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.

Thank you Razor
I am just hoping we are not going to have another one, it's not looking promising.

Back to books

Have you read Ben Fogle's book about his ascent of Everest?

Remus I can't remember if I have seen Pride or not but either way I think I'll watch it soon, thanks for the recommendation.

Yolandi I got the Nix left handed booksellers book, the start was so dire that I returned it for a refund. At 99p it was way overpriced.

Eine It'll never take you six months to get to 40 books

Tanaqui you are so right about that connection with Chris(tina) and Alexander instead of Emma, I didn't notice it but then I was reading that part of the book in the wee hours.

Stitches is The Meg the book which became The Megladon film? As I have a phobia of sharks I won't be reading or watching either but I was curious as DS and DD watched it a few days ago.

Losing track of numbers but here's my recent reads:

Killing for Company - Brian Masters
Listened to this on audiobook after watching the TV series Des last year. This was narrated by Jason Watkins who played Brian Masters in the TV series. Interesting insight into the mind and actions of serial killer, Dennis Nilsen, although there were a number of chapters that were a little laboured. Not sure I would have preserved with the print version.

Halloween Party - Agatha Christie
Another Agatha Christie that I've seen adapted for TV but never read. Not one of her best - the rationale for the murder/s was pretty weak.

Lockdown - Peter May
Peter May openly admits that this was rejected for publication when originally written in 2005. We are led to believe it was felt to be too farfetched being set during a pandemic with the city of London in lockdown. I suspect they meant the murder plot was farfetched. This started off okay but quickly descended into farce with a ridiculous race around London and daft finale. This was shit - one to avoid

A Stitch In Time - Amanda James
Easy re-read - time travel meets rom com. Enjoyable fiction. Pretty sure there was a sequel to this too that I'd be happy to read

Goodness I'm so behind with these threads..
Work and my personal life have been manic with some upsetting situations in my wider family. Reading continues to be my salvation and I'm hoping my working life is beginning to quieten down.

Done thing or not here's my list for the year:

.Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz:

2.	Snow by John Bannville
3.	The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
4.	The Bee Keeper of Apello by Christy Lefteri
5.	Paris Echo by Sebastian Faulks
6.	Dead Cert by Dick Francis 
7.	Holy Disorders by Edmund Crispin
8.	Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
9.	The Punishment She Deserves by Elizabeth George 
10.	Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese - currently reading.

Latest book review:
The Punishment she deserves by Elizabeth George
Passed on by a friend, and despite being a genre that currently appeals to me , this has sat on my TR shelf for over a year. 700 pages for a ‘detective novel’ had caused me to pause before picking it up a few times... but I’m so glad I did.
So a classic detective novel with a difference for me - whist Inspector Lindley and his female sidekick were despatched to Ludlow to review a report on a suicide whilst in police custody they end up solving the crime - but for me this was only part of the story. It read like a soap opera with many intertwining lives. It was the characters and their stories that captivated me even though I cOuld criticise the plot as being convoluted with numerous blind alleys.
I thought this was a typically British detective story and never would have guessed the Arthur was American!

Different books appeal to me at different times and at the moment crime fiction (both old and new) is just right. I think, a very long time ago I have read another Elixabeth George novel about a school but other than that this was a new author for me. Can Anyone else recommend any of her novels ?

@HeadNorth that sounds fascinating and @megbusset I haven't heard of either of those. I've added them to my wishlist which is growing quicker than I can read!

@bettbattenburg I haven't read Ben Fogle book about Everest but funnily enough his book Accidental Adventurer is coming up soon (I'm reading through my wishlist starting from oldest added!) and I was trying to decide whether to read or delete.... Is his Everest one any good?

Good grief! Black Cloud is £40 on Amazon!!

@RazorstormUnicorn OMG - I have a paperback I think I got from ABe books - I certainly didn't pay that!!!

11. Poor Cow - Nell Dunn A young mother does her best for her son while her husband and lover are both in prison. Gritty stuff, short but enjoyable nonetheless if you enjoy that kind of thing (I love a kitchen sink drama myself)

@bettbattenburg

Stitches is The Meg the book which became The Megladon film? As I have a phobia of sharks I won't be reading or watching either but I was curious as DS and DD watched it a few days ago.

Yes, I believe that The Megladon film is based on The Meg book. I’m not sure how faithful the film adaptation is though.

@Sonnet, sorry to hear you've got stuff going on.

Elizabeth George is a funny old bird. I agree that the heavy tomes produced are both a bit excessively long, and excellent in equal measure. I can't remember if I've read that one or not, but her earlier ones were roundly derided - not at all for the detective slant, but for what she, as an American writing the British minor aristocracy seemed to think Britain was like, with everyone still having live in servants, housekeepers and valets and seemingly everyone living next door to someone called Lady Something. She toned it down in later years, and in TV adaptation he carried on being minor aristocracy while, iirc, Helen was a colleague of some kind. Been years since I read any. I may delve back in.

12. Middle England Jonathan Coe

Hmm. My backstory to JC is that my A level History teacher (mid 80s and the best teacher I ever had, not least because he taped me all his Led Zeppelin albums ) put me into him.
This was too long, too much copy-and- pasting of "ishoos" (it reminded me of the Edward Rutherford tactic, and it rendered it slightly tawdry and very lazy to me- chapter starts with everyone getting up on a normal Wednesday just before Brexit, and you think "shit, that's the day Jo Cox was murdered" and sure enough, something happens to our characters to shoehorn it into the narrative. What felt even odder was that being part of a trilogy, and thus having known the characters for years, I found myself thinking they were all acting out of character (maybe that was the point, but it didn't come across, what came across was lack of ideas for plot so we'll shove them in as padding for the events leading up to Brexit.) I couldn't work out, and didn't particularly care why niece Sophie was given so much wordspace until ta-dah! She inadvertently offends a transwoman! Of course! That thread didn't work at all as JC is clearly neither a TERF or a TA but just thought "hmmm need another ishoo here, let's have a rummage in the Guardian."

I skimmed the last 100 pages and I'm cross with JC because I don't think this book needed writing.

for bett and Sonnet

I read a lot of Elizabeth George years back, then got a bit weary of her, but iirc, she had/has a researcher, or possibly a whole team of them, here in the UK who do a lot of the legwork in terms of background, thereby enabling her to cram massive amounts of convincing-seeming detail into her books. Although having just refreshed my memory by looking it up, she is an Anglophile and does visit the UK often (or did, in the olden times).

I think I just got a bit fatigued with the lordly Lynley and felt there were better detective novels out there with coppers who didn't have titles but I did read a lot of them and did enjoy them well enough (just don't get me started on the TV series casting very attractive Sharon Small as Havers, who's supposed to be plug-ugly).

I'd forgotten the Havers thing!
I remember thinking EG was insufferably snobby too. Lady Helen the aristocratic beauty, Havers, the gor blimey me owd mucker stereotype of working class girl gets job. At times in the early books it was like Eliza Doolittle meeting Rita (Educating) with smarmy Lord L looking on superciliously.

I have read most of the Inspector Lynley series over the years and some are very good although all I can remember is the back story. At some point in the series Havers story becomes more prominent and Lynley takes a bit of a back seat and I think it vastly improves from then on in.

Motherwell is 99p on Kindle book deals today - there are some interesting books on there, I'd bought five before I got out of bed.

Sympathies, bett and Sonnet.

17. A Death at Fountains Abbey, Antonia Hodgson
Another murder investigation from the Georgian era, although our characters are in Yorkshire for this outing. I don't think the setting was evoked particularly well. I would have expected regional differences to be more striking to the narrator. Okay, but weaker than the previous book in the series.

18. Tales from the Folly, Ben Aaronovitch
Offcuts from the Rivers of London series. Fairly slight - okay as a 99p purchase but I would have begrudged paying more.

[quote RazorstormUnicorn]**@HeadNorth* that sounds fascinating and @megbusset* I haven't heard of either of those. I've added them to my wishlist which is growing quicker than I can read!

@bettbattenburg I haven't read Ben Fogle book about Everest but funnily enough his book Accidental Adventurer is coming up soon (I'm reading through my wishlist starting from oldest added!) and I was trying to decide whether to read or delete.... Is his Everest one any good?[/quote]
Both of those Fogle books are good, I'm reading Up at the moment.

The Darkest Day - Håkan Nesser, trans. Sarah Death

Preparations are being made for a gathering of the Hermansson family to celebrate a '105th birthday' - the 65th of pompous, overbearing father Karl-Erik, and the 40th of eldest daughter Ebba. Also attending are other daughter Kristina and son Robert, whose recent appearance on a trashy reality TV show has made him a figure of national ridicule. Everyone arrives, with their respective spouses and children, but by the end of a tense weekend, two of the attendees have mysteriously disappeared. It's up to Inspector Barbarotti to try and unravel this baffling case.

Weirdly compulsive but strange whodunnit by this good, though odd, Swedish writer - there's not much action and it's very long, over 500 pages, with the revelations stretched out in stages. I'm still not sure whether I actually found it all that satisfying, but still found myself reading it into the small hours because I wanted to see how he resolved things.

Just caught up on previous posts, to those having tough weeks.

Tales from the Folly was another of my 99p purchases Bibliomania, I haven't read the whole series but thought the first one was great, although I did read it in a whole day when I had a fever which probably added to the atmosphere. I read Foxglove Summer, the fifth in the series, and did feel that it was more rushed and not as good.

My other 99p deals today were The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class, 1910-2010, Doggerland, My Friend Anna: The true story of the fake heiress of New York City and Homesick: Why I Live in a Shed.

@SOLINVICTUS totally agree with you about Middle England. I chose it as a book club read when it first came out and felt really guilty for putting my fellow members through it. Not a patch on What A Carve- Up, just trying too hard to be a "Brexit" novel.

On escapist detective fiction, I quite like Louise Penny's books set in Montreal. They're a bit uneven particularly as you get further into the series but the first few are pretty good.

Also Ann Cleeves, her Shetland books and Vera series are good.

Sorry detective fiction recommendations were for @Sonnet

I agree Stokey Anne Cleeves is excellent and I like the Inspector Gamache series although you are right about them being uneven. I’m reading one of the less good ones now.

Sharma, I think that reading the Ben Aaronovitch books with a high fever would add to the experience! Not a criticism.

9 Don't look back Ben cheetham
10 TaftAnn patchett
11 Dilemma b a Paris
12 Blackwood Michael Farris smith
13 You let me in Lucy Clarke
14 Behind her eyes sarah pinborough
15 Michael Farris smith *Desperation road
*
Just starting Desperation Road. I loved Blackwood so bought 2 more by Michael Farris Smith. Blackwood was a small town noir murder. Excellent writing which was reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy
Taft was my first Patchett book and I will certainly read more
A lot of standard psychological thrillers there but Behind her eyes was outstanding in its ridiculousness. I don't normally say derogatory things on here as I know I couldn't hope to pen a decent story but this was absurd and although many psychological domestic thrillers are not great literary works, they are enjoyable. This book made me feel robbed of the time I had spent reading it. Apparently it's been on Netflix

12. Shards of Honour (The Vorksigan Saga) by Lois McMaster Bujold.

Billed as sci-fi romance, I was looking for something light and easy to read. For this type of book I do want to fall in love with the characters, which did not happen. Kind of light but still with the alluded rape and torture scenes (nothing graphic); not quite what I was after.

13. A Burning by Megha Majumdar.

Expertly narrated audiobook. This book is getting a lot of hype and I thought it was great. The story follows three main characters with interweaving stories. Pathos, humour, a commentary of current issues in India (and worldwide). Very, very good.

There is hardship and inequality within this book but it is offset by moments of humour. I’ve been listening to the Women’s Prize for Fiction Podcast and in one of the episodes Zing Tseng interviews Tayari Jones about her book The American Marriage. In the conversation Tayari Jones talks about this, that there are rays of humour even when life is bleak and books that don’t show this are not true to life. (I’m paraphrasing). That is how it feels reading misery-lit books to me and probably why I’ll never read A Little Life. I find them unremitting; I don’t want to pick up the book. I read two-thirds of A Fine Balance and I can see why it’s a great book but it was so sad, I put it down to finish later and could not bring myself to pick it back up again. These books are just not for me!

On the other hand, I very much admired Shuggie Bain which is bleak but also contains those essential rays of humour.

10. Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout. This was a 99p Kindle buy and is a sort of "sequel" to My Name is Lucy Barton in the same vein as Olive Again by Strout - a series of short stories about characters linked to Lucy Barton in the small town of Amglish. I couldn't remember much about Lucy Barton. At first I thought perhaps I should have re read it as there were lots of mentions about the poverty and abuse she had grown up with in the first few stories and I couldn't recall just why her mother was so awful. As the stories developed it came to matter even less. It was a bit of a mixed bag, some tales were quite emotive and others were a bit dull or folksy. I'm glad I don't live anywhere near Amglish. Not keen to visit it again.

10. Rough Magic by Lara Prior-Palmer The author's account of her experience taking part in an endurance horse race in Mongolia as a 19 year old. The language has literary pretensions which sometimes work and sometimes don't. We learn more about Lara's feelings than about horses or Mongolia or what's actually going on - again at times this is insightful, at other times eye roll inducing. At its best moments this had echoes of Bruce Chatwin about it. But mostly I felt sorry for the Mongolian families and better prepared competitors that she sponged off as she wafted through. By the end she was irritating the hell out of me and I was very glad to part company with her. I do admire what she was trying to do with this book. It would have been easier to write this as another posh girl adventure travelogue in a breezy jolly hockey sticks no nonsense style, and she's certainly created something very different from that here.