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?

Wow Mama I would assume same school but we didn't do a few you mention including Changeling

Actually shit Mama were Othello, Atwood and presumably Owen taught by the same staff member by any chance?...

I didn't do English A level, but studied Brighton Rock for GCSE and loved it.

@MamaNewtNewt

On tenterhooks here

👀

Maybe I should try Bleak House again Eine. I just hate the way he goes off on Los of different plot strands that don't really have anything to do when the real story for pages and pages. I did like the series when it was on a few years back though.

The rest had quite a bit of crossover with @Sadik
Volpone - loved
Metaphysical poets - bit meh at the time but now love
The Wasteland - loved and still find it echoing around my head, in fact would go back and reread.
Othello - pretty good
Henry IV part 2 - loved Hal who I think I would find a sanctimonious git now for his treatment of Falstaff
The Great Gatsby - also in love with Gatsby but again now I'm not sure. Watched a film with the DDs recently where a black girl was questioning why they were learning about rich white people & I do get the point.
Emma - not my favourite Austen
Milton - Samson's Agonistes bit dull
Chaucer - Wyf of Bath - actually probably one of the funniest tales, had a teacher who adored the Wyf and inspired us all.

But what I did love generally about English A level was the depth and knowledge you got off all the texts, while I felt at uni you went through them so quickly, particularly in first could of years which were just like a history of literature.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I'm struggling to remember which staff member taught what, I had one male teacher and one female. In my memory the male teacher covered most of the texts but that can't be right. I know the female teacher covered The Handmaid's Tale but that's all I can remember that she covered for certain.

Right ok, I do think there is POTENTIALLY a chance its the same school but obviously we use anonymous names for a reason

Trying to figure out how to work it out without Private Message because I cant login to mine.

The book we did at school that I really can't stand is Silas Marner (for GCSE). “O father,” said Eppie, “what a pretty home ours is! I think nobody could be happier than we are.” (not envy).

I quite 'liked' Heart of Darkness but more because once you've read it you see the cultural references to it everywhere in film and literature. Tristram Shandy I've 'read' in the sense that I've turned all the pages and looked at all the words...

Middlemarch and Persuasion were my two A-level novels. Also Othello, Dr Faustus, metaphysical poets, some Pope I think (?) and a Chaucer. Possibly the Franklin's Tale? Dunno, it was a million years ago, but I loved Middlemarch and was put off Austen for years.

I also failed to read Cider With Rosie for O level. Even our very entertaining English teacher (I remember acting As You Like It in the style of Rambo for one lesson) failed to make it interesting.

Mine were
Emma
Dr Faustus
Chaucer - prologue and Nun’s priest’s take
John Donne and metaphysical poets
Keats and Wordsworth
Paradise Lost
Anthony and Cleopatra
The Tempest.

So nothing after 1850! The whole of modern literature was ignored. We had a vote on the poetry - 20th century poetry or Keats and Wordsworth. The whole class except for me voted for K&W. The teacher was gutted.

Thanks for new thread btw SouthEast

Still reading The only plane in the sky by day and Rosie Hopkins Sweetshop of Dreams at 3am.

Thank you for the new thread, from a lurker.

A Level English - back in the mid 1970's - all I can remember are the two I loved:

King Lear

T. S.Eliot

Both have stayed with me, been read again & again over the last 40+ years.

Just popped back with my latest.

39: The Singing Sands - Josephine Tey

The manuscript of this novel - complete - was found among Tey's papers when she died in 1952, and so was published posthumously. Detective Alan Grant, suffering from some sort of unexplained breakdown (manifesting mainly as claustrophobia and anxiety) is sent off on leave and goes to stay with his cousin Laura and her family in Scotland. On the way there, he becomes drawn into a mystery surrounding a sudden death. Is there more to this apparent accident than meets the eye?

Purists would rightly say that the plotting here, in regard to the death, anyway, isn't the most ingenious or consistent, but I was content to go along and see where it led. As ever, Tey writes so excellently, with particularly evocative descriptions of the Scottish islands, that the whodunnit becomes almost incidental. It's been a while since I really looked forward so eagerly to picking up a book and reading just a bit more...it felt like a real treat.

I'm loving the A-level chat (and racking my brains for my own set works - mid-90s comp, though not northern). I think that our board was examined entirely by Y13 exams and no coursework, which seems a bit archaic now! I seem to remember that we had three papers: Shakespeare, poetry and possibly novel/other? We definitely did:

Hamlet
Richard II
The Merchant of Venice
Samson Agonistes (and possibly other Milton?)
TS Eliot Selected Poems (slim Faber book, included The Waste Land)
Emma
The Miller's Tale

I feel we may have done another novel, but I'm damned if I can remember what it was. Anyone who thinks they were at school with me (and my v. eccentric English teacher, who let us watch Apocalypse Now as an introduction to Heart of Darkness) is very welcome to chip in .

I am also a complete swot, and did S-level and STEP English because I clearly couldn't get enough reading, writing about and talking about books. I was deeply passionate about all Literature (definitely a capital L) and terribly earnest with it .

No English A levels here. Maybe that’s why everyone writes better reviews of their books than I do

But off topic, a dilemma about lending books out.

My sibling has messaged me to ask if I will lend their child (11yrs) some of my books.

I’m not keen. The last time I lent books to this sibling, they were returned damaged. Sibling’s pet had chewed them. I believe the 11 yr old is as responsible as can be expected for a child that age, but there’s also several per-schoolers in the house. I don’t trust my sibling to make sure my books are looked after, or to replace them if they’re accidentally damaged.

Would I be an utter monster if I politely declined to lend my books to my siblings child?

I am not sure I can remember my A level texts (possibly as also did a lit degree so might be muddling them up!); but we definitely did The Wife Of Bath's Tale and Death of a Salesman, possibly Othello and The Rainbow, and no idea what else! Late 80s so.probabky more dead white men :).

31. Why Shoot a Butler by Georgette Heyer. Time passer. I have no idea why I am not reading her better books!

32. Front Desk by Kelly Yang. Children's book that didn't quite live up to the promise of its early chapters- Mia is a Chinese immigrant to the USA in what I guess is the early 90s, she (and her parents) end up running a hotel, and America does not live up to its billing! I will be interested to see how this goes down with any of the children in my class who read it.

@southeastdweller, thank you for the new thread!

Tricky one Stitches. Can you lend one direct to the child, explain you want it back in the same condition, and then if it comes back battered, again explain to the child? Children are generally quite accepting of rules about things ime, especially compared to adults! And they probably know to take care of school books.

I can’t remember all the books I read for GCSE or A level. I remember reading Tess and Great Expectations at secondary although not sure if that was for GCSE. Also recall studying The Merchant of Venice and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at some point. A level was Mansfield Park and King Lear plus poems by Yeats. I studied A Streetcar Named Desire but can’t remember if that was GCSE or A level. The James Joyce chat earlier also reminded me of reading Dubliners and I’m pretty sure that was at school but may not have been for an exam. There must have been more but that’s all I can recall.

Bookmarking

I think it depends on how beloved and easily replaceable the books in question are, Stitches. is it specific ones or do they want to choose? Could you point out that libraries have reopened so it would be nicer for the child to pick their own? Or buy your way out with a book-token if that's an option?

12. Lords and Ladies - Terry Pratchett
I remember loving this book when I first read it about 20 years ago. Very happy to say that it stood up to a re-read very well. So much clever detail and tightly plotted. Love how it makes you reflect on the human condition.

Loving all the A level chat and seeing some familiar texts listed. I did:

Hamlet
Measure for Measure
Paradise Lost
Wife of Bath’s Tale
Bleak House
Frankenstein
Either Emma or Sense and Sensibility and cannot remember for the life of me which one
Coleridge and Wordsworth Lyrical Ballads
John Keats

The best bits were Hamlet, Frankenstein and Austen. Feel like I may have forgotten one too....

@VikingNorthUtsire

Another A Level Eng Lit student here; we did King Lear (loved), The Merchant's Tale (didn't really get - it was not until Uni that I learned to love Chaucer), Mansfield Park (hated).... There must have been a fourth? How have I forgotten what it is?

Snap! Except I think I did Wife of Bath as the Chaucer. Although I know I also read Heart of Darkness for school at some point, so I don't know if that was A-level or GCSE. Other people seem to have studied a lot more texts than I'm remembering - but in my defence, it was 25 years ago now!

I've remembered my other two! Six Women Poets and The Color Purple. Really quite progressive compared to many of these lists. I did like The Color Purple.