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?

If anyone hasn't read it, The Dispossessed by Ursula le Guin is on for 99p, it's a SF /utopian / anarchist classic (and incidentally the source of my username).

Hello everyone. I love this thread, I’ve had some great recommendations from it, and have lurked for ages. It’s been one of the things that’s spurred me to read a fair amount this year which has been great for my mental health.

I’ll be joining you properly for next years threads, under a different user name as I talk about what I’m reading to loads of people and wouldn’t want other posts linked

@Piggywaspushed can I ask what the read along will be from January 1st? I’ve read the Little Dorrit thread (I mean I could have spent the time reading the book ) and would love to join your next thread.

Have a lovely December reading everyone

Welcome PrincessMayraBolkonskaya. Looking forward to you joining us next year. I suspect we share a love of War and Peace

My latest I really enjoyed (well not sure that’s the world) Dreamland by Rosa Rankin-Gee

A sort of dystopian novel but based in a future that feels worryingly close.

Chance and her family are given an incentive at the start of the story to move out to Margate from London where they are living in temporary accommodation.

The story that unfolds feels incredibly real, yet it’s a world we don’t quite recognise. It reminds me somewhat of the tv show Years and Years but with a far harsher element to it.

@PrincessMaryaBolkonskaya

Hello everyone. I love this thread, I’ve had some great recommendations from it, and have lurked for ages. It’s been one of the things that’s spurred me to read a fair amount this year which has been great for my mental health.

I’ll be joining you properly for next years threads, under a different user name as I talk about what I’m reading to loads of people and wouldn’t want other posts linked

@Piggywaspushed can I ask what the read along will be from January 1st? I’ve read the Little Dorrit thread (I mean I could have spent the time reading the book ) and would love to join your next thread.

Have a lovely December reading everyone

That made me laugh re 'Little Dorrit'. Wondering what you're making of the thread :)

Hello princessRussianname. We are pondering doing Hard Times next.

39. Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan

This was the fascinating story of how the author's life started spinning out of control due to an initially undiagnosed brain condition that presented with psychosis, manic episodes, and epilepsy. Over a week or so, the author goes from being a competent and articulate 24-year-old newspaper journalist to a hallucinating, paranoid, violent wreck of a person who cannot string two sentences together.

What follows is a desperate race against time for a diagnosis, and one doctor's simple insight into what turns out to be a hitherto unknown auto-immune disease that was attacking her brain.

This was a great story and I would recommend it to everyone here. Especially interesting was the réalisation towards the end that this could very well be the problem with all those people, young and old, who were thought to be "possessed" by evil spirits in the old days, or just left to rot in asylums.

40. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

I was convinced that The Martian was a one off, and that its author had exhausted all his ideas in his first book. Not quite. Andy Weir has written another cracking story, this time one astronaut tackling an existential issue for the human race. Interstellar travel, "first contact", calculations galore, and much more can be found in this book.

I definitely enjoyed it and would recommend it to everyone here. Well, maybe not to Remus

@DesdamonasHandkerchief we do share a love! I was obsessed with it as a teenager when I very much thought I was Natasha, but my love for Marya has grown as I’ve got old. I plan to start a re read soon, a chapter now and then.

I like the Little Dorrit thread @IsFuzzyBeagMise I find myself wondering what posters will reveal next! Chapter 19

Thanks @Piggywaspushed I’ll keep an eye out

Did you watch the BBC series with Paul Dano Princess? That's what made me want to read W&P and I loved it. I will also be rereading it in the future - although this time I'll know which chapters to skip

There are quite a few things in the monthly deals that I already own and love - as Sap mentioned, Underland, but also some William Boyds, a couple of Tana Frenches, a Daphne Du Maurier and I'm sure there were more.

I am mulling over buying River Kings and Snowflake, but thanks to Remus's rave have also added The Great Mistake to my cart - sounds right up my alley.

Also considering Homeland Elegies which I'd totally missed, but peeking at the first couple of chapters it looks amazing.

Cote
I’ll be steering well clear, with or without potatoes.

@noodlezoodle Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

@PrincessMaryaBolkonskaya another fan here! I read a blog post where the writer re-reads every year one chapter a day (they said there are 361). I took inspiration from that and read Anna Karenina like this this year (271 chapters) and finished ahead of time in July. I really enjoyed reading it this way, small chapters and it gave me time to digest and enjoy. Plus of course, it meant I could read other things.

I tried and failed to join Little Dorrit as I was joining too late really so will look out for announcements for Hard Times.

I've got Anna Karenina on my 2022 hit list.

I loved that BBC adaptation @DesdamonasHandkerchief !! Really loved it. I’m always searching for it on the streaming services to no avail.

That sounds great @StColumbofNavron can you remember the blog? I like the reading snippets for that very reason, I can race through the lighter stuff alongside it.

I also want to read Anna Karenina in 2022!

I can't remember the actual blog I am afraid. I read W&P on the back of the series too, but in 2020 and I remember being pleasantly surprised that no chapter was more than about 12 mins long - the same applies to Anna Karenina, though I read it in hardcopy but most chapter were about 4 pages (of small print).

I had read Anna before, though I am not sure if I ever finished it as I kept finding bookmarks in it . I have also seen so many adaptations (I am a big fan) that I am not sure if my recollections of reading it were from what I have seen or what I had read.

Anyway, I got a lot out of reading it nice and slowly last year rather than racing through.

Also, weirdly, I loved the War scenes - I went to our local open space and was sitting about imagining the Battle of Borodino.

55. The New Wilderness by Diane Cook. Set in the near future, Agnes and her mother Bea have left the city which is becoming uninhabitable due to deteriorating air quality, and become part of a group of volunteers surviving in a controlled wilderness. This is billed as "environmental fiction" but it's really more about the relationships within the group members than climate change as such (except for the reasons for them being there in the first place). It was okay to begin with, but dragged in the second half. I'm astonished that it was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2020!

I'm so behind with my thoughts on books I've given up until my next read - my list so far though

1. Requiem for Immortals by Lee Winter
2. Passing by Nella Larsen
3. Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor
4. The Haunting of Alma Fielding by Kate Summerscale
5. The Victorian Chaise Longue by Marghanita Laski
6. Beloved by Toni Morrison
7. The Sea The Sea by Iris Murdoch
8. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
9. Winter by Ali Amith
10. The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty
11. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor
12. Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
13. Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth
14. Knowledge of Angels by Jill Palton Walsh
15. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
16. Jews Don’t Count by David Baddiel
17. The Inland Sea by Madeleine Watts
18. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
19. American Dirt by Jeannie Cummins
20. Court number one: The Old Bailey by Thomas Grant
21. Dinner with Edward by Isabel Vincent
22. Patsy by Nicole Y Dennis-Benn
23. The Bone People by Keri Hulme
24. Say Say Say by Lila Savage
25. Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
26. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
27. Happy by Fearne Cotton
28. Frankisstein by Jeanette Winterson
29. Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
30. You have to make your own fun around here by Frances Macken
31. Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez
32. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin
33. Spring by Ali Smith
34. A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler
35. Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
36. The Time Traveller’s Guide to Regency Britain by Ian Mortimor
37. The Good Earth by Pearl S.Buck
38. Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally
39. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
40. Weather by Jenny Offill
41. The Street by Ann Perry
42. How to be a Heroine by Samantha Ellis
43. Whats left of me is yours by Stephanie Scott
44. How to be both by Ali Smith
45. Guest House for Young Widows by Azaden Moavers 46,47,28Dependency, Youth and Childhood by Tove Ditleven
46. 1,2,3,4 by Paul Aster
47. Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller
48. Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall
49. A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
50. Men who hate women by Laura Bates
51. Latitudes of Longing by Shubhangi Swarup
52. Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine by Gail Honeyman
53. You could do something amazing with your life You are Raoul Moat by Andrew Hankinson
54. Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan
55. The Margot Affair by Sanae Lemoine
56. Crimes strangest cases by Peter Seddon
57. The count of Monte Cristo
58. The Long Take by Robin Robertson
59. The only plane in the sky: An oral history of 9/11 by Garrett M.Graff
60. Nomandland by Jessica Bruder
61. Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi
62. Summer by Ali Smith
63. Fresh Water for Flowers by Valerie Perrin, translated by Hildegarde Series
64. Plainsong by Kent Haruf
65. Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
66. History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund
67. Stalingrad by Vasily Grossman
68. Small Pleasures by Claire Chambers
69. The Employees by Olga Ran with Martin Aitken
70. The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis
71. The Sleeping Beauty by Elizabeth Taylor
72. The Cut Out Girl by Bart van Es
73. Living the Dream by Isabelle Dupuy
74. Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
75. Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
76. The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa with Stephen Snyder
77. Pew by Catherine Lacey
78. Things we lost in the fire by Mariana Enriquez with MeganMcDowell
79. On Silbury Hill by Adam Thorpe
80. Ghost Stories
81. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle
82. No Honour by Awais Khan
83. A little life by Hanya Yanagihara
84. Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder
85. Memento Mori by Muriel Spark
86. Moominland Midwinter by Tove Jansson
87. Lean Fall Stand by Jon McGregor

58. Music and Silence - Rose Tremain In 1629 Peter, an English lutenist, travels to Denmark to join the Royal Orchestra, performing for King Christian IV on demand. The King, seeing in Peter a resemblance to his childhood companion, commences to use the lutenist as a confidante and friend to whom he can discuss matters of state, his failing marriage and increasing poverty.

I loved this. Tremain's historical fiction is a delight (I can't condone her more modern settings). The POV of the chapters alternate between various major characters; my favourite sections come from Kirsten, the king's adulterous wife who is awful but knows she is and doesn't see why she shouldn't be.

Another War and Peace fan here. It's so expansive and multi-layered. I really didn't enjoy Anna Karenina which felt very claustrophobic and narrow by comparison. Maybe W&P is due a re-read. The BBC adaptation was excellent.

War And Peace has waited for me a while - I think I will read along to the Thandiwe Newton edition after my next audio. You lot have inspired me.

I really enjoyed the BBC production of War and Peace too and then read the book off the back of it. Slightly too much war for my liking but a really engrossing story. I haven’t read Anna Karenina - perhaps that should go on next year’s list.

81. A Bit of a Stretch - Chris Atkins

Saw one or more recommendations on here for this - thank you and apologies for forgetting who recommended. Chris is a documentary maker who ends up in Wandsworth prison as his film making was financed by a dodgy tax scheme which the celebs used to invest in to avoid/reduce tax. Chris was implicated/guilty because he facilitated the process by doing whatever the accountants requested. He ends up in Wandsworth prison convicted of fraud. As a documentary maker he brings his observational and analytical skills and the book covers his time in Wandsworth. He freely admits that he had it easier than the average inmate as his class and education helped him gain trusted roles and an easier time in prison. He also did not go into prison (or come out of it) with a drug habit or mental health issues. I think we all probably know the prison system is not fit for purpose but some of his revelations were still shocking. An absorbing read.

BadSpellaSpellaSpella
I'd love to know what you thought of Lean Fall Stand. I don't know anyone else who has read it!