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.

Ooh Piranesi was my top pick for the Women's Prize! Great news.

I haven't tried Piranesi because I just couldn't get to grips with JS and Mr N. Should I?

Have given up on Shadowplay.

It's very different to JS and Mr N. Still fantastical but in a very different way. The world building is excellent and it's much shorter so probably worth dipping your foot in.

I didn't like JS & MrN Remus , not a fan of Dickensian style novels nor in fact Dickens, but loved Piranesi. It is quite other worldly though so if you're not into any kind of fantasy/magic realism or similar, you may not like it.

Thanks. I’ll get the sample.

Agree that Piranesi has an atmosphere all of its own.

Have reserved A Fortnight in September at the library.

Just finished Head First: A Psychiatrist's Stories of Mind and Body. Essays by a psychiatrist on theme of how a purely technical approach to the ills of the body fails many patients and how experience of illness and pain are bound up in our minds" interpretation. Some areas in common with Suzanne O'Sullivan''s It's All in Your Head, but covered new ground. I liked this, and his empathy for human suffering, whatever the origin and whatever the expression, shone through. The occasional banality, but overall good.

18. Olive, again by Elizabeth Strout Loved this just as much, if not more than the original Olive. I've had it on my kindle for a while and have been 'saving' it. An absolute treat. Strout is fast becoming one of my favourite authors.

Just finished Normal People and I didn't hate it. I loathed Conversations with Friends so I was surprised. Her new one is getting rave reviews, so probably worth a punt. In the library queue for it.

I think I’m the only person on here who loved both of Sally Rooney’s books. I’m 42nd in the reservations queue at my library for her new one

I won’t be bothering with her new one. I didn’t like either Normal People or Conversations with Friends so have concluded she’s not for me! I find her writing style very irritating, particularly the lack of speech marks.

I’ll stick my head above the parapet and say I really liked both Sally Rooneys, especially Normal People. I really rate novels where the characters seem psychologically and physically real to me, and they hit the spot. Yes I am a millennial (a geriatric one though).

The first available date for the new Sally Rooney as an ebook at my library is towards the end of March 2023. I probably won't bother, although I didn't mind Normal People. I really didn't like Coversations with Friends but then I'm not of the right age to engage properly with Rooney's writing and the mindset of her characters.

I was disappointed by Conversations with Friends - didn't hate it but didn't see what the fuss was about. I preferred Normal People and quite enjoyed the TV adaptation, despite being much older than the characters. I was interested to see online that on FB that a friend who is a retired history teacher in his 70s also really enjoyed it, as I wouldn't see it as a recommendation for someone only a few years younger than my parents.

I've just bought The Only Plane In The Sky on kindle daily deals. I think it's had unanimously positive reviews on here, however it sounds like a book that you have to steal yourself to read because it's so desperately sad.

@DesdemonasHandkerchief - I bought it too, as I'[m interested in oral history

Thank you for the heads up on The Only Plane In The Sky. I nearly bought it a few weeks back. I don't particularly want to relive the grisly details of that day but I am fascinated by people's responses to it, and the way they express their memories.

Also bought The Only Plane which I actually thought I already had and intended to read this weekend but apparently not!

@DesdamonasHandkerchief

I've just bought The Only Plane In The Sky on kindle daily deals. I think it's had unanimously positive reviews on here, however it sounds like a book that you have to steal yourself to read because it's so desperately sad.

Walked in not really knowing what to expect. Remains the most affecting book I have read in possibly a decade.

88. Mister Impossible by Maggie Stiefvater This is the second in a trilogy following several Dreamers, who can bring back dreamed objects into the waking world, and the Moderators who are trying to wipe them out. I really loved the first book (Call Down the Hawk), & bought this expecting a real treat. Sadly it really didn't live up to no. 1, with not a great deal of plot progression, and too much jumping back & forth between characters. I only really got into it at about the 60% mark, and then the ending was a real let-down. I will read the final book, but overall a disappointment.

39. Magpie by Elizabeth Day

This book has had a lot of hype and has a long list of endorsements from well known writers printed on the first pages e.g. Terrifyingly Brilliant" says Marian Keyes. Touted as "the most gripping psychological thriller of the year." I really wondered if I was reading the book described. The story starts with our heroine, Marisa viewing her ideal house when a Magie flies in through a window and a vase breaks in the ensuing kerfuffle. Is this a portent of doom or just a dull chapter with more similies crammed in than a piece of Engish Language GCSE coursework?

Marisa has met a partner through online dating and things have moved swiftly so that they are getting a house and planning to have children just a few months into the relationship. When they move into their house their financial situation means they have to look for a lodger, but is all as it seems? I found the narrative style tortuous, every detail broingly and unncessarily (to my mind) described. It really got in the way of the plot. I found it all dull and uninteresting. I just didn't care.

40. The Carer by Deborah Moggach I enjoyed this. A light, breezy read - thanks to whoever recommended it several threads back. James is an elderly widower, an ex Oxford Professor who needs a live in carer. After some disastrous experiences related briefly in the first chapter (e.g. A Jamaican carer called Rejoice who bungs up his bowels with Maize stew) which I found offensive and full of lame stereotypes I decided to plough on and found the story really improved. James has two middle aged children who haven't been that successful, they have relationship problems and don't want to look after their father who they don't live near so are really happy to have found Mandy - an overweight, untidy and garishly dressed "angel" who their father seems to adore. As the pair become great pals and Mandy starts to call James "Pops" and "Jimmy", the siblings start to wonder if Mandy had ulterior motives especially when she mentions she inherited a flat from a former client.

48. Fanny Hill - Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure - John Cleland A country maiden, orphaned by the small pox makes for London to seek her fortune. She accidentally becomes a prostitute, but that's OK because she likes the sex.

First published in 1748, this book has been banned for lewdness for much of that time. My copy is from 1964, published after the pornographic publications laws were relaxed. It's not really pornographic, the sex is implied and not described.

The archaic language took some effort, I had to concentrate quite hard. The novel takes the form of 2 long letters from Fanny, addressed to "Madam" written from a later perspective where the narrator is in comfortable middle age with husband and children, looking back on the experiences of her youth.

Ah yes, I've read that. Well, bits anyway...Lots of unfeasibly large penises if I remember correctly.

80: The Spoilt Kill - Mary Kelly

Another BL Crime Classics reprint of a Mary Kelly novel of the 1960s. In fact this won the Golden Dagger in 1961, edging out John Le Carré. It has one of the most unusual settings in any crime novel I've ever read - private investigator Hedley Nicholson (later to reappear in Kelly's Due to a Death ) is engaged by the head of a Stoke pottery firm to try and track down the perpetrator of industrial espionage. Soon this dull if worthy task becomes much more difficult and personal.

The factory setting is convincingly evoked, and Nicholson (who narrates the story) is a complex, believable character who grapples with doing his duty versus what's right. Kelly excels at this kind of writing so even though the central plot isn't the strongest, this is still an engrossing read. If I'm being honest, though, I'd have to say I didn't enjoy it quite as much as I did Due to a Death.

21. Underbelly by Anna Whitehouse. This book has lots of hype and like quite a few recent novels focus on ‘instamums’. Lo and Dylan meet at school drop off and despite widely different lives they bond over their ‘creative’ use of social media. It all goes tits up unsurprisingly. I enjoyed the first section of this book, the competitiveness of motherhood and getting to grips with school life. The second half fell apart, and raced through huge developments way too fast. An easy read.

89. Acts and Omissions by Catherine Fox I picked this up from a recommendation on here, and I think it's been reviewed a few times. Set in the fictional diocese of Lindchester, this follows a year in the life of the Church and a range of those associated with it.
    Although I'm not at all religious (and I've never read the Barchester novels, though they're on my TBR list) I absolutely loved this. It's gentle, funny, and kind to all of the characters, but with enough plot to keep things moving. I had it as a bedside book reading a chapter a night for the first half, but then gave up and zipped through the rest this morning. I've already ordered the two sequels, and I'm sure I'll be re-reading this one.