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’ve made it to NZ in one exhausted piece and now in quarantine hotel for two weeks, hopefully will read a book or two!

On the flight I finished 15. Nation by Terry Pratchett. This is a stand-alone YA novel set in a 19th century world very similar to our own. On the verge of manhood, Mau copes with the destruction of his remote island nation by a tidal wave, while shipwrecked English girl Daphne finds healing from her own traumas by helping Mau rebuild his society. This was a page-turner covering interesting deeper questions about why the gods (if they exist) let bad things happen, colonialism and the basis of happiness. Other than that I am struggling to put together any intelligent thoughts about it (or anything else) ATM.

Good luck in your new home Ladybird. What a beautiful country you've moved to 💕

Another one who devoured Lace, Judith Krantz, etc as a teenager. I loved those huge blockbuster books you got back then. I reread Scruples and Princess Daisy a couple of years ago and thoroughly enjoyed them. It was in a Judith Krantz book that I first heard Donald Trump mentioned. I wasn’t keen on the Flowers in the Attic type stuff at all though. Very odd.

Does anyone remember John Masters Heart of War series set in Kent in the First World War? I remember loving them too but not entirely sure they would wear well nowadays.

Where are the three inch thick blockbusters of today?,

Good luck Ladybird, I’m very envious.

Glad to hear you got there safely Ladybird - hope quarantine is ok!

A few more for my list:

14. We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Short but important. I'll try and get my teen DC to read this.

15. Passing by Nella Larsen. Set in 1920s Chicago, this is the story of Irene and Clare. The two women were at school together but have taken different paths in the years since, Irene marrying a black man while Clare has chosen to hide her black heritage, pass as white and marry a white man. This was okay. To be honest I found it slightly boring.

16. The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers. War fiction featuring John Bartle, a 21 year old private on a tour in Iraq in 2003-5, and his time back home afterwards. This is a powerful depiction, written by a veteran, of a young man sent to fight in a far-off war and the psychological legacy of his experience. It's easy to criticise the US for its role in Iraq (and I do), but we should not forget or diminish the trauma experienced by the soldiers who are just following orders, not making the decisions. Recommended.

Good luck Ladybird! Are you or your dh from NZ, or is it completely new?

@BestIsWest, I think I loved Scruples- it's the one where the heroine goes to France, loses tons of weight and then becomes massively successful? I enjoyed all of those forementioned but haven't heard of Princess Daisy! Also The Moneylenders- or was it Moneychangers? And North vs South, I think it was. There is definitely a gap in today's market!

@Tanaqui, that’s the one. Princess Daisy was about the daughter of a Russian Prince and a Hollywood film star who is ‘poor’ and has to work for a living.
I may have just ordered Mistral’s Daughter from AbeBooks .

Love all the bonkbuster chat. I have a copy of Judith Krantz's I'll Take Manhattan on the shelf and it is excellently diverting reading when my brain can't cope with anything more challenging.

This article made me wonder whether I should try Penny Vincenzi or Lesley Lokko for a modern version: www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jan/31/what-trashy-novels-taught-me-about-life

Oh yes, I used to love a bit of Penny Vincenzi.

[quote BestIsWest]@Tanaqui, that’s the one. Princess Daisy was about the daughter of a Russian Prince and a Hollywood film star who is ‘poor’ and has to work for a living.
I may have just ordered Mistral’s Daughter from AbeBooks .[/quote]
I may have added Nana Mouskouri singing "Only Love" which was the theme tune to my Spotify guilty pleasures.
It was on TV in Jan 86 according to my diary from that year. I'm never going to be Tony Benn as a diarist but I can tell you what was number 1, what I watched on telly, and what perfume I was wearing.

Fuxache. That was me getting so excited about bonkbusters I forgot to drop the Aibu name 🤣

Sol Poison? Rive Gauche? Anais Anais or Giorgio Beverly Hills?

Rive Gauche Anaïs Anaïs featured heavily later that year though.

That article made me laugh, noodle

“Don’t worry if your previously lovely mother suddenly reveals herself to be a deranged psychopath who locks you and your siblings in the attic before deciding to poison you all with sugared doughnuts. As long as you can have sex with your hot twin brother everything will turn out for the best in the end.”

That, right there, is Flowers In The Attic in two sentences.

Best, I think Crazy Rich Asians is the closest I’ve come across to a modern day blockbuster. No sex, though, or not explicitly. But lots of shopping and general merriment, with some dastardly dastardliness thrown in.

Oh I enjoyed Crazy Rich Asians. It’s as much the detail of the clothes, the food, the decor, the flowers that I loved rather than the sex. I learned all about Fabergé from Princess Daisy and that Bill Blass made the perfect little black dress for seducing a man.

@BestIsWest
Where are the three inch thick blockbusters of today?

In the fantasy section, mostly.

I'm not sure I realized how deranged Flowers in the Attic was, as I was so new to adult books, I didn't have much to compare it with. I just knew I was a long way from Malory Towers.

Thanks everyone! Tanaqui my DP is from NZ and our DD has citizenship by descent. I’m an Essex girl by descent and have never lived here before but have visited quite a bit.

13. Against The Grain - A Deep History Of The Earliest States - James C Scott

A bit disappointed with this part history, part archaeology / anthropology which basically takes the premise that the road from nomadism to settled civilisations was not a smooth, one-way development but a bumpy continuum including long periods when to be a 'barbarian' was preferable to living under the yoke of an early and often tyrannical state. An interesting subject but the book is quite repetitive and would have worked better as a good long-form essay.

A very long way from Malory Towers @bibliomania. I was in my twenties by then and old enough to know better.

Ooh sudden Mistral's Daughter flashback. Man I loved that book.

Outlander is a near inheritor of the bonkbuster tradition I think. And Louise Bagshawe (Mensch) but she stopped writing 10 years ago didn't she.

I'd completely forgotten about Mistral's Daughter, I loved that one as well. Been amusing myself reading the reassuringly detailed plot synopsis of Flowers in the Attic andcits sequals on wikipedia. I had been about to say how could it get any darker than the first one but yes, they get even worse. I've got a 13yo who is at the beginning of the 'struggling to transition to adult books' stage so it's a good reminder that at that stage it's just about getting them to keep reading anything.

Hilary Norman and Julie Ellis were the bonkbuster authors of choice here.

Louise Mensch/Bagshawe is definitely my guilty pleasure when I want some absolute trash - I remember getting The Movie free with a copy of Cosmopolitan, and it then did the rounds at school (girls grammar, boys were a fairly unknown quantity at the time)!

Come to that, her sister's (Tilly Bagshawe) earlier books aren't dissimilar either. Although she started writing under Sidney Sheldon's name for some reason - I assume those are less bonkbuster-esque.