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?

I've had my first DNF this year. Written In Blood - Caroline Graeme. I couldn't get into this, despite my best efforts. I like some of the other Midsomer Murders books, but didn't like the characterisation in this. It was too clichéd even for Midsomer Murders!

Trying a non fiction now.

@SirSidneyRuffDiamond I felt the same about American Dirt. Its not the cultural appropriation as such but the way in which it's done. No commentary on US or Mexican politics as such, the US portrayed as a land of plenty and opportunity, the main characters felt atypical as came from a place of privilege, and the portrait of the sensitive cartel boss was just ludicrous. That said, I'm not necessarily against someone writing about a different culture. I guess another of the issues with American Dirt was there are many Mexican authors that have written about similar things but it is an American who has been lauded and sold millions of copies.

3. Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers

I'm late to the party on this one. It's been on my TBR pile for a while but quite a few 50 bookers rated it highly in the end of year summaries which moved it up my list.

I'm so glad it did as I absolutely loved this book. I loved everything about it. I saw on Goodreads that quite a few people didn't like the ending, but as you might have guessed I loved it.

I can't remember who mentioned that their Mum's first husband died in the train crash featured. I can't imagine how poignant it must have been reading the book with such an involvement and I found myself thinking of you and your family and all of the other families too.

@BookBanter I listened to Rivers of London Book 1 on Audible and found it a generally good experience. Great narrator that 'made the book' and often recommended on 'which audiobook should I buy' threads.

However, I found the overall story quite messy and all over the place at times. I've heard the second book is much better, most likely when the author hasn't got to go into as much scene setting and character introductions. When I looked at reviews on Goodreads, some others felt the same.

Overall, I wasn't wowed by that particular volume, but I was intrigued by the concept and thought I may revisit and try book 2 at some point.

May be one to try on audio? If you have library access, they are all available in Borrowbox.

I read American Dirt last year as well. I didn't have strong feelings about it, but I did find the personal vendetta and personal relationship the main character had with the cartel leader pretty silly. But some scenes were well written, particularly the opening scenes. I agree that it may have been written with American movie producers in mind.

1. Rotten Row by Chaz Brenchley

Following on from the Crater School books, I thought I'd try something else from the same author. This is a more straightforward SF novella. The premise is that humans can travel throughout the cosmos, but only those who are willing to accept being 'upshot' as a datastream, their original body being compressed and destroyed, and then reloaded into a new randomly assigned lab-grown body. There are strict rules around the Upshot - except at the end of the system on Rotten Row, where anything and everything is permissible. Artist duLaine travels there as part of his mission to create immersive artistic experiences, but gets more deeply entangled in local politics than he intended. I thoroughly enjoyed this, it's a fun piece with some nicely made points around identity and art.

That was me @MamaNewtNewt. It gave me a peculiar jolt because it was so unexpected. Having spoken to my DM about the book, she won't be reading it as it's too close for comfort. In fact she tells me that, much like the character in the book who runs to get on the train and is pleased to have made it, her husband usually caught the next train home but got out of work a little early and apparently did actually run to get on board this earlier one. When he didn't arrive home she went to the station and was told about the accident. She assumed that he was on his usual train which had been delayed by the crash and that he would get back once the trains were running again. He never arrived. He had an unusual surname and when the list of the dead and injured was compiled it was transcribed as a slightly different, more common name. So for two days his whereabouts remained unknown until she got to see the list for herself and realised the mistake. All very sad.

1. Beastie Boys Book - Michael Diamond / Adam Horowitz

Oh, I loved this book. As much a love letter to growing up in 1980s New York as band biography, it encompasses photos, flyers, comic strips, playlists, shaggy dog stories, even recipes. I don't think I've read a music book as utterly joyful and exuberant.

@yoshiblue I love the narrator of Rivers of London but agree with you both the story was far too messy. A shame as I had high hopes.

On the American Dirt chat I enjoyed this book as a unrealistic thriller (a genre I quite like) but the reviews suggesting this was great literature. I ran out of time to post my last few reviews of 2021 but for those that enjoyed American Dirt but are interested in something more authentic I would thoroughly recommend The Distance Between Us a memoir but The Mexican author Reyna Grande. It was equally gripping but read honestly, there is enough drama in the realities of bored crossings and torn apart families without the need for exaggeration. For me this was much more interesting story and focuses on the major reasons people cross.

And sorry for your DM @SirSidneyRuffDiamond - coming unexpectedly to this real life event must have been a challenging reading experience for you.

*but the reviews suggesting this was great literature …were bonkers

@SirSidneyRuffDiamond oh my goodness that is so sad. I totally understand why your mother wouldn't want to revisit that by reading the book.

@MegBusset

4. Beastie Boys Book - Michael Diamond / Adam Horowitz

Oh, I loved this book. As much a love letter to growing up in 1980s New York as band biography, it encompasses photos, flyers, comic strips, playlists, shaggy dog stories, even recipes. I don't think I've read a music book as utterly joyful and exuberant.

I listened to audible version a year or so ago and absolutely loved it, particularly the early section. Like you say it's a bit of a love letter to NY and I found the details about Adam Yauch / MCA so poignant and beautiful, without being overly sentimental. It's definitely my favourite audiobook, memoir / autobiography AND music book. In fact I might have to have another listen in the not too distant future!

A couple of days of the lurgy (not COVID thankfully) has meant plenty of reading time.

1. Back Trouble - Clare Chambers

Picked this up for 99p in the monthly deals on the back of enjoying Small Pleasures last year. This is a gem too. It features Philip, a 40 year old man who has just lost his job and partner. When he injures his back he spends the time he’s immobilised writing his life story. The story does jump around a bit between childhood, recent past and present day but it’s done well so I didn’t find this confusing. Philip isn’t exactly a likeable character - he’s rather self-pitying - but I liked him enough to be interested in his story.

1. And Away… by Bob Mortimer

Bought this for DH for Christmas and thought I might as well read it too. I enjoyed the first half more, where he’s talking about his childhood, but also liked the bits covering his more recent heart problems. I always liked Shooting Stars but never really got into much of Reeves and Mortimer’s other stuff so the second half talking about that was less interesting to me. I did enjoy finding out more about him though.

10. Watching Neighbours Twice A Day: How ‘90s TV (Almost) Prepared Me For Life by Josh Widdicombe

Oh, I loved this. Josh is only 4 years younger than me so almost everything he watched was something I also watched. I also grew up in a neighbouring county to him so I also recognise all the specifically south-west things he mentions like Gus Honeybun and Trago Mills. Virtually every page of this had me thinking ‘oh yes, I remember that!’. As with all these types of books though, your enjoyment will be affected by how much your own experience was similar to his so it won’t necessarily suit everyone (much like Bookworm which I also loved for the same reasons but I know others haven’t connected with so much).

@weebarra - The Wolf Den is on my TBR list. Looking forward to it.

1. Just Ignore Him - Alan Davies. Also on my TBR list having read the blurb in a book catalogue. Emotionally powerful but very readable.

Library book.

2. Dava Shastri's Last Day, by Kirthana Ramisetti. Billionaire philanthropist Dava Shastri is dying of a brain tumour, although no one but she and her doctor know this. She gathers her family together at their holiday home, planning an assisted death, but allows the news of her dying to break a day early so that she can read her obituaries. Against her expectations, skeletons come rattling out of the closet, and the whole family has to navigate their relationships, questions and resentments. Despite sounding really depressing, I found this a lovely, uplifting, slow ramble of a family saga. Dava's love of music is woven throughout the book and I found this enhanced my enjoyment of the story, and am now sat happily listening to Mercury Rev.

[quote yoshiblue]**@BookBanter* I listened to Rivers of London Book 1* on Audible and found it a generally good experience. Great narrator that 'made the book' and often recommended on 'which audiobook should I buy' threads.

However, I found the overall story quite messy and all over the place at times. I've heard the second book is much better, most likely when the author hasn't got to go into as much scene setting and character introductions. When I looked at reviews on Goodreads, some others felt the same.

Overall, I wasn't wowed by that particular volume, but I was intrigued by the concept and thought I may revisit and try book 2 at some point.

May be one to try on audio? If you have library access, they are all available in Borrowbox.[/quote]
Thanks Yoshiblue. I have just added the audiobook to my reading list to give it another try at some point. Can't believe I missed that it was available on audio - I'm on Borrowbox constantly!

I'll also not give up on the series as a whole, then, even if i still decide the first novel isn't for me.

I quite liked them and read them all last year.

How has nobody announced that Never Let Me Go is among today's Kindle deals? Get it while it's 99p, people.

Tried a few audiobooks today while cleaning the loft out. Gave them all 30 minutes to hook me but only one of them succeeded. I ended up listening to the whole thing non stop for six hours. I was great company at tea time

I've noticed quite a few of you saying you don't like having DNFs and I used to be the same. However, since last year I have realised how many books there are and how little time there is and life is too short to push on with a book that isn't clicking in some way with you. My new rule is that it has to hook me within the first few chapters. If i'm bored by chapter four, I don't continue. If I can tell it's got something, and I'm just not in the mood at that time, I don't count it as a DNF. I put it back into my TBR pile.

Just my little spiel as I'm beginning to feel embarrassed as my DNFs are likely going to creep up to double digits within the next few weeks!

DNF (audiobook) Half a Creature from the Sea: A Life in Stories by David Almond Collection of short stories set in Tyneside with magic and monsters, metaphorical and real. Listened to half of the first one and gave in as I found it so dull.

DNF (audiobook) Nutshell by Ian McEwan This sounded fascinating from the blurb! Told from the POV of a feotus, the baby observes his mother having an affair and plotting with her lover to kill her husband (baby's dad). Another one I really wanted to love but I just couldn't get into it. Gave in after an hour's listening. Found it quite disturbing actually and normally I love weird stuff! But this was just too weird while also being really dull. I think there's only so long you can hold one's attention when you are narrating from a womb and can't see things going on in the story.

DNF (audiobook) The Cockroach by Ian McEwan Again, this one sounded interesting from the blurb. Politican wakes up to discover he has transformed into a big bug. it's supposed to be a satire of Brexit politics (I think?). This was painstakingly dull. Could not continue even though it was only a short novella.

And the one that I actually finished in one sitting:

7 - Don't Make a Sound (DS Cody #3) by David Jackson
Third book in the series (but you don't need to have read the others to enjoy this one). Crime fiction - police sergeant investigates a series of kidnappings. The story is told from several characters' perspectives, including the criminals and the children.

I absolutely loved this and soared through it. I wasn't expecting to enjoy it so much because I thought the first two in the series were just 'okay' but this one was fantastic. Believable, complex characters. Interesting relationships and interactions. The children actually sounded and acted like real children. My heart was in my mouth at one scene when Cody was in the kidnappers' house. Just so well written. And I didn't guess the 'twist' at the end but it wasn't so out of the blue that it annoyed me. Perfect crime fiction in my opinion.

I also agree with everything SirSidney said about American Dirt. One thing that irked me as well was the implication that as soon as the immigrants made it to America, everything would be hunky-dory -- in fact it can't be easy to be living in the US without a visa or social security number, unable to get legal employment and in constant danger of being deported.

In general I don't like novels which I feel are trying too hard to get me to emote at predetermined moments (like a Hollywood movie), but admittedly my opinions of which novels fall into that category are quite subjective. I disliked All the Light We Cannot See for that reason, a novel that I know loads of people loved. And I've kind of avoided Khaled Hosseini for fear that his novels are a bit like that as well.

It's interesting to hear the different opinions about Elif Shafak from Turkish members of this thread. I haven't read anything by her yet. I think it's important to bear in mind that even within a single culture, authors obviously speak from different vantage points depending on their situation. For instance, Reading Lolita in Tehran was written by an Iranian and was hugely popular in the US, but one of my Iranian friends didn't like it much. She mentioned to me that the author came from a very privileged and politically powerful family, and that her own family had had quite a different perspective on the Iranian revolution, especially when it first began. She said some of the changes the revolutionaries proposed were welcomed by members of the left: e.g., free state-provided education for all children. It was not evident till later how repressive the new Islamist regime would turn out to be. Without knowing much about Iran myself, I could see why the book was a bestseller in America: it paints a binary opposition between Iran, land of repression, and the US, land of freedom. Obviously there is some truth in this narrative, but it overlooks the violence that American imperialism has perpetrated in other parts of the world. It reinforces a myth about America that Americans are happy to hear. So my Iranian friend was uncomfortable in some ways with the story about Iran that Azar Nafisi chose to tell. The 'situatedness' of every author definitely informs their perspective, and my friend (also an author, though a children's book author) would have told the story of the revolution very differently.

I can see this in my own experience as an immigrant from the US to the UK. I grew up in small-town America, my parents were Christian fundamentalists, a lot of people we knew struggled to find steady jobs, many of us didn't have health insurance and my middle-aged aunt's dying words to her children when she was having a stroke were 'Don't call an ambulance, it's too expensive'. That was the America I grew up in. Living and bringing up my DC in South East England is absolutely wonderful in comparison. I frequently think of how lucky I am to be living here in comparison to where I grew up in the US. On the other hand, one of my American friends who now happens to live in the same UK city as me has an entirely different perspective. She grew up in an educated, culturally and politically aware Jewish family in San Francisco. She has experienced anti-Semitism in the UK that she didn't experience in the US. She's not unhappy here in the UK, but she loves San Francisco and she doesn't have the same feeling that I do of 'I escaped!'. Neither of our perspectives are wrong, it's just that we grew up in two different versions of America and the narratives we have to tell about our birth country are very different.

Finished number 3 Piranesi

I loved this book. I found it really comforting which is an odd feeling to come away with I think. I liked Piranesi, I was rooting for him from the beginning. It feels like lots of books I've read recently have a main character you're not meant to like, or you're meant to have complicatedfeelings about. Piranesi just seemed content and positive even though his life was hard. I loved it, I loved him. I loved the descriptions of the statues. I don't want to post spoilers, even though probably half the world has read it before me, but I liked how Piranesi managed to remain content even at the end. That's a real skill. I wish I was more content in my life.

cassandre - Interesting. Thank you for your insight and perspective.

That is not my problem with Elif Şafak, though. If anything, we are quite similar re privileged background and international education.

What I find despicable in her books and her overall self-promotion is the amount of bullshit she sells herself on, thinking it will go down well with her Western audience. Changing the spelling of her name, jumping on every fashionable current affairs bandwagon, publicity stunts like announcing she is bisexual in a TED talk about which she apparently didn't come out before because she didn't feel safe. Why then was she such a vocal supporter of Erdogan's AK Party, which caused the country to regress decades in every social agenda?

Then she moves to London in 2019, saying she is escaping persecution, but somehow forgetting to mention that her husband was deeply entangled with the fundamentalist Islamist organisation of Fethullah Gülen who orchestrated the failed coup attempt that year, and that is why they had to leave Turkey. Nothing is authentic, everything is an audience-pleasing façade, and not just in her books.

@CoteDAzur

How has nobody announced that Never Let Me Go is among today's Kindle deals? Get it while it's 99p, people.

I read this quite soon after it came out (just googled 2005! Wow). I’m honestly still haunted. Five spangly stars but I’m not strong enough for a reread!

@CoteDAzur

How has nobody announced that Never Let Me Go is among today's Kindle deals? Get it while it's 99p, people.

I noticed but I was too scared to say anything

Fair enough Cote - I didn't know that. She sounds incredibly hypocritical and yes, that does put me off her as an author.