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?

So I have asked DH for his input re fook/fuck. He is not only Southern but has a very posh voice too. His explanation is that in RP took and tuck do not sound the same. I explained to him that his fuck sounds like it should be spelled faurk or somesuch and furthermore there is no R in the word bath, so why pronounce it barth? We agreed to disagree but he is definitely wrong

@YolandiFuckinVisser

His explanation is that in RP took and tuck do not sound the same.

This explanation has gone right over my head

What has the pronunciation of took and tuck got to do with how someone pronounces fuck?

It’s interesting because my Granny pronounced ‘look/book’ with the long oo sound (NW England, Cumbria and Wales ancestors). If I read ‘fook’ I hear Mancunian though.

The accent thing was a large reason I disliked All The Lonely People. He constantly said “Me did this, me did that” as if the reader was too dim to ascribe the correct accent to the character by knowing his background.

@StitchesInTime yes, confusing! It's me trying to come to some conclusion about why anybody would write "fook" to evoke a northerner saying "fuck" with the aid of two real words (took and tuck).

The worst for me (as a south Londoner) is "sarf London". WTF is "sarf"?

If you are a south Londoner, then of course you pronounce it "sahf". There's no r in there!

Hope you are feeling better Piggy and welcome to the new thread members.

62. Little House in the Big Woods, Laura Ingalls Wilder

Trip down memory lane after enjoying Prairie Fires. Found this charming, atmospheric and full of fascinating period detail. It made me think a lot about how we deal with works of art that contain outdated or problematic attitudes but also a lot of wonderful things.

There were no houses. There were no roads. There were no people. There were only trees and the wild animals who had their homes in them,

Such a beautifully atmospheric paragraph and yet so deeply flawed. Personally I tend to think keep the books, keep the statues, but elevate other voices, other stories, so that there's no one narrative - but I'm not the one being hurt, so maybe easy for me to to say.

63. Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain, Barney Norris

Modern novel set in Salisbury; a spiritual/historic introduction considers the fact that human beings have created sites of worship in this area for thousands of years.

There exists in all of us a song waiting to be sung which is as heart-stopping and vertiginous as the peak of the cathedral. That is the meaning of this quiet city, where the spire soars into the blue, where rivers and stories weave into one another, where lives intertwine.

Each chapter of this book concerns one of five characters, whose stories touch lightly on one another's. I found some of them more successful than others - I was really touched by a woman trying to say goodbye to her estranged adult son the day before the trial that she expects to end in her imprisonment, and by the tongue-tied teenage boy who knows his father is dying and can't find the words to talk to him about it. These were the first two stories and unfortunately I found I was less interested by the later ones, so my early enthusiasm for the book didn't last to the end.

64. Persons Unknown, Susie Steiner

Good old police procedural, second in the Manon Bradshaw series. Manon is grumpy, clever, and very human - I like her a lot. In this second novel, she has moved her adopted son, Fly, away from the London district where he grew up, to small-town Cambridgeshire, where he is struggling. When a wealthy Londoner is stabbed in a local park, Fly is caught up in the investigation. I wouldn't exactly say that Steiner's touch is light when it comes to matters of gender, race and class - she lays it on with a trowel at times - but (as I think I've said before) her realism and humanity are a welcome antidote to the clumsy snobbery that you get with Susan Hill.

65. The 99% Invisible City: a Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design, Roman Mars

Short chapters about many of the little things you can spot in cities every day and may never have thought about - fonts on signs, patterns on emergency vehicles, the design of the central reservation on a dual carriageway, the tricks of planting and design that affect the ways that we mentally "zone" our space. I love the 99pi podcast and found this book very interesting - I wish it had been a little less US-centric and would love to find a British equivalent (he does talk about some UK cities but only really if they share characteristics with American ones).

66. And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie

Classic murder mystery which launched many imitations over the years. Ten strangers arrive at a glamorous, isolated house on an island off the Devon coast, each believing that they have been invited either by an acquaintance or a prospective employer. They find their host absent, and the mood soon turns dark as the guests start to die one by one, while escape to the mainland is cut off by bad weather. I don't read a lot of Christie and this impressed me - the tone is light, full of every day details, but uncanny, constantly tense, and it had a satisfying ending.

37. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

I think this is going to fall into the category of books I admire but don’t really like. As everyone probably knows, Charles and Sebastian form a romantic friendship (and more…??) at Oxford but become estranged as Charles is drawn closer to Sebastian’s house and family; later Charles has a doomed affair with Sebastian’s sister Julia.

It’s very amusing in places and the flamboyantly camp characters are very charming, but they are just minor roles. The seeming acceptance of gay relationships amongst the upper classes in the early 20th century was a pleasant surprise. But by the end I was had grown a real dislike of Charles. I’m not someone who has to necessarily like the protagonist of a book to enjoy it, but I think maybe their behaviour needs to be psychologically explicable to me - I need to be able to identify with to a certain extent. These characters are all Tories which really didn’t help me in this department. Charles just seems so callous and detached at times - he leaves his wife to travel round South America for two years and refuses to visit his children when he comes back; he’s shagging Julia during a storm while his wife lies seasick in another cabin; he has no sympathy for Julia’s Catholic guilt and seems to lack the imagination to try to enter her worldview.

I do want Anthony Blanche as my new gay best friend though: ‘I wanted to dash out of the house and leap in a taxi and say, “Take me to Charles’s unhealthy pictures!”’

I also think it’s one of those novels where I’m going to start seeing allusions to it everywhere. It already put me in mind of Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye (semi-autobiographical novel where the main character is an artist as a substitute for ‘novelist’) and The Little Stranger (outsider becomes obsessed with a stately home, tries to marry the daughter…).

Fell off the thread and haven’t caught up with it all yet but have just read Summer Crossing by Truman Capote.

Has anybody read it? It’s his first novel, found in a box in 2000. Very Capote. Very bleak. Not without flaws and prejudices but I’d recommend it.

77. Stuffocation by James Wallman

Non-fiction. It looks at the problem of people feeling overwhelmed by having too much stuff (hence the title) and some ways people react to this.
His conclusion is that minimalism is unlikely to catch on in a big way, and that instead we’re likely to see a rise in people prioritising experiences (and showing off about them on social media) over continuing to accumulate stuff.

78. Your Simple Guide to Reversing Type 2 Diabetes by Professor Roy Taylor

One of our family friends has recently been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, and it’s got me and DH worrying a bit about our own lifestyle, which is admittedly not as healthy as it could be.
DH has heard about the Newcastle reversing diabetes diet and is keen for both of us to have a go, and bought this book for us both to read. It’s a short and easy read, at just 153 pages (including the index).

Basic principle is that you get type 2 diabetes if you’ve got too much internal fat in the liver and pancreas, and based on clinical trials Taylor and his team did, an 8 week, 800 calorie a day diet is advised as a quick way to reduce fat and thus reverse diabetes.
I have to admit that it sounds a bit daunting.

79. Just Like The Other Girls by Claire Douglas

Psychological thriller sort of book. Una takes a job as a live in companion/ carer for a rich elderly woman, Elspeth.
Elspeth’s daughter, Kathryn, seems to resent Una being there, but otherwise the job seems fine until Una learns that both of the previous girls to work for Elspeth died, and starts to wonder if she’ll be next.
A good page turner.

Just finished another on the train. It’s called Born in the GDR and is the stories of 8 East Germans after the fall of the wall. Okay but the writing was a bit repetitive and it didn’t really tell me anything that I hadn’t read elsewhere already.

37. The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne This started off very serious and, violent I was really interested in the story but then it descended into sort of farce. It was a curious mix of serious issues and attempts at humour in a Lucky Jim type style as we follow Cyril Avery through his life. I didn't like Cyril much and got quite fed up in places, I think the book went on too long.

Interested to see the posts on Penelope Fitzgerald , I’ve tried one (Blue Flower I think) and failed to get into it, and have Human Voices on my tbr pile. You’ve inspired me to try again.

I read a couple of crackers on my holiday this week:

31. Hungry by Grace Dent - I only knew of her through her always sparkling Guardian restaurant reviews and recently her podcasts which are also great fun. Really enjoyed this memoir covering her childhood in Carlisle, family secrets, her media career and caring for her dad as he descended into dementia. Lots to say about class prejudice especially in the media. Easy to read and relate to and the writing is always fresh and buoyant.
32. Mr Loverman by Bernadine Evaristo This was a great fun, joyful read. The main character has been married to his wife, the mother of his children, for decades and in a relationship with his male partner for even longer. The book peels back the layers of the central relationships and sometimes even brings you round to peripheral characters who didn’t seem likeable at first. I enjoyed it more than Girl, Woman, Other (which I also liked) as it goes more for depth rather than breadth. Sometimes there’s a bit too much exposition but I think less so than in GWO and I didn’t find it detracted. I’d say this one hits the sweet spot as a good, unchallenging read that is also satisfying.

88. Travellers In The Third Reich by Julia Boyd

A lot of people on the thread have read this now. My thoughts largely echo @PermanentTemporary upthread.

Though overall a very worthwhile work I found it difficult to get going with, and by and large found it too hard going to read without taking breaks and dipping in and out. As such it won't make Bold, even though I admired it.

37. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Read this as it's been recommended to me a lot as a book people really love.

Whilst I did enjoy it, I came away feeling pretty dumb as it took me over half the book to figure out what was going on. The chapters are well labelled as to which period of time you are reading about, but I couldn't usually remember the previous chapters time period, and on Kindle it's hard to flick back and check.

I think in a few years I might read this again and see if I get more from it knowing what's going on from the beginning. Of course, the way my memory is going it's more likely I will forget to re-read it and if I do it's possible I will just be confused all over again!

@MegBusset

Hello again and sorry for being an infrequent visitor to the thread this year. I have excuses (working and studying) but am trying to get back in the swing of it. I have treated myself to some nice additions to my TBR pile to motivate me.

21. The Big Midweek: Life Inside The Fall - Steve Hanley

The Fall's long-suffering bass player recounts 18 years at the heart of the legendary band with the legendarily difficult Mark E Smith. Although I didn't find it quite as engaging as Brix's The Rise, The Fall and The Rise it was enjoyable enough.

Just catching up on my return from a week in Wales, and delighted to see a fellow Fall fan on here! I've just bought Excavate! The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall.

The Unseen by Roy Jacobsen Many thanks for the recommendation upthread (*cassendre I think). I loved this beautiful and subtle story of a family living on an isolated Norwegian island and the intrusions of the wider, modern world. If I have a very minor criticism, it is that I thought the ending was a little bit rushed and slightly less convincing than the main body of the book, did anyone else find that?

The Broken House by Horst Kruger I read this straight after, and it took me a little while to get into as it is a much more cynical style, but by golly it packs a punch. It was first published in 1966 (but has only just been translated into English) and is the author's own story of growing up in a Berlin suburb amongst ordinary, non-political homeowners, "the typical child of innocuous Germans who were never Nazis, and without whom the Nazis would never have been able to do their work". It is worth reading for the penultimate* chapter alone, "Day of Judgement", which was originally written as a piece for a magazine in response to the Auschwitz trial of 1964-5. It is one of the most powerful and unsparing pieces I have read by a German writer trying to understand how the horrors of Nazi Germany could have happened and how the Germans responded in the following two decades. Recommended.

*In the original it was the final chapter, but there is an afterword written by the author 10 years later in 1975

89. My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier

Ambrose Ashley a committed bachelor surprises all not least his heir Philip by marrying their cousin whilst abroad, but when Ambrose never returns home, Philip initially suspects foul play til he too is bewitched by his dazzling relation.

This is the fifth Daphne Du Maurier I have read in 18 months, and I was left a bit disappointed. The is she/isn't she idea is well written and taut but then it all sort of crumbled for me with its random, non-ending ending which comes from nowhere and seems to bring the book to an abrupt standstill and not a satisfying conclusion.

Billy Summers by Stephen King
Started this yesterday afternoon, and stayed awake very late to read it in pretty much one sitting. Billy is a hitman, who only kills bad men - and he agrees to kill one more bad man before retiring. The first half is the book is Billy establishing his cover, as a writer in a small town. The second half is what happens after he kills the bad man.

It's not a horror story - it's sort of crime - but mostly it's just a study of a character, Billy, and his life, and whether or not a hit man can actually be a good man not a bad man.

I very much enjoyed this, although it wasn't without his flaws. Too many characters were introduced in the first half imo, who would become redundant in the second half. There's a rather clumsy reference to The Shining, which doesn't go anywhere and didn't add anything to the story. The ending isn't what I wanted it to be, although that's more to do with me than a criticism of King: it certainly worked as an ending.

I think people who like King will really like this - and I really like King.

Sorry mine should read 5th Daphne overall and 4th in 18 months. I know I don't really need to correct it but I need to

45. The Prime Ministers : Reflections on Leadership from Wilson to Johnson by Steve Richards

Interesting and entertaining set of vignettes on each of the Prime Ministers in Richards' (conscious) lifetime: in my version there is in fact no chapter on Johnson. Richards focuses on the character and leadership style of each individual. I think this worked better for me when he was dealing with the earlier PMs about whom I knew less (Wilson, Heath and Callaghan), but there were thought provoking moments in each entry. I'm not wholly sold on his writing style - the book was repetitive in parts and he uses the word "ached" far too often (too many people ached to be Prime Minister, or for an answer to some knotty problem). But I enjoyed this overall and think it's worth a read.

Back from the Sistine (and possibly even more interesting than not screaming there, unless you happened to be in the coffin) we happened upon a cardinal's funeral in St. Peter's on Friday morning. Fascinating!

Gobbled up
33 The Plot on the way back.
Not much to add to other reviews. A clever story, only flaw being the fairly obvious "behind you!!!!" perp. Well written and page turning though.

@Emcla, welcome! I have Wintering on the tbr Kindle but am saving it for, well, winter. Seems to have universally positive reviews.

@StitchesInTime, totally agree about Hagrid's "voice". One of JK's few character mistakes imo. Just because he's a big mucky giant he has to sound like a Wurzel? Give over.

@Boiledeggandtoast, I know what you mean about the ending of the Unseen but I hadn't realised until upthread that it was a trilogy so very much looking forward to more!

@Boiledeggandtoast I got Excavate! for my birthday a few weeks back and have been enjoying dipping into it.

Meanwhile, on with the holiday reading:

23. Just One More Thing: Stories From My Life - Peter Falk Unashamedly easy reading (each chapter is only three or four pages long), this collection of anecdotes from the Columbo actor's life is highly entertaining reading - from being turned down for parts because of his glass eye ("For the same price I can get an actor with two eyes"), to his stage and screen work and of course the legendary raincoat.

77. Anthrovision by Gillian Tett
    I've always admired Tett's reporting, (notably of course her writing leading up to / around the 2008 financial crash) and was surprised to learn her background is in anthropology, rather than economics. This book is her manifesto for the value of taking an anthropological approach to a wide spectrum of issues in business / politics and the wider world. It's a little repetitive in places, but overall really interesting.
    
    Unfortunately I had it on audio, and the reading was truly dreadful to the extent that it obscured the meaning in places - random STRESSES to words, oddly placed..... pauses and [ insert girlish giggle] irrelevant attempts to sound smiley. If it hadn't been a time of year where I have very little time /energy for 'proper' reading, I'd have returned it and bought the book.

78. Gemsigns , 79. Binary and 80. Revolution all by Stephanie Saulter
    I'm trying to stick to no screens in the hour before bed, and don't have any new paper books so went for a re-read of this trilogy.
    It's SF set around 150 years after a pandemic which killed a large proportion of the population. Station Eleven haters will be pleased to know that while the pandemic itself is a bit hand-wavey, the time scale (seizures coming on gradually, manifesting as almost unnoticeable 'absences' at first, but then increasing in frequency over a number of years, finally resulting in death), & the difficulty of establishing the cause makes the toll much more plausible.
    
    The pandemic mainly hits young healthy adults, leaving orphans, older people and a massive labour shortage. The solution is Gems - genetically engineered humans, initially produced for heavy manual labour and manufacturing, raised in creches, and owned by their producing companies under an indenture system.
    
    By the time of the novels, the Gems have been developed to include a wide range of augmentations. The indenture system has been challenged, and Gems are fighting to have their legal freedoms confirmed and to be recognised as fully human by the norm population.
    
    While some of the political parallels in the books are a bit heavy-handed, overall the books tell a nice fast paced story with some great characters (Gem and norm). They're pretty cheap on Kindle, & I'd recommend as a good summer holiday read to anyone who likes SF.

90. Girl by Edna O'Brien

Much read on here, to, I believe mixed reviews?

It wasn't for me. I found it scant, and scant because no one really knows the truth of what those girls endured.

I also don't at all consider myself 'woke' but it did feel at times like a further exploitation. A successful white woman profiteering from her imaginings about the true story of an abused black child.

Fundamentally it is scant because it is someone else's story to tell.

I know what you mean about the ending of the Unseen but I hadn't realised until upthread that it was a trilogy blush so very much looking forward to more!

Me too!

Thanks Meg, it looks interesting.

ps Our compilation holiday CD in the car included the classic Rowche Rumble.

pps I can't imagine what Mark E Smith would have made about a mention on Mumsnet.....