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.

1. The Midnight Library Matt Haig

The idea of our infinite parallel lives was an interesting one-Nora hangs between life and death and is able to test out alternative realities where she might have had a different future. The first part of the book was very readable-however I saw the ending telegraphed from a mile away and had the feeling that the book freewheeled downhill towards it! There was also too much of a 'message' in the last chapters of the book for me where it seemed to veer off into self-help manual territory.

Not reading so much at the moment as too much going on IRL (job hunting, house hunting, remaining brain cell hunting) but have managed to join the local library. It is not only fully open but is enormous, and I had over an hour in there by myself with no preschooler . Actual bliss! I restrained myself to getting out 4 books, but they should enable me to Write a Historical Novel while Pivoting my Career, providing an excellent Customer Service and learning about how the Ritual Year works in the Southern Hemisphere (I managed to tear myself away from empathy in chimps, vampire lore and the entire fiction section, v.g.)

Oh Ladybird, I am consumed with envy hearing about your library. Hope it will still be your local after you move.

Ooh Ladybird it's like a postcard from a different world.

Isn't it funny how sometimes what we remember about books is more about how they made us feel than the actual storyline?

Yolandi I read The Outcast by Sadie thingummy jiggy several years ago and I literally can NOT remember a thing about it, other than how very very bleak it was. Even your review didn't manage to jog a spark of memory about the actual story

nowanearlyNicemum, I remember very little about most of the books I read apart from (usually) a couple of minor plot details and the general impression it left me with. It does make me wonder why I read since I retain so little of them. Writing out reviews and keeping lists helps somewhat with it. It makes me wonder if I should respond to those "how many of the books on this list have you read?" type questions as there's a world of difference for me between "read" and "read and remembered what I read".

I rely on Amazon to remind me I have already purchased a copy of a book these days when I'm about to click to buy.

I don’t always remember a lot of what I read. Earlier this year I read something and it was only when I went to add it on goodreads that I discovered I read it a couple of years ago. Nothing specific about the story had rung any bells, just a vague sense that I had read something with a similar storyline before (woman getting drunk on night out, forgetting what she’s done, then being sent photos etc. in the post afterwards and blackmailed - and to be fair to me I think I have read more than one book with that type of storyline!). Amazon is good for reminding me but only if I bought it on kindle - I must have borrowed that one from the library originally.

Ah, you're making me feel much better now!!
I've never actually read the same book twice unintentionally - but then I don't devour the same number of books some of you do either

1. Orlando King by Isabel Colegate
2. Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick - amazing non-fiction account of life in North Korea.

10. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig - Read for work book club. Hated it with the fire of 10,000 flaming suns. So twee and yet so heavy handed in its preaching and moralising. 11. The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice - I remember loving it when I first read it 15 years ago, but unfortunately it doesn't hold up.

My inability to remember what I've read is why I decided to start re-reading the hundreds of books I own rather than buying new ones - and be critical about them so that I get rid of ones I don't enjoy (apart from the classics - both new and old - which I keep because it makes me look vaguely well read when in the background of Zoom calls!).

Although that is why I'm currently stuck on Middlemarch. I know I just need to dedicate some time to really get into it, but it's hard going.

When my DM was in her 40s - she mentioned reading books and then remember she had read them.

10 year old me was

And now

The thing is. You remember the AMAZING, you remember THE SHIT but the majority of meh don't remain in the vault

I'm totally guilty of using Amazon as an aide memoire. To be fair mostly for thrillers that just blend into one. I also wonder whether I absorb books less deeply on a Kindle than in paperback?

The good thing is you can reread everything and still be surprised!

Agree with the ‘meh’ ones not sticking Eine. I read a lot of psychological thrillers and a lot of them fall into the ‘meh’ category so if I’m going to accidentally reread a book it will probably be that category, especially as they all have similar names nowadays (What She Knew, What She Saw, What She Said).

Stokey I find the problem with a kindle is that you don’t keep seeing the front cover of the book so the title/author don’t stick in your head in the same way that they do when reading a paperback, when you see them every time you pick the book up. I often have to read the blurb to tell if I’ve read a book before because if I read it on kindle the title may not mean anything (although as shown above reading the blurb doesn’t always help either!)

Chessie, you are so right about the lack of front and back cover on a Kindle contributing to the blobbing together of everything that gets read in my head. And the psychological thrillers, too. I don't read many of them now but they were never very well differentiated in my head. Now the problem is the slightly underwhelming "literary fiction lite" that I still read more of than I should. The really really good books stick of course. And so do the absolute shockers, but now I work through my list more consistently, I have fewer of those than I used to.

19 Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce

Possibly the most perfect children's book ever written.

@JaninaDuszejko

19 Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce

Possibly the most perfect children's book ever written.

I agree, Janina - I love that book.

@JaninaDuszejko

19 Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce

Possibly the most perfect children's book ever written.

Agreed!

I too have a poor memory for the books I've read. But remembering the plot details isn't important. It's how you feel while you're reading it that enters into your heart and becomes part of you

@ChessieFL

Stokey I find the problem with a kindle is that you don’t keep seeing the front cover of the book so the title/author don’t stick in your head in the same way that they do when reading a paperback, when you see them every time you pick the book up. I often have to read the blurb to tell if I’ve read a book before because if I read it on kindle the title may not mean anything (although as shown above reading the blurb doesn’t always help either!)

This is also what leads to people going into book shops to ask for "that yellow book"

Now Tom's Midnight Garden I have NO problem remembering!

I think you mentally need to train yourself with a Kindle. I've been using mine for about 4 years and for at least 2 I found myself almost speed-reading if that makes any sense. I don't know if it's because it's on a screen and our brains are so used to doing things quickly on a screen...dunno. I still definitely do not read as "well" on the Kindle as I do with paper in my hands. Mind you that also might be because I am also guilty of having about 200 99p psycho thriller books on there. All of which, bar very few indeed, are instantly and eternally forgotten.

Ironically I'm sure I read Tom's Midnight Garden when I was a child, but it's blurred together with various other timeslip books

I find that I tend to read fiction more quickly on kindle (actually on my phone on the app), but I love it for non-fiction because of the ability to highlight passages & then look back at the key threads of an argument as the book progresses.