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 Woman in the White Kimono by Ana Johns. This was given to me by a friend as the title/cover would have put me off. It tells two stories, one set in 1957 Japan with a forbidden romance between an American serviceman and a Japanese girl from a very traditional family, the other set in the present day as Tori tries to piece together fragments from her father's past. I enjoyed the 1957 story far more than the modern story and found the descriptions of Japanese life, culture and attitudes of the time fascinating. The novel appears to be partly informed by the author's own family history whilst shocking events that occur seem to have a basis in fact according to the end notes. I enjoyed reading it but not enough to tell anyone they must read it too!

I've got behind on my reviews so here's a brief catch up on recent reads:

9. Lady In Waiting by Anne Glenconner This was an interesting biography, I've read several very spoilery reviews so sadly it didn't hold many surprises but I do think if that hadn't been the case the details of her life would have been very shocking in a 'if you didn't know it was true you'd never believe it' kind of way.
   I was left wandering if her friendship with Princess Margaret was more of a curse than the blessing the author seemed to think it was!

10. Valley of Bones

11. The Soldiers Art

12. The Military Philosophers by Anthony Powell, books 7, 8 & 9 in the Dance To The Music Of Time series. These three books cover Nicks war experiences. The highlight for me was meeting up with my old friend and reprobate Stringer, I was sorry when he bowed out, along with my other old friend Templer. Bloody Widmerpool is still on the up and up though! Gratified that he's made such a wonderful choice of wife, they certainly deserve each other!

13. The Home Stretch by Graham Norton, to begin with I was pretty captivated but the plot didn't really go anywhere I didn't expect it to.
    John Boyne lite, and you can see it's JB he's trying to emulate, but that said I was stupidly impressed that a TV personality could put together a credible story and tell it pretty well and I wouldn't be adverse to reading his other novels on a beach somewhere.

14. Daisy Jones and The Six another book that grabbed me initially but seemed to peter out a bit towards the end, or maybe it was the interview format that got a bit tiresome. Enjoyable easy reading though and I liked the unreliable narrator issues around various protagonists memories of the same events. Would be another good beach read. (I clearly need to get to a beach as soon as restrictions are lifted I've got them on the brain!)

15. The Offing by Benjamin Myers. A gentle story of a young man and his summer of self discovery set just after WWII. I loved the character of Dulcie, who changed Roberts life forever. Many comparisons to A Month In The Country, which I think is the better book, but I did enjoy The Offing and thought it was a better read then the other Myers book I've read The Gallows Pole

16. Eleanor and Park a coming of age love story that I raced through, YA undoubtedly but a good read nonetheless and well worth the 99p I paid. Some very evocative 80's music featured and I also enjoyed the Spotify playlists that collated the soundtrack to the book.

I've just bought Nazir Afzal's memoir, The Prosecutor, for 99p. I've heard him speak on the radio about justice, race and misogyny, and am looking forward to the book.

13. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds In This Strange World by Elif Shafak

Where to start...

This was a lot like A Thousand Splendid Suns in the sense that it bore little likeness to the country it supposedly represents, written in English for the foreign market by an author who grew up outside said country, and I detested it for many of the same reasons.

There is a lot that doesn't make sense in this book, but my personal hate magnet was the impossible names. There is no way in this word or next that a woman would be known as "Leila" in Turkey, since Turks will try to pronounce it phonetically as "Leh-ee-la" and fail, because they can't say a vowel sound after another. The name would be pronounced and written Leyla, as that name is indeed everywhere in the country. The explanation in the book is ludicrous: "She would laugh and say that one day she went to the bazaar and traded the 'y' of 'yesterday' for the 'i' of 'infinity'.", except that there is no 'y' or 'i' in the relevant Turkish words.

It is also literally impossible for her to have legally changed her name's spelling to Leila, in a country where all names mean something, there are no made up names, everything is written phonetically, and there was an actual law until 2003 or so that said you can't have a foreign name.

"Zaynab122" is also impossible. The B at the end would inevitably be pronounced as p, and anyway she would be known as "Zeynep", a common name in Turkey. "D/Ali" is even more ridiculous - Nobody would say the "dash" and it would be Dali which sounds like Deli = Lunatic.

The author knows all this as a native speaker who has lived in Turkey for some years, but she is selling a bullshit story to foreigners so all is well as long as it more or less fits their prejudices and misconceptions - such as newspaper editors not choosing a recent picture of Leila because they "worried that the sight of her heavy make-up and conspicuous cleavage might often the nation's sensitivities" which is rubbish. Since at least the '70s, make-up, cleavage, short skirts, bathing suits, and even regular page 3 girls have been a regular feature of Turkish press.

The more I read, the more her bullshit story grated. "Yet she was no David; and Istanbul, no Goliath"? Excuse me? I am willing to bet real money that no poll would show more than 0.01% of the population in Turkey has even heard of the David vs Goliath story. Certainly no barely literate girl of an illiterate mother from a far Eastern corner of the country, born at a time when no foreign books and certainly not the Bible would have been available, who didn't even complete elementary school, would have been aware of that Bible story.

No less ridiculous is the idea that there would be regular boats of asylum seekers ("Afghans, Syrians, Iraqis, Somalis...") in the '70s that sometimes capsized off the shores of Kilyos, north of Istanbul. First of all, there were no such refugees coming through Turkey to pass to the West at that time, or at any time until recent. Second... Have you seen the map? WHERE would they go to seek asylum on a boat in the Black Sea? Soviet Union? Romania, Bulgaria or Ukraine, all three of which were under Communist rule?

Pathetic. If you want to read books about Turkey that are not so full of nonsense, try Orhan Pamuk.

14. The Ladies of Grace Adieu and other stories by Susanna Clarke

Strange days. Most years I don't read a single female author but here I am, having already read two in quick succession by April

I very much enjoyed these short stories that are set in the Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell universe, just like I love everything about Susanna Clarke's writing style - the quaint period vocabulary, understated humour... the footnotes!

I would have preferred to read more about the Raven King and was a bit disappointed with the story about him but still, this was a good collection of stories and I recommend it to fans of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

@CoteDAzur, funnily enough I just listened to a short story read aloud by Orhan Pamuk, is there a book of his you would recommend?

I loved Orhan Pamuk's Black Book when I read it 20 years ago. His Snow was celebrated it its English translation when it was published, but I would think its subject matter and references quite impenetrable to the foreign reader.

Fell off the thread after a crazy few work weeks which also means I've not done much reading.

@Terpsichore I reviewed If Morning Ever Comes upthread - glad you enjoyed it too!

I have been reading The Golden Thread by Kassia St Clair, but although it is really interesting, it is too intellectually demanding to read when there's so much going on at work. So after reading an article by Sarah Hughes about trashy novels she read when growing up I stumbled across:

19 Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown

at a cut price on Kindle so on impulse I bought and read it. Hughes gave this as a rare example of a bonkbuster involving a lesbian protagonist, but I don't think that was really an accurate description (and I may be being unfair to Hughes). It's very much a lesbian coming of age story, written by someone with very firm views about what a lesbian should be and how she should behave. I found the first part of the story, dealing with the heroine, Molly Bolt's, difficult upbringing, compelling and pretty well written. However, as she moved on into her adult life, a more didactic tone crept in and the writing fell apart a bit. This must have been daring for the time (1973 I think) and there are lots of intriguing side alleys, including one very feminine character who wants to play out sexual fantasies of being a man. But by the end I just didn't like Molly very much, so ultimately this didn't work for me. That said, the scenes with her mother shortly before the end felt real and were strangely touching.

If anyone is interested, here's the Sarah Hughes article. Maybe I should revisit a few Jilly Coopers! www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jan/31/what-trashy-novels-taught-me-about-life

Back to the fabric now.

This is the only time I've ever seen Rubyfruit Jungle mentioned outside of Educating Rita.

Just been reading back as I've not posted for ages. Bookshark I'm sorry to hear that about Middlemarch as it's on my TBR pile this year (I try to knock off a couple of classics each year.

19. Paris by Edward Rutherfurd
    I am a huge fan of Sarum, also by Edward Rutherfurd. I knew he had written similar novels, such as London, New York and Dublin, and I was hoping for a similar format to Sarum – a large scale family sage starting in ancient times, moving through generations set in Paris following several different families. I know it’s a formula, but it’s one I enjoy.
    It follows three main families – the bourgoise Blanchards, the ancient de Cynge family who are nobles, originally close to the French royal family, and the working class Gascon family. There were several minor families as well the revolutionary le Sourd family, the Reynards and the Jewish Jakob families.
    As with any story like this, I enjoyed some family storyline more than others. I enjoyed the Blanchard storyline, which was the core of the story, (even though at the beginning it seemed like the Gascons were the main characters – they seemed to fade away for a long section of the book. Overall I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t told in the linear way I was expecting and the storylines zipped around a bit too much for me. The story really started in the late 19th century around the time of the building of the Eiffel Tower, leading up to and briefly after the second world war. There were brief glimpses back in time to medieval times, and the French revolution, but these really read like stand alone short stories and it felt a bit disjointed. These were just long enough to get invested in some characters and then to never hear from them again, or find out what happened to them was a bit frustrating, such as Naomi the Jewish girl who ran away from home and the protestant girl who was rescued by the Catholic family. I feel I would be more invested in them if I had known their stories in a chronological way.
    I felt it came together well in the final few hundred pages, while all the families were in some way working together for the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation of France in WW2.
    On balance a good read, but a bit frustrating in parts and not really what I was expecting.

20. The White Ship by Charles Spencer

Well written non-fiction account of the sinking of the White Ship, in 1120. It’s the story of how the period of English history now known as the Anarchy came about. At the beginning of the 12th Century – 60 years after the Norman conquest, William the Conqueror’s youngest son Henry I is on the throne and ruling over a stable kingdom, with the succession secure in his 17 year old son William Ætheling. In November 1120, both King Henry, William and their entire retinue of hundreds of nobles and clergy were in Barfleur in northern France, getting ready to set sail back to England. The King and a smaller party went ahead, while the heir to the throne William set sail the following day on the White Ship with two of Henry’s illegitimate children, and a huge party of young nobles. The ship sank as soon as it was out of the harbour with only one survivor. The loss of the heir to the throne, threw England into turmoil, the contenders for the throne being Henry’s only surviving legitimate child, a daughter Matilda and his nephew Stephen (who was due to sail on the White Ship himself, but disembarked at the last minute as he was unwell). Before his death some 15 years later, Henry demanded his noblemen swear an oath that they would support his daughter Matilda to be Queen in her own right. When Henry died, Matilda was in France and before she could return to England, Stephen seized the throne. The years that followed were known as the Anarchy and England was at war with itself. It was only brought to an end when Stephen recognised Matilda’s son Henry as his heir when his own son Eustace died. Matilda’s son Henry became Henry II and ruled for 35 years.
A good history book, well written and interesting. It could have benefited from a family tree (I was on Google a lot), and it would have been helpful if not every woman of significance was called Matilda!
A good read though.

Oops posted a bit too soon

21. Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer Not sure how I feel about reading Jeffery Archer. He has been around for decades obviously but I’ve never read any before. It is the story of two men, born on the same day – William (born into a wealthy banking family in the USA) and Wladek born in Poland and abandoned at birth. The stories run in parallel and moved at quite a pace, William loses his father on the Titanic, mother remarries and dies in childbirth, but becomes a rising star in finance. Wladek is taken in by a peasant family but is later adopted by a baron as a companion to his young son. At the outbreak of WW1, the baron’s castel is occupied by the Germans and Wladek is kept prisoner in the dungeons and at the end of the war is sent to a Russian labour camp. Alone in the world, Wladek escapes, ends up in Istanbul before being set to America as a migrant in the early 1920s. William becomes a banker, Wladek renames himself Abel and works his way up the hotel industry. Their paths cross when William’s bank is involved in the foreclosure of the hotel chain where Abel is the manager, and when they meet William is somewhat impressed with Abel and his determination to succeed in business, but Abel blames William personally for his friend’s suicide when the bank refused to back him. But when Abel goes into business with William’s former stepfather, their animosity is sealed forever.
    The story of William Kane and Abel’s lives run through the book and their mutual dislike grows, you realise it is a tragic story as they are both likeable characters and I was kind of rooting for them both, ultimately you just want to see them solving their differences and working together because if they pooled their talents and resources, they would be unstoppable. A decent read – certainly a page turner.

I've now started reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari as a change of pace, with Before the Coffee gets Cold trundling along on Audible (Not sure what to make of it so far)

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie it's been ages since I watched Educating Rita and I had to refresh my memory. I'd completely forgotten all of that!

@VikingNorthUtsire thank you so much for mentioning The Prosecutor being a 99p deal today! I was just thinking earlier today that I'd like to read it. Bought.

I love Educating Rita - one of my favourite films.

The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis is 99p on the Kindle

I got Rubyfruit Jungle out the library when I was about 13, with zero knowledge of what it was about (it was the 80s and I think it was on the "Women's Interest" shelf)

Permanent, glad I could help. Always satisfying when something you have been wanting to read pops up on a deal

Wow, Piggywaspushed I've never read anything by David Olusoga that sounds so angry. The fact that someone who I always think of as calm and considered has written that just shows how wrong the commission has got it. I feel like it would have almost been better if the government hadn't bothered. Although I suspect BLM has just picked up a whole lot of new white allies because the report is so clearly bullshit even looking at it from a white perspective. We've all seen the insidious racism workmates/friends/families have experienced at times FFS.

43. The Lammas Ecovillage: Deep Roots & Stormy Skies by Tao Paul Wimbush

If anyone has read Wilding and wonders what the options are for contributing to ecological renaissance in the UK if you don't happen to have conveniently inherited 3500 acres of land, this might provide an alternative.

Lammas is a group of 9 eco-smallholdings that was founded in 2009 on a degraded 76 acre sheep farm. Tao Wimbush was one of the founding group members and closely involved in their fight to get planning permission through the Pembrokeshire Low Impact Development policy (now overtaken by Welsh government One Planet Development planning policy). This book is a combination of autobiography & a history of the planning process and development of the village to date.

Despite a fair amount of interpersonal conflict - probably round about typical for groundbreaking projects like this that attract strongminded & unconventional participants - overall most plot holders have done a remarkable job with some very unpromising land, and it's telling that the area has very much become a hub for other environmentally friendly smallholding / land projects. While it's smaller in area & less dramatic than Knepp (and scruffier!), there's still been a real transformation in wildlife presence.

I should declare an interest, in that I live locally to Lammas, & I know most of the people involved in the book in one way or another. I'd definitely recommend it as a good read though to anyone interested in low-impact living and/or community dynamics.

20. The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester This is not a standard cookery book...

Another book i picked out of someone's lockdown clearout box. I had great fun reading it, and it was really helpful that I knew so little about it beforehand - so I might do the same for you all. I'll just say that Tarquin, the narrator and main character, has a voice you'll either love or hate - even though I loved it, it wasxa bit much by the end. Most of all he is a food obsessive and the book is peppered with recipes. Because all other characters are seen through his eyes, they have let's say a rather limited chance to shine.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

This is the only time I've ever seen Rubyfruit Jungle mentioned outside of Educating Rita.

Was wondering where I'd come across it Educating Rita is one of my favourite films too (though last time I rewatched I was struck by what an absolute git Michael Caine is)

RavenclawsomeCrone I've revisited The White Ship event this week too, but in Pillars of the Earth. It also marks the beginning of Sharon Penman's When Christ and his Saints Slept, and yes, all the Henries, Mauds and Matildas confused me too!

After reading Rubyfruit Jungle I did some delving into Rita Mae Brown and discovered that not only did she have a relationship with Martina Navratilova but also wrote a revenge roman a clef about it after Martina dumped her. So OBVIOUSLY I have to read that. It's called Sudden Death and isn't available on the Kindle, but a battered paperback is making its way to me as I type.

Perm, I love The Debt to Pleasure! You think you're reading one thing and then it starts to dawn on you that something else is going on.

Sadik Many thanks for your review of The Lammas Ecovillage. I'd not heard of it before but it sounds really interesting (and probably less exasperating than Wilding).

Welsh yes, it was you who wrote that nice review of If Morning Ever Comes, thank you!

I was inspired by listening to an episode of Backlisted for my next read:

35: To Love and be Wise - Josephine Tey

Tey brings her detective Alan Grant back into service for this one. At the start of the novel he drops in on a literary party, hoping to have a word with his actress friend Marta Hallard, and happens to meet a young American man, Leslie Searle. Searle is one of those rare people who is stunningly good looking and turns heads; before long he's been invited to stay for the weekend by the party's hostess, writer Lavinia Fitch, at her rambling country house in the village of Salcott St. Mary. There he proceeds to charm Lavinia's young secretary Liz - who's engaged to be married to writer and broadcaster Walter Whitmore.

Within a short time Grant is sent back to the village by his chief to investigate Searle's mysterious disappearance...but no trace of him is to be found.

This was beautifully written and crisply witty, with much enjoyable by-play between Grant and his second-in-command, Williams. The denouement is well camouflaged and, when it comes, a genuine surprise. I suppose it could be guessed but it's certainly ingenious. Definitely recommended for fans of vintage, highly civilised crime fiction with no blood, guts or sex to disturb the peace

I enjoyed the Tey Backlisted, Terp.. I'm planning to take the Caledonian Sleeper from London to Fort William in August and have lined up rereads of Tey's The Singing Sands and Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps in preparation. Planning to walk the Great Glen Way and can't wait!