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.

Piggy

I always think Hardy works best for angsty, clever teenage girls. I used to love him, but just cba now.

BoiledeggIt was a summer job in an accounting firm - the interviewer was a senior partner. (It was 1980's Ireland many people still had pre war sensibilities). What if I'd been reading Lady Chatterley's Lover - he might have had an attack of the vapours!

I agree Remus. I reread Jude and The Return of the Native a few years back and they seemed quite overblown and didn't speak to me like they did decades before. Hardy seems to have gone out of style a bit. Is he still on GCSE or A level syllabuses? There used to be lots of dramatisations of his stuff in the 70's and 80's. There was a film remake of Far from the Madding Crowd 6 or 7 years ago with Carey Mulligan and Martin Sheen that seemed to not make much of a splash.

I really liked the Carey M film, mostly for the very beautiful Gabriel Oak. I haven't seen Hardy on any exam specs for years, apart from a couple of poems.

I liked the one on ITV with Paloma Baeza

Tess is still on the AQA A level spec.

Liked the sharpened stick comment @Piggywaspushed . I've never read any Hardy, we did Dickens at A level which put me off Victorian males. It doesn't sound like I'd have the patience for him now.

89. Sistersong - Lucy Holland. I feel this must have been reviewed on here already. It was marketed as for fans of Circe, which I really liked. It tells the story of 3 sisters Riva, Keyne and Sinne, in 6th century Britain and is based on a ballad. The sisters are the King's daughters and Each has a different type of magic, although magic is failing as the Saxons advance. Each sister has a POV, the strongest story for me was definitely Keyne who has been born in the wrong body. I felt the writing was sometimes a bit YA particularly in Sinne and Riva's parts but I do think each sister had a distinct voice. The story picked up a lot in the last third and took a very unexpected turn towards the end. I'd say it's worth a read but the writing doesn't have the depth of Madeline Miller.

SapatSea That made me laugh (my husband's family are Irish and I can well believe it)! Well, I suppose he was half right, it is depressing.

Piggy it was very sharp, whatever it was.

Cornish I DNF the latest Rooney quite early on and agree it would take rave reviews on here to convince me to pick up another.

Just finished Giovanni's Room. Sublime writing. One of those you instantly want to read again just to savour the words.

Back to Hardy. If anyone is interested, I was listening to a podcast with Douglas Stuart - the author of Shuggie Bain - this morning, and he picks Jude as one of the books that shaped his life. It's here if anyone fancies it.

45. Underland by Robert MacFarlane

I've been reading this on and off for a few months now, and ended up totally loving this book and being more than a little envious of the authors adventures to underground places.

I picked it up in a bookshop because of the beautiful front cover, read enough of the back that I thought it might be interesting enough to read about tree roots for a bit and downloaded it for 99p recently.

Spoiler alert. It's not just about tree roots.

He writes about all sorts of underground spaces in different parts of the world and his travels to access them. I really liked him as a person and think he is pretty self deprecating. The mountain skills he has to hike alone through Norway in the winter are incredible, there's not many who can do that safely.

He also writes with passion about these spaces and explains the geology and history in an accessible way.

I loved this, and might well go and look at his other books. I'm surprised to have enjoyed it so much, but definitely one of the best books I've read this year.

Thanks for the podcast recommendation Stokey it's a really great idea to get authors to choose the 5 books that have shaped them. Will have a listen later.
When I was in sixth form I read Jude and George Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying in the school library and they had a huge effect on me at the time. It felt like finally someone else understood. I wouldn't recommend them now and have been disappointed by re reads later. I wonder if access to the internet with all sorts of other people's experiences, psychology sites and endless information means that fiction books aren't so important in that respect anymore?

@RazorstormUnicorn

45. Underland by Robert MacFarlane

I've been reading this on and off for a few months now, and ended up totally loving this book and being more than a little envious of the authors adventures to underground places.

I picked it up in a bookshop because of the beautiful front cover, read enough of the back that I thought it might be interesting enough to read about tree roots for a bit and downloaded it for 99p recently.

Spoiler alert. It's not just about tree roots.

He writes about all sorts of underground spaces in different parts of the world and his travels to access them. I really liked him as a person and think he is pretty self deprecating. The mountain skills he has to hike alone through Norway in the winter are incredible, there's not many who can do that safely.

He also writes with passion about these spaces and explains the geology and history in an accessible way.

I loved this, and might well go and look at his other books. I'm surprised to have enjoyed it so much, but definitely one of the best books I've read this year.

I've been trying to read this for over a year. I own it in both hardback and Kindle version but I just can't get through it. There's stuff I really like in there but there's also stuff that is so bloody navel gazy that it drives me bonkers and I abandon it for another 3 months, on repeat.

@FortunaMajor

Piggy it was very sharp, whatever it was.

Cornish I DNF the latest Rooney quite early on and agree it would take rave reviews on here to convince me to pick up another.

Just finished Giovanni's Room. Sublime writing. One of those you instantly want to read again just to savour the words.

Giovanni's Room = stunningly good. I must read some more of his, but I fear they will be too depressing.

I was disappointed in Giovanni's Room, but love Another Country - which I first read by mistake at 14 (library hardback with no dustjacket and information and I really didn't know what to expect), and then reread a few years ago for a bookgroup (my suggestion I think). I've had some of his other books TBR for many years, but many have been reissued in Penguin in the last few years, and I also hav ea couple of bios TBR

Shocked about the job rejection because of reading Jude the Obscure, Sapatsea.

I like The Fortune Men so far very much, and am finding it mostly very evocative of the period, but for one thing that I find unbelievable.

The book is set in the 1950s

A woman remembers reading an Andrew Marvell poem at school (so 1930s or 1940s?, To His Coy Mistress, in which a man tries to persuade a woman to have sex with him, and actually refers to wanting her to let him relieve her of her virginity, arguing that life is too short to wait. We wouldn't have even read a poem like that in school in the 1980s. My A level course included some John Done poems but we certainly wouldn't have read and discussed his very sexy poem in a simiar vein to Marvell, To His Mistress Going to Bed.. I was at school in the 1980s.

Booker announcement due at or after 7,15 tonight on Radio 4.

I was at school in the 80s and we did some very sexy poems. Larkin's 'Sunny Prestatyn' is one that still particularly stands out to me.

Interesting, I don't remember much sex in The Whitsun Weddings, I fuess we had illicit relationships in Antony and Cleopatra and in French Lit, in Therese Raquin (but more murder than sex)

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48415/sunny-prestatyn

By 'sexy' I mean with sexual imagery, rather than a turn on btw!

56. The Corinthian by Georgette Heyer

57. Cotillion by Georgette Heyer

I'm DNFing serious books all over the place though still hoping to get back to most of them. Life is very tough right now. So I turned to a couple of Heyers. The Corinthian is very much 'by the numbers' though its theme of cross dressing and deception has charm. Cotillion I have given a bold because it's irresistible, one of her very best. The characters are rich, charming and consistent and she gives them Dickens-style language motifs which are very appealing. There's a pleasant sensuality to it all and the romance is richly satisfying.

Oh and it's funny!

Booker winner is Damon Galgut, The Promise

@elkiedee I did To His Coy Mistress at school, I think it was for A level as we were doing Donne & the metaphysical poets. I do remember sniggering at the worms taking her virginity. I think they may have studied it in the past in the same way as a classic. My school was an extremely conservative boarding school so wouldn't do anything experimental!

I haven't read The Promise but think it was the favourite? I remember The Times choosing it when the shortlist was announced.