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.

Sap I absolutely love Tessa Hadley, and need to read more of her.

SOLV I'm afraid to report that the monthly deals are - gasp - really good this time. Lots of thread favourites in there. I think they've stopped having a 'monthly deals' section and I just found it via the '1000 books from 99p' link here: www.amazon.co.uk/s?ref=lp_3017941031_sar&rh=n%3A3017941031&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&fs=true

I've bought The Lamplighters which has been on my watch list for a while. And The Corinthian which I may or may not have read already.

Oooh I want the Lamplighters.
I'm going in. May be some time.

26. The Evenings - Gérard Reve

Another Backlisted book, and one that took me a little while to get into, but I found myself enjoying it more and more as I went along. Set in postwar Amsterdam, it's a bleakly funny account of a young man spending the period between Christmas and New Year with his parents, who drive him crazy with their irritating habits. Reminded me of A Confederacy Of Dunces - a book which I love - in its warts-and-all depiction of human absurdity.

I do so hate going through pages of dross for the odd gem so jts the first time I've done it in months.

There were many I already have either read or have TBR but I picked up :

The Lamplighters
The Nightwatchmen
Traces

98. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (Audiobook)

The worlds most awful woman somehow finds multiple people willing to commit adultery with her. Later, through sheer boredom, greed and selfishness she goes on to financially ruin her husband and destroy his life.

A highly praised novel but I found it so hard to engage with beyond a basic surface level.

I struggle with books were the protagonist is an absolute twat.

(Well read by Juliet Stevenson though, ever reliable)

Madam Bovary was one of my favourite books in my 20s. I really identified with her as an immature character with a head full of romantic notions that get brutally stripped from her one by one (right down to her delusions about the romantic nature of suicide). Maybe I wouldn’t have so much sympathy with her now, ten years on!

40. Rip It Up - Richard Wiseman

Exploration of the ‘as if’ principle of psychology: often, acting as if you are a certain type of person actually induces the desired feelings and actions. An example would be power posing - adopting the body posture of a powerful person actually does increase your confidence. This is because behaviours often give rise to our emotions and thoughts (whereas we tend to intuitively believe that thoughts come first). The body often acts first, and then the conscious mind thinks up a reason for the behaviour a split second later. A lot of the research covered here was already familiar to me, but I always enjoy Wiseman’s light-hearted approach and it made me laugh when he said something like, ‘Now, as we are contractually obliged to do in all social psychology books, we’ll cover the Stanford Prison Experiment…’

Happy 18th to your DD, SOL!

The Unheard by Nicci French

I normally enjoy their books, but this was disappointing. Tess picks up her 3 year old daughter from her ex’s house, and discovers Poppy has drawn a very disturbing picture. Poppy then starts behaving oddly and Tess becomes convinced Poppy has seen something disturbing. Tess then starts behaving in a completely unhinged manner. I couldn’t understand why she would do most of the things she did, and there’s lots of plot holes. Glad I only got this from the library and didn’t pay for it!

I do think the Kindle deals are quite a good crop this month, and was also pleased to pick up some books that I expected to return to the library unread. I can return them now but not wait for them to come through again.

My too many purchases include:

Fredrik Backman, Anxious People
Beryl Gilroy, Black Teacher - reissued memoir with a new foreword by Bernardine Evaristo
Emma Brodie, Songs in Ursa Major - weirdly, this came through as a library ebook reservation, a Kindle 99p deal and then a Netgalley acceptance came through after I bought it, all within a couple of days. I had assumed that my request would be either ignored totally or rejected in this case (partly because the publisher declined so many of my requests that I rarely even bother asking). Have returned the library ebook just in time to get another reservation through unexpectedly. (the new Sally Rooney, so VERY surprised).
Louise Erdrich, The Night Watchman - I've read this and would recommend it - set in the 1950s about a Native American family - the government were trying to take away the community's land rights etc and force assimilation, and the character of the title is fighting a legal battle, while his grand daughter ventures to the city to try and find her sister.

Anyone interested in the history of London might want to snap up Judith Flanders' The Victorian City for a very reasonable £1.49. It's one of the 'time-limited' deals so I'm not sure how long it'll be around at that price, but it's a great read.

I agree good deals this time. I got:

Homo Deus Yuval Noah Harari (non fiction, by the same author as Sapiens which I really want to reread)

This One Sky Day by Leone Ross which I know little about but have seen booktubers excited by.

I have the Flanders book TBR. There is a batch of interesting offers for Black History month including books on both WW1 and WW2.

Looking again at the offers, they also include Barbara Pym's Crampton Hodnet at 99p, Other books from Virago Modern Classics include Daphne Du Maurier, The Birds and other stories at 99p and there are more that have been there a while for 99p and £1.99.

@Terpsichore thank you for the heads up, have just bought The Victorian City

99. Bad Blood by John Carreyou

This was mentioned upthread and piqued my interest.

It's the story of how young Silicon Valley wannabe Elizabeth Holmes and her boyfriend Sunny Balwani perpetrated a massive fraud with "a cutting edge technology" which was essentially a flight of fancy, a total fantasy magic box which was hopeless from the beginning.

Though John Carreyou does explain the WHY and the WHAT really really well. I remain baffled on the HOW.

Elizabeth Holmes was completely unqualified beyond a high school level and had no knowledge at all of medicine, phlebotomy or pharmacology but yet still managed to convince lots of really wealthy people to give her money. That's one thing.

But beyond this, she hired the best of the best from everywhere, and they walked out in their droves because Theranos was a house of lies and there was no product and what there was didn't work.

Despite this, instead of being quickly and easily exposed as a shambles, staff were bullied and threatened with legal persecution which was followed through on simply for telling the truth.

It's really hard to accept or process that this went on for years. One woman lying about a piece of crap bit of tech. I find it hard to believe it would happen in this country.

It seems like The American Dream was built by Billy Bullshit and fuelled by Greed and the race to be part of the next big thing.

There are people, individual people, who lost millions, in what one employee aptly called a "folie a deux"

Like I've just watched an hour of the documentary and she is literally just poncing about doing nothing of substance, and everyone who works for her knows and no one can stop her.

So baffling. Like in a fiction novel scenario you'd be like "this is idiotic bollocks, this would never actually happen"

Eine, her trial is happening as we speak. It's absolutely mystifying to me how she got away with it for so long. One notable theory I read is that all of the serious investors were older men who might have viewed her as a daughter figure? V few women investors and men around her own age.

Me too, Eine and noodle. I mentioned it upthread because of the trial starting at last, and the original podcast I listened to after reading the book was gearing up again with new episodes to cover ongoing proceedings.

It really is gobsmacking. But yes, Holmes somehow managed to enthral Henry Kissinger, George Schulz (former Secretary of State) etc etc....basically, men of a certain age who seemed, er, mesmerised by this young, blonde, pretty woman who spun them a line and convinced them to lend their names to a complete scam.

It does seem utterly incredible, but on painful reflection, there are people who swore blind (and continue to) that Trump was some sort of genius, aren't there.....I guess if you're brazen enough, you can get away with an astonishing amount. And brazen is Holmes's middle name - her defence is that she was coercively controlled by Sunny Balwani

Just whipped through the risible but readable The Burning Girls by CJ Tudor. These books are pretty awful really but they are quick reads. The back of the book tells me that at least two of Tudor's books are making it to the screen which isn't surprising. In her last books, I found her constant mention of brand names enraging. She has at least stopped doing this.

94. Sleeping Beauties by Suzanne O'Sullivan. This caught my eye when @Terpsichore reviewed it, probably mainly because I live in Sweden, where the Sleeping Beauties of the title (refugee children in a comatose state caused by a functional neurological disorder, or "mass hysteria"), this was an interesting read and I have downloaded one of her other books.

I’ve also bought lots in the sale this month including The First Rumpole Omnibus
I adored Rumpole when I was younger and my paperback copy of this has no cover as it’s been re-read many times but I’ve not read it for about 20 years now - wonder how it’s held up.

Regions of the Heart - David Rose and Ed Douglas This was recommended to me after watching the documentary The Last Mountain. It is the story of climber Alison Hargreaves who perished on K2 leaving two small children Joe and Kate. Joe himself died on Nanga Parbat in 2019 aged just 30.

It’s fascinating but sad. The authors had access to her diaries and testimony from friends and family and take a look at what drove her - ambition and obsession to a degree but also darker forces within her marriage - did she continue to climb, away from her children, because she was trying to finance an independent future for them away from her husband? Lots of mountaineering detail too which I always enjoy despite being a complete wimp when it comes to that sort of thing.

My latest reads could probably be considered as falling into the 'misery memoir' category given they all deal with unhappy childhoods, although they're all quite different.

39. Empire Of The Sun by J. D. Ballard, Based on Ballard’s own childhood in Japanese-occupied wartime Shanghai (although thankfully Ballard was at least imprisoned in the same prisoner of war camp as his parents unlike the fictional Jim) this book looks at the atrocities of war through a child's eyes. We see Jim's evolution from a pampered ex pat child to a street wise, feral boy who stays alive by living on his wits. He witnesses so much pain and suffering but increasingly he becomes desensitised to the violence and death that surrounds him. He thinks only of himself and his own survival and in this way he is one of the few who survive their captivity, although he emerges a very different person.
    For me this book particularly excelled in the early section dealing with Jim's life of privilege and the rapid descent into chaos and violence that the Second World War brings with it. Separated from his parents he lives for weeks on end by haunting the ex pat mansions of his family and friends eating and drinking the decadent alcohol, cocktail cherries, crackers, olives and other sundries left behind. Once the food runs out and the water is turned off he has no option but to give himself up to the Japanese. The later sections set during the hunger marches and in the prison camps are far more brutal and can be quite a tough read.

    40. My Name Is Why by Lemn Sissay Thread favourite, having not got on with the audio version of this book I'm glad I managed to get the ebook from BorrowBox, as this is well worth reading. As others have said a damming indictment of the U.K. 'Care' system.

    41. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson. The actual biography of Winterson that Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit was based on. Interesting if you haven't read the novel but overall I preferred 'Oranges' and obviously quite a lot of the same ground is covered.

    42. The Consequences of Love by Gavanndra Hodge. Bought when it was on daily deal. Blurb says 'Seven-year-old Gavanndra Hodge's life is a precarious place. Her father is a hairdresser and drug dealer to Chelsea's most decadent inhabitants; her mother an alcoholic ex-model. So, it is up to Gavanndra to keep her little sister Candy safe.
        But when Candy dies suddenly on holiday aged nine, Gavanndra's family, already so fragile and damaged, implodes. Now a mother herself, and with only memories of Candy's awful final moments, Gavanndra embarks on a journey to write her way back to the little girl whose death tore her family apart.'
        This was an engaging memoir and it's a testament to the author that she has emerged from such a dysfunctional childhood, via an Oxbridge education, to become a well respected editor and loving wife and mother. Definitely worth buying when it next pops up at 99p.

    43. The Island Of Sea Women by Lisa See, not a memoir but a well researched novel that deals with the lives of the 'haenyeo', female divers in the Korean province of Jeju. whose livelihood consists of harvesting a variety of mollusks, seaweed, and other sea life from the ocean. Known for their independent spirit, iron will and determination they reverse the traditional roles and become the main breadwinners in this otherwise traditional society, whilst their husbands spend their days looking after the children.
        The women dive up to 98 feet deep without breathing apparatus, holding their breath for up to three minutes at a time. Unsurprisingly their ears are forever compromised by the water pressure endured and they risk suffering from the bends and hypothermia. When the book opens in the 1930's they dive in cotton suits, wet suits are a luxury not available to them till the mid 1970's.
        The novel deals with the period between 1938 and 2008 (by which time the haenyeo have become an oddity with a museum dedicated to them on the island and most of their number old ladies who are a tourist attraction) and covers the era of Japanese colonialism, World War II and the Korean War.
        There is a plot involving two best friends described by the blurb thus: 'Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends who come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook’s mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility but also danger. Despite their love for each other, Mi-ja and Young-sook’s differences are impossible to ignore.'
        For me though the real beauty of this novel was being transported to a place and time I had hitherto known nothing about, and being completely immersed in that culture. The historical elements and atrocities of the novel are also all completely true. One of those books that leads you down a Google rabbit hole once you've finished it!

@DesdemonasHandkerchief I've read 3 of the 5 books you just reviewed and have 2 TBR. Glad to see you also liked The Island of Sea Women - I thought this was an excellent read. I read a lot of historical novels but was particularly interested in it because it was new to me. I've read some of Lisa See's novels about Chinese and Chinese American women (some of which draw on bits of her own family's history).

What a coincidence, hope you like the two TBR elkiedee.

86: Palladian - Elizabeth Taylor

I picked this pretty much at random from the tbr shelves but it coincidentally turned into an appropriate choice after my last non-fiction Gillian Tindall book about old houses. Young Cassandra Dashwood, newly orphaned, takes a post as governess to Sophy, the daughter of widowed Marion Vanbrugh. He lives in the half-ruined 18th-century house he inherited, with his ineffectual Aunt Tinty and her grown children, forthright doctor Margaret and alcoholic Tom. An ancient and terrifying Nanny completes the household.

This almost Gothic scenario could date from a much earlier era (Dashwood and Vanbrugh, anyone?) but it was Taylor's second book, written in 1946 and set contemporaneously. Having said that, she clearly means to evoke echoes of 'Jane Eyre' most of all - to the point where Cassandra duly falls in love with Marion.

Tbh I was in two minds about this at first - it seemed a bit too fantastical and fairy-tale-like - but then about three-quarters of the way through, it somehow redeemed itself and I started to realise (a bit late) how many subtle levels it's operating on. Not my favourite Taylor novel at this point but the writing is, as ever, superb - and actually, I think this is a book you need to read again to really appreciate. And I'll definitely do that at some point.