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?

No definitely not a Scottish thing. The author has lived in NYC for quite some time and that, plus editing for a US reader may be the reason.

23. The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver

Downloaded after so many posters mentioned this in their top books ever for our list and I wasn't disappointed.

I loved the chapters written in the character of each sister, giving them a particular voice. And although I agree the first half drew me in more, I did enjoy that book carried on after the event where most authors would have finished the book, so you can see the aftermath.

I knew nothing of the history of the Congo and this was a fascinating insight, I think after a period of reading about WW2 maybe it's time to move onto Africa. I went to Uganda in 2019 (which borders Congo I think, I'm sure travel insurance was easy to come by but I would have invalidated it by going to the DRC border) and it didn't occur to me read about the country before I went, and we stopped in Rwanda on the way home too, so I think I will find some books from this area to add to my growing reading list.

I love it when a fiction book teaches me something of a topic and sparks an interest and furthering reading.

For some reason I read most of Barbara Kingsolver's other fiction over years but was wary of reading The Poisonwood Bible. Loved it when I did.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit - entirely agree re Paris Echo. Hollow is an accurate description in my opinion. I lived in Paris for several years so am a total sucker for books set there but the constant road-name-dropping business was irrelevant and did my head in!

Razorstorm great review of The Poisonwood Bible. I knew nothing about the Congo history and it really piqued my interest.

On the "Pleather" question - I also never heard it called that in the 80's, like Piggy it would have been called "mock leather", but mostly I remember "leatherette". In the early 70's we moved to a new build house and my parents splashed out on a massive "leatherette" modular sofa and spinning chair. After about 6 months it started to crackle and peel and little bits stuck to our skin. The furniture store wouldn't take it back. Oh, how my mother hated "leatherette."

@PermanentTemporary Devil and the dark water was featured on that BBC2 programme Between the Covers. Features an interview with the author and the four guests discuss it too. Could be worth a watch to help you explore the book more before giving up?

razor, if you are after books about Rwanda I’d really recommend Our Lady of the Nile, which is set in a girls’ boarding school and shows the impact of simmering ethnic tension very well.

Razor Another novel I’ve enjoyed set partially in the Congo is The Dream of the Celt by Mario Vargas Llosa about the life of Roger Casement, who uncovered colonial atrocities in the Congo and Peru before making fatal mistakes in the 1916 Easter Rising. It is a gruelling but gripping read and really deepened my understanding of the visceral horrors of colonialism.

33. Spring by Ali Smith
    I can’t add to the already wonderful reviews already on this thread, I’m enjoying this quartet a lot

34. A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler
    This follows the life of Andreas who grows up in a mountainous area in Austria from the turn of the century , past WWI and WWII to the tourist boom to the area in the 70s. Its an understated life which is taken one day at a time with his fair share of tragedy. This is only 147 pages and was a huge bestseller in Germany, it didn’t wow me or anything but that may be more because it’s a quiet measured book with emphasis on nature. Much enjoyed.

@RazorstormUnicorn

Books set in African countries are a real draw for me. Would you like some suggestions of some of the best (IMO)

Oh leatherette , yes!!

Think we are all agreed on pleather then!

I think the book had a US editor, although I don't think the pleather thing is US English either.

Now there’s an 80s flashback Warm Leatherette

Leatherette, absolutely!
Pleather, nope.
(This sort of anachronistic, even if it's not really anachronistic but just seems to be, stuff, irritates me more than it should- I graduated in real life on the same day as Dexter and Emma in One Day and NEITHER of them would have been called that. Unless she was a child prodigy or super-duper posh, which she wasn't. Likewise Karen in Outnumbered. Emma in One Day would have been called Karen tbf. Hmm.)

@FortunaMajor, I like the sound of your teacher very much. My history teacher lent me his Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd tapes

@SOLINVICTUS

That's not the only realism issue in the shocker that is One Day

Enjoying the thread and read the posts about Lemn Sissay with interest. Read My Name is Why last year and was deeply affected by it - such a shocking indictment of a system but his compassion for his earlier self and for others shines through - inspirational.

18. Wolves of Willougby Chase by Joan Aiken - read to the DCs. Fairly sure I read this as a child but didn't remember it as a particular favourite. A lovely bedtime read-alouder, as it is so atmospheric and the DC loved guessing what was going to happen.

19. Autumn by Ali Smith - I'd avoided this series as read a couple of her previous books many years ago and didn't get on with them. I've been missing out. Angry but in a cock snooking way rather than a defeatist way, incorporating the reduced circumstances of the post-office, a lovely friendship between a child and her adult neighbour, and cow parsley.

Thanks Pepe and Ladybird I've added both of them to my Amazon wishlist.

@einereisedurchdiezeit yes I would love a few recommendations of books set in Africa. It's much more likely to help me find new favourite books than random googling or following Amazon's guesses!

26 A Load of Bull by Tim Parfitt
Picked up out of a lockdown clearout box on somebody's wall. Starts well as a fun, breezy account of a magazine journalist going to Madrid in 1988 to launch Spanish Vogue. Keeps a good focus on falling in love with Spanish culture, particularly the Madrid version of it, with some anecdotes of culture clash in publishing. As it went on, the robust sexism got less appealing - a couple of times he unexpectedly meets a fat woman in some capacity or other, and practically vomits over the page, and in general if a woman isn't fuckable, she's invisible or annoying until he can get away. There's not much about fashion, very little detail about publishing magazines, the Spanish culture bits get less and less present and it ends up with what I suspect is meant to be a love story but which just ends up sounding smug. It beguiled an hour or two reasonably enough.

@RazorstormUnicorn

Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi

A man abandons his wife and four children in America. As the years pass, the ripple effect of his abandonment impact the four in different ways (Some upsetting content)

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Western colonialism destroys tribal life

Tiny Sunbirds Far Away by Christie Watson

Blessing lives a privileged city girl life in Lagos, but financial challenges take her to her Grandfather's country home where culture and expectations are extremely different.

My Traitor's Heart by Rian Malan

A stunning autobiography. Rian Malan is brought up in a racially prejudiced home during Apartheid, a system invented and brought about by his own Grandfather. Is he a traitor by wishing to defy his upbringing and be accepting and inclusive, or is he a traitor to every black person he meets, simply because of who he is?

Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton

My favourite novel.

Kumalo is the village priest in a rundown dustbowl. He has had to become accepting of the fact that everyone leaves the village, usually for Johannesburg, in search of a better life.
But when a fellow priest writes from Johannesburg, Kumalo goes on a journey of shock and heartbreak, redemption, hope and self transformation

HONESTLY. ❤️

60. Frenchman's Creek by Daphne Du Maurier

Dona St Columb escapes her weak marriage and shallow and indolent life in London, for the country air where adventure awaits!

Ok so this is a desperately silly and highly unrealistic romance.

I ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT!

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit

Thanks so much for those recs and overviews, they are all added to my list and I bought Ghana Must Go straight away it was £1.99 on kindle.

That's one book read and seven added to my list!!

24. Shameless: How I ditched the diet, got naked, found true pleasure... And somehow got home in time to cook dinner by Pamela Madsen

I stumbled across this book on the website of a podcast I listen to (Sex with Emily - she is witty, honest and has some great ideas). The writer has been married to the same man her whole life, is stuck in a sex rut and feels something is missing and goes on a journey. So far so good, I'm interested in this journey and what the take home for me might be.

Well, there's nothing in it for me! She heads off for sensual and then erotic massages with men, and finds herself in the spiritual side of things where the men who massage her first do a bit of talk therapy, then massage but somehow after a few sessions the massage becomes spanking.

She tells herself she isn't cheating on her (completely unaware husband) and if you consider penis in vagina sex is the only form of cheating, she's correct. But she gets naked with others (sometimes a whole room of people!) and they make her orgasm, and to me that is cheating.

I carried on reading past all the new age waffle basically to find out if her husband thought she was cheating or not. Spoiler alert, he was confused but ok with it! There, I saved you the read.

She did have some great things to say about appreciating the body you are given, finding attractiveness in all people, that women have permission to seek pleasure and prioritise it but her journey is not going to be my journey.

What I decided to do next, is make my husband watch Sex in the City and we'll try out some of the positions. I feel very unadventurous compared to the writer, but it's definitely not cheating!

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I read Cry The Beloved Country at school (well over 30 years ago now) and I still remember the huge impact it had on me - the love and despair were palpable, even to a callow teen. I think it may be time for a re-read.

@Sadik, that was a very synchrinicitous mention of An Instance of the Fingerpost- it was mentioned on a podcast (the rest is history) I was listening to last week, and I hadn't remembered the title quite right so couldn't find it- now I have just downloaded it!

47. Deep Secret by Diana Wynne Jones. This is imo one of the weakest of her novels- I love the plot and the excellent one way system, but both the main narrative voices are adults and I don't think she gets the tone quite right- interestingly, the sequel uses the character of Nick, who is the character that comes off the page here, and is 14- I just think she excelled at early teenage voices. Worth a read for the convention in the hotel alone though!

Some mindless crime:

42. Death is a Word, by Hazel Holt
The ultimate in cosy crime. Our narrator spends as much time deflea'ing her pets and washing the net curtains in her kitchen as she does unravelling the truth behind the unexpected death.

43. The Word is Murder, by Anthony Horowitz
44. The Sentence is Death, by Anthony Horowitz
The author includes himself as a character, trailing in the wake of a Holmes-lite private detective. I found this to be a fairly cardboard effort, not very impressive.

45. The Ministry of Bodies, by Seamus O'Mahony
I've read quite a few medical memoirs but this has to be my favourite. The author worked as a gastroenterologist in a hospital in Cork, which has local interest for me. These memoirs are often commended for their brutal honesty, but he really goes for it, including stinging criticism of fellow doctors he believes to be shirking responsibility and trying to offload difficult patients. If you think the NHS is bad, Irish hospitals are worse, with the never-ending scandal of patients on trolleys and weaselly managers blaming doctors for not moving the patients on quickly enough. He's jaded and coming up to retirement and he's not going to varnish the truth. I stayed up far too late, absorbed in this.

15) Where Rainbow’s End by Cecelia Ahern
Really enjoyed this book. Was just what I needed to read, a lighthearted, uplifting, romantic story. This is about two best friends Rosie and Alex and how life gets in the way of them getting together. 4/5