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?

Fortuna, if you can read The Stand while ill with a respiratory illness then I take my hat off to you. That is...robust! Though I agree it's not a holiday read. It's one for a boring April when nothing much is happening and the end of the world doesn't feel nigh. Perhaps interspersed by some light baking or coffee with a neighbour. Pleasant, but not too taxing.

@FortunaMajor
That's interesting! I read an article with my students (Italian teenagers) about how the Italian press (you can imagine) treat Amal Clooney.

That's me ^ by the way.

@PepeLePew

Fortuna, if you can read The Stand while ill with a respiratory illness then I take my hat off to you. That is...robust! Though I agree it's not a holiday read. It's one for a boring April when nothing much is happening and the end of the world doesn't feel nigh. Perhaps interspersed by some light baking or coffee with a neighbour. Pleasant, but not too taxing.

I was about 15 and off school for a few weeks with proper flu, very ill and bed bound. My brother was sent to the library to get something for me. Joyous boy came home with it in all innocence... allegedly. I was convinced I was going to die.

I've just bought his daughter a recorder for her birthday. Elephants and aggrieved younger sisters never forget.

[quote Geamhradh]@FortunaMajor
That's interesting! I read an article with my students (Italian teenagers) about how the Italian press (you can imagine) treat Amal Clooney. [/quote]
It's frustrating and bloody everywhere. She has the much more impressive career and yet is secondary to him.

SOL Sorry, just sharing the love...

I've just bought his daughter a recorder for her birthday. Elephants and aggrieved younger sisters never forget.

Ooh, that's.....punitive.

It was me who abandoned The Stand on holiday, although if we were to vote on least suitable holiday read, my money is on The Underground Railroad. I thought it was an extremely impressive book, although I seem to recall a few dissenting views on here, but I don't see how you could relax into holiday fun while reading it.

I’ve fallen off the thread because we’ve gone into lockdown here (NZ) and so I’ve lost my lunchtime reading hour and am generally being squeezed all ends with full time work and a four year old at home and only one office chair between me and DP… Anyway I’ve nearly done my Little Dorrit for August!

Half A Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is on 99p Kindle daily deal today.

me being a bear of very little brain today.

I see why you didn't relax with that one Biblio. A good book, but not really a beach read. I find the holiday read such a tough one to select. Nothing too taxing, yet nothing too frothy. Historical fiction usually does it for me, but I have to take a selection to be on the safe side.

Daphne I was only thinking of you the other day wondering how you were settling after the big move. Hope things get into more of a normal routine for you.

The best advice I've read about holiday reads is to take something you've started and are already enjoying. This is great in theory, but if I'm enjoying a book I will just race through it before I've even left home. It also only holds good for one or two books per trip.

38. Maigret Goes To School - Georges Simenon

Maigret investigates the shooting of a villager outside La Rochelle. He goes there dreaming of chilled white wine and oysters but by the end he is glad to head back to Mrs Maigret in Paris. And all is well with the world.

We are going well, we’ve bought a house and have both found jobs, DD is due to start school in a couple of months. Lockdown is a bit of a spanner in the works but at least we are in the South Island where there are no cases yet. It’s a bit of a different experience from lockdown in the UK as a SAHM - there it was trying to cope with the tedium of playing dinosaurs for hours on end, now it’s the frantic scramble to play dinosaurs while also typing up the minutes from the 57th zoom call you’ve had that morning… Today my headphones decided to plague me by beeping loudly at random intervals while I was trying to capture the action points in a managers meeting, it was like some sort of aural Chinese water torture

38. The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman This is the second book in the Thursday Murder Club series. It comes out in September. I hadn't read the first book, so the club and their cohorts weren't known to me. It therefore took me awhile to get to know them and I was still left in the dark about the details of their connection to one another.

God, I found this dull and flat. I was so bored by it. However, I'm sure it'll sell as well as the first book, especially in the Christmas market and I can see the BBC picking it up as a cosy Sunday night drama starring the "usual suspects" (perhaps Celia Imrie as no nonsense Elizabeth and Miriam Margoyles as seemingly ditzy Joyce)

It takes several chapters before any murder occurs. The narrative has a chapter written in the third person and then one narrated by Joyce as a diary entry but more like an unfocused chat -very verbose and rambling, going off at tangents that lead nowhere. The "action" centres around Elizabeth, one of the "gang" who used to work for MI5. Her younger ex husband shows up having stolen £20 million in diamonds from a "middle man" broker used by gangsters when on an MI5 bugging operation. He needs help to avoid being assassinated. There is also a sub plot involving Ibrahim (another club member) who has been violently mugged by a teenage tearaway and who the club want to exact revenge on.

The whole plot moves at a snail's pace (as it is so thin). The landscape is littered with stereotypes and I just don't believe in the Thursday Murder Club world created. Joyce's world of badly knitted friendship bracelets, nigglying worries about making tea properly and general tone of "silly British mild eccentricity" just didn't cut it for me.

Sounds like you're settling in, Daphne! It's no joke starting a new life under these circumstances.

Thanks for the review, Sap. Having read The Thursday Murder Club, I don't intend to read the follow-up. I see what he's aiming for but it's a swing and a miss as far as I am concerned. If I want to read older people tackling crime, I'd rather go for Agatha Christie or Hazel Holt.

Speaking of Celia Imrie has anyone read her book(s)? I was drawn to one about The Titanic but wondered if it would be a bit crap.

I wonder if Osman reads Jonas Jonasson. That sounds a bit liek his madcappery.

@LadybirdDaphne

I’ve fallen off the thread because we’ve gone into lockdown here (NZ) and so I’ve lost my lunchtime reading hour and am generally being squeezed all ends with full time work and a four year old at home and only one office chair between me and DP… Anyway I’ve nearly done my Little Dorrit for August!

Marvellous !

I’m interested in reading Imrie’s Titanic book too Piggy, but I’m just going to wait until I can get it from the library or it’s 99p on kindle. I know she’s done a few light hearted books set in Nice but I haven’t read those.

A couple of re-reads because I'm planning to write a proper review of both for a newsletter, I won't review again here as I posted about both when I first read them last year
83. The Dirty Life and 85. Good Husbandry both by Kristin Kimball
and in between
84. Remember Me? by Sophie Kinsella
I always feel like I ought to like chick-lit, as I'm a big fan of light / comfort reading, & I love a good romance, but I've never really got on with it. Sophie Kinsella always seems to get positive reviews, so I thought I'd give this a go (I've also got the first Shopaholic book on reserve from the e-library, but this was available straight away).

Lexi wakes up in hospital with a head injury, thinking she's 25 with a mundane job and disastrous love life. In fact, she's got amnesia, and is 28 with a great job and a husband - but sadly, her life isn't as perfect as it initially seems. I thought it was a great premise, the plot & final reveal
are plausible, and the romance element nicely done. Unfortunately it still didn't tick my boxes - it's written in the first person, which I always associate with YA books & tend to find irritating, and there wasn't enough humour for my tastes. Shame, as I could really do with a new author for some gentle amusement when not on top form.

I've not read Sophie Kinsella's non series books although I have a lot of them on my Kindle (and previously had some in paperback!) but my memory is that I didn't find the first Becky Bloomwood book all that funny either - I thought they got better, and the funniest were Shopaholic and Sister and Shopaholic and Baby - in which Becky is pregnant for the first time. Mini Shopaholic was slightly disappointing given the chance to make fun of products for babies. But then my own views on that subject would just get ranty rather than amusing..

45. A Deadly Education by Naomi Novic.

A fun read about an unusual magical school. I will definitely be reading the next in the series.

46. The Secret Barrister: Stories of the Law and How It’s Broken by The Secret Barrister.

A serious book full of facts and figures about the Justice system in England and Wales, highlighted by occasional personal examples. The section on prisons is particularly depressing - cost-cutting in the worst way.

There are several interesting discussions in this book. For one, that we should “venerate the presumption of innocence as to operate in the defendant’s favour”; so that it is better for several guilty people to go free rather than one innocent person go to prison.

That we dehumanise and ‘other’ criminals, making it easy to see the Criminal justice system in abstract and nothing to do with us. The Secret Barrister wants us to “start viewing criminal justice, the courts and legal aid as not just for bad people rightly accused, but good people wrongly accused, bad people wrongly accused, good people rightly accused and everyone in between.”

I didn’t find it the easiest book to read (lots of jargon) but appreciated the broadening of my horizons. Always learning!

4 hours left of Anna Karenina. Ooh, it’s been good..

Sorry to hear you’ve been unwell during your holidays, piggy , and I hope you feel better soon.

I also added The First Woman to my tbr pile. Thanks for the review viking.

Jews Don’t Count is in the 99p deals today.

The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane is also in the 99p deals today. Can anyone recommend? I can never seem to 'search' these threads correctly.

From the Daily Deals I've bought Widowland - C J Carey is Jane Thynne under a pseudonym,. As Jane Thynne, she has written a series of 5 books about Clara Vine, an English woman (with a German mother I think), living in Nazi Germany and taking part in various spying missions), starting with Black Roses. This is an alternate history/Nazi dystopia novel, imagining Britain 13 years on from a pact between Britain and Germany.

Most people bought Thursday Murder on the hype, very many were dissatisfied - I wouldn't be surprised if sequel sales were much lower.

Just back from The Capital and turning the big 4-0

I liked Thursday Murder Club and am looking forward to the sequel!