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?

I have read a personal record of 62 this year, thanks to lockdown and this thread (thank you!). Only one DNF which was "I Am Pilgrim" by Terry Hayes.
I have six favourites for your Excel sheet @PermanentTemporary. Looking forward to reading your list - thanks!
We Begin At the End - Chris Whitaker
Small Pleasures - Clare Chambers
This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor - Adam Kay
Piranesi - Susanna Clarke
The Sealwoman's Gift - Sally Magnusson
The Cat and The City - Nick Bradley

So sorry about your DH, Perm.

Will be interested to see our communal hitlist.

Sorry too @PermanentTemporary. I also had no idea that subject matter was covered in Morgan’s latest, I loved her first (was it really a decade ago!).

Looking forward to hearing peoples round ups. I’ve got some lovely reading time left this year so think I will hold fire.

Do I get summarily expelled if I DNF This Thing of Darkness? One-third in and it’s not really grabbing me. Does it pick up?

I wouldn't say it gets much more cheerful, Ladybird. I'll still talk to you even if you give up.

I have TTOD on my kindle but I’m a bit scared to read it as I don’t think it will be my thing and I don’t want to get kicked off the thread!!

Me too ChessieFL, I picked it up when it was a 99p Kindle deal. I'm waiting for a lazy poolside holiday to give it a fighting chance!

@PermanentTemporary, so sorry about your DH. And thank you for the spreadsheet.

I've made it to 46 and have a couple on the go but can't see me finishing 4 in 3 days!

46 Insertion by AJ Quinnell.
This was a pretty good premise and I enjoyed it, yet felt it could have been more. It's a Robin Cooky (medical crime one, not foreign secretary one) Alistair MacLeany, James Bondy sort of very readable hybrid with an interesting premise that didn't really get explored as much as the gung ho breaking into things and rescuing people bit. He could perhaps do with JK's editor going "I say AJ, what about adding another 280 pages here?"
An easy read and I'll probably pick up more of his.

I've reached 49 books and I'm hopeful I'm still hopeful I'll reach 50 by NYE.
Latest reads are:
48. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Free on Audible read by Hugh Grant who did a good job I thought. A straightforward, personable narration which differentiated characters without histrionics and silly voices. Lovely to listen to whilst wrapping the presents.

49. Before The Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. Translated from Japanese this is a gentle time travelling story made up of several people's interwoven experiences of travelling forwards and back in time from a nondescript basement cafe. There are several rules that have to be followed:

1. You must always sit in the same seat in the cafe (which involves waiting for the ghost who normally sits there to move, something she only does once a day.)
2. Once you travelled in time you cannot leave the seat.
3. You can only interact with people who have visited the cafe in the past.
4. Nothing you do or say in the past will chance the future however hard you try.
5. You must return to the present before the coffee you are served gets cold, failure to do this means you become the new cafe ghost trapped at the same table for eternity. It was okay, I found the protagonists names a bit confusing initially as they were unfamiliar to me and many sounded the same, I didn't dislike it but I wouldn't recommend it either.

My Christmas book haul! Two lovely cook books, the latest Stephen King (which I bought for DH but I'm including here as I really bought it for me!) And two random books. This is what happens when my husband is let loose in a book shop and randomly chooses from the biggest displays of books by people I vaguely like! He's bought me the second Richard Osman book, when I had no wish or intention of reading the first. Wondering if I can return this Does anyone know if it works as a stand alone novel? And Louis Theroux's latest which I will read and may enjoy, we'll see!

I DNFed TTOD too, we can have a little refuseniks club :)

I reckon I'm done for this year too, I've got a few things on the go, but none of them are really grabbing me (I'm saving my new Adrian Tchaikovsky for dull January weekends). Quite enjoying Humankind by Rutger Bregman, but it's more of a couple of chapters before bed kind of book.

I'd be grateful for any recommendations for really good Audible non-fiction, particularly politics / economics / social sciences. I'm currently listening to There is Nothing For You Here by Fiona Hill but again not really gripped. Unlike JD Vance, who is really good at expanding his own story of unlikely success into general lessons, it feels quite repetitive and unreflective so far. (I'm very similar in age to her, also come from a post industrial area, and also first - indeed so far only - member of my family to go to university. Maybe economics different to languages / Cambridge different to St Andrews, but I don't recall ever being asked pointed questions about where I came from / what my father did, nor comments on my accent.)

In total this year I've read 111 books, 49% non-fiction 51% fiction. 64% by women, 35% by men. 14% audio, 55% ebook (mix of kindle & library), 32% paper.

Top fiction definitely The Prince's Pen by Horatio Clare, non-fiction harder to pick a favourite, but ignoring the very niche (bee swarming / landrace gardening etc) my top three in no particular order would probably be Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake, The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson and A Libertarian Walks into a Bear by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

Bolded books for your spreadsheet Permanent - lots of them, it was definitely a good year overall

Patrick Hennessey: The Junior Officers Reading Club
Matthew Kneale: Pilgrims
Susanna Clarke: Piranesi
Horatio Clare: The Prince's Pen
Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling: A Libertarian Walks into a Bear
Tishani Doshi: Fountainville
Jenny Kleeman: Sex Robots and Vegan Meat
Horatio Clare: Truant
Margee Kerr , Linda Rodriguez McRobbie: Ouch: Why pain hurts and why it doesn't have to
Azadeh Moaveni: Guest House for Young Widows
Henry Greely: Crispr People
Tim Harford: How to Make the World Add Up
Javier Blas & Jack Farchy: The World for Sale
Tao Paul Wimbush: The Lammas Ecovillage : Deep Roots & Stormy Skies
Grace Dent: Hungry
Merlin Sheldrake: Entangled Life
Polly Barton: Fifty Sounds
Sasha Swire: Diary of an MP's Wife
Helena Kennedy: Eve Was Shamed
Caitlin Moran: More than a woman
Lucy Kellaway: Re-educated
Wally Shaw: Swarming: Biology & Control
Musa Okwonga: One of Them
Eric Lonergan & Mark Blyth: Angrynomics
Walter Isaacson: The Code Breaker
Naomi Novik: The Last Graduate
Deborah Feldman: Unorthodox
Theodora Kroeber: Ishi in Two Worlds
John Lewis Sempel: The Running Hare
Daryl Gregory: The Album of Dr Moreau
Sarah Pinsker: We are Satellites
Alex Kotlowitz: There Are No Children Here
JD Vance: Hillbilly Elegy
Joseph Lofthouse: Landrace Gardening

Just finished 37. A Christmas Carol First Dickens I've read and will definitely try another one next year. Couldn't get scenes out of my head from The Muppet Christmas Carol though!

Full list for the year including standouts for the spreadsheet. Thanks for offering to collate @PermanentTemporary

1. Midnight Library - Matt Haig

2. The Story of a Lost Child - Elena Ferrante

1. We Should All Be Feminists - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
2. Strange Weather in Tokyo - Hiromi Kawakami
3. The Vanishing Half - Brit Bennett
4. Confessions of a Bookseller - Shaun Bythell
5. The Nakano Book Shop - Hiromi Kawakami
6. The Truths We Hold - Kamala Harris

9. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother - Amy Chua 10. All The Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr 11. In Your Defence - Sarah Langford 12. Mr Loverman - Bernadine Evaristo 13. Home Stretch - Graham Norton 14. Many Different Kinds of Love - Michael Rosen 15. The World at My Feet - Catherine Isaac 16. Alcohol Explained - William Porter 17. American Dirt - Jeanine Cummins 18. Some Kids I taught and what they taught me - Kate Clanchy 19. Notes from a Small Island - Bill Bryson 20. Fifty Fifty - Steve Cavanagh 21. Small Pleasures - Claire Chambers 22. Gloriously Rock Bottom - Bryony Gordon 23. Watch Her Fall - Erin Kelly 24. Hungry - Grace Dent 25. The Enchanted April - Elizabeth Van Artim 26. How Women Rise - Sally Helgesen 27. Excellent Women - Barbara Pym 28. The Girl with The Louding Voice - Abi Dare 29. Everywoman - Jess Phillips 30. Pies and Prejudice - Stuart Maconie 31. The Push - Ashley Audrain 32. Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro 33. Some Tame Gazelle - Barbara Pym 34. Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovich 35. Devils Advocate - Steve Cavanagh 36. Cloud Cuckoo Land - Anthony Doerr 37. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

@PermanentTemporary so sorry you and your DH were let down so very badly

Looking forward to seeing the list of the bolds, if you need a hand let me know as I was planning to look through to get ideas for what to buy with my Amazon voucher. If not thanks so much for doing that.

I'm going to hold off on adding my final list as I'm hoping to finish the audible version of The Kraken Wakes this year. I won't get Needful Things finished as I stated it yesterday and it's huge.

My highlights of the year were:

1. The Girl With The Louding Voice by Abi Daré
2. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
3. The Last House On Needless Street by Catronia Ward
4. The Long Song by Andrea Levy
5. The Pursuit Of Love by Nancy Mitford
6. Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
7. Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers
8. Hungry by Grace Dent

Not a bad hit rate, and if I had to narrow it down to a top three it would be War & Peace, Hungry & The Long Song.
Now I'll stop spamming the thread and go back to read all the comments I've missed in the lead up to Christmas!

Sadik It's not an Audible, but I really recommend Series 1 of The Big Steal about Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Vladimir Putin, and how Putin took post Soviet Russia from emerging democracy to kleptocracy. There's a new series just started which I haven't caught up on yet.

Apparently it is available on Audible too.

Sorry, should have said it's a podcast.

Note to self, engage brain before posting.

PermanentTemporary and thank you so much for collating everyone's best reads.

Mine are:

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
The Shipping News by E Annie Proulx
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
Mayflies by Andrew O'Hagan
The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel
Earth and Heaven by Sue Gee
The Only Plane in the Sky by Garrett M Graff
Small Island by Andrea Levy
And Away.. by Bob Mortimer

Four of these are books from quite a while ago. Although The Shipping News had been in my bookcase for years and I'd never got round to it before. A brilliant discovery and probably my number one book this year.

I'm going to include more rereads this year; more old favourites and classics and fewer hyped-up latest literary fiction best-sellers with quotes from their mates on the cover - usually employing phrases like skewering and razor-sharp - which can prove disappointing.

@PermanentTemporary 💕

And these were my Christmas presents (no input from me)
I’ve already read And Away … it’s a modest and unaffected account of Bob Mortimer’s life and the times he struggled as well as some fun stories about his TV shows (I am a Vic and Bob fan from way back). I love Bob .. how can you not?
Isn’t the cover of Small Things Like These beautiful. It will be my next read to sneak in a short one before 2022

So sorry to hear about your DH Permanent.

Having lurked a bit in the last couple of years, I enjoyed taking part in these threads this year, thanks southeast and everyone for all the reviews and conversation. I love that you lot both introduce me to books like The Appeal and give me an opinion on who might win the Booker prize when I’ve only read 1 and a quarter shortlisted books. This is the first time I’ve ever made any count or record of what I’ve read and it’s nice to have reviews to look back on. I did make 50 but will post without counting next year.

Didn’t read a great deal of non-fiction but what I did read was excellent and by and large surpassed the fiction, particularly Tony Parker’s Lighthouse and A Swim in the Pond in the Rain by George Saunders (thanks, Meg).

Best looked-forward-to read was Mick Herron’s Slough House which was fab.

Best surprises for me were Ali Smith who I’d concluded years ago was over my head, but I enjoyed the first 3 Seasons this year and have Summer to look forward to. Also, Thursday Murder Club was great fun, but I nearly missed it because of the lettering on the cover.

Finally got round to reading Patricia Lockwood - enjoyed both Priestdaddy and ‘No one is talking about this’ especially the former.

Glad I retried Girl, Woman, Other as it was an excellent read once I got going and it led me to Mr Loverman which was a good holiday read alongside Grace Dent’s Hungry.

Also enjoyed Shuggie Bain, Born a Crime (great on audio), Everything Sad Is Untrue and Conundrum.

Most notable not-for-mes were Piranesi, Circe and the new Sally Rooney.

PT, because my laptop dies I never carried across lists and bolded books but , if it's helpful.

I read a lot of quite heavy books this year , for some reason . Standouts were :

The Spirit Level by Wilkinson and Pickett
Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Authority Gap - Mary Ann Sieghart
The Gift of Rain- Tan Twan Eng

and
Unwell Women - Elinor Cleghorn . Review to follow before New Year!

Thank you for collating and hope you are OK.

All my top reads were non-fiction and probably not that helpful but for what it's worth, they were:

Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts - Christopher de Hamel
London Fog: The Biography - Christine L. Corton
Just My Type - Simon Garfield
The Only Plane in the Sky - Garrett M. Graff
The Ratline - Philippe Sands
East West Street - Philippe Sands
The Land Where Lemons Grow - Helena Attlee
Falling Upwards - Richard Holmes

I also loved a couple in the fiction category - Golden Hill by Francis Spufford and Mary Kelly's superbly weird/tense Due to a Death.

Cornishblues, I'm reading Slough House at the moment and loving it

Thanks for doing the number-crunching, Permanent, you're a ⭐️

I've read some excellent books in 2021 (and very few duds), although I've yet to make 50 in a year. I'm in awe of those of you who do, and especially those who pass the 100 mark.

My standouts are:

Fiction:

Dusty Answer by Rosamund Lehman
The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
The Land of Spices by Kate O'Brien
My Antonia by Willa Cather

Non-Fiction

The Years by Annie Ernaux
This Rare Spirit by Julia Copus
One of Them by Musa Okwonga

Poetry

Devotions by Mary Oliver
Charlotte Mew Selected Poetry and Prose