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?

Have been revelling in mindless crime for the last couple of weeks.

113. Hercule Poirot's Christmas, Agatha Christie
The usual incredible number of random individuals with fake identities just happen to be present at the crime scene, but she got me - I missed the clues to the real murderer.

114 - 118. Murder on Campus, Death of a Dean, Dead and Buried, Lilies that Fester, Delay of Execution, all by Hazel Holt
Cosy traditional crime. The lead character, Mrs Sheila Malory, doesn't too anything too strenuous by way of investigation, but in between bouts of housework she has a cup of tea with someone who inadvertently drops a clue, and then a few chapters later she has a cup of tea with someone else, and after a little gentle probing, they burst into tears and confess all.

Barack Obama's List Is Out :

I love Hazel Holt Biblio. I’m trying to track down Lilies that Fester via my local library as I can’t get it on Kindle and refuse to read them out of order.

Is anyone else wonder quite how many books Barack Obama read to have 24 'books of the year'. It should be 120 at least.

Looks like decent list. There are a few on there on my 'to read' already.

I've almost finished Ann Patchett's These Precious Days. It is a wonderful series of essays that are mix of moving memoir and musings. This was a lockdown project for her and I don't think many people will have spent the pandemic doing magic mushrooms with Tom Hank's assistant. It is well worth a read.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Obama does read that many - I’ve heard him and Michelle both describe his obsession with reading every spare moment.

63. Armageddon by Max Hastings
FINISHED IT. It's taken me months to read this, and I can't really tell you why, as Hastings deploys a journalist's skill of weaving soldier and civilian accounts into his narrative of the battle for Germany 1944-1945. Maybe that's the problem; I actually found it more readable when Hastings told the story himself. There are passages that reach real literary class in this, particularly his descriptions of Berlin in the last days, or the hungry winter of Holland. The jauntiness of individual soldier accounts without a broader perspective can ring a bit oddly as a result. But most difficult for me is Hastings' profound reverence for military lives and skill, and his apparent distrust of anyone who prefers not to be shot at. The whole viewpoint seems skewed, that yes war is hell but it's also natural, or at least unnatural to flee it.

I'm left wanting to return to Antony Beevor and not to read more of Hastings' view of life. But still, there are images and ideas in this that will stay with me.

BadSpella Eric Carle lived in Germany during WWII. Although his family had emigrated to the US, for economic reasons not as refugees, he had returned to stay with relatives and was stuck there. But Judith Kerr's German Jewish family left as Hitler was coming to power - her father was a high profile socialist writer. They first moved to France but fortunately for their survival they ended up in London, though from her writing it seems that her parents never reestablished the kind of lifestyle as refugees that they'd had in Berlin. She did experience the Blitz and rationing as a teenager/young woman though.

I think a lot of books for young children are very much about food, one way or another.

I have English Passengers and another book by Matthew Kneale on my TBR. I'm interested in the descriptions of the books he's written but also, he is Judith Kerr's son. HIs father wrote for the BBC, radio mostly I think rather than TV.

Actually I have three Kindle books by Matthew Kneale on my TBR - English PassengeItrs, another novel published in 2020 called Pilgrims and a book about Rome's history. I'm interested to see that he's also written an Atheist History of Belief and another novel, published 2018, about London facing an 1849 cholera outbreak.

I didn't realise he was Judith Kerr's son @elkiedee, thank you. I read Pilgrims, but didn't love it - I do love Kerr though (does anyone not? The Tiger who came to Tea is such a perfect perfect book!).
118) Crooked House by Agatha Christie. Apparently one of Christie's own favourites, this is okay, but I suspect the ending was more original when it was first written.

Matthew Kneale's father was Nigel Kneale, who created Quatermass, very famous in its day (1950s) as a ground-breaking TV science-fiction serial, and adapted for radio as well. There was a new TV remake as recently as 2005.

He also wrote TV plays - 'The Year of the Sex Olympics' foreshadowed the growth of reality TV, and does anyone else remember 'The Stone Tape'? That absolutely frightened the life out of me as a child!

He was a very interesting man. DH and I went to an evening of his films and interviews at the NFT once; it was fascinating.

67. The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper

Tagging on the end of TDIR re-reads, I just feel this gets better every time I go back to it. There are many things I love about Harry Potter, but the sheer unnecessary length really isn't one of them, and this series really shows it up. Taut and also beautifully written in parts, like others upthread I think I enjoy the descriptions of a family Christmas in Will's present day most, but I also love the relationships between Will and Merriman, and Merriman and Hawkin. And the Victorian Christmas, and the descriptive writing around the finding of the signs. Just perfect.

103: Field Work - Bella Bathurst

This was a completely absorbing read, and brilliantly written. Bathurst rented a cottage on a Welsh hill farm and came to know Bert, the farmer, who'd toiled on his land all his life, as his father had done. She got interested in why people farm, why they pour their lives into this unimaginably hard, grinding, usually unrewarding and unceasing labour, and set out to write what became this book.

She talks to everyone from vets to award-winning butcher/slaughtermen to owners of a rural online dating business, with a chapter on the sessions run by counsellors who try to help build bridges within families torn apart by conflict - battles over what happens to the farm when the older generation dies; the prejudice that means women/daughters and anyone not white have a massive battle to be taken seriously in the industry. There are grim passages on the horrific toll taken by foot-and-mouth, TB and all the thousand disasters that can befall livestock at a moment's notice. Bert, the farmer who owns Bathurst's farm, dies.

But what's never in doubt is that (almost) everyone she talks to loves what they do with complete dedication, and would never do anything else. If you're a vegetarian or vegan this will be hard reading, but it's an unsparingly fair and even-handed book. BB has also written along similar lines about lighthouse-keepers, and now I really want to read that, too.

Blimey I well and truly fell off the thread again. So many interesting posts to catch up on! My uni has short, intense 8-week terms, and the autumn term is the hardest because it’s followed by a week or so of undergrad admissions interviews, which I just finished a couple of days ago, hallelujah. I was so tired over the past few weeks I couldn’t even read properly; the words were just dancing across the page. So many lovely young people, so many UCAS forms. God I’m drained. I hope I can keep up with this thread more systematically next year, because I do love it.

It's lovely to hear you’re moving to France @magimedi, I hope you enjoy your new life there!

@FortunaMajor and @Stokey, Home Fire is one of my favourite novels of all time. I’m glad to hear of others appreciating it so much. With denaturalisation/removal of citizenship so much in the news at the moment, it’s a novel that seems to be increasingly politically relevant.

@Sadik, I liked your review of The Right to Sex. Very true what you say about her conclusions mostly boiling down to ‘it’s complicated’. On the other hand, that’s what a lot of my own conclusions about feminism and many other issues boil down to, so maybe that’s why I liked the book so much. She exposes tensions rather than opting for easy answers.

@VikingNorthUtsire, I haven’t read War and Peace since I was young; I’d love to join in on the read-along next year. I must join that thread. I also think your review of the Kate Clanchy book is spot on. She is well-intentioned, but inadvertently does a lot of ‘othering’ in her descriptions of the pupils she teaches. I know that she has found the negative reaction to the book very hard to deal with psychologically; she has stated publicly that it has made her suicidal. Some people have attacked her on Twitter in quite relentless fashion, and even though she triggered the original conflict herself to some extent (by launching a cringe-worthy attack on a negative review by a young Goodreads reviewer last year, and asking people on Twitter to come to her defence to refute it), I find the black-and-white nature of ‘KC is a racist’ to be disturbing. She lives in my neighbourhood (as I may have said before) and I feel sorry for her on a personal level, because I think she’s quite fragile at the moment. In short, another example of ‘it’s complicated’! IMO we need the critical tools to differentiate between overtly racist people (who argue against a multi-cultural Britain) and well-meaning white lefties who exhibit unconscious bias (I’m sure I myself at times have belonged to that category). Basically though I just wish KC would get the hell off Twitter and Goodreads, for the sake of her own mental health.

Some catch-up reviews. Am hoping to post a few a day for the next couple of days till I've caught up properly.

60. Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep, Philip Reeve. 4/5
    I wanted something escapist and easy to read in the middle of the uni term, and this was perfect. This novel is clearly pitched at a younger audience than the Mortal Engines series; the protagonist Utterly Dark is 11. As ever, Reeve writes beautifully. Reality and fantasy are skilfully mixed in the vivid portrayal of an island somewhere off the coast of Britain, where the eccentric inhabitants live next to the sea, but fear it – and as it turns out, rightly so.

61. Telling Tales, Ann Cleeves. 4/5
    The second book in Cleeves’ Vera Stanhope series. Like the first, this has excellent characters and plotting. Also like the first, it ends a bit abruptly and unexpectedly, but that’s all right. A pleasure to read.

62. I Curse the River of Time, Per Petterson. 4/5
    The second novel I’ve read by Petterson this year, after Out Stealing Horses, this focuses on the relationship between adult son Arvid and his terminally ill mother. Arvid, the first-person narrator, also recalls his youthful decision to drop out of university and join the ‘proletariat’ as a factory worker. (His fellow factory workers are stoically unimpressed by this idealistic demonstration of solidarity.) At times the narrative dragged a little for me – I think Petterson’s novels are too bleak for me to love – but the characters are convincingly, endearingly human.

85. Next of Kin - John Boyne

The book is set in 1936 against the brief reign of Edward VIII and the story of the King and Mrs Simpson is integral to the plot. The story focuses on Owen Montignac, the 25 year old nephew and heir of a successful landowner and businessman, and Roderick Bentley, a respected judge, and how their paths end up crossing (trying to avoid spoilers). Whilst not entirely credible, this was a real page turner for me and I raced through it.

Thank you Terpsichore. I hadn't heard of Field Work until I read your review and it is now firmly on my TBR.

Elkidee I read Pilgrims earlier this year and enjoyed it a lot, but I suspect it's one of those things that it really just depends whether the style appeals to you.

Cassandre I do agree that actually 'it's complicated' is the genuine answer to a lot of these issues (something that a few posters in other less cuddly corners of MN could perhaps do with remembering!)

120. No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood (Audible)

In No One Is Talking About This a nameless protagonist is absorbed by her life in The Portal which is a stand in for every social media and newsfeed platform, but most recognisable as Twitter.

When tragedy engulfs her family, her outlook both on life and The Portal begins to change.

This works very well as an Audible because its a stream of consciousness narrative.

Only right at the end in the acknowledgements did I realise it is semi-autobiographical, but I have to stick to my reaction before I knew that, which was :

I could see what it was doing, and I admired it, but I didn't feel it quite hit its mark.

Worth a look though (or a listen) as an original attempt to do something different.

50. A Swim in the Pond in the Rain by George Saunders I gave up on Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo after a page and a half. I'm not a big reader of short stories and have never previously managed a whole Chekhov (sorry, Anton, it's not you, it's me). Would this selection of 7 Great Russian stories, each followed by an essay by the writer and creative writing professor George Saunders, hit the spot? Yes, absolutely it did. Admittedly I always enjoyed the commentary much more than the stories – but you are introduced gently, guided through the first one almost page by page. It’s a joy to witness Saunders’ love of the stories. He’s also an experienced teacher of them; when you’ve struggled with elements of a story - well, his students will have too. The essays are fascinating on reading, literature, and the art and process of writing (and editing), and always very readable and entertaining - nothing like the impenetrable introductions you get in some editions of the classics. This is one of my books of the year and a keeper I’ll revisit.

119. The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris. I heard the author interviewed on A Good Read, and this sounded interesting- however, although I enjoyed the writing and the set up, the plot just didn't work for me, and I thought the structure and pacing could have done with a bit of tightening.

44. Perfume by Patrick Süskind

I had to go in a six-hour road trip on my own the other day and after listening to music for an hour, decided to give this audiobook a chance.

How have I never read this book before? It was exquisitely written and magical, even as it described the murder of teenage girls. Atmospheric and bizarre, detailed and yet misty, beautifully described.

I loved it and I cannot help thinking that those of us who must have likable characters to enjoy a book do not know what they are missing.

Listening to it while driving through the South of France on my own was also a singular experience. I was passing by Grasse when Grenouille arrived in Grasse in the book However, the narrator wasn't the best. He made Grenouille sound like Gollum in Lord of the Rings ("My precious..."). And how hard would it be to find an English-speaking narrator who could also say a couple of street names in French? He couldn't even properly say "Grenouille"

@CoteDAzur Perfume is very high on my list after I saw Richard E Grant talk about it on his recent book/travel programme. He was doing what you did basically - reading whilst in the spaces that the books were set.

I haven't read Perfume for years, I wonder what's happened to my copy - just incredibly compelling. (And also my total sympathy with having to listen to crap audiobook narrators who cba to spend 2 minutes on google in order to pronounce foreign words/place names correctly.)

Fell off the thread after a plateau of 38 books. Not going to make the 50 now probably but will pick up some of the latest recommendations. Just starting on Nana by Emile Zola( translation) but only a few pages in.