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.

@PermanentTemporary

13. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen What to say about this book that hasn't already been said? Austen's only real romance, her only likeable heroine, the mix of comedy and seriousness, the list of comic setpieces always fresh and pleasing. I was struck this time by the reality of Wickham, that pleasant, good-looking man who turns out to be almost too hollow and useless for true evil. Still there and still in the family at the end of the novel, they have to have him in their lives because of Lydia's selfish thoughtlessness. Nothing excites Austen's contempt like financial uselessness. I contrast it with Becky and Rawdon in Vanity Fair, 'living well on nothing a year' and still rather glamorous even so, whereas Lydia and Wickham trudge from one unpleasant lodgings to another, trapped together by nothing more than stupidity and veniality. Almost as awful as the terrible fate of Maria in Mansfield Park.

TOTALLY disagree with some of this!!!! Pistols at dawn?

Austen's only likeable heroine? Erm...Anne Eliot? Elinor Dashwood?

Her only really romance? Erm...Anne Eliot????? Marianne Dashwood earning to lovely properly and deeply and gratefully?

I do agree that Wickham isn't true evil though - he'll suffer longer than Marianne did, and will soon learn contempt for his wife, but his actions were those of a weakling rather than a true villain.

@Stokey

There's a debate to be had there yes, but it would have to be done in a thread with a massive spoiler heading for both book and show, I don't see him finishing them now no. I actually think he is planning to let Elio Garcia do it for him posthumously, he already relies heavily on Elio's memory and resources apparently

I ran out of steam with GoT. I really wanted to like it and thought the first book was great. But by book three, or possibly four, I just couldn't summon up the enthusiasm. I'd be furious if I'd been heavily invested in it and there was no end in sight. Particularly, I think, given the TV show romped ahead. I had a similar issue with that, thinking about it, and lost interest round about season three. Came back to it last year in a moment of profound boredom and caught up just in time for the end of the final season.

I agree Pepe. The GOT books just become more and more rambling with new characters thrown in whose stories don't really go anywhere.

I've been attempting to read all the 99p books I seem to have impulsively purchased on my Kindle over the past year but not got round to reading and started Fire and Blood last week which Martin wrote as a side project a few years back(when many fans thought he should be getting on with delivering The Winds of Winter, book 6 in GOT series) It charts the history of House Targaryen set 300 years before GOT. It was a DNF for me after a few turgid chapters. It's like the worst, most boring school history text book ever but is not even about real history.

19 The Burning Girls by CJ Tudor.
Why an author so good at taut, unsettling little thrillers has produced this rambling, derivative (Merrily Watkins called, she wants her book back) mess is the only mystery between the pages.

A Month in the Country is in the daily deals - such a beautiful book.

19. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

This was a book I read for GCSE English but wanted to read it again (30 years later, eek!). Due to the time and place it's set there is much racism and use of the N word. The book is so descriptive of places and characters (without needless waffle), you really feel for George and Lenny with their hopes and dreams for a new life.

I had forgotten the ending until it was upon me and it brought forth such emotion for both men. I can see how George knew what was going to happen, so took matters into his own hands. He enabled Lenny to always hold on to his dream.

A beautiful, emotional, book.

I don't like Anne... she's a passive aggressive snob. Who wouldn't be, in the circumstances? I feel for her, I want it to work out for her but I wouldn't voluntarily spend a weekend with her.

Marianne Dashwood - a pure comedy, ending happily but God it's not romantic... thirty five and seventeen? Exactly half his age... yuck.

22. Lace by Shirley Conran I picked this up in the library app after I saw it mentioned on another thread. Although I'm the right age to have read it when it first came out, for some reason it never appealed (I didn't read Flowers in the Attic either though I'm not tempted to change that decision )

For anyone who hasn't read / heard of this classic 1980s bonkbuster, it's the story of four women who met in Switzerland in the late 1940s and became lifelong friends. We meet them at the start of the book in the mid 1970s when the four - by now all highly successful in their various professions - are summoned to a hotel room in America by a film star, Lili, who demands to know which of the four is her mother. The novel then takes us back to 1948, and follows their lives to this point.

There is, famously, a lot of sex (at one point including a goldfish). I suspect if I'd read this in my teens I'd have devoured the sex scenes and skimmed the rest. Now - I skimmed the sex scenes (no longer groundbreaking, and often rather dull) but loved the stories of their lives and friendship. Unlike some books of the time (looking at you Jilly Cooper) I think on the whole it's aged really well, & I was also pleasantly surprised by how funny it is. (I was also very tickled by the afterword from the author describing some of the real life people behind the characters. I can see why Terence Conran - her ex-husband - was less than impressed )

How is Anne passive aggressive or a snob? She's bullied into a decision she then spends many years regretting.

And the age difference thing would have been entirely normal. Marianne learns to love somebody who deserves her.

I was going to say that about the age

Lizzie is obviously also much younger than Darcy.

Men were expected to LIVE

Uni, a European tour, some time in the Army and/or learning the estates.

Girls (and girls they were) schoolroom to ballroom to bedroom.

15. Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. This has been read by a few of you, I know (it's the one with the spiders in case anyone wants to avoid it!). The world building is great, the plot is fine, if a bit derivative, the writing is nice, but unfortunately sometimes I got a bit bored because I just couldn't engage with any of the characters. I understand the logic behind having all the spider narrators being Portia/Bianca etc, as otherwise there would have needed to be so many narrative voice, but I felt to contrast with that, Holsten should have been a really vital character, and for me he just wasn't. Slightly disappointing.

16. Hickory Dickory Dock Agatha Christie- Poirot and a house full of students, as noted upthread this is racist from today's viewpoint, but was possibly quite open minded for the time. A middling Poirot I would say.

23. The other passenger, Louise candlish. Group of people, two older, two younger who travel to work over the Thames river boat. It all goes horribly wrong and one of them ends up dead. Shares a whole host of unlikeable characters, hunting party style and you'd be happy to see them all killed off if only the author would hurry up and get to the end of the tedious second half of the book. 4/5 for the first half, 2/5 for the next bit, 1/5 for the ending.

Just dropping in to say that Scoff, Pen Vogler's history of food and eating, is in the daily deals today. I enjoyed this when I read it at Christmas and I think a few other people were interested.

19. The Silver Collar, by Antonia Hodgson
The most recent in this series of historical crime fiction set in the Georgian era. This had an enjoyably boo hiss villainess and interesting new characters - a good outing.

20. The Pull of the Stars, by Emma Donohue
Reviewed a few times recently. A Dublin nurse struggles with the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. I loved this and gobbled it down at a sitting. The first section, a very detailed a account of nursing/midwifery, reminded me a bit of the Lucilla Andrews books I loved in my teens. Some on here didn't like the love story, but I did. The real-life Dr Lynn was intriguing - I had never heard of her. If I were to be critical, I'd say the author doesn't wear her research lightly, but that's a minor quibble.

Terp, I want to buy Scoff on the deal but I'm next on the library list for it and I feel oddly as if I'd be betraying the library book that is waiting excitedly to be claimed. What if no-one else wants it?

Ah, I loved Lace as a teenager, @Sadik. I might dig it out and reread it. I devoured those big glamorous blockbusters at the time - Judith Krantz, Danielle Steel... We're (rightly) concerned about the misleading effect of social media on our kids' lives, but those books had a lot to answer for in terms of how exciting I thought adulthood was going to be!

I know that feeling, biblio!

I reread Lace a couple of years ago. I think it's aged relatively well, all things considered. Certainly remains wildly entertaining. Flowers in the Attic, on the other hand, is one of the few books I'd consider strongly steering an impressionable teen away from. I was telling DD about it the other day - her eyebrows went through the roof when I told her they were all in the school library.

Do I want to buy Scoff? I was making good inroads into my TBR pile but have slipped a lot on the Daily Deals recently, where there have been some great choices. I'm hopeful of holidays this year, so perhaps I should be stocking up on things to read (hollow laugh at the thought of ever running out...).

Flowers in the Attic were just bonkers, weren't they? So so bizarre looking back.

My two guilty pleasure re-reads of thick books=mini series etc are The Thorn Birds and Mistral's Daughter. Re-read both regularly and hate Father Ralph the abusive twat more each time.

@PepeLePew

I reread Lace a couple of years ago. I think it's aged relatively well, all things considered. Certainly remains wildly entertaining. Flowers in the Attic, on the other hand, is one of the few books I'd consider strongly steering an impressionable teen away from. I was telling DD about it the other day - her eyebrows went through the roof when I told her they were all in the school library.

Do I want to buy Scoff? I was making good inroads into my TBR pile but have slipped a lot on the Daily Deals recently, where there have been some great choices. I'm hopeful of holidays this year, so perhaps I should be stocking up on things to read (hollow laugh at the thought of ever running out...).

Our holiday has just been cancelled by the company, we moved it from last year as they cancelled it then too.

Oh no @bettbattenburg, how annoying. I'm about to book. I'm hopeful of Greece this summer....

I loved Lace, may have to reread it. "Which one of you bitches is my mother?" Is a great line. I seem to remember reading Lace 2 too which was about which bastard was her father, but it wasn't as good. And yes yes to the total bonkersness of Flowers in the Attic, again wasn't there a while series of them which got darker and darker.

19. Shadow Box - Luanne Rice. Thriller set on Northeast coast of the states, lots of rich people with yachts and sailing shoes. Decent enough page turner which I got through in a day or so.

I never read Lace, but I remember Flowers in the Attic as being completely bonkers but weirdly compelling.

Ah yes, I read all of Flowers in the Attic, Lace, Princess Daisy, The Thorn Birds etc when I was about 13 - really not very suitable reading for that age group....

18. Confusion - Elizabeth Jane Howard

The third book in the Cazalet Chronicles set during WW2 and following the lives of the upper middle class family. Life is tough for everyone in this book but particularly for teenage cousins Louise, Polly and Clary who should be having fun and living the best years of their lives rather than doing their duty and dealing with loss. As with the earlier books, I found the lives of the different family members and their relationships completely absorbing even if not the happiest backdrop. Highly recommended.

19. Thirteen - Steve Cavanagh

This is one of a series of murder thrillers about Eddie Flynn, a NY defence lawyer with an inauspicious past. I like Eddie and some of the other recurring characters - although all the books work on a standalone basis. Eddie is brought in as part of the defence team for a Hollywood actor charged with murdering his wife and head of security whose bodies were found in bed together. We know the actor didn’t do it because half the book is narrated by the murderer. This was not bad but had a few major plot holes for me.

I read Lace, a few years after having heard all the excitement about the mini-series (managed to not know the answer, though; so well done everybody at the time ). Either late teens or early twenties - can't actually remember. I quite enjoyed it, though I'd read very few bonkbusters to compare it to.

Surely the line is "which one of you four bitches is my mother?"? Have I been remembering it wrong all these years?

Anyway.

1 The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Attwood
You all know the premise. This is an author whose prose flows over me, like Harpur Lee or Kit Whitfield, and as such I loved reading the book. I liked the fact that Offred was not Moira, or her mother, or Ofglen, or even the previous Offred. Possibly I suspect I would be very similar. There was a lot of sororital love in the book.

The world-building was better than the plot.

I did feel that there was a bit too much detachment in the description of the high-emotion parts. Possibly this was intentional - it is supposed to have been noted in significant retrospect, and there's some musing on the act of memory and creation - but the last part, which is actually meant to be the academic detachment, is a little bit of a caricature of that (and no, you can't make it seem less so by adding the note laughter).

Wish I'd read it thirty years ago, when the film came out and I thought "oo, that sounds interesting" [sigh]