly. It was my first exposure to her prose style which I loved.

@bookgirl1982 I loved Bookworm. Judging from your username I'm guessing you're a similar age to me, in which case it should cover all your childhood favourites - a real trip down memory lane! Although Lucy Mangan does sound a bit irritatingly precocious at times, but I'll forgive her that for reminding me of some great books!

I wish there was an edit function now I’ve called you all boomers. Never used the word!

My first completed book for 2021 is Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee. I've had this on my kindle since 2014 when it was recommended on an earlier incarnation of this thread (by bibliomania I think?), so I am very pleased to have finally got around to reading it. The material is organised both chronologically, in that there are four sections each dealing with a period of Woolf's life, and thematically, in that each of these sections is sub-divided into different topics, and I feel that this structure works well. It is an exceptionally well-researched and well-written biography, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in a balanced view of Woolf's complex personality (but only if you want to commit to a long book - it is a doorstop!). And, as the posters above were saying about A Place of Greater Safety, the end was desperately sad even though I knew what was coming.

Hello to Satsuki and welcome to all the new joiners!

Another fan of Bookworm, it gave me a big dose of nostalgia. I used to practically live in the library when I was younger.

Good to see you back, Satsuki , we missed you. Hope things are OK.

@PepeLePew

karmatsunami, Mrs Palfrey really is so good, isn’t it? My heart is still broken by it, a year later.

After I finished it I just lay in bed staring at the ceiling for a while, not really thinking about what I'd just read but definitely feeling it.

I would love to join. I have just finished Promises, Promises, by Erica James. Really good read.

With lockdown last year I read well over 100 books, but I doubt I will be able to match that this time, so will go for the 50 books

Can I join please? I love the following or last year's books and I'm really committing myself to reading far more this year than I have before. Here are the ones I'm kicking off with the first one is a book I'm physically reading and the other is an audiobook.....

Into the water- Paula Hawkins

Where the crawdaws sing - Delia Owens

Both are a total departure from what I normally read which is historical fiction. However I've completely exhausted Philippa Gregory, Elizabeth Chadwick, Anne O'Brien and the like, so I'm open to everything new this year.

A Tomb With A View by Peter Ross Gentle and interesting wander through some UK graveyards, looking at famous and not so famous graves. Had a block of post it notes next to the bed so I could mark sections to do further research on, as not all descriptions have photos in the book and I wanted to learn more about some people . Wandering around churchyards and churches is a bit of a hobby for me so this inspired me to look forward to doing that when I can.

1. Sweet Pea by C J Skuse

A dark thriller about a serial killer.

The story is told from the perspective of the killer’s - Rhiannon’s - journal.
(Although I’m imagining this “journal” as being more of a mental recounting of the days events, rather than something that Rhiannon is actually physically writing. It’d be very incriminating if it was an actual physical journal and someone found it)

By day, Rhiannon lives a seemingly normal life, she lives with her boyfriend and has an ordinary job at the local newspaper.
But secretly, she’s making kill lists in her head - almost every journal entry starts with one of these. And every now and then, she’s out there planning a murder. Which are described quite explicitly, as is Rhiannon’s sex life.
And so far, Rhiannon’s doing a good job of pretending to be a normal person and getting away with murder.

The ending would have been a bit of a cliffhanger, except that the version I have included the first chapter of the sequel, which follows straight on from the final chapter of Sweet Pea and resolves the cliffhanger ending.

A good page turner on the whole.

Piranesi sounds like something I would love but was so bitterly disappointed in The Starless Sea last year, I've been put off this genre.

Hello Satsuki, how lovely to see you back. And sorry to disagree with your very first post but I'm firmly with Eine on Behind the Scenes at the Museum. I've given Kate Atkinson a few goes, but just can't get on with her. I certainly don't seek unrelenting cheerfulness in my reading, but there's something about the particular tone of the negativity in her work that is a complete turn off for me, and then I can't see past it to the good things that are undoubtedly there.

@dementedma The Starless Sea was my book clubs last read of 2020 and I hated it.
Pages and pages of endless description with no real advancement of plot; a cartoon evil villain with a fur coat and a completely improbable love story between two characters who had hardly spoken two words to each other beforehand.

I skim read large portions. Completely put me off the genre also!