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?

I've also got Strange & Norrell sitting on a shelf, but the size of it is off putting.

I've recently started a new job working in my local library and I still haven't got over the novelty of the box of new books arriving every week and getting first dibs. I've had to put a block on my own card to stop me checking out anything else.

Cloudstreet -Tim Winston
Set in Australia, two rural families move to the city to escape various traumas and end up sharing a house. This follows the lives of the two families from mid WW2 into the 60s.
It's interesting in that I haven't read a lot set in Australia so it was a new perspective, but at the same time it's quite long and I got bored about 75% of the way through. I picked it up because it's on the Jubilee reading list and I do like a list to work my way through. Not sure I'd have picked it up otherwise and I wouldn't say rush to read it.

Noughts & Crosses - Malorie Blackman
This turns race on it's head where the black population are the dominant race. Two young people enter a mixed race relationship and face prejudice and racism. Also looks at terrorism. YA that came out a bit too late for me to have picked it up when I was younger. It was mentioned on the Sarah Cox book show, which led me to seek it out. It's excellent.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid
A Pakistani immigrant in the US finds his life very charmed as he graduates from Princeton and does well in a high flying graduate program until 9/11 changes how he is perceived and how he looks at the world in return.

I really liked this, it's very well done. I wasn't keen on Exit West which dealt with the migrant crisis with a touch of magical realism, so I was a bit sceptical, but this stayed firmly in reality. I was avoiding his books, but this has completely changed my opinion.

Moab is my Washpot - Stephen Fry
Autobiography of the first 20 years of his life which deals with being sent away to boarding school at a very young age and his brush with criminality.
Interesting but I can't see myself bothering to read his others.

I'm 50% through the new Candice Carty-Williams, People Person and I am not keen at all. I'm pushing on for the sake of it, but could quite happily not bother with the rest and not feel like I am missing out. Partly I'm struggling as it's in print and I find it hard to sit still with a book recently, but also the plot is a bit naff and contrived. I LOVED Queenie and hoped for more gritty social commentary, but this is a bit too farcical for me.

@FortunaMajor A job in a library: you’re in paradise! 😸

I live practically next door. It takes me 30 seconds to walk to work.

Definitely paradise.

Assembly by Natasha Brown This short (100 page) sharp book reads like an essay on office gender and (especially) race politics, thinly fictionalised. I found it very readable - this is not faint praise as I have abandoned more books than I can count recently - but also frustrating. The settings were extreme (high-finance banking and then a high-society weekend). When it looked like it was going to explore thorny issues of complicity it swerved away with a plot thread that jarred for me. The main character never came alive in my mind so it often read like a thought experiment.

Congratulations Fortuna, I’d love that weekly box!

10. Galatea by Madeline Miller. VERY VERY short, can't believe it actually got published tbh Probably won't bother with any more of hers.. although I liked song of achilles

@FortunaMajor I'm jealous!

Thanks for the tip on Stasiland, I've bought that while it was 99p and I think I'd like to read it. I've also added Qualityland to my wishlist as it sounds like a book I'd like to read and discuss with DH.

27. Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King

Still going through my King read through and this book proves my feelings that his books are sometimes amazing and sometimes really awful. This one's great. For a start, it's only 4 hours long. Secondly, the story is just told all the way through with very little diversions of detailed back stories of minor characters. It's a monologue from a lady gone to tell her story to the police and it took me a little while to engaged but I read the second half really quickly.

Next on the King list is Insomnia which I was given a copy of as a teen but never read it as I sometimes have trouble sleeping. These days I usually drop off ok, but don't always stay asleep. Has anyone read it? Might it get stuck in my head?

Off to Italy tomorrow for a few days holiday so will be reading something else anyway. Maybe several books if I get stuck at the airport....
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Lots of great recommendations, thanks.

I bought Stasiland, it looks like an important read.

I'm another Chocolat fan, in more ways than one 😉🙄

Pepelepew thanks for the Moffat recommendation, you reminded me it's on my kindle tbr pile.

I'm having a slow reading year but recent reads include

the homecoming by Anna enquist ✅
time by mark Sheldon Jones
And stephen fry does the knowledge ✅✅

I’m not sure I could work in a library (or a bookshop) - I would constantly want to read the books instead of doing what I should be doing!

@Sadik you could be right. I got this from the library and there are very few copies in our county, possibly only one. I think the translator did a great job, there was wordplay that works in translation, but was that in the original? And was the tone in the original or was the translator influenced by what they had read? There's a whole new discussion about books in translation that I'm not going into, only having read a few that I can recall.

@RazorstormUnicorn good choice.

@FortunaMajor I'm jealous! a dream job.

Fortuna, get them to put you on cataloguing duty and that should dent the excitement of a new book delivery (but only a bit ).

15. French Braid, by Anne Tyler. <happy sigh> Absolutely blissfully brilliant. Anne Tyler's storytelling is either for you, or very much not for you. It's 100% my cup of tea, and I loved this understated family story in which every word counts. As for plot, nothing much happens, and everything happens. My read of the year so far.

I've had to put a block on my own card

Fortuna My dream job as a child! Still is, very envious.

@TimeforaGandT glad it’s not just me! I hate not finishing books, it’s very rare that I give up, but this one was touch and go! I did wonder if it was partly to do with the fact that it was a translation, and maybe that did make it less readable, but mainly it was the storyline and characters which were the problem.

@FortunaMajor I’m jealous! I also live next door to a library but I don’t think they need any staff at the moment…

@ChiswickFlo I haven’t read Galatea but I quite enjoyed Circe by Madeline Miller (although it was a bit weird) - have you read that?

And finally, @ChessieFL your username is making me want to re-read Polo…maybe I’ll pick it up once I’ve finished the next four books waiting for me from the library/lent by a friend…

I have just finished Billy Connolly's Windswept and Interesting which I believe was a Christmas present.

I adore Billy Connolly. I suspect some of this is rehashed from Made in Scotland as a lot seemed familiar- but I don't care. It's warm, honest, nostalgic and funny. And even though he grew up in Glasgow very differently from me and many decades before, any Glaswegian recognises so much of what he describes. It's like a jollier Shuggie Bain in places.

I spent the book pondering whether he wrote it himself or if it was ghostwritten - the voice is so Billy and you can just hear him speaking. It tuns out he dictated it into a (temperamental ) phone and and that makes total sense. The whole book is like listening to him talking to you. Which is lovely.

Also finished Hard Times to decamp with a few of us to the readalong thread tomorrow.!

@DuPainDuVinDuFromage
Yes I have actually. I thought it was OK.
I'm not sure I'll rish ti read her again

12) One Minute Later by Susan Lewis

I think occasionally you read a book which changes you and for me this one did. I found it very emotional in parts and genuinely felt a connection to the characters.

129 Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister

Well, this was an intriguing one! Jen witnesses her teenage son Todd stab someone. When she next wakes up it’s the day before the murder, and then the day before that, and so on. Each time she goes back in time she keeps all her memories but to everyone else it’s just a normal day. Gradually she pieces together what led up to the murder and she realises that sometimes you don’t know your loved ones as well as you think! This did take a bit of concentration, and there were some aspects of time travel that just weren’t really addressed (it considers the effect of anything she does differently on this immediately involved in the murder but not anything wider than that) but I did think it was worth it in the end. I want to read it again so I can see how it all pans out knowing the answer! I did see one ‘twist’ coming though which was a bit disappointing.

41 The Lighthouse Witches - C J Cooke I’m sure I got the recommendation for this from this thread but the crappy new search function isn’t coming up with anything…thanks to whoever recommended it, anyway, because I absolutely loved it! It’s a very atmospheric story about a family spending a few months on a remote Scottish island, involving witches and folk tales and lots of creepy bits. I read it in pretty much one sitting (interrupted only by having to pick the kids up from school) and now I want to go back and flick through it again before it goes back to the library - always a sign of a good book!

47. You'll Be the Death of Me by Karen M McManus YA thriller. Three former friends who all have secrets from each other decide to bunk off school and stumble into a crime scene. An easy read that verges on silliness towards the end.

I’ve not looked at all the new kindle deals but a quick flag Young Mungo is 99p this month!

Agree, quite a good haul of deals this month! I was up at 4:30 with the baby so did my browsing then...

I bought Young Mungo, Meg Mason's (of Sorry and Bliss fame) first novel You Be Mother, and Book Lovers by Emily Henry- her books seem to have really exploded on tik tok lately, I read one last summer and they're fun beach romance novels.

I also spotted Prep and All Among the Barley, two of my favourites.

In the midst of a Paris/France reading season here at the moment.
22. The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre (translated by Stephanie Smee)
I heard about this short French crime novel on the Strong Sense of Place podcast's Paris episode and really enjoyed it. It's unlike anything else I've read. Don't remember seeing it on here before so here's the blurb.
"Meet Patience Portefeux, 53, an underpaid Franco-Arab judicial interpreter for the Ministry of Justice who specialises in telephone tapping. Widowed after the sudden death of her husband, Patience is now wedged between university fees for her daughters and nursing home costs for her ageing mother. She's laboured for 25 years to keep everyone's heads above water.
Happening upon an especially revealing set of police wiretaps ahead of all other authorities, Patience makes a life-altering decision...Patience becomes 'The Godmother'.
This is not life in the French idyll of postcards and stock photos. With a gallery of traffickers, dealers, police officers and politicians who are more real than life itself, a sharp and amusing gaze on everyday survival in contemporary France, and an unforgettable woman at it's centre, Hannelore Cayre's bestselling novel shines a torchlight on a European criminal underground that has rarely been seen."
Patience is our narrator and this is 100% her story - the struggle of coping with the financial and emotional costs of her mother's decline are entirely relatable, but Patience has an unconventional background and a fascinating moral compass which make her a fabulous leading character. Big issues with a light touch and humour packed into less than 6 hours on audio...recommended.
23. House of Glass by Hadley Freeman
My favourite book of 2022, I wanted to pick this up again as much of the book centres on Paris and France so it fitted well with my reading season. This book had a massive impact on me last year and was well worth revisiting. I love it.

Currently reading The Paris Library on paper and Rooftoppers on audio.

I don't usually review books that I read aloud to my son (aged 9), but we are currently loving the Adventures on Trains series and it has been a joy to read them together. The first in the series is The Highland Falcon Thief, second is Kidnap on the California Comet and we are just starting book three Murder on the Safari Star. Middle grade children's books in the tradition of old fashioned locked room mysteries, these get a big thumbs up from both me and DS.

That sounds lovely CluelessMama! Enjoy!

I like the sound of The Godmother.
I'll have a look at it.