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?

Ooooooh Stokey that sounds awful!! I'd give up right now

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is also in the Kindle sale today. Excellent, albeit very depressing.

@nowanearlyNicemum

Ooooooh Stokey that sounds awful!! I'd give up right now

Another vote for giving up. I wouldn't have the patience for that.

Sounds like a first draft with a desperate need for about another eight rewrites.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is also in the Kindle sale today. Excellent, albeit very depressing.

Yes. I thought it was very good.

Stokey what on earth?! It would get on my nerves too.

I was tempted to buy The Spy Who Came In From the Cold....then just before I clicked 'buy', I realised it isn’t; it's Call For the Dead, the first of the Smiley novels. They’ve rather naughtily plastered the much better-known title on the cover, presumably to lure the unwary....it’s a very misleading jacket-design!

12. A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian - Marina Lewycka Nadezhda, middle-aged mother and university lecturer is horrified when her widower father informs her of his intention to marry a much younger woman who has decided on marriage as her best chance of remaining in the UK. As an immigrant from Ukraine himself, the octogenarian ex-engineer and tractor enthusiast wants nothing more than to aid Valentina's quest for British citizenship.

I enjoyed this, Nadezhda's eccentric father and her acerbic elder sister let slip more and more detail about their life in Ukraine during WW2 and the escape to Britain afterwards and slowly Nadezhda learns more about herself send her family. Valentina, at first a comedy baddie, resorts to worse behaviour, abusing her aged husband and taking over his house by degrees while spending his meagre savings and conducting various affaires with younger men.

Some interesting detail about the history of Ukraine and its relations with Russia and the Soviet Union.

@Terpsichore

I was tempted to buy The Spy Who Came In From the Cold....then just before I clicked 'buy', I realised it isn’t; it's Call For the Dead, the first of the Smiley novels. They’ve rather naughtily plastered the much better-known title on the cover, presumably to lure the unwary....it’s a very misleading jacket-design!

Oh that's naughty. I assumed it was both in one volume.

19. The Nanny State Made Me - Stuart Maconie

An unashamedly partisan celebration of state-funded British institutions, from schools and railways to the NHS and the BBC. As a child of the 'nanny state' myself it was an enjoyable enough read, although I'm not sure I learned anything I didn't already know; and there were some offputting typos and factual errors (like repeatedly holding up Peppa Pig as a highlight of BBC children's programming, which any parent of a preschooler could have pointed out as wrong).

19. The Fun of It - ed Lillian Ross

Collection of columns from the Talk of the Town section of the New Yorker, from the 1920s to the 2000s. I persevered through something like 400 of the flipping things of which maybe one in ten were worth reading. Somehow, like scratchcards, I kept going back to it in the hope of finding a gem. Each piece is less than a thousand words long, and subjects range from the end of prohibition to conservation of sea bass, via interviews with Fellini, WC Handy and many, many baseball players.

@VikingNorthUtsire

I also have Death and the Penguin on my shelf, it was one of the books recently recommended for readers wanting to understand Ukraine (www.theguardian.com/books/2022/mar/04/beyond-war-books-understand-ukraine-invasion-putin-gogol-oliver-bullough)

On a slightly incongruous note (sorry), I see that Georgette Heyer is the featured Deal of the Day kindle author today. I know lots of you go to her for comfort reading. Is there a particular book you'd recommend to someone (me) who has never read her before? I really do feel like some escapism!

Looking at the 99p deals, I'd very much recommend Cotillion - if you don't like that one, I don't think you'll like Heyer.

I also love Arabella but not quite so good as Cotillion IMO, and False Colours is one of my favourites but not so generally liked I don't think.

Of the others, Grand Sophy is absolutely classic Heyer comedy but does have one unpleasantly antisemitic moneylender scene. I don't think I'm alone in finding Regency Buck annoying, Lady of Quality is Heyer-by-numbers, and The Nonsuch forgettable IMO (at least, I had to read the summary to be reminded of the plot)

13. The death and life of American cities by Jane Jacobs .

Written about 60 years ago but still incredibly relevant today, this book looks at what makes big cities successful. She starts of with what makes a street feel safe and almost everything else is linked to that. Eg people feel safe in a street when there are always other people around. To have other people around, you need a mix of primary uses, i.e. not just residential or offices or restaurants and theatres. If there is a mix of uses then the businesses there benefit from different 'shifts' of customers, so in Wall Street (then) a restaurant cannot survive on lunchtime trade alone, with everyone disappearing at 5pm. A mix of different ages of buildings means new businesses can afford to rent space in older buildings until they can afford somewhere better and there is a variety of different trades and shops. The size and length of blocks influences how much passing footfall streets get and how much people feel part of an area. Parks and playgrounds that are on the edge of communities get a lot of criticism as they won't get used if they are hidden from sight and not on the way to anywhere so feel unsafe. Areas can 'unslum' themselves if they are allowed to do so and knocking down loads of buildings and building new ones is unsuccessful.

An absolutely fascinating book which is apparently a classic and has made me look at some changes in my (small, UK) city in a new light.

Just finished Rejoice! Rejoice! Britain on the 1980s by Alwyn Turner.

Obviously, Mrs Thatcher dominates the text but there is a lot of insight into the way people spoke, read, consumed media, lots about TV, pop and so on. It's very detailed. Less about science fiction , specifically Doctor Who, than the 1970s one, thankfully.

Two things stuck out - how astonishingly, openly homophobic and racist MPs and journalists were (there is a numbing quote from an MP who said that if AIDs wiped out gay men it would be 'for the best really'). I had wiped this from my mind. And how alarmingly like the 1980s everything seems now. Some of the pages on Russia were downright creepy to read in 2022. And the culture war/anti PC stuff seems to have had a real revival with Clause 28 type returns entirely feasible.

A good read. I look forward to reading his 90s book at some point.

Britain in the 1980s...

Frederick, Cotillion, The Grand Sophy- definitely second or third the recommendations for those as good Heyers to start with.

19. Disarmed by Sarah Rees Brennan. More slashy fencing romance, much enjoyed by me!

20. The Heron's Cry by Ann Cleeves. Second in her new crime series set in Devon, this is a safe pair of hands if you want a solid detective story. Nicely done.

21. A Field Guide to Lies and Statistics by Daniel Levitin. An easy read on statistics, but not much here I didn't already know from other similar books and R4s More or Less!

I love Death And The Penguin.

22. The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett. Reviewed a couple of times upthread, I love how she is experimenting with telling detective stories in different ways, but although I enjoyed this, and thought the pay off at the end was great, a couple of times in the middle I wasn't so absorbed. There was also a covid reference that felt unnecessary (she wrote it during lockdown, but it is set pre covid). Overall I probably preferred The Appeal, but I am definitely looking forward to reading her next.

9: I thought I knew you by penny Hancock
Really enjoyed this- have read it in a weekend . I find at the moment I either plod along half interested in a book and eventually give up or read a book in 24 hours that I can't put down. This was a story about two best friends and each have one teenage child. One child makes an accusation against the other and it follows the impact this has. I found the two main characters very flawed but still was gripped from start to finish.

@Taswama there was a really good documentary about Jane Jacobs and her fight against redevelopment in NYC on BBC4 a few years ago - Citizen Jane, it’s called. Unfortunately not still available on iplayer but it looks as though it might be viewable in a few other places if you’re interested....Amazon Prime and Apple TV by the looks of it. You can buy the DVD too, of course.

63. The Poison Garden by Alex Marwood

Romy is the only adult survivor of a cult hidden away on a remote farm in Wales. She and her younger siblings have to try and cope in the outside world. This is told partly through flashbacks in the cult and partly present day. It was OK but the ending let it down, leaving too many loose ends.

64. The Key In The Lock by Beth Underdown

Dual timeline story covering the death of Ivy’s soldier son in 1918 and the death of a child in a fire in a local mansion thirty years ago. It was OK but never fully engaged me.

65. The Maid by Nita Prose

The main character is a maid working in a hotel. Molly is socially awkward (I assume neurodiverse although this is never specifically stated). As a result of not understanding social interactions she gets into trouble when a guest is found dead. I found the premise intriguing but the main character didn’t ring true - she talks in a way that I’ve never heard anybody talk and I just didn’t buy some of the things that she is portrayed as not understanding.

22. Girl, 11 by Amy Suiter-Clarke. An above-average thriller, which I enjoyed very much. I listened to the audiobook, which I think was very well done, and is probably the best way to enjoy this book. The plot is based around a true crime podcast presented by a woman who is investigating a cold case of a serial killer who abducted young women, each one a year younger than the previous one. He was never caught, the case went cold when the killings stopped. But then suddenly abductions and killings start again, many years after the last ones. Is this the same killer, or a copycat. Lots of interesting detail, well written and a good conclusion. Recommended.

23. The Fortnight in September by R C Sherriff. This is a Persephone book, one of two I got for Christmas. I took my time reading this, because I didn't want it to end, and wanted to absorb every word. I absolutely loved this book. A joy to read from start to finish. Couldn't fault it, just delightful. It tells the story of an ordinary family of dad, mum, and their three children (two teens and a ten year old) taking their annual fortnight's holiday in a rather run down boarding house in Bognor in the 1930s. It looks at their hopes, fears, highs, lows, the minutiae of their lives as their holiday progresses. Nothing much happens, plot wise, but it was nevertheless a page turner for me. I was so absorbed in the everyday lives of the Stevens family. They were all so lovely. I may have trouble finding anything quite as good as this for my next read.

Thanks so much @Terpsichore ! I will look it up.

@Taswama that sounds so interesting. I read a little about Jane Jacobs I believe in The Power Broker, Robert A Caro's book about Robert Moses, who oversaw city planning in New York for decades and took a much more top down approach to neighbourhoods - he loved cars and moved on from some really imaginative public works in the Depression to try and make New York a driver's city. Eg the bridges out to the Long Island beaches were made too low for buses to go under them...

@Stokey I know you've already had some recs for Eleanor of Aquitaine but wanted to add Sharon Penman - I absolutely love her historical novels, and she has a few on the Plantagenets, including Eleanor.

I gave up at Lionheart though, it was far too battle-y (which is really Richard I's fault, not Sharon Penman's, but there we go!)