50 Book Challenge 2021 Part Four

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the fourth 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, the second one here and the third one here.

Wow, Tara, what a task!

List A (Top 5 Fiction, in order of when I read them)
Beloved Toni Morrison
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante
Tess of the D’Urbevilles by Thomas Hardy
Milkman by Anna Burns

Top 5 Non Fiction
Nothing to Envy Barbara Demick
Far from the Tree by Andrew Solomon
The Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
Istanbul by Bettany Hughes

I don’t have a Should Read list, just my own favourites! I found the Non fiction much more difficult, with honourable mentions to:
Jeruselem: A Biography by Simon Sebag-Montefiore
Akala’s Natives
Palestine by Joe Sacco
The War on Women by Sue Lloyd-Roberts.
The Outrun by Amy Liptrot

Forgot to bold my favourites but remembered to bold the Did Not Make the Shortlist.. 🤦‍♀️

I didn't do non-fiction. Here's mine if we're doing that too. Same caveats as above

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning - Laurie Lee
The Life Project - Helen Pearson
Uniquely Human - Barry Prizant and Tom Fields-Meyer
The Five - Hallie Rubenhold
Poverty Safari - Darren McGarvey

@LadybirdDaphne I raised a very large eyebrow when a friend called her DD Livia .

@magimedi I loved the Paul Scott books but think my favourite would be Staying On. I actually forgot about them when choosing my 5 as knew I wanted at least one about India but didn't know what to choose. I lived there when I was a teenager and devoured lots of Indoan novels.

OK, I'll bite the bullet and list 5 favourite books
even though it's an impossible task!

The Odyssey by Homer
The Heroides by Ovid
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Lover by Marguerite Duras
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

5 books everyone should read:
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
The Bone People by Keri Hulme

As an aside, probably my favourite book ever is Montaigne's Essays, but that is a weird one for several reasons: it's nonfiction and more or less in a genre of its own; I've worked on it a lot and so am quite invested in it; and finally, it's so huge I haven't even read it yet from cover to cover.

Back with my 'must read' list, which I'm going to be a wuss about and say isn't really a must read list, but more a list of books which had a big impact on me. Not necessarily books I enjoyed, but books I found significant if that's the right word.

1. Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky
2. The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald
3. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
4. Jane Eyre - Bronte
5. Wuthering Heights - Bronte

I don't want to pre-empt any conclusions but it does look as though Jane Eyre is going to come out of this pretty well 🤞

[quote Stokey]**@MamaNewtNewt* I was tempted by I, Claudius* too but suggested it to my book club a could of years back and they all ended up giving up after about 50 pages! I had to change my selection to something more modern. But it is a work of genius and actually very funny IMO.[/quote]

Wow it's strange that none of them could get on with it, I thought it was just brilliant. I love Goodbye to All That by the same author too and was tempted to add to my list of books people should read. It was so difficult to narrow my list down and some books it caused me pain to leave out.

@YolandiFuckinVisser I read Kafka on the Shore a few years ago and felt like I was meant to find it profound if I could just work out what on earth it was on about.

I completely went off Murakami. I read quite a few over a few years, Kafka first. They all seemed to involve the manic, pixie dream girl trope as his only female characters.

Agree Palegreenstars I've really gone off Murakami too. IQ84 did for me, by the third volume all the semen spurting and dream/alternate reality sex was just too much. I find his books always start brilliantly and really draw me in but then the endings (or lack thereof) never seem worth the effort.

After my last non-fiction, about London's excruciatingly hot summer of 1858 and the reeking Thames, I planned to read Clare Clark's novel The Great Stink, which I'm sure I did have a copy of once...however, turns out I must have got rid of it at some point. So instead:

29: Sweet Thames - Matthew Kneale

This is set in 1849, a decade or so earlier than the Great Stink, but centres around the obsession of young engineer Joshua Jeavons with designing an ambitious method for dealing with effluent in the Thames. But Joshua is sidetracked by worry over his troubled relationship with his young wife, Isobella - and events send him spiralling out of control as he descends into London's poorest, grimmest - and cholera-ridden - slums.

Not as good as I was hoping for from Kneale, and not a patch on his latest, Pilgrims . It's a sort-of thriller but didn't really work for me ...I persevered to the end but found it rather laboured and unconvincing in terms of both plot and language.

I am spending 2021 charging through already downloaded Kindle books and clearing out my Amazon wishlist and now I'm going to get 100 other suggestions to read! What are you lot doing to me

13. 50 Shades of USA by Anna McNuff

This was my birthday treat book. I follow Anna McNuff on social media and think she is my friend. Her enthusiasm is infectious. This book is about her first adventure when she cycled 11,000 miles around the all the states in the USA. It's an easy read, but I love travel memoirs and I love USA landscape. Perfect pause from the heavier, longer books I've been reading.

Thirteen books takes me to 26% of the way through the challenge before the end of March, and if I didn't keep reading Stephen King I'd be way ahead of that!

Ok, I am going to think about my five favourite books.

I forgot Twelve Years A Slave Solomon Northup. Honourable mention. I think I need a Top 10 for Nonfiction!

It's so difficult to narrow down to 5 books isn't it!

My five fiction favourites are:
1.L'Assomoir - Emile Zola
2.Twenty Thousand Streets under the Sky - Patrick Hamilton
3.The Netherworld - George Gissing
4.Vanity Fair- W.M. Thackery
5.Consequences-E.M. Delafield
These are all rereads and comfort books but Looking at my selection I have to say they're not very uplifting stories.

I think that books everyone should read are a bit different to favourites, they should instruct or make you see the world in new ways or have had a huge influence (not necessarily what you might read for enjoyment). My 5 Fiction everyone reads are:

1. 1984- George Orwell

2.The Trail - Franz Kafka

1. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
2. The Canterbury Tales (perhaps especially if you speak English)- Chaucer
3. The Arabian Nights (Andrew Lang Trans) or The Illiad.

My Five non fiction everyone should read:
1.The Communist Manifesto - Marx and Engels
2.A Vindication of the Rights of Women- Mary Wollenstonecraft
3.A Narrative oft he life of Frederick Douglass (An American Slave)- F. Douglass
4.How your body works- Judy Hindley (kids book)

1. The Prince - Nicolo Machiavelli

The Anarchist's Club by Alex Reeve
The second in the series, following The House on Half Moon Street
Not as good as the first, but perfect bath time reading, and I gobbled it up in just a few hours.

23. 29 Seconds by T M Logan

Sarah rescues a young girl, the daughter of a powerful Russian criminal. Due to this he offers Sarah a once in a lifetime deal, she simply has to give the name of one person 8n her life that she wants to disappear. There will be no link to her, no chance of being found out, all it will take is a phone call lasting less than 30 seconds. If she gives the name of someone, there is no going back.

Sarah is being sexually harassed and bullied by her boss, and in a moment of madness makes the call and gives his name.

I won't give any spoilers, but I found the book gripping overall and when the end came (or so I thought), it was a big disappointment. The story continues and the real ending is anything but disappointing.

I really enjoyed this book, and never guessed the twist - I'd recommend it.

Been thinking about my top 5 all day, it's a bit of a mixture but in no particular order here we go

Into Thin Air by John Krakuer
First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
Dear Bob and Sue by Matt and Karen Smith
Neverending Story by Michael Ende
The Stand by Stephen King

16. Straight by Dick Francis I divide Dick Francis books into 5 groups - early/good, middle/lightweight, middle/good, late/solid, late/annoying. Straight is late/solid and a satisfying read. A jockey finds that his brother's business and entire life drops into his lap and he has to sort out all the puzzles and mysteries left behind.

18. Felicia's Journey - William Trevor 17-year-old Felicia leaves her father's house in disgrace, runs away from the small Irish town she has lived in all her life to search for the man who got her pregnant but failed to give her his address beyond "North of Birmingham". It's never mentioned by name but I recognise Wolverhampton in the description of the town she arrives at to begin her search, where she is drawn in by the seemingly-harmless Mr Hilditch, a middle-aged bachelor with a terrible secret.

Loved this book, it's pretty bleak throughout but the story is compelling and very well written from the viewpoints of Felicia, Mr Hilditch and an incidental Jehovah's Witness who witnesses more than she bargained for.

15. Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

Katey Kontent (yes, really) has romantic and professional adventures in late 1930s New York. I really loved the first 100 or so pages of this, which dealt with a sort of love triangle between Katey, her best friend Eve and a wholesome banker named Tinker. After that things became more complicated and I wasn't fully dragged along with the story. I felt that introducing other pivotal characters rather undermined the strength of what felt like the central story. Towles' writing is an absolute pleasure to read, with so many beautifully crafted sentences, and he does conjure up a vision of 1930s New York that makes it seem enormous fun. Ultimately, however, I preferred his subsequent A Gentleman in Moscow, which was one of my standout reads a couple of years ago.

I think Murakami is a creepy fucker and I shan't read any more of his. He neither understands or likes women IMO.

I am a third of the way through Pillars of the Earth and good old Ken likes women mucho mucho. Well, bits of them.

I'm also reading Diana In Her Own Words (updated version for the anniversary or something) Bless her, she was absolutely crackers. It's interesting reading bits about specific days and what she says happened on that day and then googling the photos from that day. I ended up with a lot of books on the royals as Marjorie-up-the-street, my Mum's lovely neighbour, got it into her head about 20-25 years ago I was, like her, an ardent royalist. Hey ho.

Sorry another drive by post until I can catch up properly.

Women's Prize Longlist just out.

Because of You by Dawn French
Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi
Consent by Annabel Lyon
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan
How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones
Luster by Raven Leilani
No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
Nothing But Blue Sky by Kathleen MacMahon
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Small Pleasures by Clare ChambersS
ummer by Ali Smith
The Golden Rule by Amanda Craig
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller

Apologies for any weird formatting, it didn't paste well.

Fortuna you just pipped me to it! I'm ashamed to admit I haven't read any of them yet. Though quite a few are on my list.

Jhalak Prize announced theirs yesterday (I think) - apologies if already posted:

Romalyn Ante - Antiemetic for Homesickness (Chatto & Windus)

Catherine Cho - Inferno (Bloomsbury Circus)

Afshan D’Souza-Lodhi - [re: desire] (Burning Eye Books)

Caleb Femi - Poor (Penguin)

Kiran Millwood Hargrave - The Mercies (Picador)

Tammye Huf - A More Perfect Union (Myriad Editions)

Rachel Long - My Darling From the Lions (Picador)

Deirdre Mask - The Address Book (Profile Books)

Katy Massey - Are We Home Yet (jacaranda)

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi - The First Woman (Oneworld Publications)

Paul Mendez - Rainbow Milk (Dialogue Books)

Stephanie Scott - What’s Left of Me Is Yours (W&N)

Interesting no overlap.....

Ooh thanks for the other list. I'm not familiar with that prize but always interested to try different ones. I'm still working on the Stella Prize list from last year

I've read 6 from the WP list and broadly enjoyed them. I finished Consent this lunchtime.

Last year I managed to read the longlist before the shortlist was announced. I'll try again this year.