50 Book Challenge 2021 Part Eight

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the eighth (and probably final) 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, it’s not too late to and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.The lurkers among you are also very welcome to come out of the woodwork and share with us what you've read!

The first thread of the year is here, the second one here, the third one here, the fourth one here, the fifth one here, the sixth one here and the seventh one here.

How have you got on this year?

That does sound terribly appealing Sadik!
113) Appointment with Death by Agatha Christie. Rather bland Poirot.

@ChessieFL - oh yes I have actually read the A-Z but totally forgot about it. OK so now fictional people are making me feel old, in my mind the Walsh sisters are in their 20s (as am I ) and Kate is a baby. Totally agree with you on the Rachel’s Holiday sequel, I wonder if she will go the route of having her relapse, hopefully not.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit - I know, it’s almost like they don’t want the freebies to be easily found. I downloaded all of the John Wyndham audibles, can’t wait to have a listen. I can’t tell from my library what I paid for and what was free, will let you know if I spot anything good though. I don't know if you’ve tried the Chronicles of St Mary’s but the early ones were free, the audible versions got me through a hospital stay when I was too ill to read earlier in the year, the narrator is really good. They aren’t high literature but they are fun and I love it when they actually do their jobs and go on assignment in the past.

OK maybe you already knew this but just searched on "included with audible" and it's brought up 8000ish options and the list can be filtered. I'm off to look!

I DID NOT KNOW THIS

@Sadik I have no idea how you found this but THANK YOU, might be just what I need for Christmas reading.

Currently reading Archangel by Robert Harris. Is there a better writer of easy reading, page turning thrillers? If so I want to know! (Stephen King too inconsistent though with flashes of genius.)

Agree with that MegBusset though I didn't adore The Second Sleep. I did finish it though.

@MegBusset

My DM reads thrillers nearly exclusively, and reads Lee Child and Karin Slaughter, neither is really for me though

117. The Sea Lady by Margaret Drabble

As a young child Humphrey Clark has a much anticipated holiday spoiled by domineering siblings Ailsa and Tommy Kelman and this holiday reverberates across all their lives.

It was just so not believable. I didn't believe them as people. I didn't believe the plot. I found that it had a higher opinion of itself than it earned. The idea that the author thinks they are saying something profound, when in fact its all a bit banal.

Weird. First Margaret Drabble. Don't know if there will be another.

I'd say Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code is probably the definition of an easy page turning thriller- but the only Robert Harris I have read is Fatherland and I didn't love that. I like Lee Child, Micheal Connelly, Desmond Bagley; all pretty consistently page-turnish.
114) The Hollow by Agatha Christie. I rather liked this Poirot, in the country house tradition, although it doesn't have the most satisfactory ending.

The Hollow is one of my favourite Christie's @Tanaqui. I don't really know why, just feels like it's has all her trademarks without being too well-known.

Also a fan of Robert Harris who I've just got my Mum into. I don't think I've read Archangel but really liked Conclave and his Cicero books, as well as a couple of older ones.

100. The Promise - Damon Galgut. The Booker winner and a worthy one IMO. I've read 3 others on the shortlist and can see why this was chosen. It follows a white family in South Africa from the mid 80s to the present day, and although it focuses very tightly on the family members, there is a strong background of the change and upheaval in South Africa at that time. The book is divided into 4 sections, 26th each part having a funeral. The main characters are 3 children at the start, Amor 12, Astrid 16 and Anton who's around 20. The way its written is really interesting as it's all third person - no speech marks although there is direct speech- but it flits in between all the characters' POVs. I found it really evocative and gripping.

101. The Christmas Murder Game - Alexandra Benedict. I love detective stories, puzzles and cryptic crosswords and Christmas so this should have been my perfect book, combining them all. A family have been gathered to play a Christmas riddle game by a recently deceased Aunt in a country house. Whoever wins will win the house. Each day there is a sonnet they have to solve to find a key, but they are snowed in and someone starts murdering them. I thought it was quite obvious who the murderer was from early on, there's no much depth to the characters and the sonnets are difficult for the reader to solve. Nice idea but badly executed.

Don't know why there is a 26 in the middle of this sentence. It should say

The book is divided into 4 sections, with each part having a funeral

The Crater School book was a recommendation from another author I read Noodle - I really rate author blogs for finding new stuff (along with this thread of course!)

@MegBusset

Currently reading Archangel by Robert Harris. Is there a better writer of easy reading, page turning thrillers? If so I want to know! (Stephen King too inconsistent though with flashes of genius.)

Gordon Stevens. Written some crackers- every one I've read (and reread) has had me going "this would make a brilliant film" No idea if he's still writing, or even alive but he definitely deserves to be more famous Provo- the IRA and special forces Kara's Game- Bosnia and special forces Kennedy's Ghost- US politico thriller. I've read the first two loads. Easy to read (bit of a grim suicide in the name of duty in Provo that haunts) page turners.

47. William Again by Richmal Crompton. A nice easy comfort read to get me within spitting distance of the 50 book total.

I've officially given up on Malibu Rising, having enjoyed Daisy Jones and The Six by the same author, I just couldn't care enough about this group of people to find out if they burned to a crisp in a Californian mansion or not 🤷‍♀️ (Not a spoiler as you're told about the fire in the prologue.) I've wasted far too much time on this sub Jackie Collins novel and I will be holding it completely responsible if I don't hit the magic 50 this year!

Thanks for the thriller recommendations, I've just tested positive for Covid so might need a few easy reads to get through ten days of self isolation!

37. Alone On The Ice - David Roberts

A well written account of Douglas Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911-14, which ended in an epic struggle for survival when two of his three-man party died weeks of travel away from the safety of the expedition hut. I was unfamiliar with Mawson's story as it tends to be overshadowed by Scott and Shackleton but it's every bit as gripping and tragic as any tale from the golden age of polar exploration. The only downside was some poor quality reading of the Audible book.

41. The Apollo Murders by Chris Hadfield

Is there nothing this man can't do? Canadian astronaut and former ISS commander Chris Hadfield wrote a bestselling autobiography An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth which I read, loved, and reviewed back in 2015. Now, he is back with his first fiction book.

This is a "What if?" story around US/USSR space race that somehow ends up with a Russian cosmonaut ending up in the American capsule headed for the moon. It is not high literature, but the story is interesting, the characters distinct and complex, and the details are both historically and scientifically correct.

A very respectable first book, recommended to everyone here.

@MegBusset

Thanks for the thriller recommendations, I've just tested positive for Covid so might need a few easy reads to get through ten days of self isolation!

37. Alone On The Ice - David Roberts

A well written account of Douglas Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911-14, which ended in an epic struggle for survival when two of his three-man party died weeks of travel away from the safety of the expedition hut. I was unfamiliar with Mawson's story as it tends to be overshadowed by Scott and Shackleton but it's every bit as gripping and tragic as any tale from the golden age of polar exploration. The only downside was some poor quality reading of the Audible book.

This is exactly my sort of thing. So exactly, that I might have read it already but can't remember!

Ah, Meg, you have my sympathies. Unpleasant and unsettling. Hope you're
feeling ok

48. Acts and Omissions by Catherine Fox

I didn't enjoy this as much as others on here. I found the narrator annoying and the cast of characters too huge to get a grip of. And you never got more than a page or two of each situation before we'd leaped to the next thing.

Also, for a book set it a church there is a huge amount of swearing including taking God's name in vain. I've been involved in lots of church settings and everyone is always way more uptight with their language.

(I couldn't care less about the swearing btw, just a bit jarring in a cathedral!)

Anyway at the end I couldn't put it down so it was fine, but I won't read the others of hers.

49. Six Stories and an Essay by Andrea Levy Thanks to elkiedee whose review I think was how I knew of this. I really enjoyed Levy’s Small Island many years ago. The stories in this slim book cover similar themes - the hopes versus the realities of the experience of em/immigration, disadvantage, and British selective amnesia about its history. Stories are introduced with information about why they were written or the real life experiences that inspired them. The essay is about an episode that Levy witnessed and how it informed her outlook and writing. All this makes for a very readable and moving mix of memoir and fiction that is revealing about the ways that the writer has worked experience into her fiction.

101: Spam Tomorrow - Verily Anderson

Another thread, about finding obscure books from childhood, threw up the name Verily Anderson, and reminded me that I had this memoir waiting to be read. There's more than a hint of the early Monica Dickens about VA's jokey style, and she had a similar background (not necessarily very moneyed, but rather posh).

The main focus is WW2, during which 20-something Verily marries Donald, disapproved of by her family (he was almost 20 years her senior). Their efforts to set up home together are derailed by the conflict and by Verity's first pregnancy, which goes horribly badly - she makes a big joke of this, but it sounds appalling - and after a second baby things settle down into comic set-pieces with amusing lodgers in the country farmhouse she rents with a friend, until finally the war ends and she and Donald are reunited and able to buy their dream house (in a perfect Regency Square in Kensington).

Gritty realism it ain't, but if you're after a quick, light read this is a lot of fun, and Verily has a very droll turn of phrase that did have me snorting several times.

61. The end of innocence: Britain in the time of AIDS by Simon Garfield
Totally random pick: i opened my library e-book app and filtered to 'available now'. And if it had all been as good as the first chapter, it would have been one of my books of the year.

First published in 1994, the year before combination therapy went (fairly) mainstream, and a new edition in 2021 with a foreword from Russell T Davies. Opens with an interview with the beguiling and shocking Rupert Haseldean, the man who put 'charming country cottage' into cottaging. More joyous stories like his and this would have been unstoppable. However it has a much broader remit than this, reprinting a lot of Garfied's articles of the time, which vary in interest. For me, though, it is incredible how it brings back the details of the time, particularly tabloid guest writers like John Junor and George Gale producing rank homophobia.

42. Insertion by A J Quinnell

This was brilliant , written by the author of Man on Fire and other similarly political action-filled books in the style of F Forsyth.

A top brain surgeon gets abducted by people who fake his suicide, but his wife isn't convinced. While she searches for him with the help of a police woman and a Senator, the surgeon uncovers a massive conspiracy.

I very much enjoyed this one and would recommend it to all of you.

102. American Dirt - Jeanine Cummins. Much reviewed on here and elsewhere, this is the story of Lydia and her son Luca fleeing from the cartel in Mexico who has murdered their family to the promised land of "el norte". There's a lot of controversy around Cummins' right to tell this story which I do get. The US is portrayed as a haven, and Lydia and her son don't seem particularly "Mexican" characters. Luca feels a bit old for his supposed age and Lydia seems a bit blind to the reality of her country. The strongest parts are drawing attention to the plight of the migrants, the lengths they have to go to riding the freight trains and crossing the desert. I think it has motivated me to read the books around the subject by Latin authors to understand the difference rather than the sanitised "white" version.