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?

@Piggywaspushed @Gingerwarthog
Ive only read the first Shardlake but for some reason didn’t feel compelled to continue, despite it ticking every box on the ‘this is my sort of thing’ list.

Im wondering now if it’s because I read it when I was pregnant and my brain was basically cheese (I think I managed about 4 books total that year), in fact I feel like it’s only just coming back online now. Perhaps I should try the second now and see if I am more engrossed.

29. The Nonesuch by Georgette Heyer
Doesn't need much reviewing on here. This isn't a Heyer I pick up very often but I'm always pleasantly diverted when I do.

55. The Shadow King - Maaza Mengiste
Booker-shortlisted (in 2020) novel about Mussolini’s brutal invasion of Ethiopia, when women as well as men took up arms against the invaders. The main characters are Hirut, an orphaned young Ethiopian woman working as a maid for an aristocratic army commander and his violently unhappy wife, and Ettore, a Jewish-Italian soldier forced to take photographs of atrocities. This is a complex literary novel, as concerned with how war is portrayed and myths are made - from The Iliad and Aida to newsreels and Ethiopian praise songs - as with the actual war itself. The story is told in vivid and visceral language, but at times the pacing is a bit off: the two main characters don’t meet until over three-quarters of the way through, and large, interesting-sounding parts of the story are passed over. There is a lot of physical and sexual violence, and it’s not an easy read, if a fascinating one.

56. Tramps and Vagabonds - Aster Glenn Gray
A much lighter read: two young men jump the rails to travel round the Midwest in Depression-era America, slowly falling in love. Lots of interesting details about hoboes and their lifestyle.

57. Unreliable Memoirs - Clive James
James’ frank and often comic memoir of growing up in post-war Sydney with his widowed mother. It was published in 1979, and I think he’d write some of the anecdotes about girls differently nowadays.

58. Women, Men and the Great War - ed. Trudi Tate
An anthology of stories about WWI. The editor has clearly tried to include as wide a range of voices as possible, female and male, realist and Modernist, Americans and people of colour, but the result is that some of the stories are only rather tangentially connected to the Great War, or don’t seem the best representatives of their authors’ work. Does include the original tale that gave rise to the myth of the Angel of Mons.

@Piggywaspushed you are the reason I now have a Kindle spreadsheet and use a number generator. (Though I sometimes still ignore mine).

I am most honoured !

I have a kindle spreadsheet which I created last year. I don't use a random number generator, but the spreadsheet itself really helps with choosing my next book - seeing it all laid out rather than having to scroll through pages of kindle.

I agree @Tarahumara, it’s the equivalent of looking at the book shelf isn’t it? Sometimes I can spend a whole day (sort of) shortlisting then reading reviews. I could probably have read another book in that time, but I really like the process.

34 The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle - Neil Blackmore
After a sheltered and bookish childhood in eighteenth-century London, Benjamin Bowen is sent on the Grand Tour with his brother Edgar, as part of their mother's plan for them to rise above their mercantile origins and mingle with the quality. But along the way, Benjamin learns more about the mystery of his mother's origins, and falls in love with Horace Lavelle, whose mantra is to reject reject reject everything Benjamin's mother stands for. This was a very readable, page-turner of a coming of age story - and Mr Lavelle was a fascinating, damaged but devilishly attractive character - but lacked substance in the historical world-building, and I felt it was very harsh towards Benjamin's mother, who made mistakes but did seem to be motivated by what she thought was best for her sons. Suspect I wasn't quite the target audience - there is a lot of explicit gay sex - and think it would appeal more strongly to LGBT people who have lived through a similar struggle against parental expectations. Would still read Blackmore's next novel, The Dangerous Kingdom of Love, which rates more highly on Goodreads.

Cornishblues, I really liked Names for the Sea too. It felt like a different Iceland from the image of it I have now, even though the crash only happened recently, really. I like how she depicts her colleagues and students – I think it's very sensitive and affectionate, and it brings them properly to life.

11) Shuggie Bain - Douglas Scott

I ordered this book because I had heard good things about it. When I arrived I noticed it longer than the normal books I read, but I was hooked from the very beginning. You find yourself hoping for a happy outcome for both Shuggie and his Mum.

36. Diary of an MP’s Wife - Sasha Swire

As it says in the title, the diary of an MP’s wife. This covers the years 2010-2019 when Sasha’s husband, Hugo, was a junior minister first in the Northern Ireland office and then in the Foreign Office before heading to the backbenches. Sasha is the daughter of John Nott who was Defence Secretary during the Falklands Conflict so she grew up in a political household. The Swires are close friends with the Camerons staying with each other on a regular basis so, during the Cameron premiership, Sasha was part of the inner circle. This is a gossipy book which in Sasha doesn’t hold back on sharing her opinion on lots of politicians and others who cross her path. However, it also captures the detail of life in politics from constituency association meetings and canvassing to the travelling required as a junior minister in the Foreign Office to dealing with questions in the house as well as all the politicking surrounding leadership contests and challenges. Probably only for those with an interest in politics but I enjoyed it (and it was very different to one of my earlier books: the biography of Jeremy Heywood even though they both cover this period).

I also use a RNG to select my books (well, most of the time) otherwise I find I waste too much time finding something to read.

I've finally got to the end of Discworld.

40. Raising Steam
    The invention of the steam engine brings changes to the Discworld. Moist von Lipwig gets in on the action but not everyone is happy. It's not one of the best but is good in places.

41. The Shepherds Crown.
    Tiffany Aching brings all the witches together to fight off a threat from the elves. I wasn't that much taken by the plot but I liked the writing and that the original three witches all make appearances. There's a sense of coming full circle and Geoffrey, the boy who wants to be a witch, echoes Eskarina, the girl destined to be a wizard, all the way back in Equal Rites. A fitting end to the series, though there could have been so much more.

@ABookWyrm that's interesting about the invention of the steam engine in Discworld. Having recently reread Pyramids I was taken aback by a reference to trains, when there is no other evidence of that technology existing in the universe at that time. Just a slip of the pen I guess!

19 The Garden of Evening Mists - Tan Twan Eng

Teoh Yun Ling, a retired judge, returns to the site of her apprenticeship to a Japanese gardener in the Malaysian highlands during the Malayan Emergency of the 1950s. As she writes her memoirs in her former-mentor's home she evokes her memories of her wartime internment in a Japanese labour camp, her subsequent escape and employment in the Japanese garden of a family friend's neighbour, and the resolution of her feelings towards the Japanese and the house and garden she inherited on the disappearance of her lover during the 1950s Emergency.

This isn't a long book but it took me a very long time to wade through it! It is beautifully written, especially the passages describing the flora and fauna native to Malaysia. I was previously completely ignorant regarding 20th Century Malaysian politics, the art of Japanese gardening and the legend of gold hidden by the Japanese during WW2, so I managed to learn some stuff too.

39 The Maze of Doom - David Solomons I read this to the DDs. It’s a Doctor Who spin-off book, with Jodie Whitaker’s incarnation of the Doctor and her companions Yaz, Ryan and Graham. I was surprised by how good the characterisations were - it felt like I could have been watching a TV episode, and I could hear the actors speaking their lines in my head. Good story too, based on an Ancient Greek myth. The DDs really liked it - now I just have to get them to watch more Doctor Who (we got stuck at one of the Christopher Eccleston episodes which was genuinely terrifying and I’m waiting until they’re a bit older to watch more! Maybe I should skip to Jodie Whitaker’s much less scary version…)

@MegBusset I think there are a few anachronisms like that in the earlier books. I think sometimes Pratchett seemed more focused on getting a funny line in rather than staying "in world." I suppose at the time he was just writing fun fantasy books and had no idea how much it would grow.

35. Hard Times - Charles Dickens

This tale of the perils of a utilitarian education, set against a backdrop of Northern industrial hardship, isn't Dickens' best, but still has some wonderful comic characterisation in the self-inflated Mr Bounderby and bitter busybody Mrs Sparsit.

Reading again, albeit slooooowly.

12. In My Dreams I Hold A Knife, Ashley Winstead. Ugh. A total page turner, but I'm sorry I finished it. Massively melodramatic and feels as though it was written with one eye on film options. I really need to stop reading books that sound as if they might be Secret History-adjacent. Badly written, with acres of exposition between dialogue, and to start with, character so thinly drawn that I couldn't tell them apart. If you have 7 or 8 main characters you'd better make sure they are very memorable early on.

13. Rachel's Holiday, by Marian Keyes. A re-read ahead of starting 'Again, Rachel'. I love this book and think the way she deals with difficult topics with such a lightness of touch is brilliant.

14. Skint Estate, by Cash Carraway. I don't know if I could say I enjoyed this excoriating memoir of living in poverty, but it's brilliantly done. Should be required reading for Tory MPs or anyone who supports austerity measures. Cash is sometimes infuriating and makes some choices that are hard to understand, but I found it impossible not to root for her.

I’m now about a third of the way through Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrell and I’m really struggling.

Those who have read it, is it worth persevering?

I don’t hate what I’ve read. It’s well written and a nice alternative world to dip into, the blending of actual historical events with the magic of element is nicely done (although the out and out magic/ faerie stuff kind of bores me, a bit like I loved Game of Thrones but was never that arsed about the white walkers 😂).

It just feels a bit, I dunno, rambling and pointless at the moment.

Im reluctant to abandon anything that isn’t actually bad and that I’ve already invested a significant amount of time in, but I wonder if the pace picks up at any point and do we get a bit more of a driving narrative at all?

I read it when it first came out, Alias, and I can't say it wove a spell over me. I wanted to like it more than I actually did. I think if you've got a third of the way through, you've given it a fair chance, and it's not the book for you right now. I'd stop. You can come back to it some other time (I have it on kindle and intend to do this). It's meant to be pleasure, not a chore.

Yep.
I gave up on this one too

I loved the rambling and historic pastiche (oh the footnotes!) of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell but if you aren't enjoying it yet then just stop. It's a long book if you aren't enjoying it.

42. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak I know there was quite a bit of discussion on the first of these threads about this book and its accuracy (or lack of). I might not have bothered to read it after that if I didn't already have it on my kindle. I thought the concept of the brain staying active for a short time after death was really interesting, and the first part of this book that shows a just-murdered woman remembering various scenes of her life was very well written and engaging. The rest of the book though, which follows her friends' reaction to her death seems like it was written by a completely different author. They're all two dimensional characters who seem to think they're in a slapstick comedy.

I abandoned Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - I have a whopping great hardback copy