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?

118. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (Audible)

I have found Matt Haig books a bit trite in the past and wouldn't have read this at all had it not been on Audible for free read by Carey Mulligan.

I had to eat my words at the start, Carey Mulligan reads it so well, and I got really into it.

Nora Seed (which is a highly twee name and part of the overall problem with Haig) wants to die. Life hasn't worked out like she wanted and everyone blames her. Then her cat dies, and Nora considers taking her own life.

Between Life And Death, Nora encounters her school librarian who has volumes of books of other lives were Nora made other choices

Will the Grass Be Greener? Etc Etc

What started out as really engaging becomes so repetitive and preachy, and really, plotwise, quite predictable, I mean you do know where its going from the beginning.

Plus point : Easy Access Cosy Reading, don't regret reading it but nothing earth shattering and very The Lesson Of This Book Is.

43. Musical Areas in Aboriginal North America by Helen H. Roberts

This was a precious find in an old private library, published in 1936 by Yale University Press.

It explains and geographically groups the subtly different music of North America's native tribes as well as their instruments, concluding that they are not all pentatonic, descending, and minor as was "previously" thought, and that we don't understand their languages well enough to draw definitive conclusions.

A fascinating look into the fledgling field of Native American anthropology, nearly a century ago.

Leviathan by Rosie Andrews. Nice cover and title which lured me in. I can see this being marketed as the next "Essex Serpent* as it has a plot that involves a search for a mythic/ancient beast (although it is set during the English Civil war rather than Victorian times). The book has glowing reviews on Goodreads but it left me cold. I always knew I was reading a book, the world building of 1643 didn't convince or draw me in nor did the characters.It felt contrived.

Thomas Treadwater is a wounded soldier in the English Civil war. He is released from the fight to return home to Norfolk after receiving a worrying letter from his 16 year old sister. When he arrives home , he finds all the sheep dead in the fields, his servants locked up for aiding witchcraft, his father comatose and his sister alone. Their most recent servant hire, a sexy young woman who is thought to be a witch has apparently seduced their father become pregnant and is on the run. Treadwater is rational and doesn't believe in witchcraft but some sort of evil that needs unravelling is on the loose..

Once there were Wolves- Charlotte McConaghy
This was an unusual story. It involves a biologist Inti Flynn, originally from New Zealand, who has moved to a very remote area of the Scottish Highlands along with her severely traumatised twin sister Aggie. Inti is part of a team trying to introduce a pack of Canandian Wolves into the Scottish wilds. Inti has a condition called "mirror touch synaesthesia" which means she can feel a similar sensation in her body as does another person who is experiencing it. Inti can experience what the animals and her wolves are feeling. One night she discovers the body of a local farmer who has been killed. Suspicion falls on the wolves and Inti decides to protect them. The narrative follows the fallout from this decision, flashbacks as we learn what happened to traumatize Aggie and we also discover if Inti's love interest had any part in the killing of the farmer.

This was okay. I don't know if it is my own headspace but I found it a bit dull.

I'd like to join in a War and Peace read through! Sounds like a good way to tackle the book.

People talking about The Dark Is Rising sparked a thought that I think this was one of my mum's favourite books. Had a quick look and found a battered copy on my shelf which backs up my memory. I had to be very selective when choosing from her books as I didn't have any shelf space at that point in time.

I've got all 5 books in one, so will try and read Over Sea, Under Stone and The Dark Is Rising in December I think.

Great timing, Sap, as I just came on to post my latest...

102: The Dark is Rising - Susan Cooper

I'm happy to have joined in with the thread on this one. It's a quick read but an immersive one - one thing, though: I was expecting it to be similar to Over Sea, Under Stone in terms of narrative style, but it's much more full-on fantasy/time-slip. Having peeked into the next volume, Greenwitch, I see that Will Stanton, the central figure of this book, meets up with the Drew family from the first one, so it'll be interesting to see how the story continues.

Sorry, not Sap - I meant RazorstormUnicorn! 👆

It's so lovely to read Christmassy books at Christmas time. I am enjoying watching Hawkwye rn for the same reason!

115. They do it with Mirrors by Agatha Christie. A quick reread of a Marple.
116. The Runaways by Elizabeth Goudge. I think I would have enjoyed this more as a child, when I suspect I would have loved Nan's parlour; and the unevenness of the plot would have bypassed me. But I quite enjoyed it anyway!

Well and truly fell off the list again - far too busy, and now I've tested positive for Covid, just in time to ruin Christmas. Luckily so far feeling OK.

Belatedly posting my list - not read much more since last time!

1. In the Shadow of Power – Viveca Sten
2. Our Endless Numbered Days - Claire Fuller
3. The Truants - Kate Weinberg
4. Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout
5. Olive, Again – Elizabeth Strout
6. The Winter Book – Tove Jansson
7. Waiting for Sunrise – William Boyd
8. The Collector of Lives: Giorgio Vasari and the Invention of Art – Ingrid Rowland and Noah Charney
9. Lanny – Max Porter
10. Murder on Safari – Elspeth Huxley
11. The Magpie Murders – Anthony Horowitz
12. In Black and White: A Young Barrister’s Story of Race and Class in a Broken Justice System – Alexandra Wilson
13. Guest House for Young Widows: Among the Women of Isis - Azadeh Moaveni
14. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup – John Carreyrou
15. Rules of Civility – Amor Towles
16. In Your Defence – Sarah Langford
17. Reflections in a Golden Eye - Carson McCullers
18. Platform Seven – Louise Doughty
19. If Morning Ever Comes – Anne Tyler
20. Rubyfruit Jungle – Rita Mae Brown
21. The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History - Kassia St Clair
22. The Thursday Murder Club – Richard Osman
23. The Dutch House – Ann Patchett
24. Sudden Death – Rita Mae Brown
25. Blood Orange – Harriet Tyce
26. In Bad Company – Viveca Sten
27. Regeneration - Pat Barker
28. Olivia – Dorothy Strachey
29. The Eye in the Door – Pat Barker
30. The Ghost Road – Pat Barker
31. Red at the Bone – Jacqueline Woodson
32. My Name is Leon – Kit de Waal
33. Troubled Blood – Robert Galbraith
34. The Darkest Evening – Ann Cleeves
35. When I Hit You – Meena Kandasamy
36. The Falconer – Dana Czapnik
37. The Reckoning – Yrsa Sigurdardottir
38. My Former Heart – Cressida Connolly
39. The World I Fell Out Of - Melanie Reid
40. Blind Goddess – Anne Holt
41. The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford
42. Cotillion – Georgette Heyer
43. Stay With Me – Ayobami Adebayo
44. Van Gogh: A Power Seething – Julian Bell
45. The Prime Ministers: Reflections on Leadership from Wilson to Johnson – Steve Richards
46. Report for Murder – Val McDermid
47. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - Taylor Jenkins Reid
48. The Honjin Murders – Seishi Yokomizo
49. Grown Ups – Marian Keyes
50. My Brilliant Friend – Elena Ferrante
51. You Left Early – Louisa Young
52. The Appeal – Janice Hallett
53. The Shadows in the Street – Susan Hill
54. Perfect – Rachel Joyce
55. Hold – Michael Donkor
56. Brixton Hill – Lottie Moggach
57. Invisible Women – Caroline Criado Perez
58. Fleishman is in Trouble – Taffy Brodesser-Akner
59. The Killings at Kingfisher Hill – Sophie Hannah
60. Where the Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens
61. The Untouchable - John Banville (re-read)
62. The Beginning of Spring - Penelope Fitzgerald
63. Everywoman – Jess Phillips
64. Unnatural Death – Dorothy L. Sayers

My two latest reads

65. Little Red Chairs – Edna O’Brien

I don't know if it was because I was reading this rather disjointedly, but I found it a bit of an odd novel. It didn't seem to form a cohesive whole. The first part - describing the arrival of a charismatic stranger in a small Irish town - was fantastic; really beautifully written and observed. The second part, after we discover his real identity, veers into a wholly different world and I didn't feel O'Brien was entirely comfortable or secure in describing or writing about it. But parts of the writing in the first half have very much lodged in my mind.

66. How Hard Can It Be – Allison Pearson

Aaaaaargh, Allison Pearson. Can't stand her newspaper columns or Twitter presence. But I did really enjoy I Don't Know How She Does It, to which this is a sequel. So after wrestling with my conscience about giving her more money, I bought this on a 99p deal. And enjoyed it too. Kate Reddy is a lot more sympathetic than Allison Pearson, and there were some good passages in this about parenting, looking after elderly relatives, and being a middle aged woman in the workplace. Very easy to read, a bit sprawling, a bit of a Bridget Jones rip-off but (guiltily) the sort of thing I need to read with too much going on and, er, having Covid.

Hope everyone else on the thread is well and not too snowed under by life and Christmas prep.

Fell off the thread, not the list!

Oh, and meant to add that I have now embarked on my annual re-read of The Dark Is Rising, and pleased to see so many others on the thread doing the same!

Terpsichore, Greenwitch and The Grey King are my two favourites in the series for the way in which they bring the children together and show them wrestling with their different situations and Will in particular trying to navigate two different worlds. The final one is disappointing - when I read it to DS a few years ago I was struck by how much it went on with little in the way of plot - but the others are just fantastic. I do think of all of them, though, The Dark is Rising is the most atmospheric. For those of you who like it, Backlisted featured it as their Christmas book (I think) last year.

The Grey King is probably the best-written, I think. But that is possibly because I grew up in Wales near where it's set, and her description of the fog over the mountains and the landscape generally is so evocative of home for me. I don't re-read that one often, though - it's too sad.

I might have to do a Dark is Rising re-read too - though I never bother with Over Sea Under Stone and Greenwitch.

I had to buy copies of those two for dd when she was the age for the series as I'd never bothered getting them myself (I only used to buy books as a child if I'd already read them from the library & knew I liked them).

Is it in Grey King where they go to Cantre'r Gwaelod? That's my favourite bit of all the books.

Also, I see Hidden Valley Road is on kindle deal today, I think a number of us have read it & found it interesting.

The Broken House by Horst Kruger
By a German journalist, and subtitled 'Growing up under Hitler.'
Not great. A bit self indulgent and disjointed. Not really sure there was a great deal of point to it.

Remus I found the complete opposite when I read The Broken House in the summer. This was my review at the time:

^...... it took me a little while to get into as it is a much more cynical style, but by golly it packs a punch. It was first published in 1966 (but has only just been translated into English) and is the author's own story of growing up in a Berlin suburb amongst ordinary, non-political homeowners, "the typical child of innocuous Germans who were never Nazis, and without whom the Nazis would never have been able to do their work". It is worth reading for the penultimate* chapter alone, "Day of Judgement", which was originally written as a piece for a magazine in response to the Auschwitz trial of 1964-5. It is one of the most powerful and unsparing pieces I have read by a German writer trying to understand how the horrors of Nazi Germany could have happened and how the Germans responded in the following two decades.

*In the original it was the final chapter, but there is an afterword written by the author 10 years later in 1975^

Interesting that we had such a disparate reaction!

disparate reactions

I think that might have been my problem with it - the 'Day of Judgement' chapter was the only one that really seemed to have much to say. The rest, about himself as a student and about his sister, seemed to say so little imo. And as somebody who's read absolutely loads about the war and its aftermath, even that chapter didn't really do it for me, because it was too much about the writer and not enough about what he was writing about. I found it all rather self-ingratiating and soulless.

It makes more sense now I realise it was written to 'pad out' an article.

I think we may have to agree to disagree!

Of course.

Remus have you read A Woman in Berlin? If not, I think it would be right up your street.

Remus In view of our recent difference of opinion, would it help or hinder if I also endorse A Woman in Berlin?!

Read it. Liked it!