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?

Just a reminder to Dickensalongians that tomorrow is 1st December!

Just realised that I DNF House of Glass. I got a bit bored and distracted at one point and mean to go back to it. It is good.

113. I Am A Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter (Audible)

Quoting from Amazon as I was struggling to summarise :

Can thought arise out of matter? Can self, soul, consciousness, I" arise out of mere matter? If it cannot, then how can you or I be here? I Am a Strange Loop argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is the strange loop",a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. The most central and complex symbol in your brain is the one called I." The I" is the nexus in our brain, one of many symbols seeming to have free will and to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse. How can a mysterious abstraction be real,or is our I" merely a convenient fiction? Does an I" exert genuine power over the particles in our brain, or is it helplessly pushed around by the laws of physics? These are the mysteries tackled in I Am a Strange Loop

This was challenging. I realised early on that

a) I would have been better reading this in print
b) That I didn't have the much referred to accompanying PDF and
c) that, published nearly 26 years after his seminal Godel. Escher. Bach it was one for established fans, and guess what? Haven't read it.

On the whole I found some of the philosophy side overly simplistic :

Do Dogs Have Souls?

Is Sign Language Language?

But yet the maths side, refs to Principia Mathematica baffling, as Maths is not my strong suit and I was lucky to pass GCSE.

If anyone has read Hofstadter or is involved in similar academic fields, feel free to @ me.

@CluelessMama I went to see Mick Kitson at an event back in 2018 when he was promoting Sal - really great speaker and I loved Sal.

He bought out a new book this year, Featherweight, which is set in Tipton in the Black Country about a Romany girl sold off to a bare-knuckle boxer. For anyone who has ever been to the Black Country Museum you'd recognise the descriptions of the canals and houses. Highly recommended!

Thank you so much emmaw1405. I didn't know Mick Kitson had written another book and will definitely seek it out.

Ooh, my local library has a copy of Featherweight

108. Juliet Tango Foxtrot: How did it all go wrong for British policing? By Iain Donnelly
The title means JTF - job's totally fucked. The writer was a police officer for 30 years and misses the old days when police chased down scrotes and looked properly smart in their uniforms. I'm not sure we would see eye to eye on everything, but he makes some sensible points about what an organization needs to succeed - a clear mandate and enough resources, and not to be treated like a political football. Teresa May does not come out well.

*109. Weather, by Jenny Offill
Fiction told modishly in disconnected paragraphs. Woman broods about looming environmental catastrophe and the wellbeing of her family and acquaintances. It's all very readable and quirky but I finished it feeling a bit "so what".

Very disappointed in the monthly deals - I usually find something but there’s nothing this time that I haven’t already got.

I bought a few bits Homeland Elligies by Ayad Akhtar and the newest Eddie Flynn by Steve Cavanagh.

It's not very comprehensive this month, is it? But for anyone who hasn't read it already but would like to, The Only Plane in the Sky is reduced to 99p.

Thank you @Terpsichore!

The only thing I spotted was the latest Steve Cavanagh book Devil's Advocate (Eddie Flynn). It's the follow on from Fifty Fifty which was very popular in the last year.

I read it last month and its a solid 4 star legal thriller - really pacey and would recommend.

I was actually wondering if they were the new deals or not - didn't buy anything. I did see Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, which has really stayed with me. It's a time travel book set partly within a future Oxford (drawing heavily on old-fashioned cliches, so the overall portrait is one that I found inept but oddly endearing) and partly centuries in the past, in a small manor house as a mysterious illness takes hold. Like other books by this author, I found it frustratingly slow-moving at times, but this adds to an immersive experience.

Completely agree with your review for Weather, bibliomania.

54. Erebus - Michael Palin

The story of the ship Erebus, which along with Terror disappeared on the doomed 1845 Franklin expedition to find the North-West Passage. Palin tells the story in a very light and readable way, finding (appropriate, tasteful) humour in the accounts of the men who sailed on her. I’ve been fascinated by this story since reading (and more recently watching) The Terror, and it was very compelling to read a non-fiction account and realise how cleverly Dan Simmons wove his story around the known facts. I’m sure DP will be very glad that I’ve now finished it and will stop interrupting his work to say things like ‘Crozier really did propose to Sophy Cracroft!’ ‘They really did have a monkey and a dog called Neptune!’ ‘Someone really did do an autopsy on John Hartnell!’

Palin also covers the earlier voyages of Erebus and Terror to Antarctica. The surgeon McCormick, who spent a lot of time admiring and even empathising with seabirds, before nevertheless shooting and eating them, was very good value.

piggy I'm so far behind with Little Dorrit that I'll be steering clear of the chat again this month but I'm still plodding on and steadfastly bringing up the rear!

@Palegreenstars

I bought a few bits Homeland Elligies by Ayad Akhtar and the newest Eddie Flynn by Steve Cavanagh.

I loved Homeland Elligies and thought it was very well woven together.

@nowanearlyNicemum

piggy I'm so far behind with Little Dorrit that I'll be steering clear of the chat again this month but I'm still plodding on and steadfastly bringing up the rear!

No worries! Hopefully you can join us on Jan 1st!

Robert Macfarlane - Underland is on Kindle daily deal today. IIRC it as had good reviews on this thread.

This review in the Guardian made me put The Great Mistake by Jonathan Lee on my Wishlist, and I found it for 99p the other day. Well, I loved it and devoured it in just a couple of days. It tells the story of Andrew Green who planned Central Park, amongst other things, and his murder at the age of 83. I found it really gentle and compelling - it's a book about dreams, ones that come true and ones that don't; about a man at the heart of New York society but also on its fringes; about a man who is both known and unknown and a murder that is tragic not only in its victim but in its villain, and its total pointlessness. Just beautiful.

As a general shoutout my latest is

114. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

A short one for some festive cheer and I am shouting it out to everyone with Audible credit that its Hugh Grant

@SapatSea

Robert Macfarlane - Underland is on Kindle daily deal today. IIRC it as had good reviews on this thread.

I feel such guilt that I still haven't finished the bloody thing.

I've bought 2 books about Germany: Gile Milton's one about the aftermath of World War 2, Checkmate Berlin plus The Broken House by Horst Kruger*.

I've managed to comb through the deals and find quite a lot of goodies that I didn't have as well as some that others may have missed. I snapped up Homeland Elegies too.

I was also pleased by looking at my wishlist to see if anything had come down to find a book which I'd never have found otherwise, The Usual Santas, down from over £11 to £1.43. This is a collection of Christmas crime stories from Soho Press, an American publisher of crime fiction set around the world, some in translation but also US and UK writers. They are the American publishers for Peter Lovesey (who writes the foreword) and Mick Herron. This is a publisher whose books I always have a look at when I see them in charity shops or on Kindle offers, as normal prices can be quite high.

In recent months I've discovered that the best deals are often really well hidden. I wonder if they're promoting particular books and publishers at the expense of others, as you do have to hunt through a lot of rubbish to find the interesting things.

And they also seem to have some books at mid price rather than cheap, and some which seem quite expensive, as if they hope readers won't notice that the new book they've been wanting to read is actually being sold for more than £5 or £6, and not really an amazing deal.

Maybe they're holding some offers back for daily deals and bargains over Christmas, though they seem to have stopped doing the regular sales which were additional to daily and monthly offers.

We Need to Talk About the British Empire - Afua Hirsch
Found in the audiobooks at the library, but really a series of podcasts. Afua speaks to people who were directly affected by the Empire and it's legacy. Interesting, but ultimately a bit lacking as it only briefly touched on the history and could have easily been part of something meatier like her excellent book Brit(ish).

Imperfect Women - Araminta Hall
After the murder of a woman and the following investigation into her death, her two best friends realise they didn't all know each other quite as well as they thought.
Engaging sort of thriller. Enjoyed although the twist was fairly easy to spot.

The Patron Saint of Pregnant Girls - Ursula Hegl
Historical Fiction. Late 1800s Germany. Women of different generations bond after a tragedy.
This was over long, rambling and very jumbled. Had promise, but lost it in trying to cover too much with too many characters.

The Lincoln Highway - Amor Towels
1950s Nebraska. Released early from a juvenile correctional facility due to bereavement, Emmett returns home to collect his younger brother and to set out for a new city and fresh start. His plans are significantly interrupted when he discovers two of his fellow inmates have managed to escape and hitch a ride to his home.
I wanted to like this more than I did. Told from too many different POV and dragged on.