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.

Thanks for the lovely new thread @southeastdweller.

Just a quick note to say that A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole is a Kindle Deal of the Day today, well worth 99 pence for this wonderful book.
In some places there is laugh out loud humour, while others are filled with poignancy, as our hero attempts to navigate his way through a chaotic life.
One of my top ten all time favourite books, along with TTOD of course!

Wow, this is flying along!

1. Bel Canto - Ann Patchett
2. Rodham - Curtis Sittenfeld
3. Airhead - Emily Maitlis
4. Eight Pieces of Silva - Patrice Lawrence

5. Christmas in Austin - Benjamin Markowitz - recommended on here. I really enjoyed this, though as previous review made very clear, not much happens! It's a detailed portrait of a family over the Christmas period, there's some lovely writing. But if you want fast paced, look elsewhere!

6. The Guest List - Lucy Foley I'm not quite sure why I got this from the library, because I really didn't think much of the Hunting Party. But I liked this quite a lot more - it's gripping and atmospheric, and less two-dimensional than the previous book (though it'd be misleading to claim the characterization was complex and detailed!). A good use of a rainy Sunday morning.

Just a quick note to say that A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole is a Kindle Deal of the Day today, well worth 99 pence for this wonderful book

A well-read friend whose opinion I respect tremendously recommended this to me. I loved it to start with, but it all got a bit too nonsensical for me. There are some laugh out loud bits. Glad I read it.

Yes @OllyBJolly, I remember laughing out loud at that book, but can't remember much about it! I read it when I was 19 though, so maybe that's why.

Should anyone have similar tastes to me, I have trawled the monthly deal and bought the following (so much for not buying any new books...). You're welcome.

Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore
Columbine by Dave Cullen
She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey
Mrs Hemingway by Naomi Wood
Their Finest Hour and a Half by Lissa Evans
Just Kids by Patti Smith

I have assessed my TBR pile and I should get around to reading these in about 2024 (not entirely an exaggeration).

List so far:

1. Transcendence, by Gaia Vance
2. Fat Cow, Fat Chance, Jenni Murray
3. The Push, Claire McGowan
4. A Field Guide to the English Clergy, Fergus Butler-Gallie

5. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer

1. Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons, Matthew Fort

Interesting discussion about 16-year-old reading habits. Like a PP, I had free range of my parents' book shelves, and as they are both book hoarders, there was a VERY wide range of reading material available. There seemed to be a fashion in the 60s and 70s for writing in lots of transgressive sex scenes, and I picked up more from the likes of John Updike and Gore Vidal than I did from Judy Blume :) One particular book was a riotous adventure set in the pre-AIDS New York gay scene, with pretty much wall-to-wall gay sex and drugs actually i would love to read this again

There's a difference though, I think, between saying to your 16-yo "Here are hundreds of great books, some of which contain sex scenes - you can read whatever you want" and giving them a specific book which you recommend. Generally I'd say that 16 is plenty old enough to read a book that contains sex, although I can't remember what happens in Small Island, and obviously all kids are different, so that may not apply in this specific case.

A couple of updates from me after a slow start:

8. A Spell of Winter, Helen Dunmore

Thanks to BelleSauvage for inspiring me to choose this book, which has been sitting on my Kindle unread for a long time. Atmospheric, absorbing, visceral at times, spooky at others. It reminded me, at different times, of various other books that I've read - one of the strongest impressions that I came away with was a resemblence to We Have Always Lived In The Castle, which is definitely a good thing.

Cathy and Rob are siblings, living together in a ratehr run-down country house with their grandfather and servants. The question of what has happened to their parents is one that neither Cathy nor the reader is quite sure about, and which comes out gradually through the book. Isolated and insular, the siblings share a closeness which excludes outsiders.

There's a bit of an elephant in the room when discussing this book, which I am not sure whether or not to mention. Suffice to say I found bits of it genuinely quite disturbing but not out of place with the book as a whole, which is quite beautiful and suffused with sadness.

9. Beneath the Streets, Adam Macqueen

Alternative history thriller set in the 70s and based on the Jeremy Thorpe scandal. Thorpe was tried for the attempted murder of a former (male) lover; this book considers what might have happened had he been successful in his attempts, if Norman Scott, instead of being part of a notorious trial, was just a young man who disappeared.

This is a lively and fairly light-hearted book for the most part - Macqueen has great fun depicting the period, both the seedy world of 70s Soho and the more mundane world of the typical suburban family home. However, there is genuine anguish in the depiction of young runaway boys, friendless and naive on the streets of London, being swept up and terrorised by violent pimps and other shady characters. When these boys come to harm, the establishment turn a blind eye at best, and the pain and terror experienced by these young boys is swept under the carpet.

What blew my mind is just how much of this book is actually true. I've moved straight on to read A Very English Scandal, to fill in the gaps.

I've bought Orlando King in the new monthly deals, after hearing it mentioned somewhere (Radio 4?) with loads of people saying it's a great neglected classic. Also will probably buy Barkskins and Black Narcissus (I do love Rumer Golden) although, like Welsh, I have enough unread books to last me years

Thanks Wednesday about the Lissa Evans trilogy (your comment miles and miles up the thread, but actually only yesterday evening - this really is moving fast). I loved Old Baggage so much towards the end of last year, that I bought it for my Mum for Christmas and asked her to buy me Crooked Heart. She read Old Baggage in about 2 days, then harassed me to hurry up with Crooked Heart so she could borrow it. I have V for Victory on my kindle - will get to it soon. And according to Welsh's post above, Their Finest Hour and a Half is in the deals, so I'm going to head over there right now.

16: Shady Characters - Keith Houston

Further adventures in the wonderful world of typography. I've had this sitting on a shelf for a few years, having suggested DH get it for me one Christmas, but then there were just too many books, too little time...anyway, I'm glad I read Just My Type first because this is a natural sequel, exploring as it does the arcane and fascinating history of punctuation.

Lots of the basic background here was familiar to me thanks to Simon Garfield, and so it was great to sit back and wallow in a wealth of nerdish detail about such things as pilcrows, ampersands, @ signs, hyphens and dashes and - my special favourite - the manicule, the little hand with a pointing finger that was often seen in Victorian advertising, but arose centuries earlier in manuscripts, and was initially something drawn in margins by readers to mark out particular passages, only to be adopted later by printers. There are some lovely illustrations in this book, especially of manicules (a wonderful 14th c manuscript has a drawing of an octopus stretching its tentacles comically over several lines).

Great fun, but I say that as someone endlessly fascinated by language and how it works, so it was perfect for me and wouldn't necessarily float other boats

welshy - you need to go and sit in Bad Influence corner. I'm firmly blaming my actions in the last 10 mins on you.

Thanks for the new thread

Here’s my list:

1. The Flamingo’s Smile: Reflections in Natural History – Stephen Jay Gould
2. Exit Strategy: the Murderbot Diaries 4 – Martha Wells
3. Network Effect: a Murderbot Novel – Martha Wells
4. This is Going to Hurt – Adam Kay
5. Human Voices – Penelope Fitzgerald
6. A Body, Undone: Living On After Great Pain – Christina Crosby
7. Country – Michael Hughes
8. The Anarchy: the Relentless Rise of the East India Company – William Dalrymple
9. Cold Earth – Sarah Moss

Yeah Welsh. Did I just buy the Lissa Evans book? I did not. Please think about what you have done.

My list so far:

1. Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
2. Up the Junction - Nell Dunn
3. The Trick is to Keep Breathing - Janice Galloway
4. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
5. The Man who Wasn't There - Pat Barker
6. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami
7. The Colour Purple - Alice Walker
8. Trespass - Rose Tremain

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I feel like Fingersmith gives nods specifically to The Woman in White but it’s been such a while since I read them both. Love both.

I had a bit of a dry reading month in January but feeling absurdly optimistic today. Probably because I managed to get up early and gained extra hours of reading / work / exercise time. Plus January is done - phew.

My list so far:

Mary Barton - Elizabeth Gaskell
The Girl with the Louding Voice - Abi Dare
Hard Times - Charles Dickens
Girl, Woman, Other - Bernadine Evaristo
Cranford - Elizabeth Gaskell
Bad Science - Ben Goldacre

I would like to join please. I read very little last year due to COVID-19 and would like to stop obsessively watching the news and read more instead. Like many others I am trying to read books I already own. I am prioritising physical books over Kindle books.

1. Liane Moriarty – Nine Perfect Strangers
I had read all of Liane Moriarty’s books apart from this one. I enjoyed the first three quarters of the book, which is set in Australia in a luxury well being centre in the middle of nowhere.
The nine people on the retreat come from a variety of backgrounds and have various reason for attending. There is a twist to the story which is quite outrageous and unrealistic. Overall, I think it is a good read, but not as much of a page turner as her previous books.

2. P. G. Wodehouse – The Inimitable Jeeves
Bertie Wooster has a gentleman’s gentleman called Jeeves. Bertie is a bit of a blunderer and Jeeves is very resourceful and gets Bertie and his friends out of many tricky situations. The theme of the book is the love life of a friend of Bertie’s called Bingo. Bingo falls in love with virtually every woman he meets and relies on Bertie’s, and therefore Jeeves, help to enable him to marry the woman of his dreams. This was a quite short but amusing book.

3. Helen Dunmore – Birdcage Walk
This was the final novel written by Helen Dunmore before she died in June 2017. In the afterword dated September 2016, she states that while she finished and edited the novel, she was already seriously ill, but was not yet aware of it.
The book is set in Bristol at the time of the French Revolution. The protagonist, Lizzie Fawkes who grew up in a radical family, has recently married a property developer. The book details the impact of the French Revolution on the UK property boom. Lizzie’s husband, John Diner Tredevant has invested heavily in property development and would lose everything if there is social upheaval or war. Diner, as he prefers to be called, has been deceitful about his first marriage. He is also controlling and tries to curtail Lizzies free spirit and the influences of her upbringing. He believes that she belongs to him and must do as he wants. A very enjoyable book.

4. Georgette Heyer – False Colours
I used to read my mothers Georgette Heyer novels if I was ill in bed as a teenager. I don’t recall reading them at any other time. Although I was a voracious reader and borrowed hundreds of books from the library, I never borrowed any Heyer books, and only read the ones we had at home.
Many years later, I bought False Colours from a library selling withdrawn stock. I started but did not finish the book. Perhaps lockdown is similar to being ill in bed, as this time I finished the book. The story seemed familiar so perhaps it is one of the ones I read years ago. The story concerns identical twins Kit and Evelyn. Kit stands in for Evelyn, supposedly for one evening, in order to save a marriage of convenience that Evelyn is meant to make to enable him to pay off his mother’s debts. Evelyn has gone missing, which results in Kit having to carry on the pretence with many unforeseen consequences. An ok book, with some quite significant plot holes. I also have the Alastair Trilogy on the shelf, which I may get round to reading later in the year.

1. Early Riser - Jasper Fforde
2. Good Habits, Bad Habits - Wendy Wood
3. (Bear Head - Adrian Tchaikovsky)

I had some mixed feelings about Good habits, Bad habits. It was packed full of psychological studies that reinforced the author’s point that “willpower” alone isn’t enough to sustain habits. The studies were interesting, but I already knew a fair few of them, so I kept switching off. This was absolutely not the author’s fault. I also discovered I am VERY resistant to change when it involves effort which also made me switch off. Again very much not the author’s fault!

The points raised about changes and habits needing to fit into your life, to have some kind of intrinsic reward, and the idea of “stacking” habits was really useful and has given me some good ideas of how to change the things I want to change. The one criticism I do have is that it was pretty hard to find the tips and strategies amongst the studies, so some clearer layout may have helped impatient readers like me.

Sadly I have dislocated my wrist, which may slow down my reading and reviewing as I can only hold things in one hand. I would like to reassure people that this was not a habit I was hoping to achieve, so please don’t be put off the book.

Currently dealing with the pain by reading Bear Face by Adrian Tchaikovsky which is OF COURSE fantastic. Honey! Rogue Bees! Mars!

1. Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This is a big book and I listened to it it while running, it was narrated by actor Adjoa Andoh and her lovely, melodic voice was great company on chilly winter runs and really helped with the pronounciation of Nigerian names and bringing to life different dialents. It is a love story between childhood sweethearts but so much more - Ifemelu is lost and lonely in America while Obinze endures the same in England. They are reunited in modern day Lagos. It is mainly in Ifemelu's voice, including her blog and she has strong opinions on everything - race, hair, fashion, love, architecture, politics, literature. I found her great company - her character descriptions are so on point and scathing, her sense of place and societal change, but her love for her parents, her auntie Uju and cousin Dike and ultimately Obinze are real and warm. I felt I lived this book over my January runs and never wanted it to end.

@VikingNorthUtsire
Could you link the monthly deals please? I can't find them! I've been onto the Kindle>deals> but can only see daily and then 6 others.

Solinvictus that’s it - they don’t call them monthly deals in any more, it’s just normal deals that change monthly! So you were in the right place.

Book #5 for me is Circe, which I'm enjoying.

@ChessieFL

Solinvictus that’s it - they don’t call them monthly deals in any more, it’s just normal deals that change monthly! So you were in the right place.

Hah! Okey-dokey

@BestIsWest

So I saw Eine . You’re living dangerously.

So I saw, fancy closing a thread by declaring that Station 11 and Never let me go are brilliant whereas TTOD is unmitigated rubbish.

Also bringing my list over

1.Cilka's Journey - Heather Morris

1. The Testaments - Margaret Atwood
2. The Baby Group - Caroline Corcoran
3. Who Killed Ruby? - Camilla Way
4. The Angina Monologues - Samer Nashef
5. The Shelf - Helly Acton
6. Too Scared to Tell - Cathy Glass
7. I Can't Believe You Just Said That - Danny Wallace
8. No One Ever Has Sex On A Tuesday - Tracy Bloom

10. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World - Elif Shafak 11. Her Perfect Lies - Lana Newton 12. The Warning - Kathryn Croft

Between You and Me - Lisa Hall

< POTENTIAL TRIGGER WARNING > Domestic Abuse

I read this book when it first came out but wasn't really in the right headspace and the big twist (and YES it is actually a big twist like it promises), got me confused and I thought I'd read it wrongly/misunderstood somehow.

I decided to read it again even though I knew the plot twist, and have to say I loved it. It had me enthralled from the beginning, every time I had to put it down I couldn't wait to get back to it. As the story is told from the intimate 1st person viewpoint of both main characters, it really gives you an insight that you wouldn't get if the story was being told in the third person. Lisa Hall is so clever in the way the sentences are constructed and the book is written.

It's an emotional and inspiring book, that despite it's subject matter, I really enjoyed

[Edited by MNHQ at poster's request]