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?

2 The Nakano Thrift Shop by Hiromi Kawakami. Translated by Allison Markin Powell

Unusual romance written in spare style concentrating on the minutiae of the interactions between the staff of a second hand store as they get to know each other and the regular customers. Delightful and curiously life affirming.

1. A Man Called Ove by Fredrick Backman - I absolutely loved this. Beartown by the same author was my standout read of last year, so whilst I knew this would be good I didn't have 5 star expectations. I give it 5 stars.

Ove is a grumpy 59 year old man, suffering after the loss of his much loved wife, the story is about how he heels and learns to live again. It had me laughing and then sobbing my heart out with the turn of a page. I thought it was wonderfully written and just a beautiful, heartwarming story

1. Piranesi - Susannah Clarke

Can't really say too much without spoiling this apart from that I really, really enjoyed the first half but found the second half a little disappointing. I don't 'do' much magic realism these days after overdosing on it in my youth but she does do it very well. A short read so definitely worth a look.

1. Heroes - Stephen Fry Second book in his retelling if Greek Myths focussing on the familiar stories of Heracles, Ordipus, Jadon etc. I would say this is easier to jump into compared to Mythos. Great read and really enjoyed it.

Going to start Troy- Stephen Fry.

It's all just a bit..odd. I'm not really sure what the point of it was. It's sparsely written, and is a bit cold in tone. There isn't much of a plot either, it's more a snapshot of a few weeks in the character's lives, with no particular story arch

AthosRoussos this description of Spring Garden sounds so classically Japanese, it made me smile.

Before a visit to Japan a few years ago, I decided to read a pile of Japanese novels to try to get a feel for the country, and so many were exactly as you describe. There was a recurring theme of feeling a bit lonely, a bit lost, wistfully interested in another solitary individual but never actually doing anything to change things. It got a bit wearisome after several similar books.

The Makioka Sisters was an honourable exception. A Japanese Pride and Prejudice which I really enjoyed.

Hello everyone. I'm a newbie on here. I'm hoping to challenge myself a bit this year and find some new authors/genres. I used to read quite widely, but in the last few years have stuck to comfort books/old favourites.

1. The Fatal Flying Affair - T E Kinsey
   The latest Lady Hardcastle Mystery. Light and entertaining. I only discovered these books last year and DD(13) enjoys them too.

2. The Duke and I - Julia Quinn
   Read this years ago but having watched Bridgerton thought I'd have a re read.

3. Romancing Mr Bridgerton - Julia Quinn
   Again, read years ago and I quite enjoyed it then. However I no longer really enjoy JQ's style of writing so skipped chunks of it.

4. The Nothing Girl - Jodi Taylor
   I love Jodi Taylor's books. Advertised as a fairytale for adults. It's much softer than the St Mary's Chronicles/Time Police series, though has a couple of emotional moments.

5. The Something Girl - Jodi Taylor
   Another pleasant read. A delightful duo of books. There are a couple of short stories on Kindle that I shall buy at some point to read.

I'm going to have another go at Our Mutual Friend - Charles Dickens. I started it on the Read Along thread last year, but didn't get very far.

2. The Confession by Jessie Burton

A friend dropped off some ready meals at the beginning of my isolation and lent me this book too and I've hardly been able to put it down.

The story is told across two timelines but it does this in a clear way and you don't switch too often (I find some books massively confusing how much they jump around).

The main character is searching for her mother and you find out some of the history as the current time search develops.

I am keen to read others by the same author, but this thread is adding books to my wishlist way faster than I am reading them!

@Stokey yes, aimed at children I meant more young adult. But totally agree that they could be adult books...I thought the same when reading the Dark Materials trilogy.

8. Soon I Will be Invincible - Austin Grossman
This book goes back and forth between two points of view; that of Dr Impossible, a supervillain with a chip on his shoulder, and Fatale who is a cyborg with a shady past who is signed up to a team of superheroes at the start of the book. It was easy to lose the thread of the narrative at times as it wasn't always immediately clear when a flashback or passing reference to the past was occuring. I also didn't care about Doctor Impossible who was an insufferable bore and would have rather read a whole book about Fatale. It left several plot threads dangling in the wind at the end. Possibly as a set up for a sequel but since it was published in 2007 it doesn't seem likely. If you have a passing interest in superheroes, super villains and the shades of grey between them then it might be worth a read. I gave it 3 stars, not quite a stinker but only just not quite.

9. The Year of the Witching - Alexis Henderson
I enjoyed (well, not enjoyed it's a bit dark and grim for enjoyment) this one a lot more. I felt like it spelled out its central themes a little too explicitly in some very rushed exposition towards the ends, but that aside I would recommend this book if you're looking for some darkness and religious authoritarianism being overthrown alongside your witchcraft. There's no definitive "good" and "bad", just the sins of man twisting these to their own ends for the sake of power. There's no happy ending here, just a brief reprieve.

Since I've flown through the start of my year of reading, I've decided to go for something that will definitely slow me down a bit. My next book is 10. Ducks, Newburyport - Lucy Ellman and the fact that it's over 1,000 pages, the fact that it's a stream-of-consciousness and I'm already enjoying reading about the mountain lioness and her kittens, the fact that I hope they make it, that it would be insufferably sad if they don't, the fact that this 'the fact that' doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would, the fact that I will be slowly chipping away at this for the rest of the month.

Morning
2) Wintering: How I learned to flourish when life became frozen Katherine May
Read a review on here, saw it was on offer on Kindle so read it whilst completely missing the Plath reference & obvious nod that was this was really about the author’s depression, and not just lovely Winter traditions...
That said some of it home a little too hard (had a major illness last year, became a shielder & am struggling to get back to being a ITU nurse in the middle of a pandemic (!!!) so ultimately this was a useful & quite lovely read.
Would happily read more about the Northern lights though...

Hit home... sorry

@LadybirdDaphne Excellent. Thoroughly looking forward to it. Just need to finish Red Rising first.

@highlandcoo I did think it was probably just a cultural difference in style, but I've only read one other Japanese book, Convenience Store Woman, and whilst noticing several similarities, didn't think my sample size was big enough for me to be sure of any cultural themes. Sounds like I was on the right lines though, based on your experience. And absolutely, yes, to the being wistfully interested in another solitary individual: that's spot on.

I'll add The Makioka Sisters to the tbr list.

The bolding of my original post has allowed me to spot my grammatical errors. I'll use being a bit ill and very distracted by RR (I was posting and trying to read at the same time..) as an excuse .

I never got to grips with His Dark materials - I should have loved it, ticked all the boxes of what I usually liked, and I felt it was all a bit over complex and try-hard. DH loves it. I've even read it twice (thinking I must be missing something) but they don't do it for me.
I watched the BBC series with DH because he insisted, it was ok, but it's really not the AMAZING experience everyone else seems to love.

@eitak22 - enjoy Troy. I loved the whole series. I listened on Audible and he is a great narrator but I bought copies for the bookshelf as well (sign of a good book for me if it "makes the shelf" as dd says

I quite enjoyed The Convenience Store Woman last year. Odd little book and not my usual thing. I've got Before the Coffee Gets Cold lined up - time travelling Japanese coffee shop stories - what could go wrong?

3. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - Washington Irvine
I watched the series Sleepy Hollow and wanted to know the full story of the Headless Horseman! It is basically this - Icabod Crane is a teacher in Sleepy Hollow, scared of his own shadow, fancies the daughter of the local wealthy farmer, she fancies Brom Bones who is a rival to Icabod, Icabod is annoyed by this, rides off into the night on his horse, gets followed by the "Headless Horseman" and is never seen again.

4. The Pursuit of William Abbey - Clare North
South Africa in the 1880s. A young and naive English doctor by the name of William Abbey witnesses the lynching of a local boy by the white colonists. As the child dies, his mother curses William.

William begins to understand what the curse means when the shadow of the dead boy starts following him across the world. It never stops, never rests. It can cross oceans and mountains. And if it catches him, the person he loves most in the world will die.

I was up until 2am this morning to finish this one. Loved it. There is a lot more to the story including other people who have been cursed in the same way but I don't want to give anything away. I've read all of Clare North's books now and recommend them all.

@RavenclawesomeCrone I preferred Convenience Store Woman. A far more intriguing main character.

3. Earthlings by Sayaka Murata

By coincidence I've just finished reading the next book by the writer of Convenience Store Woman (which I've not read yet). I really like Japanese fiction but often find the endings a let down as if the writer has gone down so many rabbit holes or things have gotten so weird that they don't know how to wrap it up.

Earthlings was very good.
If you've ever read any Haruki Murakami books then you'll understand how "weird" Japanese books can sometimes get and how you just have to go with it. In Earthlings we follow Natsuki through her childhood where she is sexually abused by a trusted young teacher to adulthood when she enters a celibate "marriage of convenience" with a man who is also disillusioned with "earthlings." She also becomes reacquainted with Yuu, a cousin whom she had a close bond with in childhood before they were forbidden to see one another and with whom she vowed to "do whatever it takes to survive". In order to survive, Natsuki believes she is an alien and that her favourite toy has come with her as an "advisor" from her home planet of Popinpophobia and in moments of crisis may speak to her. Her husband believes that "normal people" are all part of the "Factory" a repressive system that seeks to sublimate Earthlings and make them into breeders to fuel the machine. The narrative had a lot of resonance about how the world compels us to conform to stereotypes and mores, how going outside that norm is punished in various ways, how are parents are often the enforcement tools of the "Factory" and how emotional, physical and sexual abuse can wreak havoc on young minds and lead to great dissassociation and extreme behaviour.

I became really engrossed in reading Earthlings, it surprised me as it didn't always go where I thought the narrative would take me. Well worth reading.

Great review @SapatSea

2. Other People’s Houses by Lore Segal

I had to read this fictionalised memoir after enjoying Segal’s novel Her First American. It was wonderful and a five star read for me. Lore is 10 in 1938, and the forces of Nazism are making life untenable for Jewish-Austrian families. In a desperate attempt to ensure her safety, and to potentially enable the rest of the family to follow, Lore’s mother and father place her on the first Kindertransport, without knowing whether it will even be allowed to leave the country, or what will become of their daughter if she reaches England. Lore is taken in by several different foster families over the course of the war, and her own writing ability at such a young age could be the key to her whole family’s survival, as her father asks her to petition for Visas for them once she is settled. The book is written like a novel, she is so faithful to her experiences and the caprices of her youthful thought processes, she conjures the world as it appeared to her 10 year old mind truthfully and unflinchingly. It is a story of love, hope, kindness and gratitude, but also offers a look inside British class differences and the experience of refugees from this time that is rarely exposed or discussed. It was a fascinating, moving read and I really recommend it for anyone with an interest in these events or time period.

That sounds very interesting. Thanks for the review and for the recommendation, SatsukiKusabe.

@Okki ... I struggled through Our Mutual Friend last year ... if it helps for motivation, the second half of the book is definitely easier going and more enjoyable than the first half :)

I'd like to join in too please! I'm doing it on goodreads as well but I only pledge 30 books there i dont know if ill make 50 we will see! I mostly read gothic horror, horror, thrillers and some general literary fiction
I have read two books so far

1: Cold Hill House by Peter James
This wasnt great sadly but it kept me engaged and I read it all in one sitting. Its pretty pedestrian clichéd haunted house scenario. A family moves into a large abandoned house to do it up and sell, unaware of its tragic past...

2: Follow me to the Ground by Sue Rainsford
I absolutely loved this one. Southern Gothic vibes. A young woman/child lives with her father who created her from the ground. They are healers who reach inside peoples bodies to get rid of their sickness.. sometimes burying the people whilst they deal with their internal organs inside the house.
Very innovative and beautiful. But also creepy and twisted.

Can I join too please?
So far this year I have read
1. Miss Benson’s Beetle - Rachel Joyce
Totally far-fetched but a great adventure story and some great comedy moments. Raced through it.

1. Pigs in Heaven - Barbara Kingsolver

Sequel to The Bean Trees which I read last year. Loved this - a much more challenging read, raising some complex questions about race, identity and family 3. Saving Missy - Beth Morrey This is an easy read, in the Eleanor Oliphant genre of ‘lonely misfit makes good’. I found it a bit overlong and repetitive but enjoyed it nevertheless.

This ones awesome especially for this site. A cross between the film Knowing, a linear and inverted version of the Time Travellers Wife with a splash of Sophies choice. I was in pieces reading at four chapters in the middle. It made Little life look happy. Its big scope, big scale but the best thing is the main character is a single mum. Its the relationship with her daughter, friends, the patient she's treating. (She's a junior Psychiatrist) and lack of relationship with her cold mother that make the book. He's looking for beta's, especially single moms. Even though the endings epic. The reason she's a hero is because she's a great mum. Can't go into more detail without spoiling it. And you don't find out until the last word who the girl actually was. Best ending ever. Here's the back page.

Blurb

A love as old as history. One must never remember. One can never forget.
Leaving behind her poor childhood psychiatrist and devoted mother Hannah May Johnson begins her residency at Tallwood Psychiatric hospital. Her first patient is Skye, a girl with multiple personalities who murdered her mother. After a prediction by the girl saves her daughter's life a friendship grows and Hannah realises that something connects them. That the girl has abilities. Her stories aren't stories at all, there the memories of a thousand lifetimes. The extent of the girls abilities become clear. There was only one reason Skye allowed herself to be held. She was waiting for Hannah.
Blissfully happy Hannah loves her new life. Yet now she's throwing her sleepy daughter into the SUV and driving in panic to the middle of an empty desert on the word of a troubled girl.
Its not the truth of Skye that frightens Hannah. Its the bleak future the girl foresees. An ancient darkness. Patient. Watching. It hunted Skye a thousand lifetimes. Now it comes for Hannah and those she loves most. Hannah now understands what Skye needs from her as the salvation of all depends on one day, a single choice, and a light that has yet to shine.
If you fancy a freebie, Pm me. I'll pass on his email. He uses Mom so I'm guessing US.

I'd like to join in too! I read 50 last year (just!) and I'd like to repeat it this year if possible.

1. Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell. I read this one because I loved North and South last year and I got the audiobook cheap from Audible. It was ok. A bit dull and worthy at first, but the last part (a murder trial) was excellent. The main problem is that Mary is in the vein of limp lettuce Dickensian girls who spend a lot of time weeping prettily.

1. The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Dare. This was a recommendation from some on here last year. I thoroughly enjoyed this, and found the writing refreshing. The Audible audiobook of this is also really good.

1. Hard Times by Charles Dickens. I'm a big Dickens fan and I'm trying to read them all. Sadly this means I've read all the best ones already! Hard Times was good and parts of it were excellent, but it's still not a patch on David Copperfield or Great Expectations. The audiobook read by Anton Lesser was excellent.

Has anyone ever listened to the Bible in a Year, read by David Suchet on Audible? I'm trying to do it this year, but I don't know if I've got the stamina!