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?

Thanks for all the kind words. I read some pages from several print books last night and changed the settings on the Libby ebooks app on my phone. The ease of reading etc was a revelation. While the change in my sight in February/March felt quite sudden, I think at least some of the problem must have been forming earlier.

I've also been closing each eye in turn to see how much I can see. If my operated on eye was the worst before, I'm surprised that I could see as much as I could in the couple of weeks, as with one eye I can see so much detail, and through the other is a thick dirty fog.

So glad things are getting better elkie

45 The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman
Sequel to the Thursday Murder Club. Silly fluff, but I enjoyed it, more than book 1 in fact as there's less time introducing the characters and more comic set pieces.

Pleased to hear about the improvement @elkiedee; good luck for the future

39: The Late Mrs Prioleau - Monica Tindall

This was the only novel by this Anglo-Irish author, the aunt of the historian Gillian Tindall (she mentions the book in her memoir, which is how I found out about it). New Zealander Susan, newly-married to Henry Prioleau, travels back to the UK with him when his domineering mother dies. She’s never met any of his family before and is nonplussed by his needy, whining elder brother Austin, his two sisters, and the strange family dynamic between them all.

Gradually, Susan pieces together the story behind the life of the late Mrs Prioleau, with the help of family reminiscences and the letters and diaries she discovers. All the way through I could see this playing out in my head as an absolutely classic black and white film, the kind you see on Talking Pictures, with swooning music, plenty of extended flashbacks and someone like Ann Todd as Susan. Pity nobody ever made it!

all the very best @elkiedee hope it's all good news from now on

Goodness @elkiedee. I hope the other eyes as successful.

26. Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre
Having seen the film and quite enjoyed it, I reread the book. What struck me this time was that all the things that seemed most fictional about the film were in fact toned down from reality. Perhaps Ben Macintyre's funniest and most engaging book. I think my favourite bit is the letters of Dan Leverton, a London undertaker conscripted into the army and in action during the invasion of Sicily, who wrote home about that bitterly fought campaign as if it was a bracing holiday ìn Norfolk.

That sounds scary @elkiedee so glad you are on the mend.

36. The Vision by Dean Koontz

A psychic is helping to find a serial killer. Terrible book, badly written and a twist you could see coming from a mile away.

37. The Waiting Rooms by Eve Smith

Decades of spiralling drug resistance have unleashed a global antibiotic crisis. Ordinary infections are untreatable, and a scratch from a pet can kill. A sacrifice is required to keep the majority safe: no one over seventy is allowed new antibiotics. The elderly are sent to hospitals nicknamed ‘The Waiting Rooms’ … hospitals where no one ever gets well. I really enjoyed this, although not sure I would have taken as much from it pre-COVID. The time jumps between pre-crisis UK and South Africa worked really well. An interesting, and slightly terrifying read.

38. Girl A by Abigail Dean

Girl A, the girl who escaped her parents’ House of Horrors and saved her siblings, has to face her past when her mother dies in jail. This started really well but overall I found it a bit boring. I found it frustrating that ideas, like the line between complicity and being a fellow victim of abuse, were introduced but not fully explored. The twist (if it can be called that) was beyond far-fetched but was simultaneously obvious from the start.

@elkiedee sending good vibes!

22. Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier - I’ve never read any Du Maurier and I couldn’t get over how gripping this tale of smuggling on the Cornish Coast was. Read whilst I was in Cornwall which added to the experience. Cracking.

Continued my Sarah Moss fanhood with Names for the Sea. In 2009 Moss and her family moved to Reykjavik as she took up a lecturing job. The book is both an account of Moss’ experience of being a bewildered stranger in a foreign culture, and a fascinating look at life in Iceland and Icelandic culture and self-image.

The alien geography of the lunar landscape is beautifully conveyed - but what makes it particularly interesting is the very practical detail of family life there, with challenges like finding a nursery in a foreign setting and getting a buggy over a lava field where the ground is set in waves.

Cultural differences are fascinating: the lack of availability of secondhand goods causes particular problems for a newly arrived family, and contrasted with middle-class NCT-sale bun fights in Canterbury. At the University, students are on average older than their UK counterparts and it is not unusual for them to have children.

The year Moss spent in Iceland became a particularly eventful one: she arrived just as the financial crash happened, which hit the family’s spending power hard. The volcanic eruption that caused havoc for flights occurred during the same year. We read about these events and we also meet lots of fascinating characters with stories to tell ranging from the 1973 eruption on the island of Heimaey to how to build bridges with disgruntled elves. I loved it.

@Palegreenstars it's brilliant isn't it? I think I'm due a reread as it's been a while, would love to read it in Cornwall, that must have been pretty atmospheric.

Bollywood: A History, Mihir Bose

This has taken a long time to read, mostly because I’ve only been reading it on my short commute, two days a week.

It does what it says on the tin really. A really easy to digest overview of the Indian film industry. Bose is a journalist, not a historian but nevertheless he does a good chronological, narrative overview. I’m really familiar with Bollywood films and some of ancillary incidents and affairs he refers to, but I imagine if you’ve never seen a film
or don’t know who the players are it might be a more labourious read (though I def lost time to googling some films and people). The most interesting thing for me was the way that the industry was working in multiple languages and most stars don’t or didn’t speak Hindi but that a consensus had to be reached about using Hindi as the main language, though he does point out that there a successful movie industries around Bengali and Tamil language films in particular.

I pretty much blame this book and the Eurovision song contest for my slight obsession with Iceland. This is where my "did you know that in Iceland..." thing with my long suffering family started. I loved it. (not sure the family were as pleased I'd picked it up)

Thanks to everyone discussing the Women's Prize list, I decided to divert from my TBR pile and jump in on

26. The Final Revival of Opal and Nev by Dawnie Walton

This is probably my favourite book of 2022 so far. It's so well done as a punk music book that I actually googled if Opal and Nev were real as I was sure I'd have heard of them, I was almost relieved to discover it's most definitely fiction!

The book covers a wide time period, focusing on Opals struggle to carve a career in a white male dominated industry and the heart ache and tragedy that brings. I can imagine her being one of those women at protests recently with a sign saying 'I can't believe I still have to protest this shit.'

Opal is a flawed role model but I still found myself rooting for her and enjoyed the time I spent in her company reading this book.

😂 Sol!

40: A Carnival of Snackery - David Sedaris

The second volume of DS's diaries. For some reason, I just don’t find his actual books that funny - or not as downright hilarious as other people do, anyway. The diaries are a different matter, maybe because they seem more immediate (although obviously written with at least half an eye to publication) and had me laughing out loud several times. They’re also very touching in chronicling his close bond with his sister Amy and the frustrations of the relationship with his father - who's 97 at the end of the diary, in a nursing home, frail, miraculously-recovered from Covid, and still as maddening as ever.

40: A Carnival of Snackery - David Sedaris

The second volume of DS's diaries. For some reason, I just don’t find his actual books that funny - or not as downright hilarious as other people do, anyway. The diaries are a different matter, maybe because they seem more immediate (although obviously written with at least half an eye to publication) and had me laughing out loud several times. They’re also very touching in chronicling his close bond with his sister Amy and the frustrations of the relationship with his father - who's 97 at the end of the diary, in a nursing home, frail, miraculously-recovered from Covid, and still as maddening as ever.

1. Storyland by Amy Jeff's.

I didn't finish this. A bit too fluffy for me and not sure it did what the blurb promised.

10. Am starting 4 thousand weeks by Oliver burkman today...

Sorry about the double post! Wretched site playing up again.

Stuff I've Been Reading, by Nick Hornby
A collection of his monthly columns containing book reviews and general musing on reading. Nothing wildly exciting but I added a couple of books to my tbr list. I like his habit of listing books bought as well as books read - rather tempted to add that to my own reading diary.

British summer time begins : the school summer holidays 1930-1980, by Ysenda
Maxtone Graham
An oral history of childhood summer holidays. It seemed a good seasonal read and has the charm of listening to an older generation reminiscing, but I didn't enjoy it as much as her book about girls' boarding schools, Terms and Conditions.

Oops, used italics rather than bold. That wasn't intended to imply disapproval, just a slight cock-up on my part.

@elkiedee that sounds awful for you, very glad to hear you're improving.

Some quick reviews on my latest books...

26. Circle of Friends by Maeve Binchy - I listened to a podcast on Maeve Binchy which made me want to try this, and I absolutely loved it. The story covers an academic year in the life of a group of students in Dublin in the late 50s, mostly women, and their developing relationships with each other. Very much my kind of thing it turns out.

27. Broken Harbour by Tana French - book 4 in her Dublin Murder Squad series which I've been really enjoying. This was my least favourite so far, partly because the details of the crime were very upsetting, but still a compelling read that I raced through. A great setting as well, on one of the ghost estates which was abandoned by property developers after the crash, really creepy.

@MamaNewtNewt we had such great weather in Cornwall - I was only mildly sad I wasn’t reading it in a storm for full affect!

Just finished Lamentation , the penultimate Shardlake. I realise I am way behind most of you but I do insist on my random number generator and it didn't come up until now!

This book has a stunning and gruesome opening.

I preferred it to the Heartsone Mary Rose shenanigans. This seemed more intense and claustrophobic and the plots tied together better. A good read and ultimately a fairly satisfying conclusion to the era of Henry VIII. Shall now wait for Tombland to come around on the RNG! The historical notes are interetsing. I never really knew what became of Catherine Parr - always just thought of her as number six - 'survived'.

HeartSTONE

Absolutely love the Shardlake books @Piggywaspushed.
Have started Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason and it reminds me of Barbara Trapido's Brother of the more famous Jack. I'm not far into it but it's good and has a sympathetic main character - although I prefer her sister tbh and her Aunt Winsome.