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?

Shuggie Bain is also 99p. The first Jackson Brodie book, Case Histories (Kate Atkinson), is also 99p if anyone hasn’t tried these yet.

I was really disappointed with this month’s deals, several things I’ve already read and nothing new I want! That’s not a bad thing though looking at my TBR pile….

Thanks ChessieFL - I'll be getting both of those!! 😎

Young Mungo turns up in my deals list but as £8.99 which doesn't seem like much of a deal. Has anyone else noticed differently priced books in the deals before?

After all the Strange/Norrell chat this seems a good point to add my latest reads.

1. Mr Norrell and Jonathan Strange by Susana Clarke I really enjoyed this, it was cleverly done and quite an immersive experience I thought. Possibly a little overlong, I'm not sure I'd ever reread it, but I loved the alternative universe she created and I felt the characters of the two magicians really came alive on the page. For me a far better novel than Piranesi, I'll be seeking out the adaptation.

10. Hard Times by Charles Dickens for the MN read along. Read by Bertie Carvel on Audible he did a sterling job but even he couldn't save this somewhat second rate Dickens effort. Some entertaining characters, my favourites being Bounderby and Bitzer, but somehow I always felt like the story didn't manage to escape the constraints of Dickens critique of industrialisation and it all felt a bit heavy handed.

Shuggie Bain is 5.99 in my version of the kindle deals

@PepeLePew that's so strange, I've just checked and they definitely only charged me 99p for Young Mungo. Wonder what's going on.

Young Mungo and Shuggie Bain were definitely both 99p first thing this morning, but have now gone back up to normal price. Maybe someone cocked up and added them in error!

How bizarre! Not to worry, my reserved copy of Shuggie Bain just arrived at the library so that's a good coincidence. Glad some of you managed to take advantage of the deal.

Just about to settle in and sort through the monthly deals, but before I do:

16. The Unheard, by Nicci French. Tess's 3 year old daughter Poppy has returned home from a weekend with her dad clearly disturbed by something. She can't explain why but is drawing distressing pictures, swearing and wetting the bed. Tess seeks help from those around her, but it seems that no one will listen. Very well done - as always, you're in safe hands with Nicci French - I found this incredibly tense and ripped through it in a couple of days.

Have rattled through Nala's World a sweet cat based travelogue by Dean Richardson. Apparently, Nala and Dean were full on Insta celebs a couple of years ago but I had no clue. This was a present for DS from DSM for Christmas.

It's written for UK and US market , I think , since some strange Americanised past tenses (eg creeped) and couch surfing jarred a bit. I felt I didn't learn all that much about the countries but it was a cute, undemanding read, if a touch preachy.

The book's subtitleOne man, his rescue cat and a bike ride around the globe is very misleading. I have no idea way they didn't change it.

@RazorstormUnicorn I'm still on Gerald's Game in my Stephen King readathon. God it is so boring, I can't wait to get to Dolores Claiborne! Are you reading the Dark Tower series? I had to read them in one go as by the time I got to the next book I'd forgotten what happened in the others.

Good job I saw the tip about Yong Mungo on here and dived in straight away 😊

Death of a Bookseller - British Library Crime Classics
This was okay. An easy, relatively comforting crime, although I was sad to lose one of the characters.

Gerald's Game and Dolores C are two of King's books that I don't rate.

Ooh will look out for those books as always looking for a good mystery to read the class.

I'm still reading through the ladies detective agency books, currently on book 8 (The good husband of Zebra drive) I've already read twice as many books as last year and were in June so very happy with myself.

25 The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I'm late to the party with this one, but I really enjoyed this fictional biography of Hollywood star Evelyn and her list of husbands. Great fun.

26 Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood by Lisa Damour. I have a 14yo DD (as well as two teen boys) and I really liked this. Pragmatic and useful and empathetic towards the teen viewpoint.

I wasn't keen on Dolores Claiborne the last time I read it but im disliking Gerald's Game so much that it's seeming like a literary masterpiece in comparison.

I've been off the thread for ages as I've managed to get into a rotten trash TV habit. Must do better.

Train journey today though, so finished 15. The Foundling by Stacey Halls. Bess, a London street seller, has a baby following a short-lived romance. With no means to keep her baby daughter, she places the child in the Foundling Hospital. On returning six years later to reclaim her, Bess discovers that her baby was in fact collected some years ago, supposedly by her mother.

Lots of plot twists and turns here, not all them successful or plausible. The character of Bess was reasonably engaging, but none of the others were. I liked this less than The Familiars.

I'm reading Karitas Untitled by Kristin Baldursdottir at the moment, it's a novel about an artist in rural Iceland who is trying to find a way to do what she feels called it within the constraints of rural, historical Iceland.

Just catching up on a few here. Recent reads are:

30. Record of a Spaceborn Few - Becky Chambers
    I'd read the first couple of these a few years ago and IIRC loved the first and didn't like the second. I can't remember if the same characters are involved but I found this a little boring and preachy without too much plot. Humanity have reached the stars in ark style ships and the galaxy UN equivalent has given them a planet to orbit around so their ships can get energy and continue to operate. But what is humanity's future? Some characters want to stay on the ships and maintain their traditions, others want to leave and move to planets. Personally I didn't really care one way or another what they did. I may have been more invested if I'd read it directly after the first two or remembered more about them.

31. The Space Between Worlds - Miciah Johnson
    This was much stronger. A first novel about travelling between parallel universes. This form of travel has been invented and one company runs it. But the catch is that you can only go to a parallel earth where you no longer exist. The main character Carmenta has been killed in nearly all of the 375 Earths that have been discovered so though she is from the wrong side of the tracks, is valuable in her ability to go and gather data for the more privileged scientists to analyse. Good premise, well executed.

32. Emily - Jilly Cooper
    I'm staying in a house that has all the Jilly Cooper books. Picked up one of her early ones at random for pure escapism. It definitely doesn't tick any feminist or classist boxes, privilege is lauded and Emily just wants a husband, but it's still a guilty pleasure. Although wasn't very convinced by the denouement.

I am massively, massively behind (and a bit surprised to see I haven't fallen off the thread - I think we are moving a bit more slowly now we're coming into the summer!). Just posting my update here and then I will go back to read the rest - I've got to page 20 of the thread. It's possible I've already reviewed some of these and forgotten about it, so apologies for any duplication!

26. A Narrow Door – Joanne Harris
The latest in the St Oswald series, I again enjoyed this far-fetched crime caper, bringing back all our old friends (particularly Roy Straitley). This one centres around Rebecca Buckfast, who we all know is capable of pretty much anything from previous entries in the series. Harris does a good job of making her just sympathetic enough to keep you reading.

27. An Unsuitable Match – Joanna Trollope
By numbers Trollope, undemanding and easy to read. After a long, hard failed marriage, Rose falls for Tyler - but her children are worried he's out to steal their inheritance. I found most of the (adult) children frankly annoying, but I quite liked Rose and was rooting for her.

28. Taft – Ann Patchett
Slowly working my way through Patchett's oeuvre, this was good, but not my favourite. Our narrator, John Nickel's, life has not gone the way he planned; his wife Marion has left with their child, his dreams of musical stardom have been shattered and he's running a bar in Memphis. Into his life come young siblings Fay and Carl Taft, who stir up all kinds of trouble. Interspersed with the present-day story (which also features Marion and her family) we have episodes from the point of view of the Taft children's late father, which I found the most effective and touching parts of the novel. I found the relationship between Nickel and Fay Taft difficult and I'm not sure Patchett would have written it in the same way today.

29. Again, Rachel – Marian Keyes
Can't really add to what's been said upthread - I'm very grateful Marian Keyes let us back into Rachel's lifeand I really enjoyed this book, although I felt it wasn't quite as taut as Rachel's Holiday.

30. Slow Horses - Mick Herron
This is now a big TV adaptation with my all-time favourite Kristin Scott Thomas in the role of Di Taverner, and I'm really looking forward to watching it if I can work out how to get something from Apple TV. I'm not a big spy thriller fan, but this was great. The titular slow horses are washed up agents who've failed in some way or another and have ended up under the leadership of Jackson Lamb in Slough House (so called because it might as well be in Slough). Lamb is a (literally) larger than life character with various disgusting personal habits, and Herron clearly enjoyed writing him as much as I've enjoyed reading about him. In this first instalment, the slow horses are caught up in what looks like an Islamic terror kidnapping plot - but is it all it seems? Gripping and just on the right side of far-fetched silliness, I'll definitely be reading the rest of these.

31. The Decagon House Murders – Yukito Ayatsuji
An homage to Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None", and apparently a cult classic in Japan (published in 1987 and thus 35 years ago, which I have to keep reminding myself is old enough to become a cult classic...). I found this rather clunky and it didn't really do it for me. The plot was clever but not as clever as the original, which rather leaves you thinking what's the point?

59. If This Gets Out - Sophie Gonzales and Cale Dietrich
YA romance between two boyband members. Most interesting part was the management’s ruthless image control.

60. Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art - Rebecca Wragg Sykes
A brilliant synthesis of recent research into the Neanderthals: the amount of information now attainable from, say, a couple of teeth is absolutely gobsmacking. There’s a lot of detail, so that readers can understand how Sykes arrives at her conclusions, that some might find a bit dense. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in who we are and where we came from.

Waiting for our street party to start…

Broken Heartlands- A journey through Labour's lost heartlands is FT journalist Sebastian Payne's road trip through Red Wall seats. It is interesting, although I think he does (deliberately) skirt issues such as racism and Thatcherism. He mentions them but deindustrialisation and the gig economy and the deliberate dismantling of unions maybe don't get the fuller attention they deserve. He goes to one constituency that didn't go blue (Coventry) and notes its more diverse population but foregrounds its Tory mayor (mainly because he is a fan of devolving power). It's only when he lists reasons why voters didn't vote Labour that some of the uglier face of racism rears its head as quote.

Anyway, it's interesting an reasonably balanced, although he really has hunted down the more 'reasonable' voices. The three reasons he unearths are, of course, Brexit and Corbyn -and also that the Red Wall has changed in character and is more affluent and naturally conservative than people characterise it as. Other people such as Lisa Nandy, Andy Burnham, Ed Miliband and George Osborne perhaps provide more interesting insights.

Overall, the book will need a rewrite! Several times Payne writes 'barring catastrophe'he can't see how Boris' charisma and popularity can be upended. Oh dear. He also visits Wakefield and talks to the (now imprisoned) Tory MP. Oh dear...

Towards the end he very briefly mentions the threat the LibDems might pose to southern Tories. Interestingly for someone who writes so fully about Labour being pulled in two directions, he seems not to see it in the Tories and remains unconvinced that the Tories could be toppled by LibDems. All in all it seems his crystal ball was in for repair when he wrote the book!

42 Hamnet - Maggie O’Farrell I hadn’t been keen on reading this as I thought it would be too depressing, but then my neighbour lent it to me. And I’m so glad she did because I loved it - it’s so beautifully written, the characters felt so real and there were so many happy moments as well as the devastating sadness. It’s the first book I’ve read by O’Farrell and I’ll definitely seek out others.