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?

22. The Light Between Oceans - M L Stedman

Probably familiar to many of you. Tom, a lighthouse keeper in Australia and his wife, Izzy, decide to claim a baby as their own after it washes up on their lighthouse island in a boat containing a dead man. The repercussions then unfold. This book might be quite marmite but I can see how and why all the key characters made their decisions and enjoyed it.

20. The Fine Art of Invisible Detection - Robert Goddard

This was a nice, quite light detective story. Umiko Wada is an assistant to a private detective in Tokyo. When her employer dies in a hit and run, Umiko takes it upon herself to continue looking into the case that probably led to his murder. This takes her to London and Iceland as she investigates a 1970s cover-up at a UK chemical weapons lab and its consequences up to the present day. A lot happens, none of it too violent or unpleasant, and it comes to a satisfying conclusion.

21. Fall - John Preston

Fascinating and highly recommended biography of Robert Maxwell. In many ways a monster, he nevertheless comes across as a tremendously sad and lonely man who might have done some good in the world. For whatever reason - perhaps a combination of tragic circumstances and a fatally flawed personality - he ended up a terrible husband and father and committing fraud on a massive scale. As a biography I really admired the pace of this, and it also gives quick but effective portraits of other key players, notably Betty Maxwell, who was loyal far beyond wifely requirements. Along the way there are plenty of jaw-dropping details.

@DameHelena I would recommend giving Red Shift a go, it's short book and more what would be termed YA than children's fiction these days. I did read somewhere though that you have to go over it more than once to get the full impact though, I'm pretty sure I had no idea what was going on when I first read it. For example, the Roman soldiers' narrative reads like a script from an American film about the Vietnam war, so it's not immediately obvious that they're Romans. The link between the 3 male protagonists can be confusing but sorts itself out in my mind at least...

@TimeforaGandT . I borrowed that book from a SIL years ago and read 3/4 of it but then stopped as it was too painful. I loved it up to that point but just couldn't cope with the way the plot went with ever hurting so much. I still have the book but have never picked it up again.

@Taswama - I thought it was quite heartbreaking in places but I can see some might find it overwrought.

[quote Taswama]@TimeforaGandT . I borrowed that book from a SIL years ago and read 3/4 of it but then stopped as it was too painful. I loved it up to that point but just couldn't cope with the way the plot went with ever hurting so much. I still have the book but have never picked it up again.[/quote]
Is this in ref to The Light Between Oceans? I've not read it. Sounds a difficult read!

[quote YolandiFuckinVisser]**@DameHelena* I would recommend giving Red Shift* a go, it's short book and more what would be termed YA than children's fiction these days. I did read somewhere though that you have to go over it more than once to get the full impact though, I'm pretty sure I had no idea what was going on when I first read it. For example, the Roman soldiers' narrative reads like a script from an American film about the Vietnam war, so it's not immediately obvious that they're Romans. The link between the 3 male protagonists can be confusing but sorts itself out in my mind at least...[/quote]
Thank you! I am a naturally fast and somewhat careless reader, so it sounds like I'll have to really focus on this. It sounds so interesting.

Red Shift has really lodged itself into my memory. I wouldn't say I totally enjoyed it when I read it as a teenager, but the section about the Roman soldiers made the past so alive and grim and urgent - it undid all the quaintness and tidiness of history as retold to children. I liked eg. Rosemary Sutcliffe, but Red Shift blew her version of Roman Britain to bloody shreds.

Damn my lack of self control. Bought two new books today. In my defence they were from a small indie bookshop and both on the TBR list, but still...

Very virtuous of you to support a small indie bookshop, Roman!

There's a new Rivers of London book out in April along with a new St Mary's book and the next Slough House book is out in May, for any fans of those series wanting to get their library reservations in quickly.

Thanks for the headsup biblio I’ve jumped in the queue for Bad Actors!

10 Unquiet Women by Max Adams

A series of brief stories of women "from the dusk of the Roman Empire to the dawn of the Enlightenment" with what the author describes as "a common thread of restlessness". A reaction to the under-representation of women in the traditional historical narrative.

An easy read, with the cross-references footnoted for you . Can dip in and out of. Mostly, but not entirely, Western Classical and European. Lots of talk about crafts and survival of fabrics. Some familiar places and people, some I had little previous awareness of. (And my copy has a pretty and posh-feeling dustjacket.) I would definitely recommend this book.

Fortuna, I agree with your review of The Paper Palace on the Women's Prize longlist. The treatment of sexual abuse just didn't seem nuanced or sensitive enough.

I'm reading the whole longlist via my library too. I'm old-fashioned and don't like audiobooks or Kindle, so I've reserved all the hard copies. I've been able to request 15 of the 16 books (Salt Lick by Allison Lulu seems to be out of print?). It's a bit of a nail-biter to see whether the books all come in at once, because obviously I can't read them all at once! But so far it's working better than last year, when normal library deadlines had been removed due to Covid, and I just couldn't get hold of the books I'd reserved because people weren't returning them.

My next few Women's Prize reviews, two books I liked much more than The Paper Palace:

11. Remote Sympathy, Catherine Chidgey 4/5
    Women’s Prize longlist. It’s hard to write a novel that says something new about the Holocaust, but New Zealand novelist Chidgey succeeds breathtakingly well with this book. She knows German and reportedly consulted 6,000+ pages of archival documents in order to write the novel. The story focuses on Buchenwald, but more specifically on the ‘respectable’ German officials and their families who ran the camp. I didn’t know, for example, that Buchenwald was so close to Weimar, a town beloved of Goethe and Schiller. The novel is narrated in different voices (a German officer, his young wife, a part-Jewish doctor, the collective citizens of Weimar) and at first I found it unbelievable that the Germans could be so nonchalant about the horrors that were being perpetrated under their watch. However, I gradually came to think of it as an example of what Hannah Arendt calls the banality of evil: the fact that the people who carried out the atrocities of the Holocaust did not seem to emerge as psychopaths, but as ordinary people who somehow convinced themselves that what they were doing was all right. This chillingly effortless self-exculpation is what Chidgey’s novel brings to the fore. If I were to make one criticism of this excellent novel, it would be to say (on a literary level) that the different voices of the novel don’t seem to me to be as different as they could be in terms of their prose style. But I am very glad to have read this, and I will certainly seek out more of Chidgey’s work.

12. The Final Revival of Opal and Nev, Dawnie Walton 4/5
    I know next to nothing about pop music, so music lovers will probably be even more impressed by this novel than I was. But I was thoroughly engaged by the novel’s inventive style (a mock ‘oral history’ where a young music journalist lets her interviewees speak for themselves). The story is engaging, and the depictions of race in the US from the 1970s onward ring true. (My white American mother, from the South, was keen to impress on us kids that the Confederate flag was a symbol to be proud of and one that had nothing to do with slavery.) The Black heroine Opal emerges in the novel as an increasingly complex and endearing figure. And the second half of the novel moves much more quickly than the first. I can see why this was one of Obama’s books of the year.

Thanks for the St Mary's and Rivers of London tips @bibliomania - I really enjoy St Mary's (and the Time Police spin offs), Rivers of London I lost track of a couple of books ago but still a good read. The author does a lot on Twitter, asks some very specific questions for his research and posts some interesting bits and pieces!

We have a lovely little bookshop near us @RomanMum, unfortunately it's not very practical to visit when you have two small, boisterous boys to control but I do support them online

I think I spoke too soon about DTS1 being better when he's back in his school routine @LadybirdDaphne as he had three enormous meltdowns yesterday

The Gifts is in the Kindle deal today. The Guardian gave it a great review, if I remember correctly. Worth a pint if you liked The Essex Serpent it seems.

@merryhouse

10 Unquiet Women by Max Adams

A series of brief stories of women "from the dusk of the Roman Empire to the dawn of the Enlightenment" with what the author describes as "a common thread of restlessness". A reaction to the under-representation of women in the traditional historical narrative.

An easy read, with the cross-references footnoted for you . Can dip in and out of. Mostly, but not entirely, Western Classical and European. Lots of talk about crafts and survival of fabrics. Some familiar places and people, some I had little previous awareness of. (And my copy has a pretty and posh-feeling dustjacket.) I would definitely recommend this book.

Sounds great!

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

The Gifts is in the Kindle deal today. The Guardian gave it a great review, if I remember correctly. Worth a pint if you liked The Essex Serpent it seems.

By Jennifer Saint, you mean? Looks interesting.

How do you all have the patience to go through the Kindle deals? I find there's so much dross I just skim/give up, and probably miss some gems!

26. The Mystery of the Blue Train - Agatha Christie. Another Poirot novel. This one was one I hadn't read before, so didn't know who the murderer was. I actually enjoyed this one a lot. The action takes place on the Blue Train, a train transporting the wealthy down to the Riviera for their luxurious holidays in their villas. There's jewels, affairs, subterfuge, shady characters, murder - pretty much standard for any Christie novel. It was a lot of fun and just what I needed. My exhausted brain needs gentle books that don't require much effort right now.

Cassandre I'm pleased to hear Remote Sympathy is good as I've got that to look forward to next. I'm reading This Ones Sky Day at the moment and struggling a little. More magic.

Last year the list was broadly excellent. This year 50% through and I am largely disappointed. They haven't been terrible, but very little has stood out.

Agree Salt Lick was a nuisance to find. My library heavily promotes the prize but fails to stock most of the books.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

The Gifts is in the Kindle deal today. The Guardian gave it a great review, if I remember correctly. Worth a pint if you liked The Essex Serpent it seems.

Looks interesting, but who do I have to buy a pint for to get it?

You can buy one for me, Ladybird.

Re Kindle Deal dross, Dame, the daily deal is only 5 or 6 books, so it only takes a quick glance. The monthly deals take more patience, but the blast of serotonin when I find a book I want seems to be enough to keep me scrolling.

37. Alive, Alive Oh! - Diana Athill
Her final book, a collection of short pieces. As ever, she comes across as honest and wise, and writes so beautifully about anything I would read her shopping lists. (TW: the title piece has a graphic description of her near-death from a miscarriage.)
If you haven’t read her before, I would start with Stet her memoir of her career in publishing, or Yesterday Morning about her childhood.

38. The Seventh Raven - Peter Dickinson
Re-read of a brilliant YA thriller, published in 1981. Doll, the 17-year-old narrator, leads a very comfortable upper-middle class life in West London. She is helping out with the annual children’s opera, organised by her mother (a thwarted professional cellist) and others. One of the participants, Juan, is the son of the ambassador from a fictitious South American country, ruled by a brutal dictator, with US backing. At the dress rehearsal, after a botched attempt to kidnap Juan, the entire cast and crew are held hostage by revolutionaries in a church (the opera venue). Nuanced characterisation, moral ambiguity, clever links between the main plot and the plot of the opera: all the things the much over-praised Three Hours doesn’t have. The only false note is that the most ruthless revolutionary is the one who speaks the least English and has the least European ancestry (it’s not racist, but unfortunate).

@bibliomania

You can buy one for me, Ladybird.

Re Kindle Deal dross, Dame, the daily deal is only 5 or 6 books, so it only takes a quick glance. The monthly deals take more patience, but the blast of serotonin when I find a book I want seems to be enough to keep me scrolling.

Oh, thank you; I hadn't realised the distinction!

I can't believe how fast you read, Fortuna! I agree about this year's Women's Prize longlist. I suppose the list really depends on what kind of book the judges like, and I have the impression that this year the judges and I don't really like the same sort of book. They've gone for some pretty obscure choices.

I'm also impressed with your web of library connections! I live fairly close to the county library, and their system lets you reserve books from all the smaller local libraries in the area, which is good, but I never thought of branching out to other library systems... Reservations are now £1.30 a book, but I don't really mind, as it's less than the cost of a coffee, and I'm supporting the library which is a good cause.

ChannelLightVessel, I haven't read Candide since I was an undergraduate -- and I didn't really like it then, I think I found the satire too biting. 'Il faut cultiver notre jardin' is a brilliant conclusion though.

If you're reading 18th c lit, have you ever read Dangerous Liaisons? It's rather long but such a brilliant book. The different voices and the intricate social network forged by the letters of different characters are extraordinary.

I'm currently reading Le Pays des autres / The Country of Others by Leila Slimani. She's being interviewed tonight (in French) at the Maison Francaise d'Oxford at 5 pm, and they're going to livestream the event on their facebook page, so I might try to tune in, even though I don't think I will have finished the book by then.

I've never read Dangerous Liaisons, but I love the film with John Malkovich.