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.

Five favourite books is hard! I have loved reading different books at different points in my life but when I go back to read again, I sometimes don't love them so much...

So, at the moment, these are the ones which I look back on and still absolutely love, and can / could reread with ease and enjoyment;

1. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
2. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
3. The Shipping News - Annie Proulx
4. The Dutch House - Anne Patchett
5. The Other Boleyn Girl - Philippa Gregory

@Tarahumara what a massive undertaking, good luck. I commented a couple of pages back, and will struggle to formulate a final list but will try:

Favourites:
Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie
Jitterbug Perfume - Tom Robbins
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
The Shattered Earth trilogy - N K Jemisin
Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

Books everyone should read
The Hate U Give - Angie Thomas
Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
A Woman in Berlin - Anon
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark
Player Of Games - Iain M Banks

Since I'm 50 this year I'm going with a book for each decade. So:

1. Carrie's War by Nina Bawden
2. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
3. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
4. A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
5. The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa

The last decade was the hardest to choose because I don't get as emotionally attached to novels as I did when I was younger. Plus since my forties include having DS and getting a smart phone my reading has slowed down. So I've gone with a fairly recent stand out novel.

Ooh I haven't done 'books everyone should read'.

1. The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard
2. Making Sense of the Troubles by David McKittrick
3. Chernobyl by Serhii Plokhy
4. Pictures on a Page by Harold Evans
5. The Reason Why by Cecil Woodham-Smith

Oooo Book A Decade?!

0-10 A Little Princess
10-20 Cry, The Beloved Country
20-30 Bleak House
30-40 Letters Between Six Sisters

I’m just updating my latest reads for now, I’ll need to have a proper think about top 5 lists.

11. The Foundling by Georgette Heyer

Features a shy young Duke who decides to go off on an adventure away from his mollycoddling uncle and servants.
I liked the Duke, who turns out to be more resourceful than anyone has given him credit for, but some of the supporting characters grew rather irritating, and overall not one of my favourite Heyer novels.

12. Monster by C J Skuse

Following her brother’s disappearance, 16 yr old Nash has to spend Christmas at her boarding school with a handful of other girls.
There’s rumours flying around the local area about a wild beast attacking people, and when a blizzard hits, and the girl’s Matron goes missing, things take a darker turn.

Well paced with lots of tension for the most part, but with some really bad decision making from the girls.
Like the bit where they lose Matron. The dog she was with turns up covered in blood as the blizzard rages and night falls, so the girls barricade the school and say we can’t do anything more until morning!
Except - there’s a working telephone in the school. A landline telephone that they could have used to call the emergency services and explain that Matron was lost out there in the snow and maybe dead.
But no, none of them think that maybe calling for help would be a good idea until the next morning when the landlines are no longer working

13. American Gods by Neil Gaiman

I really enjoyed reading this. A sort of road trip across the USA, all leading up to a showdown between the old forgotten gods brought to America, and the new gods that are emerging.

14. Birthday Boy by David Baddiel

Children’s book. 11 yr old Sam wishes that it could be his birthday every day - and suddenly, it is.
DS1 enjoyed this a lot more than I did.

I started The Mermaid of Black Conch earlier, but I don't think it's for me. I can't remember if anybody has read it yet?

Favourites:
Bleak House
In Search of Lost Time
Emma
The Odyssey
The Dark is Rising

Everyone should read:
Go Tell It On the Mountain - James Baldwin
The Beginning of Spring - Penelope Fitzgerald
The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Radetsky March - Joseph Roth
The Post Office Girl - Stefan Zweig

Non-fiction:
A Devil in the Grove - Gilbert King
Family and Kinship in East London - Michael Young and Peter Willmott
Vanished Kingdoms - Norman Davies
Wonderful Life - Stephen Jay Gould
The Hare with Amber Eyes - Edmund de Waal

Top 5
If this is a man Primo Levi
Middlesex Jeffrey Eugenides
The Cider House Rules John Irving
Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy
The Women's Room Marillyn French

Cancer ward Alexander Solzhenitsyn looked ridiculous written down as a favourite but I've done lots of rereads over the years and it has lots of small stories aside to the main narrative and a wide variety of themes. We need to talk about Kevin could be there on number of rereads.

My favourites:

• The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
• The Crow Road by Iain Banks
• I, Claudius by Robert Graves
• All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Must reads:

• How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS by David France / And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts
• The Outsider by Albert Camus
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
• The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

I was wondering why the number of posts had suddenly shot up since Friday. @Tarahumara I am holding you responsible for me failing to get on with my work!

I'll do my update first then another post with lists.

14. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

Much reviewed on here in past years, I'm a bit late to the Silicon Valley party, but I was gripped by this account of Theranos, a blood testing start up founded by Stanford dropout Elizabeth Holmes. Painstaking and courageous journalism by the author, and a sobering tale of how hype, bluff and friends in high places can lead you to believe in your own myth, and draw clever people with lots of money into disastrous investments. I was particularly impressed with the employees who spoke out despite heavy pressure from some very influential people and oddly also a little bit impressed by Rupert Murdoch, who allowed the WSJ to publish the original expose despite having invested over £100 million in Theranos.

With the disclaimer that my lists will change daily (as many upthread have already said), and that I have included only fiction:

Favourites

1. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark
2. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
3. The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles
4. Five Little Pigs - Agatha Christie
5. The Dark is Rising - Susan Cooper (the series if possible, but if not then just that one)

Books everyone should read

1. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (obviously)
2. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
3. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
4. East of Eden - John Steinbeck
5. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie

I have included each of the second list for a reason, and I'm going to let you all know the reasons whether you want to hear them or not!

Brodie is just how to write a perfect book.

Bleak House is how to write a long rambling saga that is based on something deeply uninteresting to most people (the law) but somehow manages to cover all human life and make you sob and laugh and think half of it is ridiculous and incredible and sentimental but love it all the same.

Crime & Punishment is the forerunner of basically all psychological crime novels.

East of Eden is, for me, the archetypal family saga and is satisfyingly depressing and pessimistic about human nature without being either Thomas bloody Hardy or the Grapes of Wrath, which is brilliant but too much for me.

And I think everyone should read an Agatha Christie (Ackroyd is probably regarded by most as her best, although I could have stuck Five Little Pigs in here too) because my comfort popular reads are crime novels; very popular books are popular for a reason, and the neat, swift characterisation of (in particular) Sheppard's sister in Ackroyd shows that Christie was a genuinely good writer.

A lot of love for Muriel Sparks in the top 5 lists! I have a couple of hers in my 'to read' pile, but not Miss Jean Brodie. I've got A Far Cry From Kensington and another one. Started A Far Cry... but the main protagonist who is narrating went on about how she used to be so FAT, and that MOONface she had etc so much, I ended up closing it. I may be feeling a little sensitive about last year's lockdown weight gain . I've lost a little so when I'm feeling less meh about that, I'll give it another go.

East of Eden is brilliant. Such great (evil) characters.

Stasiland by Anna Funder Much reviewed on this thread already. I thought the individual stories were compelling and overall I liked it. However, I found her personal asides and metaphors/similes rather irritating and sometimes just silly, eg "a saggy old condom of liverwurst", "bored as bats" (?!), "(his) Adam's apple moving up and down like a mouse on a ladder", "Darwinian diagrams flash into my mind showing man on a scale of increasing uprightness and lack of body hair: from monkey to Neanderthal to Cro-Magnon to Modern. Here now in front of me is Socialist Man, smooth and keen and very, very verbal". Shame, as there was much of real interest.

I also find it very difficult to narrow down favourites and must-reads but lots of great recommendations. I would just add my very favourite and most re-read book (which I've mentioned before, but have never come across anyone else who knows it) - Foster by Clare Keegan (and would add again, don't be put off by the trashy cover).

The House in Half Moon Street by Alex Reeve
This was reviewed in the Guardian a while back, and sounded right up my street. It really was. Victorian crime, medical stuff, autopsies, prostitution are exactly my thing!

I started it last night, stayed up late and then had a lie in this morning to finish it. It's a rip-roaring ride through Victorian London, in which our hero, Leo, investigates the murder of the prostitute he loved. But was she really all he thought she was, or has she kept secrets from him? And Leo has secrets of his own too.

This was a little over -long in places, but I was totally gripped and will definitely read the sequel.

As an aside, my stupid kindle keeps trying to turn gripped to groped, appropriate to the content of the novel.

It's so hard choosing favourites isn't it
I loved East of Eden too and when I was younger (teens) I thought the thorn birds was the best book ever and it still has a place in my heart from memories of those times

Favourite reads:

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe - Fannie Flagg
Dutch House - Ann Patchett
Last Night at the Lobster - Stewart ONan
Murder on the Orient Express - Agatha Christie
The Green Mile - Stephen King

Five recommended:

Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
P&P - Jane Austen
Hearts Invisible Furies - John Boyne

5 favourite (sometimes the actual novel changes but the author stays the same!

Power of 3 - Diana Wynne Jones
The Grand Sophy - Georgette Hever
The Demon's Lexicon - Sarah Rees Brennan
Autumn Term - Antonio Forest
The House in Hiding - Eleanor Lyon

Apparently I love children's books best!

Everyone should read:
All Quiet on the Western Front
Murder on the Orient Express
Emma
Alice in Wonderland
Little Women

But I am not 100% certain- I am away from my bookshelves so can't look and see what I have forgotten!

Read so far this year:

1. Small Pleasures Clare Chambers
2. The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Dare
3. Limitless by Tim Peake
4. Ghost by Iona Holloway
5. The Missing Sister by Dinah Jefferies
6. The Truths we Hold by Kamala Harris
7. The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
8. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

and latest reads:

1. The Ghost Road by Pat Barker

Such a good writer. It's a tough read but absorbingly told story. I do wish I'd read the two other books in the trilogy first. It's fine as a standalone but a bit of insight into the characters might have been good.

10. Fifty Fifty by Steve Cavanagh Not my usual genre but an enjoyable story.

11. The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan This is a book I won't forget in a while. The story of a teen who has only ever been in care and how that has impacted her. I was completely involved in her story. It's a challenge to read - it's sickening how some people live- but totally believable. Some of the events hit you like a punch in the guts. Gritty, sad, shocking. I'm glad I read it.

I do need to read something upbeat now!

So hard to choose just 5 but here goes. These two lists are kind of interchangeable for me!!

5 fave books of all time:
The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
The Cazalet Chronicles – Elizabeth Jane Howard
Beloved – Toni Morrison
The Map of Love – Ahdaf Soueif
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernières

5 books I would recommend to everyone:
A town like Alice – Nevil Shute
Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
Anne of Green Gables – L M Montgomery
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

OK, I had a go at five favourite books. It could have been five completely different books, but these are what I'm going with for now:

A Traveller in Time - Alison Uttley
Our Mutual Friend - Charles Dickens
Excellent Women - Barbara Pym
Tess of the d'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

Despite falling off the OMF readalong, I still love it, and there has to be something by Dickens. Pym because she's so funny and sad. Tess because Hardy's such a brilliant writer. Jane Eyre because I'll never forget the sheer excitement of devouring it, aged 12. A Traveller in Time because I was a history-mad child obsessed with the Tudors (and half of my family came from Derbyshire).

With apologies to The Girls of Slender Means, which only just didn't make the cut, and Tom's Midnight Garden, ditto.

I like Girls of Slender Means too!

Belated thanks for the new thread, southeast. Here’s my list:

1. Why Mummy’s Sloshed- Gill Sims
2. Hungry- Grace Dent
3. Ballet Shoes- Noel Streatfeild
4. Notes on a Scandal- Zoë Heller
5. Stephen Fry in America- Stephen Fry
6. Toast: The Story of a Boy’s Hunger- Nigel Slater
7. Kind Words for Unkind Days- Jayne Hardy
8. Poverty Safari- Darren McGarvey
9. Into Thin Air- Jon Krakauer

10. Jew-ish: A Primer, a Memoir, a Manual, a Plea- Matt Greene 11. The Well of Loneliness- Radclyffe Hall 12. It’s Not About You- Tom Rath 13. Bill Bailey’s Remarkable Guide to Happiness- Bill Bailey 14. Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me- Kate Clanchy 15. My Dark Vanessa- Kate Elizabeth Russell 16. How to Write Everything- David Quantick 17. The Witches- Roald Dahl 18. Let’s Do It: The Authorised Biography of Victoria Wood- Jasper Rees 19. Utopia Avenue- David Mitchell 20. Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire- Akala 21. A Bit of a Stretch: The Diaries of a Prisoner- Chris Atkins 22. The Thursday Murder Club- Richard Osman 23. Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams- Matthew Walker

And here are a few more I’ve finished:

24. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck- Mark Manson This was an audiobook on BorrowBox. The opening chapters were quite interesting, and also the section on relationships near the end, but I slightly lost interest in the middle.

25. QI: The Sound of General Ignorance- John Lloyd and John Minchinson Another audiobook- full of interesting facts, as you would expect. I wasn’t sure about the sound effects…

26. The Only Plane in the Sky: The Aural History of 9/11- Garrett M. Graff Someone recommended this on MN (possibly on another thread; I think it was in the Monthly Deals last month). This is an amazing blow-by-blow account of 9/11 (focusing almost entirely on the day itself), written in the form of interviews with survivors including office workers, firefighters, police officers and passers by. I really felt as though I was there, thanks to the amount of detail included, such as the ash which covered Manhattan and got in everyone’s mouths. There were also parts of the day I’d forgotten, for example that the Pentagon was badly hit. With the 20th anniversary coming up later this year, everyone should read this.

27. The Prison Doctor- My Time Inside Britain‘s Most Notorious Jail- Dr Amanda Brown I reviewed the book last year and this was the audiobook. I wasn’t massively keen on the narrator: she wasn’t the author and it showed.

I think the idea of compiling a 50 Bookers’ 100 Best Books is a great one: sadly I don’t have the energy at present to get involved.

22. I Never Said I Love You - Rhik Samadder

Wrenching memoir of living with depression, though leavened with humour and a love of life, despite everything. Doesn’t pretend to have a simple cure. Found it hard to read his paeans to his former girlfriends, but that probably says more about me than his writing. N.B. Discusses his childhood sexual abuse.

23. London’s Industrial Past - Mark Amies

A short but interesting volume, mainly photos with commentary (to complement radio talks I haven’t heard), focusing on the 20th century and household names. Sad to see how many jobs and buildings have been swept away in the very recent past.