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?

@AliasGrape I felt similarly about Still Life, bits of it were just too self consciously quirky for me, and I didn't engage with all the characters, but other parts were incredibly moving.

35. You Made A Fool Of Death With Your Beauty by Awaeke Emezi - just reviewed by @FortunaMajor upthread. A young, grieving artist starts a fledgling relationship with a new man, who whisks her away to his luxurious family estate in the Caribbean. Things become complicated after she meets his father. There was a lot of buzz around this being a literary/romance crossover novel but I'm sure I've read plenty of literary romantic fiction before! Nevertheless I enjoyed it, I wasn't always convinced by the main character's emotional journey but it was beautifully written, very sexy, and very escapist.

40 Around The World In 80 Days - Michael Palin

I watched the TV series and read the book back in the 80s so it was a pure joy to revisit this, with the added bonus of a wonderful narration on Audible from Palin himself.

Grannie I think for me it was that her other books have been a lot more arty or edgy in topic. The cynic in me thinks this was to try and hit up a broader market. Her other books have had something to say about various issues and this seemed a bit trite in comparison. It's the move from serious social commentary on race and sexuality to naff love story that grates, even if the writing is beautiful.

AliasGrape I think Still Life was OTT and unbelievable, but I loved it as an immersive escape into an enjoyable world. At the time I read it, I hadn't had anything that had swept me along in that way for ages. I felt like I was sitting with them over a bottle of wine.

I can definitely see that Fortuna I’ve actually found myself thinking about it at random moments today since finishing the book last night. It would be really bloody lovely if life was like that.

I know there are some fans of the Manon Bradshaw series on here, so I thought I would pass on the very sad news that Susie Steiner died the day before yesterday, of the brain tumour from which she had been suffering for several years. I follow her on Twitter and her husband posted about this yesterday. I think she posted that her cancer was terminal some time ago. I've really enjoyed the Manon Bradshaw books (there are, sadly, only three - it was my new favourite crime series when the first one came out), and I also really liked her earlier standalone novel, Homecoming.

Reviews of some books I read last term. After a somewhat patchy reading year so far, I finally read some books I thought were brilliant.

29. Traversée de la Mangrove [Crossing the Mangrove], Maryse Condé 5/5
    A classic of Caribbean literature, which I read many years ago, but reread this year because it has just been added to the first-year French syllabus at my university. The novel opens with the mysterious discovery of a corpse, but it’s not a murder mystery; the book is made up of short chapters told from the differing perspectives of all the characters in the little Guadeloupean village of Rivière-au-Sel who encountered the dead man (a mysterious stranger who had recently emigrated to the village). As a result you get a broad panorama of life on the island, told by people of different sexes, ethnicities, ages and classes. Their stories intersect like the twisted branches of the mangrove swamp. Many of the town’s residents also have ties to other countries, so the novel is not just about Guadeloupe, but about the increasingly interconnected world we all inhabit. As Condé herself writes, ‘We live in a world where, already, frontiers have ceased to exist.’

30. Childhood, Youth, Dependency, Tove Ditlevsen, trans. by Tina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman 5/5
    Recommended to me by a Danish friend. Also known as The Copenhagen Trilogy, this is an extraordinary three-part memoir by a Danish poet and writer. Quite a harrowing read, but also a fast-moving one, that recounts Ditlevsen’s difficult childhood, her love affairs and friendships, and her eventual drug addiction. There are so many memorable lines: ‘Childhood is long and narrow like a coffin, and you can’t get out of it on your own.’ The story of her addiction (first published in 1971) is told frankly and with a remarkable lack of self-judgment. I will definitely return to this book in the future for a second reading.

31. Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones, James Clear 4/5
    As someone who has always had trouble establishing routines, I found plenty of useful ideas in this book. I appreciate the fact that Clear doesn’t claim to have uncovered a life-changing secret all by himself, but draws on and synthesises a range of ideas from different sources.

32. L’Événement [Happening], Annie Ernaux 5/5
    I read this short memoir and then saw the film based on it in the same day. The film was excellent, but so visceral that I felt queasy and utterly emotionally drained by it – I’m glad I saw it, but I wouldn’t see it again! The book, unlike the film, alternates between the story of the protagonist’s pregnancy and multiple abortion attempts on the one hand, and on the other hand, the author’s reflections on those events forty years later. This establishes a space of critical distance in the book that makes the narrative feel less grimly relentless. I only wish Ernaux’s story wasn’t still so relevant today.

33. Foster, Claire Keegan 5/5
    I loved this as much as I loved Keegan’s other novella, Small Things Like These. In beautifully understated prose, Keegan shows how a child flourishes when she receives a few months of adult warmth and attention. I’m keen to see the Irish film based on this story.

Oh that's terribly sad. Her books are a cut above the standard for the genre and I enjoyed those I've read immensely. She's taken far too young.

I didn't know Susie Steiner, but that's very sad indeed. Sympathy to everyone who knew her books.

RIP Susie Steiner.

April in Spain by John Banville
This was poor, I’m afraid. It’s the sequel to Snow which I enjoyed, but this one takes forever to get going, then ends in a rush that’s really silly. Disappointing.

Another one without time to post reviews. I'm not reading anything remotely literary recently anyway, just psychological fiction and some non fiction in between.

I'm struggling to read many books at all tbh, I'm about 15 books behind on the reading challenge.

17. The Wake (Elizabeth Knox)
A horror that initially reminded me a little of The Fog by James Herbert but not as well written. Far too long with too many filler scenes. Horror aspect was tame, with some comedic description. Characters were a bit underdeveloped and the writing was poor in places. A decent concept and plot, just not very well executed.

18. The Family Next Door (John Glatt)
This is about the Turpin family. It tracks their movements across the country, looks into the parents history and what the children went through. All those neighbours that saw concerning things and did fuck all about it infuriates me. I can’t really rate this because of the subject matter.

38. The Authenticity Project - Clare Pooley

Recommended by a pp (sorry, can't remember who). Was worried about the starting setting of a twee Fulham cafe but actually it was a good read, not amazing, but not the fluffy London mummy chick lit I was dreading.

Oh, and enjoyed the reference to Yellow Car.

Is it the sequel to Snow? I thought of it more as a 'crossing the streams' thing, maybe a one-off, as it brings him and Quirke together.
I'm hoping for more Strafford books. I liked Snow.

I wouldn't have said it was a sequel to Snow, more like a crossover. I liked both books. I liked April in Spain a lot. I was going to recommend it on my list when I update on the next thread. * *

I thought it was well written and evoked that period of time well. It started slowly but really accelerated towards the end. The ending was abrupt, shockingly so. It was upsetting! I suppose it was meant to keep Quirke in his dark place.

I liked Strafford too and hope he comes back in the next book. There was a moment where characters meet for dinner and it seems contrived, a pure plot device, but otherwise I thought it was a good read.

150 The Matchmaker of Perigord by Julia Stuart

A barber in a small French village decides to set himself up as a matchmaker. Very silly and implausible but quite entertaining. I also know the area where it’s set quite well so it was nice when towns I’ve visited cropped up.

36. Here We Are – Graham Swift

I’m still not entirely sure what to make of this short novel about a classic love triangle set in the world of 1950s. Mainly told from the perspective of Evie, 40 years after the events she’s relating, we meet Ronnie, a magician to whom Evie serves as assistant, and Jack, the compere of the show in which they perform. During the course of the story we delve back through Evie and Ronnie’s relationship, which we find out early on did not survive long, and Ronnie’s childhood. The sections on Ronnie’s evacuation during the war, during which he is mentored in magic, are good and evocative, and the later descriptions of some of the tricks he does with Evie really bring the show alive. There’s also a fantastic passage when Evie is out in her garden, absolutely beautifully written - as is the whole book, really, as you would expect from Swift. But I didn’t quite understand where it was coming from or where it was going and I felt the character of Jack was frustratingly under-drawn. So a mixed bag, but some lovely writing.

37. On Connection – Kae Tempest

I read this very short book – really a collection of essays – in an evening. A friend recommended it and I enjoyed it. Tempest’s focus is connection through creativity, but they define creativity very broadly, to include even the way you listen to a friend, or cook a meal. The book was written during the early months of the pandemic, where there wasn’t much of an opportunity to connect face to face, and there are some interesting meditations (with which I largely agree) about the difficulties of communication via screens. I also liked the descriptions of how Tempest felt going on stage, and because of the way in which they’d defined creativity, I was able to relate that to my work as a barrister, and the connection I feel with others who have been involved in a long courtroom case with me, even if we’re on different sides. And I also liked the discussion of the Jungian concept of the spirit of the times and spirit of the depths, something I’d not come across before (not being in any way up on psychology). A short, intense read, and I’ll continue to think about it.

Snow Country by Sebastian Faulks

• on the recommendation of other posters.

I read Birdsong years ago and I've always thought that Faulks is a beautiful writer. This is no exception and he creates a strong impression of Austria between the wars, complete with snow, icy lakes and the Schloss Seeblick sanatorium. He packs a lot in here and at times I wanted him to slow down and tell us more about some of the minor characters or the work being done at the Schloss ( to be fair, that's probably described in Human Traces - the first part of the planned trilogy which I haven't read yet.) Martha Midwinter is the young woman who runs the place and she deserves a book of her own. I was gripped by Snow Country- especially by the character of Lena who overcomes a huge amount of adverse childhood experiences. I'm going to get a copy of Human Traces - I think it will be the story of psychotherapy and how this developed in the first part of the twentieth century in Austria. Part 3 will probably take us through World War 2. Highly recommended - slower to start but keep reading until you get to Part 2 and Lena's story.

@IsFuzzyBeagMise and @DameHelena Well, Amazon are marketing it as, "The sun-kissed follow up to the bestselling Snow" so I'd assumed it was supposed to be a sequel.

Agree that the ending was shocking abrupt but, for me, I thought there'd been too many wasted words in the build up and that the ending became a bit farcical, undermining something that should have been really moving.

It just didn't work for me, and I really thought it would. I assume there will be another one, but not sure if I'd bother. He can definitely write, but this seemed to lack subtlety somewhat, I thought, and was unbalanced.

I've got his Ghosts on my TBR pile but this has put me off a bit from trying it!

Yes @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie fair points! I know what you mean. It came out of nowhere as a brutal, meaningless act. Farcical is right. And it was over straight away. Perhaps there will be a sequel?!

I may still read the next Strafford or Quirke book though, I'll see :)

31. How To Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie

I'm not very well (just a sore throat, cough and fatigue - not COVID according to test) so trying to rest and just finished this book in 48 hours. I got really into this and it felt like when I got immersed in books as a teen. It's not literary, but was a good story. This is her first book, and I'd read another if she writes more.

44. At Bertram’s Hotel - Agatha Christie

This is the Agatha Christie challenge read for July. No spoilers but not your average Agatha Christie. Set in London at Bertram’s Hotel (as the title suggests) and featuring Miss Marple. No murder until over 60% of the way through the book (according to my Kindle). The book moves between various guests/staff at the hotel who may or may not be linked to one another and Scotland Yard which is investigating a crime syndicate. I am a traditionalist and like an Agatha Christie to be based in one location (St Mary’s Mead, a country house, the Orient Express etc.) so this involved too much jumping around for me and too many characters which meant only surface knowledge of any of them.

Sorry failed to bold in previous message

44. At Bertram’s Hotel - Agatha Christie

Just a shout out to @southeastdweller to start a new thread

www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/4584077-50-books-challenge-2022-part-five