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.

88. Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

The first in the Grisha series.

Solider Alina discovers her dormant magical abilities when her regiment is attacked while crossing the unnatural shadow fold.
Hers is an especially unusual and valuable magical ability.

I really enjoyed reading this and have reserved the next in the series from the library.

89. James and The Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

I read this one to DC. It’s one I didn’t read as a child, so the first time I’ve read it.
Starring giant peaches, giant (friendly) insects, and an orphaned child who’s been horribly mistreated by his nasty aunts.
It’s all really odd. But DS liked it a lot.

Some of my recent reads:

The Pearl by John Steinbeck

More of a novella really, this is the story of a poor pearl diver who finds a magnificent pearl, thinking it will solve all his problems, but he isn’t prepared for the reactions of his neighbours. Beautifully written, Steinbeck manages to say a lot with very few words.

The Rebecca Notebook and other memories by Daphne du Maurier

This includes the notes DDM made when planning Rebecca as well as the original epilogue chapter. It’s really interesting to see how the final novel changed from her plan. The rest of the book is pieces about her family and moving into and out of her beloved house Menabilly.

Love In A Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford

I enjoyed this more than The Pursuit of Live that I read earlier this year. Narrated again by Linda Radlett’s cousin Fanny, this follows posh girl Polly who scandalises her parents when she marries a duke much older than her. Funny.

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

Already well reviewed on this thread, and not much I can add that hasn’t already been said. One of my standout reads of the year.

44 The Country of Others by Leïla Slimani. Translated by Sam Taylor

I think this is one of my books of the year so far. It is the first in a planned trilogy, loosely based on Leïla Slimani's own family. This novel is the story of Mathilde, a French woman who marries a Moroccan soldier, Amine, who was stationed in her village in WW2. The novel starts as they arrive at his farm near Meknes and follows them over the next 10 years while there is political turmoil in Morocco.

The novel is written in the third person and is brilliant on the complexity of each of the many characters as they balance their frailties and achievements and complex emotions about each other. Mathilde and Amine's marriage is complex in a way that feels very real and your view of each of them changes over time as different facets of their personality are revealed. As I read the book I was both desperate to keep reading it while also never wanting it to end because I loved the writing so much. Not quite sure what I can read next that could possibly compete.

The second part of the trilogy has already been written and will be published in France in February, I hope there isn't a long wait for the English translation.

@StitchesInTime I keep seeing the Leigh Bardugo books recommended for YA. Do you think it would be suitable for a nearly 12 year old, who's inhaled Hunger Games, Divergent and similar?

@Stokey

Shadow and Bone is the only one I’ve read in the series, but from what I’ve read I’d say the peril, violence and romance so far is milder than what you get in The Hunger Games or Divergent.
So it should be suitable for a nearly 12 year old.

Caveat here that if she’s still young enough to be scared of the dark (my 10 yr old still refuses to go to sleep without a light on), then she might find the Shadow Fold in the book disturbing - it’s an area of unnatural darkness, created centuries ago by an evil magic user, with deadly monsters lurking within. It’s an attack by these creatures that initially triggers Alina’s powers, and there’s a bit later on in the book where the Shadow Fold is expanded to swallow up more land.

The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier
I read this when I was around 8 or 9 but could remember very little about it apart from a happy ending in a village. Somebody on here told me what the book was, and I found a copy in a charity shop this morning and enjoyed it very much.

Ah I loved that book Remus, I remember choosing it from those little Puffin magazines we got in school.

Yes, one of my childhood favourites too!

50. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Reviewed all over these boards. I found it a really enjoyable read even though the characterisation was hugely flawed and a lot of the time it barely made sense. The power of a story and of setting. Great stuff.

78: The Davidian Report - Dorothy B. Hughes

A superbly tense and hard-boiled noir suspense novel by the author of In a Lonely Place. It's a little after WW2 and Steve Wintress arrives in Hollywood, tasked with finding the elusive Davidian. On the inbound plane with him are a young soldier, a woman and an ex-FBI man.

Can he trust any of them? Have they been planted to spy on him? What's Steve's own motivation anyway, and is he a good guy or a bad guy? The answers to these and many other questions are only gradually revealed in a taut narrative that could be a moody black and white movie. Highly enjoyable.

Marking my place, do I can find this thread later

Thanks @StitchesInTime. She gave up the night light last year so hopefully will be fine. I'm hoping her new school will have a better library as she just whizzes through books at the moment, it's getting pricey!!

26. Adults by Emma Jane Unsworth
The story of 35 year old writer Jenny, her relationships, and her instagram addiction. I assume this was supposed to be a satire but I simply did not recognise enough of anything that was going on here for that to be successful. I'm not loads older than the main character, and see none of her agonising over every like and punctuation mark in my slighter younger friends. The characters were cardboard and the structure of unevenly paced chapters, emails, even script dialogue at one point was badly thought out (and I loved the use of whatsapps and texts in The Appeal ). Boo.

Hopefully a grammar school will have a well stocked library, but also try public libraries. My local libraries don't charge for reservations or fines for kids. I don't think my parents could have kept me in books when I was your dd's age! Sadly it's hard to get DS2 to read and DS1 doesn't devour books as he did between 7-12 - I'm hoping he can be tempted back a bit by Suzanne Collins' prequel to the Hunger Games and the final Noughts and Crosses book (Malorie Blackman) due out next week.

Hi Stokey, might be worth encouraging books swaps with friends too. It's cheaper and creates peer pressure to actually read them!

Choosing a book from the magazine was far and away the best bit of primary school. Right up there with choosing something from the clothes catalogue.

@TheTurn0fTheScrew

26. Adults by Emma Jane Unsworth The story of 35 year old writer Jenny, her relationships, and her instagram addiction. I assume this was supposed to be a satire but I simply did not recognise enough of anything that was going on here for that to be successful. I'm not loads older than the main character, and see none of her agonising over every like and punctuation mark in my slighter younger friends. The characters were cardboard and the structure of unevenly paced chapters, emails, even script dialogue at one point was badly thought out (and I loved the use of whatsapps and texts in The Appeal ). Boo.

Glad I'm not alone. I thought it was tripe.

Speaking of tripe

Real Life - Brandon Taylor

Black, gay, depressed, bulimic post graduate student comes to terms with his past as a child sex abuse victim while trying to navigate his friendship group and failure on his course while dealing with 'false' allegations of misogyny and the death of his father.

Oppression Olympics shopping list of issues with no plot. Overwritten with unrealistic dialogue and a pantomime cast of characters. Every sentence overwrought with angst and feeling. While it had some valid points to make about micro aggressions and racism/homophobia, overall my eyes hurt from rolling so much.

Moon Tiger - Penelope Lively
Woman on her deathbed recounts her life, particularly her time was a war correspondent in Egypt during WW2. Beautiful prose and compelling plot as all the strands of her life come together.

Beyond Black - Hilary Mantel
Psychic medium takes on a new assistant/companion, but their relationship suffers when the spirits from beyond interfere in their lives and secrets from the past surface.

I don't know what to make of this. I couldn't put it down but came away feeling that I didn't really like it.

Washington Black - Esi Edugyan
11 year old slave is plucked from the fields to be a man servant to his master's brother. After a suspicious death, the two flee to the Arctic when the boy is abandoned to make his own way in the world.

I read this blind and thought the first half was wonderful, but spent the second wondering what on earth I was reading. Quite fantastical which didn't really work for me as it wasn't the novel I was anticipating.

The Shadow King - Maaza Mengiste
Set during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. A recently orphaned girl struggles to come to terms with her new life as a maid in an army officer's home. As the war goes on she is determined to take on more of a role than the one offered in tending to the injured and dead. She takes up arms and encourages other women to do the same.

This does a great job of exploring the roles women took on during the war which are largely ignored or forgotten. Well written and interesting covering an area of lesser known history.

The North Water - Ian McGuire
Mid 1800s, a whaling ship sets off for the Arctic with a killer on board. The reluctant ship's surgeon gets drawn into an investigation when a cabin boy is brutally murdered, but he has secrets of his own to keep.
I quite like a bit of historical drama on the high seas and this didn't disappoint. It was a welcome change to the usual naval/pirate angle many others take.

Very much enjoying Nights at the Circus but in print so taking a while.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

Choosing a book from the magazine was far and away the best bit of primary school. Right up there with choosing something from the clothes catalogue.

We used to have a travelling bookshop come in to my primary. We paid into a saving stamps book throughout the term and then could buy something from the shop when it came. I loved it. Although the year I blew my stamps on a very fine and much coveted set of Berol Felt Tip pens instead of a book was memorable when I got home.

40. I love Female Orgasm by Dorian Solot and Marshall Miller

I found this as a recommendation and it was more aimed at beginners than I realised, but to be fair I've been married a long time now and there is no harm of being reminded of the basics and having a go at getting out of the typical rut lots of couples find themselves in! Interesting read. Picked up a few things to try at least. Nothing groundbreaking.

In my second year at middle school (equivalent to year 6 primary) I was invited to help in the school library, and we also ran a bookstall and went up to a bookshop up the road with our English teacher to choose books. I remember getting a book catalogue which may have been the same Puffin one you mention, as the boos I'm sure I chose from that source were both published by Puffin. Antonia Forest, The Cricket Term and Christabel Mattingley, New Patches for Old. I still have those two. I don't know how many times we got this or how many others I bought that way.

My aunt worked in (think she might have been a manager) a really large branch of Dillons for a while in the late 1970s, I think it was the same building that is now Gower Street Waterstones, which is near a lot of the University of London colleges (UCL, SOAS, Birkbeck etc) in Bloomsbury. I used to spend my book tokens there when we visited London to get her staff discount. And she once sent me a lovely parcel of 5 books - think I still have those as well - definitely one story about a girl at school (not a boarding school) by Mary Harris.

47. Billy Liar on the Moon - Keith Waterhouse A sequel to Billy Liar concerning Billy's attempts at being a grown up. Although he has a wife, a grown-up job and a flat and is now 33 years of age, Billy's internal fantasy life is as active as ever.

I enjoyed this one. Billy Liar is a long-standing favourite of mine (both book and film) and I didn't even know there was a sequel until I found it in a charity shop. It's comical and poignant, Billy's boring job in local government, his stultifying existence as householder and difficult extra-marital affair are tempered by an imaginary friend and the unauthorised composition of well-observed but scathing copy for the town guide book.

I have fallen off the wagon temporarily. A stressful time with a last minute school change and a funeral. Started Animal by Lisa Taddeo but have abandoned. Think I need something gentle at the moment.

@Emcla me too! I've slogged through the last couple of books (A Prayer for Owen Meany and The Sealwoman's Gift), and that combined with some life stress meant that I stopped reading for a bit. I'm easing myself back in by rereading Adrian Mole, possibly followed by a reread of Pride and Prejudice. I see them as a sorbet to cleanse the palate

Serendipitously, I was just reading a thread where someone said no child ever got a love of reading from the books they brought home from school.
I beg to differ. One of my fondest memories of primary school was the day they put up racks in the corridors with hundreds and hundreds of colour coded books. You were all assigned a colour and could take one. Keep it as long as necessary (overnight invariably in my case ) then change it.
To me, it was a dream come true. I could read as many books as I wanted!
Many of the old editions of childhood favourites have come from those racks. 45 years on I remember still my favourites. And that every day when I took one back, the teacher would say "are you sure you've read this properly?"
I do think things have become over-complicated these days. Too many boxes to tick, reading schemes that I agree must take the lifeblood away from reading both for the kids and the teachers.
I also remember our teacher reading out loud at the end of the day:
The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe
The Hobbit
Watership Down.

We would have been 8. I wonder if those choices would be "allowed" today?

We had a student teacher read us The Hobbit when I was 9. Loved it at the time.