50 Book Challenge 2022 Part Two

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the second 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, it’s not too late to join, 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 the 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.

The first thread of the year is here.

What are you reading?

O Pioneers! - Willa Carter
Uncompromising tale of pioneer life. Didn't love it, although I know it has been universally liked on here.

Shroud for the Archbishop - Peter Tremayne
Nun fiction alert. In mid 600s, Irish nun and lawyer Sister Fidelma visits the Vatican and gets drawn into solving the murder of an archbishop designate.
This is the second in the series of 30 odd. This sort of thing is usually right up my street, but I've not really clicked with the character so far despite it ticking all of my boxes of wanting a historical, preferably medieval, murder mystery series to get lost in.

Nine Pints: A Journey Through the Money, Medicine and Mysteries of Blood - Rose George
A fascinating and brilliant exploration of all things blood, from the origins and current state of the blood service, early transfusion experiments in war, tainted blood scandals, menstrual huts in developing countries and the development of blood science in medicine and beyond. Written for the layperson with some dry humour, this is really informative and interesting.

Thank you IntermittentParps - I will add to my TBR list/pile. Love a good bit of nun-fiction.

@TimeforaGandT

Thank you IntermittentParps - I will add to my TBR list/pile. Love a good bit of nun-fiction.

I love the term 'nun-fiction' Was it coined on here?

I think so but not by me!

[9] Home Coming by Yaa Gyasi. Imagine this has been reviewed in previous years but I hadn’t heard of it until recently. This is a well written and moving debut novel. It starts with the story of two half-sisters born in what is now Ghana and then we drop into the lives of each of the subsequent generations. It was a clever way to write as it means a lot of a lot of history is covered in what is a relatively short book. It might have been nice to stay with some of the characters for longer, as we are only with them only for as long as it takes to make the point, but in this case I think less is more. I really enjoyed it and would recommend.

1. The Haunting of Alma Fielding - Kate Summerscale.

On my TBR list, mentioned in passing in a podcast some months ago.

Based on a true case, the story of an investigation into alleged poltergeist and supernatural activities surrounding a South London housewife in the late 1930s.

Very well written, reads like a novel. Interesting and complex relationship develops between the subject and her investigator. Well researched, it relates the case to the wider sense of pre-war unease and interwar blossoming of supernatural/psychic reports. I won't spoil the ending.

Library book

'Twas me who coined nun-fiction, IntermittentParps (love your username btw) but in my defence, I did it inadvertently

Fortuna, good to see you enjoyed Nine Pints, I thought I was fascinating. Rose George writes such excellent books. I can recommend her others if you haven't read them.

@Terpsichore

'Twas me who coined nun-fiction, IntermittentParps (love your username btw) but in my defence, I did it inadvertently

Fortuna, good to see you enjoyed Nine Pints, I thought I was fascinating. Rose George writes such excellent books. I can recommend her others if you haven't read them.

Well, I congratulate you anyway

1. The Time Machine, H. G. Wells

A sci-fi classic. Absolutely marvellous. A top read for this year for certain.

That said, I'm prone to having bad dreams. I'm hoping the Morlocks don't turn up tonight.

The Powerful and the Damned by Lionel Barber

A memoir by the editor of the FT through the crash, coalition government, Brexit, Trump and the start of Covid.

I really enjoyed it. It was a very easy read and I have already gifted copies for friends’ birthdays.

Terpsichore thanks, that's good to know. I quite fancy Deep Sea and Foreign Going. I like her 'voice'.

Yes, that’s really good too, Fortuna - I never knew container ships could be so fascinating!

19 - Home by Harlan Coben (audiobook)

Ex-detective helps his friend on a mission to trace friend's cousin's missing son who was seemingly kidnapped from his house when he was six years old.

I don't know why I keep going back to Harlan Coben - maybe because his material is everywhere at the moment and I'm made to feel like i HAVE to like it because of the marketing (thanks, Netflix). This was the first once that I finished as i usually DNF his books.

This was like a cheesier James Bond meets the Changeling. I liked the pace and it was a nice and easy read/listen while I've been doing household stuff. I only learnt after finishing that this is part of a series and not a standalone, so now I see why it seemed to have lots of characters and subplots and backstory that had nothing to do with the main plots. I still feel like there was too much travelling around the world though and several parts were just too far fetched for what turned out to be 'the big reveal'.

I say I won't pick up another Coben book but I probably will.

delightful dinosaurs Mary Lawson is a great writer, similar to Anne Tyler but slightly more plot driven. The three I have read so far are all set in remote Northern Canadian towns, and all stand alone, but there is some intertwining of the stories, with a cross over of characters. You get a great sense of the time/place. Would really recommend.

Deep Sea and Ocean Going is fascinating. At least, I found it fascinating. Most of my book group were completely nonplussed by it, and couldn't understand why someone had written a whole book on container ships.

I also enjoyed Deep Sea and Foreign Going (I then had another book on Audible about the rise of the shipping container which definitely was too much on the subject!)

Disappointingly I've DNFed Alexis Hall's Something Fabulous - I just can't do the zero-historical-plausibility level. I know there's plenty of implausibility in Georgette Heyer (and my new favourite KJ Charles) but there's just enough historical convincingness to carry me along. Shame as I love a good Regency romance.

4-The sea is not made of water by Adam Nicholson

A non-fiction book about a man building a couple of rock pools and seeing what shows up in them…There are a few chapters that looks at bigger tidal stories (e.g. a chapter explaining how tides work, a few chapters about people’s relationship with the intertidal area). I never thought I’d say this, but I actually found the chapters that focussed on the rock pools in minute detail much more interesting. Forget about the cultural history of the intertidal area for food, tell me more about limpets’ inner most thoughts 😂

It probably didn’t help that I read Hugh Aldersey Williams’ Tide earlier this year. In my opinion, what that had to say about the cultural significance of this area was much more interesting. Nicolson wins it when it comes to natural history though. I now know more about the social hierarchy of prawns and how sandhoppers find their way, than I ever thought possible.

I now know more about the social hierarchy of prawns and how sandhoppers find their way, than I ever thought possible.
OK, I'm sold

1. Ducks, Newburyport - Lucy Ellman

The internal monologue of an American housewife as she goes about her daily business dwelling on the past, her dead parents and dead pets, her previous health issues and worries about her children, the environment, school shootings, Trump, the police, America's violent past and present, also musings on films and literature.

I loved this. It took me weeks to finish and the lack of punctuation other than many many commas required some intense concentration but it was so worth it. But also...

the fact that whenever I read a book with a distinctive writing style or language I find myself copying it unconsciously in my own thoughts and anything I try to write, the fact that I am a very impressionable person, personage, decoupage, page boy, my liege, Good King Wensleslas, wensleydale, cheddar, brie, "cheese, Grommit?"

On to something a little easier on the brain now I think!

1. A history of the world in twelve maps - Jerry Brotton I had read the first few chapters of this several years ago and then gave up; I picked it up again to get it finished while I have the time to read more than just a couple of pages before falling asleep (as I'm between jobs at the moment...). It improved hugely once it got to the 1500s (the author's area of expertise, as it turns out), and was quite readable and interesting once I learned to treat it as if I had to get through it in order to write an essay rather than reading for pure pleasure. It is a very wide-ranging meander through several thousand years of global history (a bit Euro-centric but there is plenty of material on other parts of the world too) and had some really fascinating stuff, but is a bit dry.

One thing that really struck me is that there is barely a single mention of any woman, even in passing - I noticed one female ruler of the Low Countries who was very much incidental to the main story but that is about it - I'm not a raging feminist (ok I am a bit) but a quick google shows there have been plenty of female mapmakers who could have been referred to as well as, or even instead of, all the men!

All in all, I'm glad I read it and I feel like I now know a lot more than I did about the history of geography.

DelightfulDinosaurs The Time Machine is a wonderful book isn't it? Need to do a reread at some point.

Just finished my first French read of the year which was the excellent: Le Bal des Folles by Victoria Mas. (The Mad Women's Ball). A fascinating account of the famous asylum, the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris for women, under the leadership of pioneering neurophyschiatrist Jean-Martin Charcot (famous for his public demonstrations of hypnotism on his patients). Set in the late 1885 it focuses on four main characters: Louise, abused by her uncle; Genevieve, the head nurse; Eugénie, a young bourgeois girl who can communicate with dead spirits and Thérèse, a former prostitute who has been incarcerated for decades. The main event of the novel is the famed Ball where upper-class Parisians come to watch the mad women dance but the book really addresses how powerless women were at this time. No matter what their social class, they could be thrown into the hospital for any 'crime' - whether that be actual murder or just because they didn't fit in with the limitations of the role of women at this time - and rarely made it out. It won several awards in 2019 and was made into a film by Mélanie Laurent. Very easy to read in French but available in English too.

I also finished Snow Country (Sebastian Faulkes) which was also excellent and brought back memories of the brillant Human Traces which is partly based on the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris in the era of Charcot.

12 Trials for the Chalet School by Elinor M Brent-Dyer
For me these are the ultimate comfort (re)read. I didn’t actually recall much if anything about the plot of this one, apart from the detail of the melting of the snow to make hot chocolate when the inevitable happens and a group of girls encounter mild peril on a mountainside until a bunch of burly Alpine farmers come to rescue them. At this point I’m wondering how insurable the Chalet School is given the large number of accidents that seem to arise each year. But this had everything – sullen misfit of a new girl who comes to her senses after an accident, Joey being unbearable and over-stepping the mark left, right and centre while pregnant with yet another child, the teachers being trim and trig (I don’t know what that means) and Mary-Lou being insufferable yet seemingly adored by everyone. Fun times.

@EmGee

Just finished my first French read of the year which was the excellent: Le Bal des Folles by Victoria Mas. (The Mad Women's Ball). A fascinating account of the famous asylum, the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris for women, under the leadership of pioneering neurophyschiatrist Jean-Martin Charcot (famous for his public demonstrations of hypnotism on his patients). Set in the late 1885 it focuses on four main characters: Louise, abused by her uncle; Genevieve, the head nurse; Eugénie, a young bourgeois girl who can communicate with dead spirits and Thérèse, a former prostitute who has been incarcerated for decades. The main event of the novel is the famed Ball where upper-class Parisians come to watch the mad women dance but the book really addresses how powerless women were at this time. No matter what their social class, they could be thrown into the hospital for any 'crime' - whether that be actual murder or just because they didn't fit in with the limitations of the role of women at this time - and rarely made it out. It won several awards in 2019 and was made into a film by Mélanie Laurent. Very easy to read in French but available in English too.

I also finished Snow Country (Sebastian Faulkes) which was also excellent and brought back memories of the brillant Human Traces which is partly based on the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris in the era of Charcot.

Le Bal des Folles sounds wonderful! I'd have to read it in English, being a typical English monoglot, but I will seek it out.

10. A Belfast Child by John Chambers This is the memoir of what you might call an 'ordinary' Northern Irish Protestant, born in the late 1960s, and brought up in a working class loyalist family.

Although I'm of an age to remember all the news reports from NI (also born late 60s), and I've read a few books about the Troubles, this really brought the experience of living through it to life. Casual violence was an accepted part of life for everyone, and witnessed by young children just as much as adults. The author messed about and got into trouble in his teens just as many do, but again the level of violence and threat is really hammered home in his descriptions of his experiences.

I had this on audio, and it was really well read. Again this was from the Audible Plus catalogue - I seem to be doing much better with the included books there than my actual credit using choices at the moment.