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?

@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.

I have added Rose George to my list.

I'm only reading female authors this year, which is no problem for fiction but trickier for non-fiction as I found when looking for some suggestions for my Christmas list. I read about 1/3 non fiction.

@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.

That sounds really good, I will seek it out. Maybe @highlandcoo will be interested too.

Yes, absolutely! Both sound really interesting. I’m another Human Traces fan. I think I’d like to reread it before moving on to Snow Country as it’s been quite a while.
How long is Le Bal des Folles? I might tackle it in French if not too huge.

"I'm only reading female authors this year, which is no problem for fiction but trickier for non-fiction as I found when looking for some suggestions for my Christmas list. I read about 1/3 non fiction."

I've had a look & 25 of my non-fic books from last year were by women (lots very good) & probably similar most years, so let me know what sort of nonfic you like and I can see if I can suggest anything that might fit :)

Highlights from last year over a range of topics included Sex Robots and Vegan Meat , Guest House for Young Widows , Fifty Sounds & Ishi in Two Worlds just on a quick skim

I don't want to start a bunfight, but I just don't understand why people would choose to only read female authors.

Highlandcoo it's not too long - 235 pages. I am going to attach the blurb at the back if the book to give you an idea of the language!

29. The 86 Fix by Keith A Pearson
30. Beyond Broadhall by Keith A Pearson

These books tell the story of Craig, an unhappy middle aged man who gets sent back to when he was 16 in 1986 so he has the opportunity to correct what he thinks went wrong in his life. Things don’t quite go to plan and he then has to try and correct the timeline. This is good fun if you like time travel books and as long as you don’t think too much about the logistics of it! However there were several errors throughout which I found really irritating (dressing gown chord, unable to bare children, shear relief).

31. Bedknobs and Broomsticks by Mary Norton

I went to see the musical recently and there were some things that were different to the film, so I wanted to see if those differences were closer to the book than the film. I didn’t remember having read this as a child, but as I read it little bells started to ring so I must have done. Anyway, the book is very different to both the film and the musical - the only things they have in common are some of the characters, a trainee witch and a flying magical bed. Pretty much everything else in the film is made up and the musical is based on the film with some tweaks. The book is great though, glad I reread. And if you like the film I highly recommend the musical!

Continuing my mammoth Dick Francis re-reads (No.34):

10. Come to Grief - Dick Francis

Sid Halley returns (without Chico) to hunt down the person responsible for mutilating horses in fields on moonlit nights (which annoyingly is referred to in the book as vandalism rather than mutilation). Unusually, we know who the offender is early on but Sid has to prove it and uncover the background. No racecourse action (except in Sid’s memories) but a good read.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

I don't want to start a bunfight, but I just don't understand why people would choose to only read female authors.

I toy with this every year. I'd like to, but get FOMO despite knowing it would only be for a short time.

For me it's about supporting female authors. For most of the top earning female authors eg Mantel and Atwood, only around 20% of their readership is male. Male authors get a more even split. Women don't get taken as seriously in the publishing industry (see book covers) and have to fight to get their work out there. They also don't get as many prize nominations, hence the founding of the Women's Prize.

It would be a one off event if I were to go ahead, but I read mostly women anyway so don't feel it's as pressing.

@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.

Thanks for this review @EmGee. I'll look it up. It sounds interesting. Uncomfortable resonances with the Magdalen laundries in Ireland.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

I don't want to start a bunfight, but I just don't understand why people would choose to only read female authors.

As an exercise for a year I think it's perfectly reasonable, particularly if you generally read only or predominantly men (which lots of people do).

As a young woman I mainly read books by men with years where I read none by women, this wasn't deliberate and I wasn't aware at the time that I was doing it because it wouldn't be considered worthy of comment. Now I read predominantly but not exclusively women (although I did have a year recently where I didn't read any men and didn't miss them at all). I feel like I'm balancing out my youthful bias (indeed my bookshelves are about 50:50). Plus my tolerance for badly written women with bouncing bosoms has decreased a lot with age. Not to mention those Booker Prize winners that are all about middle aged men looking back on their lives where the only women are dreadful relatives or manic pixie dream girls.

5: light perpetual by Francis spufford
This book starts in 1944 and focuses on a group of children that in the first chapter are in a shop that gets bombed. (Not a spoiler it's on the blurb!)
The second chapter and the rest of the book are about what would have happened had they lived. Each section is 15 years on from the last and the changing times and historical events of each period so covers mods and rockers, racism, 70s strikes, boom and bust
It sounded like the kind of book I would love (a bit like one day or life after life) but I just didn't . My favourite storyline was probably Alec's but as with other books I've read recently I didn't particularly relate to or warm to any of the characters and some of the detail I found a bit boring.
I think I'm in the minority as I know it's had excellent reviews and it was a top pick for a lot of instagrammers I like in their books of 2022 but I was a bit disappointed with it .

With you on the bosoms Janina. Puts me right off.

Thanks for the insights.

Oh god @LethargeMarg I hated The Light Perpetual other than the first few pages, which I thought were magnificent. Golden Hill is worth a read though - much more fun.

I rarely come across bouncing bosoms. Must be reading the wrong sorts of books.

Taswama some ideas for non fiction by women:
The Life Project - Helen Pearson
Somebody I Used to Know - Wendy Mitchell
Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me - Kate Clanchy
All That Remains - Sue Black
Virginia Woolf - Hermione Lee
Invisible Women - Caroline Criado Perez
Republic of Lies - Anna Merlan
The Five - Hallie Rubenhold
With the End in Mind - Kathryn Mannix

ChessieFL I love the Bedknobs and Broomsticks book! Loads better than the film (but the film is great too!).

I’m not reading only female authors but having just finished a very male-heavy non-fiction book by a male author and gone straight onto a novel by a male author about a middle-aged white male, I am slightly craving something by a woman for my next book after this new one!

I’m also encouraged to try to read more in French thanks to your posts @JaninaDuszejko and @EmGee - I live in France (since last summer) but my French isn’t good enough to really enjoy reading in the language, and I have discovered that I can get English language books from the library so there’s no shortage of them to drive me to French!

Based on your recommendations I’ve requested the first Cahier d’Esther from the library and might try Le Bal des Folles as well…

In a weird coincidence, Light Perpetual is 99p today, so I might give it a go and see if I like it any better!

Thanks so much @EmGee. Really helpful.

I've actually ordered it on audible as I have five credits sitting there, and I'd probably benefit more from practising my listening skills in French rather than my reading. The result of a traditional Scottish education where the notion that we might want to communicate in the language one day, rather than pass an exam, seemed completely foreign to the teacher

Incidentally, I'm noticing on Amazon recently that the audible link always comes up first when searching for a book .. anyone else?

I’m inspired by all the French reading to make a start on a Turkish book I bought that I have wanted to read for a long time. I can read Turkish but I’ve never really been confident that I can understand literature. I might make a start though as I also have two non-fiction books in Turkish that I’ll need to read for my next possible research project.

I don’t really keep track of whether I read men or women but I think it’s pretty split, I just read what I fancy at any given time, though I do understand the reasons behind choosing to. I want to read more from the non-anglophone world, but sadly that means in translation.

I meant it metaphorically really, it's the male gaze that's the issue. In Peter Carey's The Chemistry of Tears the female narrator described herself like this 'If you had been there on 21 April 2010, you may have seen me, the oddly elegant tall woman with the tweed hat scrunched up in her hand'. As if any woman would ever describe herself as elegant. The book goes on to describe how her dead lover's sons tell her that they would always care for her because they knew their father really loved her and not their mother. It's basically the wet dream of a middle class cheating husband. Shame, because the rest of the book has an interesting story.

I really struggled with Golden Hill although I know it's had great reviews. I put it aside thinking maybe I just wasn't in the right mood for it at the time.

@DuPainDuVinDuFromage, moving to France .. how brilliant! I live for part of the year in France and ventured along to the local book group in the village last year.

Instead of all reading and discussing the same book, the meeting consists of everyone reporting on what they've recently read. Which is quite good for getting ideas for what to read. I attempted a description of Orgueil et Préjugés and they very kindly gave me a round of applause then one lady commented "Ce n'était pas correct mais c'était courageux"