50 Book Challenge 2022 Part Three

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the third 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 and the second one here.

What are you reading?

Didn't see anything I wanted to buy, Grannie. There seem to be a few repeat deals, so it's a chance to pick up Invisible Women for anyone who missed it previously. I bought it but haven't managed to read it yet.

Just a reminder that there are a few interesting things in the new monthly deals - well, I think they’re the new deals, they’re so hard to find! Quite a few decent biographies. Prairie Fires is 99p again (the Laura Ingalls Wilder biog), and I bought Anne Sebba's book about Ethel Rosenberg, which has had good reviews.

Oh yes, agreed Terp - Prairie Fires is worth the read.

Very slim pickings this month, although there are a number of good ones that have been in previous deals. I have bought Sea State and The Mad Women's Ball, both of which have had good reviews so I will give them a go at 99p each.

@bibliomania I have not read Invisible Women so may snap that up!

Oh well, I guess I should work through the huge stack of 99p deals already filling up my kindle.

Has anyone readKing Leopalds Ghost, I was investing in that

7 The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett

Book 24 in the Discworld series. Lifelong Policeman and reluctant aristocrat Sam Vimes is sent as the new Ambassador to a small area in the mountains where vampires werewolves and dwarfs are working out how best to be part of the Modern World (and the humans just hope to be still alive at the end of it). Someone has committed a crime - though quite what is uncertain, except that deaths are involved - and Vimes is determined to solve the mystery. Pterry at the top of his game. Jokes are almost non-existent except a tongue-in-cheek parody of them, and the subtleties all go somewhere. Not one to start with (especially if you don't want any spoilers) but a highly satisfying read.

14. The Corinthian - Georgette Heyer Another from the ‘Heyer’ file on my kindle as I avoid reading anything ‘proper’, mindless escapism being the order of the day here. This is not one of the better ones, IMO. I’m not sure why I chose it for a reread other than I couldn’t really remember anything about it. Nearly 30 year old man about town falls for 17 year old ‘not yet out’ girl who is mostly portrayed as a child. All kinds of silliness and capers ensue, girl dresses like a boy and is worthy of love on account of being not like all those other stupid women who have to worry about their reputations and propriety and stuff, and try to find husbands what with that being the only way to guarantee their future security. Silly women, no wonder the Corinthian decides to marry a child, that’ll learn them.

10. Mockingbird by Walter Tevis

Whoa! This was a was a vividly created, phenomenal masterpiece from the author of The Queen's Gambit and The Man Who Fell to Earth It made me think long and hard about this entirely plausible scenario of humankind's downfall, seen through the eyes of its most advanced AI and two people who somehow "wake up" and see their world for what it really is.

I rate this book as highly as 1984 and certainly far beyond most SF I have read over the last 30 years. Highly recommended.

@AliasGrape - worth it for "Must George be vulgar?" though

[quote merryhouse]@AliasGrape - worth it for "Must George be vulgar?" though [/quote]
Oh absolutely. To be fair I still inhaled it in 2 days

I very much appreciated Cedric too!

The only thing I've seen in the Kindle sale is one I bought for £2.99 a few days ago, now 99p. It's got me reading again after a couple of weeks off though, so I'm not complaining! Nothing exciting - just an Andrew Taylor - number 5 in the Ashes of London series.

Remus I got that too - I've read the first couple in the series and enjoyed them.

@MaudOfTheMarches

Remus I got that too - I've read the first couple in the series and enjoyed them.

I like the characters and the period. The writing is a bit pedestrian but there's enough to interest me in them. Not sure how long he intends to keep going with them.

I haven’t looked at the monthly deals yet but probably a good thing for me if not much worth buying!

17. To the Hilt - Dick Francis

Still ploughing on through my re-reads. Alexander is an artist and usually lives off grid in Scotland. However, he comes from a traditional aristocratic family and goes to the aid of his mother and stepfather when it’s discovered that the FD of his stepfather’s business has disappeared and all the cash is in Panama. Where are the horses? The plundered business sponsors a high profile race and his stepfather owns a racehorse. The racing content is almost non-existent (a regular gripe of mine) but it’s a decent thriller.

The writing is a bit pedestrian but there's enough to interest me in them.

I think they fill that slot for me - diverting but not taxing. I hope he doesn't string it out too long, though. I'm not really one for series but once I've started I feel obliged to keep going. I'm still dutifully following the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, despite getting to the stage where I can pick one up and not know whether I've already read it.

@Piggywaspushed I’ve fallen behind already, I will be finish the ‘homework’ tonight and then be along to the Hard Times thread

@MaudOfTheMarches I gave up on the Ladies' Detective. I loved them at first but thought they got very samey and rather lazy.

18. Marion's Angels by KM Peyton I felt in need of a light read, & picked this one up prompted by the KM Peyton chat a while back.
    It's a sort-of-sequel to the Ruth/Pennington books, revisiting them a few years after the end of Pennington's Heir. I'm not sure why I didn't read it back in the day - it's classic KM Peyton with 'all the feels' as the youth might say (or probably don't any more).

@MaudOfTheMarches I also reached that stage with the Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency ! Sometimes even halfway through the book I’m still not clear on whether I’ve read it before. My ‘reading memory’ is all appalling to be fair, but I do think some of the blame has to go to the writing in this case at least.

I still enjoy No 1 ladies but haven't read the latest one. It's on the TBR pile at the minute.

8 Mein Rant: a Summary in Light Verse of Mein Kampf, by R F Patterson

Created to bolster the spirits of the British public in 1940, part of a tradition of ridicule. Written in Carroll/Milne - style doggerel:
The statesman who is sage and wise
Will not indulge in petty lies
For if he tells a mighty whopper
His conduct will be far more proper

A quick and easy read, even if you do have to go back and re-emphasise a few bits. Not exactly funny as such, and occasionally a bit uncomfortable as Hitler's thoughts on Jews are rendered (as his thoughts on everything else) without comment. An interesting little piece of history.

Grape

"Horrible, Ricky, horrible!"

8. Whose Names Are Unknown by Sanora Babb
Back in January, I started a bit of a reading season on the theme of the 1930s Dust Bowl in the USA. I read The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah, who wrote about Whose Names Are Unknown in her author's note, so when I saw a copy on a rare outing to a large second hand bookshop, it felt like bookish serendipity.
This novel joins the Dunne family in the Oklahoma Panhandle, five members of three generations living in a small dugout home. We follow their lives as they and their neighbours try to exist in an increasingly hostile environment. As crops repeatedly fail and dust storms worsen, the family begin to contemplate leaving their land to seek a better life further west.
From the back of the book: "Babb wrote Whose Names Are Unknown in the 1930s while working with refugee farmers in the Farm Security Administration (FSA) camps of California. Originally from the Oklahoma Panhandle area herself...She submitted the manuscript for this book to Random House for consideration in 1939. Editor Bennett Cerf planned to publish this 'exceptionally fine' novel, but when John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath swept the nation, Cerf explained that the market could not support two books on the subject."
It was finally published in 2004.
This is a much shorter novel than Steinbeck's, without the chapters specifically dedicated to social commentary. Babb stays with the view of the world as the main characters see it and their thoughts as they try to make sense of what is going on, and I became very attached to the Dunnes. I undoubtedly got more from reading this novel after the others in my Dust Bowl season. Now it's time to move on to other times and places in my reading.

Cote thanks for the review of Mockingbird - another one for my TBR list.