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.

Nope!?

I read it when my eldest was a baby, it's a fictionalised version of the plague in Eyam, Derbyshire. I'd recommend it.

Another vote for Year of Wonders, it's great.

Quick question, do we count graphic novels? My husband has loads and a couple have caught my eye.

I've finished The Goldfinch and I'm struggling to have an opinion either way on it. Unnecessarily long is my only pronouncement.

Cool, thanks betts

Fortuna, a perfectly fine assessment IMO

7. The Never Game by Jeffery Deaver

This is a Jeffrey Deaver book featuring a new main character Colter Shaw who makes his living collecting rewards. Deaver has clearly taken inspiration from current affairs for the story but it felt really contrived and flat. The main character wasn't too bad and the backstory of Shaw's upbringing off the grid with his paranoid (or is he...?) father and the rest of the family was much more interesting than the main story of a series of disappearances. One thing that was driving me insane though - you know how some writers give their characters a 'thing' to humanise them (a like, a dislike, an approach etc.) and then bang on and on and on about it? Well in this Shaw is a man who likes to assess EVERYTHING using percentages and by the end I was hoping there would be a 100% chance of someone giving him a slap and telling him to SHUT UP! No such luck.

8. Misery by Stephen King

Continuing my re-read of Stephen King books in order, I have just finished Misery. It has been funny revisiting the books I have read previously (some on several occasions) as my tastes have clearly changed a bit over the years and there has definitely been a re-ordering of my top Stephen King books.

Misery was a book that I didn't really enjoy the first time round, maybe because my favourite King books were the 'epic' ones like IT and The Stand with lots of main characters and a variety of settings. In contrast Misery is the story of a writer (Paul Sheldon) who is rescued after a car crash by his 'Number One Fan' (Annie Wilkes) and these are the only main characters with the action pretty much restricted to one location. I'm not sure why I ever thought this book was dull, King starts the tension right away, there's no lengthy lead-up here, and ratchets it up constantly throughout the book. If I have one criticism of King generally it's that his endings often don't live up to the promise of the rest of the book but the ending of Misery was just right. Enjoyed every minute of this and Annie Wilkes stands up as one of the great Stephen King characters.

@MamaNewtNewt

Another vote for Year of Wonders, it's great.

Quick question, do we count graphic novels? My husband has loads and a couple have caught my eye.

I’ve counted graphic novels in my lists before.

Year of Wonders is good. She did another one based on the father in Little Women which wasn't as good, but was okay. I think it's called March.

MamaNewt - Misery is so good. Definitely up there in King's top ten (maybe top 5 if I don't count The Dark Tower books!).

I've started The Greengage Summer which I think I've seen mentioned on here a few times.

I enjoyed Year of Wonders' especially as I used to live in the area & have walked to the plague stone. Terrific beginning and middle but I thought it lost its way rather at the end.

I will go back and catch up (and see if there are any books to add to my growing wish list)

Next up is The Katherina Code by Jorn Lier Horst - this was a 99p kindle daily deal and was ok as a lunch time read as a break from work. Two cold cases, a teenager and a woman, are reopened as new evidence has come to light regarding the kidnap of the teenager involving the husband of the missing woman. William Wisting is the main protagonist who has remained in touch with the husband since he investigated his wife’s disappearance.

I have this 3/5 on Goodreads. Short chapters make it an easy book to pick up if you only have a short time to read, the plot was engaging, you didn’t know who did it but the story was how he did it. I think I have another one on my kindle so won’t be getting rid of that before I have read it.

2 down 48 to go.
I've finished The Future of Almost Everything by Patrick Dixon and Animal Farm by George Orwell.

The former is written by a guy who is a Futurist, i.e. his job is to analyse trends and predict the future based on this. He looks at the future through six lenses: tribal, fast, urban, radical, universal and ethical. I really enjoyed the early parts of the book which looked at regional and global development and health and science advances and their impact on humans. It was especially interesting thinking about a future where people will have healthy lives up to 120 years old, and the changes that will be required in work, society and the family to support this. Then it went down the rabbit hole of energy production and NGOs and I lost the plot a bit.

It has been over twenty years since I read Animal Farm, which I picked up on kindle as it came out of copyright. I read somewhere that a person should read every good book three times over the course of a lifetime and see what you get out of them at different life stages. Reading as a teen I was interested in the Russia/China/Communism aspects, but reading now as an adult and as a senior manager in my organisation, I pondered how we promote people within the organisation who were starry eyed and wanted to change everything, and over time it becomes impossible to tell the pigs apart from the men. Also this book inspired me to post 'Four legs bad. Two legs good!' on a SM thread populated by Covid deniers.

They didn't get the reference

I might go back and read Year of Wonders again; I remember enjoying it first time round.

We used to take kids there on school trips. The horrors of the plague, and the self-sacrifice of those who stayed in the village to avoid infecting others, is really brought home at the Riley Graves. Poor woman burying child after child

Sadik good point about Lady Catherine de Bourgh et al.

Characters don't have to be likeable but they do have to be interesting.

I like a character if they are good or bad if they are interesting as @highlandcoo points out

I am afraid to say that I really didn’t care one way or the other if Eleanor Oliphant was competent fine and really got sucked into that one.

@HeadNorth

I enjoyed Year of Wonders' especially as I used to live in the area & have walked to the plague stone. Terrific beginning and middle but I thought it lost its way rather at the end.

I've done that walk too - from the village to the stone, and then back via the ice cream shop down the fields to our holiday cottage in the next village.

MamaNewt, I think Misery is his best book assessed by any normal literary metric. It’s got a plot, an ending and it all zips along with no weird digressions or dodgy bits. I don’t love it the way I love The Stand but I can see it’s probably his best novel in many ways. And I know that a lot of his novels that I have enjoyed more have (ahem) significant flaws.

@finisterreforever it is a bonny part of the world and the plague stone is very evocative - I used to live in Hayfield on the side of Kinder Scout and loved walking in the Peak District. The book did give a good sense of the high peak country and huddled stone villages - I have very happy memories of the 5 years or so I spent there.

[quote HeadNorth]@finisterreforever it is a bonny part of the world and the plague stone is very evocative - I used to live in Hayfield on the side of Kinder Scout and loved walking in the Peak District. The book did give a good sense of the high peak country and huddled stone villages - I have very happy memories of the 5 years or so I spent there.[/quote]
A friend of mine was the Hayfield wakes queen one year, I wonder if they even still do that. I used to spend a lot of time up your way but never lived there.

I think The Goldfinch was one that I found the main character quite annoying, rather than unlikable. I just wanted him to be more active and he seemed a bit passive. It definitely needed editing.

I'd agree that The Goldfinch was too long. It became an effort to read and not sure it was worth it.

I love both Misery and The Stand, albeit in different ways. Although Misery is on the short side, it's got so much suspense in it that it's like watching a film. Plus I like the fact that's it's perfectly possible in real life, whereas I'm not so good when Stephen King goes into fantasy. That said, I like The Stand in a different way - it's long enough to fully develop, and even if it gets a bit fantasy-based towards the end, I'll forgive it for just being so engaging and absorbing.

I really should read more Stephen King - once I've got through my huge TBR pile...

1. Dear Enemy by Jean Webster

Sallie McBride is writing letters to her college friend Judy who has persuaded her to become reforming superintendent of the orphan asylum in which she herself grew up. In her letters to Judy and to friends, it becomes clear what Sallie wants from life.

This book was an American bestseller of 1916. It is problematic in about a million ways, so be warned - there is no prejudice or terrible political opinion left unexpressed. But I love it, it's a fun and heartwarming story.

Remus I love The Greengage Summer, I hope you enjoy it.

I've been following the comments about The Other Hand for the last couple of days and have just twigged that I actually started it! Gave up very early on; I thought it was rubbish! Sounds like that was a good call.

The Secret History is one of my all time desert-island books, but The Goldfinch really needed a good edit. There's some fabulous writing in it, but that's not enough...

Thanks, Boiled Egg. I'm sure I'll be back with an opinion or three at some point!

Just finished no 4 The Other Passenger by Louise Cavendish. I’ve read another of hers and could see some similarities. Not one that I would recommend. Glad to have finished it and move on.