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?

Hello Satsuki, welcome back!

I'm having an unfortunate start to the year. Was reading Life Events, by Karolina Waclawiak but finding it just too gruelling. It's a book about a depressed woman becoming a death doula so honestly, not sure what I was thinking! Got about a fifth of the way through and gave up, will try again another time.

Worryingly, next up is The Starless Sea, by Erin Morgenstern which is a library book with a long list of people waiting for it, so it's now or never. For those that hated it, did you discover that pretty quickly or was it good part of the way through?

Really not sure what to do next! Might have to re-start more gently with Bookworm.

Welshwabbit we share a wheelhouse . Have put The Truants on my TBR.

@noodlezoodle I realised about 50 pages in before I realised it probably wasn’t going to be my cup of tea but it took about half of the book before I thought I really do not like this.

It’s easy to skim read just skip past all of the ludicrous descriptions of boring room after boring room until something actually happens

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit - re "Request : I want something magicky/witchy but grown up"

Have you read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell? It's a brilliant book that is magicky and also well written, witty literature for adults.

Yay, I have finished a book!

1. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Wolf
Adapted from a lecture she gave to young women students at Cambridge and published in 1928, Virginia Wolf contemplates the historical and 'modern' day role of women in fiction. The room she talks about is the fact that women authors such as Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters did not have a room of their own in which they could write but had to write in the same room as all the family and deal with all the interruptions of the household going on around them.
This was a good read (though difficult at times) and is still prescient, considering it was written nearly 100 years ago now. I loved the use of Shakespeare's imaginary sister who had just as much talent as her brother but because she was a woman, could not follow in his path and in Woolf's imagination, died doing so.

On to Mountains of the Mind by my top hot nature writing crush Robert (male gaze, adventurer but I like him anyway) Macfarlane. It's the only one of his I have never read, plus I am reading The Cossacks by Tolstoy on my Kindle because they discussed it on A Good Read recently and I am a sucker for reading books they discuss on there.

Also will have to get hold of a copy of The Truants. It sounds amazing and I read the start on Amazon and now need to read the rest quite urgently...

I’m giving jonathan strange another go I think after enjoying Piranesi so much. Just have to find it...

Hi noodle and welcome newcomers

I'd love to join you please.

1. Firewatching by Russ Thomas

[quote CoteDAzur]@EineReiseDurchDieZeit - re "Request : I want something magicky/witchy but grown up"

Have you read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell? It's a brilliant book that is magicky and also well written, witty literature for adults.[/quote]
Yes. I loved it.

@noodlezoodle

About a third of the way in when none of the strands gelled in tone and I still didn't know what was going on

Mountains of the Mind is really good. Much less naval gazing than his others.

whippet Did you see the Christmas episode of Backlisted on the Dark is Rising? Your hot nature writing crush was on it.

Eine, I don't know if this suggestion is a bit off, but you might like Thornyhold by Mary Stewart (re witches, which autocorrected to quiches originally ).

A book about quiches sounds good, although possibly a bit cheesy.

OMG can I do this ladies.... started one yesterday ☺️

Good Me Bad Me by Ali Land

brilliant so far 🎉

I didn't realise you had also taught, FortunaMajor! DS is classed as "severely sight impaired/blind", but does still have some vision left which he tries at every opportunity to use! Because of this, he's not progressed with Braille as fast as he might have done if he were completely blind, but it's quite likely that he'll use it more when he gets older because it's so much more efficient than struggling to read poorly/inadequately-enlarged texts. He has some giant print books (N48, i.e. 48pt text!) which we get from a Guide Dogs scheme - the catalogue is quite limited, but at least you can have books customised to your exact requirements (text size, typeface, line spacing, etc) and they cost exactly the same as the "standard" editions do. He reads ebooks at school thanks to an RNIB online library that he had access to. We'd never manage Harry Potter otherwise - it would be several volumes of A4 books otherwise!

He's recently started listening to audiobooks and loves them! He prefers CDs because it's easier for him to choose one and put it on independently - digital devices are harder for him to use and we're not leaving him with a tablet because he'd be up half the night playing Minecraft. The choice is pretty limited, though, so I think we'll have to move to digital soon. I also saw that snobbish thread about audiobooks recently, and was utterly enraged by it, but was greatly heartened by all the lovely 50 bookers rushing to defend audiobooks as proper reading!

I'd like to join in please. I joined for the first time last year and didn't make it past the end of January! And the books I said were on my TBR list are still on it now... I read 34ish books in 2020 but had a lull when lockdown, home schooling and WFH kicked in, which is where I am again tomorrow but I'll do my best to get to as close to 50 as possible.
Book 1 was Pine by Francine Toon, which I was quite disappointed with as it wasn't what I was expecting.
I've just started Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire by Akala.

I forgot to say thank you to southeast for starting the new thread (and keeping us all going).

2: The Ratline - Philippe Sands

I've had a vague idea, which I probably won't stick to, of alternating fiction and non-fiction, so book no. 2 is an unforgettable investigation, both gripping and harrowing, of a wartime story. Philippe Sands, author of East West Street (which I haven't read, but now will) traces the WW2 career of senior Nazi Otto von Wächter, who set up and ran the ghetto in Krakow with brutal efficiency, sending thousands of Jews to their deaths. Sands happened to meet Otto's son, The now-elderly, charming Horst von Wächter, during the research for his first book, and Otto's denial of his father's guilt, and equivocal stance towards his parents' Nazi affiliations (his mother Charlotte was also a staunch Party faithful) is a troubling thread running through the book.

It's also a kind of family saga, as Sands sifts through Horst's archive of his mother's papers, letters and photographs, and a pacy detective story, tracing von Wächter's disappearance after the war and mysterious death in a hospital in Rome. There are some seriously grim aspects to the narrative here, and no easy answers, but I just couldn't put this down. In fact, I'm off to download the podcast that preceded the book.

and Otto's denial of his father's guilt

.....I mean Horst's denial. Anyway, it's a really great read.

I read that last year Terps I found it misnamed, there is very little about the actual Ratline and its processes at all.

It was good though.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

A book about quiches sounds good, although possibly a bit cheesy.

Boom-Tish!

Done Thornyhold mackerella

@ForthFitzRoyFaroes

Eine what about Blackberry Wine by Joanne Harris? Haven't read it for years, but it would fit the bill for cosy but grown up magic, and may, if I remember correctly, feature a cottage.

Oh yes, good call.

Eine Naomi Novik? I enjoyed Uprooted and Spinning Silver

@RavenclawesomeCrone

I am fancying a decent book on witches and witchcraft (fiction) I looked at A Discovery of Witches and couldn't decide if it was trashy or not.

It is . I thought it was awful but at the same time found it completely compelling and couldn't put it down! It was almost as though..... I was under a spell..... [side eyes Deborah whats-her-name]

@noodlezoodle I quite enjoyed the Starless Sea although it was ultimately frustrating. I loved the imagery and the first half. It definitely got bogged down in the second half where you realise there isn't much of a plot as such and feel like you're wading through the sea itself but not really getting any further. I think the frustration rises out of thinking there is a decent story in there somewhere, it just needed a lot of editing.

1. The Darkness - Ragnar Jonasson. Icelandic crime which someone (sorry have lost track of who) recommended earlier in the thread. This was very bleak with amazing descriptions of Iceland, which is on my holiday wish list. I was pretty surprised by the ending. Would definitely read more in the series so thanks book threaders!

1. From The Shadows by Lisa Hartley

This is the third in a series about DS Catherine Bishop who is based in Lincoln. I did not think it was as good as the first two, but an easy read and a good story. Bishop goes undercover to investigate the death of a former policeman who is living on the streets whilst struggling with the emotional fallout of a previous investigation.

1. wintering by Katherine May

I thought this was absolutely beautiful. It's about how humans in general, and the writer in particular survive actual and metaphorical winter. It's about pulling in, slowing down, shoring up. It meanders in exactly the was I like books like this to meander and wanders through history, folklore, science, geography, nature, and psychology. I really loved it. Definitely one to keep and read again.