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 thread, southeastdweller

1. The Flamingo’s Smile – Stephen Jay Gould
2. Exit Strategy: the Murderbot Diaries 4 – Martha Wells
3. Network Effect: a Murderbot Novel – Martha Wells
4. This is Going to Hurt – Adam Kay 5. Human Voices – Penelope Fitzgerald
5. A Body, Undone: Living On After Great Pain – Christina Crosby
6. Country – Michael Hughes
7. The Anarchy: the Relentless Rise of the East India Company – William Dalrymple
8. Cold Earth – Sarah Moss
9. Winter’s Orbit – Everina Maxwell
10. Bully for Brontosaurus – Stephen Jay Gould 12. N.W. – Zadie Smith
11. The Footnote – Anthony Grafton
12. Dogs of War – Adrian Tchaikovsky
13. Motherwell – Deborah Orr
14. Bear Head – Adrian Tchaikovsky 17. The Official History of Britain – Boris Starling & David Bradbury
15. The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting – KJ Charles 19. The Fire Next Time – James Baldwin 20. The Door – Magda Szabó
16. Clean and Green: 101 Hints and Tips for a More Eco-friendly Home – Nancy Birtwhistle
17. I Never Said I Loved You – Rhik Samadder
18. London’s Industrial Past – Mark Amies 24. Checkmates – Stewart Foster
19. The Perfect Alibi – Christopher St. John Sprigg
20. The Apocryphal Gospels – Paul Foster
21. The Gnostic Gospels – Elaine Pagels
22. A Memory Called Empire – Arkady Martine
23. The Birth of Classical Europe – Simon Price and Peter Thonemann 30. Klara and the Sun – Kazuo Ishiguro
24. The Birth of Modern Britain – Francis Pryor

32. A Desolation Called Peace – Arkady Martine
This is the sequel to A Memory Called Empire. This book has more action, and an interesting first contact scenario that should have been given more space (no pun intended).

33. Mr Loverman – Bernadine Evaristo
An entertaining tale of a septuagenarian closeted gay man, originally from Antigua, his family and life-long lover. I was pleased that we also got to see things from his wife’s perspective, and that she also had a happy ending. (I may be a little over-sensitive about this as XH is now on his third relationship with a man.)

34. A Surprise for Christmas, and Other Seasonal Mysteries – ed. Martin Edwards
A selection of short stories from the British Library series of Golden Age crime writing. Not as good as some other anthologies I read, but I got it for 99p from Amazon, so I can’t complain.

35. Last Witnesses: Unchildlike Stories – Svetlana Alexievich
Recollections from USSR citizens who were children during the Nazi invasion, 1941-1945. Not surprisingly, a devastating outpouring of suffering, cruelty and death, though with some heartening humanity and kindness. Very simple, child-like language.

I didn’t do A level English. DM, who did, likes to reminisce that she once threw her volume of Gerard Manley Hopkins poetry into the fire (it wasn’t lit).

French A level: L’Avare (Molière); l’Alouette (Anouilh); Boule de Suif et autres contes de guerre (Maupassant)

Thank you for the new thread southeast. I always keep up with reading the thread but I'm well overdue a post about my own recent reads.
13. Chocolat by Joanne Harris
Vianne and her young daughter move to a small French village at the beginning of Lent and cause a stir among the locals by setting up a chocolaterie.
A reread for me. It had been quite a few years. I had remembered most of the characters and much of the plot, and was pleased to enjoy this novel as much as I remembered enjoying it in the past. I remembered the power of the changing winds but I'd forgotten just how many magical references there were and I liked those too. A perfect read in the run up to Easter.
14. The Lollipop Shoes by Joanne Harris
The sequel to Chocolat set four years later. Vianne is living in Paris with her daughters Anouk and Rosette, trying to lead a quiet, settled life without the changing winds and magical influences of the past. When a stranger, Zozie, becomes a part of their lives, their settled existence is shaken up...in good ways and bad.
Also a reread, I vaguely remembered being less enthusiastic about this when I read it last time and definitely felt the same this time round. It is much longer (in my copies this was 450+ pages compared to Chocolat around 300 pages) and it did drag at times. There is a more sinister feel to it and the magic steps up a notch from Chocolat and builds more and more as events come to a head. Good, but not as good as Chocolat.
I had planned to continue the series to read Peaches for Monsieur LeCure and The Strawberry Thief which I haven't read before, but I strayed off course...
15. Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall
A bestseller from a few years ago all about the geopolitical situation in crucial regions and how the landscape influences the strategies of the leaders of major world powers. This covered a lot of ground (puntastic!) and took quite a broad view, but there was SO MUCH in it that I didn't know/had never heard before/hadn't stopped to think about. I'll pick this up again in future to look up specific countries/regions, but I know it has already shaped my understanding of everything from major historical events to the plot of Homeland! It's been on my TBR for ages and I'm glad I've read it.
16. Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas
Set 17 years before The Hate U Give, Maverick's King Lord dad is in prison and his mum works two jobs to try to make ends meet. Maverick helps out the only way he knows how: slinging drugs. Life's not perfect, but he's got everything under control. Until he finds out he's a father...
This drew me in completely by the end of Chapter 2! It's written in exactly the same style as THUG which I loved - first person, short sentences, wisdom and humour that had me completely invested in Maverick's story. The story moved along quickly and I really enjoyed it. I now really want to reread THUG to see how the characters and stories piece together. As an aside, I haven't seen the film of THUG but thought it was interesting to read in the acknowledgements that the author thanked "Russell Hornby, who brought Maverick to life in such a phenomenal way on-screen that I suddenly realized there was a story to be told".
17. We Were The Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter
Another fantastic read. The background to this is similar to House of Glass which I loved earlier in the year - Georgia Hunter found out as a teenager that her grandfather had been born in Poland in a Jewish family. She undertook a decade of research to uncover the story of how her grandfather survived the war and what happened to his parents and four siblings who were all living in Poland when war broke out in 1939 (meaning that their experiences differ from those of the family in House of Glass who were already living in France before the war). Officially this is a novel, but from what I understand it is only fiction because the author has chosen to write in third person present tense and include dialogue that she has imagined - the 'characters' are all real individuals called by their real names and the plot is based on true events. It is really powerful - the strength of the family bonds, the bravery, the resourcefulness, the determination to survive in unimaginably terrible circumstances, the need to rely on the kindness of strangers. After feeling a bit unsure at the start, I was completely enthralled by the end.

Good to see your review of the Obama book Shakeitoff - DP was given it for his birthday though hasn't read it yet. Work is busy at the moment, so not much mental energy for books, but I've finished a couple of easy reads:

46. The Galaxy and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers

The fourth in her Wayfarers series that started with Small Angry Planet. A group of travellers all of different species are stranded together on a waystation planet when a tech malfunction puts satellites out of action, & have to deal with various personal crises. Although these aren't billed as YA, they definitely have that feel about them - I have a suspicion I'd have loved this one age about 14 or so in the same way that I loved Isaac Asimov's Foundation series.

To a certain extent I think Chambers suffers from the fact that various things about her books invite comparison with Ursula le Guin. She's light years away from matching the writing or meticulous plot crafting in le Guin's best books, but realistically, so are most SF writers, and I don't judge others for it.

47. The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M Danforth

Cameron Post comes from Miles City, Montana, where she lives with her grandmother & her evangelical Christian aunt, following the death of both her parents in a car crash. When her aunt discovers her relationship with another girl, she's despatched to a residential conversion school which promises to 'cure' young gay people of their sexuality.

This one is badged as YA, & I'm not quite sure what led me to pick it up - I think I saw it reviewed somewhere & found it in the library e-books. I'm really glad I did, it's beautifully written, & absolutely convincing.
There's no cut-out villains, just a lot of people trying to do the right thing according to their beliefs, and no quick-fix solutions or plot resolution.

Thanks for the new thread, here's my list:

1. Born Lippy: How to do female, Jo Brand. 4/5
2. How to be a woman, Caitlin Moran. 1/5
3. Love will tear us apart, Holly Seddon. 3/5
4. I looked away, Jane Corry. 3/5
5. Deliver Me, Karen Cole 4/5
6. Now you see her, Heidi Perks 3/5
7. Break In, Dick Francis 4/5
8. Bill Bailey's Remarkable Guide to Happiness 2/5
9. What she saw, Wendy Clarke 3/5

10. Away with the Penguins, Hazel Prior 3/5 11. Ellie and the harpmaker, Hazel Prior. 2/5 12. The silent ones, KL Slater 4/5 13. The flower girls, Alice Clark-Platts 3/5 14. As good as it gets, Romesh Ranganathan 3/5 15. The Thursday Murder Club, Richard Osman (R4 serialisation) 3/5 16. Xmas at the island hotel, Jenny Colgan 3/5 17. Hamnet, Maggie O'Farrell 4/5 18. Alexa, what is there to know about love, Brian Bilston 4/5 19. Xmas island, Natalie Normann 2/5 20. To the hilt, Dick Francis 3/5 21. Reports from Coastal Stations Geoff Saunders , 4/5 22. The Other Passenger, Louise Candlish 2/5 23. Bolt, Dick Francis 4/5 24. Battle of brothers, Robert Lacey, 2/5 25. On the front line with the women who fight back 5/5 26. The 24 hour cafe, Libby Page 4/5 27. The secret midwife Katy Witz, 5/5 28. Up and down the dales 5/5 29. Banker, Dick Francis 5/5 30. Knockdown, Dick Francis 4/5 31. Mother, Laura Jarrett 3/5 32. SIxty degrees north, Malachy Tallack 4/5 33. Walks through history 3/5 34. Limitless - the autobiography 4/5 35. Little girl gone, Alexandra Burt 2/5 36. Outpost, Dan Richards 4/5 37. Space hopper, Helen Fisher 4/5 38. The doctor will see you now, Max Pemberton 3/5 39. Liar, Lesley Pearce, 4/5 40. Trial run, Dick Francis 4/5 41. The oldest house in London, Fiona Rule 3/5 42. Distinction, Pierre Bourdieu 1/5 43. The strawberry thief, Joanne Harris 4/5 44. Can you make this thing go faster, Jeremy Clarkson 3/5

24. The Dutch House by Ann Patchett. Much reviewed already on this thread. Brother and sister Maeve and Danny live in the beautiful Dutch House in Pennsylvania with their obdurate father and his unpleasant new wife and her two daughters. The story is told through Danny's eyes, from childhood onwards. I loved this - Patchett is so good at family relationships. My top fiction book so far this year.

thanks South for the new thread.
I've hit a reading wall recently, but trying my best to keep up with the threads in the hope of finding inspiration.

1. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
2. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
3. Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe
4. Spring by David Szalay
5. Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker.
6. Robert Harris The Second Sleep
7. Lolita by Vladamir Nabakov

8. House of Glass by Hadley Freeman 9. Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers 10. The Appeal by Janice Hallett

Currently reading The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. Not a patch on Once Upon a River which I really liked.

on the A-Level chat, I didn't do English, but for French I read Thérèse Raquin, Germinal, Le Blé en Herbe, and Tartuffe. Hated them all, but I do wish I could still read a novel in French. Can barely read a menu in it nowadays.

@TheTurn0fTheScrew

on the A-Level chat, I didn't do English, but for French I read Thérèse Raquin, Germinal, Le Blé en Herbe, and Tartuffe. Hated them all, but I do wish I could still read a novel in French. Can barely read a menu in it nowadays.

Haha! DH still teases me about the time I ordered us steak in St Malo and it turned up as children’s minced breadcrumbed fishcakes in the shape of fish. And the trip to Paris when I forgot the word for three and ordered 13 coffees(more than once). In my defence A level was a long time ago.

The Only Plane In The Sky - Garret M Graff. Can’t top Eine’s review on the last thread so I will just say this was excellent, moving and heartbreaking.

Welcome to Rosie Hopkins Sweetshop of Dreams - Jenny Colgan Also as discussed on the other thread, firmly adhering to the cupcake by the beach model, this is a Sweetshop in the Peak District. I think Jenny Colgan is about the best when it comes to this genre and sometimes I need pure escapism.

47. Ayoade On Ayoade by Richard Ayoade (Audible)

This was the perfect anecdote to Ulysses. Short to start with.

Last year I listened to Ayoade On Top his dissection of a shite Gwyneth Paltrow romcom. It was good, but rather one note.

This was different, Ayoade interviewing himself alternating playing psychiatrist and irrational angry man.

Everything stated by Angry Ayoade is deliberately surreal and absurd. It's SO FUNNY and I am so glad I did it as Audible.

The appendices were unnecessary though.

@BestIsWest

Glad you found it worth your while

26. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey It's a re-read for me, still as powerful in its evocation of a 1960s psychiatric ward as seen from the perspective of one of the patients who documents the arrival of a new patient and his struggle against the regime. Lovely detail around the experiences of the narrator and his understanding of the other patients, along with his delusions regarding the methods employed by the staff and the outside world to keep control.

Hi Everyone!

Hope it’s OK to join.. here’s my list-

1-Fifty Fifty
2-Sweet Sorrow
3-The Sentinel
4-The Thursday Murder Club
5-When The Crawdads Sing
6-The Killing Floor
7-The Other Child
8-Scorpion
9-My Lovely Wife
10-We Know You Know
11-The Man She Married
12-Fair Warning
13-Who Took Eden Mulligan
14- Girl A (Dan Scottow)
15-The Samaritan

The Samaritan was an excellent read. Told from two different characters from the start until about half way in and then becomes more interlinked. Really enjoyed it. Although my last three reads have been really dark so I think I’m going for Adrian Mould next!

Welcome, Lockdowntherabbithole

31. Huntingtower, by John Buchan
Remus recommended this to me on the last thread and it was lying unread on my kindle so I gave it a shot. Published in 1922, it's very much of its era. A retired grocer, a poet and a troop of extraordinarily pugnacious unofficial boy scouts, the Gorbals Die-Hards, rescue a Russian princess from a Scottish estate. They don't write them like this any more.

32. Another Time, Another Place, by Jodi Taylor
The latest St Mary's. Not quite enough plums in the plum pudding for me - I wanted more time travel and more St Mary's camaraderie, rather then Max seething about management changes. I get enough of that in real life, thank you.

I am checking in. On Wives and Daughters at the moment . Longer than I expected so will be a while with that one, what with work and the dreaded 'not exam exams' that I will be marking for three subjects...

Speaking of which I went to school in Glasgow so did Highers and then CSYS across the two English A level years. I also did English, French and German so lots of lit! I can't remember it all but most of it!

We didn't do texts ; we did authors at CSYS which was certainly good for understanding their themes better:

English - about four Hardy novels , the poetry of Burns (of course!), coursework (self selected) on George Bernard Shaw, King Lear for the Shakespeare (I hated it - the teacher was very dry and it it now my favourite Shakespeare!( and I have vague memories of Arthur Miller. We also did House With The Green Shutters and at Higher Sunset Song, two Scottish standards. I remember doing poems , such as Prufrock but not much memory of poetry except the Burns. We did Brecht in translation and I also did Brecht in German! We did some Miller. Not much Shakespeare there : I avoided him at uni as I felt really under read. Regret that now.

French - Baudelaire (filth!) , Rhinceros La Peste , Maupassant

German - Biedermann und die Brandstifter , Katharina Blum , Die Neuen Leiden des Jungen W, Brecht . I loved all of those.

Biblio - did it make you laugh? I thought it was such good fun.

Just comparing my list with yours Janina and you appear not to have done Burns!!
There doesn't seem to be much poetry on a Scottish syllabus but we did lots of individual poems; I remember quite a smattering of Heaney.
I think we also did Things Fall Apart at some point. We had one of those teachers who did more than the exam required. I hated TFA : the teacher had missionary parents and had lived in Nigeria so he did drone on although generally I loved my teacher with his embarrassingly filthy name (can't put it on here - outing!). To Kill A Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies featured too at Higher.

So few women but plenty about women which was woke for then...

As a now English teacher, I note drily that very little has changed. Chaucer and George Ellliott (sp?) have pretty much vanished now. Duffy and Attwood have ascended; lots of war stuff in some specs. Otherwise, nothing new under the sun... American lit has sadly vanished from GCSE. Bloody Gove.

Remus, I wouldn't quite say I was in fits of laughter, but I did like the Gorbals Die-Hards.

Piggywaspushed No, we did Edwin Muir instead since I'm from the north of Scotland. Did Burns at primary though.

I did the Irish Leaving Cert rather than A Levels. Shorter syllabus as you do more subjects (6 or 7). Much more fixed content, set nationally. Hard Times, Macbeth, a Brian Friel play and a mixture of Irish poets (Yeats, Kinsella, Kavanagh, Austin Clarke) and non-Irish ones (Donne, Dylan Thomas, Emily Dickinson - I think the lone female voice). The thing I'm most glad of is memorizing a lot of the poetry.

Oh, and it was all exams. No coursework in any subject.

Enjoying the A-level, O level, Uni, Scottish Highers lit chat! I used to live in Scotland and it is possibly my favourite country, (although I'm Irish-American, went to school in NI and live near London these days)!

Anyway;

15. No One is Too Small to Make a Difference - Greta Thunberg

Another short read. A collection of her speeches. A bit repetitive obviously, but I still enjoyed it. She's good, but she'll never make it big .

In seriousness, I can see from this why everyone listens to her. She makes great speeches, in which I almost always agree with everything she says.

Got another book on a sort if similar subject now. As someone else said recently on here, I'm finding non-fiction much more useful at the moment. I flit from one to the other. I either only want fiction or I only want non-fiction and I seem to be having a non-fiction phase at the moment.

14. Lancelot - Giles Kristian

The Athurian legend told from the point of view of Lancelot. There is little magic or enchantment in this novel. Instead it’s set in the gritty backdrop of the dark ages when the Saxons come to Britain’s shores. The early part of the book was very strong - you really develop a sense of empathy for Lancelot and the losses he suffered in his early life. I did feel it lacked a bit of depth when Arthur came into the picture. Suddenly, years would disappear over the course of a chapter. It was worth reading though and it was hard not to be moved by the inevitability of the fate we know waits for Arthur’s Britain and the main characters.

For English at school we read Kes for O level, for A level we did John Donne and other metaphysical poets, The Taming of the Shrew, The French Lieutenant's Woman, Richard III and Schindler's Ark. There must have been others but I don't remember them. I might be wrong on which ones were A level and O level. There was a 3rd Shakespeare play but I can't remember it.

34. Lies, Damned Lies and History - Jodi Taylor

The seventh, I think, in The Chronicles of St Mary’s series about time-travelling historians. As ever, the historians are leaping around historical events from Caernarfon in the time of Edward I, to a skirmish with King Arthur, to Stonehenge in its early days and to Lincolnshire in the time of King John to see the loss of his baggage train. Max is in trouble at St Mary’s so also trying to resolve injustices and safeguard St Mary’s from the two staff imposed by the University to oversee proceedings. The inevitable mishaps occur. Another entertaining read but with a more serious note in some places reflecting the trouble Max is in.

35. Acts and Omissions - Catherine Fox

Read this following recommendations by other 50 bookers and because I like a good church-related book. The book follows a year in the life of the Cathedral Close of fictional Lindchester and the wider clerical events within the parish. I struggled initially with the style as the author keeps talking directly to the reader which I dislike. However, the characters and plot were enough to get me through. There are quite a lot of clergy some of whom were very peripheral but the main characters generally worked well although I cannot believe that two such disparate personalities as Suzanna and Jane would be good friends and this was merely a device to shoehorn Jane (who otherwise had no clerical connection) into the storyline. Jane would have better as a friend of Marion and Gene. I also find it difficult to believe, however charming he was, that everyone would have cut Freddie quite so much slack. Minor gripes and I am likely to read the next one..