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.

I'm here for my scone. I bloody loved Hamnet

According to Crazy Rich Asians which I have just finished, one's scone should be eaten with lemon curd. That is sacrilege.

The book however is marvellous. I was really sceptical when you were all raving about it last year but it was gloriously good fun with a look at the lives and loves of the ultra rich society jet set and those who dare to interlope.

Remus you are dead right about the order of preference for jams (although I'd be tempted to add gooseberry between rhubarb and raspberry) but completely wrong about putting jam first. Surely the best way is to smear your scone thickly with clotted cream (which is too thick to blob on top of the jam) and then place a decorous spoonful of jam on top, and then scoff the lot, rapidly, before the jam can slide off?

I always put the milk in tea first...

Have just bought Any Human Heart. If I end up hating it, I'll only have wasted 99p!

Basic engineering principles, Best.. Shuddering at the lemon curd, Fortuna, but if it's a warm, fresh fruit scone, I can accept lovely melty butter.

Mack - You are wrong about milk first; you are wrong about the jam/cream order; you are, however, gloriously right about gooseberry jam and I shouldn't have forgotten it.

I love lemon curd (a really good one) on fresh tiger bread with Lurpak. It doesn't belong on a scone.

Lurpak is rank. Butter from our local farm (they have their own milkman) on tiger bread with peppered soft cheese is delicious.

The correct way to make tea is in a filter teapot with appropriate pattern, a little jug for the milk and a special cup. When I get time I do it like this as it makes up for the cold tea I regularly drink at work.

Butter and soft cheese, betts?

Nope, definitely milk in first, especially as it's always made from leaf tea in a pot in our house. (The exception is lapsang souchong, as I'm the only that likes it and DH and DD don't want me contaminating the pot with its foul delicious smoky aroma. I have to make that in a cup, with bags .)

But milk first scorches it when the tea is added.

Butter and cheese like philadelphia don't ever go together but it's a must with Boursin black pepper cheese.

Milk first here and jam then cream. I worked at Bettys.

That said, I have been known to leave the tea bag in so may not be the authority.

Imagine if trifles went sponge ,custard, cream, jelly?? No no no.

Raspberry or blackberry jam, then cream, on scones.
Tea - it needs to be in a cup with a white interior and ideally around Pantone 723C in colour.

Butter and cream cheese is almost as big a crime as butter and peanut butter. My OH has the latter sometimes and it makes me feel sick.

I've really enjoyed following this thread but have been lurking rather than posting! Anyway, here's my mini-list + update some 500 messages in:

1. The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin
2. A Thousand Moons, Sebastian Barry
3. Over Sea, Under Stone, Susan Cooper
4. Mémoire de fille, Annie Ernaux
5. Someday Angeline, Louis Sachar
6. Magpie Lane, Lucy Atkins

1. Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. 3/5

I really wanted to like this, but it kind of confirmed for me again that Terry Pratchett, genius as he is, isn’t for me. Bits of it were enormously witty (e.g. some of the footnotes) and the concept overall is brilliant. However, I find this kind of British comedy/satire surprisingly hard work to read.

1. The Discomfort of Evening, by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld. 3/5

FFS this book is dark. Narrated by a young girl living on a farm in the Netherlands with her very religious Reformed family, this novel won the International Booker, which is how I came across it. I find books about fundamentalist religious families very interesting, and in some ways this story is no exception; there is no shortage of Bible verses circulating in the protagonist’s head as she struggles to cope with death, loneliness and sexual desire. However, child death, animal abuse and child sexual abuse (however matter-of-factly described) meant that I had a hard time persisting to the end. The (non-binary) writer is clearly very gifted, but the world they construct is not an easy place to be in.

1. Foreign Affairs, by Alison Lurie. 5/5

A refreshing page-turner, this is my favourite Lurie book so far. The two main protagonists are both American academics travelling to the UK on research leave, and so many details about US/UK cultural differences are spot on. Vinnie Miner, the fifty-something professor of children’s literature who feels that she belongs more in Britain than in the States, is a wonderful creation. The book captures many different layers of what it feels like to live for awhile in a foreign country: how exciting and frustrating it can be, and how difficult it can be for an outsider to become acquainted with a culture beyond the level of tourism. Spoiler: even the most seemingly yokel American tourist can have more character than initially meets the eye.

I'm another one of the Hamnet lovers! Yes, the portrait of Agnes could be seen as cliched in some ways I suppose: a wise-woman herbalist healer figure, whose knowledge of the natural world contrasts with her husband's book learning. But I thought her character was beautifully done, and I liked the way Shakespeare himself was relegated to the background. The description of maternal grief after child death was difficult to read but very powerful. The part where I lost interest a bit was the section about the travels of the flea -- but that plot seemed uncannily prescient given the current global pandemic! Plus ca change...

@mackerella

I hadn't thought about Winter as having a chick lit plot, BadSpella, but I see what you mean! I might read more chick lit if it contained threatening, anthropomorphised rocks, disembodied phantom heads and revenge blogging, though .

@mackerella: this made me laugh! I'm an Ali Smith fan who never would have thought of her as chick lit either! But you have a much clearer memory of Winter than I do. My memories of the four seasons novels have gone all fuzzy; I just have vague recollections of fascinating portrayals of real life artists woven through them. I think when they come out in paperback I'll buy the set and read them all again in one go. They are worth it.

Cream then jam.

Tea then milk.

Butter & PNB on toast, with sliced gherkins.

Reminder to self to try some Ali Smith.............

cassandre I've only read Autumn and Winter so far, but enjoyed them very much and am looking forward to reading the other two this year. I might also buy them in paperback - it's not often that I do that after I've already read a book, but I think that these ones are worth it.

Thanks for the reviews, too. I'm investigating Alison Lurie now, whom I haven't read yet, on the back of your review and other recent ones!

Pepe I've just looked up Pantone 723c and the thought of such strong, tannic tea is making my teeth itch. I think mine would be more like Pantone 157c.

I'm going to put in a bid for damson jam, preferably home-made. Then cream - clotted, please.

I don't have any book talk at the moment, though. Just thought I'd weigh in on the great scone debate. I did actually make some scones last week so Dh and I could indulge

Apologies - newbie here, but does listening to audio books count? Thank you

I count audiobooks, Cheezer. I think most of us do. You can more or less make up your own rules, though - apart from strong views on scones and jam (and a handful of books which always cause controversy when they turn up on the thread), this is a very chilled place most of the time.

mackerella, that is on the milky side for me. But I would drink it without making a fuss. All tea is good tea, as far as I’m concerned.

Still haven't got anywhere

I think I am going to have to abandon my unread paperbacks for a while and hit the Kindle

1. The Name Of The Rose - Umberto Eco

This one wasn't for me. 500 pages, of which maybe 100 were actual plot and the remainder were either incomprehensible (to me) Latin or religious musings which just sent me to sleep. I know it gets great reviews, but not from me I'm afraid.

@PepeLePew love the fact someone else is a Chalet School comfort reader. I spent far too much money completed the full set a few years ago, and have an occasional re-read of the full set, but the earliest ones are the best. Have you read The Chalet Girls Grow Up? I love the premise, but got so annoyed how miserable it was - surely if you're going to write a sequel, you do it with some affection for the characters?

And strawberry jam followed by clotted cream, obviously. No butter, that's just unnecessary.

Imagine if trifles went sponge ,custard, cream, jelly?? No no no.

As soon as a trifle includes jelly it is an abomination. If anything jelly above the cream is less offensive than sponge encased in jelly. Boak.

Don't drink tea so don't have an opinion.

Agree that a jam foundation on a scone (to rhyme with gone obv) makes sense but I have catholic tastes in jam and could happily have any jam except strawberry and would even enjoy lemon curd.

Book wise I've read the first chapter of The Magic Toyshop and the introduction to Black and British but have not settled to one yet.

Catching up on the thread in bed this morning as it's too cold to get up is making me want a nice cuppa (tea first , brewed for at least 3-5 mins, and only a dash of milk) and if I had the prerequisites, a scone for breakfast. I'm Devonshire I believe, jam followed by clotted cream, my Cornish friends were appalled.

@PepeLePew and @BookShark, nice to see other Chalet School fans. There was a long running thread on here for a while a few years back. Someone posted transcripts to all the books which I downloaded and devoured. Lots of merriment on the thread about EBD's obsessions with pansy-coloured eyes and multiple births, IIRC. I still have a few of my old ones including The School at the Chalet but have been unable to persuade DDs to read them.

12. The Old Drift - Namwali Serpell. I feel like I've been reading this for ages, although it's only a week. I bought it because I'm trying to read more BAME writers and it had won the Arthur C Clarke award so was expecting SF. Instead I got a long meandering mix of family, magical realism and Zambian politics. It's been compared to Cloud Atlas, and I can see it but it's nowhere near as cleverly done. The story starts with 3 grandmothers, then 3 mothers, then 3 children, week are loosely connected, but I did lose track a bit of who was who. There's no real SF in it, the last 100 pages or so moves into the future, was the story ends. I think there are the bones of an interesting read here, and may well appeal to others, but for me it needed serious editing.

Any trifle with jelly is an abomination except my late grandmothers who really knew how to make trifle.

Tea should be Pantone 156c, coffee should be 738 c.

Tea then milk, jam then cream, butter with crunchy peanut butter!

12. Just My Type by Simon Garfield. An excellent example of why I love this thread- I have no real interest in fonts, would never have even seen this, yet I enjoyed a little waltz around the history of typesetting and font design, and now might notice fonts a little more!

@noodlezoodle, in that case thank you, and I shall look forward to Harrow!

Just finished book seven, curled up in bed with a cup of tea and ignoring the cold! Disappeared - Anthony Quinn. Set in Ireland this is the first book featuring detective Celcius Daly who begins by investigating the disappearance of an elderly man which later links to other crimes from The Troubles, police informers and special branch.
I liked the descriptions of Ireland and the character of Daly. The story line zips along and is well constructed. I didn’t like the very abrupt ending, the lack of female characters and I felt the slightly unbelievable story line with the son of a disappeared informer.

Frustratingly my library e-book service doesn’t have the second in the series but jumps to the third. I probably will continue reading the series as it was a quick easy palate cleansing read in between something heavier.