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.

@MamaNewtNewt @PepeLePew

I LOVE LOVE LOVED The Gunslinger but the next two books didn't impress at all and then I gave up during Wizard And Glass

Meh

@PepeLePew I can't believe how much more I loved the audiobook (4 stars) compared with the book (1 star). Poetic is how it seems to me.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit it will be interesting to see if this where our tastes diverge after our recent similarities

@MamaNewtNewt

They might not diverge! You might find like I did that the sequels don't live up to it.

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan One of my favourite books ever is Claire Keegan's Foster (especially good if you are familiar with Ireland, NB as I've mentioned before, don't be put off by the trashy cover). I didn't like Small Things Like These quite as much, but I still think it is still a gem of a book. It is set in a small Irish town in the 1980s and tells the story of coal merchant Bill Furlong - his background, his marriage and five daughters, and his relationships in a wider community under the stifling influence of the Church and particularly the local convent. It is only just over 100 pages long but the language is gorgeous and spare and it touches on many aspects of morality and life.

Another in my growing list of nun-fiction recommendations.

Material Girls by Kathleen Stock Much in the news recently. I thought it was a really good, clear and balanced exploration of gender identity and the significance of biological sex. I would also add that I found nothing in this book at all which could in any way justify the appalling treatment meted out to Professor Stock recently and suspect that many of her critics have not actually read it.

By way of contrast, I'm currently reading Sons of the Waves by Stephen Taylor, which looks at the lives of "common" seaman in the late 18th/early 19th century. Fascinating!

The Dark Tower discussion is my trigger to come on and thank those of you on this thread (I can't remember who, but I think @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie was one of them) who recommended it to me. Although I got frustrated at points, overall, I loved it (and sorry, @EineReiseDurchDieZeit Wizard and Glass was my favourite). I thought the end was great as well. I know lots of people don't. Enjoy @MamaNewtNewt!

Boiledegg, I saw a review of Sons of the Waves in the LRB and it did sound fascinating. You're tempting me!

SOLINVICTUS thanks for the mention of A Child's Christmas in 1980s Wales. Found it online and just had a quick read Lots of memories there for me - the Corona Pop man and Arfon Haines Davies. My first date with DH was December 23rd 1984 (in Wales) so it took me right back to then.

53. Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser. I really enjoyed this, so thank you to those who recommended it upthread. I loved the Little House books as a child and it was fascinating to find out how much was true and which bits had been left out, and to discover more about the pioneers in general.

@Terpsichore

Boiledegg, I saw a review of Sons of the Waves in the LRB and it did sound fascinating. You're tempting me!

I'm less than a quarter of the way in but so far it's been really interesting and very accessible to a landlubber.

Hi all, I hope you don’t mind if I sneak on to the thread for the last part of the year. It’s a bit late to start a 50 book challenge but I wanted to get some recommendations so it seems only polite to say hello too. I feel as though the past few years have been a whirl of retraining, new job, kids growing and staying up later and a general lack of time to read. I’ve fallen into re-reading (or listening to) old favourites I can pick up in the odd bits of time I have, then put them down without losing track of the story. I’m getting bored though and I’m determined to carve out some reading time. I’ve started with some biographies/memoirs I’ve had for a while.

Windswept and Interesting by Billy Connolly - I had this on audiobook which is the ideal way to hear his story. Some parts were familiar but it didn’t spoil it - it was like having tea with an old friend. Some parts were heartbreaking but it’s also full of joy. I really enjoyed this one.

Walking with Ghosts by Gabriel Byrne - this was completely different. Beautiful poetic writing and more of a meander through early memories than a traditional biography.

I’m now reading How Not To Be a Boy by Robert Webb

Hello and welcome @Tailrunner - never too late to join

Re: the Dark Tower, I read them several years back on one of these threads. As a series I found them wildly inconsistent, with some great bits and some that really dragged or didn't work. And I didn't like the ending. But it was a fun journey along the way.

33. The Fortnight In September - RC Sherriff

Another Backlisted recommendation and a deceptively simple, poignant and funny account of a family holiday from London to Bognor Regis in the 1920s/30s. All the characters and their interrelationships are beautifully drawn, and as someone who probably only has a handful of years of family holidays left I found it particularly resonant.

Welcome @Tailrunner. This is a haven of loveliness in a mad mad world.

@Bestiswest, me too with the pop man, but ours came from Mandora which I think must have been a local version of Corona and we had to go up to the chip shop for it. Have you read Andrew Collins "Where did it all go right?" That's about growing up in the 70s and 80s and is great.

Welcome @Tailrunner. These threads are something I always come to with pleasure.

I've just abandoned 'The Survivors of the Chancellor' by Jules Verne. An unreadable pile of tosh in the form of a diary by one of the passengers on at Atlantic sailing ship on the 1870s. Mainly made me very glad that I live now and not then. Manages to insert a truly incredible amount of racism and other stupidity into what should have been a ripping yarn.

Hi tailrunner. Welcome! I really liked 🤔How Not To Be a Boy. I thought it was interesting and brave.

Meg, A Fortnight in September is a joy, isn't it? It was the perfect end of summer read for me after a year of cancelled plans. I know my holidays are very different but I recognised so much of the emotion, the hope and the anxiety in particular.

Welcome aboard, Tailrunner, good to have you with us. I enjoyed Gabriel Byrne's memoir, too.

Welcome Tailrunner

Welcomre @Tailrunner

I’ve recently read these books:

Underbelly Anna Whitehouse. Contemporary novel set it London, this has Lois and Dylan as the two protagonists, two mums whose kids meet on the first day of school and become friends. Both mums have an online presence, Lo is an influencer and Dylan writes about her life of poverty and her abusive ex in a blog. It took 3/4 of the book for something remotely interesting to happen and when it did I wasn't bothered because the two women's relationship had been poorly developed. The book could have properly explored the dark side of Instagram and the realities of being a ‘mummy influencer' but instead the authors (Anna wrote this with her husband) bore us over many pages with lots of minutiae about some of the mundanities of parenting and being an influencer and it was all rather dull.

Let's Do It: The Authorised Biography of Victoria Wood - Jasper Rees. This was in places a bit of a slog as it was way too detailed on some of the various jobs she did over the years. I'm a huge fan so I never felt like DNF-ing but so many times I wondered 'Where are her family in her story, what are they thinking of her success, how did it her fame affect their relationships' etc. Strictly for V.W afficionado's.

Beautiful World, Where Are You? - Sally Rooney. It follows Eileen and Alice, two best friends in from Ireland in their early 30s, trying to navigate life and their relationships. I loved her first two books, so I always had high expectations and, generally speaking, they were met. The story - as much as there is - meanders occasionally and I was tempted to skim read some of the (almost comically) lengthy and erudite emails Eileen and Alice send each other. But mostly her writing is so elegant and a sheer pleasure to read, and I thought she did a pretty good job of discerning the separate voices for the four characters. I also thought she depicted the intricacies of the female friendship superbly, especially in the last quarter of the book. It's my least favourite of her three books but it's still a highlight of the past couple of years of reading.

Welcome Tailrunner - this is truly the nicest corner of the Internet.

Thank you boiledegg for the latest nun fiction recommendation. I have just finished:

77. In this House of Brede - Rumer Godden

Someone - I can’t remember who (was it you boiledegg?) recommended this earlier in the year. Set in a Benedictine convent in 1950s Sussex following the lives of the nuns. I enjoyed this very much as whilst it gave a very good feel for the daily prayer routines and the religious festivals as the backdrop, the focus was on the lives of different nuns within the monastery (not a convent) from minor day to day issues to bigger issues of faith and discord. Probably not for everyone but if you like church/nun fiction then do read it.

It wasn't me but it sounds right up my street! Not sure why I didn't add it to my wishlist earlier, but it's there now, thank you GandT.

Welcome Tailrunner.

@TimeforaGandT

Welcome Tailrunner - this is truly the nicest corner of the Internet.

Thank you boiledegg for the latest nun fiction recommendation. I have just finished:

77. In this House of Brede - Rumer Godden

Someone - I can’t remember who (was it you boiledegg?) recommended this earlier in the year. Set in a Benedictine convent in 1950s Sussex following the lives of the nuns. I enjoyed this very much as whilst it gave a very good feel for the daily prayer routines and the religious festivals as the backdrop, the focus was on the lives of different nuns within the monastery (not a convent) from minor day to day issues to bigger issues of faith and discord. Probably not for everyone but if you like church/nun fiction then do read it.

I think a few of us read it last year, and reminisced about the Diana Rigg serialisation on TV when we were bairns.

102. The Thirteen Problems by Agatha Christie. Lovely collection of the Miss Marple short stories, highly recommended!

Inching towards 100 with.....
93: Parisians - Graham Robb

I’m feeling a bit bereft after the end of ‘Paris Police 1900’ on BBC4, so I dug this out of the tbr pile. Each chapter is a different mini-exploration of an aspect of Paris: factual, but told in a fiction-like way. I enjoyed it, but had a slightly hard time working out which bits were true (not all of it, I’m fairly sure), and spent very large amounts of time googling to check important details. This was useful in that I came away knowing a lot more than I did, but it still left a vaguely uneasy feeling that Robb was an unreliable narrator. That may just be because I like my non-fiction to be totally unambiguous, though.

94: The Unheard - Nicci French
Someone else on here gave this a pasting but my guilty love of NF meant I had to check it out. Single mother Tess is gradually consumed by fear that her 3-year-old daughter Poppy has witnessed something terrible....but what, and how?
There are some very familiar NF tropes here, including the old ‘the police refuse to believe anything I tell them but I know I’m right’ scenario...it all got a bit wearying, and the denouement left me scratching my head - I still can’t work out what was supposed to have happened in one specific plot point, which is mighty frustrating. Not NF’s finest.

@Welshwabbit

The Dark Tower discussion is my trigger to come on and thank those of you on this thread (I can't remember who, but I think *@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie was one of them) who recommended it to me. Although I got frustrated at points, overall, I loved it (and sorry, @EineReiseDurchDieZeit* Wizard and Glass was my favourite). I thought the end was great as well. I know lots of people don't. Enjoy *@MamaNewtNewt*!

It was me!

The ending hurts me, but I do think it was the right one. But it hurts me. But it was the right one. But...but....

Speaking of which, I bought this Christmas tree decoration and this one to indulge my Dark Tower obsession. If you know, you know.