50 Book Challenge 2021 Part Three

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the third 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 and the second one here.

1. Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell

Much reviewed on here, so I won't rehearse the story. I found the first part a bit over written and self consciously trying for meaning. I was slightly irritated by Agnes portrayal as wise woman/herbalist/woman in tune with nature - it is a bit of a tired trope. The book came alive for me in Venice and a touching moment of connection between a young captive monkey and a cabin boy, both lost, vulnerable and far from home. The exchange of the flea and its journey was fantastic and I really enjoyed that section. Hamnet's death and laying out was obviously affecting, but I did feel I was being emotionally manipulated - the author would pile on the pathos in a way that felt unneccessary and a bit forced. Overall, as with other MOF's books I have read, it was a decent read but I couldn't go further than that.

I couldn’t sleep last night either, so I finished:
13. The Footnote - Anthony Grafton
Bit of an oddity, a search for the origin of the footnote in historical writing. Written in a sprightly style, but takes no prisoners. Worth reading if you’re interested in - and already knowledgeable about - the history of history.

I think I might give Hamnet a go next. I have enjoyed O’Farrell’s writing in previous novels, but I’ve had problems with the real-life plausibility of some of her plots.

I'm sorry to hear about your dad, Razorstorm. My condolences.

Thanks for the Seven Brief Lessons on Physics mention Pepe. I've been waiting for it to come down in price.

I haven't brought my list across yet and am behind on reviews so here they are:

1. Fugitive Pieces, Anne Michaels
2. Spring Garden, Tomoka Shibasaki
3. Red Rising, Pierce Brown
4. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J. K. Rowling
5. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4, Sue Townsend
6. How To Be Good, Nick Hornby
7. The Invisible Man, H. G. Wells
8. Piranesi, Susanna Clarke
9. The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, Sue Townsend

10. Away with the Penguins, Hazel Prior 11. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J. K. Rowling 12. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell 13. The True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole, Sue Townsend

1. The Invisible Man, H. G. Wells

I haven't read many of the sci-fi classics and plan on rectifying that this year. This is the short and intense story of Griffin, a scientist who, having successfully discovered the secret of invisibility, is now living with the consequences, and it hasn't gone quite as planned. I hadn't realised that this starts not with the lead up to the discovery, but with Griffin, already invisible, fleeing across the country to find somewhere quiet he can work in order to reverse the process. It all goes pretty downhill from there as he descends into a frantic, panicked madness.
Obviously there's much in here about scientific responsibility, arrogance, primal nature, and threaded throughout is the continual theme of the discord between Griffin's scientific genius, and his sheer idiocy and lack of foresight (seriously, man, why didn't you make a copy of your notes and keep them somewhere safe?).

1. Piranesi, Susanna Clarke

Reviewed on here a lot recently so I won't rehash the plot. Suffice to say that I really liked it, and thought the descriptions of the house were wonderful. I could just see it all perfectly in my head as I was reading. Unusual and enjoyable.

1. The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, Sue Townsend

Mole, book two. Great. I'm going to hang out with him on and off in the next few months whenever I need a pick-me-up.

10. Away with the Penguins, Hazel Prior

Every year I try to read a couple of books from genres I think I don't really like, just to test whether I'm being unduly critical or missing out on something. I do the same elsewhere in life with varying degrees of success (every few years I try a banana to see if they're nice yet - they never are) because I've learned that my tastes can be a bit changeable. I've had one or two good reads out of doing this; The Black House by Peter May for one.

This is something I wouldn't usually go for, but I thought I'd give it a try because I like books with older protagonists, and books about physical isolation, and, you know, penguins are fun. It was an ok read, and I don't resent the time spent on it, but I think I was probably right about this not quite being for me. The plot is mawkish and unrealistic and I thought the dialogue was pretty poor in places. I did enjoy the penguiny bits though!

11. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J. K. Rowling

Another audiobook listened to whilst pottering around the house. Lupin is awesome, as always.

12. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell

Needs no introduction or summary. Brilliant and awful and clever and terrifying.

13. The True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole, Sue Townsend

I went straight for this after finishing Nineteen Eighty-Four as it left me feeling rather wrung-out. This is an odd Mole though. It's a very short jumble of Mole's diary entries, poetry and letters, followed by diary entries by Townsend herself (somewhat fictionalised I think) and then a satirical take on a teenage Margaret Thatcher. It all felt a bit thrown together and I wasn't quite sure what the aim of it was. I think the next Mole book goes back to true form though so I'll come to that at some point.

I'm now reading The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (it's very unusual for me to be reading a Book of the Moment; I usually come to them years later because my tbr list is so long) and The Ardent Swarm by Yamen Manai, and am still reading The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte. W&P is trundling along in the background when I feel like it.

Oh and I love Bryson, and A Walk in the Woods is one of my favourite books ever.

Pepe I hope you get some sleep tonight.

For all the Bill Bryson fans, he has just been on World Book Club with Harriet Gilbert talking about Notes from a Small Island.

WBC and A Good Read are my favourite podcasts. Harriet Gilbert is great. I really recommend both for those who haven't tried them yet.

That Swedish horror book Ritual which was mentioned on another thread (group of hikers get lost in a remote Swedish forest and all manner of scary things happen) is 99p today. I have foolishly bought it and will probably have to read it on a sunny beach to avoid being scared witless!!!!

Sorry for dropping off the thread – Fridays and Saturdays are often so busy that I don’t have much time to read, let alone Mumsnet. I missed you all, though, and have very much enjoyed catching up – there have been some great reviews over the last few days!

Remus, I was genuinely touched by your post – although I suspect that you’ll hate a lot of books I love, and also that my ability to write persuasive reviews > my taste in books. I’m the kind of person who is constantly being seized by new enthusiasms and getting obsessed for a few weeks before I get distracted by the next thing . I suspect that some of my reviews are bathed in the rosy glow of proximity and that I’ll have cooled on the book a bit by the time I’m another 5 reviews down. (Not Cranford though – that one really is wonderful.) I’m actually quite envious of the people on here who have more definite tastes than me and know clearly what they do and don’t like – in fact, I love reading a review where the reader has really hated the book! I’m a bit too wet and Lib Dem-y and trying hard to see the good in everything .

I’m loving the suggestions about a lesbian Regency romance with quivering Follett breasts (and zombies?) in the style of Dan Brown. Count me in!

Maybe there ought to be a jointly-written 50-booker novel à la Nicci French, with one person contributing a chapter then leaving it for the next person to carry on

Are you familiar with the collaborative books published by the Detection Club, Terpsichore? They operated in much the same way, taking turns to write chapters of a “round-robin novel”, Consequences-style. Each author tried to address the problems set in the previous chapters without sharing their own plot ideas with the writers who followed. The first book, The Floating Admiral was conceived primarily as a way to swell the club’s coffers, but it was such a success that they followed it up with others, including Ask a Policeman and No Flowers by Request. (Two earlier collaborations, The Scoop and Behind the Screen were originally BBC radio broadcasts but were published as novellas in the 1980s.) The Detection Club even produced a sequel to The Floating Admiral in 2016 (called The Sinking Admiral), which was published a mere 85 years later .

Thanks for the recent Jeremy Thorpe reviews, Viking. I’ve wanted to read John Preston’s book ever since I missed watching the adaptation on TV through sheer disorganisation!

Permanent what a lovely review of The Foundling, especially the “as light as a fairy cake, and just as delightful”! I haven’t read any GH for a while, but she was the only author that I could read in the horrible period when I was struggling to look after a toddler with high medical needs and a newborn. (Also, I’m not remotely sorry about making you buy the John Mullan book because I’m sure you’ll enjoy it!)

Thanks for a fab review of the Maria Dahvana Headley book, Tax The Rat Farms. I put her translation of Beowulf on my wishlist recently because one of my DCs has been doing Beowulf at school, and you’ve just made me add this book as well! In a review of the Beowulf translation, they quoted a few lines including:

“Anyone who fucks with the Geats? Bro, they have to fuck with me”

• which made me laugh SO HARD that I had to buy it. Have any of you 50 Bookers read it?

Hope all you insomniacs get some sleep tonight!

15 The Institute by Stephen King.
I’m not sure I would have read this to the end if it wasn’t by SK and I wasn’t such an SK fan in the past.
A little bit Dead Zone, a little bit Firestarter...
I liked the character introductions, he’s always done those well when he gives himself time and space to do so. Hated some of the details of the experiments on the children and his habit of describing the girls (and women) by how developed their breasts are, although Stephen King In Lazy Misogyny Shocker shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me.
Some of his books have a heart amongst the horrors, some are overwritten, meandering tosh.
It passed a few evenings, is about the best I can say of it.

@razorstormunicorn I'm really sorry to hear about your loss, I hope you are doing ok under the circumstances.

@ChessieFL I really like Connie Willis’s time travel books including Doomsday so definitely recommend it. Which Mitford book are you reading? I read The Mitford Girls by Mary S Lovell a few years ago and found it a really fascinating read.

Pepe, your review made me cough up for the physics book on the daily deal.

That’s the one I’m reading @MamaNewtNewt.

I tried the Laura Thompson one a couple of years ago but gave up - it seemed to assume a lot of prior knowledge about them and jumped around in time a lot which I found really annoying, not having the assumed prior knowledge. I’m enjoying the Lovell one so far.

I didn't know about the Detection Club, mackerella - that really made me laugh. I was thinking about how Nicci Gerard and Sean French apparently do much the same thing - write a chapter or a section and then leave the manuscript for the next one to take over (and presumably solve the problems). But yes, 'Consequences' was the sort of idea. Or maybe a literary equivalent of that round in Masterchef where they have to cook a vaguely edible meal in much the same way

MamaNewtNewt Mary S. Lovell's biographies are fab, I read her Bess of Hardwick a couple of years ago and bored my family talking about her as we went round Hardwick Hall and Chatsworth.

9. What Matters in Jane Austen by John Mullan
Solving literary puzzles in Austen's work by close reading* and deep understanding of her novels.

Another wonderful read for an Austenite. Shows Austen's technical innovation and feelings for her characters, as well as some less innovative moments. Written with beautiful simplicity by an expert.
*I'm aware that close reading is the name of a criticism technique - I probably mean close attention.

@JaninaDuszejko

MamaNewtNewt Mary S. Lovell's biographies are fab, I read her Bess of Hardwick a couple of years ago and bored my family talking about her as we went round Hardwick Hall and Chatsworth.

I've not read any of her others, am off to add the Bess of Hardwick book to my wish list now

I finished Book No. 5 '84 Charing Cross Road' by Helene Hanff. It's a book of two halves. The first half is an exchange of letters between the author (who lives in New York) and Frank Doel (a bookseller in London). I'm probably the last person in the universe to read this book so I'll just say that I enjoyed the contrast between Helene's letters and Frank's letters. In particular, I loved the line, "I hope 'madam' doesn't mean over there what it does here" .

In the second half, 'The Duchess of Bloombsbury Street', the author finally gets the opportunity to visit London, the city of her dreams.
She meets Frank's wife and daughter and pays a visit to the bookshop at 84 Charing Cross Road (now closed, sadly). Assorted acquaintances (many of them fans of her book) invite her to lunch or dinner and take her to visit the famous tourist attractions. She also enjoys trips to places like Windsor, Oxford and Stratford upon Avon. Her enthusiasm for London is very endearing - at the start of the book her brother gives her the gift of $100 and suggests she uses the money to visit Paris. However, the author says she has no interest in visiting Paris and will use it to extend her stay in London by a week ($100 obviously went a lot further in 1971!). Along the way there are musings about the differences between English people and Americans and the differences between New York and London. There's also a very prescient observation of England's relationship with Europe - "He said they hate entering the Common Market for the same reason. They don't want to be part-of-Europe, they want to be separate, different, set apart".

All in all, it's a very gentle, charming book. Not a lot happens but I enjoyed the author's company.

@ChessieFL

That’s the one I’m reading *@MamaNewtNewt*.

I tried the Laura Thompson one a couple of years ago but gave up - it seemed to assume a lot of prior knowledge about them and jumped around in time a lot which I found really annoying, not having the assumed prior knowledge. I’m enjoying the Lovell one so far.

Laura Thompson's one is SHIT

The only Mitford book anyone needs and I HAVE READ THEM ALL is the sublime Letters Between Six Sisters

Biographers will never beat them in their own words. Genuinely my favourite EVER non fiction

The Letters are fascinating but I did wonder how much them being edited by Diana's DIL biased the selection of letters (the book contains only 5% of their letters) to be kinder to Diana and less kind to Jessica and Nancy. It did feel a bit like Diana and Debo got the last say by virtue of living longest.

Diana sort of got almost the last say but at the same time lived until her unchanged views became even more visibly grotesque.

Interesting you say that because I’m about 20% through the Lovell book and I’ve been told about 100 times how beautiful Diana is/was. I know from the introduction that Diana and Debo were both still alive when Lovell write her book, and I have been wondering if the writing would have been slightly different if they weren’t still alive. Lovell herself said that Diana wasn’t keen on the book so it feels a bit like Lovell was trying to appease her maybe? Will have to see if this continues throughout the book.

Loving the Mitford/Derbyshire chat. Chatsworth is basically where I spent every Sunday and more besides as a child, and now my grandparents are long gone, and my mum last year it's a happy place memory.
I have Deborah's cookbook and while it's clear she never plucked a pheasant in her life, it's amusing- alternating between little snippets on how to make disgusting things with bits of left over offal and the best corned beef pie recipe ever.

@ChessieFL

Interesting you say that because I’m about 20% through the Lovell book and I’ve been told about 100 times how beautiful Diana is/was. I know from the introduction that Diana and Debo were both still alive when Lovell write her book, and I have been wondering if the writing would have been slightly different if they weren’t still alive. Lovell herself said that Diana wasn’t keen on the book so it feels a bit like Lovell was trying to appease her maybe? Will have to see if this continues throughout the book.

From other books I have read from that era I think that Diana was widely considered to be one of the most beautiful women of her generation. I'm pretty sure that some of her grandchildren / great grandchildren are models so might have inherited her genes (but hopefully not her views!).

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I don't agree that biographers will never beat the persons own words, ideally you'd have both to give a well rounded view of the person and events. The biographer has the advantage of distance and being able to assess the information with a detached eye and with the benefit of hindsight. Letters, diaries etc. are an invaluable source but I think in a lot of cases the additional research from a biographer gives context to that information. That said a biographer can easily select information to support their preconceptions so in an ideal scenario you'd have the original source material too.

If anyone is new to the Mitfords, the place to start is Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate and Jessica's Hons and Rebels. Then a biography to get a sense of the arc of their lives and see how they turned the raw material into fiction. Then Letters between Six Sisters. [Bangs gavel]

8. The Collector of Lives: Giorgio Vasari and the Invention of Art – Ingrid Rowland and Noah Charney

A very long title - although the book itself isn't even a quarter as long as the subject's most famous work. After I'd slogged my way through the full second edition of Vasari's Lives, my husband bought me this to -compound- -the- -torture- give me a more rounded view. The book switches between Vasari's own life, the context in which he was writing - both what was happening in the world at the time, and the way in which art was perceived - and the lives of those he wrote about. I found the latter a bit pointless, as I'd already read the Lives. But the context setting was interesting and the book is also good at putting right some of the grosser errors in Vasari's text and righting a few wrongs against some of the more maligned featured artists. I also enjoyed reading Vasari's correspondence, which is written in a very different style from the Lives and gives you a much better impression of the man. Overall, whilst not perfect, it left me with a much better appreciation of Vasari's manifold talents, and of the huge achievement represented by the Lives.