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?

Oxford does actually feature in Adrian Mole at one point, I don't remember which volume or how old AM is at the time (AM is 15 months older than me so I kind of feel as if we grew up together!) At that point Adrian is a lodger or something with Pandora Braithwaite, who's now married (obv not to AM). I think she might have been an academic for a bit before becoming a Labour MP in Tony Blair's government. Sue Townsend was very left wing and tended to vote for Communists or for things like the Socialist Alliance - she certainly wasn't a fan of Tony Blair.

Joan Smith wrote 3 crime novels set in Oxford published in the 1990s. One had the series character living in the same street as my grandparents' house (the one where my mum and her sisters were mostly brought up).

I don't know if they're in print or available now but there is a series of 10+ books by Veronica Stallwood which I really like, featuring Kate Ivory and set in Oxford. The character is a midlist author and sometime amateur sleuth.

That list is a bit odd, with some repetition, and it's not the first Adrian Mole book (I don't remember him leaving Leicester/Ashby-de-la-Zouch in that). Maybe it's the 3rd or 4th book.

30. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks In 1910 A young british man is sent on a fact-finding mission by his company to an equivalent in France. He stays with his host's family in a large house in the Somme valley. Here he falls in love with his hostess, they run away together and she leaves without word when she realises she is pregnant. 6 years later the young man is back in the region, reluctantly avoiding death in the trenches. His lover has left France in the company of a wounded German soldier but he strikes up a friendship with her sister and they maintain contact throughout the rest of the war. In 1978 a young woman attempts to achieve some understanding of her ancestry by studying her Grandfather's notebooks, a meticulous diary kept throughout the war.

This is a great book, lovely descriptions of life in middle-class pre-WW1 France, gruelling descriptions of trench warfare and the mental anguish suffered by the survivors of various battles and manouvres.

It’s Adrian Mole - The Wilderness Years that is set in Oxford.

Loved Birdsong but have struggled with the rest of his books got Paris Echo on TBR right now.

Consent by Vanessa Springora Thanks to Cassandre for the recommendation. This is a difficult but compelling read with VS recounting how, as a fourteen-year-old, she became the muse and sexual "partner" of a celebrated French writer in his 50s who was already well known for his attraction to young girls. It is particularly disturbing in that her mother seems to have been complicit with the arrangement, and the author was widely admired for his affairs; indeed when he was criticised on a television show by a Canadian writer, she is dismissed as a "sex-starved harridan, jealous of the happiness of young women so much more fulfilled than she". A shocking indictment of some of the more "permissive" attitudes and hypocricies of the time and a brave expose of how society can fail to protect girls and young women.

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin I'm sorry I can't remember who first recommended this, but many thanks as I thought it was terrific. The Guardian describes it as "exquisite" and so it is. It recounts the story of David, a young American in 1950s Paris, who embarks on an affair with an Italian barman while waiting for his fiancee to return from holiday. Although it is the story of a gay love affair, the passion, regrets and unspoken emotions described are universal and written to heart-breaking effect. Definitely one of my top reads this year.

Robert Robinson (of 'Ask the Family' fame) wrote an enjoyable crime novel set in Oxford, Landscape with Dead Dons. It's all very silly but quite good fun.

@YolandiFuckinVisser Birdsong is a book that will always stay with me. One of my favourites.

14) Invisible Girl by Lisa Jewell Audio book
Great narration. I got this to listen to out of curiosity as have never read a Lisa Jewell book before and have heard rave reviews about her books. This was just an okay for me. However I liked the twist. 3/5

This is about Saffyre Maddox and when she was ten something terrible happens. The man she thought would heal her doesn’t and she hides in the shadows watching, waiting an invisible girl.
Then there is Owen Pick and he is invisible to. Nobody sees him. Nobody cares. He’s never had a girlfriend. Never had a friend.
Saffyre goes missing on Valentine’s Day opposite Owen’s house and suddenly the whole world is looking at him, accusing him.
Yes I would recommend but as I say an average read.

For an Oxford novel, how about Crompton Hodnet, by Barbara Pym?

Oh, I've been meaning to read Barbara Pym. That sounds tempting. Zuleika Dobson looks a bit mad but I'm strangely tempted.

Has anyone read To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, sounds a bit like St Marys but set in Oxford? It's on a few Oxford reading lists on tinterweb.

I've read a few Inspector Morse and they're a bit sexist - not quite the heaving breasts of Ken Follet but not far off. Plots are clever though.
I think as well as Brideshead, Maurice by EM Forster may have been set in Oxford, or at least part of it.

An Instance of the Fingerpost is set in Oxford & is a really good read, would definitely recommend it.

19. The Death of Bunny Monro by Nick Cave

Well, that was weird. It is the story of a door-to-door salesman with a permanent hard on, driving across the country with his 10yo son after his long-suffering wife's suicide, and stopping at the homes of former clients to sexually assault them.

Nick Cave is a better writer than many authors on the Booker list and I did enjoy his wild prose and twisted, piercing observations. Half way between Lolita and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, this story is not for the faint of heart but I recommend it for those of you who like well-written yet disturbing fiction.

Terpsichore, Robert Robinson is a bit of an in-joke between my DH and me (I've been known to award points around our family in Brain of Britain style: "that's two to Mr DH, three to Miss DD and a shiny sixpence to Master DS for being so clever" ), so I think Landscape with Dead Dons will make a perfect father's day present for him - thank you for the tip-off!

Can I jump on the half-term read recommdations topic please and ask for books set in Norfolk, especially the Broads? I have Coot Club lined up but I probably need something a bit more grown up too

Have you read the Ruth Galloway books by Elly Griffiths, Viking? They're set on the North Norfolk coast (a bit east of Kings Lynn, I deduce, in the salt marshes).

And there's Waterland, of course.

Thanks Mackarella, good suggestions. I thought I'd read Waterland and that it was set in Kent, then realised I was thinking of Last Orders. I haven't read any Ruth Galloways, although I read one from one of her other series on holiday last year and enjoyed it. So both good tips, thank you.

I was about to say Elly Griffiths too.

@JaninaDuszejko I’ve read To Say Nothing Of The Dog - it’s very good, a sort of cross between St Mary’s and Three Men In A Boat.

Isn't Never Let Me Go set in Norfolk ?

David Copperfield, The Go-Between and Restoration all have sections set in Norfolk.

54. Pale Rider by Laura Spinney History of the Spanish Flu much reviewed on here already. I've had this on the go for a while, but realistically Rules of Contagion was probably more to my tastes in terms of pandemic-lit. (My fault not the authors, I tend to get drawn in more by maths/science/social science rather than straight history.)

Two failures, back to back

56. Metroland by Julian Barnes

Barnes debut. Two pompous male sixth formers come of age. No doubt accurate, but very much a short novel made long by its tediousness.

57. The Doll : Short Stories by Daphne Du Maurier

The handful of good ones in here are all insightful looks into male/female relationship difficulties, but on the whole, nothing special.

Lol. Just opened up On Canaan's Side to discover I in fact read it 9 years ago and it is in fact A Long Long Way I've not read.

At least its a library book

Thank you for Norfolk recommendations 😊

40. The Other Passenger, Louise Candlish

Similar to other books I have enjoyed by the same author. A confident,
twisty thriller set in modern London, playing on the tensions between the
careless established middle classes, with their big houses and loud
opinions, and their less well-off neighbours, who look on with
(justifiable? malignant?) envy and resentment. Here, older couple Jamie
and Clare are excited to befriend the younger, edgier (and good-looking)
Kit and Melia, but the friendship soon starts to move into darker
territory. Then Kit goes missing, and two police officers stop Jamie on
his way to work. If I need something distracting, engrossing and and
clever as a non-demanding read, Candlish has always delivered the goods.

41. Girl, Wash Your Face, Rachel Hollis

I was going to write a long and witty post about why I disliked this but I can sum it up by saying the bits that were readable were unoriginal, and vice versa - it wasn't all terrible but the "Rachel Hollis" bits in the mix emphatically were. Here are two people doing a good job talking about why this book, and the whole RH thing, is not good:

www.goodreads.com/review/show/2510192688

medium.com/honestly-yours/once-again-rachel-hollis-wants-you-to-know-shes-better-than-you-4e3e4d08f636