50 Books Challenge 2022 Part Four

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the fourth thread of the 50 Books 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.

The first thread of the year is here, the second one here and the third one here.

What are you reading?

18 Small Pleasures Claire Chambers
This has been reviewed on these threads a few times already. I quite enjoyed, but didn’t love, this. Intriguing premise and I was interested enough to want to see how the story worked out, though I suspected what the answer to the ‘mystery’ would be because how could it have been anything else. It irritated me how that didn’t seem to occur to anyone else in the novel, though maybe I’m looking through a more modern lens. I was irritated by Jean not following things up and missing quite obvious things too, she was a bit of a crap journalist, though this is somewhat acknowledged and explained by her growing relationship and emmeshment with the family. I really didn’t see what the train crash was doing
there or had to do with anything frankly, it just felt shoehorned in (or rather tacked onto the end just to make it all more tragic than it already was). Chambers explains in an afterword how she wanted to use the virgin birth story but was waiting for something to ‘stick’ to make a novel out of it, and learning about this rail disaster was it - I’m not sure I see her reasoning to be honest.

Official shortlist announced

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason
The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
The Bread the Devil Knead by Lisa Allen-Agostini
The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/features/features/announcing-the-2022-womens-prize-shortlist

Enjoyed your overview, Fortuna. The Sentence is the only one on my tbr list at the moment.

noodle, your irritation at the Nick Hornby made me want to read it, perversely enough - it can be bracing to read something objectionable from time to time. I've read one collection of his books reviews, The Complete Polysyllabic Spree. I don't think our taste hugely overlaps, from distant memory. Not sure if I've read What I'm Reading, but it's in my library so I'll take a look. Can't easily locate Ten Years in the Tub.

I'm all over the place this morning, book club last night and a big chat about this, so trying to update the Faceache page as well this morning.

I'm pleased with their shortlist for a change. They usually chuck in a few off the wall choices, which is why I added some onto the list I though they'd choose. There's usually one or two that make me think bribes must take place, because I really don't see how they got there.

I chose 3 in common with the judges and can't complain about the others.

Great Circle I really liked, but didn't like the modern storyline which took away from it a little for me. Had it been purely the historical fiction storyline I'd have been raving about it. The was the one I went running to book club to recommend as we are mostly into historical fiction and this would have been a great choice for us.

Sorrow and Bliss I enjoyed at the time, but a few weeks later remember very little about it. I think this will win.

The Book of Form and Emptiness while not really my cup of tea, I can recognise the quality of the writing. If the prize was awarded based purely on the writing, this and The Sentence would be the only two contenders.

The Bread the Devil Knead
Delighted to see this make it. Deals with some very heavy topics in a really good way with a great protagonist.

The Island of Missing Trees I liked the historical fiction element of it, but don't really like magical realism. She's too big a name to not make it through.

The Sentence
Beautiful writing and captured the feelings of lockdown in a really unique way. This is the one I think should win, but I don't think it will.

Thanks from me too Fortuna for your very interesting posts on the Women's Prize!

I've fallen off the thread somewhat because I had to abandon my Women's Prize reading temporarily in order to focus on my teaching prep for this term (which started on Monday, sigh). I've read half the longlist so far, but only one of the selection I read made it onto the shortlist, namely The Island of Missing Trees. And that one wouldn't have been on my personal shortlist; the style wasn't really my cup of tea -- it felt like Shazak was trying too hard and too obviously to get the reader to emote.

But I didn't fall madly in love with any of the eight books I did read, so I don't have feelings of disappointment about the shortlist either.

And I'm looking forward even more to reading the books I haven't read, especially The Sentence. Just hoping that term will calm down a bit soon so that I can finish the books I haven't read before June 15 (when the winner is announced).

Thanks Fortuna. I've only read Great Circle of these, which I largely agree with you about; the modern storyline didn't add much. I'd also say I thought it wore its history and research a bit heavily, and felt like a 'lesson' sometimes. I did like it though, and thought her relationship with her brother was a standout.

I'm currently reading and enjoying Louise Erdrich's The Night Watchman, so am feeling well-disposed towards all her other work too and will likely try The Sentence soon.

Thank you for your review of the shortlist, Fortuna! Much appreciated!

Yes thank you Fortuna - I’ve added to my tbr list based in your comments. Though I’m doing so badly at plodding through all I already own that I’ll probably get to some of them sometime in 2024.

I’ll probably get to some of them sometime in 2024

You and me both, although I sometimes think it helps to clear the field a bit if you wait a few years to see what will last.

I'll probably get to them sometime in 2024 😅

I've ordered samples of 'The Bread the Devil Knead' and 'The Island of Missing Trees', as I think I like the sound of them.

biblio I've given him a second chance for now so we'll see how I get on! I am in the US so I wonder if 'Ten Years in the Tub' is the US version of the Polysyllabic Spree (as he does refer to himself and his publishers that way on occasion).

That might explain it noodle.

2024 would be an optimistic target for me to get round to some of planned reading, which does make me wonder why I waste time on less-than-stellar books.

FINALLY made it all the way through a book

18. The Windsor Knot by S J Bennett Fluffy whodunnit where a visiting Russian musician is found dead at Windsor Castle the morning after a dine and sleep with the queen. Queue total ineptitude from both the met police and MI5 but fortunately her majesty the queen is on hand to solve the case with her sidekick/assistant private secretary Rozie. This was utter nonsense but I loved it. Just the kind of easy reading I needed to get me out of my slump. Will definitely read the next in the series

28 Moonfleet - J Meade Falkner

Loved this and now have what I believe the kids call a "book hangover". Currently reading Andrew Ridgeley's book about Wham! and a biography of Marie Colvin. The latter is excellent but depressing, covering the deaths of both Colvin and photojournalist Tim Hetherington. I will be back at some point with reviews.

For Ann Patchett fans, there is a collection of her essays in the daily deals - for some reason the cover is masquerading as an Elizabeth Strout book so I almost missed it.

Yes, I snapped up the Ann Patchett earlier. I will have to MAKE myself read it; for some reason I have a resistance to reading essays (and short stories actually) but I love her novels and I think she's fascinating.

DameHelena I'm hoping the essays will give me a "way in" to Ann Patchett, as I've never been able to get into her novels but I would really like to. I know there is something there but I just can't catch her narrative voice.

Yes, I say I love her, but some of her novels I just don't 'get'. What have you read?I really like The Dutch House and Commonwealth, and I think Bel Canto is a masterpiece, but Run, Taft and The Magician's Assistant left me a bit cold.

I've tried The Dutch House and Commonwealth, but I think I need to start with Bel Canto, which I've avoided for some reason.

Maybe you'll like all the ones I don't get on with

Maybe I will! I didn't realise she had written so much, to be honest.

35 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome Read to the DDs. I love this book - it’s so wholesome and so evocative of summer holidays in the Lake District. I’m always shocked, though, that a bunch of kids (the youngest of which is 7) could go camping on their own on an island and have so much freedom - very different from the limited freedom my girls of the same age have a hundred years later! They really enjoyed the story and we’ll read more books in the series soon.

In Swallows and Amazons John must be about 13 and in the 1920s working class children would have left school at 14 so 13 would have been seen as more responsible then. The 'Little House' books which were also published in the 1930s describe Laura and Mary being left alone in the house for a couple of days in the 1870s when Laura was a similar age to Roger.

Thanks for the Women's Prize chat, everyone - Fortuna, I'm really struggling with The Sentence but I'm listening to it as an audiobook and I think it's got too much of a plot for that to be entirely successful. I keep missing crucial bits of information - the whole thing at the beginning with the van and the body was largely drowned out by noise on my commute. So I am thinking of giving up and starting again with it in book format - I've got a week off coming off and want some really good immersive fiction.

43 (I think). Castle Skull, by John Carr
Crime novel originally published in 1931. Wildly gothic, like the bastard child of Buchan and Poe. We have a man running across the castle battlements wreathed in flame, we have adultery, revenge, several secret passages and not one, but two, detectives brooding over events and making enigmatic pronouncements. That kind of thing can be fun, but it was so over the top that it was ultimately unsatisfying.

@JaninaDuszejko yes it would have been completely normal for the time! And things were probably not hugely different when I was very little, in the 80s…we’re all a lot more protective now, and I’m currently walking the tightrope of allowing my older DD gradually more freedom before she starts secondary school in a year and a half - it’s hard to know where to set the boundaries!