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?

51. Over Sea Under Stone by Susan Cooper

Snuck in another book
I think this was a favourite of my mum's and I now see why she loved Cornwall.

I enjoyed the book and love the old fashioned way of speech. I might start peppering my speech with "I say" and "smashing" for a bit.

I also snuck in another one....pretty sure this is the last of the year now.

107: The Poisoner - Stephen Bates

A moderately interesting examination of the notorious case of Dr William Palmer, 'The Rugeley Poisoner', who was condemned to death in 1856 for killing his erstwhile friend John Cook. Cook was a young man who'd just won a large sum at the races, and it seems most likely that Palmer - a racing aficionado who owned a string of horses and was hugely and disastrously in debt - administered some kind of poison in a panicked and ham-fisted attempt to solve his own problems. He may also have poisoned his own wife a few years earlier, and certainly took out a massive insurance policy on his alcoholic brother, lying about his condition and encouraging him to drink himself to death (the insurers refused to pay out).

Some interesting issues are raised around the way trials were conducted in the 19thc, and the difficulty of establishing scientific evidence at the time - strychnine poisoning was suspected, and Palmer was known to have bought the drug just before Cook's death, but no trace of it was found in the body. There was enough doubt to mean that nowadays he might have been found not guilty, but he was instead convicted, hanged, and became a kind of folk-bogeyman.

Am I the only one reading three books at once to bump them over the line into January's thread 😆

Haha, I’m just trying in vain to finish Vanity Fair for this year @MegBusset. 62% through so expecting it to maybe be a 2022 book.

Only one book gift here but it's a whopper! 900 pages.... And just as I am about to embark on War and Peace

Thank you Daphne for the 12 Days of Kindle link

@MegBusset Only three books? I' have more than that on the go and I'm very likely to carry more than three forward. Also, I move around my current reading, so when I start a new book it will begin at the bottom of the pile but then library books move up every few days until they're at the top or I finish them. So the Marian Keyes book I'm reading - my own copy - could take some time!

I'd actually quite like to finish two or three more books, though I'm quite pleased with what may well remain the final total for 2021 - 156 "books" including standalone short stories/novellas/essays - a page count range of 6 to 706, but with most between 200-450 pages. Several books of 550 to 650 pages almost certainly had a higher word count and demanded slower and more focused reading than the 706 page novel by Jane Smiley, which had small pages and a large, clear font - I think I've read another book by her which was in reality a bit longer than Golden Age (A Thousand Acres).

122. Aisling and the City, by Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen
I mentioned this book previously in my defence of chicken. It's the fourth book in the series, taking our heroine to New York for work opportunities. It's a bit silly but fun, with a wry take on Irish cliquishness.

123. What is Beautiful in the Sky, Michael Harding Another popular Irish author, a journalist who writes books that are part memoir and part meditation on lockdown, religion, love, mentors, poets, storytellers, travel and the joys of mowing the lawn. My father lent me this - not entirely to my taste. If I'm honest, I found it a bit sentimental.

That was meant to be my defence of chicklit. Not chicken.

Biblio thank you for your passionate defence of chicken. All are welcome here

I am not quite ready to post my final reviews of 2021 but have just done some rough and ready totalling-up on my spreadsheet.

I will have read ~90 books this year
About 2/3 were written by women
About 3/4 of them were fiction
Only about 1/6 were written by authors who are not white (to the best of my knowledge)
About 1/2 of them were library books
About 2/3 were ebooks

I know I've been lazy in my reading this year, seeking out comfort reads and grabbing things from the library ebooks app which maybe weren't what I really wanted to read (but were easy to find). I think, looking at my list, that it's probably been a bit more varied than these numbers suggest. I might think about recording some other information about them next year (when they were written, whether they are books originally written in English etc)

Cluck cluck, Viking.

Forgot to mention I finished The Dark is Rising.. Hoping to finish The Ruin of Klasch before the end of the year, but I'm a bit... bewildered.

106. The Toast of Time by Jodi Taylor

A festive (kinda) Chronicles of St Mary’s short story. Nothing much happened. Not one of her better efforts.

107. Streets of Darkness by A. A. Dhand

This is a detective story set in Bradford. Amidst racial tensions a prominent Asian citizen is murdered and Detective Harry Virdee needs to find the culprit before racial tensions can explode into race riots.

There’s the germ of a good story here, and some interesting characters, but it’s absolutely drowning in clichés. A chief five days from retirement. Dark pasts. A detective with anger issues, who has been suspended and so on. I also hated the fact that the only female characters are peripheral at best, either wives, or prostitutes or victims. However the most off-putting thing was the references to Bradford, trying to brand it as Gotham City...! I hate the entire “I love this city”, “This is my city” trope, you can just about pull it off if you are in NY, but Bradford?? I couldn't really take it seriously, I mean Bradford isn't even the best city in Yorkshire, hell it's not even the best city in West Yorkshire

@VikingNorthUtsire have you read Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of the Dead? We read it in book club last year and it was one of the highlights. I'd like to read her new one too but it's mammoth, also love the covers from that printing press.

I'm from the best city in Yorkshire - Leeds - but I have no problem with the idea of authors or characters with a connection with another city making a case for their place, and I do really like reading books with Yorkshire settings even if they're not ones I'm familiar with. I have a couple of favourite crime series set, separately, in a fictitious Yorkshire town called Bradfield which clearly has lots of references, including a council estate called Wuthering Heights.

But playing around with crime fiction tropes is also something I quite enjoy in the books I read.

@elkiedee I'm also from Leeds hence my tongue in cheek teasing about Bradford, although Leeds is clearly the best city in Yorkshire I also enjoy regional settings, especially in Yorkshire, but the whole "he's bled for this city" thing was so frequent that I found it really off putting and coupled with the other cliches it ruined what was a decent enough idea. Is Bradfield the setting for the Wire in the Blood series?

Yes, that's one of them. There's also a series by Patricia Hall but her Bradfield isn't necessarily the same Bradfield as Val McDermid's one.

Sod it, I'm abandoning The Ruin of Kasch.

65. More Than a Woman by Caitlin Moran
This is a whole lot of fun to read. I don't necessarily think it's the answer to anything much but it has sparked some thoughts in my mind, for sure. One of the main ones is about the absolutely shredded state if the mental health services in this country, and wondering what the answer can possibly be. I'm not sure anyone has got the answer. There's a loud clear message from consultants that inpatient stays often don't fix anything, or even make things worse, or is that just because the inpatient services are so threadbare that they are simply places where at least a locked door can keep some of the predators out, and don't have anythingthat would be necessaryto be therapeutic? I lost my dh to suicide a couple of hours after he was assessed by the local service as low risk (actually the assessment was written as 'no risk' but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that that was a slip of the pen rather than a nonsense). There is a high rate of suicide in men and Moran does address that, though I don't know if I agree with her. Because, actually, until very recently suicide prevention in the UK was a bit of a success story. Sometimes the answers are very simple, but not the simple ones she goes for. Anyway. I enjoyed reading it. Thanks to her. Also I like to fantasise about sex with Pete Paphides.

I need to get my list updated for the annual round up. We've got book club Xmas lunch tomorrow so that will motivate me to try to get it sorted in the morning.

I've got two I'm not sure I can count as they are podcasts/radio shows, but they are on Goodreads and were found via the library audiobook service.

Down the Line - Pam Ayres
A few of her shows and a bit of general chat. This was joyous. I listened while walking the dog round a very popular spot and was very aware I was laughing out loud and had a huge grin on my face. I was beaming. It's mostly very silly stuff but with her very acute observations. Worth a listen if you need cheering up.

Angela Carter: A BBC Radio Collection including The Bloody Chamber and part of Nights at the Circus as well as a script she'd written but not submitted that was found after her death. There was also an interview with her at the end which was recorded shortly before she died.
It was excellent. She was in heavily involved in the dramatisations of her work for radio and they were brilliantly done.

Tin Man - Sarah Winman after really enjoying Still Life I requested her other book from the library. This did not disappoint. It's about the intense childhood friendship between two boys in the 70s and what happens when their lives diverge in the 80s/90s when one decides to marry and the other is openly gay. She creates really interesting characters and writes beautifully. I would now buy anything she releases blurb unseen.

King Lear - William Shakespeare
A king splits his kingdom between his daughters to avoid potential war, but things don't go to plan as he slips into madness.
I wasn't that keen on this one and don't think I would rush to read it again.

Learwife - J.R. Thorp
The untold story of the wife of King Lear, noticeably absent from the work of Shakespeare. This starts with her 15 years into banishment in a convent. When she learns of the deaths of her husband and daughters, others stop her from leaving She mulls over events that lead up to her banishment, while dealing with a crisis within the Abbey itself.

This was a wonderful idea for a book and is beautifully written, but is self-indulgently long. There is no plot to speak of, it's all character driven and is very very slow burning. I think it helps to be at least familiar with the play before embarking on this. I'm hesitant to give it a star rating just yet as the length (12hrs40mins) was unnecessary and this is clouding my judgement.

I'm determined to finish Julie Bindel's Feminism for Women by the end of the year as I really don't like to carry books over (for no reason other than my own silliness). I'm 20% in and it's a call to arms if ever there was one. It's brilliant so far.

Just to let others who may be doing something similar know - I've started a compilation spreadsheet of the books we've bolded in 2021. I'm only doing lists from this last thread, and I'm still on page 1, so it's going to take a while! I don't think there are big surprises on those being recommended by several people but I thought it might be satisfying to do anyway. Hope nobody minds. I'll post it when I get it done.

@PermanentTemporary

Just to let others who may be doing something similar know - I've started a compilation spreadsheet of the books we've bolded in 2021. I'm only doing lists from this last thread, and I'm still on page 1, so it's going to take a while! I don't think there are big surprises on those being recommended by several people but I thought it might be satisfying to do anyway. Hope nobody minds. I'll post it when I get it done.

Brilliant, thank you. It will save me sitting with pen and paper and a tally chart! 😁

I use the end of year bolds to shape my hit list for next year.

I don't usually clog up the beginning of every thread with do lists but as it's the end of the year, here's mine for the spreadsheet, with standouts bolded.

1. Broken Greek - Pete Paphides

1. London Belongs To Me - Norman Collins

1. I Wanna Be Yours - John Cooper Clarke

1. Piranesi - Susannah Clarke

1. Samuel Pepys - The Unequalled Self - Claire Tomalin

1. Every Man For Himself - Beryl Bainbridge

1. Exterminate All The Brutes - Sven Lindqvist

8 The Order Of Time - Carlo Rovelli

1. Journals - Keith Vaughan

10. Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese - Patrick Leigh Fermor

11. A Change Of Climate - Hilary Mantel

12. A Swim In The Pond In The Rain - George Saunders

13. Against The Grain - A Deep History Of The Earliest States - James C Scott

14. Digging Up Mother: A Love Story - Doug Stanhope

15. The Talented Mr Ripley - Patricia Highsmith

16. Motherwell - Deborah Orr

17. Dickens - Peter Ackroyd

18. Medical Grade Music - Steve Davis and Kavus Torabi

19. Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son - Gordon Burn

20. The Nation's Favourite - Simon Garfield

21. The Big Midweek: Life Inside The Fall - Steve Hanley

22. Offshore - Penelope Fitzgerald

23. Just One More Thing: Stories From My Life - Peter Falk

24. In A Lonely Place - Dorothy B Hughes

25. The Evenings - Gérard Reve

26. Chernobyl Prayer - Svetlana Alexeivich

27. And Away - Bob Mortimer

28. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

29. Starlight - Stella Gibbons

30 Miracles Of Life - JG Ballard

31 Conundrum - Jan Morris

32 The Fortnight In September - RC Sherriff

33 Treacle Walker - Alan Garner

34 Betjeman's England - John Betjeman

35 The Expendable Man - Dorothy B Hughes

36 The Bookshop - Penelope Fitzgerald

37 Alone On The Ice - David Roberts

38 Archangel - Robert Harris

39 Scott's Last Voyage - Through the Antarctic Camera of Herbert Ponting - ed. Ann Savours

40 Dan Leno & The Limehouse Golem - Peter Ackroyd

56. Little Dorrit - Charles Dickens

Will save my thoughts for the readalong, but overall I loved spending time in this book’s company! Definitely one of my highlights of the year.

Hopefully can polish off another book or two before the end of the year.

Brilliant Permanent - looking forward to it.

I've only managed 36, but have read some great stuff this year.

Top 3 are:

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
Company of Liars by Karen Maitland

Permanent I'm so sorry to hear about your dh and that he, and you yourself, were let down so badly by mental health services. It is a scandal and very worrying that mental health provision and support is in such a dire state.