50 Book Challenge 2021 Part Seven

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the seventh 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, the fifth one here and the sixth one here.

Tanaqui

41. Small Pleasures - Clare Chambers Much reviewed on this thread (and a great review just a few posts above me by Cornishblues). This zipped along nicely.

42. The Morning Star - Karl Ove Knausgaard. I've not read any books by him before so had no expectations. The narrative started off quite normally. A Norwegian couple spending time with their young children at their holiday home. Gradually, it transpires that the wife has mental health issues and the husband seeks escape one day by drinking himself into a stupor. There is an incident with a huge swarm of crabs crossing a road as the drunken husband drives over them , crunching them, a dead kitten and a neighbour that the wife might want to have sex with. It is all told in absolute minute detail, which I found a little dull. Just as I was getting used to the family (and trying not to wonder where the story was headed or what it was going to be about) it suddenly switches to a priest on her (reluctant) way home from a conference and so it goes on adding new characters and situations until everything takes a demonic turn into horror. I found it all rather strange and not in a good way. It also ends suddenly with no resolution as it is planned to be the first in a trilogy (Grr...)

As well as Piranesi, The Other Black Girl is a Daily Deal today, both £1.49 - I've already snaffled both on previous bargain offers. I was pleased to get Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser for 99p, as it's in high demand from the library and I've had to return it unread in hardback and library ebook - I don't want to have to return an ebook mid-reading.

I didn't think Piranesi was a great read but YMMV.

The author's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was a much better book.

32. Dark Age (Red Rising #5)

I loved the earlier Red Rising but this one was a drag - 784 pages of very little plot but interminable detail about the thoughts and interactions of its 100 characters, all of whom I had completely forgotten since the last book.

It got interesting towards the end, but not enough to recommend this mind killer of a tome that took me over a month to get through.

I really enjoyed Early Morning Riser (as a Standard Deviation fan who'd been hoping for another book - it didn't disappoint).

Incidentally, for anyone on here who enjoyed Bad Blood, the frankly jaw-dropping book about Elizabeth Holmes and her supposedly-game-changing blood-analysis company Theranos - she's finally on trial for duping her investors. There's a very entertaining podcast called 'The Drop-Out' from ABC News which has started up with new episodes to cover the trial. Well worth a listen.

Thanks @Terpischore - I now have 3 Katherine Heiny books TBR - both her collection of short stories TBR. I borrowed and enjoyed a much more recent short story by her, 561 published as a standalone, from the library's digital collection. It's a sort of slightly painful social comedy about how a character relates to her husband's ex, also a former colleague.

@CoteDAzur

32. Dark Age (Red Rising #5)

I loved the earlier Red Rising but this one was a drag - 784 pages of very little plot but interminable detail about the thoughts and interactions of its 100 characters, all of whom I had completely forgotten since the last book.

It got interesting towards the end, but not enough to recommend this mind killer of a tome that took me over a month to get through.

Sooooooo boring. I gave up.

49. The Five by Hallie Rubenhold. Reviewed several times already on this thread, this is the story of the lives (not the deaths - intentionally, there is very little detail about those) of the five women killed by Jack the Ripper. This is well-researched and I found it interesting to learn more about the lives of working class women in the second half of the 19th century.

50. (yay!) How Hard Can It Be? by Allison Pearson. A sequel to I Don't Know How She Does It but set a decade later, the endearing main character Kate is now 49 and juggling a new job, teens, ageing parents and an incompetent husband. Decent chick lit.

1. The Woman in the White Kimono - Ana Johns
2. Cilka's Journey - Heather Morris
3. Intuitive Eating 4th Edition - Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch
4. The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman
5. Emma - Jane Austen
6. The Shipping News - E. Annie Proulx
7. James and the Giant Peach - Roald Dahl
8. Small Pleasures - Clare Chambers
9. The Midnight Library - Matt Haig

10. The Keeper of Lost Things - Ruth Hogan 11. One Shot - Lee Child 12. Dissolution - C J Samson 13. September - Rosamund Pilcher 14.The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood 15. Dark Fire - C J Samson 16. This Naked Mind - Annie Grace 17. Everything that Remains - Joshua Millburn 18. The Family Upstairs - Lisa Jewell 19. Shrill - Lindy West 20. On Connection - Kae Tempest 21. The Killings At Badger's Drift - Caroline Graham 22. Raven Black - Ann Cleeves

Haven't been on here for ages and in quite behind with my reading! But here is my list.

Just about to move on to either an Aretha Franklin biography (Respect) or the new Richard O.

That should have been "3 Katherine Heiny books TBR - both her novels and her collection of short stories"

Remus - I should have given up, too. I can't believe how long it took me to read it

33. The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney

Good, solid SF that didn't take a month to read. This book was published in 1955 but it feels quite modern other than some outdated notions about dainty women and their sensitive nature.

A doctor sees a patient who is adamant that her dad is not her father, although he is identical to her father physically and seems to have all his memories. He sends her to a psychologist but then starts seeing more patients including children who say the same about their family members.

Is it social contagion, or is there really something going on?

In this short book that Nicole Kidman's film The Invasion was loosely based on, the author conjures the familiar yet claustrophobic feel of a small town and its few inhabitants struggling against an army of people they have known all their lives, wondering if they are going crazy.

I liked it.

Cote
I didn't enjoy 4 (seem to remember disagreeing with you about it, although we so rarely disagree that I may be wrong!!!😂) so when 5 began so badly, I was never going to slog on.

Hello everyone! Here's some thoughts on books I've read recently:

The Unwelcome Visitor - Denise Welch. Her third memoir and this time she writes about how her long struggle with depression has affected her life but perhaps this is only worthwhile reading if you're a fan of some of her previous TV shows since many of her projects are covered. Very readable and somewhat relatable, it's just 99p this month on Kindle.

The Appeal - Janice Hallett. Very much liked on here but by the end I I couldn't wait to finish this crap. I didn't care who did what, and it'll be dumped tomorrow at my local charity shop. There way too many characters in this book which made things so confusing (and most of their voices are hard to discern from each other) and too much about fundraising and not enough about the murder - I feel I was mis-sold on the plot thanks to the marketing team. I also didn't buy that most of the characters would be sending so many emails to each other. After reading a gushing quote on the back from the dreaded India Knight just before I put this in my supermarket trolley, I should have known better than to purchase.

Hear Me Out - Sarah Harding. Memoir from the recently passed away Girls Aloud singer, written whilst she was terminally ill and obviously very sad to read in places. Seems a bit churlish to write about the book's shortcomings in the circ's so I'll just say this was a mostly pleasant and quick read and I felt angry on her behalf about the fearmongering last year about the NHS in the media, which may have indirectly contributed to her death.

37
Cider With Roadies Stuart Maconie.
A favourite comfort food reread from a favourite writer. His sort of memoir about his relationship to music from being taken to see the Beatles when he was in nappies and nobody remembering much about it, to the 70s punk scene up in Wigan and the bit I most related to because I was there, the 80s in the north west mainly, taking him on to becoming an NME writer and then DJ.

I love this man so much! Interesting to reread this which was written before Pies and Prejudice and when he still thought Morrissey was a decent human being and all round hero.

@Cornishblues, ah the joys of the tacking pins and chalk. We'd go to John Lewis in Nottingham and pick the patterns and fabric and then my mum would make me and my cousins literally all our clothes.

"although we so rarely disagree that I may be wrong"

I gave you my list, but here are also some thoughts on books I've read recently, but haven't been here to review!

Small Pleasures - Clare Chambers. Longlisted for the women's prize for fiction 2021.

I didn't love this. I found the main protagonist almost completely unlikeable. It was also in the "lesbian romance" section on Amazon, which was absolute bollocks. This was anything but! I was far more interested in the actual lesbians, but they were very much sidelined to make room for a dull as dishwater romance between the other characters. Dissapointing.

Shrill - Lindy West. Non fiction book by a feminist, body acceptance advocate. Some of it was hard reading, especially when she talked about how she was targeted by trolls etc, but I enjoyed her writing and humour.

The Killings at Badger's Drift - Caroline Graham. The first Midsomer Murders book and actually, I remembered whodunnit from the series (which I love...should I be embarrassed? Probably)! So it wasn't a surprise ending. But I really enjoyed the characterisation, which you miss out on watching the series. It's a bit silly and outlandish, but it's Midsomer Murders so silly and outlandish comes with the territory! I liked it.

Raven Black - Ann Cleeves. The first Shetland book. I really liked this. I found the setting really evocative. I used to live in the Highlands of Scotland and I enjoyed them talking about Inverness and Aberdeen as the big smokes! I lived in one of those cities and thought I was living really off the beaten track. Really well written - I know she's a well established and well loved writer, but sometimes, even when I come late to reading books by these sorts of authors, I'm not that impressed! But with this I really was. Will definitely read the next one in the series. Don't think I'll read Vera, as I'll only be able to imagine Brenda Blethyn!

I prefer the Shetland ones to Vera (though I love those too) as, though I think I've only ever watched a couple of Brenda's Vera episodes, the book Vera does seem completely different and less of a "why-eye pet" parody.

Yes, I know what you mean re the parody element to the Vera program. I hadn't heard of the books until I saw the program, which is annoying. But then, I really enjoyed the Midsomer Murders book and I also knew the program first there, so maybe I'll give Vera a go some time. Not before I've read the Shetland ones though, as I really liked that.

Dogs of War - Adrian Tchaikovsky
Bioform engineered animals are used in warfare in advance of humans, but what happens if it goes wrong. What rights do these modified creatures have. Discuses lots into ethics in warfare and what it means to be human. This is told in a very linguistically simple way from the perspective of a bioform dog. It only really starts to get interesting in the final quarter. It wasn't for me. I found it a massive slog and I could have easily given up. Agree that there is a lot of really good stuff to talk about in it, but hard work to get there.

Cunning Women: A Feminist Tale of Forbidden Love after the Witch Trials - Elizabeth Lee
Set 10 years after the Pendle Witch Trials a young woman with her mother and much younger sister live in an abandoned plague village as they are not welcome to live amongst others. Making a living as Cunning Folk and herbal remedies they live on the fringes, but a chance encounter leaves the young witch hoping for more and a chance of love and to integrate into normal society despite being a witch. Disappointing swirly gothic. All the action at the end with a lot of boring pointless plot to get there.

All's Well That Ends Well - William Shakespeare
Unrequited love across different social classes. A woman heals a dying king and requests her choice of husband as reward. The husband feels slighted by the inequality of position and flees after marriage. The wife resorts to trickery to get him back.
This is an odd one, considered one of his problem plays and yet I quite enjoyed it. I fail to see what Helena sees in Bertram but hey ho. Read in advance of reading Mona Awad's All's Well which is set around a staging of the play.

91. Unseen Things Above by Catherine Fox
    More goings on in Lindchester - not quite up to Acts and Omissions, but still a lovely book and one I'm sure I'll re-read many times.

92. Lady of Quality by Georgette Heyer
    I used to own a full set of the Heyer romances, but ditched all but my dozen or so favourites when I moved abroad many years ago. I've been gradually buying and re-reading the missing ones on Kindle. This is definitely third rate Heyer, almost exactly the same plot as Black Sheep but with less plausible backstories / motivations for the characters, and no real comic set pieces.

93. The Foundling by Georgette Heyer
    Much better - rather sweet story of young Duke Gilly casting off his devoted but overwhelming retainers and having an adventure all of his own, a convincing heroine, and entertaining minor cast.

I haven't read much on paper over the past couple of weeks but raced through these two audiobooks while gardening.
43. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
Biography of Louis Zamperini, from his rebellious childhood to representing USA as an athlete at the 1936 Berlin Olympics and serving in the US airforce during the Second World War. This is non-fiction with a compelling narrative, Zamperini's life story is the kind of true story that would seem far-fetched if it was a novel. It became a tough listen as WW2 progressed (not wanting to give any spoilers) but also had hilarious anecdotes and had me looking up maps and other information to find out more. This one will stay with me I am sure.
44. Bad Apples by Will Dean
By contrast, I found this equally compelling as I listened but the plot will fall almost immediately out of my head I suspect. This is the fourth in the Tuva Moodyson series which I love for their strong sense of place in rural Sweden. The author always paints a brilliantly vivid picture of the season and this novel is set in October - evenings are growing darker, the weather is beginning to cool, apples rot on the ground and Halloween is approaching - a very autumnal read which I enjoyed. I like the main character Tuva, as usual in this series there are a cast of eccentric and weird supporting characters who may or may not be harmless, and as usual the plot trots along quickly which keeps my attention (although the plot is never my favourite part of these novels). I didn't love the ending but I enjoyed the novel overall.

@Sadik, Cousin Kate is in the 99p deals today - is it worth a read? I'm yet to read any Heyer although it sounds right up my alley.

I think a few people have had a go at The Appeal? It's certainly a quick read. I can see it would be Marmite and it's all a bit silly but I thought it was better than Osman's offering just because it's cleverer really. Bit disappointed that all the women are unhinged or vengeful.

I have indeed bought Cousin Kate Noodle. I'd say it's not one of her best (more melodrama, little humour) but still worth a read. I wouldn't be inclined to start with it as a first one though - personally I'd splash out £2.99 on Cotillion . I reckon if you don't like that one, Heyer isn't for you (though others might disagree).