50 Book Challenge 2022 Part One

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the first thread of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2022, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

If possible, please can you embolden your titles and maybe authors as well of books you've read or going to read? It makes it much easier to keep track, especially when the threads move quickly at this time of the year.

Who's in for this year?

Can I join? I did one of these threads a few years ago and read so much more. So far this year I have read:

1. Piranesi by Susanna Clark
Really enjoyed it - it reminded me of The End of Mr Y.

2. My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Good book, terrible ending. Really annoyed me!

3. Amnesia by Peter Carey
Took me quite a while to get into this. I stuck with it because I have loved the other books of his that I have read. The main protagonist is sp unlikeable I didn't want to spend my time in his company. After the first 100 pages I loved it.

4. A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines
Realised I had never actually read this despite knowing the whole storyline! It was wonderful. The descriptions of nature made my heart sing.

I am afraid I agree with Remus and piggy that the second book of the Regeneration trilogy is very disappointing by comparison to the first one but things do pick up again in the final book (although I think the first book is the best). I am trying to recall how key the events of the second book are to the third. I’ll be back if I remember!

Found my reviews and the final Regeneration book which is The Ghost Road very much follows on from The Eye on the Door. Both books focus on Billy Prior and Dr Rivers.

Finished Book No. 2 'Once, Twice, Three Times an Aisling' by Emer McLysaght & Sarah Breen. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Aisling books, they started off as a Facebook page (Oh my god what a complete Aisling) which turned into a hugely successful book and the fourth book in the series has now been released. I read the first book a few years ago and enjoyed it. When news about the Omicron variant hit the headlines, I was sure we were heading for another winter lockdown and thought something light and cheerful was in order, so I bought books two and three. This is the third book in the series.

The main character (Aisling) has moved home to Ballygobbard (affectionately known as BallyGoBackwards or BGB). Aisling's best friend Majella is planning her wedding. Aisling is her only bridesmaid and has sole responsibility for planning the hen weekend and helping out with the wedding planning. Meanwhile, she's working very long hours at her business (a cafe) and has taken on a very big order. Her new boyfriend James seems like the perfect man but her ex John is still very much on the scene.......

I didn't enjoy this as much as the first two books. I read it after 'Still LIfe' which would be a hard act for any book to follow. But the authors have certainly captured the essence of village life in Ireland - the prominence of the GAA, the local Tidy Towns group, the blessing of the graves, the local radio show sponsored by Mulcahy Feeds etc. I don't know if readers in the UK would get all the Irishisms. There are some very funny bits like Majella's attempts to keep the hen party informed of all the plans via Whatsapp and the assorted replies and demands that follow whenever she posts an update (to complicate matters further, the groom is Spanish and some of his family are in the Whatsapp group). I used to do admin. for a Whatsapp group so I could really relate to this bit. The book is a bit uneven and the end was entirely predictable.

And now for something completely different. Book No. 3 will be 'Love in a Time of War: My Years with Robert Fisk' by Lara Marlowe.

@BadSpellaSpellaSpella

Forgot to add book 2

1. The dark is rising by Susan Cooper

A nice read in the run up to Christmas and the new year. I enjoyed the family and village life sections to the fantasy parts more.

I've also just finished reading 3. The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper to DC2, having started it before Christmas. I completely agree with @BadSpellaSpellaSpella that I much preferred the village and family life passages to the fantasy sections. Although I know it's much loved on this thread, TBH I got a bit bored with the Light/Dark battle, and wasn't sad to finish it.

1. Many Different Kinds of Love by Michael Rosen. The children author’s account of getting covid at the start of the pandemic, surviving ICU and recuperating. I found this very moving - particularly the inclusion of his nurses messages whilst he was in a coma.
2. Heartstopper Volume 2: Alice Osemann. Guilty pleasure graphic novel about a high school romance. Cute
3. Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. A Japanese time travel novel. I definitely got this recommendation from this thread but I can’t remember who!

I found the first half a little dry for a time travel novel, the characters had quite similar names and the writing was too sparse (I often worry with reading translated fiction about this last point, not being quite sure what the author intended). However, The second half was really emotional and I was invested totally in the story. I wonder if the author intended to make the rules around time travel so tedious to make those that chose to pursue it incredibly determined.

I’m expecting to read a lot in the next few months as I’ve been sorting my kindle and have about 150 unread books under 300 pages which I’d like to make a dent in.

3. Bookworm: A memoir of childhood reading - Lucy Mangan

I’ve had this on my kindle for a couple of years now having read the first quarter and then abandoning it. I know so many people though who have raved about it and so I was determined to go back to it. Honestly I found it a bit meh. Perhaps because I don’t have the same nostalgia many will have on reading this book as I am a primary school teacher and so have revisited most of my favourite childhood books as an adult already. I also found some parts a real slog to get through and found my attention drifting. Lucy has a way with language though and uses light humour throughout the book which I liked. A bit of a 3 star for me this one.

I don't know Charlotte McConaghy but at a quick google her work sounds interesting. How would you describe her books? Thrillers, lit-fic...?

Janina - re Elif "Shafak"

"Who is allowed to tell what story and how many changes should to be made to make it acceptable to the Anglophone world?"

Everybody is "allowed" to tell any story, of course, and the problem isn't "changes". It is misrepresenting a country and its people with a bullshit story just to sell books to Anglophones.

"Is choosing to write in English the first problem?"

Writing in English isn't the problem. It's the symptom.

"There are plenty of writers that have grown up with split cultural heritage and that otherness might well be a contributor to their success as writers."

That is the case with Orhan Pamuk. He writes in Turkish but his American school education shows in how he looks at many issues and even in his prose, which is unusually easy to translate to English.

It is not the case with Khaled Hosseini and Elif Şafak, both of whom are imho guilty of producing stuff just to get Anglophone women (let's accept that it is not men reading these books) who know nothing about their countries but want to read about them part with their money because it pulls on their heart strings in a way that lines up with their prejudices about these countries.

StColombo - "It’s impossible to disagree with Cotes points around names etc. I can’t really see any reason for it than an English speaking market will be more familiar with Leila than Leyla, but it’s definitely not necessary."

"Leila" is not just unnecessary but also stupid because anyone who knows anything about Turks would know that they wouldn't' know what to do with two vowels together, and anyway the explanation "traded the 'y' of 'yesterday' for the 'i' of 'infinity'" is just ridiculous because neither yesterday (dün) or infinity (sonsuzluk) have y or i in them. Same with Zaynab and D/Ali - completely unpronounceable so-called names that would never ever happen in Turkey, a place where all names mean something and where there are no creative spellings since everything is written 100% phonetically.

In trying to make her book more English-friendly, she has dug herself deeper and deeper in absurd rubbish. This sort of thing can only be stomached by the reader if they know nothing about the country. Incidentally, that may be why she writes in English these days.

@ChessieFL

Certainly the issue in On Chesil Beach is a lack of communication. However, for me this is reasonable because they’re a young naive couple, they don’t actually know each other that well, and don’t really know what to expect from marriage and sex. It’s reasonable in that context that they don’t know how to communicate with each other. I haven’t read the Holly Seddon book that BookBanter refers to but their review mentions it’s the couple’s 10th wedding anniversary so you would expect them to be able to communicate by that stage so in that context I would find a lack of communication much more annoying! Having said that, probably about 90% of plots would disappear if everyone just told each other what was going on all the time so we should probably all be grateful to some extent for a lack of communication!

@Stokey and @ChessieFL

I haven't heard of On Chesil Beach but will be steering clear if 'characters don't communicate' is the main cause of the problem driving the plot. I'm learning this is a big bugbear of mine.

I think that poor communication between characters is fine and often necessary to create conflict/tension, but I don't think the whole plot should rely on characters not speaking to each other. I want to finish a book believing that the story/journey HAD to happen in order to have the final resolution. If i finish a book and learn that the whole thing could have been sorted in the first chapter if characters just spoke with each other, I feel utterly cheated.

The characters in Love Will Tear Us Apart have been best friends since childhood and married for ten years. The idea that there is something HUGE in the letter she has discovered in his belongings is drawn out for the whole story and then it's revealed that it's just a big misunderstanding. it's getting me worked up again! This was the first and last book of Holly Seddon's I'll read. I've lost any trust in her now after that (did i mention that this 'poor communication plot' is a big bug bear of mine?)

DNF #4 Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

Urban fantasy set in London. Detective is recruited to a special met police department when he learns he can communicate with ghosts. He then works with a senior detective, a wizard, to solve a series of murder cases involving goddesses and trolls.

I am so disappointed as I really, really wanted to love this. It sounded brilliant and is reviewed so highly. But I DNF 50% of the way through.

I love the storyline, just not the delivery.

Didn't connect or care about any of the characters.

Didn't like the main character Peter and thought he was pervy.

I didn't understand the 'background' clearly so couldn't absorb into the world. Did Peter and his friend know about the existance of trolls etc before he went to work with Detective Nightingale? If not, why do they both just accept it so readily? Why isn't there a beat where they're in disbelief?

It was a bit too fast paced. Seemed bitty to me. Peter kept going from one place to the next and never stayed with a character or a place long enough for me to care. Characters and places started to morph into one.

I couldn't visualise anything. I'm not one for huge chunks of description but do appreciate a little imagery peppered here and there. Only Peter's race was hinted at and nightingale's age. I have no idea what they might look like or what their homes/offices looked like etc.

Ultimately, I need to connect with a character in order to care enough about them to finish a book. I don't necessarily have to like them (e.g. American Psycho - hated the main character but loved the book as I engaged with him and his voice and his story). For me the author didn't do enough to help me engage with the characters so it's a DNF.

I think I'll try the Dresden Files, as recommended above.

Cote - I understand your anger at the misrepresentation of Turkish culture; I can get similarly agitated at historical novelists who mess about with periods I know well (looking at you, Conn Iggulden). Don’t even get me started on the book that combined Joan of Arc with baked potatoes…

On the other hand, being a fiction writer is tough and should we really blame writers for making their work marketable by confirming to readers’ prejudices/expectations around certain cultures? Sometimes it might even be the editor, rather than the writer, nudging the work in certain directions for profit. When writing is your vocation, it’s not always possible to cling on to every last scrap of your integrity if you want to make a living. Also, these are works of fiction, not billed as documentaries - if a reader wants the ‘facts’, maybe they should turn to other sources.

Luster - Raven Leilani
The ordeal of the haunted room - Jodi Taylor
Just ignore him - Alan Davies
Mrs March - Virginia Leito*
The Wolf Den -Elodie Harper**
A rant of ravens - Chris* Goff

A great start, some really interesting books, especially The Wolf Den, and then completely different and let down by A Rant of Ravens!
Premise: NY based magazine design editor has relationship issues and takes advantage of aunt's offer to look after bird sanctuary while aunt is away. Then murder happens...
Sounds interesting, and the fact there are 6 more books in the series is a good sign?
Nope, badly written, badly edited, silly story, effortlessly racist and stereotypical.
Particularly annoying was the author's insistence on naming all the computer applications used by the protagonist. I suppose it was published in 2000. Anyway, off to find something better!

From recent interviews I think her writing is moving towards ‘issues’ that she wants to address and Turkey/Turkishness etc is really becoming the backdrop as opposed to the focus. In things like İskender/Honour the characters being Turkish and being in Hackney is fundamental but increasingly I think she focuses on this less now. That said, I have bumped Tequila Leyla up and will read it more critically after this discussion.

1. War Lord by Bernard Cornwell.

A bit slower paced than his others but still my favourite kind of book to read when I can't sleep.

My academic ones were

1. dressed for freedom about fashion and feminist activism from suffragettes to the 1970s. I quite liked it. Not just opinion but lots of information.

1. Decolonising Data by jacqueline quinless

I enjoyed this but it is most relevant to health researchers. A bit more detached than eg Patricia Hill Collins.

3. Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty

My library reservation of this came up early. Whilst I enjoy reading books about nature and wildlife, I felt I didn't enjoy this one quite as much as I'd hoped I would. Undoubtedly Dara McAnulty is a very talented young writer, and I'm in awe of the level of maturity of his writing at such a young age. And to write with such clarity of thought not just about nature but about his autism is superb. I think it was that it became rather same-y towards the end - the diary format I think is what didn't work here for me.

My first DNF of the year - Holy Island by L J Ross. It was a library audio book. I started it this morning and by less than 1.5 hours into it I'd had enough of the misogyny, the rudeness from the DCI, the Mills and Boon direction in which I could see it going. Utter dross, not spending any more time on this pile of ridiculous shite. Feeling cross with myself for wasting even that much time on it

Interesting discussion. I agree that One Thousand Splendid Suns (for example) is deliberately written in a way to tug upon your heartstrings, but then that's true of lots of fiction books (eg The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry - not sure why that one came to mind in particular). Is it "worse" if it is aimed at western readers and set in a country that those readers probably don't know much about, because it may increase feelings of "otherness"? Or is it all fair game to the fiction writer as LadybirdDaphne says, and on balance a good thing to have more books available to the English-speaking market that are written by international authors and set all over the world? I'm leaning towards the latter, although Cote I do understand that it must be infuriating to come across the glaringly incorrect examples you mentioned above.

@LittleDiaries - I couldn’t agree more about LJ Ross.
I bought the first three of her series as we were going on holiday to Northumberland and I thought it would be fun to read some crime books set in the area.
The first one was really really poor. I’m amazed it was published at all, let alone that it became a whole series. Unconvincing plot, unbelievable dialogue, badly written .. as you say, a pile of shite.
I actually struggled through the second (why???) which was as woeful as the first. Then gave them all to the charity shop.

@FortunaMajor I think the Giordano Bruno series is by S. J. Parris rather than Parker

@highlandcoo I'm relieved it wasn't just me then . I couldn't believe that a woman would write that utter nonsense that she had coming from a young DCI. He must have been off sick the day they had equality in the workplace training

Tarahumara - "Is it "worse" if it is aimed at western readers and set in a country that those readers probably don't know much about, because it may increase feelings of "otherness"?"

I don't think of it as increasing feelings of otherness, but as deliberately playing on the prejudices and misconceptions of their target audience: Western, Anglophone, ignorant about the country in question, knowing only that people must be mistreated there and oh so very sad it is etc

Imagine you are American and someone who left the US as a kid and grew up in Saudi Arabia publishes a book in Arabic that just talks about how Americans just have sex with everyone, drink all the time, and get fat eating McDonalds. Of course it becomes a bestseller in Muslim countries, among people who already believe all this is true for Americans and who know nothing else about the US. That is the sort of infuriating "literature" I am talking about.

Ladybird - "should we really blame writers for making their work marketable by confirming to readers’ prejudices/expectations around certain cultures?"

Yes, we should. I understand that being a fiction writer comes with a certain poetic license but this goes beyond that. You buy a book expecting authenticity and somewhat realistic representations of the surroundings, with the possible exception of SF genre. Even then, I would argue that better worldbuilding with plausible details goes a long way to making a great book.

A Daughter Of Smoke And Bone was today’s book. YA fantasy mostly set in Prague about a 17yo girl fostered by chimaera and living between two worlds.
It’s been a while since I read some fantasy and I enjoyed returning to it. It’s a very readable and, having spotted the sequels for £3 I think I’ll continue. Probably 3*

SPOILERS!!! I'm neither Mexican nor American and I felt manipulated by American Dirt because it appeared to me that it was written in such a way as to be palatable to the majority of Americans (and probably to secure a lucrative film deal) SPOILERS!!!! For instance the two main Mexican refugees were not just escaping cartel oppression, but were running from a personal vendetta carried out by an extremely influential, ultra-violent cartel with a huge reach. Their entire family had been annihilated on the instruction of the leader of the cartel. The main character is educated, fairly wealthy, ran a liberal bookshop, speaks excellent English etc. Her murdered husband was a journalist dedicated to exposing the country's political/legal/police corruptions. She is accompanied by her innocent, yet precocious, 8-year-old son, Luca. Their journey to the border is characterised by brutal events happening to their fellow travellers. No one but the most ardent anti-immigrant hardliners could fail to understand and sympathise with their need for refuge. I did not feel that this was necessarily representative of the majority of Mexican illegal immigrants. Worst of all the writer then wheels on a another young male character late in the novel. A character with charm but with whom the reader feels less emotionally invested. It is this character who dies in the final stages of the novel.It felt as if the writer needed to include a tragedy as a shocking climax but knew that killing Luca might be too unpalatable for her American audience. I should say that none of my book club friends agreed with me on this though and they raved about their emotional responses to the book.