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?

@Piggywaspushed hope you get well soon.

I am finally on holiday and proving it by upping my reading pace by about 300%.

42. Cotillion by Georgette Heyer

I know there are lots of Heyer fans on the thread, and a friend of mine has also been banging on at me to read her for years. I finally took the plunge and you were all right; I really enjoyed this. So light and fun and frothy. The writing just dances along and it feels like reading is no effort at all. I'm a crime novel junkie and so I usually want books with twists and turns I can't guess. Part of the reason I've never really been a romance fan is that you know how it's all going to end up. But funnily enough I didn't mind that at all with this; I was just enjoying the ride so much. I understand that the hero of this book, Freddy Standen, is not typical of Heyer's leading men - so can anyone advise me which one I should read next to get a more representative view?

43. Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo

I really liked this too, although it is very different from Heyer! Adebayo's first novel is an examination of the marriage between Yejide and Akin which is at first a love match, but is undermined by their inability to conceive a child. This is perceived very much as Yejide's problem, and she submits to all manner of ever-more outlandish remedies to try to rectify the situation - until her husband's relatives persuade him to take a second wife.The story doesn't develop in exactly the way you expect, and tragic events help Yejide and the reader to piece the full picture together. The internal turmoil within the marriage is reflected by political events in Nigeria (the book mainly takes place in the 1980s, but we have flash forwards to the 1990s and the 2000s). I was wholly convinced and absorbed by this until the ending, which I thought was rather too pat, and the way things had happened between the point where the story was left and where it picked up again felt highly improbable. It wasn't an awful ending, though, and didn't spoil the rest of the book for me.

@Welshwabbit, Venetia and Frederica are amongst my (and other 50 bookers) favourites. Also generally a lot of love for The Grand Sophy (although I have not yet read it as I only buy when in Kindle deals….).

I have just checked into my hotel in Rome so it seems appropriate that I finished n31 Conclave on the train. (After panic because my Kindle froze this morning and I chucked a couple of Bill Bryson paperbacks into my case- but managed to unfreeze the Kindle-phew!)

This was great! Like Dan Brown without Langdon stopping every few minutes to shoehorn a symbolic fact in or be shot at or run around with a local floozy half his age who turns out to be the Key to the Whole Thing.
Bit of an unnecessary ta-da moment at the very end, but still a rollicking read and lots of fascinating papal tidbits of information.
My first Harris and he's going to be a bold at year end. Not great worthy literature, just a good, well-written thriller. Have bought dp the paperback for the beach. (,he refuses Kindle and likes Catholic Popey things)

Never mind the mental capacity for The Absolute or Harry Potter, I’m only managing some old Rosamunde Pilcher books. In which everyone inherits a fortune/mews house in London in tragic circumstances and is looked after by the devoted forelock tugging ancient daily help.

Piggy I hope you are feeling better soon.

Razorstorm I definitely want to read more on the subject, so will be looking out for other books too. I think it's a shame it's not more openly discussed, but does seem to be becoming less of a taboo thankfully. I'm sorry to hear about your Mum.

Ridley Road - Jo Bloom
A Jewish hairdresser from Manchester moves to London in the early 60s to look for a man she had a brief affair with. Set against the backdrop of anti-fascist protests, things are not as they seem when she first arrives.

This covers a really interesting time, but sadly a quite juvenile and obvious love story plot and basic writing leaves a lot to be desired. I think could have been a great book with a better author. It is due to be out on TV later this year. I can see it working well in that medium, but as a novel it did nothing for me.

Everything You Really Need to Know About Politics: My Life as an MP - Jess Phillips
A very honest and lively look at life as an MP, from the everyday grind to the international jolly. She doesn't hold back on her opinion of certain people. She also discusses the pros and cons of the system and her frustrations with it including with her own party and the press. Her aim is to bring the point of politics to the everyday person. It is very accessible and she comes across as very personable. She is obviously very passionate about her job, but realistic about the limitations.

Get well soon Piggy

69: Timekeepers: How the World Became Obsessed with Time - Simon Garfield

Another of Simon Garfield's dependably-interesting non-fiction explorations. Have to admit that I found this one slightly less involving than some of his others, perhaps - not quite sure why. Anyway, he covers a different aspect of time in each chapter, with a slightly heavy emphasis on clocks and especially luxury watches (he tries to sound sceptical but I sense he's a bit of a secret watch nerd). Along the way he takes in the 4-minute mile; why the first CDs had a run-time of 74 minutes; how the advent of the railways led to standardised time across the whole of the country - and much more. Quirky and fun but also thought-provoking.

70: The Garden Party and other stories - Katherine Mansfield

Superb and heartbreaking writing here from someone who didn't have the luxury of time. Mansfield knew she was dying when she wrote these stories and most of them have an undercurrent of death despite moments of gaiety and humour. She captures the essence of being human in a few words, brilliantly pinned to the page. I'd read them years ago and re-reading just underlined what a superb writer she was. On to her biography next, I think.

35.The Magician - Colm Toibin
This book follows the life of the writer Thomas Mann (most well known for Death in Venice). Mann has an interesting childhood in Lubeck living with his German father, Brazilian mother and siblings. He is uninterested in the family business and a bit of a dreamer. He marries Katia and has six children, all the while carrying on homosexual affairs and comes into contact with a panoply of key twentieth century figures such as Einstein. He also moves from Germany to Switzerland and finally to America and gets involved in broadcasting to fight against Facism. This should have made for a lively, interesting tale and whilst it seems to be meticulously researched it felt flat.
Mann was nicknamed The Magician by his children (hence the title) but there was no magic in Toibin's writing. I actually checked back in my Kindle home page twice to check this was indeed written by Colm Toibin as it bears no relation to the writing style that brought his thin stories of girls emigrating to to America or the grim realities of small town Irish life to life. This book was a real slog, I would say it was didatic in its approach but sometimes there were vignettes and moments that were described at length that bore no seeming connection to what went before in what was ostensibly a linear narrative. Dull.

Hope you feel better soon Piggy

How lovely you are in Rome Solinvictus. My H is another Kindle refuser. He also refuses to have his eyes tested so needs reading lights that would wake the dead in order to read the small print in physical books.

Terpsichore it's so long since I have read any Katherine Mansfield, I have the Garden Party collection somewhere, must hunt it out. Thanks.

Get well soon, Piggy.

Best, you made me buy Conclave. I have no moral fibre.

74. True Crime Story, by Joseph Knox
Fiction, despite its title. Not presented as a straightforward narrative, but as a series of extracts from interviews with the characters. Reminded me a bit of The Appeal, which is presented as a series of emails and you have to work out what happened.

I'm wondering if this is the newest twist on the unreliable narrator, namely a series of narrators of varying reliability. I say newish, but you can trace it back to Wilkie Collins and the earliest phase of detective fiction. It felt quite a fresh take (as did The Appeal), but it may get stale fast if we have a lot of copycat versions. I liked it but didn't find it a page-turner.

Get well soon, piggy

My reading year continues at a snail's pace.
13 Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
I haven’t yet been disappointed by a Kingsolver book. I just love the way she writes so factually and knowledgeably about the natural world and at the same time portrays such engaging human characters.

14 A month in the country by JL Carr
I would never have picked this up without the numerous recommendations on this thread so many thanks for that. I enjoyed the poetic nostalgia and the gentle pace throughout this short novel. Very glad that I read this on my kindle as the quick reference dictionary was particularly useful for all the religious references!

Catching up a bit with reading as I'm on holiday (and the WiFi is patchy which helps avoid other distractions!)

22. Offshore - Penelope Fitzgerald

I think Fitzgerald might be becoming one of my favourite authors. She has such a lightness of touch both with prose and plot - neither overdone but both perfectly floored. Set in the 60s, this Booker-winning portrait of domestic life on board a clutch of Thames houseboats in various states of disrepair is funny, sad and full of life.

^perfectly formed, not floored! Damned autocorrect

Have just completed Summer by Ali Smith - It's been mentioned on the thread already and I know she polarises people but this is thought provoking, warm and holds up a mirror to Covid UK.
I particularly like the way she mixes in real artists with fictional characters to discuss the importance of art. I didn't know about Fred Uhlmann and his children with balloons art series for example.

42 The Employees A workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn. Translated by Martin Aitken

A series of witness statements, some human, some humanoid, from the employees on Spaceship on a planet where they have found some mysterious objects that appear to affect the employees emotions. Shortlisted for the International Booker this is a short but poetic book about what it is to be human. Another selection of narrators of varying reliability, like bibliomania's last book.

44. Van Gogh : A Power Seething by Julian Bell

A short biography of Van Gogh that intentionally eschews detail and lengthy analysis in favour of a lively and eclectic trip through his experiences, influences and, in places, his finished products. It's almost a pen-portrait of Van Gogh the man. I already knew a reasonable amount about some parts of his life (in particular, the influence of Japanese prints on his art), but this gave me some more insight into his early life and his relationship with his brother, Theo, without the need to plough through (for example) the 900 page opus I understand someone else has written about him. Van Gogh doesn't come across as an easy or pleasant individual, but the numerous quotes from his correspondence with his brother show him to have been extremely eloquent both about his art and about himself. The relatively brief section at the end dealing with his spells of mental illness is very sad to read; you can't help thinking that he would have been treated very differently today, perhaps with a different outcome. Not at all comprehensive, but (for me) probably the better for it.

So it is looking like a trend, Janina!

75. A Year at the End, by Anne Theroux
Account of the ending of her marriage to Paul Theroux. I always thought he was a prat and this didn't change my mind. I liked her laconic style.

46. Days Without End, Sebastian Barry. 4/5
    The narrator of this novel, a young Irish immigrant to the US, recounts his experiences fighting in the 19th-century Indian wars and then in the American Civil War. I already read A Thousand Moons last year, which features the same characters (yes, I read the two books in the wrong order, but that turned out not to matter much). A Thousand Moons, which has a female narrator, was great too, but I thought Days Without End was even more impressive. Thomas McNulty’s voice is amazingly fresh and convincing, and even though novels about war are not my favourite genre, this kept me engaged all the way through. The fact that Barry manages to make a story of 19th c. male cross-dressing gay lovers so believable speaks for itself. McNulty leaves readers to form their own judgement of the characters he describes they are not portrayed in black and white terms, but are human and imperfect and there are many interesting twists and turns. In short, Barry is a wonderful writer.

47. Real Estate, Deborah Levy. 4/5
    The last volume in the trilogy of Levy’s ‘living autobiography’, this did not disappoint. The middle volume, The Cost of Living, remains my favourite of the three, but her style in this book is funny, honest and feminist as ever. As it happened, her father, the anti-apartheid activist Norman Levy, died during the week I was reading this memoir. He was clearly a remarkable person, and so is his daughter.

48. Still Waters, Viveca Sten, trans. by Marlaine Delargy. 3/5
    This was a very enjoyable summer read, with an appealing setting on the Swedish island of Sandhamn (which Sten herself knows well and describes lovingly), but it was a bit too cosy for my taste. I like my detective fiction a bit darker I guess, ha. So I probably won’t seek out other volumes in the series. As an aside, I was interested to see that the book was published by Amazon. I didn’t realise Amazon had a publishing arm. Obviously publishing translated fiction is a great thing to do; I just hope Amazon is paying the translators a decent wage.

Much sympathy to you, Piggy!

Wow, the Kate Clanchy row just carried on escalating and then properly exploded. I feel quite sorry for her now. A few other white authors who came to her defence have also been on the receiving end of criticism: Amanda Craig and Philip Pullman. The voices of people of colour absolutely need to be heard, but the vitriol of Twitter in full swing is an ugly thing to witness.

MegBusset, I love Penelope Fitzgerald, and Offshore in particular. I thought the children in that novel were particularly well done -- she doesn't patronise them or sentimentalise them at all. I think there's a fair bit of autobiography in the novel, as she did live with her children in a boat for awhile.

46. Trans by Helen Joyce
If you're already deep in this argument you'll have heard of this book. I think it offers a lot to understand what people are going on about, though by going for a big sweep across a lot of areas it sacrifices some depth. Helen Joyce is a serious journalist and it's a journalist's book, in that it pulls together other people's thinking. I'd agree with some who would no doubt not agree with me on the arguments that the title is not great; the book says, after all, 'this is not a book about trans people'.

@MegBusset @cassandre I also really enjoyed Offshore earlier this year. I haven't read anything else by her, what would you recommend?

Am just about to start Conclave @SOLINVICTUS so great to see a positive review of it.

I also loved Days without End which we read for book club last year. Such a light touch over such a difficult subject. Apparently all his books are about different parts of the McNulty family.

65. A Mind To Murder - PD James. Thks was her second book, written and set in the early 60s. It's about a murder in an upper class psychiatric clinic. I wouldn't say it's one of her best and was a bit bored by it.

66. Sorrow and Bliss - Meg Mason. This is the story of Martha, narrated in the first person, and her life struggling with mental health and her marriage and family. I loved it, it's very funny, sad and honest. I had to Google it to see if Meg Mason really is Martha, she isn't but her voice is so accurate. Really recommend this.

67. The Wedding Party - Tammy Cohen. This was a 99p Kindle Richard & Judy buy. I'm lucky enough to be on holiday in Kefalonia where it is set so thought I'd give it a whirl. It's a thriller, wedding with various tensions around, but didn't really rock my boat. In terms of the setting, it could really be anywhere. Louis De Bereniers has of course written the classic Kef novel but reread that a couple of years back and don't fancy reading it again.

@cassandre I’ve been following a little on Twitter but was pretty shocked at some of Phillip Pullman’s tweets. He seems to be taking on the troll role for some reason.

42. Ouch! Why Pain Hurts, and Why it Doesn't Have To by Margee Kerr and Linda Rodriguez McRobbie. A book about various aspects of pain - attitudes towards pain, pain assessment and measurement, treatment, management of chronic pain and its effect on sufferers, self-inflicted pain etc. This was a mixed bag for me - I found some bits really interesting (eg the section on self-harm) and other parts rather rambling. Also, I listened to it on Audible, and found the narrator's voice slightly annoying (she is American and very dramatic!). Overall it was worth a read, as I learnt some interesting facts and encountered some viewpoints I hadn't heard, but I feel that some sections could have been written more succinctly.

@Stokey the others I've read are Human Voices and The Beginning Of Spring, both fantastic. The Bookshop is 99p on Kindle atm so just bought that.

41. Utopia Avenue - David Mitchell The trials and tribulations of a band trying to make a name for themselves in Swinging 60s London

I was a bit disappointed with this one. I am mostly a Mitchell fan, I love Cloud Atlas, Ghostwritten, Bone Clocks and Black Swan Green. The others are good but not in my list of great books.

This was a good story with interesting side-chapters on the band members' personal lives (Jasper's back-story and Elf's family grief at the death of her baby nephew especially), but I found the author's rendering of working-class speech irritating and I could't ignore it enough to fully engage.

As a bona-fide Northerner I can't forgive the spelling of "fook" whenever uttered by Griff from Hull. In my accent "took" is pronounced exactly the same as "tuck", there is no need to make a massive issue of "fook" and "fuck". I always read to myself fook with a long oooo as in Typhooo and I've never heard anybody actually say that. My Lancastrian Grandma used to pronounce "book" and "took" with a long Typhoo oo, but even she wouldn't have said "fook" with a long oo had she ever had cause to utter such a profanity.

Likewise, Gravesend-born Dean never ever says "you", it's always "yer" which makes sense to me in some contexts but not all. eg "I can go there but not yer". I'm not from Gravesend though so I could be wrong, however it grated on me throughout.

All-in-all not a bad book but not as good as I was anticipating. The David Mitchell universe is present to an extent; Jasper is the descendent of Jacob de Zout, the Captain Marlowe is a venue for one of the band's early gigs, Luisa Rey plays a role as Elf's first lesbian lover but all these are incidental and the book could stand alone without prior knowledge of these entities, however the horology crew make an appearance near the end in a section that would be totally baffling if you haven't read Bone Clocks