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?

Hey Emcla and MegB good to see you both around again.

Sign me up to the Taylor Jenkins Reid guilty pleasure club too. Always good for an immersive fast paced fun read. I've got Maybe In Another Life on the coffee table winking at me.

On Phillip Pullman he's noted on twitter for doing faux-innocent shit stirring and is one giant wooden spoon who deliberately inflames arguments, especially if it brings another author down. I won't read him again as a result. My good opinion once lost is lost forever.

I've had a very strange week where I've felt incredibly tired with terrible brain fog, so have resorted to Enid Blyton series on audiobook. I've got through the entire Five Find-Outers series, which I loved as a child, but found them incredibly snobby, annoying and obnoxious this time around. I've also listened to the Adventure series which were always some of my favourites. I'm not counting 23 books! as they were only between 3-5 hours each before increasing the speed. I love Enid Blyton, but the flaws in her writing are very apparent when binged. Sadly not quite the nostalgic trip down memory lane I had in mind, but about as much as I felt my brain could cope with.

I DNF Grown Ups - Marian Keyes in which a family member gets concussion and can only speak the truth afterwards and can't keep her thoughts to herself. Great premise, but sadly after 3.5 hours of a 13.5 hour audiobook and no concussion in sight I gave up. She spent that long introducing the many members of the sprawling Irish family while shoehorning in 'issues' that I decided I didn't care and couldn't wait. I really wanted to like it.

Nightbitch - Rachel Yoder
A SAHM with a 2 year old starts to feel like she is losing her mind as she thinks she is slowly turning into a dog. Patches of hair start appearing, her teeth feel sharper and her instincts change.

This is a very odd and yet strangely compelling book which looks at modern womanhood and how society treats different kinds of mothers. It needs a bit of leeway for the surrealism, but I really enjoyed it.

The Lamplighters - Emma Stonex
In 1972 three lighthouse keepers disappear without a trace. The door is locked from the inside, both clocks have stopped at the same time and the log details a terrible storm of which there was no sign on the nearby mainland. 20 years later an author approaches their wives to try to investigate what happened and solve the mystery. Shifting between the two time frames, possible reasons are revealed which differ with the official report into the incident.

Great start with very atmospheric writing, but I think it trailed off a little towards the end. It's a debut novel and I'd definitely look out for more by her.

Eine it's a few years since I read it, but I really enjoyed Girl. It made me think.

I think the discussions of appropriation around fiction are a very slippery slope. Where do you draw the line of who gets to write what and who gets to decide? Can authors only write about their own direct personal experiences? Who could prove this?

Lionel Shriver speaks very well on this as she got embroiled in an argument about it a few years ago.
Guardian Article

I read Guest House for Young Widows by Christina Lamb, which is non-fiction telling the stories of various 'brides of Isis'. She touches on this as a white journalist who fully understands that the women she interviewed wouldn't have the option of being published, the reach of being known in their field and so on, however those women recognised that the important thing was to have their story told, no matter who told it. Better by someone with influence than by nobody.

I do think publishing needs to be more open to diversity, but we know it's not, we know it's going to take a long time to get there and in the meantime there are stories worth telling that may inspire people to think and be more open minded, seek out more information, seek the real stories from the people involved etc.

@FortunaMajor

Agree in general for example I really enjoyed American Dirt but, this left me cold.

Oh, separately Fortuna I won't read another Pullman because every one I have read is a shocker

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit

Oh, separately Fortuna I won't read another Pullman because every one I have read is a shocker

well there's that too...

@FortunaMajor Guest House for Young Widows is by Azadeh Moaveni, who is not white, although she was born in the US (of Iranian parents). Still the case though that she was in a position to get the women's stories published.

In the wake of reading Mansfield short stories, 71: Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life - Claire Tomalin

I'd read this years ago but quite honestly couldn't remember most of it. Mansfield's life was short and rackety and to be honest, her breezy sense of entitlement and terrible treatment of friends and family doesn't make her come across as someone you'd want to spend all much time with (she was definitely the sort of person who features on here in AIBU threads about brazen CFs). But her writing is still compelling and she died so tragically young after years of suffering from wretched ill-health. A reliably solid biog from C Tomalin that doesn't pull any punches.

72: Due to a Death - Mary Kelly
Wow. This was a cracker. A green Penguin, published 1962, and gripping from the get-go, with a terrific, almost unbearably claustrophobic sense of place. Unhappily-married Agnes lives in an isolated marshland village with her husband Tom, forced to spend her time socialising with his two friends, Tubby and Ian. Into their tight circle comes a stranger, Hedley, and Agnes finds herself drawn to him. But there's a creeping sense of unease that she can't quite seem to put her finger on....
Tbh this isn't really much of a crime novel as plots go, but the quality of the writing is extraordinary and quite unlike anything else I've read. So excellent, in fact, that I've already ordered two more of her books.

Welsh I've mixed it up with Our Bodies, Their Battlefields

I had a feeling something wasn't right when I typed it.

Both brilliant books if anyone is looking for a thought provoking non-fiction read.

You've all made me feel better about never having got beyond 20 pages of a Philip Pullman despite starting several about 10 times.
Would anyone like to try, in 50 thread time-honoured fashion, to put the case for the defence?

Meanwhile, I'm meandering gently, but fittingly wryly, through The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald. A thing of beauty.

Lovely review of Little House on the Prairie, Viking! You're so right in how that quote encapsulates both what is beautiful and what is troubling about her books.

Boiledeggandtoast, that's a good point about the ending of The Unseen. I think it might be true of the 2nd book as well -- the endings feel quite crammed with characters and events compared to the rest of the book, as though the tying up of loose ends is happening too fast.

Fortuna, I didn't know that about Pullman's Twitter habits; I guess I haven't been following him for long enough. Oh dear.

Incidentally, Shriver may well have valid points to make about the appropriation of the other in fiction (I mean, inventing characters you yourself are not is kind of the whole point of fiction!), but she's someone whose books I will no longer touch with a bargepole. She's heavily racist, no bones about it. Has come out on multiple occasions with anti-immigrant polemic and stuff about how Western culture is being diluted and ruined by intruders. My DH is an academic who works in refugee studies and she has been persona non grata in our household for a long time. The irony is that she herself is an immigrant to the UK. But because she's a white American, no probs. It makes me angry, the right has done so much to wreck America and now she's brought her poison over here.

I see Kate Clanchy as a well-meaning lefty whose unconscious racial bias has been exposed. I see Shriver as someone who is utterly unashamed of her racial bias.

But even people on the far right tell the truth sometimes!

Cassandre I wasn't aware of Shriver's outright racism as she isn't a writer I've ever sought out after finding Kevin impenetrable some years ago. I don't tend to keep up with the cultural press and I probably should, but a lot trickles down to me eventually.

I remembered the appropriation row and thought she had a point on who gets to write what fiction as I think it's a minefield where writers are damned if they do and damned if they don't when they try to include any sort of experience outside of their own.

I'm do firmly believe in freedom of speech and the right to offend as I think it's important to have issues and ideas debated on the public stage to challenge, inform and educate. I find the current trend towards purity politics and a cancel culture mentality quite concerning when coupled with student demands to be safe from ideas they don't like, before they have even engaged with them fully. Know thy enemy is important.

However I do have my own persona non grata list which I consider to be for good reason rather than knee jerk reactions. I agree with not putting money in the pockets of people you find objectionable.

I liked Kevin when I read it years ago and teach the film but Lionel Shriver is an awful awful person these days (I guess she probably always was). There is such a superior arrogance about her. I have stopped teaching the film, but not because of her, as she had nothing to do with it. Kate Clanchy thing rumbles on.I don't know how to feel. Not enjoying her wide eyed lack of genuine reflection but definitely not also enjoying the continued bile being spewed about her from some quarters on Twitter. I also don't understand why it ahs taken this long!

I just finished Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Speaking of schools, I see this mooted quite a lot as a potential GCSE text should the curriculum ever be widened beyond its current ridiculous constraints. it would indeed be an excellent addition. Well written, without being at all forced or pretentious, thought provoking, beautiful but also sad. 15 year old me would definitely have liked it.

I've liked some of Pullman. I find the first half of The Golden Compass quite boring but then it perks up. The next two books have a couple of bits that drag but I think the whole makes up for it. I enjoyed La Belle Sauvage but The Secret Commonwealth was in desperate need of editing. He comes across as a bit of a curmudgeon with just pages of quite dull rants. My daughters have really enjoyed the Spring-heeled Jack books, and actually the 11 year old liked His Dark Materials. I guess they are meant more for young adults (except for the Secret Commonwealth - no idea who that's for). I don't love Harry Potter either having been too old to read it as a child.

69. Transit - Rachel Cusk. I read Outline earlier this year and enjoyed it so thought I'd proceed with Transit. It's more of the same although the narrator is now back in London and the episodes are more with people she encounters rather than the stories of her class is the first book. There's her builder and his friend from Albania, an ex boyfriend, her cousin and his new partner, and a panel at the Hay festival. It's still very detached and observed, but I enjoyed the cadence of it and will read the last.

70. In plain sight - the lives and lies of Jimmy Saville - Dan Davies. This was an in-depth investigation by a journalist who suspected for a long time there was something off about Saville and then found himself with access to him over about 4 years but was unable to pin anything down. I didn't read this all as found myself getting a bit bored by Saville's early life and constant wheeling and dealing, and also incredibly depressed by the constant abuse that was uncovered. The bits I found most interesting were about the aftermath and investigations into his behaviour and the appalling failings of the establishment, particularly the various police forces and the BBC who brushed off a Newsnight investigation months after his death.

I loved his dark materials as a kid - Lyra was such a great character. But the latest novels I really didn’t enjoy, the latest one was full of characters inner thoughts lusting over Lyra and an indefensible scene where rape was under tactlessly as a plot device / character development. I really felt like I’d grown up and Pullman was still just a teenager reading some of his latest drivel (Twitter not included but similar)

It’s ages since I have updated anything. I have been reading but nothing much that is worth updating. A couple of recent reads:

The Book of Seconds by Mark Mason

This is an entertaining book about all the people/buildings/events that were the second to do/be something. It includes the second tallest man ever, the second ever Oscars ceremony, the second person to run the sub-4 minute mile, and so on. Good fun and sad to think that everyone e/everything in here could have been very famous had they just done something slightly sooner/been an inch taller or whatever.

The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz

I was disappointed by this. The premise sounded good - struggling writer steals plot from student who has passed away - but I found the start of the book quite dull and it was only really the last third that got going, The twist was easy to see coming too.

The Truants by Kate Weinberg

Another disappointment. This is about a group of students who get caught up with their enigmatic professor. However, we’re constantly told how wonderful and charismatic the professor is but I really couldn’t see why - this didn’t come across at all. And I just cannot believe it would be acceptable for a professor to invite students round to her house etc as much as she did. The end of the book is just a mess - trying to inject a sense of mystery but falls completely flat. Really not sure what this was trying to be.

I don't know if anyone else here wants to read The Appeal by Janice Hallett but I bought it for £1.79 this morning, following mentions/ reviews here and recommendations on LibraryThing, including a positive review by a solicitor of the way in which the story is told through lawyers examining documents. I'm intrigued because I've worked as a legal secretary (and am hoping to pick up some paid work in that line if there is any going this sutumn/next year).

I thought I'd posted this earlier but forgot to actually post my previous attempt.

33. The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell - Somehow I failed to connect with this one. There are 2 timelines: in the 1950s Lexie moves to London and builds a relationship and a career in art journalism; and in the book's present Elina and Ted are in the shellshocked throes of new parenthood. On the plus side, the relentlessness, exhaustion and challenge to sanity of looking after a new baby are brilliantly conveyed, and the plot neatly comes together. However, for me even the central characters never came alive and I never felt the force of personality that would enable them to land the glamorous lives they are given, and the minor characters really did the absolute minimum necessary for the plot. I should have DNFd but persevered because I’d enjoyed Esme Lennox and the reviews seemed so favourable I kept thinking I'd get emotionally invested in it but never really did.

38. Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher

I was surprised to find this is the basis of her own show (which I didn't know she had done). This is only a few months after bring surprised that Postcards From The Edge was fiction. I think I need to look into books a bit more before adding them to my wish list which is already 60 books long...

Anyway, it's still autobiographical and ever so witty. I giggled and smirked all the way through. I also did some big sighing. While she is quick to acknowledge the privilege in her life, it's also clear it wasn't all plain sailing and I really felt for her and the struggles she had.

That's a few books in a very short time frame for me, but the next book up is Underland which is fiction and I think quite long. So I'll probably see you all on the next thread!

46. Report for Murder by Val McDermid

Picked up this first Lindsay Gordon novel in a second hand bookshop; was pretty sure I'd read it before (I had) but couldn't remember whodunnit. An enjoyable romp set in a girls' boarding school. Quite interesting to read one of McDermid's earlier books and compare with the later stuff. There was some odd switching of perspective that didn't sit quite right in this one, which seems to have been eradicated in her more recent works. But fun.

47. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - Taylor Jenkins Reid

I am an immediate and fervent member of the Taylor Jenkins Reid fan club alluded to above. Absolutely loved everything about this. I assume no-one needs to be told any more what it's about, but the central conceit is: ageing Hollywood star Evelyn Hugo wants young journalist Monique Grant to write her life story. Why does she want Monique particularly? But that mystery is very much secondary to Evelyn herself and the fascinating account of her life. She is a fantastic character and the book is impossible to put down. I already had Daisy Jones and the Six and am tempted to plunge straight in, although I feel I should save it for another time. Is it as good?

@Welshwabbit

It's better

I deeply resent one of the last sentences though

Welsh it's easily as good if not better. I'd dive right in as she seems to be getting books released quite frequently at the moment. I don't think you'll run out too quickly.

Eine I'm intrigued, but not enough to dig the book out.

I'm about halfway through the 4th in the Boudica series, but feeling a bit ambivalent about this one. All all over long and could do with a good edit, but this 4th was to stretch out what was originally a trilogy. A stretch too far for me.

I'm next in the queue (of 12) for one copy of Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid, but am hoping that the current borrower holds on to it for a few weeks as I'm quite overwhelmed just now. I quite enjoyed Daisy Jones, the first book I've read by her, but perhaps not as much as some people here, and have several earlier books.

I'm reading another novel about the music industry written in a similar format, Dawnie Walton's The Final Revival of Opal & Nev, and really enjoying it so far. I feel a little bit sorry for the author though because she probably wrote a lot of it before Daisy Jones was published and I'm sure the comparisons etc must be really annoying.

The Aooeal has gone down to 99p, so I "returned yesterday's purchase" saying I "found a better price elsewhere" (bit daft as only Amazon sells books in Kindle format) and then bought it at the lower price. (You can do this for up to 2 weeks).

55. Playing Nice - J P Delaney

As a parent, the whole premise behind this book is terrifying, for a random person/people turn up on your doorstep and tell you that the child you have is actually someone else’s doesn’t even bear thinking about.

I loved this book, parts you could see coming, others a surprise, and one genuine revelation. It kept me hooked all the way through, every time I put it down to eat etc, I’d be looking forward to getting back to it.

I’d definitely recommend it!

56. The Moment I Met You - Debbie Johnson

I really enjoyed this book, it’s more than I ever expected it to be. I thought it would be just a boy likes girl and girl likes boy but they can’t be together lighthearted thing.

It’s emotional and written beautifully, and I found Elena (the protagonist), immediately likeable. Happiness, sadness, and tragedy all come together in this book, I genuinely couldn’t put it down.

Debbie Johnson shows insights into subjects that aren’t normally addressed. As a wheelchair user myself, some of the comments or issues addressed are very real factors that wheelchair users face on a regular basis, and for them to even be commented on is really refreshing!

57. And Now You're Back - Jill Mansell

This is a real feel good book, it starts with two teenagers experiencing first love, and a magical scene (I say scene because I could picture it in my mind), in St Mark’s Square, Venice. We meet them again 13 years later, long after they have split up and gone their own ways. The book follows the story not only of Shay and Didi, but their families and friends.

The book holds no surprises, but it is as warm and comforting as snuggling with someone under a duvet, in front of a roaring fire, and drinking luxurious hot chocolate. It’s about people’s lives and ultimately second chances. A book that, if you like Jill Mansell, will leave you with that warm and fuzzy feeling.