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 think I have ‘meaty seat pieces’, hence the size 14 trousers.

Good luck for your move magimedi

Many thanks, as always, to SouthEast for the new thread.

And bonne chance to magimedi in La Belle France.*

*iirc, 1977 French O'level.

Bienvenue en France magimedi - lovely to hear from you.

Thanks for the new thread southeast and reminding me that I haven't posted for ages!

Reading is advancing at a snail's pace and I haven't a hope in hell of reaching 50 this year but I have enjoyed most of what I've read so far this year. WIP = Little Dorrit, A year of living Danishly and Unorthodox.

1. Feel better in 5 – Dr Chatterjee
2. To kill a mockingbird – Harper Lee
3. The Christmas Chronicles – Nigel Slater
4. The Lioness of Morocco – Julia Drosten
5. Casting off – Elizabeth Jane Howard
6. The Shipping News – Annie Proulx
7. Go set a watchman – Harper Lee
8. Paris Echo – Sebastian Faulks
9. Love after love – Ingrid Persaud
10. The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
11. All change – Elizabeth Jane Howard
12. Douce Frankreich – Frank Gröninger
13. Prodigal Summer – Barbara Kingsolver
14. A month in the country – JL Carr
15. Fingers in the sparkle jar – Chris Packman
16. The world I fell out of – Melanie Reid*
17. Get your sh*t together – Sarah Knight
18. Olive, again – Elizabeth Strout
19. Fingersmith – Sarah Moss
20. The Thursday Murder Club – Richard Osman

@FranKatzenjammer I'm sorry, I meant to include you in the good wishes to magi - sorry to hear your year has been a grim one

48. Comfort and Joy by India Knight

Started a bit early on the Christmas reads and despite finding the main character a little annoying (I loved her in previous books - I wonder if I have changed or she has?) I still couldn't put it down and snorted with laughter several times. Quite fun and good for this time of year.

Thanks for the new thread! Here's my list:

1. Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee
2. A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler
3. My Wild and Sleepless Nights by Clover Stroud
4. Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me by Kate Clanchy
5. Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life by Peter Godfrey-Smith
6. Somebody I Used to Know by Wendy Mitchell
7. Such A Fun Age by Kiley Reid
8. The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson
9. Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton

10. All That Remains: A Life in Death by Sue Black 11. I Thought I Knew You by Penny Hancock 12. Red Dust by Ma Jian 13. Sun Fall by Jim Al-Khalili 14. We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 15. Passing by Nella Larsen 16. The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers 17. Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi 18. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke 19. The Reading Cure: How Books Restored My Appetite by Laura Freeman 20. When We Were Bad by Charlotte Mendelson 21. The Seven Sisters by Margaret Drabble 22. Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez 23. The Origin of our Species by Chris Stringer 24. The Dutch House by Ann Patchett 25. Long Bright River by Liz Moore 26. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson 27. Longbourn by Jo Baker 28. Who They Was by Gabriel Krauze 29. The Life Project by Helen Pearson 30. Republic of Lies by Anna Merlan 31. Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi 32. The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy 33. A History of the World in 21 Women by Jenni Murray 34. No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood 35. My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell 36. How to Make the World Add Up by Tim Harford 37. Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker 38. Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo 39. The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer 40. Apeirogon by Colum McCann 41. The Only Plane in the Sky by Garrett M Graff 42. Ouch! Why Pain Hurts, and Why it Doesn't Have To by Margee Kerr and Linda Rodriguez McRobbie 43. My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent 44. The White Lie by Andrea Gillies 45. The Appeal by Janice Hallett 46. Evening in the Palace of Reason by James Gaines 47. Small Island by Andrea Levy 48. We All Know How This Ends by Anna Lyons and Louise Winter 49. The Five by Hallie Rubenhold 50. How Hard Can It Be? by Allison Pearson 51. Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman by Richard Feynman 52. Happy by Derren Brown 53. Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser

And a new one to add:
54. Fifty Fifty by Steve Cavanagh. A man has been stabbed, and both his daughters claim the other did it. Pretty good as a page turner.

Thanks for the new thread @southeastdweller! Here's my list:

1. Eleanor the Secret Queen: The Woman Who put Richard III on the Throne by John Ashdown-Hill
2. 52 Times Britain was a Bellend: The History You Didn’t Get Taught At School by James Felton
3. A Double Life by Flynn Berry
4. The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule
5. Tall Tales and Wee Stories: The Best of Billy Connolly by Billy Connolly
6. A Million Dreams by Dani Atkins
7. The Never Game by Jeffery Deaver

8. Misery by Stephen King

1. The Crooked House by Agatha Christie

10. Pied Piper by Nevil Shute 11. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 12. Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell 13. The Stubborn Lives of Hart Tanner by Shawn Inmon 14. The Tommyknockers by Stephen King 15. Fever of the Bone by Val McDermid 16. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth 17. The Retribution by Val McDermid 18. Bring Me Back by B A Paris 19. The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly 20. Scrublands by Chris Hammer 21. On Chapel Sands: My Mother and Other Missing Persons by Laura Cumming 22. Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge 23. The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel 24. Klopp Actually by Laura Lexx 25. The Only Plane in the Sky: The Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett M. Graff 26. All the Hidden Things by Claire Askew 27. Feynman by Ottaviani and Myrick 28. Becoming by Michelle Obama 29. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke 30. Cross and Burn by Val McDermid 31. The Beautiful Land by Alan Averill 32. Doing Time by Jodi Taylor 33. Hard Time by Jodi Taylor 34. Why Is Nothing Ever Simple? by Jodi Taylor 35. Plan for the Worst by Jodi Taylor 36. The Ordeal of the Haunted Room by Jodi Taylor 37. Another Time, Another Place by Jodi Taylor 38. The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin 39. Raising Sparks by Ariel Kahn 40. Ruth and Martin’s Album Club by Martin Fitzgerald 41. Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld 42. Only the Innocent by Rachel Abbott 43. I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes With Death by Maggie O’Farrell 44. The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom 45. Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor 46. The Very First Damned Thing by Jodi Taylor 47. One Word Kill by Mark Lawrence 48. Limited Wish by Mark Lawrence 49. A Symphony of Echoes by Jodi Taylor 50. When a Child is Born by Jodi Taylor 51. Dispel Illusion by Mark Lawrence 52. Telling Tales by Ann Cleeves 53. Hidden Depths by Ann Cleeves 54. Roman Holiday by Jodi Taylor 55. A Second Chance by Jodi Taylor 56. Christmas Present by Jodi Taylor 57. A Trail Through Time by Jodi Taylor 58. No Time Like the Past by Jodi Taylor 59. What Could Possibly Go Wrong? by Jodi Taylor 60. Ships and Stings and Wedding Rings by Jodi Taylor 61. Lies, Damned Lies, and History by Jodi Taylor 62. The Great St Mary's Day Out by Jodi Taylor 63. My Name is Markham by Jodi Taylor 64. Recursion by Blake Crouch 65. The Last Day by Andrew Hunter Murray 66. And the Rest is History by Jodi Taylor 67. Christmas Past by Jodi Taylor 68. A Perfect Storm by Jodi Taylor 69. The Camomile Lawn by Mary Wesley 70. An Argumentation of Historians by Jodi Taylor 71. The Steam Pump Jump by Jodi Taylor 72. The Battersea Barricades by Jodi Taylor 73. The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford 74. And Now for Something Completely Different by Jodi Taylor 75. Hope for the Best by Jodi Taylor 76. The Back Road by Rachel Abbott 77. Stranger Child by Rachel Abbott 78. When Did You Last See Your Father by Jodi Taylor 79. Nowhere Child by Rachel Abbott 80. Why Is Nothing Ever Simple? by Jodi Taylor 81. The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham 82. In Five Years by Rebecca Serle 83. Hope for the Best by Jodi Taylor 84. The Ordeal of the Haunted Room by Jodi Taylor 85. Chocky by John Wyndham 86. The Dark Half by Stephen King 87. Come Again by Robert Webb 88. Doing Time by Jodi Taylor 89. Hard Time by Jodi Taylor 90. Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton 91. Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell 92. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens 93. Another Time, Another Place by Jodi Taylor 94. The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell 95. Saving Time by Jodi Taylor 96. A Drink Before the War by Dennis Lehane 97. Four Past Midnight by Stephen King 98. The Gunslinger by Stephen King 99. The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King

Thanks for the new thread southeastdweller. Haven't been around much recently as my MIL passed away suddenly a month ago, so between supporting DH and dealing with my coursework picking up pace, reading time has been a bit thin on the ground.

I won't post my list but have been slowly making my way through Longbourn by Jo Baker. This is the story of the servants who work in the home of the Bennet family from Pride and Prejudice and when a new servant is employed to deal primarily with the horses, the housemaid end up in a bit of a tizzy. It's clear he has his secrets and one of the maids is determined to find out what these are. Not quite sure yet what I make of this one, maybe still a bit too early to say for sure.

My list:

1. Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
2. Up the Junction - Nell Dunn
3. The Trick is to Keep Breathing - Janice Galloway
4. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
5. The Man Who Wasn't There - Pat Barker
6. The Wind Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami
7. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
8. Trespass - Rose Tremain
9. Lolita - Vladimir Nabakov

10. The Left Handed Booksellers of London - Garth Nix 11. Poor Cow - Nell Dunn 12. Goodnight Mr Tom - Michelle Magorian 13. The Orphan Master's Son - Adam Johnson 14. Private - Keep Out - Gwen Grant 15. Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami 16. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - L Frank Baum 17. Felicia's Journey - William Trevor 18. Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese 19. Our Dancing Days - Lucy English 20. The Call of the Wild - Jack London 21. The Outcast - Sadie Jones 22. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden 23. Digging to America - Anne Tyler 24. The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint - Barry Udall 25. Maurice - EM Forster 26. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey 27. The Secrets of the Chess Machine - Robert Lohr 28. The Long Falling - Keith Ridgeway 29. Piranesi - Susanna Clarke 30. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks 31. A Memory Called Empire - Arkady Martine 32. Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell 33. Merivel - Rose Tremain 34. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams 35. The Underground Railroad - Colson Whitehead 36. Parrot & Olivier in America - Peter Carey 37. Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer 38. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy 39. The Last Days of New Paris - China Mieville 40. Circe - Madeleine Miller 41. Utopia Avenue - David Mitchell 42. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy 43. Black Beauty - Anna Sewell 44. True History of the Kelly Gang - Peter Carey 45. Greenwood - Michael Christie 46. The Restaurant at the end of the Universe - Douglas Adams 47. Billy Liar on the Moon - Keith Waterhouse 48. Fanny Hill - John Cleland 49. The Backward Shadow - Lynne Reid Banks 50. We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen 51. His Bloody Project - Graeme Macrae Burnet 52. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery 53. Knock & Wait - Gwen Grant 54. The Pillow Book - Sei Shonagan 55. Room at the Top - John Braine 56. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke 57. So Long & Thanks for all the Fish - Douglas Adams

97. The Talented Mr Ripley - Patricia Highsmith. I'd never read any Patricia Highsmith and was tempted to read this after reading The Plot where it features. I think I had seen the Jude Law film though. I quite enjoyed it, it's quite clever how you root for Ripley despite him not doing anything much to inspire your affection. Intetested to know what the others in the series are like, but not desperate to read them.

Sorry to hear that @InTheCludgie I hope you are doing ok.

*100. The Wastelands by Stephen King
*
The third book in the Dark Tower series. Does anyone else remember the Dark Towers TV series from the 80s? We watched it at school and I loved it, but anytime I see or mention the Dark Tower books I get the TV theme tune in my head (come with me, oh come with me to Dark Towers...).

Anyway back to the book. After The Drawing of the Three, which definitely felt like a bridge book, the pace has picked up, but given the fact that there are 5 more books to go I'm guessing that this is more the end of the beginning type of thing. I'm enjoying the references to other King books, and there's probably some I've missed. Might take a break and read something else before diving into book 4.

Yes @MamaNewtNewt! I can't remember a single thing about the Dark Towers TV series except the opening credits and theme tune

Thank you for the new thread South.

Sorry to hear you have had a tough year @FranKatzenjammer, I hope you can come back and find pleasure here when you are ready to. Good luck with the move @magimedi! Or, I suppose, bonne chance?

109. Nancy and Plum by Betsy McDonald. This was recommended by one of you ages ago and just popped up on my library loans! Apparently it was Jacqueline Wilson favourite book as a child. It has a certain charm, in the Anne of Green Gables/ Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm ilk, although considerably more modern (1950s). I liked the titular sisters, but found the ending somewhat unsatisfactory- the "baddie" gets no comeuppance, and only a couple of the characters get rescued from their not-quite-orphanage. However, I might have overlooked that as a child, and it definitely has charm.

80. Plan for the Worst - Jodie Taylor

The eleventh book in The Chronicles of St Mary’s series about time travelling historians. Max encounters Vikings, the Princes in the Tower and Minoans and endures near drowning, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and the subsequent tsunami. So, the usual disaster ridden projects. Some familiar names from the past re-appear, we see very little of Leon and learn more about Markham. Highly enjoyable if you like this sort of thing; absolutely ridiculous if you don’t…..

From all of you posting I have come to the conclusion that I will either LOVE or LOATHE the Jodi Taylors and I am scared to start on them in case it is love because there are SO MANY

I really hated the first Jodi T. Frankly, if I want total trash, I'll stick to Enid Blyton. All the adventure, without the panting/juices flowing.

The Chronicles of St Mary’s are very marmite. I am actually surprised that I like them as they’re not my usual reading fare at all. I think I read the first one at a time when I needed something light, distracting and a little bit silly and now they are my antidote to difficult weeks!

I really like Jodi Taylor’s books, but I agree that I can see why people would hate them! They are very popular on Mumsnet though.

I think you can see from my 2021 list that I love Jodi Taylor. When I broke my ankle earlier in the year I needed a comfort listen so worked through the series on audible (the early ones are free if you are a member) and really enjoyed them (I'd already read them). They aren't high literature but they are fun and I love the time travel and history aspects.

@noodlezoodle

Yes *@MamaNewtNewt*! I can't remember a single thing about the Dark Towers TV series except the opening credits and theme tune

I'm the same. All I can remember is that I loved it and that theme tune

Stokey I read all the Ripley books in an omnibus edition several years ago when I had a Highsmith binge. IIRC it was diminshing returns. The books become increasingly ridiculous. I agree that in the first book you do root for him.

I enjoy Jodi Taylor too - for Remus, the "panting/juices flowing" is pretty much just the first book iirc.

106. 56 Days, by Catherine Ryan Howard
Crime fiction set in Dublin during lockdown - I'm sure more lockdown crime lit will follow, but this made good use of the situation. A man and woman have only just met when they decide to move in together for lockdown. 56 days later, a body is found. What happened to Love's Young Dream?

It involves some over-used devices - multiple viewpoints, split timeline and present tense narration - but I thought they were used well. Lots of snappy dialogue and it's not too wildly implausible (looking at you, Sophie Hannah). A decent genre outing.

53. Hare House - Sally Hinchcliffe
This is billedas a "modern gothic horror" with great reviews. I just didn't get it. It was so, so slow and contrived (as if it had been written by numbers).
The narrator is a teacher who has fled her job after an incidence of mass hysteria amongst the girls and comes to live in a remote part of Scotland in one of the cottages that is part of an estate with a big "house" housing the last two young survivors of the owners. The narrator takes a bus back from the local village and the driver runs over a Hare just at the bus stop which eyes our protagonist and starts to create a sense of unease. All the residents of the big house and cottage are slightly off kilter (and annoying). Tensions rise as the winter and snow creep in.

I found this book a slog. It just takes so, so long to get going. I didn't care about any of the characters and I just didn't believe in them or the situation created.

54. To Paradise - Hanya Yanagihara

This comes out on 11 January and I picked it up as an ARC as I liked the portrait on the cover. I didn't notice it was by the author of A Little Life which is a real marmite book and I 'm pretty sure this huge (over 700 pages) tome will be one too. I don't like marmite and I'm afraid I didn't much like this book either. A Little Life's narrative zipped along and I found I was quite far through it before I realised how much I was growing to dislike it and wishing it would end but To Paradise is a much more difficult and challenging read in terms of structure and writing style (though not content).

The narrative is set around three time periods in an alternative United States of America, all based around a house in Washington Square and with characters who share the same name.The structure reminded me of Cloud Atlas and the three seperate stories could have been published as three seperate books in a trilogy but huge books seem to be the trend at present.
I found it slow, often confusing and the characters didn't hold my interest. It might just be my headspace at the moment but I found I couldn't connect with it. It's billed as "a work of emotional genius."

I'll be interested to read what others make of it and I think it will provoke as much love and hate as A Little Life

Thanks for the Ripley advice @SapatSea, think I may give the others a miss.

Really interesting review of the Hanya Yanagihara. I found A Little Life such a page turner, I couldn't put it down while I was reading it but afterwards when I had time to reflect, bits of the plot made me feel a bit uncomfortable. I am quite intrigued to see what she does next but your review is not encouraging!

I'm a bit on the fence about Jodi Taylor. I read a few of them about 5 years ago but they do get very samey. I recently read The Time Police which I enjoyed so was motivated to go back to the first one. I do think Max is a bit of a Mary Sue in it, and the real life time scale is all over the place in a confusing way. But I can equally see how they're a comforting antidote as just wash over you, and I do like the history.