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.

oops - that last one is by Jonathan Coe

As a side note to chat about The Searchers, I'm currently listening to Ishi in Two Worlds (one of the free offerings on Audible Plus) which is a biographical account of Ishi, last survivor of the North american Yahi people, but also an account of the systematic killing of the native peoples in California by the settlers, at least in part from the perspective of those being hunted down.

104. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Ifemelu and Obinze are childhood sweethearts who are unfazed by the need to separate to go abroad for university, but nothing will ever be the same again.

In many ways I felt that as characters they were less "of themselves" than they were a fictional vehicle through which to discuss the wider sociopolitical experience of the culture clash of immigration and the cultural shock of repatriation.

There are also many blog pieces "written" by the Ifemelu character - about the different experiences of both race and racism between black Americans and black Africans with Adichie using the characters experience as a means of providing insights.

I thought it was less about the two leads than it was about the wider commentary, but it's definitely one of the best novels I have read this year though it has not troubled The Bone Clocks for #1 slot.

30. Starlight - Stella Gibbons

Another Backlisted recommendation, and an absolutely splendid one. I'd read and enjoyed Cold Comfort Farm many years ago but not been familiar with any of her other books. This starts as a gently humorous postwar suburban drama but morphs into something much stranger and more moving.

@TheTurn0fTheScrew

31. Mr Wilder and Me Calista goes travelling from her Athens home to the US. A chance encounter find her at a dinner with the director Billy Wilder, who hires her as a translator for his next film which is shooting on a Greek island.

As Calista loses her naivety and learns more about the world of work and relationships, Wilder struggles to come to terms with changes in Hollywood and society beyond it.

Calista's journey was somewhat far-fetched, but I thought Coe captured the young female voice far better than the average male writer. Although the tone is generally light, there are some moving sections on Wilder's flight from Germany and the fate of his family.

This was one of the books discussed on the podcast A Good Read last week, for anyone interested

biblio, I read Girl A earlier in the year and felt a bit ambivalent about it at the time - definitely not one you could say you enjoyed, but incredibly well done. A few months on, it has really stayed with me, and based on that I'm going to have to upgrade it to bold status.

Fortuna, I've been to the JP Morgan library in NYC, it's absolutely ravishing. I've never heard of Belle Da Costa Green, I might have to give this a go!

Sue Black’s Written in Bone is 99p today (the follow-up to All That Remains)

It's an odd one, noodle - it should be schlocky but it's more thoughtful than that.

Bought the Calasso book on today's kindle offers. I was eyeing it up a couple of years ago but it was very expensive then.

@bibliomania, nominated for quote of the thread 2021

@elkiedee, I agree. I love the different viewpoints on here, as elsewhere, and in all the years I've been here under different names, only once have been taken aback by a proper attack for my review of a book. Can only assume vested interest as it was, to quote HQ, very much "not in the spirit".
I loved the Greek book btw but I am another who avoids hyped and popular at the time, yet often come round to them later. That's why I was able to read Harry Potter 1-7 in one summer!
The LShaped Room trilogy are 3 of only 4 books (Vida, by Marge Piercy) that I've re-bought, having lent, and never got back, my originals. Probably the books I've reread most too (apart from my Bill Bryson/Stuart Maconie comfort food books)

@Sapatsea. I love the kitchen sink dramas. I suppose as I was born in 1965, I can see elements of the lives in my own northern mining town upbringing. I reread A Kind of Loving (Stan Barstow) and its sequels last year I think.

40. The Darkness Ragnar Jonasson n1 in the Hidden Iceland series. Love a bit of icy crime, especially as we move into winter. This is (to me) an easier, quicker read than the Dark Iceland series. More of a Sandhamn Viveca Stern feel. Not a bad thing when it's what you're needing.

@Solinvictus Oooh, I LOVED Vida when |I read it in my late teens. I became totally obsessed with it and US lefty student politics stuff when I first read it in my late teens. Possibly quite unhealthily so. Still have my original copy of that one though. Or was it my mum's copy? oops. Whether I kind of stole it from my mum's shelves or bought a copy of my own, I still have it more than 30 years later

I've been meaning to read Starlight @MegBusset so will move it up the list.

86. The Other Black Girl - Zakiya Dalila Harris. This follows Nella, the only black girl working as an editorial assistant in a publishing house. She tries to ignore the micro incivilities and tried to get people interested in race diversity to no avail. She's excited when a new black girl starts at the office but something feels a bit off. I really enjoyed this despite the cultural references generally being over my head. I'm not sure the plot twist quite works but it was a page turner that highlighted a lot of the everyday inequalities that still exist. I think i preferred it to Lustre and The Vanishing Half. @elkiedee, I'd love to know what your book group make of it, I can see how it could be a bit lightweight.

87. One of Us is Lying - Karen McManus. One of Dd1's YA books that I read in a day at the weekend while rather hungover! It was perfect fodder for uncritical reading but the stereotypes loom large, strong breakfast club vibes. I can see its appeal for its audience though.

I bought the Calasso book on Kindle Daily Deal too.

[quote elkiedee]**@Solinvictus* Oooh, I LOVED Vida* when |I read it in my late teens. I became totally obsessed with it and US lefty student politics stuff when I first read it in my late teens. Possibly quite unhealthily so. Still have my original copy of that one though. Or was it my mum's copy? oops. Whether I kind of stole it from my mum's shelves or bought a copy of my own, I still have it more than 30 years later[/quote]
Yes, me too! I read it at university, so 84-88 and was involved in miners' picket lines and CND. Looking back, my poor old Margaret Thatcher loving mum probably didn't sleep for 4 years.
Utterly fascinating that people could be so dedicated to a political cause they'd leave family and go off the grid. I'm afraid the glam aspect (the best looking boys were lefties and ultimately the lure of the Marks and Spencer ready meal and John Lewis café led me towards being a Labour voting comfort lover.
Recently watched all series of The Americans too, which fascinated me from other perspectives.

Meg, I've just last night finished Starlight. I forgot I'd ordered it from the library and then when the email arrived couldn't recall why I'd ordered it (it was clearly a Backlisted recommendation) but I thought I'd give it a go. It was terrific - just spooky enough but also such a good depiction of that era and really great characters. I particularly liked the poor put-upon vicar, and Gladys with her shrieking.

Tempted but a bit wary to give Roberto Calasso another go. The Celestial Hunter made me feel like I needed to wash my brain out.

Nice to see the Stella Gibbons love. She's been pigeonholed for so long as a one-book author, but she wrote an enormous number of novels. I went through a bit of a phase of collecting her and acquired quite a few expensive hard-to-come-by hardback copies, then someone in the book trade woke up and started reprinting them There are lots available as ebooks now.

She's definitely well worth exploring further than Cold Comfort Farm - as you'd expect: it was her first book, after all!

@highlandcoo thank you, I shall rummage for that on Sounds.

@Terpsichore which are the best Stella Gibbons for further reading?

For Stella Gibbons, before all the reprints started I found a really old copy of [Conference at Cold Comfort Farm] in the library in the building I used to work in. Sadly I was a little bit disappointed, but [Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm] is a short story collection which I remember as being good fun (can't remember more detail).

NIghtingale Wood was published as a Virago Modern Classic and I really enjoyed it. There are two large batches of reprints including Kindle and paperback editions- the first from Vintage - I have two or three which came up as deals for up to £2, the second is Dean Street Press in their fantastically named Furrowed Middlebrow imprint .- Kindle editions between £2.59 and £2.99. They also have lots of other tempting looking books from the same period.

In 2018 I won a £300 Amazon voucher through Mumsnet - I could do with one of those to spend on lots of books from Furrowed Middlebrow, Macmillan Bello, Vintage Classics and all the other mid 20th century reprint specialists.

Sorry for formatting - we use square brackets on Librarything to bring up links to details of the books we discuss on threads and so I keep using asterisks on LT and square brackets on MN by mistake.

Meg I think elkiedee got there before me

Personally I like The Bachelor, The Rich House and Westwood. Nightingale Wood is good fun - Gibbons meant it to be a version of the Cinderella story and it's very amusingly done.

As she got older she kept writing but the quality did decline, sadly. As elkie says, lots are now available pretty cheaply as ebooks so you cant go too wrong with the late 30s/1940s ones, I reckon.

@noodlezoodle

biblio, I read Girl A earlier in the year and felt a bit ambivalent about it at the time - definitely not one you could say you enjoyed, but incredibly well done. A few months on, it has really stayed with me, and based on that I'm going to have to upgrade it to bold status.

Fortuna, I've been to the JP Morgan library in NYC, it's absolutely ravishing. I've never heard of Belle Da Costa Green, I might have to give this a go!

Noodle she's really not very well known, the author only found out about her in a random conversation with a docent. Belle is the reason you were allowed in, she convinced the family to open the private collection.

Gosh, I'd forgotten about Starlight. I didn't know what to expect when I read it and it didn't go the way I thought.

Just marking place as this dropped off my threads I’m on. A bit bored with reading at the moment and currently re-reading Marian Keyes. I need a good mountaineering or history book to clear my head.

Frustratingly DS said he had a couple of good books about burial customs, whetted my appetite, then remembered he’d lent them to a friend. I can’t even remember the names to look them up on kindle.