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?

@JaninaDuszejko Ive been listening to Love After Love on and off on Audible for literally months. It’s partly that I don’t get much time for audibook listening these days as I no longer have a commute, but a big part of it is the book itself. I like it enough to not want to give up, but not enough to put aside enough time to just get it finished.

42 Going to Seed by Simon Fairlie
Entertaining autobiography by the writer / access to land campaigner / scythe seller / low impact planning policy advisor / micro-dairy farmer/cheesemaker etc (including I discovered in this book, several years as a stone mason). SF has had a colourful life & tells a good story without taking himself too seriously, which makes this a fun read.

43 City Veg by Cinead McTernan
Read for work (sent it in the hope we'd review / mention it on social media). Diary style book with lots of pretty pictures & chat about gardening mixed in with advice for those wanting to grow in a small urban garden. I imagine this might be a decent enough winter read for someone looking for some inspiration but not particularly informative as a 'how to' book. (Now I have to decide whether to charity shop it or say something nice about it and give it away on SM - I always end up feeling some strange sense of obligation when sent books by the author )

I took a break from Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell which I am sort of enjoying, but maybe not as much as I’d expected. I’m not sure if it’s partly because I’m reading on my iPad (borrrowbox app from library) and it feels like it should be read in real book form somehow. The app also makes it impossible to read footnotes without scrolling to the end of the chapter and then back, and as the author relies quite heavily on them it is a bit of a faff. Also it’s just so long and in some respects so repetitive, I appreciate the world building but I prefer my stories to whip along a little more.

I’ll definitely go back to it but in the meantime I read
21 More Than A Woman - Caitlin Moran I quite enjoyed this, agreed with a lot of but not all she said. Some things I think she oversimplified. Also I just don’t really identify with her picture of life in your 40s, I only had my first baby at 40 so I guess I’m not really where she is in terms of parenting yet, whilst I lost all my parents (4 of them! Complicated family) whilst still young, and did a lot of caring whilst young too. I know it shouldn’t really matter but I felt a bit irritated by the assumption we all have a similar timeline. Still some great stuff in there too.

1. A traitor in the ice by k j maitland

I enjoyed this but the ending was oddly anti climactic. Its obvious the author hopes it will be a series of books but not sure I'm invested enough to read another?

Just started storyland

@SOLINVICTUS if it was then it was a while ago now. I read a lot about the Arctic so it's possible.

Have just finished The Bread the Devil Knead by Lisa Allen-Agostini.
I had heard the author speaking on Radio 4 about her book and I thought the idea of it being written in Trinidadian sounded interesting. It was compelling. Alethea is a sympathetic character and although you are shouting at her to leave her abusive partner and have more self belief the author ensures you understand why this is so difficult for her.
In a way this reminded me of Alice Walker's The Colour Purple which is high praise.

@Gingerwarthog I heard that too, it sounded intriguing. Must add to TBR.

28. The Children of Jocasta - Natalie Haynes.

Retelling of the Oedipus myth from the points of view of Jocasta and her daughter Ismene. Well researched and easy to read, but I'm a bit of a NH fangirl anyway.

I loved The Bread The Devil Knead @Gingerwarthog so far it would be my choice for the Woman's Prize ( although have only read half the shortlist).

I was a bit bored by Sistersong which I read last year based on comparisons of Circe. I didn't feel there was enough meat on the story, and agree it was too long.

Just finished The Final Revival of Opal and Nev by Dawnie Walton, which was on the Woman's Prize longlist. I enjoyed this tale of Opal Jewel, a funky rocky black singer in the 70s and her brief band with Nev, who goes on to have a much more successful solo career. Definite tones of Daisy Jones and the six, but I preferred this as it had more of a story outside the band, and Opal for me is a more rounded character than Daisy.

@DuPainDuVinDuFromage yes I really like Lady of the Rivers. I think partly as Jacquetta is such an unknown person, despite having studied this period of history quite extensively I hadn't ever actually heard of her. I love Gregory's ability to pull unknown women out of history and give them a voice and a personality.

33 Kursk - The Last Mission - Robert Moore

Heartbreaking account of the 2000 submarine disaster, where Russian intransigence and distrust of the West combined with years of naval underfunding, the result being over 100 submariners dying in ghastly circumstances. Particularly poignant as at the time Putin had only just come to power, and the (eventual) cooperation between Russian and Western rescue efforts hinted at least at the possibility of improving post-Cold War relations. How tragic, again, that this has not come to pass.

Hi, I've not been online for a few months (since the last pages of Part Three of this thread) due to a rather scary and frustrating spell of sight loss. I was referred for cataract surgery and now have a synthetic "lens" inserted in my left eye. I have to wait a few weeks to check my eye is ok before they do the other one, and then I'm expecting to need new prescription reading glasses, but I can read my laptop screen again and see stuff on my phone. It's actually quite a shock to see what I couldn't see.

For nearly a month - most of March - before my cataracts were diagnosed I hardly read anything, then I experimented with various settings on the Libby ebooks app on my phone - I'd read a few books since mid 2021 that way and finished 3 books on a Kindle Paperwhite. My eyes did get a bit worse and I decided that Libby on rather odd settings (white on black, very enlarged font) was easier to read than my Paperwhite (Bold set to max and font size larger than normal). So I finished slightly more books in April. Today I'm going to experiment with my unfinished reads from February (!) as well as my current library ebook reads, and see what I can comfortably read!

Yikes, elkie, that sounds scary. Hope the recovery goes well and best of luck with your experimentation.

That all sounds very worrying elkiedee, I hope things are settling down a bit now.

Sorry to hear this, elkiedee. I hope things improve.

Fingers crossed that the new lens works well for you @elkiedee.

I feel as though I’ve slowed to a crawl - can’t seem to concentrate on reading for some reason.

Anyway - 38: Digging Up the Dead - Druin Burch

A biography of pioneer anatomist and surgeon Astley Paston Cooper, a celebrated figure in medicine in the early 19th c. The author is also a doctor so writes with a good level of understanding. Because getting hold of bodies for anatomical study was extremely difficult, Cooper - like most of his medical colleagues - was a party to body-snatching as a student, and later in his career as well, for that matter (he also practised on hapless animals and/or pets snatched from the streets of London, so there are parts of this book that need a bit of a strong stomach).
Quite interesting as a history of early 19th medicine, and should you want the details of how William IV was embalmed, this is the book for you

That sounds really frustrating @elkiedee , I hope you have a swift recovery.

Hope you're better soon @elkiedee and good to have you back!

elkiedee very unmumsnetty hugs to you. Hope it all works out ok.

@elkiedee that sounds really tough and scary. Hope things improve very soon.

Fingers crossed that all goes well, elkidee

44 Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics by Adam Rutherford
Very much does what it says on the tin. A large part of the (short) book is taken up with a concise history of the eugenics movements, particularly in the UK, US and of course Germany. Rutherford then moves on to discuss the position of genetics today, particularly looking at the complexity and partial nature of much of our knowledge, and the way in which such understanding is always evolving over time. I found this part of the book the most interesting. As well as looking at the impracticality of many of the proposals for 'selecting for increased IQ' and the like, I was also pleased to see discussion of the social model of disability included.

Just finished 13 - Sorrow and Bliss - Meg Mason I tried to skim read the previous reviews from others but got the jist that a couple of you were luke warm to the book. With expectations low (and not buying into the hype) I actually really enjoyed it. It was an easy read and I kept on wanting to go back to it. I didn't find the main character particularly irritating, but my BF who read it at the same time gave it 3/5 and said she couldn't stand her! Obviously a bit of a marmite book!

Now started Go Big - Ed Miliband which I spotted the last time I was browsing in Daunt Books. Also got In Black and White - Alexandra Wilson on the go on Audible - a memoir about a black barrister in London.

So sorry to hear that elkie, how scary. Hope everything goes well.

That sounds scary @elkiedee hope your eye sight continues to improve again.

13. Humble Pi Matt Parker. An interesting read into small mathematical mistakes which have cause big issues. If you want to know why the millennium bridge wobbles or why pacman stops at level 256 then this book is worth reading.

With having finished this book I have now read twice as many books as last year so am pretty happy with that.

Next books is No.8 of ladies detective agency - The good husband of Zebra drive

elkie that sounds truly terrifying! So glad things seem to be improving and hope it continues for you