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.

Oops, you beat me to it Pepe!

Thank you biblio - I think I’ve read about 27 but that includes A Dance to the Music of Time which is actually 12 books...so also taking issue with Updike...I also seem to have read other books by several of the authors which are not on the list but I guess that’s luck of the draw as to which book they choose for authors such as Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell etc.

I thought I hadn't read too many at the start as avoid Dickens and never got into the Printed, Hardy and the like. But the more modern ones brought me up to 50 odd and I have read all the Rabbit books which was an easy 4. Although send very strange that all 4 make a list, and that 12 books of A Dance to the Music Of Time was counted as 1.

I'm continuing keeping DD1 company in her YA Dystopian discovery so just finished 21. The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness, randomly in the week a film of it comes out. The film sounds like a hot mess that has dragged on for years with the result that the main characters are far too old for the characters in the book. I quite enjoyed the book. It has a strong premise, a world where men's thoughts can all be heard but women's are silent, and all the animals can speak. It becomes a journey story with lots of action and cliffhangers, but perhaps slightly lacking in characterisation outside the narrator & his dog. DD1 has moved straight on to the next one, but I'm also reading The Bell Jar on my Kindle which is polar opposite in terms of pace and style!

25. Guest House for Young Widows : Among the Women of Isis by Azadeh Moaveni I picked this up in the online library on the basis of WelshWabbit's very thorough review upthread. I'd just echo that the author does a really great job of exploring the complexities of these young women's lives and what drew them to ISIS. Although the human stories are the heart of the book, I also found the background sections really helpful in filling out my understanding of the Syrian conflict. An excellent read.

sadik, it is excellent, isn’t it? So respectful of their stories without sparing them from scrutiny. I thought it was really good - one of 2020’s highlights for sure.

I have just finished book 17, which was The Book of Collateral Damage by Sinan Antoon, translated from Arabic. Nameer is an academic, trying to make a career in the US but haunted by memories of Baghdad as a child and from a visit back in 2003, where he met Wadood, a bookseller who gathers the stories of people, objects and ideas destroyed by the war. The narrative is fragmented and breaks apart towards the end into poetry, letters, thoughts and other elements but Nameer’s voice holds it all together. It is a deeply moving account of friendship and the cost of war.

It isn’t a book I would ever have found for myself. I was given it as a gift by someone who doesn’t know much about my reading taste and who vaguely said they thought I would like it. It’s a beautiful hardback edition that has been sitting looking at me for several months and I picked it up mostly out of guilt. So glad I did.

Glad you liked Guesthouse for Young Widows @Sadik; I thought it was such an impressive piece of work.

I think I have read 37 from the Telegraph list, but no Rabbits...

I've managed 35 without any rabbits. I quite like a list like that though - when the BBC Big Read thing came out years ago, I challenged myself to read the top 100 books. Didn't quite manage it, but I read enough to discover books I never would have read otherwise - some good ( The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and The Grapes Of Wrath spring to mind) and some that weren't to my taste (Ulysses was a DNF and anything fantasy was a real effort) but I really enjoyed discovering some new books which I felt I "should" have read. May well save the Telegraph list for when I've finished my "read the books I already own rather than buying more" plan for this year!

I've read 38 including 3 Rabbits. I've read Swanns Way, and A Question of Upbringing but didn't get further with either of those series. Agree it is a very penis-y list, and some bizarre decisions on which series get one slot only and which get multiple.

Thank you for the new thread southeast

1. The Woman in the White Kimono - Ana Johns
2. Cilka's Journey - Heather Morris
3. Intuitive Eating 4th Edition - Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch
4. The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman
5. The Shipping News - E. Annie Proulx
6. James and the Giant Peach - Roald Dahl
7. The Keeper of Lost Things - Ruth Hogan
8. One Shot - Lee Child

Classic Lee Child, Jack Reacher thriller. I love this genre as a (not that) guilty pleasure! And I really think Lee Child does it so well. Jack Reacher is just so cool. Ridiculous and unbelievable, but I don't care . Really enjoyed it.

I was also really enjoying Dissolution, the first in the Shardlake series, but lost the damn book! Going to hunt under the sofa today, so I can finish it. I also have some no fiction arriving today, so will make a start on those soon too, but I must admit, I'm enjoying fiction a lot at the moment. Not reading at my usual pace as I am also studying and had a big assignment last week. Hopefully can catch up on some reading now.

Not that it matters really, but I'm sure I've seen that Telegraph list before, even though they just published it this week. I think it first appeared years ago and they keep recycling it at intervals. It's also a bit curious that the 20th c novels on the list only seem to go up to the 80s (with the odd exception like My Name Is Red). So yeah, a solid list, but it does feel a bit dated.

Here's my list so far:

1. Mary Barton - Elizabeth Gaskell
2. The Girl With the Louding Voice - Abi Dare
3. Hard Times - Charles Dickens
4. Girl, Woman, Other - Bernadine Evaristo
5. Cranford - Elizabeth Gaskell
6. Bad Science - Ben Goldacre
7. The Woodlanders - Thomas Hardy
8. Normal People - Sally Rooney
9. The Waves - Virginia Woolf

10. And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie 11. O Pioneers! - Willa Cather 12. What Ho! The Best of PG Wodehouse 13. The Midnight Library - Matt Haig 14. The Quiet American - Graham Greene

Here's my list so far:

1. Mary Barton - Elizabeth Gaskell
2. The Girl With the Louding Voice - Abi Dare
3. Hard Times - Charles Dickens
4. Girl, Woman, Other - Bernadine Evaristo
5. Cranford - Elizabeth Gaskell
6. Bad Science - Ben Goldacre
7. The Woodlanders - Thomas Hardy
8. Normal People - Sally Rooney
9. The Waves - Virginia Woolf

10. And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie 11. O Pioneers! - Willa Cather 12. What Ho! The Best of PG Wodehouse 13. The Midnight Library - Matt Haig 14. The Quiet American - Graham Greene

Here's my list so far:

1. Mary Barton - Elizabeth Gaskell
2. The Girl With the Louding Voice - Abi Dare
3. Hard Times - Charles Dickens
4. Girl, Woman, Other - Bernadine Evaristo
5. Cranford - Elizabeth Gaskell
6. Bad Science - Ben Goldacre
7. The Woodlanders - Thomas Hardy
8. Normal People - Sally Rooney
9. The Waves - Virginia Woolf

10. And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie 11. O Pioneers! - Willa Cather 12. What Ho! The Best of PG Wodehouse 13. The Midnight Library - Matt Haig 14. The Quiet American - Graham Greene

Here's my list so far:

1. Mary Barton - Elizabeth Gaskell
2. The Girl With the Louding Voice - Abi Dare
3. Hard Times - Charles Dickens
4. Girl, Woman, Other - Bernadine Evaristo
5. Cranford - Elizabeth Gaskell
6. Bad Science - Ben Goldacre
7. The Woodlanders - Thomas Hardy
8. Normal People - Sally Rooney
9. The Waves - Virginia Woolf

10. And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie 11. O Pioneers! - Willa Cather 12. What Ho! The Best of PG Wodehouse 13. The Midnight Library - Matt Haig 14. The Quiet American - Graham Greene

Sorry - no idea why it's posted this so many times! How embarrassing!

I've just seen this in the paper www.theguardian.com/science/2021/mar/05/ship-hovering-above-sea-cornwall-optical-illusion

I've read a book where a floating ship mirage is a key device but I can't think what it was, and Google isn't helping! Hoping someone here might be able to put me out of my misery.

It's a stupid list!

46 here - no rabbits.
Given up on about another 12.

29 read, no rabbits. 16 Dnf including 1 rabbit.
In other news Mistral’s Daughter has arrived. Can’t wait to finish current book and get started.

at all the rabbits. I've never read Updike but maybe I should

Belatedly bringing over my list:

1. The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin
2. A Thousand Moons, Sebastian Barry
3. Over Sea, Under Stone, Susan Cooper
4. Mémoire de fille, Annie Ernaux
5. Someday Angeline, Louis Sachar
6. Magpie Lane, Lucy Atkins
7. Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
8. The Discomfort of Evening, by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld
9. Foreign Affairs, by Alison Lurie

10. Shuggie Bain, by Douglas Stuart 11. A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula Le Guin

And two new reads:
12. The Tombs of Atuan, by Ursula Le Guin. 5/5
I enjoyed this story even more than The Wizard of Earthsea, partly because it has a female protagonist and intriguing cast of female characters (some of whom reminded me a bit of The Handmaid’s Tale). It offers insight into the nature of belief: how religious belief can be inculcated into someone from childhood and how she dramatically manages to break free of it.

13. Burnt Sugar, by Avni Doshi. 3/5 Mixed feelings about this book, which Stokey and Pepe reviewed earlier in the year. I agree with Pepe that the book conveys a strong sense of place. But like Stokey I found the narrator difficult to identify with (and normally I would be very much inclined to identify with the adult daughter of a difficult mother, ha). The mother was even more opaque as a character, not just because she is suffering from dementia, but because her earlier neglect and cruel treatment of her daughter as a child (told in flashback scenes) seem more based on selfishness and obliviousness than on her own unhappiness. I will mentally file this novel away under ‘not sorry I read it, but too dark for me.’

@southeastdweller thanks for the forth thread. Just marking my place. Don’t have anything to add to my list from last time though as have hit a lull in reading. My mojo has definitely slowed down. I have just started The Familiars by Stacey Halls which took me a while to actually pick up. Just lost the bug to listen to any audiobooks lately so going to take my time and just read this one instead.

Incidentally I googled Avni Doshi and stumbled on photos of her wedding. She is into designer fashion apparently and the wedding outfits are amazing. Who me, shallow?

It is a very weird and indeed, penis-y list; and has a strangely large number of books I associate with the 1980s. I have read surprisingly few as I frequently seem to have read something else by the same author. And agree, why are some series in as one, and others as 3/4? We should come up with a better one!

19. 10lb Penalty by Dick Francis. This as absolutely not one of his best- I think by this stage in his career he was writing very much with his son (I say he, I know there is a theory his wife wrote the books, and the quality certainly and sadly drops after her death), and it shows. The set up is right, and a lot of the language and phrases are right, but they are used in the wrong places or at the wrong time. It is like all the emphasises are wrong. It isn't unreadable but it is frustrating as it could be so much better!

20. High Stakes by Dick Francis. So I turned to this, one of his earlier ones with a lovely plot set piece and enjoyable secondary characters. I would definitely recommend this one.

@ParisJeTAime, I love a bit of Reacher, but if you haven't read the most recent two, I would steer clear- they don't feel the same and it was a bit of a letdown.

Ah thanks for the warning @Tanaqui. I'll avoid. So often the way with favourite old characters in books!

Viking, is it The Essex Serpent?