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.

4.The Push - Ashley Audrain
Blythe is determined to be a good mother like hers never was. But she feels something is not right with her daughter, Violet. After her son, Sam, is born she finally finds that bond and happiness she always wanted. However, after tragedy hits, she is forced to face the truth.

I wasn't sure at the start of this book if it would grip me in the way I had expected but I was proven wrong. With vibes of We Need To Talk About Kevin it had me anxious and on the edge of my seat to read what happened next! Would definitely recommend.

Me too! Ive read 4 books so far. Loved "When the Crawdads sing". Great twist.

Eine you've made me laugh with your pet hates today.

I'm with you on Seashell Café's and the Occuption of Location books. And books about female relations.

I'll throw into the pet hate mix: Thrillers with three short word titles like He Saw Me or I Came Back. Usually with a very dark cover and a yellow title font. They can fuck off. Extra fuck offs if there is a sticker from a marketing dept of a publisher telling me I MUST read it.

I also dig my heals in about reading a book just because everyone else is reading it. That's how I got tricked into reading Normal People and that is time I will never get back, I kept going thinking ALL these people can't be wrong.

I agree on the Seashell Cafe type books. I SHOULD avoid the I See You type books as described by Raven above but unfortunately I am a sucker for this type of book. Sometimes they are good but more often they are just OK. I keep telling myself not to bother but I can’t help being sucked in by them.

By the way, the recent Victoria Wood biography is on kindle daily deal today and I can highly recommend it if you’re a fan of hers. There’s also a Susie Dent book about words that I’ve had my eye on.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit

My pet hate for the last 5 years trends have been :

The Occupation Of Location

The Female Relative of A Man with An Occupation

I will never read you

Off you fuck

Yes, yes yes!

"Mavis Blenkinsop is feeling a bit poorly"

"Enoch Tripe is having an off day"

F'kofffff.

Anything with "She" in the title seems to have been written by what I'm beginning to think is a psycho-nutjob-next-door bot.

"She seemed to be nice but turned out to be a serial killer/after my husband/my long lost sister/into necrophilia/completely insane/a zombie/"

@RavenclawesomeCrone

Eine you've made me laugh with your pet hates today.

I'm with you on Seashell Café's and the Occuption of Location books. And books about female relations.

I'll throw into the pet hate mix: Thrillers with three short word titles like He Saw Me or I Came Back. Usually with a very dark cover and a yellow title font. They can fuck off. Extra fuck offs if there is a sticker from a marketing dept of a publisher telling me I MUST read it.

I also dig my heals in about reading a book just because everyone else is reading it. That's how I got tricked into reading Normal People and that is time I will never get back, I kept going thinking ALL these people can't be wrong.

I'm a refuser too. Which is why I got to read all 7 Harry Potters back to back one summer.

1 Hilo Waking the Monsters by Judd Winick
2 The Nakano Thrift Shop by Hiromi Kawakami. Translated by Allison Markin Powell
3 Hilo Then Everything Went Wrong by Judd Winick

4 Three Apples Fell from the Sky by Narine Abgaryan. Translated by Lisa C Hayden

The story of 18 months in the lives of the aging inhabitants of a small village high on an Armenian mountain that is remarkably susceptible to natural disasters. The main plot (a slight romance) moves forward slowly while we learn of the history of the village. It is clearly influenced by One Hundred Years of Solitude so one to avoid if you don't like magic realism. But the 'present day' action is less mythologised and has a more female perspective than García Márquez's masterpiece and the book ends hopefully and you are left with a sense of a fragile community supporting itself. I really liked this.

The Victoria Wood biography that a few people here enjoyed last year is on Kindle Daily Deal.

My first DNF of the year D (A Tale of Two Worlds) by Michel Faber and read by Isabel Adomakoh Young This was an audiobook. This is about a girl called Dhikilo in her teenage years I think who discovers that the letter D has gone missing from the English language. First it goes missing in her conversation with her parents at breakfast. Then it goes missing from all the road signs. Then the local Dentist and the neighbours Dalmatian go missing. Dhikilo is summoned to her old history teacher Professor Dodderfield and this is when the story unfolds. This set between England and a land called Liminus which is a world over ran by fearsome creatures. It was at this point I gave up. I really wanted to enjoy this story I really did. It sounded very intriguing. However I just couldn’t listen anymore when the introduction of a creature was introduced as I just couldn’t listen further as wasn’t enjoying it. Has anyone else read this and enjoyed it? It may be one of those books I may return to in the future when my mind is in the right mind frame. One such book I DNF last year and I will be returning to is 11.22.63 by Stephen King as have heard glowing reviews about this but I never got beyond the first 100 pages.
Currently still reading a physical book Farewell to the East End by Jennifer Worth which I am thoroughly enjoying and I am re watching Call the Midwife which is based on these books and have The End of Her by Shari Lapeni which is a thriller.

And bringing my list over as not done it yet

1. The Face of Trespass by Ruth Rendell
2. The Five by Hallie Rubenhold
3. My Darling by Amanda Robson
4. The Adventure of the Three Students by Arthur Conan Doyle

1. Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life by Peter Godfrey-Smith. One of the interesting things about octopuses is that our common ancestor is so far back in time (approx 600 million years) that any similarities between us and the octopus (eg apparently our eyes are quite similar) have evolved completely independently. I enjoyed this book - I liked the way the author uses octopuses as a starting point to discuss other interesting questions relating to evolution (What do we mean by intelligent life? Why do some creatures have a much longer natural lifespan than others?), and there were some endearing octopus anecdotes - but I didn't find it quite as engaging as I hoped to. I've had a rather hectic week, so I think that was probably my fault rather than the book.

Thanks for the Kindle recommendation Southeast. There's also The Magus, John Fowler's classic which is a strange and dark novel albeit set on a Greek island that constantly questions what is illusion and what is reality. I don't think it quite works but is well worth a read if you haven't. And the zombie dystopian The Passage which is a great read, so a good selection from Amazon today.

I've had that octopus book on my kindle for a while but it's never grabbed me with it's tentacles and said read me now. One day perhaps.

I'm reading Dawn O'Porter's Life in Pieces at the moment which is her daily columns about lockdown life starting in March last year. I'm not really finding it enjoyable so it will probably become a DNF. Her lockdown life (apart from home schooling which I don't have to do) without it's socialising is very similar to my every day life normally except I don't have any zoom or whatsapp social groups to participate in and I can't relate to her life either in lockdown or before it as it's the polar opposite of mine.

If you aren't an anti-social hermit who has only socialised twice in about 20 years then you'll probably enjoy the book.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit

My pet hate for the last 5 years trends have been :

The Occupation Of Location

The Female Relative of A Man with An Occupation

I will never read you

Off you fuck

I couldn't have said it better

Some of the worst books I've ever read had such formulaic titles that try so hard to be interesting, like Memory Keeper's Daughter.

"Mavis Blenkinsop is feeling a bit poorly"

"Enoch Tripe is having an off day"
F'kofffff.
Anything with "She" in the title"

I wouldn't touch those, either

" D (A Tale of Two Worlds) by Michel Faber... This is about a girl called Dhikilo in her teenage years I think who discovers that the letter D has gone missing from the English language."

It's funny that Michel Faber has continued on his quest to write ever-stupider books I still haven't forgotten the 900-page drivel that was Crimson Petal and the White, and reading about the "wanking vicar" on here surprisingly didn't inspire me to buy his next book .

3. The Readhead by the side of the road, Anne Tyler
Micha is a 40 something, average, set in his ways guy who runs an IT repair company and lives in his basement. Two events makes him rethink his life and his attitudes to everyone.

Just did not like this at all. Mich is meant to be boring but there was nothing interesting about him at all. The most interesting thing he did was make pot after pot of coffee. I didn’t care about the side characters and thought the Cass storyline was dull and the Brink story line unbelievable in every way. The ending was also ridiculous - who can just wander on to a school playground??

Would not recommend! My library loan of Circe is free tomorrow so I have been reading the discussion about it with interest!

5. A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore
I was gripped by this story of siblings Cathy and Rob whose parents have left them in a crumbling country house and the intense relationship between them. It’s beautifully written, powerfully evoking the house, the bleak countryside around and the characters, not just Cathy ( the narrator) and her brother, but their taciturn and frightening grandfather, Kate, the servant who cares for them and the repulsive Miss Gallagher, their governess. When I read that back it sounds cliched but it’s anything but. Highly recommended.

1. The Man who Wasn't There - Pat Barker

12 year old Colin wants to know who his Dad is. His mum told him he was killed in the war, by listening at doors he gleans the information that she just doesn't know. Well written & sympathetic but doesn't go anywhere. Feels a bit like she just got bored of it and stopped writing.

This is a very short book, I'm going for a longer one next.

Ah sorry I was critical of your favorite book HeadNorth.

Stories can resonate (or not) in such a personal way for us as individuals. That’s the wonderful thing about books.

Midnightstar if you can't face going back to the Michel Faber book, you could just read Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn, which had the same idea but is only two-thirds the length and is (at least, I remember it as being) amusing!

I bought the octopus book a couple of years ago in a Kindle sale (really must stop doing that!!!) and it's never quite been the book I want to read next. I'm hoping that my random number generator will force me to deal with all the unread Kindle books this year as I really do want to read them, just not now

Also, I'm 10% of the way through Ducks, Newburyport (which I'm enjoying very, very much - whoever described it as addictive was spot on) so I don't think I can cope with anything too serious until I've finished that!

Some of the worst books I've ever read had such formulaic titles that try so hard to be interesting, like Memory Keeper's Daughter.

I quite enjoyed that book a few years ago.

Mackerella that's how I came about the octopus book too. Like you it's never been the book I want to read right now.

What do you think of the Charlotte Betts books Eine and Cote - they are all the daughter or wife of somebody.

Raven

Oh Normal People such shite. I was so pissed off at it, that on my review on here I just put No.

Main grievances :

WHERE ARE YOUR FUCKING QUOTATION MARKS?!

VERY JUVENILIA

AS IF THIS WOULD EVEN HAPPEN BECAUSE NO ONE WOULD EVER SPEAK TO CONNELL AGAIN AFTER THE DEBS FIASCO.

The End

Such A Fun Age Wednesday

Only thought it average, and a bit preachy.

Crawdads

Mawkish

Just finished books 2 and 3.
Book 2 Another Croissant - really enjoyable read - makes me long for a time when we are free ro travel again.
Book 3 The Other Bennet Sister. I did not expect to like this as I had read Death Comes to Pemberley and Longbourn and not enjoyed either. However I really loved this, it gave Mary a back story which was totally believable and I couldn’t’ wait to finish it

What do you think of the Charlotte Betts books Eine and Cote - they are all the daughter or wife of somebody

Genuinely never heard of her - my objection to these books is that they take as their premise that the females only value is their proximity to a man, and thats before you open it