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.

I'm reading London Belongs to Me and enjoying it but finding paper book / small print hard going after lots of Kindle app reading in lockdown!

If you're after a funny, slightly magicky book about baking, Sourdough by Robin Sloan is good. Definitely quirky but without being irritating.

I'm a uni lecturer too cassandre - just finished my pile of Semester A marking!

It's relentless isn't it Tarahumara?!

it is a book that will stay with me - other solitary worlds and labyrinths where you can lose yourself, whether they are prisons or a kind of freedom. A very appropriate lockdown read.

Lovely comment about Piranesi, StayNorth, I completely agree.

I see that The Mermaid of Black Conch has just won the Costa Prize. I had never heard of it but would quite like to read it now. Am tempted to reserve it from the library as our library is still open for collecting reserved books, and has moved the due date of all books up to April. So I'm accumulating this massive pile of books due in April, but there's no way I'll ever manage to get through them all by then. Oops!

As my kindle has conked out, I’m going for a gamble with library click and collect selection. You can choose genre and then the books are chosen for you.
Quite exciting to see what I’ll discover.

Sorry to hear about your kindle shotgun but I too am curious to hear what your library click and collect will throw up. Our library did a similar thing for a while when we weren't allowed physical access and I thought it sounded like a really nice 'task' for the library staff. And obviously a great chance to make some new discoveries. Enjoy!

14: Just My Type - Simon Garfield

This kind of book is catnip to nerds like me. A wonderful exploration of the history of fonts, full of weird and wonderful details (how Helvetica conquered the world; why there are websites full of people even more pedantic than I am who spot anachronistic typefaces in films), and crammed with great stories for fans of graphic design. It's also very entertainingly laid out, with the name of each font that's mentioned printed in its own font....if you see what I mean. Another winner from Simon Garfield, who seems to have exactly the kind of magpie brain that I can't resist.

That sounds fantastic Terpsichore I'm guessing needs to be a physical not Kindle book...? (Cheap on kindle! but I read on phone app)

The Defensive Baking book has loads of five star reviews on Goodreads Sadik so it could just be me although I’m sometimes suspicious as there often seem to be huge volumes of rave reviews for what I consider to be very average or even terrible books.

Thanks for the recommendation Viking I might give it a go once I’ve forgotten my aversion to the sourdough starter in Defensive Baking!

Sadik yes, sorry, I meant to add that! It ought to be a paper book, I think. Ive just had a peek at the Kindle edition and it's pretty good but the physical book is a design experience in itself.

Just finished number 8, A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. I found this in my MIL’s house and thought I’d try Bill again, not having enjoyed Notes From a Small Island 20 years ago. I really enjoyed it. It was calm, relaxing and full of amusing anecdotes and interesting observations. I love a book with a map and enjoy googling the locations. Bill knows his history and geography and I got a good feel for the landscape. I know we have the new Notes from a Small Island in the house, so I’m definitely going to read that.

3. Tea By The Nursery Fire – Noel Streatfeild

Much reviewed on here a year or so ago. This was a very enjoyable, cosy comfort read, nostalgic and undemanding; just what was required during lockdown.

1. Cage of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Whoa! This was fantastic It started out as misery lit, detailing the trials and tribulations of incarceration in what sounds like a tropical jungle at the hands of homicidal prison wardens, but soon turned into a richly detailed apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic book with brilliant characterization à la The Shawshank Redemption. Even that wasn't enough, and after about 100 pages, the author started giving out little crumbs of information about the world these characters live in, the political landscape, forgotten scientific advancements, and humanity on the verge of extinction.

I loved everything about this book - Unique and well-developed characters, grand ideas about humanity's challenges and possible future, plot development, interesting secondary stories that developed along the way, and especially how the author parted with details of the world he crafted in small increments to be discovered like parts of a puzzle.

Adrian Tchaikovsky is fast becoming one of my favorite SF authors. His unassuming but beautifully executed Dogs of War was surprisingly one of the best SF books I have read in recent years, and it also had a lot of interesting things to say about human nature and our collective future.

Just finished 4. Airhead Emily Maitlis which was really interesting, giving a different perspective on some of the interviews she has conducted. Really worth a read.
Books 5and 6.The first 2 of the Bridgerton Series. Not my usual read but at 99p on offer on Kindle I thought I would give them a go. Although they were a quick read the stories did drag. I wouldn’t read either of them again.

terpsichore, I’m a huge font geek and Just My Type is a great book. I am inclined to go and dig it out for a reread - thanks for reminding me about it. My sister-in-law bought it for me as a joke a few years ago when I said I liked fonts. I think she was taken aback by my enthusiasm.

Pepe

Did either of you watch the recent BBC4 series The Secret History of Writing? I think it was one of the best shows I watched last year, absolutely fascinating. There's a couple of clips on the link.

6 Landskipping: Painters, Ploughmen and Places By Anna Pavord

Patchy. I liked the idea of the book better than I liked the book. I liked the chapter on art and artists but felt the rest of the book was lacking. I would have been far more interested in theories around landscape rather than long lists of who grew what where and who owned which piece of land. I quite liked some of her writing on her own relationship with the landscape but her dislike of anything modern or anything changing got irritating after a while

I’m really behind on the thread already.

Anyway, had several days of huddling together for warmth because of a broken boiler (it’s working again, but the plumber reckons it needs replacing ), so I’ve finished:

8. The Anarchy: the Relentless Rise of the East India Company - William Dalrymple

Despite the subtitle, Dalrymple concentrates on 18th-century India, where the collapse of Mughal power creates a power vacuum filled by emerging, smaller powers, including the EIC. Dalrymple is highly knowledgeable and passionate about his subject, and creates a vivid historical narrative, making interesting use of contemporary sources, British and Indian. However, I felt a bit less court gossip, and a few more basic facts (and much better maps) and more analysis, particularly of the wider Imperial context, would have made this the really great book it could have been. Well worth reading, but also rather frustrating.

9. Cold Earth - Sarah Moss

I’ve come rather late to Moss, so I’m sure lots of you have already read this. Atmospheric story of an archaeological dig in Greenland going wrong during a pandemic. Not sure the female characters were meant to be quite as irritating as I found them.

Somehow that passed me by, Janina - that's rather annoying! There was also a whole feature-length documentary film about fonts and particularly Helvetica (that's the title), which is a really entertaining watch. I saw it on BBC4 a while ago but it's still around to watch online, I think, if you google it.

On a slightly related note, one of the books I really enjoyed a couple of years ago was Philip Hensher's The Missing Ink, which is about handwriting and its decline.

Pepe lucky you didn't get a book about ecclesiastical architecture (although I like that sort of font, too ). shouldn't you all be calling them typefaces rather than fonts, though?

I was quite excited to read your review, Terps, as Just My Type is on the list of books that DH has read but that we can't get rid of until I've also read them. He has this annoying habit of buying a book then reading it straightaway and then immediately getting rid of it unless it's amazing - rather than acquiring and stockpiling more books because they look interesting, then getting distracted by library books or ones borrowed from friends or ones rediscovered on a Kindle or in a box under the bed or... I'm forever hindering our decluttering attempts because of my terrible combination of enthusiasm, acquisitiveness and hopeless naive optimism

Oh, and I've got On The Map, also by Simon Garfield, on the same TBR shelf, in case any of you are interested - typefaces and maps being two of DH's enthusiasms!

Ooooh Terps that’s going on my wish list! I know what you mean about a magpie mind, and fonts are fascinating.

Does it mention Doves? No don’t tell me!

Oh, we have the pending-tbr double book-piles as well, mackerella

There's some discussion of the font/typeface debate in Simon Garfield's book and I'm steering well clear of it here!

Frozen Fire by Tim Bowler
YA and okay only. The writing veered between pretty good, clunky and all a bit overwrought. Ultimately, not particularly satisfying.

mackarella, she did buy me a book about dry stone walls one year which was also awesome. I’d love a book about ecclesiastical architecture- I picked up the Ladybird one about church architecture in a second hand book shop last year because I loved it as a child. I was so upset when I got home to discover someone had cut out all the pictures.