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?

1. Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith - so many people have reviewed this on various threads on here. It started and finished well, the middle 600 pages kind of lost their way and it was too long in the end. But still an enjoyable read overall (even if I did skim read some of it)

11. The Return of the Railway Children by Lou Kuenzler

Sequel to The Railway Children. The title is a bit misleading because while the original Railway Children do feature in the book as adults, the focus of the book is on a new group of children staying at Three Chimneys. The plot is really just a rehash of the original - lots of the same events happen just updated for a WW2 setting e.g they have to stop the train with home made flags but this time it’s due to metal from a crashed plane blocking the line and the flags are made from parachute material. The book was fine but I’m not sure I really see the need for it, but if it encourages children to seek out the original then that’s good.

1)The Five by Hallie Rubenhold
2)The Last Thing to Burn by Will Dean

The Five was every bit as good as I had heard. A biography of the five victims of Jack the Ripper, full of vivid detail, really bringing the stories to life. I really admired the author's work to bring these women back into the centre of their own stories. She also exposed how fragile was a working class woman's position in society and how few safety nets there were. It was a really good read.

The Last Thing to Burn was an ARC - I am trying to work my way through a large number of these at present. Thanh is a young Vietnamese woman, trafficked to the UK and then imprisoned for many years by an English farmer who forces her into marriage. For me, it was really gratuitously unpleasant and seedy. I couldn't wait to finish it.

On to another ARC now 'Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars'

1. Home Fire - Kamila Shamsie

Older sister Isma takes on the upbringing of twins Parvaiz and Aneeka after the death of their mother and abandonment by their jihadist father. The book starts with Isma studying in the USA, Aneeka studying at the LSE and Parvaiz in Raqqa having been radicalised. The chance meeting of Eamonn and Isma bring the fates of these families in to collision.

I enjoyed this, the characters were well drawn and it was interesting to see two very different types of British Muslim families portrayed. The themes of love, grief, family, loyalty were dealt with and brought out well. I thought the ending was less well executed and seemed slightly rushed but overall would recommend.

Book 4 was a non-fiction according to my vague self-imposed New Year resolution:

4: London Fog: The Biography - Christine L. Corton

Thanks to my fascination with all things London, I've had this on the tbr pile for ages and had my fingers crossed that it'd be a good one...well, it was. A superb study of the historical and cultural life of the London pea-souper, 'London ivy', 'London particular', call it what you will; records of its mysterious, malign presence go back to the Elizabethan era, and the last true London fog finally lifted from the capital in 1962, never to return, thanks (finally) to long-delayed clean air legislation.

In between those times, it was made famous/notorious in literature (by Dickens obviously, but also RL Stevenson, Conrad, Henry James, Galsworthy, Marie Belloc Lowndes and many more); art (Monet, Whistler, Turner); photography; Punch cartoons; cinema; pulp fiction and so on - there are many wonderful illustrations in this book which are a joy alone.

I was also gripped by the socio-historical aspects of the fog, such as the danger for women going out alone in it (it's quite hard for us nowadays to appreciate, I think, the total sensory deprivation of a pea-souper, but you literally couldn't see a hand in front of your face and it could be as black as night at 10 in the morning), and the huge death-toll that followed a bad fog - one doctor thought the 1952 fog, one of the worst of the 20th c, could have contributed to 12,000 excess deaths. It was also instructive to discover - when pollution in London is again such a live issue - just how reluctant the governments of the day were to enact any kind of really effective legislation to remedy matters.
It's taken me rather a long time to finish this, but it was a really satisfying read (and has made me want to put lots more on the tbr list )

I've just finished book No. 1 'Hamnet' by Maggie O'Farrell. I'm guilty of racing through books sometimes, in my eagerness to get to the end of the story and find out what happened. In fact, I often enjoy books more the second time around because I'm more relaxed and take my time and pick up on all of the little details I missed out on first time around. Anyway, I took my time with 'Hamnet' - it's not the kind of book you race through. What a wonderful book! So many themes skillfully woven together - bereavement and its aftermath, marriage difficulties, family relationships, living in close proximity to your in-laws (I'm sure lots of Mumsnetters could relate to this ), domestic violence, a wicked stepmother, etc. The book has a very contemporary feel, even though it's set in Shakespearean England. Although Shakespeare features in the book, he is increasingly absent - mostly away in London, writing and staging his plays. The main character Agnes is incredibly drawn - she's so vivid that I'm struggling to cope with the fact that she is 'merely' a fictional character. I expect to walk out of my house and find her outside, tending to her garden and listening out for Hamnet. Lots of other interesting female characters too - Shakespeare's daughters Judith and Susanna, his mother Mary, the wicked stepmother Joan. There are also some lovely depictions of the landscape and wildlife. I was planning to pass this book on to a friend when I'd finished it, but now I find myself reluctant to part with it. I think I'll buy it for her instead. Highly recommended. The characters and story will live on in my head long after I turned the last page - always the mark of a good book. I suspect it will be a hard act to follow.

Book No. 2 is 'Home Stretch' by Graham Norton.

'Hamnet' sounds good, Taytocrisps, I'll look it up.

I read 'Home Stretch' over Christmas and I enjoyed it.

Hamnetis on my TBR list for this year. Thanks for the review crisps

Great review, Taytocrisps!

The London Fog book sounds brilliant, Terpsichore - it's gone straight onto my TBR list! Have you read The Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham? London pea-soupers play a big part in that.

I'm also a fan of books about London and have several on this year's list, as DH is also a Londonphile and has a collection of books that he's read but we can't get rid of because I haven't got round to them yet . I've put about 50 books that we already own into a spreadsheet and am using a random number generator to force me to read them this year! In fact, I've just started Mrs P's Journey, which is a biography of Phyllis Pearsall, who produced the first indexed A-Z of London streets (Wikipedia says she is "erroneously" credited with this achievement but I haven't got far enough with the book to find out why).

Gotta love a pea super. The book sounds great, but is £££ on Kindle.

I've read lots of Allingham but can't remember if I've read that one or not. Will certainly do so, if I've missed it.

Also added the pea-souper to my wish list. I love fog almost as much as snow, and London almost as,much as Scandinavia.

Hi

Can I join please? Got back into reading last year and managed 50 books, can’t wait to do it again this year.

So far I’ve read Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood (well, started it last year but it counts!) I last read Handmaids tale ages ago as a uni text and enjoyed it so made it a New Years resolution to read more of her work. I enjoyed it but didn’t blow me away and was a struggle to get through parts of it.

Then I read Queen Bee by Jane Fallon. A nice easy, quick read very entertaining! Will def look up more of her books.

Currently halfway through The Institute by Stephen King. I find King books a bit hit and miss sometimes, but absolutely loving this one..can’t put it down.

Looking forward to hearing all your recommendations!

SOLINVICTUS Reject Olive Kitteridge if you like, but please don't reject it on the basis that it is chick-lit because it really isn't.

@SOLINVICTUS you inspired me to cancel my Audible subscription too. We normally do family books in the car but just haven't gone very far side the summer. I used mine all on children's books. I think The Wizard in My Shed by Simon Farnaby of Horrible Histories (Stupid Deaths) is the one I'm most looking forward to.

@GreenNettle I've been reading Invisible Woman very slowly for a while now. It's fascinating and eye-opening. It also makes me angry.

1. Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser Anker. I'm sure this has been reviewed on here before as think it was one of those books everyone was talking about a couple of years ago. It's about a doctor who has just got divorced in New York. There's a lot of navigating modern dating and bemusement on the part of Fleishman that everyone wants to have sex with him. The narrative is quite odd as it's told from Fleishman's perspective for the first half of so, then switches to a first person narrator, Libby, who is an old friend of Fleishman. I thought it was quite cleverly written as you realised that Fleishman is unreliable and there is much more going on than you realise initially. It ends up as a bit of a treatise on middle aged, marriage and feminism which I wasn't expecting at all at the start. I found it quite compulsive reading but think it could have done with a bit of editing.

@Mumtotwofurbabies

Hi

Can I join please? Got back into reading last year and managed 50 books, can’t wait to do it again this year.

So far I’ve read Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood (well, started it last year but it counts!) I last read Handmaids tale ages ago as a uni text and enjoyed it so made it a New Years resolution to read more of her work. I enjoyed it but didn’t blow me away and was a struggle to get through parts of it.

Then I read Queen Bee by Jane Fallon. A nice easy, quick read very entertaining! Will def look up more of her books.

Currently halfway through The Institute by Stephen King. I find King books a bit hit and miss sometimes, but absolutely loving this one..can’t put it down.

Looking forward to hearing all your recommendations!

Welcome!

I thought the ending to Alias Grace really let it down. Have given up on Atwood now.

I enjoyed The Institute - thought it felt like a proper, old King.

mackerella yes, I've read The Tiger in the Smoke largely thanks to DH, who's an Allingham freak and brought his collection of her complete works to the relationship - but funnily enough, now you mention it, I realise that's probably one of the few books not mentioned in Christine Corton's study!

Remus I stalked my copy for ages and finally nabbed one in a charity shop...bit of a lucky find.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I totally agree about the ending to Alias Grace, I thought there were too many unanswered questions and storylines not tied up properly!

[quote Mumtotwofurbabies]@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I totally agree about the ending to Alias Grace, I thought there were too many unanswered questions and storylines not tied up properly![/quote]
I thought that she felt that she had to find a way to prove that all men are shits. It really annoyed me.

It seems I haven't read Tiger so have bought it.

5 London Incognita, by Gary Budden
A series of inter connected stories set in London, concerning myths and psychogeography, the violence and unforgiving grimness of ordinary lives in the city.
I thought I would like this more than I did. It was irritating to have the main myth of the ‘Judderman’ and a hotchpotch of made up monsters juxtaposed with real life tragedies. Repetition of key phrases also jarred - never liked it when Lovecraft did it, not keen on a writer with 1/3 of his talent for the uncanny and troubling attempting it.
Disappointing all round. For tales of underground, mysterious London it wasn’t a patch on Christopher Fowler’s Bryant And May series. Those lead you off down strange paths of research, where things you think he has made up turn out to be true. This was like trying to get a child to write a story but they just stick stuff in it they’ve seen on the tv and refuse to come up with anything intriguing or original.

@SatsukiKusakabe Great review of the Lore Segal book. I hadn't heard of the author before so have added that to my TBR list and downloaded another title called Other People's Houses which also looks good.

I thought Olive Kitteridge was outstanding, her best novel by a long way. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009. The very first section in the book was my favourite because the quality of the writing and the way she captured the characters was so believable and so poignant. It is in no way chick lit. However, I wasn't keen on Lucy Barton. I do like novels like that though, as opposed to plot driven novels, so it does depend on what you like.

Ooh, and I finished 2. Mountains of the Mind by Robert Macfarlane.

I loved this. His mix of nature writing and personal experience enhanced this history and detailed exploration of our relationships with mountains and climbing. It's written from a Western perspective, which he acknowledges, especially in relation to Everest and the mapping of mountainous areas. I loved the last section on Everest and the story of Mallory. Ever since I read Into Thin Air i've been a tad obsessed. If anyone can recommend any other good mountain drama books I would be grateful indeed!
And I'd be happy to explore some mountains with Mr Macfarlane himself. I'm sure we could have fun with both peaks and troughs.

@TimeforaGandT, I love your Dick Francis reread.

7. Snow by John Banville. I thought this was going to be a murder in the Agatha Christie vein, but it is a bit more serious than that- i liked the setting (1950s Ireland), but didn't love the narrative voice, and I guessed the ending annoyingly far in advance! It was quite appropriate timing though as it is snowing here today!

@whippetwoman I was surprised I’d not heard of it before, it really seems to get to the heart of US culture and its relationship with its past and future as a nation of immigrants. She comes at it from all angles with a real brutal honesty. It’s a very interesting book to read at this moment in time. I have just started reading Other People’s Houses

I agree Olive Kitteridge was very good but if I’d read Lucy Barton first I might not have. I have to say I’ve had more hits over time with Pulitzer Prize winners than with Bookers.

I like that you’re dealing with lockdown by chasing Robert Macfarlane up mountains.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

It's been MANY years now since I read Alias Grace but I remember it as being challenging. The Netflix series was quite a fair adaptation I thought.

Atwood is "hard work" I think. I haven't completed The only one I love is Handmaids Tale, the last one I read before The Testaments was The Heart Goes Last and I thought it was woeful.

I keep thinking I NEED to complete The Maddadam Trilogy but its that long since I read Oryx and Crake I need to reread it and I can't face it.

There's a lot of you're SUPPOSED to read Atwood around Atwood I think.