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.

[quote EineReiseDurchDieZeit]**@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[/quote]
Wizard and Glass is far and away my least favourite. It's all back story and I just couldn't care enough about Susan. I am a bad person.

@TimeforaGandT I love the concept of nun-fiction as a literary genre

Welcome @Tailrunner!

31. How to talk so little kids will listen by Joanna Faber & Julie King. My first ever parenting book - I found this really useful in ‘making my kid do stuff with a bit less drama’.

@MegBusset, to be fair, credit must go to boiledegg for creating the niche genre of nun-fiction ….

I read that How to Talk... years ago, then tried it out on DD1. The techniques did not work on her at all. She clearly has never read any parenting books and doesn't know what she is suppose to do.

@JaninaDuszejko that’s basically why I’ve always avoided them in the past. But right now I feel like the strategies are at least helping me stay a bit in control.

Welcome @Tailrunner!

I'm chortling at nun-fiction, I had initially assumed it was a typo for non-fiction. This way is much more fun.

103. Three Act Tragedy by Agatha Christie. Rather subpar Poirot with a dash of antisemitism. Quite a nice plot though! No nuns though 🤣.

[quote TimeforaGandT]**@MegBusset, to be fair, credit must go to boiledegg for creating the niche genre of nun-fiction ….[/quote]
Thanks GandT but I think it was actually Terpsichore who originally coined the term a while back and to whom all credit is due. I am definitely a fan though!

Think there needs to be a nun-rating alongside general star ratings... Maeve Binchy is often a 2 nun author, so is David Lodge.

I'd love to take credit for nun-fiction but I don't think it was me either!

Welcome Tailrunner

172. The Magician - Colm Tóibín A novelised exploration of the life and times of Thomas Mann, novelist and Nobel Prize for Literature winner. Starts with his boyhood and takes him through a troubled life as a closeted homosexual and father to six children with a brilliant Jewish wife against the backdrop of WW1, the rise of the Nazis, WW2, the Cold War and his life in exile.

This was broadly ok about a fascinating life, but at times I found the style a little dry and distant. It felt a little like Robert Harris writing a 3 part novelisation of Cicero's life knowing a biography wouldn't attract the readers. Unlike Harris, I didn't feel Tóibín could breathe life into the person and Mann came across as a cardboard cutout while the history did the work. It wore its research very heavily at times.

173. The Cookbook of Common Prayer - Francesca Haig An Australian mother makes the choice not to tell her hospitalised anorexic teen daughter that her brother has died in a tragic accident while on his gap year abroad. Her husband remains in London to find answers while she tries to pass off the death as a non-fatal accident requiring him to stay behind. Her husband would rather tell the truth, but when she starts to write to her daughter pretending to be her dead son, the lies start to pull the family apart and threaten the recovery of the daughter.

I could easily have abandoned this early on a few times as it felt like misery/grief porn, but ultimately was worth persevering with. It's told from multiple POV with some voices working better than others.

174. Misogynation -The True Scale of Sexism - Laura Bates This is a collection of her Guardian articles from 2014-18 interspersed with commentary. The articles are a shocking expose of the worst cases of misogyny in British Society based on her brilliant work with the Everyday Sexism Project. As it was largely reprints of articles there was an element of repetition and it needed a more over arching narrative to bring it together. Sadly she uses this book to lecture feminists when we have better things to do than argue among ourselves. It won't stop me being in the naughty corner with the rest of the 'wrong kind'.

175. The Ratline: Love, Lies and Justice in on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive - Philippe Sands This plots the life of one senior Nazi SS Officer during and after the war when he was wanted for war crimes. Working in conjunction with the officer's son (who believes his father was a good man) he uses family archives and personal letters to piece together even more of his life than the historical record permits to discover what happened to him as he tried to flee justice.

This was originally a podcast that was extended into a book. It is an excellent piece of investigative journalism and he handles the son with great sensitivity who remains in denial of his father's crimes despite growing evidence to the contrary. It is fascinating and shocking at the same time and raises serious questions about the support for the Nazi's beyond the end of the war from various and surprising quarters.

Is there a way to stop the app bunching everything into one paragraph?

Glad you felt that way about The Ratline, Fortuna - I really rated it too.

I've just been sad enough to do a search for 'nun fiction' and to my considerable surprise, it was me who coined it - but completely inadvertently. The double meaning didn't actually strike me at the time

Terpsichore - on the bright side, at least you weren't responsible for wanking vicars.

I heard Philippe Sands in conversation with Stephen Fry at the Hay Festival last year and really wanted to read The Ratline straight away, but somehow never got there. I saw it in a charity shop last week which prompted me to check the library for an audio copy. I was absolutely gripped by it.

I also saw HHhH in the shop and it is newly available in the library and duly downloaded. From memory it was quite the craze round these parts a few years ago.

I'm not allowing myself any more physical books in the house if an audio version is available in the library. It's taking me a painful amount of time to get through print books.

@Terpsichore

I'd love to take credit for nun-fiction but I don't think it was me either!

Terpsichore you're too modest!

From 14 June 2021:

You've got me at nun fiction, boiledegg ! I haven't read any Kate O'Brien but The Land of Spices features on the Furrowed Middlebrow top-ranking fiction list. I'm intrigued now...

Sorry, just seen that you've already found it!

Boiledegg

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie love your Christmas decorations! There is a huge turtle mural about 15 mins' walk from me; I always think of the Dark Tower now when I walk past it. Also there were some signs up in Holborn a couple of years ago trying to re-brand it as "Midtown" which always gave me a jolt when I spotted them!

63. Everywoman by Jess Phillips

I quite like Phillips and am interested in her background and life, and found this an enjoyable if not ground-breaking read. It's not a memoir as such, although she draws on her life and experiences, and there is a patchwork account of what she's done and how she got to where she is. It's more of a sort of life philosophy illustrated and supported by her experiences. There were parts I found a bit annoying and as I said before, not much was new, but she is generally an engaging writer and a few sections had me laughing out loud or nodding vigorously. I found her especially good on female friendships and mum guilt. I liked her take on cross-party relations as well; I'm very much not of the view that you can only be friends with people of a similar political persuasion and I am always encouraged when I see politicians reaching out across party lines too.

If we're nunning I need to (again) mention Virgin Territory by Sara Maitland. Utterly bonkers and no portly and strict but ultimately with a heart of gold Mother Superior is going to break into Climb Every Mountain in it, but it's quite intriguing.
(My relationship to it, as I've often said, is that my friend lent it to me when we were stuck on our year abroad in Brussels and Germany respectively and devoured anything in English)
To this day should nuns be mentioned, or even glimpsed on the horizon we all fall to the floor and say "what the fuck was your mum thinking sending you that book?"

I might get hold of a copy for old times sake.

Thanks for the warm welcome, this is a lovely group (and I love the idea of nun fiction). I'm looking forward to all the book recommendations.

I finished How Not To Be a Boy by Robert Webb. It's a very easy, honest style and an interesting view of the pressures and expectations that are associated with gender.

I think my next read is going to be Cambridge Blue by Alison Bruce.

Solinvictus I am so glad you mentioned Virgin Territory - I've been racking my brains for the title of it every time nun fiction comes up on the thread. Strangely, I don't remember it being particularly bonkers. Though having said that, given the sort of novels I used to read back then (Anna Livia / Emily Prager / Fiona Cooper / Joanna Russ anyone?) Sara Maitland was generally pretty tame

I've just finished

105. Ishi in Two Worlds by Theodora Kroeber

It's taken me a long time to listen to this (for anyone with Audible, it's on their Plus free list), but ultimately I think it will be one of my books of the year.

Ishi was the last surviving member of the Yahi tribe in California, systematically exterminated by the white settlers from the mid 19th Century. Reduced to a tiny number living in absolute hiding, a final catastrophe left Ishi alone. Eventually, on the verge of starvation, and in the probable expectation of being summarily murdered, he came out of hiding and into the town of Oroville.

This is absolutely heartbreaking, particularly the first half which recounts the story of the Yahi and their sister Yana peoples, and their decimation by the settlers. The second half of the story recounts Ishi's life from 1911 onwards, when he briefly before his death from TB found friends in a group of anthropologists based around the Museum of Anthropology in San Francisco.

For someone who had everything taken from him (even his name: since by custom Yahi indians would not tell people their name directly, but must be introduced by friends, the name Ishi that he went by simply means 'man' in the Yahi language), Ishi was evidently someone of tremendous generosity of spirit, and his sharing of his skills & knowledge brought a way of life that had been totally unknown to a wider world.

WelshWabbit

Midtown!

I saw a lorry a few weeks ago with 'Discordia' written in huge letters across it. Found it really quite unsettling!

Sadik That book sounds utterly fascinating and it's helpful to know that is included in the Audible Plus list, but was it a tough listen? I'm wondering if it might be too heart breaking for me!

It's mostly quite dispassionate in the first part which helps Cluelessmama - but yes, inevitably very distressing in places.