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?

My A Level texts get confused in my mind with books I went in to study at Uni but IIRC they were:
Wife Of Bath: Chaucer
Anthony and Cleopatra: Shakespeare
Cymbeline: Shakespeare (Why???? Such an odd choice!)
The Power and The Glory: Graham Greene
Tess Of The D'urbevilles: Hardy
Poems of Gerard Manly Hopkins, May have been another collection of poems 🤔
Heart Of Darkness: Conrad

I didn't do O-level English literature as it was an option and we had to choose options across areas, and I wanted to do German and History, I did English Lit A level, and my French A level also included a French Lit exam.

Our texts were:
Antony and Cleopatra - which I loved
King Lear
3 poets - John Donne, Alfred Lord Tennyson and Philip Larkin (The Whitsun Weddings]
2 Arthur MIller plays - as one text for study/exam purposes - A View from the Bridge and All My Sons
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park - I like Austen but like P&P, Emma and Northanger Abbey better

Not only 2 20th century texts - two of the writers were alive at the beginning of the course though I think Larkin died at the end of our first term in sixth form - we had two different teachers and were working on two texts at a time and I think this was one of our first ones.

For French Lit
Francois Mauriac, Le Noeud de Viperes - I'm really not sure why this 1930s novel by a fairly conservative Catholic novelist about a grumpy old man looking back on his life at the end of it was thought a good choice for a bunch of 16 year olds, but I loved it.
I didn't like any of the others much
Emile Zola, Therese Raquin - I'm much more interested in his Rougon Macquart books and think I might have already read Nana in translation (my mum had a copy).
Honore de Balzac, Le Cure de Tours
Moiiere, Les Femmes Savantes - play - ridiculing women who showed an interest in learning

At university I did a degree in Combined Studies ehere we chose options in broad areas - mine included 20th century English Lit, not that much beyond 1950 and only a couple of women, America in the 1950s then American Lit 1900-1945 then America in the 1960s and 1970s. America in the 1950s wasn't really meant to be a first year course. I did Comparative Literature courses on the Novel of Self Development, which was taught by a female academic with an interest in feminism and women's writing which was a contrast with most of the rest of my course content Then one on the short story for which I wrote my dissertation - about short stories by women writers and how they used the form to portray their experiences.
,

@WelshWabbit, who were the six women poets?

My school had a mad system where you spent the first 6 months reading lots of literature and poets to "acclimatize" you to A level texts and so you could make scholarly comparisons in essays. The reading list had authors such as DH Lawrence and poets like TS Eliot, Andrew Marvel that weren't on the A level syllabus. As a result the teacher ran out of time and we had 2 weeks at the end to do Lyrical Ballads before the exam. I hated A level English , the teacher only liked 2 or 3 pupils and they read all the parts/chapters in class and he only ever discussed the texts with them - snoresville. Analysis of the text in which you could only ever cite established literary critics sucked all the joy out of it.

IIRC most of what we did:
The Jew of Malta - Christopher Marlowe
Hamlet - Shakespeare
Emma -Jane Austen
Return of the Native - Hardy
Lyrical Ballads -Coleridge and Wordsworth
David Copperfield-Dickens
Anna of the Five Towns - Arnold Bennett (the "modern" text) ha,ha
The Pardoner's Tale - Chaucer

This was back in 1978-80.

Welshwabbit - your A-level list matches up quite closely with mine, I’m guessing you were in Wales, late 90s?

I THINK (may be remembering it wrong) that we only had 4 set texts but we did lots of reading around, and a long essay about a work of our own choice. Our set texts were Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Austen, so very traditional canon, but we read much more widely and talked about all sorts of books. Our school was a comp, very mixed in every way, and our teachers did a good job of introducing us to all kinds of writing (someone mentioned The Bone People in a review this week - that was one we read at school).

French A Level we did La Peste (we all had massive crushes on Camus), Le Barbier de Seville and some Maupassant short stories.

@nowanearlyNicemum, same here, I did French, German and History and the obligatory at the time General Studies, but I should have done English instead of History. Absolutely.

My Mum sat her A'level English the same year that I did A'levels (evening classes in her case), and did:
Sons and Lovers
A House for Mr Biswas
Coriolanus
Emma
Persuasion

And not sure what else. I know about those, because I have her annotated copies here. Mind you, her copy of the Rainbow is also very annotated so possibly 2 DHL??

At the risk of outing myself (always wanted to say that) I'm not in the UK and often find myself teaching the lit syllabus over here which is proper mental as the kids do an extract from EVERYTHING. Literally. They start with Beowulf and finish around the Handmaid's Tale. Obviously they end up understanding nothing and liking even less. Dd has just begged me for help with Tristram fucking Shandy to which I replied "no sodding idea" but thankfully is about to start the Romantics. A flower here, a bit of dope there. All nice and wafty-roundy. I enjoy doing the Canterbury Tales (also because I work part of the year there and it's my happy place) but only the Prioress. Gotta love a hypocrite.

French A'Level I did
Le Petit Prince
Don Juan (Moliere)
Andromache (Racine)
and.....something else.....which has obviously made a huge impression on me.

German A' level
Des Teufels General (loved this)
Dantons Tod (loved this too, and this is why I love A Place of Greater Safety. Our school copies had NO PUNCTUATION whatsoever! We spent hours putting in commas and things.
Das Wrack. Lenz short stories.
And....something else.....

French Lit university
Le Rouge et le Noir
Madame Bovary

Didn't opt for French lit after that.

Did a bonkers course called The Sociological Aspects of 20th Century Spanish Literature and did some extremely weird stuff that I can't remember the titles of, one had mud in the title and was about people living near a swamp, one was some surreal thing about a man thinking he was a dog, Or a dog was the protagonist. Or the wife treated him like a dog. He slept in a kennel anyway.

It's a wonder I ever opened a book again.

La Nausee' Sartre. That's the missing one for French.

Thanks Southeast for the new thread!

I am about 1/3 of the way through David Copperfield and really enjoying it.

I get confused between my GCSE and A Level texts but pretty sure we did:

Poetry: Seamus Heaney and John Betjeman. Started doing Sylvia Plath but switched after a couple of weeks as our teacher found it "too depressing"!
Shakespeare: Macbeth and Othello
Others: Alan Bennett's Talking Heads and Jane Eyre. Also Wuthering Heights but that might have been GCSE.

Also did A Level French (Jean de Florette/Manon des Sources and Guy de Montpassant) and German (Andorra and Besuch der Alten Dame)!

Thanks southeast for the new thread, here’s my up to date list:

1. The Pull of the Stars – Emma Donoghue
2. Half A World Away – Mike Gayle
3. Pine – Francine Toon
4. In A Dark Dark Wood – Ruth Ware
5. Olive Kitteridge – Elizabeth Strout
6. The Girl on the Landing – Paul Torday
7. The Midnight Library – Matt Haig
8. The Silent Scream – Diane Hoh
9. The Thursday Murder Club – Richard Osman

10. The Devil and the Dark Water – Stuart Turton 11. Virgin River – Robyn Carr 12. The Guest Book – Sarah Blake 13. The Haunted Hotel – Wilkie Collins 14. Last Night at the Lobster - Stewart O'Nan 15. Nine Dragons – Michael Connelly 16. A Walk in the Woods – Bill Bryson 17. Walking With Ghosts – Gabriel Byrne 18. The Haunting of Alma Fielding – Kate Summerscale 19. Piranesi – Susannah Clarke 20. Started Early, Took My Dog – Kate Atkinson 21 .I’m Thinking of Ending Things – Iain Reid 22. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo – Taylor Jenkins Reid 23. The Boy From The Woods – Harlan Coben 24. Firefly Lane – Kristin Hannah 25. Invisible Girl – Lisa Jewell 26. The Body – Bill Bryson 27. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley 28. The Long Long Afternoon – Inge Vesper 29. A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson 30. The Seven Sisters – Lucinda Reilly 31. Vol’jin Shadows of the Horde – Michael Stackpole 32. Summerwater – Sarah Moss

I’m still ploughing on with Our Mutual Friend and have started All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, I know this has had favourable reviews here and I can see why already. Am also listening to some chick-lit by Sophie Kinsella via Borrowbox (can’t recall the exact name of it but I need light and fluffy listening atm).

15. Extreme Measures (Mitch Rapp #9) by Vince Flynn

Spy/tough guy/CIA agent Mitch Rapp continues his clandestine and somewhat brutal fight against Islamic jihadists, this time also taking on the softies in US government who hinder anti-terrorism efforts by insisting on humane treatment of apprehended terrorists.

This was rather decent and had a lot of interesting arguments about the US's "War on Terror", including the viewpoint of the chief terrorist which is quite rare in this kind of book. I liked this book and will keep the series in mind for this summer's beach reads.

1Christmas Chronicles
2Merry Midwinter
3Twas the Night shift before Christmas
4Bridget Jones' Diary
5Rupture Ragnar Jonasson
6Murder Mile Lynda la plante
7Bone Chine Laura Purcell
8Noone is too small to make a difference
9 whiteout ken follett
10 The Sealwoman's Gift Sally Magnusson
11. A mind to murder PD James
12. Middle England Jonathan Coe
13. Hidden Depths Ann Cleeves
14 Home Bill Bryson.
15 Diana Andrew MortonDiana In Her Own Words/True Story
16. Pillars of the earth
17 Nothing Stays Buried pj Tracy.
18 Shroud for a Nightingale PD James.
19 Findings Kathleen Jamie

2,3 and 9 need italics really. I read them so you don't have to. Utter shite, all 3.

@MegBusset

Also did A Level French (Jean de Florette/Manon des Sources and Guy de Montpassant) and German (Andorra and Besuch der Alten Dame)!

You've reminded me! My other German was Brecht. Caucasian Chalk Circle.

And also adding Jean de Florette from uni.

I loved Jean de Florette. Poor Ugolin.

DS is in Year 10 at a boys school, currently studying Macbeth, Lord of the Flies, Jekyll and Hyde and the Power and Conflict poetry anthology. Quite the collection of toxic masculinity - I do wish his teachers had chosen one text which wasn't about men/boys killing each other.

Good point about the library, @bibliomania

A quick google of the libraries section of my sibling’s council website revealed that not only is there a library branch within a mile of my siblings home, but that the specific books my sibling was asking about are stocked in their council’s libraries

Oh Stitches, you'll be doing a lovely thing for your niece or nephew if you introduce them to the library.

My local libraries are free for reservations for kids, so 2 or 3 years ago I reserved a lot of next in series books for DS1 so he could devour whole series. Sadly he hasn't read nearly as much recently although DS2 has been reading a little bit again.

On Heart of Darkness, one writer who really disliked the novel and wrote an essay about why was the famous Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe.

@LadybirdDaphne yes! Mid Wales, 1997.

@elkiedee it was this book: www.goodreads.com/book/show/2827977-six-women-poets

Ha Stitches, that gives you an out! And as Viking says, it's actually a positive thing for the child in question.

I would have loved Betjeman, Bennett and Bronte at A level. Sounds like heaven. It’s got to be more engaging for the student surely rather than doing Paradise Lost zzzz.

I also took (and failed dismally) French A level - Les Femmes Savant, Andre Gide - Symphonie Pastoral (ugh). Poetry - Rimbaud, Verlaine, Leconte De Lisle and Victor Hugo, which I loved and some modern novel about a cyclist who lost his arm in a factory accident. No idea what that was. We had a brilliant lit teacher but an awful language teacher. I think I got a ‘U’