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?

32: No Halt at Sunset - Elizabeth M. Harland

I’ve been shifting some books about and found this in a box, with no recollection whatsoever of where I might have bought it, but I suspect it was a 20p junk-shop job. Just started dipping into it then got slightly hooked and have finished the whole thing. The back flap says the author was Norfolk born and bred and had published novels, but this book is a diary of a year on her smallholding in the late 1940s/very early 50s (rationing's still in place, and it was published in 1951).

It’s a lovely, nostalgic and comforting read, full of country lore and snippets about her husband 'Adam' and daughter 'Eve', who's in the Wrens and keeps descending unexpectedly on leave. Imagine the Provincial Lady diaries and instead of literary parties substitute pig wrangling, blackcurrant-bush and chrysanthemum cultivation, WI meetings, epic amounts of jam-making and general constant rushing from one job to the next, and you get the general idea. My God, could this woman work, and as the title implies, she never stopped. But it’s gently funny and self-aware, too.

It’s also full of the kind of old-fashioned recipes you used to see in womens' magazines ('one leg of chicken, minced and reinforced with cooked potato, makes a serviceable pasty….'), a reminder that apparently the book started out as columns in the Norwich Eastern Daily Press.

Completely niche and unlikely to be read by anyone else, but an unexpected hit!

The last one I read was a YA novel called Nick and Charlie. Basically about two boys in a high school relationship. One's going off to Uni soon, the other still has a year of school left and isn't happy about it.

It was ok, not as good as the other book I read by the same author. The characters were a bit one dimensional and self absorbed (but then again they're also 17) and the story formulaic with a very abrupt ending. It also seemed to have been written to push certain vogue agendas with more thought given over to that than the actual narrative. Perhaps that really was the point of the book though. All in all, readable but would not recommend it.

That was number 22 so I feel rather behind, would have liked to be in high 20s by now.

I've not done any reading the last few days but about to start The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides. Not my usual style so I'll see how it goes. I think it was made into a film at some point but again I haven't watched it.

Sorry, had to pop back to say to @SOLINVICTUS that I know exactly which TV series you mean - A Question of Guilt. It was 1980….3 plays about women who may or may not have been guilty of murder. I remember them very well!

Also Malice Aforethought - have you read the 30s novel it was based on, by Francis Iles? They reprinted it after the TV adaptation, as my copy (bought secondhand years later) has a still of Hywel Bennett on the cover. I suspect it had probably been long out of print before then.

@Terpsichore

Sorry, had to pop back to say to *@SOLINVICTUS that I know exactly which TV series you mean - A Question of Guilt*. It was 1980….3 plays about women who may or may not have been guilty of murder. I remember them very well!

Also Malice Aforethought - have you read the 30s novel it was based on, by Francis Iles? They reprinted it after the TV adaptation, as my copy (bought secondhand years later) has a still of Hywel Bennett on the cover. I suspect it had probably been long out of print before then.

Oh you

Thank you for that!

I hadn't realised they were all about women. I wonder what the third one was...I was 15 then, so just about the right age for gruesome true crime.

Phos, that Alice Oseman novella follows on from a series of 4 graphic novels which probably explains the lack of character development. My 14yo and her friends adore Alice Oseman so while I don't think they are great literature they are very sweet books that are clearly filling a need for a teen friendly gay romance.

@SOLINVICTUS just looked them up - it was Constance Kent, Mary Blandy and Adelaide Bartlett. I think Malice Aforethought was a separate series, but at around the same time. Amazingly, it seems to be on YouTube, but in a very poor, crackly copy
m.youtube.com/watch?v=QMqgPfowXjQ

There was a bit of a thing on the BBC at the time with true crime, I think - I have some vague memory of a TV adaptation of the Scottish Victorian killer Madeleine Smith, as well…I had a rather gruesome turn of mind!

21. Humble Pi - Matt Parker

"A comedy of maths errors" looking at different branches of maths and how the (sometimes very simple) mistakes made by humans or computers can have consequences, from minor to disastrous. Interesting stuff ranging from statistical analysis through to Excel spreadsheets, aeronautics and civil engineering. Admit I didn't follow some of the higher maths but enjoyed it nonetheless.

Met the author a couple of times, nice chap - he has a YouTube channel if comedy/maths is your thing.

For those interested in Victorian true crime, have you read any of Peter Lovesey’s Sergeant Cribb books? I think they were televised in the mid-70s, but I was too young to watch. I particularly recommend Waxwork which concerns a photographer’s wife who may or may not have poisoned her husband’s assistant, and also A Case of Spirits which is all about the Victorian craze for table-knocking.

Thanks for the new thread

Sorry, I should have made it clearer that the Peter Lovesey books are of course fiction.

48. A Patchwork Planet - Anne Tyler
The narrator and anti-hero, Barnaby Gaitlin, is a ne’er-do-well and the black sheep of a prominent Baltimore family, lives in a basement, rarely sees his daughter from a failed marriage, and works for a company doing jobs that older people can no longer manage, while waiting to meet the angel (the Gaitlin family have a habit of meeting helpful angels) that will help him turn his life around. In the course of the year in which he turns 30 (so young!!), nothing miraculous happens, but there are moments of insight and meaningful experiences that seem to offer hope for the future and a fuller understanding of life, in all its patchwork complexity.
Tyler is a fine writer, and I love her nuanced characterisation and quiet humour (particularly the descriptions of the terrible contemporary art - Brillo pads! - Barnaby’s social-climbing mother buys), and her depiction of old age is brilliant. I do, however, find the world she lives in a bit cosy at times, and I think the treatment of the main love interest at the end is a big harsh. I also suspect Barnaby’s absent parenting and approach to relationships would get a bit of a savaging if his ex-wife or girlfriends posted on AIBU.

The Glass Blowers by Daphne du Maurier Fictionalised account of her ancestors, the story of a family of master craftsmen in eighteenth-century France living through the turbulence of the Revolution. Enjoyable romp.

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald Many thanks for the recommendations upthread, I absolutely loved this. A perfect balance of excellent writing, wry sense of humour and observation, truth and pathos. Wonderful.

Things I Don't Want to Know by Deborah Levy Another recommendation from the thread and so well reviewed that I took the plunge and ordered all three volumes in one go. I really wanted to like this, but I'm afraid I just found it irritating and derivative. DL reminded me of the self-consciously "cool girls" of my youth - totally self-absorbed and concerned about image - and many of her anecdotes felt exaggerated for effect and lacked credibility. I know the next volume, The Cost of Living, was judged to be the best so I have given her the benefit of the doubt and made a start on it. I thought the first chapter was good, but it is developing in much the same vein and I'm not sure whether to keep going.

I started these two immediately after The Bookshop and I suspect it may be that Penelope Fitzgerald is such a good writer that Deborah Levy pales in comparison. For example, where PF's observations are dry and satirical, DL's come across as sneering. As MaudoftheMarches observed, perhaps it's just wrong book, wrong time for me too.

93. Jason Apsley’s Second Chance by Adrian Cousins

A kindle unlimited time travel book. Jason is sent back to 1976, the year before he was born, to get a second chance to live a better life. Not very well written (‘his eyes were on storks’) and too many plot holes.

94. The Girl In Blue by P G Wodehouse

Typical Wodehouse with lots of misunderstandings, good fun.

10. The Guest List. Lucy Foley read due to it being reviewed a lot on previous threads so won’t go into details. Was a good easy read, found it predictable but ok.

11. North to Paradise. Ousman Umar this is a short autobiographical novel of the author’s journey from his boyhood village in Ghana to Barcelona. It shows how he lived an ok life in his village to moving to work as a boy and hearing about the white man’s land that everyone believed was full of riches where everyone could buy brand new cars and goods every other week. Interesting story and would recommend.

12. Everything I never told you. Celeste Ng
Story of a family where a teenage girl dies, story flits between the aftermath and the build up from all the families points of views. Ok read.

Just finished Crippled : Austerity and the demonization of disabled people and now I need to spend some time looking at cat pictures. I feel so angry. I had to keep putting the book down as I was reading it.

Everyone needs to read this. Rob Delaney says on the back 'I wish I could force everyone in this country to read this book'.

It's quite the polemic.

Have reserved British Summer Time Begins and Crippled at the library.

Meanwhile, read A Catalogue of Catastrophes, by Jodi Taylor. The latest St Mary's, the right book for a bank holiday. I'm a bit po-faced at the constant implied threats to torture detainees for information - not funny and jolly - but aside from that, I'm find of the world she has created.

I didn’t get on with Deborah Levy boiledegg, I seem to remember DNFing The Cost of Living as I didn’t enjoy her company enough to persevere.

Kiss Myself Goodbye: The Many Lives of Aunt Munca by Ferdinand Mount this was chosen by Harriet Gilbert on A Good Read not long ago and recommended by Terpsichore upthread. Thanks again Terps as I really enjoyed it. I’d worried it would be too entitled-public-school-elitist for my liking, and I did have to persevere somewhat to make it thorough the early chapters as there was a lot of name-dropping (why call a peripheral character Dave when you can namecheck David Dimbleby?). But the worst of that is at the beginning of the book and once acclimatised the book is compelling. The author’s aunt, a powerful presence in his early life, turns out to have lived an eventful life under widely varying identities and circumstances. She seems to have both charisma and attachment issues in her DNA - were it fiction, I’d be listing plot points that strained credulity. The combination of her life and the author’s painstaking efforts to trace it - and occasions where your judgements or questions seem to differ from the author’s - make this a fascinating and compelling read.

And thanks for the Kate Atkinson news Stokey and benfoldsfivefan , yay!

[quote Sadik]@DesdamonasHandkerchief just a thought, but I've discovered that when much-reviewed / popular things come up on daily deal, very often now they're also available with no or minimal wait on Borrowbox. (I guess it's because they've reached the point where everyone who is going to buy them at full price has done so, & they're cheaper for the library system too?) It's reduced my Kindle purchases loads!

32. First Class Murder by Robin Stevens Another of the Murder most Unladylike series. Hazel and Daisy are on holiday on the Orient Express with Hazel's father, and perhaps unsurprisingly one of their fellow passengers is murdered. Fun pastiche, but I think three in succession is enough for me for now.[/quote] That makes sense Sadik thanks for the tip 👍

@Terpsichore, No Halt at Sunset sounds right up my alley - I shan't, however, take up Amazon's offer to sell me a second hand copy for 155 pounds!

noodle

If you were willing to commit to a more modest £12.20 (incl postage) it’s on Abe books?

Not sure what number I got to but have read books 1-6 in the Ladies detective agency taking me to 11 books in total so far.

Am really enjoying going back to the series after not reading them in 10 years or so.

Thanks Terpsichore. I'm in the US so the postage is quite high, but I've added it to my shopping list for when I'm in England in the summer.

This thread is so, so bad for my TBR pile

I keep falling off the threads this year! Apologies for posting a list so far in to this one.

1. Slouching Towards Bethlehem - Joan Didion
2. Diary of an MP’s Wife – Sasha Swire
3. Fake Law – The Secret Barrister
4. Buried in Secret – Viveca Sten
5. Truth And Beauty – Ann Patchett
6. Material Girls – Kathleen Stock
7. 1979 – Val McDermid
8. Mrs Hemingway – Naomi Wood
9. Mort – Terry Pratchett
10. Scrublands – Chris Hammer
11. The Other Americans – Laila Lalami
12. The Magician’s Assistant – Ann Patchett
13. Equal Rites – Terry Pratchett
14. Thief of Time – Terry Pratchett
15. The Greengage Summer – Rumer Godden
16. The Pull of the Stars – Emma Donoghue
17. Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
18. Square Haunting – Francesca Wade
19. Strange Hotel – Eimear McBride
20. Don’t Ask Me Why – Tania Kindersley

And my two latest reads:

21. The White Album – Joan Didion

Another collection of Didion's essays. I didn't like this one as much as Slouching Towards Bethlehem. It felt a little more sly, poking fun at the excesses of the 60s and 70s but in a way that felt superior rather than sympathetic. Still, she writes like a dream.

22. The Long Call – Ann Cleeves

Having exhausted the Veras and never really got into the Shetland series, I picked up this first outing for DI Matthew Venn at PILs' house (my MIL and I have similar tastes in crime novels, which is very convenient!). Thoroughly enjoyed it and devoured it in a day. Venn is pleasingly reticent for a fictional detective and this had a great cast of characters. I particularly liked DS Jen Rafferty, who, I understand, plays a central role in the second in the series, which I also nabbed whilst I was there!

Hope everyone had a good Easter. I'm going back to read the new thread now

I finished The One Hundred Years Of Lenni And Margot …. I had a lump in my throat at the end, but thankfully I didn’t cry. Beautiful book about an unlikely friendship, celebrating life and confronting death, I’d very much recommend it.

I’ve now started The Last Party by Clare Mackintosh, which I’m hoping is going to be as good as her earlier books. It’s set in my part of the world, which makes a change!

28. Red Shift - Alan Garner

An eerie and unsettling novel interweaving three storylines around the same Cheshire area, one in the present day, one during the English Civil War and one during the Roman occupation. Though not directly causally linked, they share common themes around love, language and the power of place. If you're looking for a straightforward YA fantasy, this isn't it - but I found it compellingly odd and think it would reward repeated reading.