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?

@eitak22 I bought DS1 the kids' version of prisoners of geography and later got him the full book on audible (he's 14). I listened to it myselfand he has since listened to the power of geography too.

10. Die Kanzlerin. Porträt einer Epoche. Ursula Weidenfeld

Biography (unauthorised) of Angela Merkel. Split into sections covering her successes, mistakes, the people around her and the different roles they played (including the Bonn 'altar boys').
Very interesting although I don't follow German politics closely enough to know all the characters.

[quote Taswama]@eitak22 I bought DS1 the kids' version of prisoners of geography and later got him the full book on audible (he's 14). I listened to it myselfand he has since listened to the power of geography too.[/quote]
Ooh is the children's one called the same thing? Would be great to read for work.

I've got power of geography on my to read list next.

@Palegreenstars I'm so glad you liked it. I just can't stop thinking about it.

My husband bought me another two graphic novels for Christmas, one of them is also by Una, so will have to let you know what they are like. I've only read a few (Maus and Persepolis were standouts) but my husband has a big collection which I'm going to start working my way through. Do you have any recommendations?

12. The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller
Book club choice. An enjoyable novel of rich New Englanders mostly on holiday. The dialogue and family life/parenthood sections are brilliant and I think the sex scenes are pretty good too. I find the central dilemma fairly implausible as it requires 3 characters to remain locked in their youthful selves in a way that doesn't work (plus dvery other character apparently loses any ability to notice what's happening), but i still wanted to know the ending. Would have been more interesting if the villain had been a bit less villainous. Depending who I think the villain is...

13. The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
I think as a young woman I knew this by heart, but it's a while since I reread it. Now I'm just struck by how funny it is. An unbelievable treat.

@MamaNewtNewt ooh I loved Persepolis and haven’t tried Maus.

I’m also mainly driven by my husband’s purchases. Isabel Greenberg’s Glass House is my fave and she has a few others I’m keen to get to. Glass House is all about the imaginary world the Brontë siblings created.

I’m sure it’s an obvious one but I still think about Raymond Briggs When the Wind Blows especially in recent weeks!

Will definitely try another by Una - I loved the different styles used.

@eitak22

uk.bookshop.org/books/prisoners-of-geography-our-world-explained-in-12-simple-maps/9781783964130

Here you go.

Re Borneo/Malaysia, my first thought was that the Flashman books and Maturin/Aubrey books both get there at some point, although you'd have to invest a lot of reading time to get there - it's book 6 and book 13 respectively, if Google is to be trusted. I'm not contending that you'll get a sensitive and knowledgeable evocation of the locale, by any means, but they can be fun. Probably says something regrettable about me.

Finished Can't Even: Why Millennials became the Burnout Generation, by Anne Helen Petersen. I thought she made some decent (if not particularly original) points in the first few chapters, looking at recent trends in the labour market (or rather labor - her book is heavily US-focused), such as the way that employers have successfully moved the risks and costs of training to the would-be employee, and the casualisation of employment. While the trends can affect people of all ages, it's fair to say that they fall most heavily on recent entrants to the job market. However, she lost me in later chapters, when she failed to distinguish external factors from self-inflicted woes. She contends that millennials are burnt out from the pressure to portray enviable lives on Instagram. Pretty easy solution - don't do it. A mixed bag.

Planning on a bit of an Agatha Christie binge - have taken an armful of Poirots (mostly) from the library. Thought it might be interesting to arrange in date order and see what changed over the decades. I'm on Murder on the Links, published in 1923 and set in France, so lots of comedy French accents and commentary by the bluff yet susceptible Hastings.

17. Mistletoe and Murder - Robin Stevens The fifth in the Murder Most Unladylike series, and the best one yet. Daisy and Hazel go to Cambridge to spend Christmas with Daisy's older brother Bertie, who is in his first year at the university. As expected, there is a murder to be solved...

A really fun murder mystery - these books are so readable! DD1 (aged 9) got this for Christmas and I've been waiting until she finished it so that I could get my hands on it. Now I need to plan when to give her the next in the series...I think an Easter present probably!

I think Rose Tremain's Islands of Mercy is partly set in Borneo - I haven't read it but would be very interested to hear any reviews.
IMO the Borneo sections are not that successful; a friend and I both read it and separately came to the conclusion that it's not all that clear what's going on or why it's meant to fit with the book or to matter.

Overall it's a fairly good read, I'd say, but not wonderful; it is uneven, partly because of the different settings and narrative voices. Ambitious but doesn't quite hit the mark.

I've read:
Even the Dead, Benjamin Black
Quirke series no. 7 and the last one.
This circles back to the Magdelene Laundry theme that earlier books deal with or touch on, and back to the shadowy men who run Dublin. The police procedural is pretty much business as usual and the real pleasure for me is, as ever, in the writing and characters.
There's a simultaneously optimistic and elegiac feel to this; several characters including Quirke seem to find some sort of resolution and/or new start in their lives, and there is some sadness too.
There is definitely an element of diminishing returns to this series; the first one remains the best, IMO, and they do seem slightly formulaic once you've read a few. Some of the plots and settings/minor characters are slightly rushed and perfunctory.
Overall I'm really glad I've read them, though, and will read his other non 'literary' works like Prague Nights too.

Confusion, Elizabeth Jane Howard
Third in the Cazelet Chronicles. This is possibly the saddest one in the series so far; we're deep into WW2 and all the sadness, difficulty, not-knowing and disruption that entails. The older children have either well and truly grown up or are starting to, and trying to find their way in this hard world. The older characters are dealing with the passing of time, physical and other losses, and their worries for the children.
I'm endlessly intrigued by the way these books are so reassuring/comforting/somewhat nostalgic while at the same time being so acute about people's feelings, thoughts, relationships. She is wry and dry when necessary, but also kind and generous about her characters and their actions. They're a phenomenon.

Not sure what I'll read next; I feel I might need a rest from the Cazalets or anything similar, but I have the Covids and am possibly a bit foggy to read anything very literary, or non-fiction.

Thanks @bibliomania but you lost me at '...books 6 and 13 respectively'. I'm just not whipping through enough books unfortunately!

Good to know @DameHelena. I've been warned! As a Tremain fan, I'll think I'll give it a go anyway.

Don't blame you, nowanearlyNicemum! It would be quite a commitment!

20: The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming

I felt the need for something quick and relatively undemanding after my BBC non-fiction marathon, but this spy novel turned out to be a bit unnervingly close to current events....academic and Russia expert Sam Gaddis, author of a biography of Russian President 'Sergei Platov' ('borderline sociopath and ex-KGB') gets drawn into a web of espionage and danger when an old friend suggests he helps her write a book on a sensational story she’s uncovered about a hitherto unknown spy, the 'sixth man'.

There were some clunky moments - a sudden death that isn’t investigated (there’d be a post-mortem IRL); a supposed cryptic crossword clue that’s laughably easy - but it all raced along fairly briskly. It did make me feel more than a little twitchy at times in light of current events, though.

@nowanearlyNicemum

Thanks *@bibliomania* but you lost me at '...books 6 and 13 respectively'. I'm just not whipping through enough books unfortunately!

Good to know @DameHelena. I've been warned! As a Tremain fan, I'll think I'll give it a go anyway.

I’d call myself a Tremain fan too, and it certainly hasn’t put me off her for the future or anything. I’m glad I read it, I just didn’t think it was up to the standard of something like Restoration.

19. A Class of their Own by Matthew Knott
    Reviewed on here (apologies but I can't remember who by). I listened to this memoir of tutoring children of the super-rich on audio, & while it wasn't earth shattering, it was just right for easy listening while working. It's quite a gentle book, most of the laughs are at the author's own expense & while obviously there is a lot of privilege he writes kindly and sympathetically about his pupils.

20. Concentr8 by William Sutcliffe
    At the other end of the spectrum, this novel looks at an alternate London where large numbers of troubled children in failing schools have been medicated from childhood with prescription drug 'Concentr8'. When a political dispute between the floppy-haired ambitious Mayor and the PM leads to the programme funding being cut, riots break out across the city. The story follows five teenagers who take a minor civil servant hostage during the riots, plus the police negotiator, a journalist, the Mayor and the hostage.
    
    I'd say this was an interesting if not entirely successful book. I think it's meant to be YA, but it didn't have the pace & storyline you'd expect from the genre. In many ways the voices of the journalist and hostage were the most convincing, & there are excerpts from research / data on schools policy, use of Ritalin etc interspersed which slowed things down further.
    
    Having said that, I read it in an evening, and wanted to find out what happened to the teenage characters, so it definitely had something (especially given my current level of DNF-ing books).

Treacle Walker by Alan Garner
I think others on here liked this, but it really didn't work for me. Total gibberish.

21. This Much is True by Miriam Margolyes

It's taken me a few months to get through this audiobook, not because I didn't enjoy it, I just don't get much listening time at the moment. I'm really going to miss listening to Miriam. I love her, and I love this book. I love her smutty stories, her swearing, her honesty, her love for her friends and family and her naming of names when she dislikes people (is there anything more irritating than "I met a famous person, they were awful but I'm not saying who it is", no such problem with Miriam who is more likely to drop a C bomb while telling you exactly who they are). Every time I listened I almost felt like I was meeting up with an old friend for a good old gossip and I found it genuinely hilarious, I can't remember laughing so much at a book in ages. The rate at which Miriam seems to collect friends I reckon I'm in with a shot of becoming a good friend

14. The Transgender Issue: an argument for justice by Shon Faye
A gripping and passionately argued book with plenty of cool fact alongside the anger. A good reminder of the terrible case of Lucy Meadows, who took her own life after transitioning at work and being hounded for it in the media. And the chapter on transmisogyny was one I really agreed with a lot of, including the transmisogyny in gender critical circles. Some really frustrating elements, such as decrying lack of facts, research and statistics, while never discussing how to tackle sex and gender data recording. Also a chapter on prison abolition, which explains its case well while not being entirely convincing. I was never going to agree with all of this but I'm really glad to have read it and will come back to it and interrogate it more.

13. 80 Trains Around The World by Monisha Rajesh

This is her second book, I haven't read the first which is train travel around India.

This was a lot of fun, with very little train geekiness and much more about who you meet on trains. She travels to some really interesting places, Mongolia, Tibet and North Korea as well as around the US and Canada.

I think she travelled in 2018 and it's already a little dated. She discusses the demise of the railways while everything I have read recently suggests night trains are making a comeback as people are wanting to switch from flying.

She also travels extensively through Russia and I was a little sad as I thought how unlikely people will be following in her footsteps for the time being.

A good travel read but not gripping.

Fortuna thanks for that Trip Fiction website recommendation, I've book marked!

21. After The Funeral by Agatha Christie. This is the March read for Read Christie 2022. It's one of her later novels, set post WW2, with quite an elderly Poirot who doesn't feature that heavily in the story, relying on another detective and his assistants to do all the donkey work. It's not a classic Christie, but nevertheless not a bad read.

I listened to the audiobook, borrowed from the library, and read by Hugh Fraser who played Captain Hastings to David Suchet's Poirot.

There's a large cast of characters, mostly family members, that I had some difficulty remembering who was who for a while.

I think her later novels are not as good because they've lost that glamorous feel of the 20s and 30s. There's talk of post war austerity, rationing, and housing for war refugees (which is all very relevant now). For pure escapism from the news and every day stress, I much prefer the earlier novels like Death on the Nile.

I'm currently (slowly) reading A Fortnight in September by R C Sherriff, which is just beautiful. It was a recommended read on Graham Norton's bookclub podcast, by Andy Miller (from Backlisted podcast). It's about a family going on holiday (their annual fortnight at their usual boarding house in Bognor) - mum, dad, and their three children, two of whom have left school and are now out to work. It's a quiet and gentle study of family life, written and set in the 1930s. I love it. The writing is gorgeous.

Women's Prize Longlist just announced

Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith

Carless by Kirsty Capes

Creatures of Passage by Morowa Yejidé

Flamingo by Rachel Elliott

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead

Remote Sympathy by Catherine Chidgey

Salt Lick by Lulu Allison

Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason

The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki

The Bread the Devil Knead by Lisa Allen-Agostini

The Exhibitionist by Charlotte Mendelson

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

This One Sky Day by Leone Ross

I've got some work to do, I haven't read a single one this year.

@FortunaMajor I was about to post the same thing!

I've read 3 - Sorrow and Bliss and Great Circle which I thought were excellent, and the Paper Palace which was ok.

Very surprised not to see Matrix there.

Delighted to discover there's a new Charlotte Mendelson book though, I've really enjoyed everything of hers so far.

@LittleDiaries A Fortnight in September sounds great. I've just started Small Pleasures and really enjoying that.

I'm not sure that life really was easier/simpler in the 50s but there's something appealing about it at the moment.

Only read Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead, which I think I've aired my views on already .

Grannie, I'm also surprised not to see Matrix.

Charlotte Mendelson... mmm. I've only read Almost English and it left a weird taste in my mouth. I somehow felt that she didn't really like anyone; not just more peripheral characters who one probably wasn't meant to, but the family themselves. Maybe I misread, but there was a sense of slightly poking fun/sneering at them that I didn't like. But I should give another one of hers a go, I suppose.