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?

@MegBusset @AliasGrape Jan Morris also wrote a very good book on The Venetian Empire.

Brief updates from me:

10. Head Over Heels - Holly Smale

Fifth in the Geek Girl series. That's all I'm saying about that. It suited where my head was at at the time, i.e. frazzled and in need of a brain-break.

11. St David of Dewisland - Nona Rees

Short intro to the life of St David.

12. We Are Bellingcat - Eliot Higgins

Bellingcat is a group of open-source investigators who use publicly available data, such as Google Earth, to ferret out data that has real-world importance. For example, they will compare thousands of Twitter videos from a warzone against Google Streetview and ascertain where the footage was actually shot, sometimes where conventional journalists are unable to operate. They try to operate by ethical principles, gathering and verifying as much data as possible and passing it on to appropriate people. They very much set themselves apart from Wikileaks in that they only use public sources. An interesting read, but suffers somewhat from being written by a self-confessed IT nerd whose operating model is "find data, make data available". Style is irrelevant, especially as they have to work at speed. Fascinating to find out how much can be gleaned from public sources, given enough time and resources.

[quote highlandcoo]@IntermittentParps - I take your point, but I'm fairly sure it wasn't tongue-in-cheek.

She'd just been discussing the strength of female friendships and the way in which, as they aged, her group of women friends had been mutually supportive, looking after one another when recuperating from a hospital stay for example. And how that had become more difficult as the health of each deteriorated in late old age.

Perhaps she was just being realistic .. that it most often falls to the daughter to support an elderly relative. It was the case when she was young and not much has changed since in my experience. Whether it's fair or not is a whole other debate of course.[/quote]
Yes, sadly I imagine that WAS (maybe still is) realistic.
Viewed more positively, maybe she meant/one could say it is testament to female strength and mutual support.

Read:
Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain

An astonishing individual and what a read. 18-year old woman from (in her description) a sheltered, bourgeois and somewhat dull provincial English life puts her Oxford scholarship on hold and becomes a VAD nurse in WW1.
She endures unimaginable personal losses as well as professional difficulties and privations (lack of clean warm water to wash with in nurses' accommodation being just one example).
She writes with such passion, eloquence, wit, insight and intelligence.
This is a remarkable insight into one person's experience of WW1; intimate and detailed but never loses sight of the bigger picture either. Highly recommend.

Been following the thread as always, haven't posted for about three weeks I think and have only finished two books in that time.
Listened to both on audio, would describe both as memoir with social commentary.
4. Heartland by Sarah Smarsh
"A memoir of working hard and being broke in the richest country on Earth". The author is the fifth generation of her father's family to live on their Kansas wheat farm, and on her mother's side comes from generations of teenage mothers. She shares stories of her upbringing and the experiences of previous generations. Patterns of poverty, domestic abuse, addiction and life on the edge are repeated and the author consciously strives to change the script for herself while feeling loyal to her family and considering how broader social factors and policies can limit the possibilities available.
On the one hand, I found myself losing interest in this at times and the author makes an interesting choice to write much of the book as if she is speaking to a child she never had - the child that could have been born if she had followed the pattern of becoming a teenage mum - and these sections didn't always work for me.
However, I live in a rural area and I'm from a family of small scale farmers myself, and there were elements of this book that struck a chord in a way that was very personal for me - describing growing up on the farm, the older family members who had little money but had the skills to build and repair so much of what they needed themselves, the sense of community and the experience of applying to university through a process that older family members do not understand and cannot assist with. I think parts of this will stay with me and I have found it interesting to seek out more of Sarah Smarsh's work since I finished this book.
5. The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore
"One Name, Two Fates. The chilling truth is that his story could have been mine. The truth is that my story could have been his."
Author Wes Moore grew up in Baltimore, lost his father at a young age, drifted in and out of education, experienced life in neighbourhoods that felt dangerous and got into trouble for fighting and graffiti. As a young man on a more positive path, he saw a news story about another Wes Moore, also young, also black also from Baltimore, who had allegedly killed a police officer. The other Wes Moore was convicted and is now serving a life sentence in prison.
Each chapter switches between both Wes Moores, sharing their stories as their lives take different paths. Both experience poverty, grow up without their fathers, have mothers who love and care for them, but critical moments take different turns, both due to individual decisions and the actions of others to offer opportunities and provide support. As with Heartland, I didn't find this gripping but think elements of it will stay with me. Like Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas, it certainly helped me to understand how gang culture and drug dealing can offer appealing options to young people, and can be difficult to escape.
Hoping to up the reading pace over half term. Almost finished The Grapes of Wrath - thanks to all who offered encouragement, it is a big powerful read but I'm nearly! Current audiobook is Hostage by Clare Mackintosh.

Testament of Youth is fascinating. I get quite angry at the film that reduces it to a romance.

@JaninaDuszejko

Testament of Youth is fascinating. I get quite angry at the film that reduces it to a romance.

Haven't seen the film. Although there is great romance in the book, I agree, it's so much beside that!

@CluelessMama I read Sarah Smarsh's She Come By It Natural, about Dolly Parton, last year but didn't review it. I wasn't entirely convinced by Smarsh's thesis that Dolly's life and work are a testament to feminism. It seemed to be based on the fact that she had been judged and discriminated against as a strong woman who looks a certain way, but has carried on regardless. By that token everyone from Eve down has been a feminist. I was also expecting it to be more about Dolly Parton and less about Sarah Smarsh, though the fans' stories were touching. Worth a look, I would say.

@JaninaDuszejko

Testament of Youth is fascinating. I get quite angry at the film that reduces it to a romance.

I agree Janina, the film (or as much of it as I could bear to watch) was awful.

11. The Other Americans by Laila Lalami

I was in a not-really-feeling-up-to-reading-much-because-I'm-far-too-busy mood when I started this book, so it is testament to the author that I both finished and enjoyed it. On one level a fairly conventional plot about the experience of immigrants (and other "outsiders") in a small California town, its nuance and depth made it a more compelling read. The story is centred around the death of Driss, a Moroccan restaurant owner, who dies one night in an apparent hit and run. Through the first-person narratives of people intimately connected to the event (his daughters, Nora and Salma, and his wife Maryam) and others who are more tenuously linked (a witness, a high school friend of Nora's, the man who owns the next door bowling alley and his son, the police officer who investigates) we slowly unravel his secrets, those of his family, and how he came to die. Reviews of this book concentrated on its theme that the political is personal and vice versa. Although that was clearly there, for me the more compelling parts of the book were about the secrets we keep from those closest to us, and how that fractures and shapes our relationships. Some really good stuff in here on mother-daughter disconnect, familial roles and racial and other stereotypes. Not earth-shattering, but a good, thought-provoking read.

I also loved Testament of Youth: such a powerful book, and it really does give the picture of a whole era. I don't think anything else I've read has taught me so much about WW1. So many promising young men of that generation were wiped out, and the women had to step in to do all sorts of traditionally 'masculine' labour.

I haven't seen the film but it sounds like I haven't missed much!

Thanks Maud - good to hear what you thought of She Come By It Natural.

@30Boiledeggandtoast thanks for the applebaun book review. Her gulag book was for me a highlight from a few years ago.

There was a wonderful BBC adaptation of Testament of Youth in the late 70s with the lustrous Cheryl Campbell as Vera Brittain - the great news is that it’s on YouTube

I always feel personally attached to her story because my grandmother and her family came from Buxton and would all have been living there at the same time as VB.

@Terpsichore

There was a wonderful BBC adaptation of Testament of Youth in the late 70s with the lustrous Cheryl Campbell as Vera Brittain - the great news is that it’s on YouTube

I always feel personally attached to her story because my grandmother and her family came from Buxton and would all have been living there at the same time as VB.

Oh, how exciting! I'll check it out.

The film made me very cross, it just seemed to miss all sorts of points. In particular I hated that Somerville was relocated to the most glamorous Oxford men's college, with the pathetic excuse that it was difficult to film in Somerville because of modern windows or something. Thereby erasing the reality of what women's colleges looked like and why.

PermanentTemporary, I had to check to find out which Oxford men's college was ranked as 'most glamorous'. Aha -- Merton! I'm not sure I associate Merton with glamour, but it's certainly old... That is a shame though as I'm sure they could have managed to film at Somerville or one of the other former women's colleges, and conveyed the historical point of how less well-funded the women's colleges were. Not to mention the fact that the grounds of the women's colleges are really beautiful, even if they don't date back to the 13th century

In A Room of One's Own, I remember Virginia Woolf comparing the lavish meals at a Cambridge men's college to the humble, nasty-looking fare the women students are served at their college.

And thank you for the film recommendation, Terpsichore!

There was a wonderful BBC adaptation of Testament of Youth in the late 70s with the lustrous Cheryl Campbell as Vera Brittain

I remember my Mum watching that and loving it and the book (it's one of her favourite books). It's why I read the book myself as an adult.

Merton fits with Hollywood's idea of Oxford colleges so I can see why they used it, there would be issues filming in Little Clarendon Street and trying to make it look like the 1920s, there's a lot of very ugly modern architecture in that street. I would have though it would be possible to film inside Somerville though and avoid the modern parts.

They did actually film at Somerville for the 1979 series, too! And in Buxton.

It sounds like the 1979 series is the one to watch!

I watched the 1979 version as a teenager and read the book followed by Goodbye to all that. I read Testament of Youth again a few years back.
What those people went through.

14. Girl with a pearl earring - Tracy Chevalier I had been a bit reluctant to get this from the library as I was expecting a big chunk of a book and thought it might be a bit boring and over-detailed. In fact, it’s quite a short book and I’ve whizzed through it - I loved the story and the way it was written, and I spent quite a lot of time googling and looking at the various Vermeer paintings that are mentioned in the book (there are references to quite a lot of them, not just that one). Chevalier is really good at providing an explanation for each painting that makes sense, so that it feels like this could be a true story - she brought the 17th century Netherlands to life and I cared about the characters too. I did find that Vermeer himself was Colin Firth in my mind’s eye, thanks to the film, even though I’m sure I should be picturing him differently, but other than that the paintings gave my imagination all the illustrations I needed.

It’s a lovely book and I’ve already recommended it to my mum and requested one of Chevalier’s other books from the library.

43. A Life of Contrasts by Diana Mosley

Diana was one of the infamous Mitford sisters, and competed with Unity to be the most controversial. Diana was an admirer of Hitler and then married Fascist leader Oswald Mosley. I’m fascinated by the Mitford family and it was interesting to read Diana’s story from her own point of view. She does write well and I liked all the growing up bits. However, the chapters about her political views make very uncomfortable reading, and what’s also disappointing is the lack of emotion throughout the book - there’s no real sense of the despair she must have felt being imprisoned in the war, or what is was about Mosley she loved so much (other than his politics). One thing I did find interesting is that she writes at least a couple of paragraphs about all her sisters, saying what she liked about them and what their string points were - except Decca. There’s almost no mention of her at all in the book, except when it was unavoidable and then it’s only to say that she was present at a family event or something. I knew they had fallen out over their political beliefs but the almost total excising of Decca from Diana’s history is interesting and it’s a shame she didn’t write about why she disagreed with Decca. Overall I’m glad I read this as it’s an interesting insight into the Mitfords but it didn’t do anything to make me like this ghastly woman any more!

44. Murder By The Book: Mysteries for Bibliophiles

A British Library collection of classic crime short stories, all based around books, writing or authors. Great fun!

11. Positive Forces - Doris Collins

A short book, mix of testimonials and the author's own experiences based on her Farewell Tour.

17. The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont What a mess of a book. I bought it thinking it sounded interesting. But what the author has done is create a fictional mistress/second wife for Archie Christie and not the real person. She has created a peculiar story involving a real person, Agatha Christie, and made up the rest of the characters. I don't understand why she used the real Christies and a fake mistress/second wife. It's a confused mess and, if I were a member of the Christie family, I'd be thinking about suing. It made me cross. I only finished it because I've had an unprecedented number of DNFs so far this year. It's not been a great reading year so far. Not recommended for anyone who likes Agatha Christie.