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.

1. Crazy Rich Asians Kevin Kwan.

Enjoyed this, been reviewed here many times so won’t go over it. Did find with reading it on BorrowBox compared to a book I didn’t find it easy to flit between footnotes/family tree and back again (site it can be done but gave up and looked at footnotes after).

@finisterreforever that is my plan otherwise I don’t think I will read anything else this year and have a TBR bookcase to get through

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie ...... I love 'remains of the day' too..... 🤣

@ChessieFL @noodlezoodle I loved 'Apple of My Eye', 'Her Name was Rose' is good too (that's reminded me to look up more by Claire Allan)

Don't so much mind if characters are likeable or not, but they have to be active and the drivers of their own stories - not Arthur Dent or Fanny Boring-Arse Price. They can't just float about and have things happen to them.

I don't mind a lack of plot, as long as there is strong world-building and the characters make psychological sense.

Not worried about speech marks and loved both the Sally Rooney novels.

@ChessieFL @noodlezoodle crossed wires, we're talking about a different 'Apple of my Eye'

finisterreforever - actually I am not that far off as my latest read, Banker, was 1982 so I should get to Kit before Easter (on the basis of reading one every few weeks).

The Sunlight Pilgrims by Jenni Fagan
I really liked this. It's a strange, present tense, lyrical, almost stream of consciousness novel, in which nothing and everything happens. It's set in Scotland as the world undergoes another ice age, and centres on just a couple of character and their loves and losses.

It reminded me a little of David Almond's The Fire Eaters in its strangeness and sweetness and sadness.

Recommended.

mackerella and Tarahumara I think we are reading twins. The love of a long ramble is why The Most Fun We Ever Had was one of my favourites last year.

Based on all this it really is high time to launch into Ducks, Newburyport, isn't it?

@Mumtotwofurbabies, I have been to Carcassonne (after reading the Kate Mosse books!) and it was lovely. Not much to do, mind - one for a day visit or short weekend rather than the basis of a holiday - but generally well worth a look round.

1. Jennifer Lynn Barnes - The Inheritance Games

My love of American YA suspense books knows no bounds another one about unfeasibly good looking teenagers in unrealistic situations. In this one, Avery inherits an immense fortune from someone she's never met, and has to work out various puzzles at her new mansion to understand why. In the background are the family who have been disinherited and (surprise, surprise) various hunky males that she's attracted to. Still, it was better and more involving than I expected, and the next instalment is out in a few months.

I've bought Ben Elton - Time and Time Again and Matthew Kneale - Pilgrims on 99p Kindle deals too. The Ben Elton because I enjoyed it far more than I thought I would - I'd read one of his before that which I thought was terrible (might have been Dead Famous?) - and the Matthew Kneale book from recommendations on here. I think I'm right in saying that he's the son of Judith Kerr as well?! The DC are loving the TV adaptation of The Tiger Who Came To Tea

I really can't keep up with this thread! I read all the posts, think about commenting, and then by the time I've fully caught up the conversation had moved on! Enjoying reading everything, but given my attempt to reduce time spent Mumsnetting,I suspect I'll struggle to be a regular contributor.

Anyway, partway through The Girl With The Louding Voice and really enjoying it, despite the fact it's not an uplifting book. More to follow love I've finished it!

*once I've finished it

Clara yes, Matthew Kneale is the son of Judith Kerr and Nigel Kneale, creator of Quatermass and The Stone Tape.

I decided to bring my list over, just because:

1: The Dead of Winter - Nicola Upson
2: The Ratline - Philippe Sands
3: The Truants - Kate Weinberg
4: London Fog: The Biography - Christine L. Corton
5: Under the Rainbow - Susan Scarlett
6: The Haunting of Alma Fielding - Kate Summerscale
7: Box 88 - Charles Cumming

And I've just finished
8: Periodic Tales: The Curious Lives of the Elements - Hugh Aldersey-Williams

I'm conscious that being an arts/history-type person by inclination, I tend to neglect reading about science, so this was an attempt to redress the balance; it's definitely popular science but not overly dumbed down and very interesting indeed. Hugh A-W explores the periodic table, discovered by Dimitri Mendeleev in the 19th c - though greeted with scepticism at the time - and tells the stories of many of the elements within it. This makes for a genuinely fascinating narrative, engagingly put across and full of little nuggets of surprising information. Really excellent.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I wasn’t keen on The Age of Innocence either but Ethan Frome was my favourite read of 2020. Might be worth a go if you haven’t tried it already as it is so short. Although Remains of the Day is one of my favourite books, so not sure that’s the best recommendation for you 

@RavenclawesomeCrone I’m fascinated by Eleanor of Aquitaine too (she was so interesting and I find it hilarious that Louis was annoyed at the lack of sons then she marries Henry and has son after son) and loved the Alison Weir book, will definitely have to read The Summer Queen.

One of my favourite historical novels When Christ and his Saints Slept by Sharon Penman is, though ostensibly about the Empress Maude and Stephen de Blois, very much about Eleanor.

Finished n6

Murder Mile Lynda La Plante (Tennison 4)

Lovely jubbly. Just what I needed on a cold January lockdown weekend. Nothing fancy, nothing intellectual. Just good old fashioned "this would be a great ITV three day mini series" serial killer police procedural. As it's young Tennison, I imagined there would be more references to 1979 or the 70s in general, but it was only written a couple of years ago, and the lovely but maybe a little too Lynda clearly couldn't be arsed beyond dressing everyone in brown cord and having them drive Allegra cars. Oh, and the bodies being found among the piled up rubbish in the winter of discontent.
It was good though, romped through it. I find LLP can be very hit and miss, especially in recent years and she's never been able to write dialogue (" "oh my God!" Jane shouted as she ran from the room" "it's being called the winter of discontent" etc) but this was a page turner.

I've actually read When Christ and His Saints Slept. Sharon Penman is fab, although she does go on a bit towards the end of the novel, imo. As if she can't bring herself to finish! My favourite of hers is The Sun in Splendour.

Yes!
I confess to skim reading Lionheart towards the end. Towards the middle if I'm honest.
A battle here, a battle there. Shields and swords. Swords and shields.

Same SOLINVICTUS! That one went on a bit too! I think I more or less abandoned the end of that. Still traumatised by some of the King John stuff in it at the beginning. Think that's the one I'm thinking of anyway.

"I am about to start Station Eleven "

Excellent. We are long overdue a Station 11 bunfight

Re "likable characters" - I don't even understand the issue. Why do you need to like the characters in a book? They are not real people. You don't have to introduce them to your friends & children. You won't ever have to talk to them.

If you insist on only nice people stories, you are going to miss a lot of fantastic books including non-fiction ones - many if not most people who changed the world were not very likeable.

Maybe that's why there are "women's books" with pretty covers, cursive titles, and likeable characters that do likeable, everyday things with their likeable, ordinary children and friends.

For me, it’s more about whether the character comes across as intended. For example, one of the books I read upthread had a very irritating main character but we’re obviously supposed to like her and be on her side. I didn’t like that book because the character didn’t come across as intended. I have read other books where I haven’t liked the characters, but that’s OK because we’re clearly not meant to. Whether a character is likeable or not, you have to be able to engage with them in the way the author intended so for me that’s what makes a good book. I have read some great books where the lead character is awful, but I like those books because the author does a good job of making you care what happens to the character even though they’re awful. Other books are less good because the author doesn’t make me care what happens to them.

For me I think I’m pretty flexible on most criteria here, love a good plot, love a meandering slow burner. Love heavily stylised work, stuff that tries something new, love traditional stuff.

Basically good writing. Something that gets you to forget about the rest of the world and means you can sit for so long absorbed in it that your bones creak when you get up. Even heavy NF does this at its best.

Looking at my 1 stars, the main trend is ‘a bit stupid’ or over doing it on the trauma.

Re "likable characters" - I don't even understand the issue. Why do you need to like the characters in a book? They are not real people. You don't have to introduce them to your friends & children. You won't ever have to talk to them

To explain a bit, because likeable and unlikeable doesnt quite cut it as an explanation its not quite what I mean

A Machiavellian like say Hugo Lamb, fine, interesting.

I read Tampa cover to cover and the character is evil, really, same for similar book Notes On A Scandal

It's when they are neither one thing or the other but such a tedious miserable bore or bores or just a twat you cannot bear to be in their company. At the moment I can only really think of Lily Bart but a couple of McEwan characters also manage to be simultaneously deeply irritating and tedious

No, I'm not introducing them to my company but I am spending 3 or 4 hours in theirs and so I don't want them to drain the life out of me so much I want to DNF and throw it across the room.

IYSWIM?

"a tedious miserable bore or bores or just a twat... a couple of McEwan characters also manage to be simultaneously deeply irritating and tedious"

Depressed, introspective people do tend to be irritating and tedious in RL but they can have very rich inner lives and profound reflections for which literature is the perfect medium.

Some of the most intriguing books I have ever read were first person accounts of deeply unstable and often psychotic and unreliable narrators, such as Will Self's Umbrella and J G Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition.

Then again, I find all books about the everyday lives of ordinary people with ordinary families and children utterly tedious and irritating and can't imagine why anyone would want to spend time and money on them. We are all different

Ian McEwan is an oddity for me. His books generally have no plot and focus heavily on the characters' thoughts and feelings, but he is such an amazing writer who writes so beautifully that I enjoy reading what he has to say.