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?

Also I doubt REG is carrying that lovely bag full of books himself. Thank goodness for Kindles. My limit before ebooks was five or six paperbacks to last me two weeks, and then I would top up from hotel bookswaps or English-language bookshops, where I could find them.

15. Fingers in the sparkle jar – Chris Packham The natural elements and Packham’s reactions to them were beautifully written but I felt the more human side was awkward and painful to listen to (audiobook) but that was probably the whole point, wasn’t it? I was really moved by the final chapters and agree with him wholeheartedly about the devastating and long-lasting effect that the death of an animal can have on a caring and sensitive human. Sadly, this is overlooked by many. His battle with depression is heart-wrenching and struck very close to home as my sister-in-law took her own life in May.
    Ultimately a brave and honest encounter with a young man who would much rather have been born an otter!

Hi all. Thanks for the warm welcome you lovely people.

I’ve read 3 recently
Songbirds by Christy Lefteri
I was disappointed in the ending but enjoyed it otherwise. An immigrant nanny disappears. An insight into the lives of the nanny’s.

The Long Call by Ann Cleeves
My first Ann Cleeves. Quite enjoyable but didn’t love this.

A walk from the wild edge by Jake Tyler
I loved The Salt Path and I felt this just didn’t do it for me. Maybe it’s unfair to compare but I was getting annoyed with the spending on alcohol etc and reliance on other people to fund part of the trip. I wish him well but would not recommend. Also a map of the walk would have been helpful.

I think, like many girls of their era even in posh families, that the education offered to many girls and young women was quite derisory compared to their brothers. I assume that the more intellectual Mitford girls must have just read a lot because they certainly didn't get much formal education. And girls' boarding schools often didn't offer a very good education. I read Terms and Conditions by Ysenda Maxtone-Graham about girls boarding schools over a period of the mid 20th century - - I think she goes up to the 1970s and the old girls she interviews include a number of novelists and other names I recognised. From threads I've read here, parents are far more interested in what their daughters (as well as sons) learn at school now.

As for "one of the Guinnesses", I'm not sure I'd take this as an unbiased view!

I read a lot of Irish writers, including Anglo-Irish writers, and I'm definitely drawn to stories of big houses and posh dysfunctional families.

Welcome @Emcla. I'm currently reading the follow up to the The Long Call, The Heron's Cry, via a Netgalley copy (official publication is next month). I am enjoying it. I think it's my 6th book by Ann Cleeves - following 4 of the Shetland books and The Long Call, and I must continue with the Shetland books and start the Vera series. I have quite a lot of her novels

Posh dysfunction in lavish surroundings is also a huge ✔️ from me, I like the sound of that boarding school book. I also love boarding school documentaries. It all comes back to Blyton of course.

So sorry to hear about your SIL @nowanearlyNicemum

Thanks elkiedee. I will read more Ann Cleeves I know she is quite popular on here. Just have a massive pile to get through first.

82. Angrynomics by Eric Lonergan & Mark Blyth I've had this on my wishlist for a while, so I was very happy when it showed up on the new Audible Plus list (does anyone know if this is a short term thing? It seems like a great deal having loads of books you can listen to without spending credits!). It's made up of a series of 'dialogues' between the two authors discussing current economic problems, and increasing public anger - where they distinguish between 'moral outrage', eg at massive bonuses while others can't afford food and 'tribal energy' where anger spills over into populism. They then move into a series of proposals to address poverty, inequality, and low productivity.
    It's a short book, but I found it a really good listen. I'd say it's aimed at the interested lay person - there's quite a bit of economics (helicopter money, modern monetary theory etc), but the explanations are clear and straight forward. Unlike many books of this type, the authors really do make an attempt to offer a range of politically feasible policy options to improve on current conditions (including tackling climate change).
    Politically they're probably on the left, but not extremely so, this is all about re-booting capitalism, as they put it, rather than replacing it. TBH the nearest equivalent would probably be early-stage Gordon Brown - the proposals are no more radical than introducing the minimum wage / making the BofE independent. Policies like Child trust funds / Sure start etc are very much in line with the sort of thing they suggest (though I'm sure the authors would be critical of many other of his policies!). I'd very much recommend this to anyone with an interest in politics and the art of the possible

I’m also a fan of posh dysfunctional families and boarding schools….

My recent reads below:

60. Box 88 - Charles Cummings

Box 88 is an intelligence services collaboration between the U.K. and US known only to a few members of the CIA and MI6 respectively. There are a few strands to the plot: an MI5 investigation into the existence of Box 88 and the storyline of one of the Box 88 operatives, Lachlan, told in present time and looking back to his past. I had reasonably high hopes of this but it failed to deliver for me as it just didn’t feel believable. Given I can happily read time travel books and suspend disbelief this doesn’t say much for it. It also massively (and unreasonably) annoyed me that the featured school is clearly Eton but it’s given another name.

61. Longshot - Dick Francis

Onto my next Dick Francis. Our hero, John, is a struggling author who has previously (and usefully) worked in survival/adventure tourism. He ends up going to live at some racing stables to write the biography of its trainer. Murder and trouble ensue. More horses than some which is good for me but rather annoyingly I could remember the plot and who was the bad guy. But it was a good read.

62. The Party - Elizabeth Day

Picked this up on a Kindle offer. It tells the story of friends Ben and Martin who met as schoolboys and culminates at Ben’s 40th party. Ben is rich and popular; Martin is a geeky scholarship boy. Some of the story is also told from the perspective of Martin’s wife, Lucy. Ben, Martin and Lucy are all pretty unappealing characters and this didn’t do much for me.

63. Maurice - E M Forster

This has been unread on my bookshelf for decades so quite pleased with myself for finally reading it. Written in Edwardian times. Maurice is unimaginative, of mediocre intelligence and solidly middle class. At Cambridge (presumably easier to get in then!) he meets Clive. Clive is impoverished landed gentry and intellectual. They become friends and Clive falls in love with Maurice. Maurice is initially repulsed when Clive reveals his love but then comes to realise he feels the same way too but Clive is insistent that their love must remain platonic. They spend some happy times together but things then begin to unravel and Maurice is left to struggle with his inner turmoil. This was an interesting insight into the period including the class differences and the expectations of society as well as the attitudes towards homosexuality but I couldn’t see the attraction of Maurice.

Having followed all your reviews I am going to try The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo next.

61 Who Is Rich by Matthew Klam
I no longer know who Rich is or was and I don’t care. This was like Fleischman is in Trouble but with an even more self absorbed and less likeable protagonist. Rich white Americans being tedious. Urgh.

*62 Chip Shop in Poznań.
Bloke goes to Poland to see what it’s like, works in a chip shop, travels around, learns a bit about Poland, thinks about history and Brexit. It was fine, but I won’t be rushing back for more.

63 Hollywood Wives by Jackie Collins
This has sex and shopping and lots of sun, but also a serial killer plot that seems to be completely separate until the end when it all ties together nicely. Well done, Jackie. This was high trash, well executed.

74: The Christmas Egg - Mary Kelly

Oh darn it, I've succumbed to my tendency to get mildly obsessed with chance discoveries and, from owning one Mary Kelly green Penguin acquired at random from a secondhand bookshop somewhere, I now have four of her books and have devoured two of them .

Turns out she's a bit of a forgotten legend, according to the very interesting foreword to this reprint in the British Library Crime Classics series, and wrote 10 books in the 50s and 60s before stopping abruptly - she didn't die until 2017. This one features a detective, Brett Nightingale, unravelling the mystery behind the lonely death of an elderly woman in poverty-stricken Islington - an elderly woman who just happens to be the ex-Princess Olga Karukhin, and who turns out to be possessed of fabulous gold and jewels from her Tsarist glory days. It's a strange novel, oddly plotted and not much of a whodunnit, but somehow fascinating, well-written, and I'm hooked. Unfortunately it looks as though the 6 books I don't have are all either horrifically expensive or just unobtainable, so I'll have to make do with the 4 I have!

Perhaps the B|LCC series will reprint more of them, as they seem to have published one a year.

I hope so, elkiedee, but I slightly suspect they've done the two best ones now, which are the ones I've bought. Another was a lucky Abe books find. But you never know, if I ever go into an actual bookshop again I may stumble across a few more original green Penguins...

91. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (Audible)

I'm going to assume we all know the plot 24601 etc.

It's a REALLY good Audible well read and easy to listen to.

It's also a really good novel, well written and with really accessible short chapters. I thought it would be the opposite and a bit of a slog but it's actually not.

Even when it diverges from the plot to waffle about something, which it does frequently :

Paris
Waterloo
Religion
The Sewers
Convent Life

It is well written and engaging.

Seriously, I was really pleasantly surprised by this and would recommend to those in search of a period novel that they had yet to check off.

I thought it better than the musical, but the musical is genuinely an extremely accomplished abridgement.

Oh but a word of warning on Les Mis It is like 65 hours long but unlike Ulysses I'm not screaming about it

Eine Thank you for your review of Les Mis. I planned to read this on holiday in Guernsey, in French, but chickened out. Sounds like it would make for a good autumn reading project.

In French?!

Respect!

None due really, I only managed two chapters . I think I can commit to reading it in English, though.

According to my LibraryThing records I have two Mary Kelly books, one green Penguin which is the one I remember having though not sure where it is. LT says that the other is a Virago Modem Classics edition - which I'm intrigued by as I have no memory of seeing this book, lease of all in my own collection, but I'm not sure that's true - when I first put my books in, I don't think I always made as much effort to match editions and covers. I had a set of bookshelves holding just a part of my crime fiction collection (I kept acquiring more books after running out of shelf space), but they had to come down when we had a loft extension built in 2005.

Oh, and Amazon indicates 3 British Library series editions, though these might include the one you found initially.

70. An Argumentation of Historians by Jodi Taylor
71. The Steam Pump Jump by Jodi Taylor
72. The Battersea Barricades by Jodi Taylor
74. And Now for Something Completely Different by Jodi Taylor

I'm continuing my journey through the Chronicles of St Mary's audiobooks and am really enjoying them. Most of the voices have evolved through time and I don't mind the changes but the fact that in a couple of books Kal has been sporting a Newcastle accent has been grating. I wouldn't mind if it was consistent but it keeps switching back to Manchester every other book. That aside I think the narrator does a great job of capturing all of the characters, particularly Max.

73. The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford

Oh man, I just loved this book about an upper-class girl trying to find love before WWII. Having read a couple of books about the Mitfords I definitely recognised some of the inspiration that Nancy drew from her family and found myself chuckling quite a few times throughout. I'm sure if i'd met them in real life I wouldn't have been so enamoured but I find the Mitfords fascinating. Like a few of you I also picked up Hons and Rebels when it was 99p so am looking forward to reading that and possily another couple of Mitford books.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit

Oh but a word of warning on Les Mis It is like 65 hours long but unlike Ulysses I'm not screaming about it

I screamed at the musical because bloody Marius is always a total drip (and don't get me started on Cosette) while Enjolras is so hot it's unbearable,while the book had them much more evenly matched. I think Cameron Macintosh was letting his fantasies get the better of him. Still, can't beat floppy haired revolutionaries bellowing with their legs apart. Even Marius.

I am about to finish The Bookshop so will quickly review here.

This is a true gem and I am very cross that the Goodreads masses don't seem to have realized. Often reviewed on here so: TL:DR middle aged woman opens bookshop. Nothing much happens.
But does it so very wonderfully. It made my happy. It made me sad. It made me literally laugh out loud in some parts and almost cry in others. It's a beautifully written, wry observation of people. All kinds of people. Sometimes you feel like you're reading an EM Forster, sometimes like you're watching a Victoria Wood or Caroline Aherne sketch. Sometimes it's Alan Bennett.
Fabulous, five stars, and will be in my top 5 of the year, and I may have to buy a real copy.

I am now off for some Scandi crime I think. Am binge-watching The Bridge so am in the mood for more clouds and water, natural coloured furnishings and nice lamps.

Thanks, elkiedee - The Spoilt Kill and Dead Corse are the other two Mary Kellys I've acquired, and I've now got all three in the BL Crime Classics series.

I loved The Bookshop SOL but was gutted at the ending.