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.

10. The Appeal by Janice Hallett
Classic whodunnit, but in an unusual format. At the start we know that someone is in prison, possibly wrongly so, for a murder. We don't know who has died or who has been convicted. A QC presents the case materials, comprising various email correspondence, letters and statements, to two law students, for a fresh perspective ahead of an appeal. This approach challenges the reader to work out the answers ahead of the students, which made it a decent and fun page turner.

43. The Only Plane In The Sky by Garrett M. Graff

I think @FranKatzenjammer has also read this it was in the Kindle deals recently.

I have to break the review of this down into 2 halves.

As a work, it is truly impressive, the entire history of the day collated in chronological "oral history" quotes, from those who survived it. It is a thoroughly compelling vital work, that I would dare to call compulsory reading, and to be honest, I don't know why I'd never heard much about it in terms of publicity. Every one with stomach for it should read it.

Which brings me to the second half, impressive as it is, this is the single most distressing book I have ever read in my entire life. I cried repeatedly and will never ever forget how I felt reading this. This is the sort of book that could turn a faithful believer atheist, with its unrelenting horror. I had to read it in short bursts.

In particular, the story of Fr Mychal Judge, a priest working with FDNY broke me, just absolutely broke me. He was the first official casualty on the day, and it was not that which sent me sobbing, but a surviving firefighters comment :

"I think he wouldn't have had it any other way. It was as if he took the lead - all those angels right through heavens gates. That's what it seemed like to us. If any of those guys were confused on the way up, he was there to ease the transition from this life to the next"

I have cried over that one quote, about 8 times since I read it, including writing it out.

You should read this book but it will destroy you.

I will never be able to get this book out of my head.

20 On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden

YA graphic novel. DD1 (13) adored this and insisted I read it. Two interwoven timelines, gorgeous artwork, a future space setting and all the high emotions (and happy ending) you'd expect from a YA romance.

21. The Seven Sisters by Margaret Drabble. I am a Drabble fan, having read several of her books over the years, and this did not disappoint. Candida is a woman in her 50s with adult daughters whose long term marriage has recently ended. She has moved out of the family home in Norfolk and is living in a small apartment in an insalubrious area of Ladbroke Grove, coming to terms with her new situation. Candida is an interesting character and at times an unreliable narrator. Her interest in the Greek myths winds through the story. It's hard IME to find a book with an interesting older woman as the protagonist, so kudos to Drabble for that.

22. Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez, an extremely well researched account of the gender data gap and its adverse effect on women's lives. This has been on my tbr list for a while, and you do need to be in the right mood to read it, due to its dryness (lots of facts and figures) and also the feelings of anger and frustration that it invariably evokes. Having said that, everyone should read this, especially politicians and researchers. The section about the lack of female participants in medical research was particularly shocking to me.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I have that book to read and with that review it's moved right to the top of my TBR pile. In fact I think I'm going to start it right now.

I have The Only Plane in the Sky too and I’ve been slightly skirting round it....I feel I’ll get to it in time. Excellent review Eine

Excellent review Eine and added to my TBR list. If anyone hasn’t seen it there is an excellent documentary that follows the events of that day made up of home and phone video. It’s about 4 hours long but worth watching.

28. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. I don't think this quite worked as a novel, and I don't think it quite worked as a self help book; but as a thing of its own (and along the lines of Jonathan Livingston Seagull), I really very much enjoyed it.

Tanaqui, I really like Matt Haig as a person, and admire him for the way he's brought mental health issues into the public sphere, but I find his novels too twee, and so I've avoided The Midnight Library so far.

Speaking of mental health issues, I'm having a bad patch. I still feel well enough to read, which is good, but am using novels as a way to avoid Real Work, which is bad I guess. Never mind...

My last three reads:
21. The Door, Magda Szabo 5/5
Recommended to me by a friend who’s a prof of English lit at Birkbeck, as well as posters on this thread. This book is strange and beautiful. The narrator is a woman writer, but the focus of the story is on her housekeeper, an extraordinary and enigmatic character who has lived through various traumas. I think I would have understood this book better if I knew more about the post WW2 history of Hungary, but in some ways the issues are universal: how love can be expressed in the strangest of ways, and how sometimes we don’t always support the people we love in the way they want to be supported.

22. Luster, Raven Leilani 3/5
    One of Obama’s books of the year, and longlisted for the Women’s Prize. A very original narrative voice, that offers a convincing depiction of what it’s like to be a young, black, financially precarious woman in New York. Nevertheless, I found this book quite disturbing. It’s probably at least partly a generational thing (the descriptions of RPGs and Comic Con left me cold, and made me feel old). But maybe my main complaint is that I didn’t like the way the main characters didn’t talk to one another. So much was left unsaid. On the other hand, I liked the way the plot moved from a male-female relationship to focus on a female-female relationship instead.

23. Tehanu, Ursula Le Guin 5/5
    Le Guin’s Earthsea novels have been the best thing in my year so far. Soul-nourishing is probably the best adjective I can find. Tehanu is written 20 years after the original Earthsea trilogy, and brings the themes of the earlier books together beautifully. That said, it really feels like adult fantasy, not YA fantasy. I love the idea of exploring what happens to a young, regal heroine when she turns into a middle-aged mother. The feminist themes that are only implicit in the earlier Earthsea books become explicit here, as Le Guin asks how women’s power might look different from men’s power.

Hope you feel better soon cassandre

21 Black and British by David Olusoga

A really interesting and worthwhile read. Some parts are hard reading, e.g. I didn't know about the attacks on Lagos by the British in the 19th century, actually the entire imperial project was so very violent which I hadn't appreciated. And others are horrific, e.g. the Virginian politician who campaigned for American Independence by making his actual slaves carry banners that said Stamp Tax placed 'chains of slavery' round the necks of the white American colonists. The ebb and flow of the treatment of those of African descent is depressing, particularly when you think how bad the racism was at all levels of society fairly recently. There's no guarantee that things won't get worse again.

That's a very interesting reading given this is the day of the release of the report into racial inequalities in the UK! I think it would have been a very different report had it been authored by Olusoga.

cassandre, and to anyone else who is struggling.

28. A Memory Called Empire - Arkady Martine

SF: Mahit Dzmare is the new ambassador from her small but independent mining station to the enormous, expansionist Teixcalaan Empire. She soon discovers that the previous ambassador was murdered, and was embroiled in the struggle over the succession to the elderly emperor, and that the freedom of her home is under threat. Exciting and intriguing, but quite dense. Mahit has been obsessed with Teixcalaani literature and language since an early age, and her knowledge of linguistic niceties and poetic traditions play an important role in her negotiating an alien and hostile court. This may, or may not, appeal to you. I certainly intend to read the sequel.

Amazing review, Eine. Am behind with reading the thread generally, so will now try to catch up. Work is really busy and I'm not really reading anything at the moment except essays.

@JaninaDuszejko I found Black and British so eye opening, especially the overall message that we need to start acknowledging British history and Black British history as one thing.

Agree, I cannot comprehend today’s report.

Some great reviews to catch up on. @EineReiseDurchDieZeit What a fantastic review. I read this recently and ended up doing a deep dive on YouTube - watching some of the live tv shows from that day. The volume of content that exists from that day is astounding. I did find some of the military focus a little less interesting but probably to do with my personal interests.

Piggywaspushed I think Olusoga is more positive than me I think, and maybe the black population in the UK is big enough now that the positive momentum is unstoppable. The comission into race relations is looking at all races whereas Olusoga is only looking at the black experience and we all know (and the report also says) black Caribbean men always have the worst outcomes. A history of the experience of the people of the Indian subcontinent would be different.

Thanks all

Really struggling with Middlemarch and it's brought me to a bit of a reading standstill - on the plus side, my crochet project is going great guns as I'm doing that instead!

Catching up on the thread has just given me lots more books I'd rather be reading. Can't decide whether to have a break and read something else to get my reading mojo back, or whether I just need to force myself to read x pages per day in order to get it over with. Which is a depressing way to look at it, but it's one of those books I would raced through in my former commutting life as I had an hour on the train each day with nothing else to do. Now I'm working from home, I really have to carve out reading time, otherwise it's just at bedtime and I end up falling asleep after a few pages!

I think it's worth persevering with Middle March, Bookshark, even if it's a chapter a day and then switch over to another book. That said, sometimes it's just not the right time for a certain book, and there's no shame in setting it aside for now.

Can't find new monthly deals for 99p on kindle. The "deals" are there but pricier. Might just be a bit early - hope they're not phasing them out, although I have enough of a backlog to keep me going.

Two quick reads:
27. Rapid-fire Europe, Jason Smart
Author describes short trips to 22 countries. Not distinguished by scintillating prose or geopolitical insight, this was more about minor travel grumbles. The queues are too long, the prices too high, and other tourists keep getting in the way of your photos. Tourism, I've missed you.

28. Three Act Play, Agatha Christie
Clever Agatha, fooled me again.

Biblio I think it's just a glitch. The Daily Deals aren't live yet either.

(Love the fact that there are other people here who wake up in the first day of a new month, and their first thought, like mine, is "Ooh, let's see the new monthly deals" )

Perhaps it’s Amazon’s April Fool!

The books showing on the deal are last month’s deals, but now showing their non-deal prices. Hopefully the new deals will be uploaded soon!

Sadly it was the first thing I looked at when I woke up and was very disappointed they weren’t there!

Just a reminder it's OMF day!

I have the Olusoga on my bedside table - given the praise for it here I may pick it up sooner rather than later.

24 Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr
I read this as a teenager - I have no idea what I made of it then although certain images stuck firmly in my mind. It's a series of short stories, really, set in Brooklyn in the 1950s - people drink, fight, strike, turn tricks, kill, beat their wives, rape, neglect their children and steal. No one is likeable but the empathy is enormous. It was the subject of an obscenity trial here when first published though it's almost impossible to imagine how anyone could argue it would corrupt anyone, it's so bleak and so gut wrenching. There's nothing aspirational or inspiring about it at all. It's also not particularly easy to read - he mixes up a lot of different styles, from very precise and straightforward prose to much more free-wheeling stream of consciousness narrative, with a lot of slang. It's not an easy read and the Tralala chapter in particular is heartbreaking (particularly as she so nearly has an escape route, but fails to recognise it for what it is). But my word, what a book.

25 Little Town on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
I guess this is the other end of the American canon as it's hard to think of something more wholesome. This was a hugely comforting re-read and I think it's my favourite in the series. I picked it up partly as an antidote to Last Exit to Brooklyn and partly because I was close to the end of Prairie Fires and wanted to remind myself of just how well she tells a story.

26 Prairie Fires by Caroline Fraser
The biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose. The Little House books have sold over 65 million copies, and I loved them as a child. I would really recommend this to anyone who enjoyed the books, but I suspect anyone with even a passing interest in US history would enjoy it, even if they had never read the stories. There were many fascinating dimensions to this book which is meticulously researched. The reality of prairie life is that it was hard, disappointing and brutal with endless trials that feel biblical at times0. Some of that comes across in the books but it's carefully managed, and Wilder emphasises the beauty and freedom over the misery. I loved the historical context, and particularly the way Fraser traces the problematic emotional and working relationship between Wilder and her daughter who was a troubled and tricky character.

Another sad person - first action today was to check the new deals!

If anyone has DCs in tween/teen age group, there is a young person's version of the Olusoga which is excellent.