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?

18: Staring at the Sun - Julian Barnes

I didn’t even know I had this - found it hiding at the end of a tucked-away bookcase. Jean Serjeant grows up as a quiet, unremarkable only child, is a teenager during WW2, marries a policeman, Michael, and after an unhappy childless marriage suddenly produces a son, Gregory, and decides to leave her husband. Many years later, aged almost 100, she lives with Gregory and contemplates the approaching end of her life.

You could say nothing much happens in this short book, but it tackles some profound themes, and Barnes's writing is always a pleasure. I’m interested that he chose to write about a woman, and with great insight and sensitivity (the scenes of Jean's gruesome wedding night with the awful Michael are uncannily like the plotline in Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach - except Barnes was writing some 2 decades earlier, in 1986).

The last third of the book imagines a future 2020 in which everyone consults a giant computer system that gives access to all known facts, which is amusingly prescient, but an extra feature, TAT - The Absolute Truth - is rumoured to be available; Gregory consults this as he wrestles with his doubts over the existence of God and the meaning of death.

It might sound quite rarefied but it struck a deep personal chord with me, as my beloved mum was close to Jean's age, and died in 2020. It mirrored a lot of the questions I’ve found myself agonising over since then and I found myself finishing the last few pages in tears. A tribute to Julian Barnes's skill as a writer of great intelligence and compassion.

I read A Suitable Boy a couple of years ago after watching the TV adaptation. I really enjoyed it but it was a time-consuming read and I have to admit that I never fully got to grips with all the politics.

14. The Bookshop - Penelope Fitzgerald

I read this following recommendations on last year’s thread. Thank you to those who recommended it (and sorry I can’t remember who that was). Whilst it appears to be a gentle story of a widow setting up a bookshop in rural Suffolk in the 1950s there is much more to it - some great writing with some wonderful humour. Really enjoyed it.

IntermittentParps

Are these YA? I love the Edwardian era

Hmm, not sure. The series was published over the years 1967-1981, and I don't think the YA genre existed then. It could be shelved in YA today.

It was what we’d call YA now, Intermittent - there was a very popular TV adaptation (with incredibly catchy, strange theme music). Lots of people are passionately devoted to the memory of that series!

Well then. To the YA shelf it goes!

Thanks for your review of Staring at the Sun Terpsichore. I will look it up. It's rare and amazing when you find a book that strikes a chord with you. I'm sorry for your loss

What does YA stand for please?

Is it Young Adult?

Glad to see all the Mary Stewart appreciation - she was a favourite of my late Mum's. Surprised to see she died in the early 2000s. My favourites are the Merlin books (the first 2 - The Crystal Cave and the Hollow Hills) and the later ones with a touch of the supernatural like Thornyhold and Touch Not the Cat. I have read all my library stocks and am scouring the charity shops. When I was young I also loved The Little Broomstick.

I had a phase of reading Mary Stewart a few years ago and remember that I enjoyed them but have absolutely no recollection of what they were about. Not a glimmer! This is not uncommon.

@Terpsichore

It was what we’d call YA now, Intermittent - there was a very popular TV adaptation (with incredibly catchy, strange theme music). Lots of people are passionately devoted to the memory of that series!

Thank you. I like the sound of them but sometimes YA doesn't hit the spot for me.

Yes, it's Young Adult.

I really enjoyed the first Flambards but never got around to reading the others. Keep hoping to find a set in a charity shop!

I loved Peyton's Pennington books as a teen.

Mary Stewart's Merlin trilogy was brilliant.
Had forgotten Flambards! Loved them as a teenager.
Currently reading Harbour Street by Ann Cleeves (found in a charity shop).
Enjoyed the Shetland series and the series set in North Devon but hadn't read the Vera Stanhope series up until now. This is good. Cleeves doesn't do one- dimensional characters which adds to the intrigue.

Now for something completely different.

18 The Book of Margery Kempe by Margery Kempe

This was a wild ride. It’s apparently the first autobiography in the English language and is quite something. Margery was a mystic and this book – dictated to various scribes – outlines her domestic trials and her somewhat complex marriage, her pilgrimages to the Holy Land, Rome and elsewhere, and her conversations with God. It would be fair to say that Margery, who lived in what was then called Lynn (now King’s Lynn) in the early 1400s, was a “difficult woman”, which was what attracted me to the book after I heard a podcast about her. She really didn’t care about fitting in, and spends a LOT of her time “sobbing loudly” or “crying and sobbing” in public when the Holy Spirit touched her. A lot of her time she’s complaining vociferously about her husband’s unreasonable expectations of sex (she persuaded him into a chaste marriage after her 14th birth) or her travelling companions who get really pissed off with her behaviour when she keeps falling about and wailing.

This obviously isn’t intended to be funny, and it isn’t, particularly, but it was extremely entertaining and not like anything else I’ve read. A particularly entertaining passage is about her being tormented by the devil who spent days showing her images of penises.

Also – fun story – it was largely lost for centuries, and only fragments survived until the full manuscript was discovered in a country house in the 1930s during a house party when apparently some guests went looking for a ping pong ball and found it in a cupboard. The owner wanted to throw it on a fire but one guest suggested taking it to an expert who identified it as the complete manuscript. I learned lots about medieval mysticism, heretics (she was at real risk of being burned at the stake for her views) and pilgrimage and various other things as I meandered through this at a slow pace.

I loved KM Peyton's books as a teenager, particularly Flambards & the Ruth / Pennington books. There's a nice interview with her here

Pepe I have an abridged version of the Margery Kempe book, one of those tiny Penguin books that came in a set of 60, I think, for their anniversary. It sounds entertaining and I love the discovery story.

I completely garbled that. The Kempe book I have is "One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946". I'd be tempted to buy them all but it would feel too much like cheating to buy a whole library of abridged classics.

Pepe, I know you said it isn’t funny, but your description of poor old wailing Margery immediately put me in mind of the woman on the infamous MN thread who asked if she was BU for screaming with emotion when she visited the Sistine Chapel . I seem to remember it embarrassed her DH a lot but she couldn’t see why.

@PurgatoryOfPotholes

I've spent the week reading Flambards The Edge of the Cloud Flambards in Summer Flambards Divided

all by K.M. Peyton.

I decided to try them after seeing that someone else was reading them on the previous thread.

Incredibly atmospheric and made me think of aspects of Edwardian life and the post-WWI era that I'd never before considered. I loved all the exquisite detail.

I have these on my tbra pile (to be read again) I read them when I was a teenager and the TV series was on, and then found some old orange 💕 Penguin copies at the boarding school I work at in the summer (don't know if I've mentioned on these threads but my absolute favourite part of the school is this creaky old corridor which is lined with old wooden bookshelves and rammed with orange Penguins. T'is heaven.

@Terpsichore

Pepe, I know you said it isn’t funny, but your description of poor old wailing Margery immediately put me in mind of the woman on the infamous MN thread who asked if she was BU for screaming with emotion when she visited the Sistine Chapel . I seem to remember it embarrassed her DH a lot but she couldn’t see why.

Marjory sounds like a LOT of MNers tbf, with all the shrieking and wailing.

SOL, yes! I wondered if anyone would pick that up. It's 100% the Sistine Chapel lady, with devil penises.
I do love a random left field book; and this really met the brief.

19. Luster - Raven Leilani. Another disappointing read. The writing felt cold and detached, as if I was being held off at a distance. Edie is rather a sad character, failing at life - one dead end job after another, a string of unhappy and unsatisfactory and often dysfunctional relationships. I've seen reviews comparing it to Queenie by Candice Carty Williams. I loved Queenie, but just couldn't warm to Luster.

Will catch up with reading the thread now. DH & I spent this morning unpacking books and putting them back on the bookcase, so we're getting there, slowly.

Next up, I think, will be Again, Rachel by Marian Keyes.

If anyone wants to know more about Margery Klemperer there's a really good episode of In Our Time about her here

Kempe! Don't know where the mangled surname came from

Pepe, I just read that exact manuscript discovery story in Hidden Hands