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.

Wise move, Eine
You'll probably have people piling in to tell you it's brilliant, profound and heartbreaking. It isn't; it's just shit.

I hated 1000 Splendid Suns with a passion - all its faults and defects that are a direct result of having been written in English by an American who knows little about Afghanistan.

Everyone in the West knows two things about Afghanistan - (1) Buddha statues blown up by the Taliban and (2) women get beaten up there. And that is all this book talks about.

Like a book about the US, written in Arabic, by a Saudi guy, which talks only about everyone eating hamburgers and sleeping with each other

Stokey you've just reminded me that I borrowed City of Brass through Amazon Prime Reading last year, but have never quite felt the desire to read it. Maybe I'll return it and re-read Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus trilogy instead .

10: Stasiland - Anna Funder

Reviewed previously on earlier threads. A quite staggering book about life in East Germany, when literally every single aspect of existence could be, and was, scrutinised and exploited with utmost cruelty and malevolence by the Stasi. Living in (unified) Germany in the 1990s - only a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall - Australian-born Anna Funder began to seek out the stories of people who lived in the East under this repressive regime, as well as those who imposed and maintained it. Much of the testimony she hears is heartbreakingly terrible and it's almost impossible to credit that such things could have happened so recently. An extraordinary book and a definite five-star, although not an easy read emotionally.

@CoteDAzur

I hated 1000 Splendid Suns with a passion - all its faults and defects that are a direct result of having been written in English by an American who knows little about Afghanistan.

Everyone in the West knows two things about Afghanistan - (1) Buddha statues blown up by the Taliban and (2) women get beaten up there. And that is all this book talks about.

Like a book about the US, written in Arabic, by a Saudi guy, which talks only about everyone eating hamburgers and sleeping with each other

Yes, yes, and thrice yes.

I read it, and the Kite Runner, and in the midst of people sobbing, rending their garments and listing them in the top five of all time, I posted that it felt like the writer had decided "oooh. Topical. Yay! I'll go to the pop-up ingredients-for-a-novel shop and I'll need a hint of family and friendship, a dollop of sexual abuse, an enormous quantity of blood and needless death and now where shall it be set? Ta-da! I know just the place!"

Just because the subject matter is,(supposedly, but in these cases it was all so fecking superficially done) dark, doesn't make it Literature. (not that there's anything wrong in not writing Literature, but this guy and his marketing dept want us to believe he is writing not just Literature but Very Important Literature)

I wouldn't touch another of his with a bargepole.

(that's a namechange fail in my ire. It's Sol.

I went through a Beryl Bainbridge phase a few years ago (probably about the time she died). The Bottle Factory Outing is generally raved about but is quite different to her later novels that are reimaginings of real events. I remember Watson's Apology having a similar feeling of doom to The Birthday Boys and Every Man for Himself and is probably the one that stuck with me the most after those two. Liked Master Georgie and According to Queenie. Less fussed about Young Adolf. Not read An Awfully Big Adventure but should add to my TBR pile. Basically she's fabulous and I think even her worst book is more interesting than 99% of novels.

6 Days of the Bagnold Summer by Joff Winterhart

A film of this was released last summer and I wanted to read this before I watched it. Short graphic novel about a single Mum and her teenage son and what they did over the school summer holidays. Slight, very British, lots of unsaid things, not a lot of plot, atmosphere very like a British indie film to the extent that I'm surprised it took so long to make this into a film. Central relationship very believeable, will probably force my teenager to watch with me (and maybe even read the book!).

Really...pleased isn't perhaps the right word, but really something to see a review of Stasiland on here, @Terpsichore. It's an incredible book - I read it years ago and haven't thought about it for a long time. I think I'll add it to my re-read list.

I lived in the former GDR for a year in the late 90s and found it fascinating. Looking back I think everyone there was still reeling from the shock of it all, but I was so young that the fact it was almost a decade since Reunification seemed like a long time. I'd love to go back now.

Talk of Stasiland makes me even more desperate to get back to Berlin. 😥😥

I feel that book will stay with me for a long time, @barnanabas. Like many people I've seen the film The Lives of Others and was shaken by what it reveals of the Stasi's grip on everyday life, but Anna Funder really lays it bare. I can scarcely get my head around the scale of the surveillance and the terror they exerted. The stories of torture - psychological as much as physical - are nightmarish. Nazism or Communism...not much to choose from, really, in the end, when it comes to absolute power.

And yet when the Wall came down, there never really was a 'truth and reconciliation' process. Maybe it takes an outsider like AF to see it with fresh eyes and tell some of the stories.

1. Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid. This follows a few months in the life of white woman Alix Chamberlain and her black babysitter Emira Tucker. After three non-fiction books in a row, including the dementia one, I was ready for something a bit more fun and less demanding and this fitted the bill nicely. I also think it's important that mixed race relationships and other racial themes should crop up in chick lit type books - not just in serious, powerful books on the subject. Overall I enjoyed this. But... long listed for the Booker? Really?

Btw I loved The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns . And The Mountains Echoed was rubbish though.

10. The warning - Kathryn Croft.

This book covers the circumstances surrounding a couple of teenagers accidental deaths by drowning, so maybe be a trigger for people who have lost a child.

We meet a family whose son had died 3 years previously, and suddenly start receiving mysterious emails/texts saying they should look into it as it wasn't an accident.

There are a few threads running through the book and it culminates in showing how all of them come together and relate to the accident. I usually have a good guess about whodunnit, but didn't see this coming. Thinking back on it I think this may be more to do with me as when things are revealed it makes complete sense (although not necessarily obvious from the beginning like some books), I thought it was ok, but it didn't grab me. This would ordinarily be right up my street but I was just a bit meh about it all.

I read Stasiland last summer and thought it was very interesting. An excellent book. Actually Jon Ronson talks about it in So You've Been Publicly Shamed in terms of how the Satsi made people feel shame by reading out their private letters to them as part of their interrogations and how important that was in breaking them down.

22. Hadley and Grace by Suzanne Redfearn

Got this from the Amazon First Reads programme, so it was free. It’s basically a rehash of Thelma and Louise - two women on the run together, but this time with their kids. Mixed feelings on this - I did want to see what happened to the women and I was rooting for them. However, you do have to suspend a bit of disbelief - they’re apparently plastered all over the papers/news yet can stay in hotels/go for meals without anyone recognising them. And the number of times they evade the FBI doesn’t ring true. However it is an entertaining enough read if you’re able to suspend disbelief a bit and just go with it.

Another voice for Stasiland

It didn't end up in my bolds last year but I thought it was excellent.

Oh I have to re read Stasiland now! I absolutely loved that. If you liked that, try Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick. Similar but investigating North Korea in the present. Stories come from escapees for obvious reasons. It is mind blowing.

@WednesdayalltheWay

Oh I have to re read Stasiland now! I absolutely loved that. If you liked that, try Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick. Similar but investigating North Korea in the present. Stories come from escapees for obvious reasons. It is mind blowing.

I'd highly recommend that book too. I've read quite a few books about NK as I hope to visit it one day if the regime changes (somebody I know went a few years ago) and it was one of the stand out ones.

7. The Guest List - Lucy Foley

I think quite a few people read this last year. Julia and Will are getting married in a castle/folly on a haunted island off Ireland. They haven’t known each other very long - what could possibly go wrong? The story is told by various narrators: Julia (the bride with a difficult upbringing but now a successful businesswoman); Aoife (the wedding planner who owns the castle/folly and needs the event to be a success); Olivia (much younger half sister of Julia who has personal problems); Hannah (the wife of Julia’s best friend, Charlie, who is pleased to have a weekend away from the children but still questions Julia and Charlie’s relationship) and Jonno (best man and childhood school friend of Will). The murder happens right at the end of the book and the narrative builds up to that point. It’s not great literature and I don’t think she is very good at writing from the male perspective but it certainly kept me turning the pages.

Onto something more substantial next...

4 Pine by Francine Toon

I did enjoy this. Its mainly written from the point of view of a ten year old girl who's mother has gone missing when she was a baby. Its set in rural Scotland. It has some supernatural elements and a gothic feel and could also be classified as a thriller/mystery/crime novel however its pace is very slow and focused more on atmosphere and character than any fast paced thrills.
Its certainly fairly creepy and sad. Beautifully written.

1. The Shipping News by E Annie Proulx

I've come to this book late and now I know what everyone's on about! I'll be amazed if it's not in my top five books at the end of the year. It was great.

Quoyle is a big shambling unattractive man with a good heart. Life has dealt him a bad hand and he ends up quitting his life and setting out on a long drive to the old abandoned family house in Newfoundland, with his two young daughters and an aunt - an admirably resourceful and energetic woman - who's become attached to the family and needs a fresh start herself.

He gets a job on the local newspaper and he and "the aunt" - as she is usually referred to in the book - work to pull the old house into some sort of a liveable state.

Anni Proulx is brilliant at settings and atmosphere. The sea is almost another character in this novel. Much of the plot is driven by what happens in the bay; there are drownings and near escapes; items are washed up; characters' actions are determined by the weather, and Quoyle's job focuses on documenting the arrivals and departures in the harbour for the Gammy Bird , the local paper which depends on car wrecks, sexual abuse cases and local gossip to keep its readers interested.

The author is also great at names. We meet Tert Card, Billy Pretty, Wavey Prowse and many more. People aren't perfect, but in this remote community and tough climate they find a way of coexisting and gradually Quoyle begins to find a place amongst them.

1. Thicker than Water by JD Kirk

Another police procedural, the second in the Jack Logan series. It was hard to know what to read after The Shipping News, so this filled the gap before moving on to a longer more demanding novel.

Like the first in the series, I found the plot rather far-fetched, but I'm enjoying the banter and the relationships developing between the police officers and it did the job as an undemanding read.

I've had my first DNF - The Thursday Murder Club. I found it unfunny, it had too many characters to keep track of, and there was too much padding. I'm so annoyed with myself for buying it and not waiting for it to be available at the library.

I've had The Thursday Murder Club on reservation from the library since November. I'm currently number 63 in the queue apparently. I can guarantee it won't have been worth the wait - but I find Richard Osman a bit full of himself so didn't want to line his pockets by buying it!

1. A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell (A Dance to the Music of Time: Spring: 1) On the one hand I do love a series; on the other hand I've been stung before by books about privileged white men looking back over their long lives in the 20th century, written, of course, by a privileged white man. The love of series, helped by slyly witty observational prose, won over this time, and I'm looking forward to spending a few not too demanding reading hours with this set of characters now and then over the next few months.

1. The Land of Maybe by Tim Ecott My first non-fiction of the year and I'm feeling a bit conflicted. The Faroe Islands came out of this book pretty well but authorial choices didn't always. That this book conveys an amazing feeling for the geography, wildlife, climate and what it feels like to live on the Faroes is definitely in its favour. I'm not quite sure how the author managed to get all that across though, as I found there was something about his prose that my mind would just slide over, and sometimes I'd find I'd read a whole page or two without taking anything in, and I had to go back to find out what island we were on, and what killing ritual he was trying to get himself an invite to today. That was problematic. The book is disproportionately about him inveigling himself with the tough traditional men who kill animals and going on their tough traditional killing trips with them. Yes, I know this is part of the way of life in the Faroes, but surely just part. In the middle of the book he has a really whiny pathetic chat with himself about whether he should go and see a whale drive, which boiled down to - hmm, I've swum with whales on some of my previous trips and I like being able to see happy alive whales for me me me, BUT how can I possibly know whether something is wrong unless I've seen it for myself (er, I've never seen a murder, but...), anyway I'm a JOURNALIST, what the hell, I'm going. It was at this point that he, as a person, lost my sympathy - not for going, but for the disingenuous way he talked himself into it - but I still wanted to read on about the islands. There aren't many books of this nature on the Faroes, so, flaws aside, I do feel I've learnt a lot about the islands from this.

1. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke I bumped this up the reading list as so many people were enjoying it, and because someone on this thread (sorry can't remember who) warned that it should be read before it's popularity means it gets spoilered. No spoilers from me, just to echo what previous positive reviews have said. It's intriguing, atmospheric, otherworldly, magical. It's short and well paced. The reveal of the true nature of the situation is handled in a satisfying way, as it's a first person narration by the title character 'Piranesi', and his charming naivety means the reader is half a step ahead of him, but still puzzled and intrigued. I might even try Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell again (didn't get past the first chapter last time).

Although Piranesi is totally original, some of the themes and the 'feel' of the book reminded me of Mythago Wood. I last read it over 30 years ago and loved it then. Has anyone read it recently? Has it aged well? I'm almost scared to go back to it.

Behind with the thread again so just want to mark my place.
I'll be back with reviews tomorrow but I'm the meantime I've finished
Book 6 Dead Cert by Dick Francis
Book 7 Holy Disorders by Edmund Crispin
Just started book 8 The Punishment She Deserves by Elizabeth George. At 700 plus pages it should keep me going a while

The Greengage Summer
I knew absolutely nothing about this, other than that I'd seen it mentioned on here, and it was very different to what I'd assumed it to be. It's slow and sultry and every time I thought it was going in a particular direction, it then swerved into a different one. I really liked the slow build towards the big revelation, but thought the ending was too abrupt.
Best thing in it - Willmouse. I ADORED him.