50 Book Challenge 2021 Part Two

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the second thread of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2021, 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. Could everyone embolden their titles and/or authors as well, please, as it makes the books talked about easier to track?

The first thread of the year is here.

Fab review, Shotgun!

That's great thank you @YolandiFuckinVisser I probably wouldnt have spotted the Cloud Atlas link due to the time gap.

Welcome snowspider, Shuggie Bain seems to have been almost universally loved on the thread. I found it a bit heavy going pre Christmas,but I really think I should give it another go.

Hello Hushabye, audio books definitely count, thankfully, as I'd never reach 50 without them!

Eine the film is pretty pants, I would avoid.

I read Ghostwritten years and years ago Yolandi so wouldn't have picked that up. I barely remember Black Swan Green actually. Feel like I may be due a reread of them all but it's a massive mission.

Thanks biblio. I think my 1970’s edition of Secret Garden was probably a bit dated editorially. But even so. Excruciating!

Slinking back into the thread having only just completed my first book- how will I ever make 50 at this rate? In my defence I've been a bit preoccupied with work and have found it hard to concentrate on anything so
1.Midwinter Murders by Agatha Christie
You don't get anything that you wouldn't expect here- it's a collection of 10 or so short stories featuring some of Christie's best known characters that I bought on a whim when it was on a 99p Kindle deal over the new year. Some stories are better than others- I could do without Tommy and Tuppence for example but there were 3 or 4 I really enjoyed. Oddly the stories featuring Poirot did not engage me- I'm not sure he translates well to a short story. It has done its job though- I have been feeling very fragile over the last few weeks and the short story format has been perfect.

Moving on to a Christmas gift next- the ubiquitous Thursday Murder Club!

@ RazorstormUnicorn my parents did exactly this! I wasn’t allowed to watch Heartbeat because it had Nick Berry in it and he’d been in Eastenders?! But I was allowed to read as much Stephen King as I wanted. And Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Lolita!

Ha ha, Shotgun, that was a very witty review of The Secret Garden. I loved it as a child but when I tried to read it to my own DS he was having none of it!

@ChannelLightVessel said: I think the problem with all these reworkings of Greek literature/myth is that the complexity is already there in the originals, eg nobody can say anything about the plight of women in war that isn’t in Euripides’ Trojan Women.

That's a very interesting point, but surely the fact that the myths are complex at the beginning doesn't mean they can't carry on being complex in different ways across the centuries, all the way up to modern times. Even in the ancient world there is never just one version of a myth. And different retellings throughout history keep reinterpreting the stories through new lens. That's probably what makes myth so powerful, the fact it can be recycled in different contexts and new layers of meaning are laid over the old ones -- or maybe some of the half-forgotten ancient meanings are resurrected again and come to the fore.

I'm thinking of Renaissance love poets who reworked Ovidian motifs, 17th c dramatists like Racine who staged new versions of classical tragedy, Freud's use of Oedipus, all the different versions of Antigone (like Jean Anouilh's version during the Nazi occupation, or Kamila Shamsie's Home Fire). It's not like humans are going to run out of things to do with the classical myths any time soon...

Anyway, you've made me want to buy the Troy exhibition catalogue! Will add it to my wishlist. I regret not having made it to see that exhibition.

Like *Badly

Oops. As I was saying...

Like BadlydoneHelen I'm only just adding my first book. But it was a whopper!

1. The Count Of Monte Cristo

It seems a bit daft reviewing a classic as I suspect a lot of people will have read it already. But the short version is that while this is long, it's definitely worth the effort. It does drag a little in the middle, but overall it's an amazing story of revenge, but also asking the question of whether it ultimately brings you happiness. Would highly recommend, as long as you've got time to read 1,000 pages from just one book!

7: Box 88 - Charles Cumming

Library ebook which I'd impulsively reserved before Christmas. I've read a couple of Cumming's spy thrillers - two of a three-part series - and enjoyed them, but the library didn't have the third one and I plumped for this in a 'this'll do' frame of mind, then didn't find it quite as good.

Lachlan Kite is an apparently conventional businessman, married and with a child on the way. But someone has tipped off MI5 that he's a senior member of Box 88, an elite spy network so shadowy and opaque it operates independently of the secret services. While a small team is trying unsuccessfully to break his cover, he disappears...and while they scramble to find him, Kite is forced to relive the experience that brought him into Box 88's orbit as an 18--year-old, back in the summer of 1989.

This was quite pacy and the narrative switched from flashback to present-day to keep the tension ratcheted up, so it did the job in that respect. However, it faltered a bit at the end and then annoyed me further by clearly being set up with a sequel in mind. Perfectly OK as a quick and entertaining read but nothing massively special.

You’re quite right, cassandre, my statement was far too sweeping; of course there have been many creative and brilliant reworkings of Greek literature/myth. I was really only referring to the recent crop of books being discussed by PPs that seem to think they’re the first ones to notice that the Trojan War had negative aspects, and that we don’t always get a female perspective on myth.

2. Dracul by Dacre Stoker and J. D. Barker

This is a prequel to Dracula. Dacre Stoker is Bram Stoker’s great-grand-nephew and has access to Bram Stoker’s notes and journals.

The premise behind Dracul is that the events described in Dracula were real (with names changed to protect identities of real people), and that Bram Stoker had had dealings with the undead before the events in Dracula start. The author’s postscript also talks about Bram having to cut bits out of Dracula by the demands of his publisher, and about versions published in different languages being substantially different in content to the English version.

Anyway. Dracul starts with Bram Stoker recalling his sickly childhood and his long lost nanny, and moves on to Bram’s young adulthood, where he and his siblings have sinister and dangerous encounters with vampires. Including the famous Dracula. They even make a trip to Whitby and the abbey there.

I felt that the sections about Bram’s childhood were too long and dragged rather in places, but the story picked up more once it got to the part where Bram’s an adult, and overall, it’s an entertaining vampire story.

However, basing the story around real people really interfered with my suspension of disbelief.
I can deal with fictionalised accounts of real people’s lives, but a fictionalised account of real people fighting vampires was stretching it a bit too far for me. Especially with all the author’s notes about how Dracula was true added into that.

Eine - re "I couldn't face Sloosha's Crossing the first time so I'm not sure I could a second "

Yes, you can! Just go with the flow and read without fighting it. It quickly starts making sense.

"Was the film worth a damn out of interest Cote"

I didn't think it was great, but some of it was quite well done. Somni scenes were pretty good. This being Hollywood, they left out the more complexe ideas and completely changed the ending to make it more palatable

Am now moving on to non fiction, A Shadow Above, The Fall and Rise of the Raven by Joe Shute.

I enjoyed quite a lot of natural history and sciency (lite) books last year and still have some like this on the waiting list.

@ChannelLightVessel

You’re quite right, cassandre, my statement was far too sweeping; of course there have been many creative and brilliant reworkings of Greek literature/myth. I was really only referring to the recent crop of books being discussed by PPs that seem to think they’re the first ones to notice that the Trojan War had negative aspects, and that we don’t always get a female perspective on myth.

Ah, we completely agree then Channel! I agree, it's very annoying for a modern writer to think they're the first to look at the ancient texts and do something like problematise the masculine glorification of war, or focus on a woman's perspective. I'm looking at you Natalie Haynes!

The complexity is already there in the original texts. Penelope in the Odyssey is a significant and intriguing character already. The Iliad shows the women weeping and protesting against war. I'll get off my podium now

Just checking in quickly to say that The Haunting of Alma Fielding is on the kindle daily deals (was reviewed by someone else on this thread)

I thought Dracul was terrible - some awful American isms, that really jarred with me.

@BadSpellaSpellaSpella

Just checking in quickly to say that The Haunting of Alma Fielding is on the kindle daily deals (was reviewed by someone else on this thread)

Yes, that was me a couple of days ago, and I was really gripped by it. Typical that it's in the deal, though! I've been stalking it for ages and ended up getting it out of the library

I've just bought The Haunting of Alma Fielding. I remember reading a review and thinking "that sounds great".

I am willing the afternoon away, despite the fact I have a lot of work to do. I would much rather be getting on with my TBR pile. I am determined to finish off a couple of half read books this weekend and would like to make a start on Shuggie Bain. I've been loving Acts and Omissions since someone (biblio?) recommended it in the middle of cathedral chat, so that is going to be my curl up on the sofa at 5pm book.

Thanks for the recommendation on The Haunting of Alma Fielding. My library has an ebook version (not available until March though) which I've reserved. Has anyone read The Guest Book by Sarah Blake? Im getting the audiobook tomorrow and its 16 hours long - I think 10 hours has been my longest book so far, so I'm hoping the time invested will be worth it!

All this talk of David Mitchell, and of the Thousand Autumns in particular, has reminded me of this wonderful tweet predicting the most formulaic popular book titles of 2020. She's missed A Thing of Thing and Thing that seems so prevalent in YA fiction at the moment, but I think she's otherwise got the main types nailed.

Haha, there's the Female First Name Surname titles as well (I'm not including Alma Fielding in that as it actually looks great).

Signing in to thread two and you're already on page 11! I'm currently on Book No. 3 'The Lighthousekeeper's Daughter' by Hazel Gaynor. It was a Christmas present. I wasn't that crazy about it to start with - it's drawing me in a bit more now.

My book parcel arrived this morning with 'The Salt Path' and 'Shuggie Bain'. Keen to start on these. Also the Clive James poetry book but that's one I'll dip in and out of.

@magimedi I'm so sorry to hear about your husband . I'm glad your special books have been a comfort to you and I hope you continue to enjoy the thread.