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

9. Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo
A novel in verse, we move between the perspectives of two teenage girls as their lives are changed forever by a plane crash. One lives in New York, the other in Dominican Republic, and both have to wrestle with their feelings about a family member who was on board the plane and the family secrets that came to light in the aftermath.
I found the Dominican Republic setting really interesting, not a place I had ever read about before and it made me want to know more. The New York setting centres on a community of migrants from the Dominican Republic which was also unfamiliar to me. I also liked the way that the author included Spanish words and phrases through her writing - you don't have to understand them to get the meaning, but again it made me wish I knew more.

10. The Defence by Steve Cavanagh
The first in a series about New York con man turned lawyer Eddie Flynn. In this novel, Eddie is held against his will and forced to represent a Russian gang leader who is due to go on trial for arranging a murder. Eddie must figure out what is going on and quickly in order to save his own life and that of his young daughter.
Not my usual reading, but this was short and fast paced with a straightforward timeline. The plot is pretty daft, but I enjoyed this as a change from other recent reads and would continue further into the series when I feel like it's time for another legal thriller.

11. Run, Rose, Run by James Patterson and Dolly Parton
I was excited to get this new release on audio through my library's BorrowBox. Annie-Lee Keyes flees Texas, hoping never to return, and heads to Nashville with no money, contacts or accomodation. She blags her way into playing guitar and singing in a bar, wowing the audience with her performance of songs she had written herself. Guitarist Ethan Blake is in the audience and he brings Annie-Lee's talent to the attention of Ruth-Anna Rider, a now retired country music legend who wants to help Annie-Lee to move into the industry. Anni-Lee's past is hazy though, and although she seems to be in danger, she refuses to reveal her secrets.
You know when you start to read a book and it grows on you the further into it you get? I felt the opposite about this!
At first, I got exactly what I was expecting - a straightforward structure, easy to follow writing, enjoyable narration (Dolly herself narrates Ruth-Anna Rider), slightly stereotyped characters and a few country music references. When Annie-Lee arrives in Nashville, she has a mix of brazen fake-it-til-you-make-it confidence and worrying afterwards that she has said or done the wrong thing, which I could relate to. As I moved through the middle of the book though, I started to feel like it was flagging a bit and could have done with being shorter/picking up the pace a bit/feeding us some more crumbs of where it was going. Listened to the ending this morning and it felt rushed, and I was a bit frustrated with the authors' choice of who we followed through parts of the conclusion. Knowing the ending, I think I am less convinced by the rest of the novel (if that makes sense, trying not to give spoilers).
There's an album of songs to accompany this and I heard someone recently say that they could see it being made into a film with the same songs as the soundtrack - I could definitely picture that film as I was reading, and would probably go to see it.

Sending love, @eitak22

@eitak22 Comfort reading is the way to go. Switches you off for a while.

The Gifts by Liz Hyder
I really enjoyed this. It felt a bit creative writing degree in places and got a bit melodramatic towards the end, but I found it entertaining and gripping. Worth a shot if you liked The Essex Serpent or An Almond for a Parrot.

Thanks for the kind thoughts. Comfort reading is exactly what I'm doing and it's definitely helping.

I know there are some teachers on this thread, any recommendations for books on behaviour management?

1. Tears of a giraffe Alexander Mccall Smith. Second in the North ladies detective agency series - easy to read and light detective story. Always find them heartwarming and this one has a sweet ending.

1. The instant by Amy Liptrot

A woman move to Berlin and details her life and loves there including her social media use and nature.

I loved this book. I read it on Libby but may buy a copy with some Waterstones vouchers as it's a beautiful book inside and out. It was interesting to read a book where the internet was included. It made me want to go to Berlin.

I'm currently reading hidden figures for book club which is definitely a rare case of the film being better than the book.

Can anyone recommend anything similar to Amy Liptrot to get me out of my reading slump? Thanks

25: Blitz Spirit: Voices of Britain Living Through Crisis - Ed. Becky Brown

A selection from the Mass Observation archive, tracing events from 1939 -1945. I've read many of these MO anthologies and they never fail to fascinate. I recognised a couple of the anonymised writers ('Maggie Joy Blunt' stood out at once) from previous books, notably Simon Garfield's Our Hidden Lives. The startling thing was that so many of the events and feelings discussed in the diaries mirrored exactly what's happening now with the war in Ukraine....it’s sadly true that history is doomed to repeat itself.

On a side-note, the Mass Observation project, founded in 1937, is still active, and still asks its members to write several times a year on a series of chosen topics. I’m one of the respondents, and the most recent directive is asking us to write (amongst other things) about the Second World War, and how we came to learn about it. I keep putting off sitting down to write it because the topic is just so huge, it’s virtually unanswerable....

eitak22

Finished Casting Off, Elizabeth Jane Howard. Always lovely to return to the Cazalets and their family and friends. This seemed a darker and more difficult affair than some of the others; the war is over but life is different and harder. The 'children' have grown up and are having to deal with adulthood; the adults are getting older and illness, death, relationship woes and money and lifestyle troubles (there are no servants to be had!) are encroaching.
I enjoyed it overall and am looking forward to reading the last one, as well as being sad that it will be all over. I'd say the end is slightly weak though; I know the author often shows the same events from different characters' POV, and usually it's interesting, but the long Archie section at the end felt a bit too much like just a rehash of things we already knew. I didn't feel that it brought him more to life or added much to or about him, either, which is a pity as he's a great character.

Started The Heather Blazing, Colm Toibín. His second novel. I love the quietness of his writing and the vividness of his settings (coastal Ireland here).

Have also just bought some Amazon Kindle bargains: Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights, The Covent Garden Ladies and Royal Witches: From Joan of Navarre to Elizabeth Woodville

Terpsichore, I was professionally involved with Blitz Spirit (no I'm not Becky Brown ) and loved working on it. It is fascinating, both the events/scenarios and the matter-of-fact way people write about them.

How great that you're a Mass Observation respondent. I guess some day you will appear in one of their anthologies yourself

That’s fascinating to hear, DameHelena - it must have been such an interesting thing to work on. I’d love to be able to browse in the MO archive.

It is slightly daunting to think of things you’ve written appearing in publications (especially as you’re encouraged to be frank, and some of the directives can be pretty personal), but everyone is anonymised, and you can’t use real names or any identifying info, so nobody should find out who you really are...well, not until after you're safely dead, I suppose.

@Terpsichore

That’s fascinating to hear, DameHelena - it must have been such an interesting thing to work on. I’d love to be able to browse in the MO archive.

It is slightly daunting to think of things you’ve written appearing in publications (especially as you’re encouraged to be frank, and some of the directives can be pretty personal), but everyone is anonymised, and you can’t use real names or any identifying info, so nobody should find out who you really are...well, not until after you're safely dead, I suppose.

It is, really interesting. I didn't know it was still going until I worked on it actually.

Yes, I'm sure you'll be safely anonymised. And think of what you're adding to posterity

Terpsichore I’m fascinated to read that MO is still going - I had no idea! I thought it was just during the 49s/50s.

I read Nella Last’s War and its sequels last year which are all extracts from her MO submissions and they were really interesting so will look out the Blitz book.

I'm sorry for your loss, eitak. Glad that reading at least is giving you some comfort. I am looking for similar reads for a friend who's had some terrible family news recently, so will take notes from this thread.

25 The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazlewood
This was comfort reading of a sort - I'm not a big reader of romantic fiction but have dabbled recently and DD recommended this. It was fun, and cute, and had all the romantic fiction tropes while playing on them to a degree. Olive is a PhD student in a fake relationship with a senior faculty member. She's dorky but doesn't realise she's beautiful, he's gorgeous and grumpy with a heart of gold, etc etc. It was just the right side of entirely predictable to keep me entertained.

26 On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder

Bit of a change of pace - 20 short (very short) lessons on what to do in the face of creeping authoritarianism. The message is that everyone can play a part even in small ways and that it's our moral duty to do so. It's not about protesting against specific laws and signing petitions as much as it is about protecting democracy through the actions we take or don't take. Even seemingly small things - being mindful of language and how it can be changed in ways that harm us all, or fact checking what we read - can all make a difference.

I feel increasingly uncomfortable with some of what I am witnessing and have been wondering what to do about it and as a starter manual this is good. It's highly accessible and packs a real punch, I think for teenagers in particular it's interesting - I see the teens I know being very comfortable protesting or petitioning for change etc but much less aware of how the institutions and systems around them are being eroded.

This clearly appeals to those of a particular mindset, but it did make me feel somewhat less powerless. I know his use of history has been criticised by some reviewers for being somewhat partial and biased but I mostly skimmed through the historical examples, which I think don't contribute that much.

Unsettled Ground Claire Fuller. I finished this but nearly abandoned half way through...very depressing and sad story with not much to redeem it. Well written and characters were well formed bit it was all a bit unrelenting doom...I'm leaning towards novels where I learn as I read, whether that is history, place, occupation etc, but this was just a story, and a sad one at that.

Just finished The Year Without Summer , Guinevere Glasfurd's HWA shortlisted novel about the 1815 volcanic explosion of Tambora and its far reaching climatic and social consequences.At first a little too bitty, it does come together well. It is genuinely sad and fascinating how much this example of climate change really affected everything . She includes Mary Shelley and John Constable in her six voices. These are probably less involving than the stories of ordinary people.

Earlier on in this thread I recommended an episode of 'In Our Time' about Margery Kempe. Having read your review Pepe I'm going to recommend another episode about the year without a summer which I found fascinating. It was first broadcast in 2016 so I wonder if this author listened to it?

Sorry- I should have tagged Piggywaspushed

Finished a couple of audiobooks I'd been avoiding:

20. Wordslut: a feminist guide to taking back the English language - Amanda Montell

If feminism for you means robbing the word 'woman' of all meaningful content and using the names of female parts to refer to male genitalia, knock yourself out.

21. Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? - Frans de Waal

This was infinitely better, but narrated in one of the most tedious monotone voices I've come across on Audible. De Waal is an eminent primatologist who argues for making tests of animal cognition relevant and specific to the species involved. For example, chimps did not do well on facial recognition tests when they were presented with human faces, but did brilliantly when seeing faces of their own kind. (The issue of whether intelligent animals should be kept in captivity to do such tests at all is not really addressed )

I know there were some comments from people who had read The Lightkeepers and enjoyed the lighthousey bits more than the plot. If that was you, then you might want to check one of today's 99p kindle deals which is a book all about lighthouses built on rocks.

From the blurb: Seashaken Houses is a lyrical exploration of these magnificent, isolated sentinels, the ingenuity of those who conceived them, the people who risked their lives building and rebuilding them, those that inhabited their circular rooms, and the ways in which we value emblems of our history in a changing world.

@VikingNorthUtsire
I came on to mention Seashaken Houses. I bought it in book form a while back. It's good. Nice for dipping into.

@BadlydoneHelen

Sorry- I should have tagged Piggywaspushed

Thanks Helen! Sounds interesting.

@BadlydoneHelen and other fans of In Our Time, have you seen this? Someone has indexed all of the episodes using the Dewey Decimal system

feelinglistless.blogspot.com/2022/02/cataloguing-bbc-radio-4s-in-our-time.html?m=1

@ChannelLightVessel thank you for your Seventh Raven review. I loved the book as a child but failed to pick up on most of the nuances. I would like to read it again - will check the local library.

I did think Three Hours made some interesting points about radicalisation and Macbeth, although they certainly weren't subtle!

14. The Covent Garden Ladies: Pimp General Jack and the Extraordinary Story of Harris's List by Hallie Rubenhold

Non-fiction following three people and their interactions with the sex trade in eighteenth century Covent Garden. Charlotte Hayes, a prostitute turned procuress who ran several exclusive and successful brothels throughout London. Sam Derrick, would-be Irish poet whose one great literary success was as the secret author of Harris's List. John Harrison aka Jack Harris, a successful waiter-pimp who lent his name to Derrick's publication. Harris's List was like a yellow pages of prostitutes. It was published every year for 38 years. The book follows the three characters throughout their lives, chronicling their highs and lows, including stints in prison, homelessness and disinheritance and how their fates were intrinsically linked to each other and to the List

This was a re-read of a book I've read many times. I was introduced to the book when my dissertation advisor lent me his copy whilst I was writing my dissertation on the eighteenth century sex trade and I subsequently bought a copy for myself. I know many people in this thread have read The Five by the same author. Hallie Rubenhold is a fantastic writer of non-fiction. Her style is informal, light and easy to read. You don't ever feel bogged down in her books.

Enjoyed The Covent Garden Ladies many years ago. I still haven't managed to get through more than a few pages of The Five though.

eitak22, I'm so sorry for your loss.

I'm doing a bit of a review dump (some of these books I read in February!).

12. The Wreath, Sigrid Undset, trans. by Tina Nunnally 4/5
    It took me ages to finish this book, maybe because I was in bed with Covid at the time. I have mixed feelings about it, but will definitely read the rest of the trilogy. The setting (14th c Norway) is historically interesting, and the prose is appealingly minimalist and lucid. However there’s an earnestness to it all that made the story feel heavy to me at times (many medieval texts are full of humour, obscenity even, but not this novel!). The life of the author herself seems fascinating. The daughter of a medieval archaeologist, she converted to Christianity as an adult. She had a daughter with severe learning disabilities, and supported charities for disabled children. However, she distanced herself from feminism and the women’s movement. She fled Norway when the Nazis invaded, and returned after the war. All in all, I became almost more interested in her biography than in the story of her heroine Kristin Lavransdatter. But I do look forward to seeing what happens to Kristin as well!

13. Tales from Earthsea, Ursula Le Guin 4/5
    I read this during the stress of term time and it was very soothing. I love Le Guin’s Earthsea books. This book was published in 2001, so substantially later than the first volumes in the series, and her approach in many of the stories is quite explicitly feminist (even though women play a starring role in The Tombs of Atuan and Tehanu as well).

14. Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan 5/5
    I absolutely loved this novella. (Why was it not on the Women’s Prize longlist?) It’s set in mid-1980s Ireland, the story of a coal merchant with a family of daughters who lives close to one of the infamous Magdalen laundries. He is himself the son of an unwed mother, and he sometimes lies awake at night worrying about ‘small things’, like a hungry kid he’s seen on the street. Essentially, it’s a book about ethical choices: how far would you go to help someone in trouble, when church and state are telling you that there’s nothing to worry about? The story is all the more powerful for being so understated. I will buy this and reread it when it comes out in paperback.

15. The Fell, Sarah Moss 4/5
    I always like Moss’s novels and this one was no exception. However, I found it hard to read at times, at it evokes lockdown anxiety – lockdown desperation, even – almost too well. It also made me angry all over again at Boris and the Tories, who were partying away while the rest of the nation were angsting over whether it was OK to venture outdoors for a solitary walk. Quite frankly, fuck them. The portrait of the teenage boy in this novel is also particularly well done.

16. Le Pays des autres [The Country of Others], Leila Slimani 4/5
    This was a great read – thank you, @JaninaDuszejko! It’s a family saga set in post WW2 Morocco. I loved the themes of cultural hybridity and motherhood. The story of the heroine Mathilde is based on Slimani’s French grandmother, Anne Dhobb (now deceased) who left her native Alsace to marry an Arab man and settle on the outskirts of the city of Meknes. Her daughter Aïsha is also a great character, a timid but ferociously clever child pushed against her will into a colonial Catholic school. On the other hand the book felt a little sensationalist to me at points (there’s a passage toward the end where domestic abuse is followed by intense consensual sex, ugh. Slimani likes to shock her readers). And although Slimani herself is French-Moroccan, the story seems to embrace the French point of view more than the Arab one. Many of the most sympathetic characters of the novel are white; the native Moroccan characters (for me anyway) emerge as more other. This is the first volume of a trilogy and the second volume has just come out in France. I hadn’t realised until recently quite how famous Slimani is in France; Macron has given her a special role as French cultural ambassador, and the new book Regardez-nous danser / Watch Us Dance is being advertised all over Paris, on bus stop posters and so on. Incidentally, I was interested to read that Anne Dhobb (the historical counterpart to Mathilde) wrote her own memoir of life in Morocco. However, it seems to be out of print. I wonder how much Slimani drew on her grandmother’s memoir to write her own fictional account.