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?

I read A Suitable Boy when it first came out and adored it. It took me months to read, I was in the first year of my PhD so busy getting to know lots of new people and the characters felt as much part of my new life as my real friends. I was bereft when I finished it. But it's a long book and if you're not in the mood for it now don't force yourself to read it.

12. The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett

I enjoy Ann Patchett's fiction and bought all her books (well, the ones I'd not already read) in a Kindle Big Deal last year. I think this is one of my favourites. It's the story of Sabine who (no spoilers! - this all happens right at the start) is the wife and assistant of Parsifal, the titular magician. But it's not quite that straightforward because Parsifal is gay and he and his partner, Phan, have both died of AIDS by the start of the novel. Sabine, who has always loved Parsifal, but has always (knowingly) been the third wheel in his relationship with Phan, is devastated. As she deals with the aftermath of his death, she slowly uncovers information she had never known about his life before he came to Los Angeles and met her. This leads her to Nebraska and yet more revelations.

This is a gentle book; nothing terribly dramatic happens and it reminded me a little of Anne Tyler (no bad thing). I think I liked it because there is a lot of love in there; the characters are well-formed and likeable and if the ending is perhaps a tad unrealistic, you forgive Patchett because it's the ending you want. I could happily have stayed longer in Sabine's world.

I'm reading a suitable boy slowly over the year (two parts a month) and an really enjoying it so far. I've found it easy to dip in and out of and keep track of all the characters.

Well done LittleDiaries, I can't imagine trying to move house in that storm.
And hello to magimedi, so glad things are coming together for you in France and you're surrounded by family again I hope you find the perfect home and jump back into the thread soon.

highlandcoo I probably won't be wearing an Austen dress but I do like the idea of that. Unfortunately my draughty old barn is a bit chilly at this time of year for floaty dresses

chessie I do think of that book everytime I think about buying the chaise longue. But fortunately mine is not Victorian 😂

We lost power in the storm at midday yesterday so I had to abandon my Kindle book as have no idea where my Kindle is and didn't want to run down the battery on my phone using the app so I switched to a paper book so now have two on the go at once, which I generally try to avoid

A Suitable Boy was one of my mum's favourites. She had three copies - & I now have her 3 volume paperback, plus her Kindle edition from my dad's library, but I can't quite bring myself to read it in case I don't like it.

She did specialise in loooong books though - she was a massive Trollope fan as well.

1. Paper towns by John Green

High school boy reconnects with his childhood friend who he has a crush on and then she disappears. Started off well but became dull. Female characters not well written. A rare case of the film being better.

1. Conversations on love by Natasha Lynn

Writer interviews authors about relationships and friendships. I really enjoyed this. It's the kind of book I wish I could have read ten years ago as I feel I know most of this now. Good to have my personal experiences confirmed though.

1. Call me by your name by Andre Aciman

A man looks back on his first intense relationship when he was a teenager in Italy one summer. It was well written and he does capture youthful infatuation but my main take away was how grim teenage boys are.

PepeLePew I loved Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine. Asta’s Book was my favourite. One of my favourite authors and I think I need to revisit.

Thanks for the new thread @southeastdweller
@Cassandre- hope you are well and truly recovered now.
@satelliteheart- how wonderful! Enjoy your chaise-longue!
@LittleDiaries- welcome to your new home!
@magimedi- lovely to "see" you. Hope you are well.

Catching up with the last one still...

I read The Handmaid's Tale in (iirc) about 1992 and just didn't like it. For such an important piece of writing I know that's a very superficial comment, but it is what it is. I think I perhaps read it at the wrong moment of my life (the same can be said of Marilyn French's The Women's Room which I also loathed. I very probably need to revisit both. Dd has read THT and The Testaments and I think watched the series, but I doubt I ever will. I also read Behind the Scenes at the museum about 20 years ago and remember not hating it as much as I thought I would, but it's not induced me to read any other KA

@noodlezoodle- my favourite diaries are Tony Benn and Alistair Campbell. The former is definitely more heavyweight, whilst AC is a lot more entertaining than he ever wanted to be. He was bloody brilliant on a Mumsnet webchat years ago as well.

Re: Terry Pratchett- only ever tried one. Failed after about 20 pages. It was a book club thing where we all had to gift another person one of our favourite books. I got the Pratchett, my recipient got Testament of Youth (and hated it) I think as @StColumbofNavron says, it's not him, it's not them, it's just me and not my genre. Which brings me nicely to @IntermittentParps- Testament of Youth is possibly my favourite book in the world and I've read it a lot. I first read it in my CND secretary/writing my dissertation on Military Service days in the late 80s and it rocked my world. I still have lengthy passages from it committed to memory. I've never watched the adaptation (there was a series in the 80s or 90s if I recall, and then the more recent film) and thanks @JaninaDuszejko- I shan't bother certainly with the latter now! I suppose the producers thought a love story would get more bums on seats than dreadful and unnecessary deaths in the trenches. (EDIT: @Terpsichore- thanks for heads-up about YT and the series- I shall pick that up at some point!)

@YolandiFuckinVisser- love the Stan Barstow trilogy. Have still got the last one The Right True End on my TBR pile, though oddly, looking for it this morning, I can't find it. I know it's somewhere though. I find these "kitchen sink" dramas strangely relaxing, even when the characters are struggling through lives of not so quiet desperation. I suppose that, although I'm a bit young (b1965) to actually remember the 60s that is depicted in most of them, what I do remember is my parents and grandparents talking about it.

Iain Banks- love both The Crow Road and Espedair Street. Haven't read any others, and won't be going down the Iain M route any time soon. I'd forgotten there was a Crow Road series, I'd just moved abroad when it came out I think. I'd like to see it- might try and find it somewhere.

@RomanMum- I'm ashamed to say I have an entire shelf of those "mummy-lit" drivel books. The Slummy ones I seem to remember being some of the worst, on a shelf where the bar was set very low to begin with.

@PepeLePew- I love Barbara Vine/Ruth Rendell- I remember a Dark Adapted Eye being a TV drama- early 90s possibly. I can heartily recommend A Fatal Inversion- also dramatised at around the same time.

Books added to my wishlist thanks to the last few pages:
The Life of Stuff
The Lighthouse Witches
What to read next
Into the Silence

Dd has received her first "surprise" book from the Mr. B emporium. So beautifully packaged, almost a shame to open. I must admit, when she did, my heart sank as it seems to maybe be a "the IT expert's daughter who lived in Chatsworth street and went up the stairs that looked menacing and possibly like there was a rip in the time-vortex at the top" YA sort of thing. It's called The Watchmaker of Filigree Street. She may like it, but it's my fault I guess if she doesn't, as I filled in the questionnaire thingy.

Anyhow- my short list (and a memo to self to catch up with these threads more often- I've just checked and I'm currently managing to post twice per thread!)

1. Ramble Book Adam Buxton
2. Enigma- Robert Harris
3. Christmas Chronicles -Nigel Slater (as ever in January!)
4. 112263 Stephen King
5. A Place of Execution Val Mc
6. Howard's End is on the Landing- Susan Hill.

I chuntered enough about 4 and 6 as I was reading them, so won't repeat myself here.

Currently reading Hidden Killers Lynda La Plante (Tennison 2) Just wanted a quick police procedural and that's what I'm getting. No complaints to trades descriptions with this one.

Dipping in and out of Winter by Karl Ove Knausgaard, a lovely series of essay/observations addressed to his unborn daughter. Rather reminiscent of Kathleen Jamie and just as pleasant.

I'll shuddurp now or you'll be thinking I'm Stephen King and JK's lovechild in my "needs editing" phase.

@SOLINVICTUS your last comment made me 😁.

Just off to clear up after the storm, I think we got off lightly. In other news DH read a book! It's one on my TBR list so I'll report back his views when I get to it.

SOLINVICTUS 🤣 loved your long post!
And I'm one of the few 50 Bookers who completely agreed with your 'chuntering' about 112263, it certainly went on a bit didn't it!

ta for thread south

5 Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

I enjoyed this. It was easy to read, even given that there were Descriptions of Battles - they are either on screen or in a confined built space so my particular Patrick's Sausages problem is surmountable.

I still (and despite the snarky remarks of the Introduction) think the ages were off. If Ender had been ten at the start it would have been much more believable. I'm not convinced OSC has met many six-year-olds. And on the subject of age, the maths around Ender's existence doesn't add up.

Various other quibbles, none significant. A decent construct, well-realised. At one point I started to think it was going down the Starship Troopers route so it was interesting that it went in a totally different direction. The ending definitely felt like an epilogue. Glad I read it, will almost certainly read the sequel at some point but probably not the rest of the series.

@SOLINVICTUS I seem to remember The Watchmaker of Filigree Street being OK - it's a bit steampunk-lite, but a fun enough read. How old is your dd?

@merryhouse I want to know what the Patrick's Sausages problem is now!

The kindle version of The Madness of Grief,** which a few people have read and liked recently, is currently 99p.

Oh, I really liked Watchmaker and if it’s meant to be YA that was lost on me
I thought the writing of dialogue/conversation particularly was extremely realistic and convincing, and I love the characters. I fell in love with Katsu the mechanical octopus too 😍 There’s a follow-up, The Lost Future of Pepperharrow, which I liked less in some ways ( I think it needs more suspension of disbelief); but some of the settings and events turn out to have been based on RL, which I found jaw-dropping as they’re quite brutal. And not to spoiler it, but a central relationship that is also in the first book is expanded on and explored in a way I found very beautiful and moving.

On A Suitable Boy, I’d say immerse yourself in it, pay attention to/enjoy the slightly ironic authorial voice, and approach the characters as if they were family. I adore it and although I read it years ago, they all still live in my heart.

I don't know how I managed to leave thus off my list and I've already reviewed it on here, but I'm actually on ten, not nine!

10. The Seven Husbands Of Evelyn Hugo - Taylor Jenkins Reid

@Sadik I have a tendency to skim read technical stuff. Georgette Heyer's research for An Infamous Army was totally wasted on me - I ended the book vaguely aware that there was a farmhouse involved somewhere. With the Patrick O'Brian novels (and the Alexander Kent series twenty years earlier) huge swathes of text feature in my brain as "they pulled the ropes and the sails moved and then they had a fight."

I have named this Patrick's Sausages after the scene in Steven Moffat's Coupling. For those who haven't seen it: for humorous and plot reasons, a flashback scene is shown to us twice, once from Sally's/Susan's point of view and once from Patrick's. The women are making small talk, and Susan says "fabulous spread! look, quails eggs - vol au vents - [something else fancy I can't remember]" - and Patrick, attempting to insert himself in the conversation, contributes "sausages". When we see the scene from Patrick's memory Susan's list is "fabulous spread! sausages - sausages - sausages -"

As an avid reader (at least when I can find the time!), I am definitely in 😄 hopefully it will also help me out of a little reading slump as I’ve been struggling to get into a variety of genres recently!

6. F**cked at 40 - Tova Leigh
*
I have given this book 4 stars as I really enjoyed Tova and her perspective of life. Tova is a mum of 3 and married to Mike. After a health scare she went through a midlife crisis and has basically changed her perspective on life. Tova makes some really good points about the way we view ourselves and what we settle for in life. It has given me some food for thought that's for sure. I won't be entertaining an open married but I may invest in a few sex toys 🤣

@IntermittentParps, @sadik -oh good! DD is 18 and I was worrying the cover made it look YA as opposed to adult iyswim? Plus I'd listed His Dark Materials as some of her favourites. Hopefully she'll like it.

Thank you for the new thread South.

16. Still Life by Sarah Winman. I hadn't heard of this until several of you (@LethargeMarg and @emgee I think?) recommended it on the first thread this year - I loved it! Although it was a slow start, and the lack of speech marks annoyed me at first, once Ullyses Temper turned up, I was hooked. A lovely long, slow, mainly happy story.

merryhouse loved Coupling, think that episode is brilliant, so so clever all of it.

Thank you @southeastdweller for the thread :)

First disappointment of the year for me, which would have been a DNF if it had been any longer...

14. The Atom Station - Haldor Laxness

The Icelandic author won the Nobel Prize for literature, and this was a Backlisted recommendation, but I couldn't find anything to enjoy about it at all. There is a wafer-thin storyline (country girl goes to work as a housemaid in Reykjavik and has a few limp love affairs), some random supporting characters and various references to Icelandic politics and sagas which might have made it make more sense if I had any knowledge of.

14. The Door into Summer by Robert A Heinlein

I'm in a bit of a quandary about this near-future sci-fi tale of cryo-sleep and time travel. On the one hand I really enjoyed the story of an engineer who takes the cold sleep and wakes up 30 years later in the year 2000, and found the relationship between the main character and his cat, both funny and endearing. The patronising attitudes to women, I can just about get past with a roll of my eyes, I mean this was written in 1957, but there was some borderline creepy stuff that's spoiling my enjoyment a bit.