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.

The Pillow Book sounds intriguing, Yolandi.

Pedant alert - yesterday I reported finishing Mrs Ames and said it was published 99 years ago. It was in fact 1912, 109 years ago. I really need my reading glasses these days.

Have started To the Lake: A Balkan Journey of War and Peace, by Kapka Kassabova, which has been louring reproachfully from my bookshelf for ages. I've renewed it for the maximum permitted times at the library so now I have to read it. And of course I'm loving it, as I knew I would, and just as I loved her previous book, Border. It's a mixture of family memoir and travelogue. Her family is from the region, and she spent her childhood there before emigrating. She now returns as an adult and reflects on what she sees. Her writing is unshowy but lovely, and I'm interested in the region, so this is altogether up my street.

@Welshwabbit, I've seen books I really loved criticised on here. I don't hate that many books but there are some that I enjoy less than a lot of other readers, and there are some I'm resistant to reading because I dislike the author intensely, or there's something which I find really troubling - for example I've not read a very acclaimed bestselling novel about Greece at the end of WWII. There are books that I've bought because they're bargains but I'm put off reading them. There are books that I wanted to read but was somehow put off from doing so by the hype.

Anyway, all reviews are helpful and interesting, and I don't have to agree with someone's review of the book to appreciate being able to read their opinion (and lots of others) online. So thank you for taking the time to share your views and explain why you enjoyed a book that someone else might have rubbished. Thanks to all for both positive and negative reviews, especially ones that are well backed up and explained.

I also think it's important that you're happy to say you loved something even though several other people on the thread really didn't. The opposite is valuable too.

I've written lots of online reviews in the past but so far I've got round to writing ONE single proper review all year. Disgraceful really.

I haven't read The Truants and don't remember whether I've bought it, wishlisted it or what it's about.

I'm hoping to finish reading Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins read today, so I can return it to the library on Monday (there is a HUGE queue of reservations and I feel guilty that I've held on to it for about 6 weeks, partly because I hardly read anything at all for a week when I wasn't very well) and pick up an entirely different book reservation. I have several other quite in demand library books and am hoping to be able to get one or two more back to the library having read them before incurring fines.

Just looked up The Truants on Amazon - ooh, Kindle purchase newly 2 years ago in November 2019 (I assume it was either a Daily Deal or relatively inexpensive). Campus novel. A couple of 1 star reviews followed by a 5* one at the top of the page.

@elkiedee ha! I absolutely hated the ending of that very acclaimed novel set in Greece, which has put me off the author entirely! And you and @PepeLePew are absolutely right, all reviews are interesting and it would indeed be boring if we all liked the same things.

Just finished Jane Harper's The Survivors. I didn't much care for her last couple of books but I thought this one was better. Ending a little bit unsatisfying but I shan't say more.

Another females as victims thing but not quite in the same salacious vein as some.

meg, yay for finishing David Copperfield!

at Biblio's mouthing magnificent members.

@Welshwabbit I read Fleischman earlier this year and really like it too. I think quite a few people who hated it (from reviews I read) never got to the latter part so only ever saw Fleischman's view point. I wasn't a fan of The Truants though.

@Piggywaspushed I actually found The Survivors weaker than her last two.

I've just started reading The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris. It's making me feel rather old as I'm not getting most of the pop culture references in it like what Kylie Jenner did in a Pepsi ad. I have to keep stopping to Google.

@Stokey Look forward to hearing what you make of The Other Black Girl - my library meeting group is finally meeting up for the first time since February 2020 next month (the usual date was right at the end of the month so obviously the one scheduled for March last year never happened). TOBG has been chosen as the discussion book. I read it a few months ago and think I can remember enough this time to follow a discussion. Hoping some others come and have read it. Generally the tone of the group is quite highbrow - with people who really value reading serious literary classics from the library as self education, and I think this may be a bit too popular/commercial for them.

On Kindle offers, one of the Booker longlist books which I'm most interested in reading at some point, China Room, is a Kindle Daily Deal at 99p today. Quite pleased because It was one of a whole load of books I had to take back to the library when they reduced the loan limit to pre-pandemic levels with no notice - I have a list of them all so that I can ask for them again as I finish each of my remaining library books - so I can cross that one off at least. I enjoyed Sanjeev Sahota's previoius novel The Runaways.

Random House also seems to have put up a lot of offers again - many are repeats from earlier this year, and quite a lot are an offer at a very reasonable price of but above my "need to have some kind of limit on myself* here price point, I have ereaderiq,co.uk set to tell me when books have dropped to £3 or below but in practice I wait for books to drop to under £2, or just over, with the odd exception for something exceptional, or that I really want which I haven't seen on such a low offer before. (You can check how often books have been reduced in price and whether they've been 99p several times recently before you spend more on them).

Current deals include David Lodge, Small World, a fun campus novel that I already have on Kindle for £1.99, and Lynne Reid Banks, The L Shaped Room - I do still have my orange 70s Penguin copy and the more recent good condition Vintage paperback edition, but I can pass on one or both happily now I have it on Kindle. There are several John Irving books.

I keep dropping off so catching up on reviews. I love reading about the good, the bad, the indifferent and they all help me to form a view on whether I should try something or not.

My latest reads are:

73. The Liar - Steve Cavanagh

Another Eddie Flynn story. Eddie (a NY defence lawyer) is called in by an old acquaintance whose daughter has been abducted and is being ransomed and who lacks faith in the police. At the same time, an old murder case in which Eddie’s good friend and mentor, Harry, was the defence lawyer, is resurrected as a potential miscarriage of justice which could jeopardise Harry’s role as a judge. Eddie has his work cut out. It’s not great literature but, as with the other Eddie Flynn books, it’s a real page turner for me. Eddie and Harry are both engaging but flawed characters and I like the continuity (although all the books can be read on a standalone basis).

74. Virgin Earth - Philippa Gregory

This is a sequel to Earthly Joys and follows the life and career of John Tradescant the Younger. He was a/the royal gardener to Charles I and an explorer - travelling on several occasions to Virginia and introducing many of the species he found there to the UK. He also maintained and extended his father’s collection of rarities (now in the Ashmolean). The parts in Virginia give a good idea of the difficulties faced by the early settlers as well as the appalling treatment of the Indians - although, if the book is to be believed, John Tradescant was not a part of this as he relied heavily on the Indians to help him in his search for specimens. The Civil War also plays out across the book. An educational read for me as I knew nothing about John Tradescant and not much about the civil war - I had thought it was a straightforward case of King vs Parliament but unsurprisingly it was more complex and nuanced!

@Welshwabbit I loved Fleischmann as well, so that gives me great hope that I'll love The Truants when I eventually get round to it!

28. Cult(ish) The Language of Fanatacism by Amanda Montell I was interested in the set up of this book that links the language of any ‘fad’ (CrossFit, MLM) to the outwardly more serious cults (Jonestown, Scientology). The author makes the point that specific language can be used to encourage people to join, highlight non believers, alienate outsiders and justify bad treatment. This was fascinating but pretty light touch. I also found that the author’s judgements and opinions got in the way somewhat.

I thought The Survivors was embarrassingly awful. I think I'm done with her now, although quite liked The Dry (apart from the stupid, major coincidence ending) and the one about the brother in the outback. The 2nd one was ridiculous but I thought The Survivors was even worse. Sorry, Piggy!

I have read some dreadful books recently so was forgiving. I can't remember the one before The Dry but I hated that one.

I think The Dry was her first. The second was some very annoying people lost in the desert on a business trip, iirc.

Yes that one was crap.

Force of Nature?

Can't remember and am too drunk to look it up. I liked the man dying of thirst/hunger one - think he might have been tied to a stake or something but memory fails me a bit.

The Lost Man?

The Dry was the first and I liked that. Force of Nature was next and I hated that. Then was The Lost Man which I thought was fab. Then The Survivors which I thought was on a par with The Dry.

Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck

The author drove round America in 1960 together with his dog Charley, and this is his account of the journey. I enjoyed this, although it’s not that long so there could have been more detail about some places he visited.

Orphans Of The Storm by Celia Imrie

This is a novel based on the true story of the Navratil family. Michel Navratil was splitting up from his wife, and took their two sons on Titanic without her knowing and under false names. Michel died but the two little boys survived and were reunited with their mother. I was drawn to this because I’m always fascinated by anything to do with Titanic. In fact the Titanic section only takes up a small part of this book - most of it is the build up to that event, with the story of the couple’s marriage. It was fine, but not quite the book I was expecting. The historical research is very good though.

Death and Croissants by Ian Moore

Comedy murder set in France. Light and funny, recommended if you liked The Thursday Murder Club.

@PepeLePew, I loved The Children Who Lived in a Barn, and I never met anyone else who had read it! Did you like the Fell Farm books too (somehow I always thing of them together, I think my copies had similar covers).
97) Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. More sci-fi from the author of the Martian, this has a similar amount if technical detail (although nothing on potatoes this time!), though a less plausible storyline (with aliens). I have to be honest and say the writing isn't good, it's clunky, and doesn't really convey any emotion at all, but I did still enjoy it. Not as good as The Martain though.

The Lost Man - that's the one. Vastly superior to the others.

I have almost totally forgotten The Lost Man, oddly. The others I remember pretty well!

Tanaqui, isn't it a wonderful book? The hay box had stuck in my mind (it seems to be the case for everyone - my copy had an intro by Jaqueline Wilson in which she talked about how much she loved that part) but I was struck by how much of it felt familiar when I re-read it.

I didn't read the Fell Farm books - almost all my books when I was a child were either inherited from my aunt (tonnes of school stories by Angela Brazil, a lot of Enid Blyton, and some one offs like CWLIAB) or from the library. So if they weren't in either of those collections I didn't read them. Probably this explains why the books I did read are so familiar to me - I re-read and re-read over and over again.