50 Book Challenge 2021 Part Six

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the sixth 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, the fourth one here and the fifth one here.

So, we're now almost half way through the year - how's the first half of the year gone for you, reading-wise?

Oh well done Fortuna. We haven't had a good bunfight on this thread for a while

Rushes out to buy Klara and the Sun. Use to love Ishiguru but The Unconsoled broke me, but I can cope with a slower more subtle NLMG.

46. The Gift of Fear - Gavin deBecker

This book is so interesting, and more than that shows us to trust that inner voice, there's a reason for it! This is vital reading, especially for young girls. It's not just for women though, men/boys also trust that voice too. If something is telling you not to do something/go somewhere then listen to that nagging feeling. Don't brush it off as silly.

There's an example at the beginning of the book where a guy was about to enter a shop but something tells him not to, he turns and doesn't go in. The next person to walk in (if i remember correctly is a cop), and he gets shot dead. The guy who didn't walk in subconsciously noted warning signs and was right to not go in.

That little voice telling you to do/not to do something is your subconscious and it has seen warning signs that a person may brush off ordinarily.

This book is gripping and really gives you an insight into how people work and think. I'd absolutely recommend reading it.

Hi everyone, I've been in a bit of a reading rut, with a few very average reads, but here are my reviews:

33. The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah This was my first Kristin Hannah novel and I was pleasantly surprised, as I thought she was at risk of being in the "overhyped" category. It is the story of Leni Allbright and her dysfunctional parents - her dad being a violent, survivalist misfit Vietnam veteran and her mother being a co-dependent victim of his violence. When her dad is left some land in Alaska, the Allbrights move and adopt the self-sufficient way of life there. They live on the outskirts of a small remote community, but Leni and her mum make friends and adapt to life there, despite being woefully under prepared at the start. Leni learns to hunt and survive in the harsh environment while her dad becomes steadily more violent and paranoid, and seeks to cut his wife and daughter off from the community and their friends. Lots of vivid descriptions of Alaska, aka The Great Alone, both the endless light of Summer and the seemingly endless dark of winter, but so much description that it felt like it was just for the sake of it.

It's a good story, set over a couple of decades, and certainly a page turner.
I'll read more of Kristin Hannah - probably The Nightingale next.

34. Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stewart
    This is probably the only Booker Prize winner I've read that I have actually enjoyed.
    Enjoyed may not be actually be the right word, because it is a fairly grim story, based in 1980s Glasgow.
    It opens with 15 year old Shuggie living alone in a bedsit, scraping a living with a part time job. The story then moves back to Shuggie's childhood. He is the youngest of three children, their mother Agnes is an alcoholic. His older brother and sister leave home as soon as they can, his brother Leek staying around just long enough to teach Shuggie some survival skills and how to look after Agnes.
    Shuggie and his mother have a strange co-dependant relationship, and his dysfunctional upbringing makes him feel he is not like other boys. He has few friends, often hungry and his childhood is pretty bleak.
    Not an easy read (literally as well as the dialogue is all written in broad Glaswegian) but one that stays with you.

35. The Winter Crown by Elizabeth Chadwick
    This is the second installment in the fictionalised trilogy on the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine.
    I enjoyed the first one - The Summer Queen, which focused on her first marriage to Louis, the King of France.
    This second book focused on on her longer, and more productive marriage to Henry II of England. They had a passionate and tempestuous relationship, and they had eight children, five sons and three daughters. Their marriage was always a power struggle, with Henry constantly overriding her right to rule as Duchess in her own right in Aquitaine.
    Eleanor recognised her second son Richard as her heir, which Henry failed to acknowledge in practice, and along with his older brother Henry, the heir to the English throne, began to plot against their father who failed to delegate any power to them as they grew to manhood. Eleanor supported her sons, which resulted in Henry imprisoning Eleanor.
    The story continues in the third book called The Autumn Throne, which I will definitely read at some point.
    A good read (and fairly to true to the historic facts as far as I know, though of course the dialogues and Eleanor's inner narrative are fictionalised)

36. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte perkins Gilman
    Short story that had been recommended to me multiple times.
    It's a weird monologue of a woman who has recently had a baby and is now "resting" after a period of illness. Her husband is a doctor who is enforcing rest, and not allowing her to do anything energetic. She becomes obsessed with the yellow patterned wallpaper in the bedroom where she spends most of her time. She begins to find the colour and patterns annoying and then disturbing as she falls into a serious depression.
    I found it an odd read, nothing really like anything I have read before, but I can see it's merit as a study of how someone becomes obsessed with something while in the grip of depression

37. ON Wilder Seas by Nikki Marmery
    This was the story of a slave woman Maria, who escapes her master and finds herself on the Golden Hind, Frances Drake's ship, as he explores the new world in the name of Elizabeth I.
    It's an interesting concept, with some historical truth as there is a brief documentary reference to a woman being on board.
    The story meanders around the new world, with some references to Maria's backstory, but for me the story was too disjointed and didn't really go anywhere.

Nice cover though.

21. Providence by Max Barry

This was good! A chance encounter with an alien species goes horribly wrong and Earth finds itself in a protracted war with a species we can't communicate with or even comprehend. Faced with an enemy infinitely more adapted to the vacuum of space, humans create the first truly superior AI and set out in Providence battle ships that are entirely AI-controlled.

I liked the story and the writing style but what I found fascinating were the discussions such as "Life is really about gene propagations... When we think we're choosing to be selfless, or noble, or doing our patriotic duty" we often act act in ways that protect our wider gene pool, even when that risks our own lives.

The book is full of simple but brilliant ideas. I loved the réalisation that humans create AI, the next evolutionary step up, to increase their chances of survival when faced with an existential threat just like single-cell organisms got together over time to create animals with vastly superior minds. And just like the kidneys, heart, or ear that they form cannot begin to fathom what the brain is ordering the body to do and why, the humans serving the AI battleship have only a vague idea of the ship's plans and motivations.

Once you see this you can't unsee it, and there lies the author's brilliance imho. The 4-person human crew of the ship announce "Weapons are ready", "Shield is operational" etc and that looks no different than how our stomachs say "You're getting hungry. It's time to eat" and nerve endings send pain signals that mean "Your skin is cut" etc.

I thought I might like this book, since Max Barry is the author of the phenomenal book Lexicon, which I reviewed back in 2014.

Recommended.

I like a 50-Book bunfight but not enough to suffer through another Kazuo Ishiguro book.

Authors who look down on SF to such a degree that they claim their SF books aren't SF just should not write SF imho.

22. Man on Fire (Creasy #1) by A J Quinnell
23. The Perfect Kill (Creasy #2) by A J Quinnell
24. The Blue Ring (Creasy #3) by A J Quinnell

These were fantastic examples of this genre; truly among the best that I have ever read. I am pleased to see that the author has written quite a few of them

I picked up the first book after watching the film by the same name with Denzel Washington. True to Hollywood tradition the film had little in common with the book, which is not only more detailed but also deeply introspective, with long passages on the global conflicts as well as war and violence in general.

The story centers Creasy, a has-been alcoholic ex-mercenary who starts working as the bodyguard of an adolescent girl. Then the girl is abducted...

I thoroughly enjoyed these Creasy books. They are my idea of a perfect beach read. The closest I have ever come to them before was Shibumi by Trevanian which was a well-deserved phenomenon about 30 years ago, but even that is a light weight compared to these books.

Highly recommended.

@CoteDAzur the Quinnell books sound great - although just looked them up on Amazon and the hardcover is £887!

"the hardcover is £887!"

That's crazy Their Kindle books are less than £3 each, though.

47. To Calais in Ordinary Time - James Meek

OMG this was hard work. I have never read anything by this author before and certainly won’t be attempting another.

It’s set in the time of Edward III and the English are fighting the French and it’s the time of plague. I like historical fiction so this seemed right up my street. The story follows a band of bowmen/archers as they walk from the Cotswolds to Dorset to catch their boat to France. They are joined by a proctor who is seeking to rejoin his abbey in Avignon and the Lady Bernadine who has run away from home to avoid marriage to an elderly man and to seek the knight who the archers serve. The story is told variously by one of the bowmen (Will), the proctor (Thomas) and Lady Bernadine. All sounds promising until I tell you that it’s written in contemporaneous (or a vague stab at contemporaneous) English so Middle English (adjusted to reflect class and educational distinctions). Just so painful and too many bowmen/archers for me to remember (or care) who was who. Don’t bother unless you’ve got insomnia. It’s not even a long book and it took me 10 days to get through it…..

Time, your description of that James Meek book really put me in mind of Matthew Kneale's Pilgrims - which also follows a band of people on a journey etc etc, and which I enjoyed a lot - so I just had a quick look on Amazon and read the first page or two.

The description of a character as having 'puissant shoulders' was quite enough to make me decide I don't want to read it

@TimeforaGandT I read the James Meek book last year for book club. I did find Thomas's story a bit of a pointless addendum and agree with the multiple bowmen, but did think there were some really interesting parts and themes. It's an age that isn't much written about, and I think he managed the different in classes very well as well as the role religion plays as well as all the cross-dressing, which was sometimes a bit confusing. And I loved the scene where they're doing the play & the rampant King's mother. There were some funny bits.

I also liked Klara and the Sun, another book club read. I do agree if you're not an Ishiguro fan, this isn't for you, but for me it works better than NLMG. I thought there were some really beautiful and poignant moments in it, particularly at the end. And actually the way Klara perceives the world is quite similar to the butler in Remains of the Day.

51. The Beautiful Summer - Caesare Pavere. Another book club read by an author I'd never heard of. It's very short and is a coming of age story of Ginia who is 16 and lives in an Italian town. She is friends with Amelia who is 21 and much more worldly, posing naked for various artists to make money. Ginia is both fascinated and appalled by Amelia and is drawn into her world. I think the awkwardness of the teen years and feeling extremely self-conscious is done well here, Ginia is often out of her depth and agonising about what to do. It was written in the 1940s and translated in the 50s, with a pretty clunky translation I think.

52. Nothing But Blue Sky - Kathleen McMahon. This has been reviewed on here before, it was one of the Woman's prize long list. It's about David who's wife Mary Rose has died in an accidental. He goes back to Aiguaclara on the Costa Brava where they always holidayed together, and reminisces about their life. The plot sounds a bit dull but I loved this. It was really poignant and beautifully written. I preferred it to a couple of other ones I've read that made the shortlist - The Vanishing Half & No-one is Talking About This.

@Stokey - I agree that the storyline was fine (if you lost a few of the bowmen) - it was just the style of it. It’s actually a period of history which I know a little about so I had been looking forward to it!

I abandoned the Meek book early in lockdown 1. I liked the idea but the writing, nah. If I'm going to work that hard, i want to be paid for it.

I'd fallen of this thread a bit but don't want to lose it entirely. Latest reads:

29. The Last Painting of Sara de Vos - Dominic Smith
    I read this based on a recommendation on this thread and quite enoyed it, but it didn't blow me away. Historical fiction over 3 timelines, I think the shifting story made it hard for me to really get absorbed in the story, although I appreciated the evocation of 17th century Amsterdam and the closed shop of the guilds for master painters.

30. Rachel's Holiday - Marian Keyes
    This was an audio book for my running and it was the perfect accompaniment. I hadn't read any other Marian Keyes books as they are marketed in a very 'chic lit' way that doesn't appeal to me. This was surprisingly dark and dealt well with addiction and denial as well as being funny and moving along at an enjoyable pace. The ending however was pure Mills & Boon and meant it was overall a bit unsatisfying - like good fast food.

31. Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile - Alice Jolly
    This was another recommendation from this thread and sums up why I don't want to lose this thread. It was just wonderful and I don't think I would have come across it otherwise. It is in a kind of free verse, written by a servant in 19th centural rural Gloucestershire charting a period of intense social upheaval. Society teeters on the brink of revolution and Mary Ann State chronicles this as well as her day to day life. The descriptions of the countryside, seasons and practicalities of everyday life in the country and factory are bewitching and I became fully absorbed. There is a dark mystery at the heart of what is a sad and elegaic book about lives and ways of lives passing. Just wonderful.

39. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Just to be clear – I am very much team NLMG. This was an enjoyable read, the slightly detached style really suited an AI character and a few ideas were bounced around here (like for example the idea that what makes a person special is how other perceive and remember them and this cannot be ever replicated) and I loved the ending. However at the same time I’m a little underwhelmed but have thought about it a few times.

40. Weather by Jenny Offill

A portrayal of family and life against the 2016 american election, this is very much millennial angst written in quite a fragmented way. I like the style it was written and thought that did suit the book, but having read it a couple of weeks ago I would now struggle to tell you much about anything it. So a bit too slight for me.

41. The Street by Ann Perry

This was the first book by a female black author to sell more than a million copies and like many bestsellers this was packed with plot and is a easy read. It follows a young women and her son as they try to make something of life while living in a dismal room in Harlem. The book is told from multiple points of view and builds up a picture of the street and the various characters who live there. The ending was abit rushed I felt but otherwise I enjoyed this, I read it on a short break and it was a good book to dip in and out of.

42. How to be a Heroine by Samantha Ellis
    If you like books about books (I do!) then I’d recommend. Book discussed have a female heroine and include Ballet Shoes, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Lace and Valley of the Dolls.

43. Whats left of me is yours by Stephanie Scott
    This is based on a real life crime in Japan in 2010 where a man who was hired by a husband to seduce his wife (so that he could gain the upper hand in a divorce) fell in love with the wife and then sadly murdered her when she found out who he was and tried to break off the relationship.

So great premise and the author did put in the impact of the murder on the rest of the family, but the central love story and seduction fell so flat it wasn’t in anyway believable.

64. Subtle Blood by KJ Charles
    Pastiche 20s pulp romance & fun conclusion to a trilogy.

65. People Like Us by Hashi Mohamed
    Mohamed is a successful barrister in his 30s. He came to the UK with 3 of his siblings aged 9 as a refugee from Somalia (via Kenya) after his father died, & grew up in poverty in north west London. His book is a combination of autobiography, exploration of social mobility (and the lack thereof) in the UK, and advice to working class / disadvantaged young people looking to improve their life chances. Unsurprisingly, he has no simple answers, but it's an interesting and thought provoking read.

BadSpella I think a lot of people feel the same about Klara and the Sun. It was a book club read for us and anyone who had previously read any Ishiguro was underwhelmed, but those new to him loved it. Have directed them to NLMG. I agree the detached style worked. For me it was a bit of a palette cleanser. I've read far too much wannabe lit fic recently where authors armed with a creative writing MA and a thesaurus have managed to say not a lot with far too many flowery words. Ishiguro manages to speak volumes with very simple language.

Cote it's no fun if you're not playing, but I do understand where you are coming from.

93. Orchard: A Year in England's Eden - Benedict MacDonald and Nicholas Gates
    Two blokes who work on Springwatch spent a year observing a traditional orchard and the biodiversity within. This had a very BBC nature programme feel and the narration of the audiobook was very soothing. A good one for lulling you off to sleep. Really interesting and lovely nature writing.

94. Mothering Sunday - Graham Swift
    An elderly author who was previously in service recounts the events of a particular Mothering Sunday in 1924 when she was 22 and having a clandestine affair with the son in a neighbouring country house. A very poignant novella that drifts back and forth in time. I was a bit disappointed that the 'twist' was very heavily signposted. The film is due out next month with Olivia Coleman / Colin Firth /Josh O'Connor / Glenda Jackson.

95. Ariadne - Jennifer Saint
    The story of Ariadne told from the alternating perspectives of her and her sister Phaedra. I really enjoyed this. I don't think it was quite on a par with Circe for writing, but it was vividly and competently written with a decent pace. I think if you have enjoyed the recent crop of Greek myth books then you will enjoy this and it is a very welcome change from that bloody beach in Troy.

Still like stalling within 30 pages of anything I start

Would a short story collection work for you Eine? I'm not a huge fan of them myself, but might get you through a reading funk.

Not a major fan myself but have 2 on TBR, Atwood and Gaiman 🤔 anyone done Stone Mattress?

Eine - I did, back in 2015. I'm never reading another wannabe-SF by Margaret Atwood, either. Just like Ishiguro, she looks down on SF as a genre and yet writes SF books. Badly.

Atwood is on record saying her books are not SF "because they are realistic" , so she is just not mediocre and pretentious but also utterly ignorant about what SF is as a genre.

This was my review.

37 Stone Mattress: Nine Tales - Margaret Atwood

I didn't find this terribly impressive. All about old people doing old people stuff, which was all very boring. There was no effort (none!) to develop the few potentially interesting ideas to any meaningful level. Is this woman supposed to be a sci-fi/fantasy writer? The fantasy elements were just add-ons to some very dull & geriatric stories. I kept hoping that the stories would somehow come together (as indicated by the shared characters of the first two stories) but was disappointed.

If anyone is interested in the sort of social phenomena that Atwood explores with the story where young people are burning down old folks' homes with cries of "It's now our turn!", "Burn the dusties!" etc, check out J G Ballard's books. He does this sort of thing much better.

35. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E.Scwab.

YA. Interesting premise but too long and too angsty for me. Would probably have suited the younger me down to the ground (I see you Time Traveller’s Wife) but the 40+ year-old-me not so much.

36. Women, Race & Class by Angela Y.Davis.

Powerful and incisive, this book tells the history of US women’s suffrage and is one of the first books to discuss intersectionality (I think). Part of this book shows how middle class white women had the chance to join forces with people of colour and the poor working class to push forward the agenda of equality for all but their feminist leaders chose otherwise.

Although I have heard these horrowing stories of slavery, lynching and rape, segregation and discrimination they never lose their impact. Hearing the debate of Critical Race Theory in the US or our own government’s recent report into UK and racism, the excuses continue. People, just do some research, you will see your privilege, whether that comes in the form of sex, race and/or class and strive to do better.

Waves to elkiedee, it’s Natalie Simpson narrating on the Audible version. I thought she did a good job.

Fortuna, I’m planning on reading Anna Karenina this year. Maybe after the summer. And I loved Vanity Fair.

Round-up of a few reads:

56: East West Street - Philippe Sands

A powerful, gripping and devastating book. Sands' grandfather, Leon, was born in Lemberg, now Lviv, an ancient town that was at the heart of the struggle for power in the 1930s and in WW2. Leon, his wife Rita and their baby daughter Ruth (Sands' mother) were virtually the only members of their extended family to escape murder at the hands of the Nazis.
Sands - now himself a distinguished expert in international law and human rights - discovers by chance, on a work trip to Lviv, that the family originated in the town of Zołkiew and lived on East-West Street - coincidentally, also the home of Hersch Lauterpacht, who grew up to have a key influence on the Nuremberg trials, establishing the case for charges of international crimes to be brought against Nazi defendants. One of these was Hans Frank, Governor-General of Nazi-occupied Poland, who sent millions of Jews (including Lauterpacht's family) to their deaths in concentration camps.
The third main character in the book is Raphael Lemkin, roughly a contemporary of Lauterpacht, and also a lawyer, who developed the concept of genocide and fought for it to be included in the Nuremberg verdicts, with limited success.
The result is part-personal detective story, part- history of WW2 and its immediate aftermath, part memorial to the unimaginable horrors that took place in Poland. This is a book that will stay with me, and probably a highlight of the year so far.

57: The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

Book club choice. I hadn't read this before and it somehow wasn't what I'd expected. As everyone probably knows, radiant, adorable Dorian has his portrait painted then wishes he could always stay young and beautiful. Lo and behold, he does - but as his behaviour becomes increasingly unhinged and depraved, the portrait changes into a gruesome reflection of his true nature.
The original novel was much, much shorter and Wilde padded it out with extra chapters - without them it would be an effective and creepy little short story, but unfortunately it didn't do much for me. Some of the descriptive writing was good but I do find Wilde's studied 'Look at me being witty' pose rather tiresome and over the top tbh.

And by massive contrast..

58: The Uncommon Reader - Alan Bennett

The Queen happens across a mobile library in the Palace grounds, takes out a book to be polite, then gets hooked on reading. Those around her react with varying degrees of dismay. I loved this very short novella - funny, mischievous, quietly posing a lot of gentle but incisive questions.

Terpsichore Grear review of East West Street. I have it on my Kindle, your review has just bumped it up the TBR. Just starting Travellers in the Third Reich also recommended by you