50 Book Challenge 2021 Part Five

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the fifth 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, the third one here and the fourth one here.

How're you getting on so far?

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 17. Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi 18. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke 19. The Reading Cure: How Books Restored My Appetite by Laura Freeman 20. When We Were Bad by Charlotte Mendelson 21. The Seven Sisters by Margaret Drabble 22. Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez 23. The Origin of our Species by Chris Stringer

@ChessieFL

Quick question - if you keep your books in alphabetical order where would you put Daphne du Maurier? I’ve always put her under D as the ‘du’ is part of her surname, but I was in two different bookshops yesterday who filed her under M.

Like you I would also file under D for du as it's part of her surname 😃

Many thanks for the new thread, south

List coming up (look away now if you don't want to see the results ):

1: The Dead of Winter - Nicola Upson
2: The Ratline - Philippe Sands
3: The Truants - Kate Weinberg
4: London Fog: The Biography - Christine L. Corton
5: Under the Rainbow - Susan Scarlett
6: The Haunting of Alma Fielding - Kate Summerscale
7: Box 88 - Charles Cumming
8: Periodic Tales: The Curious Lives of the Elements - Hugh Aldersey-Williams
9: Mr Wilder and Me - Jonathan Coe
10: Stasiland - Anna Funder
11: Civil to Strangers - Barbara Pym
12: Quicksand Tales - Keggie Carew
13: Woman With Birthmark - Håkan Nesser
14: Just My Type - Simon Garfield
15: A Song for the Dark Times - Ian Rankin
16: Shady Characters - Keith Houston
17: Clara - Janice Galloway
18: Cheek by Jowl: A History of Neighbours - Emily Cockayne
19: Decline and Fall - Evelyn Waugh
20: Gone to Ground - Marie Jalowicz-Simon
21: The Law of Innocence - Michael Connelly
22. Falling Upwards - Richard Holmes
23: The Darkest Day - Håkan Nesser
24: The Great Nadar: The Man Behind the Camera - Adam Begley
25: The Moving Toyshop - Edmund Crispin
26: Chelsea Concerto - Frances Faviell
27: The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman
28: One Hot Summer - Rosemary Ashton
29: Sweet Thames - Matthew Kneale
30: Murder on the Home Front - Molly Lefebure
31: The Most Fun We Ever Had - Claire Lombardo
32: Daphne du Maurier - Margaret Forster
33: If Morning Ever Comes - Anne Tyler
34: I Am, I Am, I Am - Maggie O’Farrell
35: To Love and be Wise - Josephine Tey
36: Outskirts: Living Life on the Edge of the Green Belt - John Grindrod
37: Fair Warning: Michael Connelly
38: Footprints in Paris - Gillian Tindall

I'm still persevering with my regime of one fiction book followed by a non-fiction; currently almost finished with another Josephine Tey, but also back on the Proust readlong with friends so I've got an unauthorised extra fiction book on the go (don't tell anyone!).

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

1. In the Shadow of Power – Viveca Sten
2. Our Endless Numbered Days - Claire Fuller
3. The Truants - Kate Weinberg
4. Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout
5. Olive, Again – Elizabeth Strout
6. The Winter Book – Tove Jansson
7. Waiting for Sunrise – William Boyd
8. The Collector of Lives: Giorgio Vasari and the Invention of Art – Ingrid Rowland and Noah Charney
9. Lanny – Max Porter
10. Murder on Safari – Elspeth Huxley
11. The Magpie Murders – Anthony Horowitz
12. In Black and White: A Young Barrister’s Story of Race and Class in a Broken Justice System – Alexandra Wilson
13. Guest House for Young Widows: Among the Women of Isis - Azadeh Moaveni
14. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup – John Carreyrou
15. Rules of Civility – Amor Towles
16. In Your Defence – Sarah Langford
17. Reflections in a Golden Eye - Carson McCullers
18. Platform Seven – Louise Doughty
19. If Morning Ever Comes – Anne Tyler
20. Rubyfruit Jungle – Rita Mae Brown
21. The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History - Kassia St Clair
22. The Thursday Murder Club – Richard Osman

And my latest:

23. The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

I'm still musing over how much I liked this. I've a feeling it's one of those that may grow in stature in retrospect. Many reviews on here already so I can summarise the plot quickly. Maeve and Danny are the children of Cyril and Elna Conroy. At the point at which we join the story, which is told by Danny, Elna has left in somewhat mysterious circumstances, much missed by the older Maeve, but not remembered by Danny. The Dutch house of the title was bought by Cyril through the proceeds of his successful real estate business; it's a gorgeous, sumptuous art deco building (beautifully described by Patchett, as ever), which proved far too much for Elna and sowed the seeds of her departure. The Conroy children's lives are upended by the arrival of a stepmother, and the story of their lives subsequently is told in patchwork fashion as we zoom in for close-ups, not necessarily chronologically.

I found that the patchwork nature of the storytelling made it difficult for me to get fully absorbed in Maeve and Danny's world. That said, there are already some scenes that have embedded themselves in my memory. I have also already found myself thinking a lot about the character of Maeve, who is Danny's true soulmate and the heart of the story. By the end, I felt the similarities between Maeve and her mother - outwardly very different - were obvious, and I think the book does the cycle of abandonment and history repeating itself very well.

@Terpsichore like you I am trying to alternate between different types of book but mine is Kindle vs paper! Just as I finished The Dutch House, Rita Mae Brown's Navratilova book arrived in the post, so guess what I'm reading next...

Thanks for the new thread, southeast - I'll try to do better at updating on this one!

Here's my list - I only got up to number 8 before falling off the second thread, so I potentially owe you 20 reviews . There's no chance that I will be able to do those in as much depth as I did the first 8, but I think I'll whizz through the less interesting books and then go back and write about the others at more length. I do really enjoy writing the reviews and I think it helps me to clarify (or at least, to crystallise) my thoughts about each book.

1. Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams
2. Christmas at the Island Hotel by Jenny Colgan
3. The History of Mr Polly by H.G. Wells
4. The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
5. The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz
6. Lady in Waiting by Anne Glenconnor
7. Charlotte by Helen Moffett
8. Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
9. Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss

10. Mrs P's Journey by Sarah Hartley 11. The Day I Fell Into a Fairytale by Ben Miller 12. Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse by David Mitchell 13. Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara 14. Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing by Bob Mortimer 15. Mort by Terry Pratchett 16. RHS Grow Your Own: Crops in Pots by Kay Maguire 17. This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay 18. Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann 19. Matilda by Roald Dahl 20. City of Friends by Joanna Trollope 21. Magpie Lane by Lucy Atkins 22. The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith 23. What Matters in Jane Austen? by John Mullan 24. The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd 25. The Natural Health Service by Isabel Hardman 26. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak 27. Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders by John Mortimer 28. The Year of Living Danishly by Helen Russell

I haven't asterisked any of them as I'm still pondering which ones are worth it. A couple of them - I'm looking at you, Joanna Trollope, but also Kay Maguire and Sarah Hartley - have come perilously close to being italicised, but I haven't had any outright stinkers yet!

I've been chortling over the Ulysses discussions - I do enjoy it when someone gets properly cross about a book. I haven't read it myself (or Finnegans Wake), but I have read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which is short and relatively readable for anyone who wants to try some Joyce.

Checking in, unencumbered by interpretive dance or singing, as I've returned the audiobook of Ulysses to Audible, and regained 41.5 hours of my life. Thanks, Eine, I shall make good use of that time.

1 There Are Places In The World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness by Carlo Rovelli
2 The Gifts of Reading by various authors
3 Girl in a Band by Kim Gordon
4 Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi
5 The Promised Land by Barack Obama
6 The World According to Garp by John Irving
7 Black Hole Survival Guide by Janna Levin
8 The Power and The Glory by Graham Greene
9 Acts and Omissions by Catherine Fox
10 Changing Places by David Lodge
11 The School at the Chalet by Elinor M Brent Dyer
12 At Freddie’s by Penelope Fitzgerald
13 The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley
14 Unseen Things Above by Catherine Fox
15 A Month In the Country by JL Carr
16 The World According to Physics by Jim Al-Khalili
17 The Book of Collateral Damage by Sinan Antoon
18 In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden
19 Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman
20 The Truants by Kate Weinberg
21 And The Band Played On by Randy Shilts
22 Loved Clothes Last by Orsola de Castro
23 Against Nature by JK Huysmans
24 Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr
25 Prairie Fires by Caroline Fraser
26 Little Town on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
27 Look At Me by Anita Brookner
28 The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown
29 Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
30 Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

Book 31 is Realms of Glory by Catherine Fox, the last in the series of books about the fictional cathedral town of Lindchester. I still love the characters and the church gossip, although by the end of this one I was a little weary of the breathless style and constant flitting around in terms of narrative viewpoints. And the Brexit angst was slightly painful - as a way of anchoring it to the year in question worked much less well in my view than the more theological focus of the previous books. Nonetheless, diverting and entertaining and I would certainly read any others in this series that she publishes in the future.

Thank you for the new thread, I really enjoyed the last one - particular the diversion into the grimness of Scots lit fic. Here is my list:

1. Memento Mori - Muriel Spark (re read)
2. The Mercies - Kiran Millwood Hargrave
3. Platform Seven - Louise Doughty (audio)
4. The Last Concubine - Lesley Downer
5. The Evening and the Morning - Ken Follett
6. Piranesi - Susanna Clarke
7. The Mermaid of Black Conch - Monique Roffey
8. Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (audio)
9. Hamnet- Maggie O’Farrell
10. Cranford - Elizabeth Gaskell (reread)
11. When the Floods Came - Clare Morrall (audio)
12. The Black Cloud - I D S Thomson (reread)
13. The Second Sleep - Robert Harris
14. Daisy Jones & the Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid
15. The Pursuit of Love - Nancy Mitford (reread)
16. The Bees - Laline Paull
17. Away with the Penguins- Hazel Prior
18. Magpie Murders - Anthony Horowitz (audio)
19. Commonwealth- Ann Patchett
20. American Dirt - Jeanine Cummins

I am about to finish, and adoring, A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier.

Thank you southeast for the new thread :) Am struggling with what to highlight this year- lots of solid enjoyable reads with admirable elements, few standouts.

1. Who They Was, Gabriel Krause
2. Our Kind of Traitor, John Le Carre
3. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Taylor Jenkins Reid

4. Bricks and Mortar, Helen Ashton

1. My Sister The Serial Killer, Oyinkan Braithwaite
2. Period, Emma Barnett
3. American Dirt, Jeanine Cummins

8. A Spell of Winter, Helen Dunmore

1. Beneath the Streets, Adam Macqueen

10. A Very English Scandal, John Preston 11. You People, Nikita Lalwani 12. A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, Bill Bryson 13. The Pull of the Stars, Emma Donoghue 14. Pilgrims, Matthew Kneale 15. Jew(ish), Matt Greene 16. The Lady in the Lake, Laura Lippman 17. How to Be Right, James O'Brien 18. The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock, Imogen Hermes Gowar 19. Fast Exercise, Michael Mosley 20. Stasiland, Anna Funder 21. Why Germans Do It Better: Tales from a Grown Up Country, John Kampfner 22. Findings, Kathleen Jamie 23. Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan, Ruth Gilligan 24. Less, Andrew Sean Greer 25. Sex Power Money, Sara Pascoe 26. The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie, Wendy McClure 27. Charlotte, Helen Moffett 28. Redhead by the Side of the Road, Anne Tyler 29. Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent and Navigating the New Masculinity, Peggy Orenstein 30. Love After Love, Ingrid Persaud 31. What Katy Did, Susan Coolidge 32. Such a Fun Age, Kiley Reid 33. The Years, Annie Ernaux

Chessie I also have that Queen Mary book waiting on my Kindle after seeing it recommended somewhere. When I get round to reading it, I'll be interested to compare my impression to your review.

34. Meadowlark, Melanie Abrams

Simri and Arjun grow up in an isolated religious community in the US, a community very careful not to be labelled a cult. As they grow into adolescence, the expectations and restrictions placed on them by the community elders become ever more oppressive, until they decide to run away. However, after only a couple of nights in the outside world, Arjun abandons Simri and disappears from her life.

20 years later, she gets a message from him. He's living in another isolated idealistic community, this time a secular one and one where he is one of the founding members. A disgruntled ex-member has made some allegations of child neglect and abuse, and the police and press are asking questions. Arjun asks Simri, now an established photographer with a social media following, if she will visit and take some photos - he is convinced that when people see what his community is really like, they will realise that the allegations must be false.

This was a Kindle First Reads freebie from a while back - these can be quite hit and miss in my experience but I liked this one. The middle-of-nowhere locations in the middle of the empty American landscape are skilfully drawn, and I found the characters and the tensions between them believable if somewhat overwraught (but hey, this is a psychological thriller). I cared enough to feel frustrated that the ending leaves many of the plot threads unresolved - I wanted to answer more of my questions, and that's a sign that I was engaged.

35. The Appeal, Janice Hallett

This was one of those books that seemed to pop up everywhere last year. My ebook loan request came through just as I was finishing Meadowlark and TBH my heart sank, as I was expecting it to be a dark twisty psychological thriller with unreliable memories and vulnerable females (cf a million "Girl" books which have been bestsellers over recent years) - Meadowlark was a bit like that and, while I had enjoyed it, I didn't want another helping so soon.

Fortunately this book turned out to be rather different. For those who haven't read it, or read about it, it's essentially a detective novel in epistolary form. It starts with a note from a senior lawyer to two junior associates - he's sending them a bundle of emails and text messages relating to a case. He wants their fresh impressions so he is deliberately not telling them anything about the case - what the crime is, who (if anyone) has been found guilty.

We then get to the emails, which start with some wonderfully passive-aggressive interchanges between the members of a village Am Dram group, jostling for position as a new production is being cast. You quickly identify that there are a couple of alpha families, some hangers-on desperate to get into the in crowd, a couple of comedy characters, some mysterious new arrivals..... The whole thing, TBH, is like a rather dark and twisted episode of The Archers (and I'm not sure whether that is a compliment or not).

I am quite fussy with mystery/detective plots - when the reveals come, I need them to pick up on details which have been under our noses the whole time (HATE it when a twist introduces completely new information) but I also need not to have guessed too much in advance. This book does well in that regard - you do notice certain phrases which seem a bit off, or details which don't quite match between people's accounts, but for me at least, it still remained a mystery until the second half, where the lawyers start to message one another trying to work out the details. I do wish I had had a paper copy though, as when they start to put theories together, the urge was to go back and look again at the messages sent aroudn that time, to work out whether the theory seemed plausible or not - I got frustrated trying to do that with the ebook, especially in the rather shonky library app.

I've also DNF-ed two good books as follows:

DNF Scoff: A History of Food and Class in Britain, Pen Vogler

Well-researched, entertaining book: here you will find the answer to your questions such as why southerners' dinner is different to northerners' dinner, and how afternoon tea is different to high tea (and why one is common and the other one not). DNF because it's very very long and not IMHO the sort of book that works read straight through - it has dozens of short chapters and would be ideal to dip into. Not possible with a library book - it has gone back.

DNF Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics, Peter Geoghegan

Another well-researched and very readable book. I got about 5 chapters in and had to give up as it was making me feel unspeakably angry and bleak. Our current Government and their friends and associates feature prominently among the bad guys here, using loopholes, anonymous organisations and secret money transfers to buy influence and evade scrutiny. A perfect companion piece to Christopher Wylie's MindF#ck for those who enjoyed that. But right now, I just couldn't.

Thank you, southeast

Just for Remus, here is my list - short but sweet!

1. The Atrocity Exhibition (Laundry Files #1) by Charles Stross
2. Transfer of Power (Mitch Rapp #1) by Vince Flynn
3. Anna Magdalena Bach. Fanny Hensel. Clara Schumann - Three Female Musicians in the Spotlight
4. Circe by Madeline Miller
5. Cage of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky
6. Doctor Frigo by Eric Ambler
7. Space (Manifold #2) by Stephen Baxter
8. Quantum Theory - A Graphic Guide by J P McEvoy & Oscar Zarate
9. Bear Head by Adrian Tchaikovsky

10. The Quantum Spy by David Ignatius 11. Big Brother by Lionel Shriver 12. Sunfall by Jim Al-Khalili 13. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds In This Strange World by Elif Shafak 14. The Ladies of Grace Adieu and other stories by Susanna Clarke

Bah to the lists.

Here's mine:
1: A long fallow period where I forgot how to read
2, 3, 4, 5, 6 , 7, 8, 9, 10 : Things that annoyed me and needed serious editing
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17: Historical crime that's mildly diverting
18, 19, 20: Heavy non-fiction stuff that's probably set in Germany or involves people dying horribly or having syphilis
21 - 30: More non-fiction that involves dead bodies, treachorous mountains, long, cold crossings of Antarctica or all of the above
31 - 112 - Georgette Heyer

Remus

My list so far:

1. Mary Barton - Elizabeth Gaskell
2. The Girl with the Louding Voice - Abi Dare
3. Hard Times - Charles Dickens
4. Cranford - Elizabeth Gaskell
5. Bad Science - Ben Goldacre
6. The Woodlanders - Thomas Hardy
7. Normal People - Sally Rooney
8. The Waves - Virginia Woolf
9. And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie

10. O Pioneers! - Willa Cather 11. What Ho! The Best of PG Wodehouse 12. The Midnight Library - Matt Haig 13. The Quiet American - Graham Greene 14. The Dutch House - Ann Patchett 15. Lincoln in the Bardo - George Saunders 16. The Various Haunts of Men - Susan Hill 17. The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje 18. Girl, Woman, Other - Bernardine Evaristo 19. The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene 20. Circe - Madeline Miller

Currently ploughing my way through The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope. It's good, but it could definitely be shorter!

I've been listening to the Bible on Audible, read by David Suchet - you listen to a bit every day and at the end of the year, you've 'read' the Bible. I'm thinking I might do the same with some other impenetrable books (Ulysses and Tristram Shandy are on the list) - I reckon little and often is the only way through them!

1. Requiem for Immortals by Lee Winter

2. Passing by Nella Larsen

3. Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor

4. The Haunting of Alma Fielding by Kate Summerscale

5. The Victorian Chaise Longue by Marghanita Laski

6. Beloved by Toni Morrison

7. The Sea The Sea by Iris Murdoch

8. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

9. Winter by Ali Amith

10. The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty

11. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor

12. Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee

13. Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth

14. Knowledge of Angels by Jill Palton Walsh

15. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

16. Jews Don’t Count by David Baddiel

17. The Inland Sea by Madeleine Watts

18. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

19. American Dirt by Jeannie Cummins

20. Court number one: The Old Bailey by Thomas Grant

21. Dinner with Edward by Isabel Vincent

22. Patsy by Nicole Y Dennis-Benn

Patsy emigrates to New York from Jamaica illegally, leaving her daughter behind to live with her father whom she barely knows and his new wife and children. In many ways this is a typical immigrant novel, however it does highlight the effect of Patsy’s daughter and the breakdown of their relationship over the years. Patsy is a lesbian who travels initially to New York to reconnect with her first love who is now married to a wealthy man in Brooklyn, these scenes when she first arrives were some of the best parts of the book. While this was a fairly quick easy read and I enjoyed it, I didn’t really understand Patsy’s motivation or decisions a lot of the time.

23. The Bone People by Keri Hulme
    Set in New Zealand this follows a part-Maori women who lives on her own who one day get involved in a six year old mute boy who lives with his very abusive (he beats the boy) foster-father. This is not written in the usual kind of way with various characters thoughts spaced in throughout, some scenes are also not easy to read. However all the characters are well rounded and there’s no doubt that the book creates a vivid atmosphere that I’ll remember more than the plot.

24. Say Say Say by Lila Savage
    A very short book about a women in her late 20s (or is she 30) who looks after a women who is becoming more and more mentally debilitating after an accident. This was ok but didn’t really go into things like the effect on the family, it just focused more on the effect on the carer.

25. Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
    Washington Black is a slave in the Bahamas who one day escapes on a hot air ballon type contraption with his masters brother. This should have been a great adventure but really the plot drove the characters rather than the characters driving the plot. It just became a series of things that happen.

26. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
    Wow I wasn’t prepared for how unlikeable Rabbit is. I feel like I’ve ready about him before in the relationships board on mumsnet. I will read the next one though.

27. Happy by Fearne Cotton
    This was 99p on the kindle, essentially its appreciate the small moments and try to live in the moment. The parts around this advise was nice to read but then the second half of the book is mostly Fearne talking about how much she loves her friends, kids, husband etc

Thanks for the shiny new thread @southeastdweller! Here is my current list:

1. Eleanor the Secret Queen: The Woman Who put Richard III on the Throne by John Ashdown-Hill
2. 52 Times Britain was a Bellend: The History You Didn’t Get Taught At School by James Felton
3. A Double Life by Flynn Berry
4. The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule
5. Tall Tales and Wee Stories: The Best of Billy Connolly by Billy Connolly
6. A Million Dreams by Dani Atkins
7. The Never Game by Jeffery Deaver

8. Misery by Stephen King

1. The Crooked House by Agatha Christie

10. Pied Piper by Nevil Shute 11. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 12. Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell 13. The Stubborn Lives of Hart Tanner by Shawn Inmon 14. The Tommyknockers by Stephen King 15. Fever of the Bone by Val McDermid 16. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth 17. The Retribution by Val McDermid 18. Bring Me Back by B A Paris 19. The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly 20. Scrublands by Chris Hammer 21. On Chapel Sands: My Mother and Other Missing Persons by Laura Cumming 22. Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge 23. The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel 24. Klopp Actually by Laura Lexx 25. The Only Plane in the Sky: The Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett M. Graff 26. All the Hidden Things by Claire Askew

A recent DNF was Heart of Darkness by Jospeh Conrad which I first read for my A Levels. I say read but I never actually finished the book as I hated it so much, despite writing an essay on it. I don’t know what it is about this book but I cannot make to seem the sentences go into my head and you know what I can’t really be arsed to force myself.

1. Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
2. Up the Junction - Nell Dunn
3. The Trick is to Keep Breathing - Janice Galloway
4. Brave New World - Aldous Hucley
5. The Man Who Wasn't There - Pat Barker
6. The Wind Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami
7. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
8. Trespass - Rose Tremain
9. Lolita - Vladimir Nabakov

10. The Left-Handed Booksellers of London - Garth Nix 11. Poor Cow - Nell Dunn 12. Goodnight Mr Tom - Michelle Magorian 13. The Orphan Master's Son - Adam Johnson 14. Private - Keep Out - Gwen Grant 15. Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami 16. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - L Frank Baum 17. Felicia's Journey - William Trevor 18. Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese 19. Our Dancing Days - Lucy English 20. The Call of the Wild - Jack London 21. The Outcast - Sadie Jones 22. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden 23. Digging to America - Anne Tyler 24. The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint - Barry Udall 25. Maurice - EM Forster

I would file du Maurier under "M". I believe this is what I was taught at library school in the 90s so I'm sticking to it, like I stubbornly stick to typing 2 spaces after a full stop because that's how I learned (on a manual typewriter way back in the mists of time)

@MamaNewtNewt - I feel the same about Heart of Darkness, having studied it for A level English I can't bring myself to attempt re-reading it. I hated it at the time, I don't imagine it's improved.

I did The Secret Agent for A Level. Even worse than Heart of Darkness and that, to quote the song-writing genius of Bananarama, is really saying something (bob bop shoo be doo wah etc).

I also studied Heart Of Darkness for A Level, and also hated it, although it is at least mercifully short. It was better to dissect and write about than actually read IIRC.

@VikingNorthUtsire the democracy book sounds depressingly relevant with the whole Greensill debacle.

I didn't hate Heart is Darkness but agree with Remus that The Secret Agent is awful.

I had to do Bleak House for A level which has left me with a lifelong hatred of Dickens in particular but wordy Victorian novels in general. At least Conrad is short.

The boy who broke my heart to the point where I still feel viscerally sick if I think about him wrote his thesis on Heart of Darkness so I read it then to impress the wanker. Won't be reading it again any time soon.

@SOLINVICTUS

The boy who broke my heart to the point where I still feel viscerally sick if I think about him wrote his thesis on Heart of Darkness so I read it then to impress the wanker. Won't be reading it again any time soon.

I have one of these as well

Grew up Catholic with him, and he was a singer. All hymns ruined.

Adding my voice to Heart Of Darkness hate, was on my 3rd year Summer Reading list, was the first I read because it was slim. I thought :

"If they are all like this I am so failing third year"

[quote Stokey]@VikingNorthUtsire the democracy book sounds depressingly relevant with the whole Greensill debacle.

I didn't hate Heart is Darkness but agree with Remus that The Secret Agent is awful.

I had to do Bleak House for A level which has left me with a lifelong hatred of Dickens in particular but wordy Victorian novels in general. At least Conrad is short.[/quote]
Oh Stokey!

Might it have been your age?

Bleak House is one of the best of the ones I've read (6 or 7)

Oh nooooo, I'm pretty sure we have Heart of Darkness coming up next year for DD1's A levels. I've never read it - and now I'm really looking forward to it

For some ridiculous reason I didn't choose to do English at A'level - despite my entire entourage advising me otherwise. Hmmm, stubborn? nowanearly? moi?
Still regret it! Think it would have led me down a completely different path. Daft sod!!

My A level books were The Mayor of Casterbridge and Emma. I enjoyed the latter, wasn’t so keen on the first.

Copying my list over. Thanks for the new thread @southeastdweller

1. The Three Mrs Wrights - Linda Keir
2.Holly's Christmas Countdown - Suzie Tullett
3.Butterfly Kisses - Patrick Logan
4.The Push - Ashley Audrain 
5. <strong>The Last Thing To Burn - Will Dean</strong>
6.The Silent Treatment - Abbie Greaves
7.How to Disappear - Gillian McAllister 
8.Contacts - Mark Watson 
9.Girl A - Abigail Dean
10.Dead Simple - Peter James 
11.Behind Her Eyes - Sarah Pinborough 
12.A Song of Isolation - Michael J Malone 
13.The Suicide Pact - David B Lyons
14.Between You and Me - Lisa Hall
15.The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot - Marianne Cronin
16.A Glasgow Kiss - Sophie Gravia
17.The One - John Marrs
18.The Heart Keeper - Alex Dahl
19.Written in Blood - Chris Carter
20.Saint X - Alexis Schaitkin 
21.The Secrets of Strangers - Charity Norman
22.The Book Of Two Ways - Jodi Picoult
23.Shiver - Allie Reynolds 
24.1st to Die - James Patterson
25. <strong>Kane and Abel - Jeffrey Archer</strong>

I definitely get fussier about what I bold as the year goes on