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.

I remember the TV adaptation of In this house of Brede or possibly a film. Diana Rigg maybe. I picked up a second hand copy a couple of years ago. Something satisfactorily fascinating about nuns. My university friends and I still talk about some bonkers nun book we all read where one got pregnant through being raped but they all thought it was a virgin birth and were dreadfully jealous of her.

Good of you to join us Eine 😂

I bought On the Front Line with the Women Who Fight Back by Stacey Dooley, it looks excellent and worth a try at 99p

Description:

Over her ten years of documentary film making, Stacey Dooley has covered a wide variety of topics, from sex trafficking in Cambodia to Yazidi women fighting back in Syria.

At the heart of all her reporting are incredible women in extraordinary situations: sex workers in Russia, victims of domestic violence in Honduras, and many more.

On the Frontline with the Women who Fight Back, draws on Stacey's encounters with the brave, wonderful women she has met over her career to explore the issues of gender equality, domestic violence, sexual identity and, at its centre, womanhood in the world today

I know we've talked on here before about In This House of Brede (one of my favourite books) but just a reminder that he TV adaptation is here on YouTube

Here’s my list so far.

1. The Atlas of Disease - Sandra Hempel
2. Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone - JK Rowling
3. Station Eleven - Emily St John Mandel
4. The Passage - Justin Cronin
5. The Natural Health Service - Isabel Hardman
6. The Twelve - Justin Cronin
7. Back to Nature - Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin
8. The City of Mirrors - Justin Cronin
9. Red Rising - Pierce Brown

10. Children of Time - Adrian Tchaikovsky 11. Children of Ruin - Adrian Tchaikovsky 12. The Girl with all the Gifts - M R Carey 13. The Chrysalids - John Wyndham 14. Vox - Christina Dalcher 15. The Boy on the Bridge - M R Carey

At the moment I’m reading and finding so interesting The Unthinkable by Amanda Ripley. Also reading Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. This is a re-read so it’s on hold while I finish The Unthinkable.

Thanks for the new thread southeast.

My list so far:

1. Sweet Pea by C J Skuse
2. Dracul by Dacre Stoker and J. D. Barker
3. Cotillion by Georgette Heyer
4. Skitter by Ezekiel Boone
5. Dragonquest by Anne McCaffrey
6. Dragonsong by Anne McCaffrey
7. The Pandora Room by Christopher Golden
8. Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffrey
9. Goodbye to Malory Towers by Pamela Cox

10. The Trench by Steve Alten

Thanks for the new thread, southeast.

My list so far:

1. Fates and Furies by Lauren Geoff.
2. Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo.
3. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke.

4. Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe.

1. The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne.
2. The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante.

7. To Throw Away Unopened by Viv Albertine. 8. Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life by Peter Godfrey-Smith. 9. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. 10. William Blake Poems, Selected by Patti Smith. 11. The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste. 12. Shards of Honour (The Vorksigan Saga) by Lois McMaster Bujold. 13. A Burning by Megha Majumdar.

And my latest read:

14. The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (and Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did) by Philippa Perry.

Parenting book I borrowed from BorrowBox. Short and easy to read with some good advice about trying to keep communication open with your children. There is quite a lot about the baby and toddler stage which is not so relevant to me.

Just bought the Stacey Dooley book for 99p - thanks bett.

@Tarahumara

Just bought the Stacey Dooley book for 99p - thanks bett.

Hope you enjoy it.

Been trying to post this all morning, hope it doesn't come up six times now

Thanks for the thread South!

11. Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

My first Steinbeck which I read last year, was his road trip memoir so I didn't know what I was letting myself in for. The writing is so beautiful you feel part of the family and time, and it's such a struggle for them and life is cheap. It's an era I knew little about and although a fabulous read I also feel a bit wrung out.

Time for something lighter while we're still seeing off this pandemic I think!

PepeLePew I'm sure there's a film of A Month in the Country starring a young Colin Firth.

Janina, yes there is. I'm holding off until the memory of the book has become a little less vivid. I don't want to ruin my mental pictures until they've had a chance to become properly embedded, if that makes sense?

A cheeky placemark until I can come back later with my list and have a proper catch up on the thread. I've been a bad 50 booker of late, lots of reading but no updating.

Thanks for the new thread! Here's my list:

1. Virginia Woolf - Hermione Lee
2. A Whole Life - Robert Seethaler
3. My Wild and Sleepless Nights - Clover Stroud
4. Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me - Kate Clanchy
5. Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life - Peter Godfrey-Smith
6. Somebody I Used to Know - Wendy Mitchell
7. Such A Fun Age - Kiley Reid
8. The Kind Worth Killing - Peter Swanson
9. Three Hours - Rosamund Lupton

10. All That Remains: A Life in Death - Sue Black 11. I Thought I Knew You - Penny Hancock 12. Red Dust by Ma Jian 13. Sun Fall by Jim Al-Khalili 14. We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 15. Passing by Nella Larsen 16. The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers

Terpsichore - like you, most of my bolds seem to be non fiction. I notice that as I get older it's harder to impress me with fiction than it used to be.

My list so far

1. Midwinter Murder by Agatha Christie
2. Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
3. The Familiars by Stacey Halls
4. Three Hours by Rosalind Lipton
5. Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz.
6. Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli.
7. Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld

Reading Love after Love by Ingrid Persaud and a Mallory Towers collection which was cheap on a kindle deal and which I couldn't resist for a nostalgia filled trip back to my pre-teen self in the seventies .

'and a Mallory Towers collection which was cheap on a kindle deal and which I couldn't resist for a nostalgia filled trip back to my pre-teen self in the seventies'

And yet I still managed to spell it wrong ffs!

Finally finished Murderous Contagion.

It was okay, but not as good as I'd hoped it would be. There were too many worms and mosquitoes, and not enough surgery, syphilis or scurvy. Too much modern stuff and not enough history. Too much repetition about WHO. And the whole thing seemed oddly organised. And some of it was quite boring. One that began with great promise but didn't really deliver enough for me.

13 Hidden Depths Ann Cleeves. Vera book 3 I think.

Satisfactory and well written police procedure.

Thanks for the heads up about the Kindle deals. I got The Mermaid of the Black Conch, The Bell Jar which I've never read, 84K by Claire North who wrote the 15 lives of Harry August, and Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald which won the Booker in 1979. Thought there was quite a good selection this month, I'm not sure where to start.

Thanks Southeast.

For once I'm organised enough to have actually got my list:

1. The Revelation of St John the Divine
2. Detroit 67: The Year that Changed Soul by Stuart Cosworth
3. Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson
4. The Humans by Matt Haig
5. Dear Enemy by Jean Webster

6. Pale Rider by Laura Kenney

1. Jane Austen the Secret Radical by Helena Kelly
2. The Foundling by Georgette Heyer
3. What Matters in Jane Austen by John Mullen

10. The Second Sleep by Robert Harris 11. 1, 2, 3, 4: the Beatles in Time by Craig Brown 12. The Secrets we Kept by Lara Prescott 13. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

*14. Fire and Steam: How the Railways Transformed Britain by Christian Wolmar
A chronological history of how the railways were invented and developed in Britain, and the impact they had.
Christian Wolmar is a rail enthusiast and a journalist I always looked forward to reading in the Independent and the Observer. He is a good professional writer but also an enthusiast, and the result is an immensely readable and good fun telling of this really remarkable story. The most enthusiastic part is the first section, full of the inventors, entrepreneurs and genuises of the early industrial and Victorian railway. I really wasn't expecting the 20th Century part to be less vivid - I had Wolmar pegged as a pure trainspotting type, and somewhere along the way I was expecting lyrical descriptions of late steam locomotives and early diesel rolling stock. But no; he takes a much more practical and business-minded view than that, while still able to get across the particular enchantment of rail travel.
The slightly odd feeling at the end though was because this book was in fact written in 2007. He writes about 'uninterrupted growth' and an untroubled economic landscape, and as I think about the 14 years since that time I feel rather gloomy. Still enjoyed it though.

If you want an absolute classic cookery book for less than a quid, Claudia Roden's Book of Jewish Food is a ridiculous 99p at the moment.

Kindle cookbooks don't really work for me but this one is just iconic imho.

That's amazing Viking. Such a beautiful book.

Thanks for the new thread @southeastdweller

Bringing over my list

1. Cilka's Journey - Heather Morris
2. The Testaments - Margaret Atwood
3. The Baby Group - Caroline Corcoran
4. Who Killed Ruby? - Camilla Way
5. The Angina Monologues - Samer Nashef
6. The Shelf - Helly Acton
7. Too Scared To Tell - Cathy Glass
8. I Can't Believe You Just Said That- Danny Wallace
9. No One Ever Has Sex On A Tuesday - Tracy Bloom

10. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds InThis Strange World - Elif Shafak 11. Her perfect Lies - Lana Newton 12. The Warning - Kathryn Croft 13. Between You And Me - Lisa Hall 14. Dead To Me - Lesley Pearse 15. Below The Big Blue Sky - Anna McPartlin 16. Unnatural Causes - Dr Richard Shepherd 17. Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro 18. So.....anyway - John Clees 19. Of Mice And Men - John Steinbeck 20. We Need To Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver

21 Night Music - Jojo Moyes
A nice bit of 'chick lit' escapism where everything turns out ok in the end. You don't have to concentrate hard and can just sit and delve into the story. Sometimes I just need this kind of book, where I can leave COVID and every day reality behind and get lost in another world for a while. This is nothing like Me Before You in case you're expecting something like it, all in all a lovely get away for the brain.

Thank you for the new thread South.

18. Wintering by Katherine May. A lovely book I would not have discovered without you lot- perhaps the extended metaphor (winter as both a physical and mental season) creaks a bit at times, but I really enjoyed this. Very personal and intimate. The only slightly odd thing is that despite the author being from an area near me, I kept hearing her as American!

19. Tales of Polly and the Stupid Wolf by Catherine Storr. I loved the stories of Clever Polly as a child, so was so pleased to see them on Overdrive! I am not sure if I had read this one - published 1980 so by the time I might have seen a copy I might have been too old- but it brought back the earlier stories that I remember vividly! If you have 7ish year old children I would definitely recommend (try and find the first one, Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf, I think).

14. The Orphan Master's Son - Adam Johnson I put this one off for ages because I don't like the title (I didn't think much of the Time Traveller's Wife or the Memory Keeper's Daughter), but I really loved this book.

Pak Jun Do grew up in a North Korean orphanage, from there he is conscripted into an orphans' division in the DPKA, then leads an extraordinary life involving kidnapping Japanese citizens, spying on foreign broadcasts from a fishing boats, a diplomatic mission to Texas, a year in a prison mine with a daring escape involving the murder of the minister for prison mines and assuming his identity. The second half of the book finds Jun Do in Pyongyang's interrogation bunkers while the story of what led him there is revealed with some input from the interrogator.

The writing is accomplished, the story is far-fetched but entertaining. It is a gruesome book at times, but also funny in places. The author's notes on authenticity are worth a read, he had to invent all the interrogator's sections because not much is known about this aspect of North Korea.

28. A Brief History Of Time by Stephen Hawking (Audible)

Like a few others on the thread I like the odd physics book. But even though this is a seminal work, I found it dry and dull, and I fell asleep repeatedly. It's also out of date, and skewed with the politics of academia.

Glad I ticked it off, but much prefer Marcus Chown, Michio Kaku, and Carlo Rovelli for Layman Physics.

Brief History Of Insomnia Cures.