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?

I'm trying to read a book a week this year and not doing too badly so far, considering my concentration for reading in recent years has been absolutely shot to pieces.
Not a big contributor to threads, champion lurker but I think this is a really good way to log my reading and motivate myself.
My list is a combination of already read and currently reading.

Not sure if my knackered phone is up to emboldening so apologies in advance.

1. A Dark Matter - Doug Johnstone
2. The Big Chill - Doug Johnstone
3. The Great Silence - Doug Johnstone
4. Appetite - Ed Balls
5. The Impulse Purchase - Veronica Henry
6. The Locked Room - Elly Griffiths
7. When The Music Stops - Joe Heap
8. The Cat and the City - Nick Bradley
9. Utopia Avenue - David Mitchell

Oh well, at least you've supported the charity, Alias.

That's something I tell myself after possibly unwise purchases, most recently an unexpectedly expensive (dodgy, half-length, 1970s at a guess) bridal veil required by dd(14) for theatricals.

16. Les Cahiers d’Esther: Histoires de mes 10 ans - Riad Sattouf Thanks for the thread recommendations for this one! As others have mentioned, it’s a book of comic strips (is graphic novel too fancy a description?) telling a year in the life of a 9/10 year old Parisian girl, based on the author’s real-life conversations with a friend’s daughter. It’s funny and moving and feels very real. A bit disconcerting to read though, as I have a daughter the same age in her first year at a French school having previously been at a girls’ school in England, and the awfulness of boys and growing up generally is on full display. It’s definitely helped me understand a bit better what it must be like for DD1!

I thought after the first page or two that it might be good for DD1 to read, but quickly realised that it’s very much aimed at an older audience. I’ll try to get DH to read it as I think it might be useful, if a little terrifying for him! 😂 And I’ll plan to get the next in the series from the library when DD1 starts her next school year…

@LadybirdDaphne @AliasGrape I was underwhelmed by Frannie Langton too but lots of people liked it so maybe you will! Lots of interesting stuff in there but too crammed in and the plot just didn't make sense to me.

I'm also doing all my reading on kindle while a baby sleeps on me or in a dark room.... stares longingly at pile of Christmas present hardbacks...

11. Nine Lessons by Nicola Upson
This series of detective novels featuring a fictionalised Josephine Tey and some of her characters might be an acquired taste. It does have some of the dry humour of Tey's writing and thankfully does not have the obsession with the physical characteristics of criminals that her books at their worst display. Anyway, cute idea, well executed; there are two separate series of crimes occurring that are linked to Cambridge, which come to Josephine's attention when she moves in with her lover and her friend Archie Penrose is assigned to investigate. A heroically complex plot but I made it through.

Sorry, that paragraph could have done with a lot more commas!

Finished Rachel Joyce's Miss Benson's Beetle. It was as expected. A jaunt with two mismatched women at the centre searching for a possibly mythical beetle - and themselves, of course. And they are on the run. It's a silly Thelma and Louise. A quick read. I liked her first book but others since have not been as endearing. This was better than The Music Shop, though , which I found dreadful.

I hated Frannie Langton.

@bibliomania

Oh well, at least you've supported the charity, Alias.

That's something I tell myself after possibly unwise purchases, most recently an unexpectedly expensive (dodgy, half-length, 1970s at a guess) bridal veil required by dd(14) for theatricals.

Yes at least there’s that

I’ll give them all a go but happy to bung them straight back in the charity bag if they don’t float my boat.

I thought Frannie Langton was a joke. Absolutely fucking awful. Began badly, got worse and descended from then on.

@LadybirdDaphne You can perhaps tell that I remain irate.

Piggywaspushed I liked Miss Benson's Beetle, especially when I saw it was based on two real women whose pictures appear at the end. I wonder if there's a new genre in the offing, cantankerous middle aged women plus slightly wet sidekick (see also Old Baggage). If so I quite like it, as a relaxing read. Obviously I identify with the cantankerous character.

Yes, I liked the women. There was an actual redoubtable Victorian explorer whose name escapes me. I think Joyce needs to work on her endings really.

I quite liked Miss Benson's Beetle too.
On the gentle read front, I've just finished The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler. This is about Macon whose son has been killed and wife has decided to leave him. He writes guidebooks about how to be as close to home in whichever city you're in.
After his wife leaves, he struggles along by himself living a more and more obsessive solitary existence, saving time by cleaning his clothes in the shower and making a weird sleeping bag so he can have clean sheets every night, until he falls and breaks his leg. He then moves in with his sister and 2 brothers who all live in their grandparents house where they grew up and all have their various eccentricity. He then meets Muriel who turns his world upside down. This was pretty typical Anne Tyler, great descriptions and amusing moments. I did find Macon a bit passive but liked his journey. There was a movie made of it in the 80s which I'd like to see.

Stokey I loved that film and had a major crush on William Hurt back then. I've never been able to get into Anne Tyler for some reason.

16. The Intellectuals and The Masses: Pride and Prejudice among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1880-1939 - John Carey

A smart and very readable takedown of the tendency of early 20th century modernists to be scathing about popular culture and 'the masses', creating art and literature that was deliberately obscure and inaccessible to the annoying lower classes. And linking these attitudes to the rise of fascism in Europe.

I have the first of the Six Tudor Queens waiting to be read; looking forward to that.

And I've had An Instance of the Fingerpost on my shelves for years but never felt compelled to pick it up. I will now after your review DuPain, so thank you.

I have the whole set of Martin Walker's Bruno books and enjoyed the first two; nice gentle escapist stuff which is useful at the moment.

while piling daft simile on simile, like small oily fish in a sealed metal container

@LadybirdDaphne I almost do want to read it now just for this

14. Set my Heart to Five - Simon Stephenson.

Loved this book. Set in an America of the near future, it tells the story of Jared, a dentist bot (android) who starts to develop feelings, and what he does about this unexpected turn of events.

Ironically, although a bot, Jared is a relatable, sympathetic character who as an outsider can point out the flaws in humanity. There is a lightheartedness to the writing (especially enjoyed the vision of the future) though the tone subtly changes over the course of the book. Clever inclusion of classic movies: Jared starts to watch these old films to understand his new emotions, elements of which are then subtly incorporated into the plot. Part road movie, part romance, part sci-fi, it was funny, beautiful and ultimately moving.

I don't normally read this kind of book but it was mentioned in an IET magazine article so got onto the TBR list.

Good luck with Fingerpost @highlandcoo - it’s a big chunk of a book and I can see why lots of people find it a bit much, so I hope you do enjoy it!

Delicacy: A Memoir About Cake and Death by Katy Wix

I didn’t know Katy Wix had written a book, so when I saw this in the daily deals I bought it because I like Katy Wix and I like cake! I was therefore expecting to really enjoy this - but I didn’t. It’s 21 memories from her life, all linked to cake. Some are linger where others are little more than a paragraph. It’s all quite disjointed and sometimes I would read an anecdote and be none the wiser about what I was expected to conclude from it. There were some funny bits (I did like the imagined email exchange with her personal trainer) but it wasn’t as funny as I was expecting (the blurb describes it as darkly funny). Sadly not for me.

@AliasGrape I have The Confessions of Frannie Langdon on my wish list so will be interested to hear your thoughts when you get round to it

16. Hot Mess

Billed as Bridget Jones meets Fleabag, but more like the latter in tone, i.e. a bit sweary and morally ambivalent.

Very lightweight for the most part, but rambled on a bit about why the narrator was single, whether she was depressed about being single, the social pressure to find a partner, etc. Eventually she concludes she is fine with being single, but not before exploring it from every possible angle. Having said that, some of the writing is genuinely funny, especially the disastrous Tinder dates and the "novel" sections written by the main character's father as "part" of his therapy, complete with inappropriate punctuation and an elaborate fantasy about falling in love with Wanda from next door (while maintaining a rich Russian mistress on the side, which Wanda is totally fine with).

The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett Had been looking forward to this after really enjoying The Appeal last year and found this just as good. It is similar in format in that you’re reading a dossier of evidence, here voice message transcripts, as presented to an expert reader. I preferred this scenario - coded messages buried in Enid Blyton-type books - to the cancer fundraiser one in the Appeal. The sad consequences of the tragic life history of a particular character are very moving - the phrase ‘he gets it from me’ has surely never before carried such a punch.

I admit I got a bit bogged down in the code investigation and looked forward to the expert reader input - you read all the evidence before hearing from them, without the intermittent commentary you get in The Appeal - and a couple of card tricks played here were also played in the previous book. But this is more than made up for by witty writing, the ex-con character’s off-beat perspective and sometimes spiky authorial social commentary.

17. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

Read with great elan by Simon Callow in this Audible version, and absolutely my favourite Dickens so far (despite a failed attempt to read it a few years ago ; I've realised audio books are definitely the way to go with someone who got paid by the word!)

A timely reminder of the devastating cost of hatred and conflict to human lives and relationships; the plot rattles along (by Dickensian standards) and the characters are less caricatures and more ambiguous than some of the other novels. The only disappointment is the main female protagonist whose characterisation is paper-thin; are there any Dickens novels that have really great, complex leading female characters?