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?

Interesting review of Mrs Dalloway Welshwabbit . I have been wondering about giving it another go, or trying another Virginia Woolf, as I didn’t get Mrs Dalloway when I tried it in my 20s and haven’t read any of her others.

10. 1984 - George Orwell I don't think any review is needed for this one. I tend to re-read this during times of turmoil in the world. I'm not sure of my motives for doing so!

18. A Moment of Silence - Anna Dean A lovely bit of escapism - this is a murder mystery set in 1805, with a spinster aunt as the main character. It felt very Jane Austen-ish, with a bit of Georgette Heyer and Agatha Christie thrown in. Very lightweight but fun. It appears to be the first in a series and I would quite happily read the others.

Now on to the next library book on my pile - Endurance - Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage. I’ve had this waiting for a couple of weeks so it’s a happy coincidence that the discovery of Endurance on the Antarctic sea bed has been reported today!

13. The Red Parts by Maggie Nelson. This is about the 2005 trial of the man accused of murdering the author's aunt Jane. The trial took place 36 years after the murder (Nelson never knew her aunt) when new DNA evidence emerged. It is more like a memoir than a 'true crime' book, as Nelson reflects on the impact of Jane's violent death on her own childhood, via its effect on her mother, and also on her experience of the trial as an emotional journey. Nelson is a poet, which further influences her way of expressing herself. I found this fascinating.

14. Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason. Martha is suffering from a severe but unspecified mental illness, which affects her relationships with her husband, sister and parents in different ways. I would describe this as Marian Keyes type chick lit - rather dark and compelling, but still quite an 'easy' read. I enjoyed it a lot, but I will be a bit surprised if it makes the shortlist for the Women's Prize for Fiction (I haven't yet read anything else on the longlist, so I am basing that on the quality of last year's nominations).

I saw Jen Campbell talking about The Red Parts on Booktube recently, @Tarahumara She mentioned that there was a companion book Jane: A Murder, which iirc was written more recently. They both sounded fascinating,
the kind of book I like. Will see if I can get hold of them from the library.

@LittleDiaries

I saw Jen Campbell talking about The Red Parts on Booktube recently, *@Tarahumara She mentioned that there was a companion book Jane: A Murder*, which iirc was written more recently. They both sounded fascinating, the kind of book I like. Will see if I can get hold of them from the library.

Oh I love Jen Campbell on booktube @LittleDiaries

17. Magpie Lane - Lucy Atkins

I really enjoyed this and thought the unreliable narrator was very well handled. Quite often it seems to be presented as some big unguessable twist, whereas in reality once you know the narrator is unreliable the writer has got nothing else up their sleeve. In this case I knew something was amiss but couldn't quite make out what it was, so the ending was a surprise.

Atkins does a good job of evoking the claustrophobia of living and working in the university senior management bubble, and particularly the strain it puts on the Master's wife, as an outsider. I don't read many thrillers but I would recommend this one.

15. The Fortune of the Rougons - Émile Zola

The first in his Rougon-Macquart series. I found the cast of characters took a bit of wrestling into shape - a family tree would be useful. Presumably as the series progresses, the various relationships will become clearer; I think different volumes focus more on individuals and their stories.
I did enjoy the characters of Pierre and his wife and their manoeuvrings to gain power and prestige in the town.

16. House of Correction - Lisa Jewell

Essentially a courtroom drama as a young woman, held on remand accused of murder, decides to defend herself in court and tries to piece together what happened the day a local man is found dead outside her house. An easy entertaining read.

17. The Bog People - PV Glob

A friend lent me this after we'd both read Meet Me at the Museum. An account by a Danish archaeologist of the many bodies discovered in peat bogs in Scandinavia in an amazing state of preservation, and what their deaths might be able to tell us about their lives.

18. The Lost Apothecary - Sarah Penner

Good for people who liked The Miniaturist and The Doll Factory. I enjoy a novel set in the Georgian or Victorian era, but this wasn't one of the best. The idea - an apothecary who creates poisons to rid women of men who mistreat them - was fine, but there's a confusing time-slip element added (such an over-used and unnecessary device imo) and it could have been a better book than it was.

19. The Kill - Émile Zola

Number two in the Rougon-Macquart series. I really toiled through this book. Pages and pages of purple prose conveying the decadence of the Parisians in the mid-19th century; some very unpleasant characters, greedy for money and deeply selfish. Zola does manage to get across his distaste for these characters effectively but it doesn't make for an enjoyable read. Or possibly I just wasn't in the mood.

That's an impressively diverse book selection, highland!

It was an incredible coincidence @LittleDiaries. Nelson was researching and writing her book Jane: A Murder without knowing that the case had been re-opened after so many years and would come to trial.

It's a bit of a mixed bag I guess biblio

Each NY I think I might approach my reading with an elegantly unfolding plan of texts that link to one another but in reality that's never going to happen.

Friends lend books, I'm a member of two book groups, recommendations on here catch my interest .. and at the moment like many people I'm finding it hard to concentrate so sometimes just looking for an easy comfort read.

Having said all that, I did enjoy working my way through the Barchester Chronicles during lockdown, so hopefully the Zola series will pick up and I'll be returning to them every few books. We'll see ..

I think ‘pick up’ is probably a tall ask from
Zola. I say that as a Zola fan. I always need
some distance after reading him because it takes me some time to get over things (same with Hardy, adore him, but need space) so you have my unending respect for reading them almost back to back.

Don't speak too soon StColumbo I have form for ambitious projects that don't quite reach fruition.

Reading all Iain M Banks' output as a tribute to him after he died .. that one foundered. I love him as a mainstream writer but I discovered that his space opera stuff just isn't for me.

However I thought both Germinal and The Ladies' Paradise were great (didn't realise they were part of a series when I read them first) so still hoping I will get into my stride with his next couple of books.

First one down from the women's prize list

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev - Dawnie Walton
Charts the rise of an interracial rock duo and their spectacular falling out through the eyes of a young journalist with a family tie to the band. As they reform for a tour years later, accusations are made about a tragic event.

This has a very similar vibe to Daisy Jones and the Six, so if you liked that, I think this would appeal. This feels a bit more pacy.

Also
Just Us: An American Conversation - Claudia Rankine
Black US academic explores white supremacy in current US society by having conversations to challenge the status quo with people she encounters in everyday life.

@highlandcoo I loved loved Meet me at the Museum and too read The Bog People afterwards. It's a good companion piece and not as academic as I had imagined.

highlandcoo there is a gdd Wikipedia page with a family tree and a list of the books in publication order and recommended reading order.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Rougon-Macquart

I tried reaing the series many years ago but found in patchy and gave up and read the first few chapters of some books before moving on. I still love L'Assomoir many decades on(even if it isn't cheery).

StColumbo I think Hardy is a good comparison, especially in terms of how sad and bleak the books can be. I'm a big George Gissing* fan and I can see the connection with his writing too.

That's so interesting RomanMum. My friend had known about The Bog People already and she put me onto it. It's not a book I would ever have come across otherwise.

I agree; it's written in a simple style and there's a human warmth that comes through in his writing. It's quite a unique little book.

Thanks so much for that SapatSea - I might print out that family tree .. it actually looks like a tree which is pleasing!

I've set out to read the books in publication order do you think that's the wrong way to go about it?

21: The Button Box: Lifting the Lid on Women's Lives - Lynn Knight

This was just the perfect escapist book for the current awful times. Knight comes from a close-knit family of working-class women who sewed, knitted and were keenly interested in clothes, and she inherited many of their garments, as well as the buttons they kept for sewing projects. Chapter by chapter, she explores the different ways in which women's lives have been intertwined with clothes....wearing them, making them, worrying over them, buying them, how they look in them, how they feel in them.

There’s so much fascinating information in here, and it struck a very deep chord with me - I learned to sew from my mum, using her hand-cranked Singer machine, and as a teenager I had a Saturday job in a deeply eccentric haberdashery shop which was like something out of the 1930s and still sold many of the accoutrements Knight talks about her grandmother using. I’ve always loved all the bits and bobs that go with sewing and almost every page spoke to me. Some of the descriptions of clothes are little short of mouthwatering......all the way from the late Victorian period through to the era of Mary Quant and Biba. An absolute treat. Definitely a highlight on the list for me.

Aargh - forgot to add to the above - the MASSIVE frustration about The Button Box was that, other than a flyleaf illustration of buttons and a black and white drawing at the start of each chapter, it didn’t have any pictures.....a huge oversight in my view, and a baffling one in a book that cried out for them, especially when the author repeatedly cited family photos, paintings and other resources. So disappointing.

@Terpsichore, I love the sound of The Button Box and have just ordered it. My mum's family were all tailors and although she didn't follow the same career path she did pick up a lot of skills, and sewing and knitting projects were always a big part of her life.

Your haberdashery shop sounds brilliant. When I was growing up there was a wool shop and a fabric shop in every town, and the women who worked there were experts and excellent at giving advice. The department in John Lewis doesn't come close.

Just the other week, I spent a tranquil hour sorting through the buttons in the box I inherited from my mum. She was very frugal and would cut the buttons off garments once we'd finished wearing them. I found some from a cardigan she knitted me when I was tiny and it took me right back in time. She called it my "Eskimo jacket" (as we said then) and although the mohair on the hood was a bit scratchy I absolutely loved it.

If anyone is ever short of buttons I do have quite a lot ..

I like the sound of The Button Box too. My mother and grandmother sewed professionally and my great aunt on my Dad’s side was a fantastic seamstress and worked in the haberdashery in a big department store leaving to get married just before it was flattened in the Blitz. She had loads of lovely stories and I have her hand sewing machine and many, many buttons in 1930s pastille tins plus the silver box they gave her when she left. I was very fond of her.
Have ordered the kindle sample.

highlandcoo most of the buttons Lynn Knight talks about were cut off her mum's and grandma's clothes too

The woman who owned the haberdashery I worked in had run it for donkey's years. It was a complete treasure-trove and costume designers from the local TV station used to come in to snap up packets of vintage stockings and corset springs. I often think about it now and despair at the thought of the beautiful vintage cabinets and shop-fittings that were probably chucked into skips when she died and the shop closed. I’d moved away by then.

@SapatSea L’Assommoir was my first Zola and I still feel emotional when I think about it.

Highlandcoo I had an old battered copy of The Bog People on my 'academic' shelf since uni, but didn't really need it at the time. Got Meet me at the Museum from the library on a whim and was amazed when it mentioned the book. Oddly enough I might need to refer to TBP this week...

Incidentally Radio 4 did a cracking dramatisation of Meet me at the Museum last year (?) with Tamsin Greig and Paul Ritter. Well worth checking out if it comes on again.