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.

And actually, while I am thinking of Streatfield, does anyone know which of her books has a character locked in a top room, and one of the "hero" children (a girl, possibly called Sorrel although I know that is the girl in Curtain Up) climbs up, or down, the outside wall to rescue him? Very vague memory so probably not quite accurate! if you know the title for me!

Tanaqui, could it be Far To Go? I remember that the heroine Margaret is kidnapped by the evil matron from Thursday's Child and there's another boy (Simon?) who has been kidnapped too. I think it may involve a locked room and climbing!

I would say Noel Streatfeild sounds like great comfort reading but I actually decided not to give a spare copy of Saplings found in a Stockport charity shop to my mum at a difficult point in her (terminal) illness - she died after more than 6 years because it was just too sad - I think I might have given it to someone at a meetup of our Virago Modern Classics group.

There is an obscure late NS book - think the title might be The House in Cornwall in which a group of kids think that a man is a spy, or he is a spy..... I haven't reread it very recently!

52. Can't we talk about something more pleasant? A memoir by Roz Chast
Roz Chast is a cartoonist for the New Yorker and many other publications. Between 2001 and 2008 her elderly parents deteriorated, became less able to care for themselves, moved out of their Brooklyn apartment to a residential home near her house in Connecticut and died. Roz drew cartoons and wrote about these years because that's how she processes things.

I was lent this by a friend because of mutual experiences with elderly patients. It's charming, bitterly sad and sometimes infuriating. I like that there was basically 'no hugging, no learning' and yet I felt Roz made an amazing tribute to her parents. The financial side is even more terrible than it would be here and she doesn't shy away from it (imagine paying $14,000 a month for your mother's care; imagine paying into an insurance scheme for decades only to find it doesn't transfer outside New York State; though also imagine moving your parents without checking). The physical side is detailed as well, because some of the motivation for writing this is clearly to be honest and not hide the horrors. Recommended.

I managed not to be very clear that this is a graphic memoir. I'm not a huge fan of graphic novels as I'm a very non-visual person, but occasionally enjoy them.

As for the Vicarage series, when I read the first book as a kid I had no idea there were sequels. I have the others in old hardback editions but I don't think they've been reissued. Virago has reissued some less well known novels and Penguin have done a Vicarage Family as a Puffin - I think my copy was Armada Lions like the Gemma books and Thursday's Child and some of the other late ones, and my Puffins were 1970s reissues of her much earlier and better known children's books, It's very vexing how some of my favourite children's authors' output was scattered between publishers.

Yes @elkiedee, and I find the Streatfields particularly annoying as so many had different titles for the American editions. I don't think it was Far to Go @Tarahumara, as we had that in the school library so I read it several times, but it is on kindle so I will check it out. The House in Cornwall does sound a possibility. Thank you!

Haven’t updated for a while so here’s a few of my latest reads.

Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro

Five short stories, of varying levels of oddness. As the title suggests, they all feature music or musicians in some way. They’re understated stories, and I enjoyed them.

An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro

This started well, but then I got bored. It’s about an elderly Japanese artist, looking back on his life. The ‘floating world’ is the nightlife of his city. I liked the start, with his family, and other bits set in the present day, but found it hard to follow his recollections of the past. Probably one of his I won’t reread.

Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

The premise for this was good - a young man starts working in a bookshop open 24 hours, and starts wondering why people come in to borrow old books hidden away on dusty shelves. However, it soon descended into levels of weirdness that didn’t appeal to me and I struggled to finish this.

*The Puzzle Of You’ by Leah Mercer

Charlotte wakes up after a car accident thinking she’s still a high flying career woman. Instead she discovers she’s a stay at home mum and her relationship with her husband has deteriorated. I like books like this and this was OK - the ending was a bit too sappy and neat for me but the rest was OK.

The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman

I think I enjoyed this more than the first one - the plot wasn’t quite so convoluted. It’s more if the same - people from a retirement village solving crimes - so if you didn’t like the first you won’t like this. I thought it was great! You obviously have to suspend disbelief, but it’s good fun to read and doesn’t take itself too seriously.

A Slow Fire Burning by Paula Hawkins

I liked The Girl on the Train, but didn’t like her second book. This was somewhere in the middle. A man is found murdered on a houseboat and the story focuses on three women - the man’s aunt, his one night stand, and the woman who lives in the houseboat next door. The characters were well drawn but I didn’t really warm to any of them so didn’t really care what happened to any of them.

History by Miles Jupp

I thought this was great. It’s a funny novel following hapless history teacher Clive, who works with some very annoying characters and whose marriage is falling apart. Clive doesn’t really help himself, but his wife is very unlikeable. There’s a very funny description of their hideous family holiday to France where everything goes wrong.

Emily Noble’s Disgrace by Mary Paulson-Ellis

Another where the premise was much better than the actual book. Essie is a cleaner sent in to clear a massive house after an elderly woman was found dead there. This leads Essie’s path to cross with policewoman Emily who has her own issues. This was really overwritten, full of metaphors and lots of repetition of phrases which got very irritating after a while. There were also too many loose ends. Shame as there was a good plot in there somewhere. I do have another of hers on my kindle somewhere so will read that, but unless that’s brilliant I don’t think I’ll bother with any more of hers.

@PepeLePew

I am about halfway through The Only Plane In the Sky and limiting myself to a couple of chapters a day even though I want to sit and read it in one sitting. I'm finding it stunning, horrifying, and strangely uplifting all at the same time, and I think some of those accounts should be put into school history curriculums and that every crackpot anti-US conspiracy theorist should be force-fed a chapter daily. I keep stopping, and going back and re-reading bits. I think that's how this awful, yet wonderful book works so well. It's real people's real words, presented ad hoc, and in the middle of a seemingly anodyne paragraph, more horror is released. I find myself saying, "how do we not already know this?"
As others have said, for me, it's less the "last phonecall home" accounts, dreadful (yet showing how there is nothing that matters more than love at the end of the day- even a day of days like that one) though they are, and more the unsung people doing their unsung jobs- the stuff they did every day, but that never mattered as much as it did on that day- I read last night about the air traffic controllers who managed to land 4,000 planes within an hour, in the wrong place, but alive, or the pilots of those planes who just immediately agreed to land at the nearest airport wherever that might be.

This will be, not only one of, if not the top read of the year, but goes straight onto my "books everyone needs to read" list. Near the top.

The lovely Travels with Charley is 99p today.

Thanks Remus, that hadn't caught my eye but looking at it again it looks fab - bought!

Just a quick reminder : tomorrow is Little Dorrit report in day. Or Big Dorrit as Only Connect had it, which made me chuckle.

Great post SOLINVICTUS. I read The Last Plane in the Sky this summer and agree with everything you said above. It is an extraordinary book with so many compelling stories.
45. Roar by Cecilia Ahern
30 short stories with a feminist focus - each story has a title beginning with "The Woman Who...". It felt like there were some good ideas in here but the writing was quite simplistic and some of the stories started to feel a bit formulaic/repetitive.

25 A Deadly Education - Naomi Novik

Started quite strong, but overall, I didn't love this.

A coming of age, young adult, fantasy novel. A bit like Harry Potter meets Hunger Games (both of which I read all of - who didn't? - and liked well enough).

Some very cheesy and irritating tropes, as there often are. The heroin is a gorgeous, (secretly and reluctantly) exceptionally powerful wizard. A lone wolf. The daughter of a very famous wizard (which she keeps secret of course), and a dark, brooding badass with a heart of gold and a tragic backstory. The author takes the trouble to have almost everyone else in the school with short hair, while the heroin has longer hair, (due to circumstances outside her control, naturally, not to make her more in keeping with current standards of beauty or anything...). I don't know why that ground my gears so much, but it did!

The most popular guy in school is (predictably), inexplicably drawn to her but she's pure sass with him, cos she's cool that way and she becomes his only real friend. Yaaaaaawwwwwnnnn.

The metaphors and symbolism are about as subtle as a sledgehammer.

Much ranting about the privilege, (topical), some wizards are born into, which went on so long it was a bit insulting to the intelligence of the reader, (yes, we get it, thank you).

It got sillier and sillier towards the end, which was a bit of a shame and I did end up just wishing it would finish. Started to read the first chapter of the next book, which comes with the Kindle version of the book, and then realised I couldn't care less.

On the plus side, the start is really good. The heroin is quite likeable at that point, but the author leaves her with nowhere much to go from there in terms of personality. It just got quite samey.

I liked that she never denies she's brilliantly powerful and she doesn't deny she is beautiful. She just doesn't care to be either of those things. Usually in these novels, the heroin doesn't know she's beautiful and finds our by accident that she is amazing at x, y or z.

Also, I loved the monsters, which were pretty nightmarish! That was well done.

Won't read the next one, but all in all, it was fairly enjoyable and something a bit different. And tbf, I'm probably not the book's target audience as I'm 37 and not 15.

Hope you enjoy it, Noodle.

53. The swish of the curtain by Pamela Brown
I'm not sure what made me suddenly want to read this again. A favourite book of my youth, and I wanted something easy I suppose. It's a cheerful wish fulfilment story of a group of children who make their own theatre and plays. Pamela Brown was 14 when she started it and when it was published two years later, she used the proceeds to train as an actor.

It still has charm, though the intense snobbery and unspoken homophobia are obvious to the adult eye. A lovely couple of hours of nostalgia.

I loved The swish of the curtain too, PermanentTemporary.
I wonder if I still have my copy up in the loft?

The one thing I remember from the book is them tossing back glass after glass of Ribena pretending it is wine .. or something along those lines. Isn't it strange what details stick in your head.

26 The Tales of Beadle the Bard - J K Rowling

Really quick listen on Audible, but in counting it, as I fell off the thread and I'm sure I didn't remember all the books I read in between!

I really enjoyed this. Great narration, with actors from the HP movies.

It is a collection of fairy tales, translated from the original runes by Hermione Granger, with notes on the tales by Prof Dumbledore.

I especially enjoyed the notes, which talked a bit about history in the wizarding world. Quite a convincing academic style of writing about fictional history. I love this. I'm glad she didn't go into loads of historical detail in the main books though a la Tolkien. But in this little, digestible book, it's lovely and really transports you to that world. Reminded me how much I love her books. I love everything about HP apart from Daniel R and Rupert G tbh . Sorry (I'm sure they're gutted).

85: Three Houses, Many Lives - Gillian Tindall

Another fascinating non-fiction book from Gillian T. She's so brilliant at teasing out the history of places and brings the sense of the past to life with wonderfully evocative writing.

Here she focuses in on three different old buildings, two of which have personal connections to her: the Manor House in Limpsfield in Surrey, where she spent several (miserable) years at boarding school, and The Old Vicarage in Taynton, near Burford in Oxfordshire, once home to her cousins. The last house is ancient Stapleton Hall in rural Hornsey, still surviving but now converted into flats and firmly cemented into the dense urban surroundings of London's Stroud Green.

If at times the bewildering barrage of names from the past as she traces the history and ownership of these three houses did remind me a bit of The Corner That Held Them (so many names recur it's hard to keep track), I was still gripped. Even more delightfully, and coincidentally, there's even a surprise appearance by one of the people she traced in The House By The Thames. Marvellous history-writing from one of the best in this field.

43. Free Love by Tessa Hadley
I really enjoyed this book. It was my first by Tessa Hadley and I'll definitely read more. The book is set in 1967 and I think it does evoke the spirit of the times well. It is beautifully observed.
Phyllis is heading towards 40 and is a stay at home mum, married to dull, reliable Robert who works in the Foreign Office. They used to be posted overseas but returned when Phyllis had trouble with pregnancies. They have two children, 15 year Collette and 7 year old Hugh. They live in outer London surburbia in (fictional?) Otterley on the train line but not the Tube. One evening they invite Nick, the son (in his early twenties) of an old friend to dinner as his mother wants him to know some people in London as he has recently moved there to try his hand at writing and journalism. Nick is not looking forward to the dinner and arrives a bit sloshed. Phyllis flirts as she usually does with male guests and so Nick imagines fancying Phyllis as a way to pass the time. When they go in search of a child's lost sandal into next door's overgrown garden Nick drunkenly kisses Phyllis. Phyllis feels the kiss is the most passionate she has ever experienced and it unleashes in her a mad desire and so she pursues Nick into bohemian multicultural London where her staid life becomes untethered.

Hello, have not seemed to be able to finish a book in a while with life getting in the way so not posted in a while. However have finished this one 20) The Foundling by Stacey Halls and I was underwhelmed. I much preferred her first book The Familiars and found myself drifting with this one and was quite glad it’s now finished. It would have been a DNF but I had got so far in the book where I thought I may as well finish it now. Very much 3/5 for me, a definite average. I could possibly have give it a 2/5 but it wasn’t that bad, it just wasn’t that good either.

And my list so far

1. The Face of Trespass by Ruth Rendell
2. The Five by Hallie Rubenhold
3. My Darling by Amanda Robson
4. The adventure of the three students by Arthur Conan Doyle
5. The End of her by Shari Lapena
6. The Dead Harlequin by Agatha Christie
7. Sing a Song of Sixpence by Agatha Christie
8. Farewell to the EastEnd by Jennifer Worth
9. Confessions of a Forty-Something F##k up by Alexandra Potter
10. The Familiars by Stacey Hall’s
11. The Saturday Morning Park Run by Jules Wake
12. Life’s journey to the top of Everest by Ben Fogle and Marina Fogle
13. The Other Daughter by Caroline Bishop

14. Invisible Girl by Lisa Jewell
15. Where Rainbow’s End by Cecelia Ahern
16. Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward
17. Wakenhyrst by Michelle Paver
18. The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley
19. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
20. The Foundling by Stacey Halls

P.s My next book is The Book Thief by Markus Zusak Have never read this and MIL has loaned it to me so will get started on it later on.

91. Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

Much reviewed already. Very moving.

92. Long Shadows by Jodi Taylor

Latest in Taylor’s supernatural Elizabeth Cage series.
This instalment was seriously straining my suspension of disbelief, but it’s ok as a light read. Not as much fun as The Chronicles of St Mary’s.

Anyone delved into the monthly offers yet? Have dd's 18th tomorrow so have been running round like blue-arsed fly and haven't had time to look. Mind you, with the money haemorrhaging out for party perhaps I shouldn't

I can never find them @SOLINVICTUS. Something feels like they deliberately hide them!

80. A Passage North - Anuk Arudpragasam. I wanted to read this as it was on the Booker shortlist and I know Sri Lanka reasonably well with some family ties. I found it a bit of a struggle. Every sentence goes on for at least half a page and most of the action is internalised musings. There's some interesting bits about the war and the effect of has had on the Tamil people, but the protagonist is always an outsider so the interesting stories are him telling us about a book he's read our a film he's seen and recounting the plot for pages. He's very passive and aimless. The writing is beautiful and some of the descriptions are great but it really wasn't one for me. Very relieved to have finished it.