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?

13: Family Secrets: Living with Shame from the Victorians to the Present Day - Deborah Cohen

Plucked off the tbr pile, where it had been languishing for far too long. This turned out to be an unexpectedly absorbing read - Cohen examines aspects of life that have historically been sources of shame, including illegitimacy, marital infidelity and divorce, adoption and homosexuality, and traces the changing attitudes to the keeping of secrets, with plentiful and illuminating case histories.

The most difficult chapter to read was the one dealing with children branded 'feeble-minded' and consigned to asylums: some of the stories are heart-rending.

Much to think about here from the perspective of the modern world in which sharing everything - however intimate - has increasingly become the norm.

@BestisWest, I've just ordered 1979 based on your review upthread. I think we must be a similar age I am possibly a wee bit older and it would be fun to read a book set in the period.

I'm reading A Place of Execution at the moment - Oxfam shop bargain at £1.75 - and really enjoying that. I like how VM has stayed so down to earth. It was great to watch her beating Mary Archer's team on University Challenge a couple of years ago, and her rapid response to the recent Raith Rover's issue was spot on. I'm a fan.

@highlandcoo just realised that at this point in 1979 I was 15 but have a birthday in a couple of months. 1979 was O level year for me .

Yes, I saw the Raith Rovers response. Excellent.

I meant VMcDs response BTW. Raith Rovers were still digging holes last I saw.

23. Journey into the Past - Stefan Zweig
A young man and his boss’ wife fall in love but are separated by circumstance; now they are meeting again after ten years apart. Short but gripping, a sort of German ‘Brief Encounter’. I particularly liked the fact that, although the story is told from the man’s perspective, we get a good sense of what the woman’s like and why he fell in love with her. (Zweig, born in Austria Hungary, was a popular German novelist between the wars. He was a refugee from 1933.)

24. The Word Hord: Daily Life in Old English - Hana Videen
A fascinating guide to Old English vocabulary, from the every day - fresh milk is ‘cu-wearm’ - to poetic heroes and monsters, arranged in thematic chapters. Videen’s knowledge and enthusiasm are visible on every page. I’ve just started an on-line course in Old English, and this has really encouraged me.

25. Dance of the Happy Shades - Alice Munro
Munro is the Nobel-prize-winning mistress of understated insight, her stories mainly set in rural/small-town Ontario. Her first collection of short stories, but already showing her characteristic subtle language and nuanced understanding of character and relationships. If you haven’t read her before, I would start with one of her volumes of Selected Stories.

Thanks for all the great reviews - and Terpischore’s Robert Maxwell anecdote.

1. Hostage by Claire Mackintosh

Air Hostess may or may not be being black mailed into committing a terrible crime. Motivations and coincidences were dubious in this however, I really needed a page turner this weekend and this was exactly that. Very silly but a good distraction.

12. Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes I've never read any Marian Keyes before, but borrowed this from the library on the strength of these threads, and really enjoyed it. Obviously I'm 25 years late to the party on this one, but I thought it was a great combination of a serious subject treated with a light touch. Recommendations for my next MK book welcomed (one of the other Walsh sisters books?)

There’s a documentary about Marian Keyes on BBC tomorrow Sadik and in the clip I saw she says her own favourite is The Mystery of Mercy Close. I don’t think I’ve read that one so might give it a go. My personal favourite is The Break.

The Word Hord looks great, that’s definitely going on the TBR!

It’s better to read the Walsh sisters’ books in order as there are some mild spoilers. In order they’re Watermelon (Claire), Rachel’s Holiday (Rachel), Angels (Maggie), Anybody Out There? (Anna) and The Mystery of Mercy Close (Helen).

Of her non-Walsh books my favourite is Last Chance Saloon.

Thank you stokey for the tip off about Death on the Nile which I have purchased for the challenge.

I love A Gentleman in Moscow

5. Gerald's Game by Stephen King

This was a difficult read, and not relating to the well known plot point where the lady is handcuffed to the bed while her husband has a heart attack. It's more about the repressed childhood memories she apparently has to confront while she is trying to escape from this predicament.

It is also immensely boring. A whole book about 36 hours. I did wonder at the beginning if King was writing this as he lost a bet with a friend along the lines of I bet even you can't write a whole book about this scenario...

@MamaNewtNewt have you got to this one yet in your read along?

@RazorstormUnicorn it's next up on my list and I'm not looking forward to it. I seem to remember thinking pretty much the same as you. I've been reading the Dark Tower series out of the overall Stephen King chronology and am just going to read book 7. Have you been reading those as they come up?

@ChessieFL

It’s better to read the Walsh sisters’ books in order as there are some mild spoilers. In order they’re Watermelon (Claire), Rachel’s Holiday (Rachel), Angels (Maggie), Anybody Out There? (Anna) and The Mystery of Mercy Close (Helen).

Of her non-Walsh books my favourite is Last Chance Saloon.

Totally agree with this. I love Last Chance Saloon and frequently use "I speak as I find" in a bread Yorkshire accent

Broad not bread. Blummin' sausage fingers!

@ChessieFL I've just downloaded Death in the Sunshine from Amazon first reads. My first thought on reading the description was "American Thursday murder club" and immediately dismissed it, but with two books on offer this month I went back to it as none of the others particularly grabbed me. I only read the two Thursday murder club books in December so I might leave this one in the TBR for a bit to give me some distance

Finished Marking Time, Elizabeth Jane Howard
I've realised I'm not numbering my books. Sorry...

Didn't love this quite as much as the first one; I think the idyllic country summer setting of the first is very hard to beat. But I loved 'seeing' the family again and following particularly the elder girls as they start to grow up and have some difficult things to face.
As before, there is gentle family humour, loving descriptions of food and gardens and countryside, and general nostalgia; but so cleverly woven in with the strain of WW2 and its impact on the characters, plus the really dark currents and undercurrents that exist in all their lives. She is SO emotionally articulate, and able to paint people's lives and feelings and thoughts so vividly. Will take a short break before the next one.
Now on Once There Were Wolves, Charlotte McConaghy.

Reading about Mort takes me back to reading it as a teen (it was my first Pratchett and it's still my favourite). I seem to recall having a crush on Mort AND on Death

Sam Vimes is the only man for me, these days he’s played in my mind’s eye by Jason Isaacs

Jason Isaacs would be excellent

7) A Thousand Ships - Natalie Haynes

This is the Trojan war and the aftermath, some of Odysseus' antics after the war, all told from the perspective of the women and goddesses.

Loved this, but unsurprisingly, I found it traumatic and bleak. Much tearing of hair, scratching of skin, grieving, devestation, sacrifice (literally being sacrificed) and a smidgen of vengeance by a couple of women / nymphs. Nearly a happy ending for a few.

Penelope I couldn't decide about tbh. It fell somewhere between being genius and ridiculous, which actually, is quite clever as isn't that what the myths are? Saying this as someone who has just found out the teensiest bit about Greek mythology this year!

4/5

Would be 5 if it wasn't so horrifying and traumatising - I'm sure some people would love the horror, but I'm not massively into that, so quite a personal thing

14 It Must Be Love by Caroline Khoury
Not my usual reading choice, as I don’t tend to be drawn to romantic fiction, but this is by someone I know, and so I was inspired to pick up a copy when I saw it on the table in Waterstones. It was charming – much less cliched than the usual “boy meets girl, will they won’t they”, and I found myself rooting for Abbie and Oz and enjoying the different locations and the back and forth between different periods in their life.

15 Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
I’m rarely disappointed by Sarah Moss who writes these terse and elegant novellas that really hit hard, and this was terrific. Silvie is on an archaeological field trip in Northumberland with some university students and their professor, as they re-enact Iron Age ways of living. Silvie’s parents are there because her father is an ancient history enthusiast and has the skills they all need to survive. He’s also a misogynistic and abusive boor, who makes Silvie’s life, and her mother’s, unbearable. The opening chapter of this was one of the most chilling things I’ve read in a long time, followed by a slow ramping up of unease as the heat of the summer increases and Silvie becomes increasingly unhappy. This didn’t take long to read, but was worth every minute spent. Would highly recommend.

1. A God in Ruins - Kate Atkinson

The life and times of Teddy Todd, brother to Ursula of Life After Life.

I enjoyed this, some horribly graphic descriptions of the horrors encountered by a bomber pilot in World War 2 but immensely readable nontheless. Teddy's life after the war and that of his selfish daughter and her 2 emotionally neglected children was well-drawn. I absolutely HATED the end though. Feels terribly rushed and poorly-thought-out, as if the author just got bored and didn't know how to end the book so went for something wilfully strange.

1. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

I'm sorry to say I just didn't get it. Being told by an AF I know it had to be a little more detached, a little less human. But because of that I just didn't engage. I liked Rick, but really didn't care for any of the other characters. I'd have liked more information about what was going on and why, at least if I understood the world they were in I might have understood their choices, the reasons for the choices and what effect that had on them. Maybe I just hadn't the energy to invest and would have been better with some chick lit that doesn't expect anything from the reader.

@RazorstormUnicorn Gerald's Game is definitely not one of King's finest moments!