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.

Ward proposes to alter the colour of her readers' minds

The blurb has lost me with that incomprehensible sentence

The book very much follows in that vein Stitches

38, The Director by David Ignatious

This was a spy story in the modern age of surveillance, Wikileaks, and disinformation. It was better than most, but quite slow and ultimately rather dull.

I can believe that such events and conspiracies develop in the rather dull manner described in this book, rather than a fluid page-turner like a James Bond story. Still, I would expect a spy story to be more engaging than this.

Eine, that book about ants in people's heads was truly one of the worst things I read last year. It started off ok but got worse and worse. I kept on reading thinking it was me not her. But it was definitely her.

Removes Love And Other Thought Experiments from TBR pile

FortunaMajor glad you enjoyed Nights at the Circus, it's one of my favourite novels. Wise Children is similarly enjoyable. We were so robbed by Angela Carter's early death.

"I can believe that such events and conspiracies develop in the rather dull manner described in this book, rather than a fluid page-turner like a James Bond story. Still, I would expect a spy story to be more engaging than this."
Cote - given Citizenfour managed to make a documentary film on the Edward Snowden affair essentially consisting of about 90% footage filmed inside one hotel room over the course of four days, where the outcome is entirely known, and it still feels thriller-level tense, I would have thought so!

The ants book sounds appalling!
My big news yesterday was my first visit to the library to actually browse, rather than just pick up reserved books. They didn't have the Barbara Pym book I'd hoped for, but I'm happily now reading Dinner with Mr Darcy by Pen Vogler, which is a mix of (enticing sounding) recipes and chat.

RE : Snowden

Both his own autobiography and Glenn Greenwalds No Place To Hide

In other news I have stuffed up by numbers again by confusing Craig Brown's One On One which I read in 2020 and Greg Jenners Dead Famous from this year and listing both so I'm back on 109

What was my last garbage post?
I meant to recommend those Snowden books...

78. Arabella - Georgette Heyer

Arabella is the beautiful daughter of a Yorkshire vicar and his well-born wife. She is bright and quick-witted. As one of eight children, Arabella is being sent to London to stay with her godmother, Lady Bridlington, in the hope that she will find a husband who will overlook her lack of fortune and then give her the opportunity introduce her three younger sisters to eligible young men. Her journey to London is disrupted when her ancient carriage (borrowed from her uncle) breaks and needs repair forcing her to seek refuge at the nearest house, the hunting box of Mr Beaumaris. Unfortunately, Arabella lets her tongue get the better of her when she overhears Mr Beaumaris in conversation with his friend. Little does she know how influential Mr Beaumaris is in London society and the impact this will have on her London season (along with her feckless brother). I am a Heyer fan anyway but really enjoyed this one.

And just to confirm - no nuns…..

…..but there is a vicar!

My reading has really slowed down and I'm bringing armfuls of unread books back to the library. Just managed to finish:

Guarded by Dragons, by Rick Gekoski
This is the third instalment of anecdotes about his life in the rare book trade. I read a sample and loved the slightly random story about his baby daughter impressing everyone by sucking pickles, but the rest got a bit same-y. I'm a reader, not a collector, and not all that interested in books as objects (maybe an ancient codex: I did love Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts). I wouldn't whole-heartedly recommend, but it was enjoyable enough read in shorts bursts in the office at lunchtime.

Hoorah and Halleluia! Book 50 reached.

This was Stigma: the Machinery of Inequality by Imogen Tyler who ,a s the title may suggest, is a professor of sociology (at Lancaster). She examines he personal experiences, the experiences of people living in poverty in Lancaster, issues around race, migrants , disabilities and gender and broader cultural and historical contexts..

It's very wide ranging and interesting (at times a bit high brow for me but mostly not). The chapter on austerity is excoriating as is the one on migrants.

It's very outspokenly left wing. Don't let it near the anti woke brigade! Their tuts would reverberate and the frothing would drown us all...

One thing she clearly had 'fun' with was curating DM reader comments. Terrifying.

106 Dinner with Mr Darcy by Pen Vogler
Mix of chat about the food in Jane Austen and updated recipes together with their period originals. This was a charming read, and there are a surprising number of recipes that I'm actually keen to try before I take it back to the library (definitely including rout cakes, and potentially even white soup).

Arabella is a charming Heyer I think- and certainly the one with the most social conscience.

104. Dress Coded by someone I can't remember and can't be bothered to look up. Lacklustre YA about American middle schoolers being unfairly "dress coded", could've been more interesting than it was (and while I absolutely think dress codes should be fair, I do think some clothes are not appropriate for school!).
105. Mount by Jilly Cooper. More joyous shagging, horses, and drinking- not a patch on Rivals, but still good escapism.

95: China in Ten Words - Yu Hua

This wasn't my choice of book and I doubt I'd ever have picked it to read of my own volition, but it ended up being quite interesting. Yu Hua grew up during China's Cultural Revolution, the child of two doctors, and was taught to espouse the teachings of Chairman Mao as a given. On leaving school, the Party assigned him a job as a dentist (with horrifyingly little training) and he worked in this unrewarding occupation until one day he realised that his lifelong love of reading had also given him a desire to write. So he started to do exactly that - finally selling some stories to a magazine in Beijing, and eventually going on to write award-winning novels.

The book takes ten key words related to life in China and uses them to explore both his own past and China's dizzying transformation from Communist monolith to rampaging consumer economy. It's often bitingly funny, but also studded with some horrifying anecdotes and descriptions of a level of violence - normalised as an everyday fact of life during the Cultural Revolution - that was quite hard to read at times.
A thought-provoking book offering unexpected insights.

I've got 3 to update:
93. At First Light - Barbara Nickless. This was a Kindle first read and a crime book. There is a female detective with a charming partner and misogynist boss who is friends with a dwarf who is a symbols expert. A killer is leaving lots of runic & Beowulf stuff around bodies. Bit clichéd but quite enjoyable, the best Kindle first read I've had in a while.
94. Go Tell It On the Mountain - James Baldwin. This is set in 1930s New York and is kind of about a 14 year old boy and his struggles with his preacher father, but actually the main chunk of the story is a retrospective of his aunt, mother and father's lives. The actual present story is mainly about one night where they are all praying in a church. The religious imagery throughout the story is very strong and there is a real feeling of time and place. I didn't find it the easiest read though, and found I had to make myself read it. I think his other books may be more appealing to a modern audience - think someone reviewed Giovanni's Room a few pages back and a friend was raving about. Another Country.
95. Doing Time - Jodi Taylor. I needed something light after Baldwin and this ticked all the boxes. I'd read some of her St Mary's stuff years ago but haven't read any recently, and this one about the Time Police was good fun. I may have to go back and revisit the others.

And that reminds me, I really like the new feature on your Kindle that groups series together. So obvious but so helpful!

Love that feature @stokey although I’m still dreaming of when they allow you to sort by length.

I haven’t spotted that feature! Will have to investigate. Agree that being able to sort by length would be good!!

Litter of bones by JD Kirk - passed on to me by a friend. It was entertaining and the story moved quickly. Enjoyable without being stand out.

I’ve moved on to The Various Haunts of Men by Susan Hill which is much slower but I’m enjoying it so far. The series has been recommended to me by a few people so I thought it was about time I gave it a go.

110. The Margot Affair by Sanae Lemoine

Got from Reposed

Set in Paris, Margot is the love child of a famous actress and a married politician; tired of feeling second rate to her fathers "real family" and at odds with her narcissistic mother, Margot decides to leak her existence to the press.

At a vulnerable ebb, Margot becomes reliant on a charismatic couple who are merely exploiting her to their own ends.

It was this second part to this story that actually I thought was more interesting and if anything done a bit too subtly, and its also a really different kind of gaslighting in which a young woman is deliberately ensnared into a situation and then blamed once it goes awry.

I liked this a lot but the end is a damp squib and it certainly follows the Reposed trend of being Good but not Great.

Some Tame Gazelle - Barbara Pym - I know this is beloved by some of you but it took me three attempts to get started. I got there in the end and sort of enjoyed it eventually. I think my antipathy towards clergymen didn’t help - stems from having had a C of E canon in the family, the doted on only boy among 5 girls, all of whom had their education compromised to allow him to ‘cavort at Oxford’ to quote a relative.