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?

Thanks for the new thread @southeastdweller. I don't think I'm going to bring my list over, they're just a bit too long and unwieldy by this time of the year.

Maybe we could do a top 5 reads of 2021 summary at the end of this year?

Alan Garner didn't really do it for me as a child, although I was blown away by the scene in Red Shift where Roman invaders were described in the same terms as a modern report on invading forces. It was very different to the sanitized child-friendly versions I'd read previously.

Thanks as ever for the new thread southeastdweller. My list to date is ridiculously short:

1. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
2. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
3. Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe
4. Spring by David Szalay
5. Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker.
6. Robert Harris The Second Sleep
7. Lolita by Vladamir Nabakov

8. House of Glass by Hadley Freeman 9. Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers 10. The Appeal by Janice Hallett 11.The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield 12. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 13. Diary of an MP's Wife by Sasha Swire 14. Excellent Women by Barbara Pym 15. Snobs by Julian Fellowes 16. Girl A by Abigail Dean 17. Acts and Omissions by Catherine Fox 18. The Survivors by Jane Harper 19. The Prosecutor by Nazir Afzal 20. The Madness Of Grief by the Reverend Richard Coles 21. Summer by Ali Smith 22. Expo 58 by Jonathan Coe 23. Summerwater by Sarah Moss 24. Anatomy of a Scandal by Sarah Vaughan 25. The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz 26. Adults by Emma Jane Unsworth 27. V2 by Robert Harris 28. Get Out of My Life: The bestselling guide to the twenty-first-century teenager 29. The Time-Traveller's Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer 30. The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett 31. Mr Wilder and Me by Jonathan Coe 32. A Narrow Door by Joanne Harris 33. Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor by Andrew Lownie

Currently reading something by Anthony Quinn set in 1970s London, the name of which escapes me!

Thanks for the list @southeastdweller

Here's mine:

1. Mary Barton - Elizabeth Gaskell
2. The Girl with the Louding Voice - Abi Dare
3. Hard Times - Charles Dickens
4. Cranford - Elizabeth Gaskell
5. Bad Science - Ben Goldacre
6. The Woodlanders - Thomas Hardy
7. Normal People - Sally Rooney
8. The Waves - Virginia Woolf
9. And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie

10. O Pioneers! - Willa Cather 11. What Ho! The Best of PG Wodehouse 12. The Midnight Library - Matt Haig 13. The Quiet American - Graham Greene 14. The Dutch House - Ann Patchett 15. Lincoln in the Bardo - George Saunders 16. The Various Haunts of Men - Susan Hill 17. The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje 18. Girl, Woman, Other - Bernadine Evaristo 19. The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene 20. Circe - Madeline Miller 21. The Way We Live Now - Anthony Trollope 22. The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman 23. Maurice - EM Forster 24. Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell 25. Shuggie Bain - Douglas Stuart 26. Death on the Nile - Agatha Christie 27. The Portrait of a Lady - Henry James 28. The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer 29. The Pursuit of Love - Nancy Mitford 30. Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer 31. Barchester Towers - Anthony Trollope 32. The Mystery of the Blue Train - Agatha Christie 33. Our Man in Havana - Graham Greene 34. A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Towles 35. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving 36. The Sealwoman's Gift - Sally Magnusson 37. Once Upon a Time in the North - Philip Pullman 38. Tom's Midnight Garden - Philippa Pearce 39. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 - Sue Townsend 40. Murder on the Orient Express - Agatha Christie 41. About a Boy - Nick Hornby 42. 4:50 from Paddington - Agatha Christie 43. American Dirt - Jeanine Cummins 44. Paradise Lost - John Milton 45. Arthur & George - Julian Barnes 46. Goodbye to All That - Robert Graves

It's a close run thing if I'll get to 50, especially as I've got Dombey and Son lined up next 😬

Thank you!

No list from me either : it's stuck in my old laptop...

My latest reads

Enlightenment Now - Steven Pinker
Pinker puts forward the case that despite various issues, we are living in the greatest of ages and by and large have the happiest, healthiest and wealthiest of lives compared to any before us. This was written pre pandemic, but it still stands. It's an interesting take on world affairs set against enlightenment principles.

Tales from the Café - Toshikazu Kawaguchi
A companion book to Before the Coffee Gets Cold, with more people taking advantage of the time travel capacity of the café to try to put right their relationships and regrets. I enjoyed this, but don't think it lives up to the original.

Women Talking - Miriam Toews
Based on the true case of a Mennonite community in Bolivia. Over the course of 4 years, over 100 women and children were repeatedly drugged and raped by the men of the community. This book picks up after the events in which a committee of women meet to discuss their next steps. Frustratingly the author chose to use a male narrator (the local school teacher) as the women couldn't write and therefore needed someone else to take the minutes and recount their tale. I think this would have been a much better book had it directly used a female narrator, rather than filtering it through a man.

The End We Start With - Megan Hunter
A quite experimental style. Written in single short unconnected sentences with a physical gap between them in print. A woman goes into labour at the same time as a catastrophic flood hits London. Forced to flee and move into a refugee camp, she finds her first year as a mother tough while coping with a difficult partner.
This is one of those books that says very little but manages to say a myriad of things in the gaps of what it doesn't explicitly say. A good one for anyone looking for something short to bump up the end of year numbers.

Elizabeth Strout - Olive Kitteridge
I'm only 60% in but feel I can add it now. A series of connected short stories about the inhabitants of a small town in Maine, seen through the eyes of a cantankerous old woman. It's readable, but I wouldn't rave.

Since you’ve expressly mentioned lurkers @southeastdweller

I have previously started these threads under many names but never managed to keep up and post on 26 books. However, this year it looks like I will hit 50 for the first time ever. Admittedly, I have counted books I have read to DS3 (10) but only if they are what I would consider novel length so special thanks to Lemony Snicket.

1. Outlander, Diana Gabaldon
2. Diary of a Provincial Lady, E M Delafield
3. The Duke & I, Julia Quinn
4. Pachinko, Min Jin Lee
5. Us, David Nicholls

6. The Autumn of the Ace, Louis de Bernieres

1. Migrant City: A New History of London, Panikos Panayi

8. Frenchman’s Creek, Daphne du Maurier

1. The Outsider, Albert Camus

10. The Battle of Green Lanes, Cosh Omar 11. Malamander, Thomas Taylor 12. Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens 13. The Interest, Michael Taylor 14. Twenty Years After, Alexandre Dumas 15. The Disappearance of Emile Zola: Love, Literature and the Dreyfus Case, Michael Rosen 16. Gargantis, Thomas Taylor 17. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, Marina Lewycka 18. The Uses and Abuses of History, Margaret Macmillan 19. The Wrong Side of the Table, Ayser Salman 20. Stoner, John Williams 21. A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Reptile Room, Lemony Snicket 22. The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey, Julia Laite 23. A Series of Unfortunate Events #4: The Wide Window, Lemony Snicket 24. The Alienist, Caleb Carr 25. Mixed/Other, Natalie Morris 26. The Viscount Who Loved Me, Julia Quinn 27. A Series of Unfortunate Events #4: The Miserable Mill, Lemony Snicket 28. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee 29. The Holiday, Guy Bellamy 30. The Austere Academy, Lemony Snicket 31. Mr Loverman, Bernardine Evaristo 32. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy 33. The Ersatz Elevator, Lemony Snicket 34. The Pursuit of Love, Nancy Mitford 35. Straight Outta Crawley, Romesh Ranganathan 36. Someday in Paris, Olivia Lara 37. The Girls of Slender Means, Muriel Spark 38. Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, Balli Kaur Jaswal 39. The Vile Village, Lemony Snicket 40. Catch-22, Joseph Heller 41. The Hostile Hospital, Lemony Snicket 42. The Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy 43. Dona Flor and her Two Husbands, Jorge Amado 44. The Carniverous Carnival, Lemony Snicket 45. Pride and Prejudice, Jame Austen 46. The Island of Missing Trees, Elif Shafak 47. The Slippery Slope, Lemony Snicket 48. The Light Years, Elizabeth Jane Howard 49. The Grim Grotto, Lemony Snicket

I didn't get on with Alan Garner as a child either (and I would read almost anything).

109. The Greenhouse and Hoophouse Growers Handbook Organic Vegetable Production Using Protected Culture by Andrew Mefferd Useful book if you grow / want to grow commercial crops undercover :)

Here's my list, sorry for dodgy formatting
1 Patrick Hennessey The Junior Officers Reading Club
2 Martha Wells Rogue Protocol
3 Martha Wells Exit Strategy
4 Nella Larsen Passing
5 VE Schwab The Invisible Life of Addie la Rue
6 Matthew Kneale Pilgrims
7 Susanna Clarke Piranesi
8 Jon Gower The Story of Wales
9 Ben Aaronovitch Tales from the Folly
10 Norman Collins London Belongs to Me
11 Compton Mackenzie Figure of Eight
12 Horatio Clare The Prince's Pen
13 Cynan Jones Bird Blood Snow
14 Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling A Libertarian Walks into a Bear
15 Tishani Doshi Fountainville
16 Helen Moffett Charlotte
17 Horatio Clare Running for the Hills
18 Jenny Kleeman Sex Robots and Vegan Meat
19 Horatio Clare Truant
20 Kate Russell My Dark Vanessa
21 Margee Kerr , Linda Rodriguez McRobbie Ouch: Why pain hurts and why it doesn't have to
22 Shirley Conran Lace
23 KJ Charles The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting
24 Caro Fraser The Pupil
25 Azadeh Moaveni Guest House for Young Widows
36 Sarah Langford In Your Defence
37 Henry Greely Crispr People
38 Toshikazu Kawaguchi Before the Coffee Gets Cold
39 Tim Harford How to Make the World Add Up
40 KJ Charles Jackdaw
41 KJ Charles Rag & Bone
42 Javier Blas & Jack Farchy The World for Sale
43 Tao Paul Wimbush The Lammas Ecovillage : Deep Roots & Stormy Skies
44 Cassandra Clare Chain of Iron
45 Philip H Gordon Losing the Long Game: The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East
46 Becky Chambers The Galaxy and the Ground Within
47 Emily M Danforth The Miseducation of Cameron Post
48 Grace Dent Hungry
49 Cassandra Clare City of Ashes
50 Cassandra Clare City of Glass
51 Caroline Fraser Prairie Fires
52 Cassandra Clare City of Bones
53 Adrian Tchaikovsky Bear Head
54 Laura Spinney Pale Rider
55 Merlin Sheldrake Entangled Life
56 Polly Barton Fifty Sounds
57 Sasha Swire Diary of an MP's Wife
58 Kikuko Tsumura There's no such thing as an easy job
59 David Heaf Treatment-free beekeeping
60 Emily M Danforth Plain Bad Heroines
61 Katherine Arden The Bear and the Nightingale
62 Georgette Heyer Powder & Patch
63 Viv Groskop How to Own the Room
64 KJ Charles Subtle Blood
65 Hashi Mohamed People Like Us
66 Helena Kennedy Eve Was Shamed
67 Georgette Heyer Friday's Child
68 Maisie Hill Perimenopause power
69 Caitlin Moran More than a woman
70 Lucy Kellaway Re-educated
71 Peter Gatrell The Unsettling of Europe
72 Trish Nelson Variations on a Beehive
73 Gretchen Rubin The Happiness Project
74 Wally Shaw Swarming: Biology & Control
75 Musa Okwonga One of Them
76 Rachel Trezise In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl
77 Stephanie Saulter Gemsigns
78 Gillian Tett Anthrovision
79 Stephanie Saulter Binary
80 Stephanie Saulter Regeneration
81 AJ Hackwith Library of the Unwritten
82 Eric Lonergan & Mark Blyth Angrynomics
83 Kristin Kimball The Dirty Life
84 Sophie Kinsella Remember Me?
85 Kristin Kimball Good Husbandry
86 Walter Isaacson The Code Breaker
87 Jen Gunter The Menopause Manifesto
88 Maggie Stiefvater Mister Impossible
89 Catherine Fox Acts and Omissions
90 Kate Humble A year of living simply
91 Catherine Fox Unseen things Above
92 Georgette Heyer Lady of Quality
93 Georgette Heyer The Foundling
94 Catherine Fox Realms of Glory
95 Catherine Fox Tales from Lindford
96 Frederick Joseph The Black Friend
97 Naomi Novik The Last Graduate
98 Deborah Feldman Unorthodox
99 Anthony Bourdin Kitchen Confidential
100 Gail Carriger Ambush or Adore
101 Clare North The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
102 Kate Griffin A Madness of Angels
103 Ben Raskin The Woodchip Handbook
104 Barbara Pym Crampton Hodnet
105 Theodora Kroeber Ishi in Two Worlds
106 Pen Vogler Dinner with Mr Darcy
107 Anil Seth Being You
108 Rainbow Rowell Any Way the Wind Blows
109 Andrew Mefferd The Greenhouse and Hoophouse Growers Handbook

Thanks for new thread
Here’s my list

1. Career of Evil - Robert Galbraith
2. What Lies Between Us - John Marrs

3 Who Killed Ruby - Camilla Way

1. The Casual Vacancy JK Rowling
2. In an Instant- Suzanne Redfern
3. Girl A - Abigail Dean
4. Exit - Belinda Bauer
5. Hungry - Grace Dent
6. Stop at Nothing Tammy Cohen

10. The Woman Who Stole My Life - Marian Keyes 11. Witch Week - Diane Wynn Jones 12. Blood Orange - Harriet Tryce 13. The Girl With the Louding Voice - Abi Dáre 14. The Bigamist - Mary Turner Thompson 15. Into Thin Air - John Karakauer 16. One by One - Ruth Ware 17. Last One at the Party - Bethany Clift 18. Greenwich Park- Katherine Faulkner 19. The Last Thing to Burn - Will Dean 20. Watch her Fall - Erin Kelly 21. Secret Diary of an Anti Social Behaviour Officer 22. Small Pleasures - Claire Chambers 23. The Only Plane in the Sky - Garret M Graff 24. The Pact - Sharon Bolton 25. Honeymoon in Paris and Other Stories- Jojo Moyles 26. Promising Young Women - Caroline On Donohue 27. Handstands in the Dark - Jane Godley 28. Fragile Nicki Graeme 29. Hear me Out - Sarah Harding 30. The Serial Killers Wife- Alice Hunter 31. Rachels Holiday- Maran Keyes 32. The Break - Marian Keyes 33. The Hate U Give Angie Thomas 34. The Seven Day Switch* 35. Watermelon- Marian Keyes 36. I Survived - Victoria Cilliers 37. The Glass Castle - Jeanette Walls 38. The Hit List - Holly Seddon 39. The Good Sister - Sally Hepworth 40. Anybidy Out There - Marian Keyes 41. Diary of an Essex Girl 42. Blackout - Sarah Hepola 43. The Second Husband - Louise Candlish 44. Glorious Rock Bottom - Bryant Gordon 45. The Madness of Grief - Richard Coles 46. I See You - Claire Macintosh 47. People Like Her - Ellery Lloyd 48. The First Day of Spring- Nancy Tucker 49. The Heights - Louise Candlish 50. All the Lonely People - Mike Gayle 51. The Authority Gap - Mary Ann Seighart 52. The Good Lie 53. The End of Men -Christina Sweeny-Baird 54. The Gift of Fear 55. The Nothing Man - Catherine Ryan Howard 56. The 86 Fix - Keith A Pearson 57. the Good Stripper -Marci Warhaft 58. Wall of Silence - Tracey Buchanan 59. sunshine warm sober - Catherine Grey 60. A Class Act - Rob Becket 61. Rock Paper Scissors - Alice Feeney 62 Becoming - Michelle Obama 63. All Her Fault - Andrea Mara

Lurker alert!

It's now a year since I lost DH & very shortly (days) I am moving to France to join my family. Reading has taken a backseat except for comfort & crap crime fiction. But I still check in here regularly & have a wish list as long as my arm of all the things so many of you have recommended for when I get back to proper reading again.

H U G E thank you to South East for keeping these threads going and to all of you who post all your critiques of books - it's a lovely place to come amongst the madness of the world & the internet.

@TheTurnofTheScrew I read Anthony Quinn's most recently published novel earlier this year, set at the end of the 1970s, just before the 1979 election. It's called London, Burning - is it that one? I think Eureka might also be set in the 1970s but I can't quite remember (it's a sequel to a previous book, Freya) .

@elkiedee - yes, it's London, Burning. I can never remember the names of things I read on Kindle, although in my defence I am only a chapter or so in.

Wishing you the very best with your move,Magi.

Thanks for the new thread southeast.

for FranKatzenjammer and everyone who's struggling at the moment.

I can't believe how long some of these lists are! I am grimly determined to get to 50 but at this rate it may require me switching to Mr Men books.

List so far:

1. I am an Island, by Tamsin Calidas.
2. Emma's Island, by Honor Arundel.

3. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, by Sue Townsend. 4. Wintering, by Katherine May.

1. The Law of Innocence, by Michael Connolly.
2. This is Chance, by Jon Mooallem.
3. The Book of Lamps and Banners, by Elizabeth Hand.
4. Emma in Love, by Honor Arundel. hat out.
5. The Thursday Murder Club, by Richard Osman.

10. The Less Dead, by Denise Mina. 11. The Searcher, by Tana French. 12. Girl A, by Abigail Dean. 13. The Ruins, by Mat Osman. 14. What Doesn't Kill You, by Tessa Miller. 15. Glorious Rock Bottom, by Bryony Gordon. 16. Fall: The Mysterious Life and Death of Robert Maxwell, by John Preston. 17. The Appeal, by Janice Hallett. 18. Pickard County Atlas, by Chris Harding Thornton. 19. A Crooked Tree, by Una Mannion. 20. The Lamplighters, by Emma Stonex. 21. The Cutting Room, by Jane Casey. 22. The Postscript Murders, by Elly Griffiths. 23. The Final Revival of Opal and Nev, by Dawnie Walton. 24. Borrowed Time, by Tracy Clark. 25. When the Stars Go Dark, by Paula McClain. 26. A Bit of a Stretch, by Chris Atkins. 27. We Are Watching Eliza Bright, by A. E. Osworth. 28. The Maidens, by Alex Michaelides. 29. Malibu Rising, by Taylor Jenkins Reid. 30. What You Don't See, by Tracy Clark. 31. When No One Is Watching, by Alyssa Cole. 32. Summerwater, by Sarah Moss. 33. Northern Spy, by Flynn Berry. 34. The Night She Disappeared, by Lisa Jewell. 35. Apples Never Fall, by Liane Moriarty. 36. Dope, by Sara Gran. 37. The Girl From Widow Hills, by Megan Miranda. 38. The Guide, by Peter Heller. 39. The Paper Palace, by Miranda Cowley Heller. 40. Who is Maud Dixon, by Alexandra Andrews. 41. Beautiful World, Where Are You, by Sally Rooney.

So good to hear from you, magimedi, and I wish you all the very best for your move to France - look forward to hearing from you when you're all settled in and back to reading.

Magimedi wishing you all the best for your move.

Fran

Ugh at Mr Men books - there are better picture books to read. Or novellas? Short stories? Standalone short stories?

Wishing you strength magi and Fran. And welcome StColumb! I sometimes lurk on the 26 book thread and always notice your posts there. The numbers really don't matter, but there does seem to be support for a slower thread as well as a fast one.

So lovely to hear from you @magimedi x

Oh @magimedi good luck with your move, I hope it is healing.

59. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
The author i turn to when things are really tough. And this is my favourite to read, even though surely Pride and Prejudice is her masterpiece. I love the sense of the great house, full of people, their different employments and pleasures and faults, their interactions and relationships. Full of meaty seat pieces - Fanny's childhood, the ball, the arrival of the Crawfords, her quest/journey to Portsmouth. Mary Crawford, the most fascinating and corrupted character Austen wrote, the dark twin of Elizabeth Bennett.

Mary Crawford as Lizzie's dark twin - excellent description, Perm. Amused by "meaty seat pieces" but I've also noticed that the book I read about Larkin is now apparently about Larking, which is rather different. Bloody autocorrect.

@elkiedee

Ugh at Mr Men books - there are better picture books to read. Or novellas? Short stories? Standalone short stories?

I was only kidding elkiedee

If I don't make 50 then I don't, I won't be cheating to get there.

Hello all. I've been a lurker for a while; it's been a strange year. But I've really appreciated everyone's reviews and will try to contribute more myself in 2022.

magimedi all the very best for your move. I spent a couple of months in France myself recently and in many ways it felt like a saner place to be.

to FranK and to everyone who's had a tough time this year.

No list but a few book reviews to come when I can get myself organised.

Oops and forgot to say thank you south for the new thread

DesdamonasHandkerchief, the first four Cazalets are fine. It's only the fifth that goes badly wrong. When I want a cosy reread I will be pretending it doesn't exist.

Thank you highlandcoo & Sapatsea. I'll maybe give the fifth Cazalet book a swerve if I make it that far.
Good luck with the move magimedi