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.

Oh and great work Tara

LadybirdDaphne I used to love Point books, especially the Horror series and I occasionally treat myself to one if I'm feeling nostalgic I found quite a few by Richie Tankersley Cusick on the kids section of Overdrive, made me irrationally happy
Well done on the completed list Tarahumara, only read 17 on it but hot loads more of them on TBR list

Thanks for all the work compiling the list, @Tarahumara! 37 of those for me.

18. Platform Seven by Louise Doughty

"Domestic noir" is apparently what they're calling this type of novel now - would also cover B. A. Paris's Behind Closed Doors I imagine - although this is quite a different book. I thought both were very good. Getting the elephant in the room out there first - yes, this book is narrated by a ghost, and no, that would not normally make me keen to read it. But Doughty is a good, compelling writer based on this and the only other book of hers I've read (Appletree Yard) and although I didn't feel the gimmick worked all of the time, it didn't put me off what is otherwise a rollicking good story. It's not giving a huge amount away to say that the book deals with coercive control, and it does so in a frighteningly insidious and real-feeling way. But I think one of Doughty's strengths is her characterisation, in particular her ability to suffuse her incidental characters with warmth and life. There's a certain satisfaction in the way she concludes their stories as well as the central one. I raced through this but it is one I might go back and read again more carefully a second time.

No problem - I love a spreadsheet

Welshwabbit I enjoyed both the Louise Doughty books you've read, but my favourite of hers was a third - Black Water. Try it!

I was just reading about that one @Tarahumara - thanks for the recommendation, I will give it a go.

Well done Tara, interesting to see the lists pulled together. Think I've only read 13, lots of exciting books ahead for me.

9. The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin
I'm a big Gretchen Rubin fan, although over the past few years I have enjoyed her podcast more than her recent books. I first read this a decade ago, it's still my favourite of her books and I very much enjoyed a reread.
10. One August Night by Victoria Hislop
My Mum has been a fan of Victoria Hislop since her early novels and eagerly awaits each new release. The three I have read (Cartes Postales, Those Who Are Loved and now this) I have found a bit disappointing. This is a sequel to The Island but Mum assured me it could standalone. Perhaps I missed a bit from this by reading it without it's predecessor. On the positive side, I think Victoria Hislop writes about interesting places, interesting times in history and interesting characters. And I thought the ending of this novel wrapped things up in a really satisfying way. Like Those Who Are Loved though, I just felt frustrated that Hislop seemed to skim over the surface of the drama that she was describing and I was looking for more from the subject matter. So much potential, but not a hit for me.
Currently listening to a fantastic nonfiction title on audio...will be back to review once I've finished which may be tomorrow or Monday as I'm so keen to return to it I'm kind of racing through.

Thanks for this Tara. I've read 29 with quite a few on my tbr list.

Brilliant list Tara. I'm on 36 with a few DNFs.

44. How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House - Cherie Jones This explores violence and crime in 80s Barbados, following two women. One an ex-pat who witnesses her husband's murder and the other a local whose baby is taken in the night. I found myself quite indifferent to this, I didn't warm to either character of have much interest in the two storylines. It was a bit boring really.

I've had 2 DNFs where I've read over 50% but could not go on.

The Dinner List - Rebecca Searle
A young women finds herself at her fantasy dinner party with the 5 guests living or dead she had previously chosen. The timeline drifts between the party and the events that brought her to chose those people. Deathly dull. This was for book club and I usually soldier on, but life is too short. I managed 29 of 50 odd chapters, so I did try.

Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology - Jess Zimmerman
This was billed as an exploration of mythological women and the how the stories surrounding them have been used by men to vilify women. It turned out to be a brief description of certain myths and then a long memoir piece about the author and her insecurities about her life, interactions with men, and her body. It was whiny and pointless.

71. The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing by Sonia Faleiro

This tells the story of Padma and Lalli, teenage cousins living in rural India who were found hanged in a tree one morning. I read a review of this in a paper and thought it sounded a really interesting story. It probably is an interesting story but unfortunately this book did not do it justice. I found it hard to have any emotional connection to any of the characters and most of the chapters looking at the (slipshod) police investigation I found very boring. The book also assumes a reasonable knowledge of Indian politics and how the caste system works - I don’t have this knowledge so found these parts confusing. It’s a shame because whatever happened to those girls was awful but this really isn’t a good legacy for them.

72. The Survivors by Jane Harper

Not as good as The Dry or The Lost Man. This is about Kieran who has gone back for a holiday to the small beach town he grew up in. He is haunted by an accident 12 years ago in which his older brother died and for which Kieran is seen as partly to blame. While there on holiday a young woman is murdered and this brings out the secrets of the town. The story was fine - OK but nothing special - but she does write the setting well.

73. Scoff: A History of Food and Class In Britain by Pen Vogler

As the title says! Lots of chapters covering different foods, how meals are served, or what meals are called, covering the history and how this links to class. Fascinating if you like food writing, but it is longish so better to dip into rather than read straight through. The only annoying this is that each chapter contains lots of links to other chapters and I kept pressing these by accident on my kindle and suddenly jumping to another chapter which was a bit offputting.

16 If Not, Winter. Fragments of Sappho. Translated by Anne Carson

A new translation of all of Sappho's extant poetry. The greek is on the left page and the english on the right, with gaps left where the papyrus has degraded so much we can't read the original. There is an introduction and notes on the translation at the end. It doesn't take long to read this and it's bizarre to think this morning I had read nothing by this so very famous first Western female writer, and now I have read everything. Worth reading.

18. Bring Me Back by B A Paris

Oh man this book was bad - so very bad. A steaming turd of a book that achieves an ungodly trifecta of a terrible plot, ending and characters. Finn and Layla are on holiday in France when Layla disappears (I wish I had bowed out at the same point). Cut to ten years later, Layla still hasn't surfaced and Finn is happily shacked up with Layla's sister Ellen, a pale imitation of a person, when he begins receiving mysterious emails - so far so predictable. The main character Finn is an abusive, controlling arsehole to every single character (I didn't get the impression this was deliberate by the author but I might be wrong) who is without any redeeming features and remains obsessively in love with manic pixie dream girl Layla, even as he gets engaged to her sister. The 'tension' is ramped up by way of flashbacks, half glimpsed sightings of Layla and the delivery of a LOT of Russian dolls. I kind of half guessed the ending to this one but dismissed it as surely no-one could come up with such an insanely stupid idea...surely...

19. The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly

This is the 3rd (I think) in the Harry Bosch series and was a pretty solid crime book. Harry is being sued by the widow of a serial killer that he killed, the Dollmaker, when a body is found and Harry gets a note from the Dollmaker claiming responsibility. This book is pretty old and I was expecting some outdated language and attitudes towards sex workers but to be honest there were quite a few insightful comments from Harry. The fact that his mother was sex worker who was murdered when he was a kid seems to have given him a different perspective to some of his colleagues. That said the trade off towards the end of the book didn't sit well with me and I'm hoping Harry will address that in a future book.

Currently listening to Becoming by Michelle Obama which I'm loving and reading The Hours by Michael Cunningham which I've only just started.

@MamaNewtNewt

Did Becoming last year

Job For You, Count the mentions of "Our Little House On Euclid Avenue"

36 In Your Defence by Sarah Langford
Reviewed upthread by Welshwabbit - I don't have anything specific to add, but I found it really interesting & very glad to have read it.

Great list @Tarahumara. I'm mid 40s but with a few glaring omissions, I've never managed Tess or Wuthering Heights . But it has managed to address the gender balance with a lot more women than on most lists.

MamaNewtNewt, love the review. Almost makes me want to read the book, just to compare notes, but I shall resist.

Thanks for the list - seems more varied than these things usually are. I'm on 33 but this WILL be the year that I finish A Suitable Boy having started and failed twice already so I'm committing to making that 34!

Thanks Tara. It's a nicely eclectic list. I'm on 30. I really have to get into Georgette Heyer, Stephen King and David Mitchell, all of whom sit impatiently on my tbr list.

23. Slough House, by Mick Herring
Seventh in the series about failed spies. The reader now has to remember lots of characters and chunks is back story to understand what's happening. Took me a while to get back into it, but I enjoyed it when I did. Cynical power games, some decent action and a few nicely mordant jokes.

24. The Doomsday Book, Connie Willis
The action in divided between Oxford and 2054 and the fourteenth century. Time travel has been discovered and a young historian has been sent back in time. But something has gone wrong and people are starting to fall ill in both zones. Will she be able to return?

I've read this author before and I know she takes her time - you wait around admiring the scenery for a long while before the next stage of the plot unravels. But it can help you get very invested in the characters, and I tore through the last few chapters to find out what happened to people I care about. She was writing in 1992, and it's interesting to see how she imagined the 2054 outbreak - the NHS with inadequate PPE, track and trace and fretting over toilet paper. She even has protesters outside the hospital gates with placards demanding to leave the EC. As an American who didn't know Oxford particularly well, she also provides a very old-fashioned portrayal of the place. I became very immersed and as someone put it previously, I have a book hangover since finishing.

24. 84K - Claire North. This is set in a near dystopian future, where "The Company" has joined forces with the government and everything has a price. If you're rich you can live in one of closed communities like Pimlico or the Cotswolds, if not you sell your soul to the Company until it's cheaper to replace you with someone less experienced. The main character works for the Criminal Audit Office. All crimes have a price and you can pay off the indemnity if you're rich enough, the 84K of the title. This was an incredibly dark book. The world building was good, plot was reasonable but confusing time lines and writing quirks made this a bit of a struggle for me. The hero takes the name Theo Miller, and the author spends most of the book referring to him as "the boy who would be Theo" or "the man called Theo" which rather grated.

Thanks for putting that list together Tara

I don't think I have read many from it all, so I shall spend a happy Sunday morning having a look and reading a few reviews and adding some to my Amazon wishlist.

I haven't read many classics, but now have plenty of ideas of the next few to try.

Thank you Tara for the list. Lots there that I've read and a few omissions that I am inspired to address.

Interesting that Tess is so popular but we don't seem to rate any other Hardys.

Is Georgette Heyer worth reading for the first time as a (cough) 40 something (cough)? I'd assumed that she was popular mostly as a nostalgic re-read for people who'd grown up reading her.

Thank you Tara - I have read 32 on the list. I didn’t submit my top 5 as couldn’t narrow it down but I think that’s a good list.

22. A Month in the Country - JL Carr

Much reviewed on here - it felt like a whole summer rather than a month - and depicted village life and characters beautifully as well as the painstaking nature of the work on the church mural. Has anyone seen the film and is it good or a letdown?

23. My Dark Vanessa - Kate Elizabeth Russell

I know that quite a few of you have also read this book about 15 year old Vanessa’s relationship with her English teacher which she does not consider to be abusive. This was a disturbing read (to the extent I put it down at times) but also compelling. I suspect it’s a book I will remember unlike some I have read.

I feel the need for something lighter next...

I think the film is fine, Time - very respectful of the source. I didn't feel as if it added much. In the book, the important stuff is going on under the surface, so it's hard to portray. Pretty enough to look at but not much happens.

2. Inside Broadmoor - Jonathan Levi & Emma French

This book is quite short, a friend of mine lent me this after we had a discussion about Broadmoor, I hadn't realised Broadmoor was so local to where we live.

It was an okay read, gave a good insight into life inside Broadmoor and went into some of the history.

Can't believe how many books everyone is getting through, I really need to concentrate on finding more time to read.