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.

@Tarahumara

All time?

Gilead and Home by Marilynne Robinson (counts as 1 in my opinion)

The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte

Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton

Letters Between Six Sisters ed. Charlotte Mosley

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

If I must lose Gilead or Home then I am keeping Home but they are essentially 2 halves of one whole.

Are we allowed to to nominate both fiction and non-fiction? Great Books or lesser books that have burrowed into our hearts?

Definitely either Great or lesser.

Good question about fiction / non fiction. I guess maybe fiction only, if we are aiming to emulate other similar lists like the Telegraph one?

I have three:

Persuasion
A Fine Balance
Americanah

Probably A Tale of Two Cities

Then there are books which I have adored but haven't gone back to, and I wonder whether I would still love them as much: Tess is one, and Kavalier and Clay

2021 Books

I know you lied
The other passenger
The housewarming
I am I am I am
Spare room
The Hypnotist's love story
The birthday party

Currently reading the 5th Cormoran Strike (love them so much) and listening to The Midnight Library.

Is this a list of favourites or a 'best of' list. Are we going to try and balance male/female? What about world literature, if we balanced it by population then for every European novel we'd need 2 from Africa and 7 from Asia? I've read a handful of Japanese novels and 1 chinese (that was Monkey though so arguably deserving of a place). I will have to think...

@Tarahumara thank you.

5 favourite books. Liking the phrasing.

The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
The Plague and I by Betty Macdonald
Persuasion by Jane Austen
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Wild Swans by Jung Chang

Bloody hell that was hard to do.

Now, my 'favourite books of all time' list is different to my '5 books that everybody on here should definitely read' list.

Ballet Shoes
The Worst Journey in the World
King's Dark Tower
Sense and Sensibility
The Secret Island by Enid Blyton

I also need to see:
A Clockwork Orange
Lolita
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
on this list somewhere.

OK... so favourite books of all time or 5 books that everybody on here should definitely read?

What do you all think?

Hmm- one for each? Most reread would be interesting too! But happy to do either!

Oh, maybe author instead of book? To avoid the series dilemma?

Everybody should definitely read :

Mindfuck by Christopher Wylie

Middlemarch by George Eliot

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Lady Chatterley's Lover by DH Lawrence

Vanity Fair by W M Thackeray

Personally don't think there should be any attempt to 'balance' it - a good book is a good book and it shouldn't matter who wrote it.

Two more for my list:

17. Before the Coffee Gets Cold - Toshikazu Kawaguchi. When you sit in a certain seat in this cafe, you can time travel to your own past or future. But there's a catch - you must stay in that seat, and you can only stay for as long as it takes before your cup of coffee gets cold. This book touches on a few serious issues (dementia, filial responsibility, abortion) but in a very light and superficial way. That's not necessarily a criticism - this book has a gentle, quirky feel to it which is all part of its charm.

18. Piranesi - Susanna Clarke. Piranesi lives in a World of vast Halls and Vestibules and Stairs and Statues and Tides, but only one other living person. Who is he, and how did he get here? Magical realism at its finest - I absolutely loved this!

OK - let's do both! (What am I taking on?!)

List A - top 5 favourite books of all time
List B - 5 books that everyone on here should read

Okay - final choices

5 favourite books of all time:
Ballet Shoes
The Worst Journey in the World
King's Dark Tower (this is a series, but if I have to choose just one, then The Drawing of the Three)
Sense and Sensibility
The Secret Island by Enid Blyton

5 Books everybody on here should read
A Clockwork Orange
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
This Thing of Darkness
All Quiet on the Western Front
Into Thin Air

And I propose a third category:
5 books that will cause a fight and therefore everyone needs to develop an opinion on:
HHhH - Laurent Binet
The City and the City - China Miéville
Never Let Me Go
Station Eleven
And the Mountains Echoed

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

Now, my 'favourite books of all time' list is different to my '5 books that everybody on here should definitely read' list.

Ballet Shoes
The Worst Journey in the World
King's Dark Tower
Sense and Sensibility
The Secret Island by Enid Blyton

I also need to see:
A Clockwork Orange
Lolita
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
on this list somewhere.

Agree that favourite books is different to everyone should read. But I think my list of books I’d want to see on our list would still be the same. For me it’s books that you’d be nervous about recommending to someone in case they didn’t love it like you did, and you’d have to rethink your assessment of them.

Hangover Square
The Stand
Against Nature
Ballet Shoes
Ducks, Newburyport

That was hard. I wonder

I focused on fiction. If I can have non-fiction, I’d add Into Thin Air and Just Kids. Possibly at the expense of The Stand and Ballet Shoes if I can only have five in total.

tara, good luck!

This is agonizing! I'm going to go "books that make me I'm glad I'm a reader", so let's call it list A (in no particular order):

1. Pride and Prejudice stays on the list
2. The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame
3. A Month in the Country, by J L Carr
4. Some Tame Gazelle, by Barbara Pym

Pondering over the fifth plinth. Either The Fall of the Stone City by Ismail Kadare to bring in a more international flavour, or In Ruins by Christopher Woodward for some non-fiction.

Apparently I'm all about a fantasy of bygone English/village life. Ñot proud of it, but there we go.

I had to reject both The Stand and It - it was very painful.

Favourite 5 fiction books:

1. Wuthering Heights
2. Great Expectations
3. Bring Up The Bodies
4. The Hearts Invisible Furies
5. Captain Correlli's Mandolin.

If I could have had 10 Pride and Prejudice, War & Peace, A Fine Balance and David Copperfield would have been on the list.

If we were doing non-fiction I would choose:

1. Into Thin Air
2. The Glass Castle
3. Wild Swans
4. Educated
5. Blackbird

Which makes me think I must be into misery memoirs!

Ooh, books I read and loved because someone or other on here suggested them and I wouldn’t have read - or re read - them otherwise.
Into Thin Air
All Quiet on the Western Front
Lord of The Flies
My Cousin Rachel
It

My favourites (comfort reads in other words) would include
Persuasion,
Rebecca,
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Down Under - Bill Bryson
The common Years - Jilly Cooper

Is Into Thin Air the most popular book on here? I’ve recommended it to so many people.

Non Fiction :

Night by Elie Wiesel
The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Order Of Time by Carlo Rovelli
Mrs Jordan's Profession by Clare Tomalin
Letters Between Six Sisters