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.

19. The Reading Cure: How Books Restored My Appetite by Laura Freeman. The author is a recovering anorexic, who explains how descriptions of food in the books she loved helped with her recovery by changing her perspective on food and encouraging her to try things she had previously forbidden herself. I enjoyed this, particularly the section on Woolf. However, there are lots of better candidates in the book-about-books genre.

I know you've all been waiting patiently to hear the progress on the 50-bookers list of books!

First a couple of general comments. I found it too tricky trying to handle two lists, so I ended up combining everyone's votes. Which means that the final list is a combination of personal favourites and wider recommendations - which I decided is quite nice actually!

It has ended up as a Top 59 rather than a Top 100. This includes all books that were mentioned by more than one person but not books with only one vote.

I believe that our pet peeves about this kind of list is when:

1. They include a book that we haven't read (but we've read lots of others by that author)
2. They include some authors multiple times but others only once.

Therefore our list is a hotch-potch of books and authors! If the author was only mentioned in respect of one certain book, then this book is on the list. If an author was mentioned in respect of multiple books, then the author is on the list (rather than any one of their books).

Hope that all makes sense.

So first of all, the top 12:

1. Jane Austen
2. Dickens
3. Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

4=. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque 4=. Into Thin Air by John Krakuer 4=. Stephen King

1. Agatha Christie

8=. Daphne du Maurier 8=. John Boyle 8=. John Steinbeck 8=. George Orwell 8=. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Numbers 13. to 24. (all with the same number of votes):

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper
The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
A Clockwork Orangeby Anthony Burgess
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
David Mitchell
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte

Numbers 25. to 59. (with two votes each):

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard
Dutch House by Ann Patchett
A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore
Lady Chatterley's Loverby DH Lawrence
Little Women by Louisa M Alcott
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Small Island by Andrea Levy
The Persian Boy by Mary Renault
Wilkie Collins
Iain Banks
Barbara Pym
Bill Bryson
Wild Swans by Jung Chang
John Irving
Georgette Heyer
Diana Wynne Jones
The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif
Hilary Mantel
Ursula Le Guin
This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson
Fingersmith
The FiveBy Halle Rubenhold
The Odyssey by Homer
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
Virginia Woolf
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Vanity Fair by W.M. Thackery
The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Was v excited to find this classy piece of literature in the apartment we’re staying in for the next few weeks... It’ll take me right back to the mid-90s!

Wow thanks for doing a great job putting the list together Tara! I’ve read 30 of those which is better than I usually do on those ‘must read’ lists!

I've read 42 of that list. Now to read the rest (several are already on my TBR list thanks to you lot).

Great work Tara ! I've read 40 which is very much better than my usual tally of such lists, & a handful of DNFs. (Plus a couple - Tess for example where I'm pretty sure I've read them all the way through but actually can't remember much more than that which must be a sign of age )

BTW is John Boyle meant to be John Boyne? Because I think the former is a footballer? Or am I being dense?

tara, what a task! Thank you, and what a fascinating list. I think the methodology is probably the most sensible and transparent of any such list. Plus it means I’ve read 49 on the list because you’ve included authors not books in many cases. It makes me think I should bump Middlemarch up the TBR pile.

Excellent work, Tara, and great dedication to the 50-Booker cause! Thank you.

Good spot Sadik - yes John Boyle should be John Boyne. He was mentioned for The Heart's Invisible Furies and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.

tara - Amazing work & many thanks.

I've read 30, which is far more than most lists & I suspect says something about 50 bookers (& lurkers ).

Thank you so much Tara
I've read 33, DNF 2 (Americanah and The Five) and have a further 9 or 10 on my TBR pile.

Great work Tara.
I’ve read 40, DNF a few. I’ve read all of the top 25.
I’m all about the easy read at the moment - I have never read Ballet Shoes or Georgette Heyer so might give them ago next.

24 not 25 sorry, haven’t read A fine Balance

Fab work tara!

Thanks, Tara. Great work!

I've read 42 and DNF a fair few more (including Wild Swans, Middlemarch, The Poisonwood Bible and A Suitable Boy).

Wow great work! Am a bit embarrassed to say My score it just 17. On the upside I suppose this means I now have a bit of inspiration to add to my reading list

I never did go back to The Five either. I feel bad for saying I was bored by it, but I really was.

I’ve read 25 and quite a few others are loitering on my kindle waiting to be read!

It is nice to see that female writers outnumber male writers - it’s usually the other way round on these lists.

I have read 34. Loved some, hated others. Am pleased to see 'Tess' as the first named book on there.

Just finished Stephen Fry's Troy (special signed edition!). he is a highly entertaining narrator of the myths . I found this one a much easier and more entertaining read than Mythos and Heroes, possibly because it is a more unified narrative. It makes a good accompaniment to books such as Silence of the Girls and A Thousand Ships.

So for authors I counted if I read one by them so 46