50 Books Challenge 2022 Part Five

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the fifth 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, the third one here and the fourth one here.

What are you reading?

I've finished almost nothing recently due to university deadlines (plus I have an 800 pager on the go), so it's nice to look back on the Booker lists to remind me of what I've enjoyed when I used to find the time. I've read 47 nominated books, but only 13 winners. Top ten would be:
Wolf Hall
Bring up the Bodies
The Remains of the Day
The Little Stranger
The Handmaid's Tale
The Line of Beauty
Restoration
The Sense of an Ending
The Sellout
Last Orders

There's some right old shite amongst the nominees I've read too though, including The Comfort of Strangers, Time's Arrow, and particularly, The Finkler Question.

61. Rocannon's World by Ursula K LeGuin
    Rocannon is stranded on a planet populated by several different intelligent life forms.
    This is LeGuin's first novel and I didn't like it as much as I like other books of hers that I've read. There are traces of the brilliance to come, but the story felt underdeveloped. The best part of the novel is a prologue, which tells the story of a woman on a quest to find the necklace that should have been her dowry.

62. The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey
    Loved this one.
    Caribbean fisherman, David, meets a mermaid and the events that follow have a lasting effect on both of them and other members of the small island community.
    It's beautifully written, and very evocative, with some parts of the story told by Aycayia the mermaid in blank verse.

63. Trans by Helen Joyce
    A look at gender ideology and transactivism and the harm it does to women, children and even to trans people. It's easy to read with the arguments and evidence clearly shown. The chapters on males in women's prisons and detransitioners are particularly saddening.

64. The London Eye Mystery by
    Siobhan Dowd
    A children's crime story.
    Twelve year old Ted and his older sister Kat watch their cousin Salim enter a pod on the London Eye but when it comes back round again he's not on it. Ted and Kat try to find clues to what has been to him.
    It's well written and their search takes them to some interesting places.

I've read 28 of the Booker shortlisted books. Some of my all-time favourite novels are on the shortlist - The Remains of the Day, Notes on a Scandal and possibly the most divisive book in MN history - A Little Life.

24, including one of my all-time favourites, J L Carr, A Month in the Country.. Looked at in the aggregate, it's not a list - would keep you company on a desert island.

Surprised to have read 28.

I've read 19 and have about 20 more waiting to be read on my kindle. Like others I'm surprised by how many I'd never heard of.

I've read 19 of the winners and 36 other shortlisted books. I do like a Booker nominated novel (as long as I avoid the 'middle age man looks back at his life' ones!) and struggled to cut it down so here's a list of 11.

Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguru
Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge (I struggle to choose between the Bainbridges TBH)
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
The Ghost Road by Pat Barker
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
Possession by AS Byatt
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

Oh I’d missed that Alias Grace was shortlisted! That makes 7 in total for me then…

Oh, I was only counting winners. BRB!

My beloved Carol Shields is on there twice. Unless is an all time favourite of mine.

That put me up to 32! Hoorah. Thanks, Beryl.

Arabia is good too.

I've read 17 of the winners and 26 of the short listed. Favourites as above, and my least favourites were A Tale for the Time Being and The New Wilderness.

Any reccs on this months' Kindle deals? Just finished Still Life that's on there for 99p. A solid 4* Summer read.

Thank you for all the good wishes. I've read two books this month 😁

I'm away camping so haven't got my list, but I am slowly chipping away at the Booker winners and shortlists when I'm not dictated by Borrowbox reserves coming up. There are some real gems in there, but equally a lot of rubbish. Some are definitely style over substance. A few years ago I read an entire longlist and wasn't that impressed. I don't think I'd bother again. I will however continue my Women's Prize quest ever year even though it gives me a stressful few weeks.

I don't think I've ever stuck to my reading plan for the year, but I still like to make one.

I felt the same about the apples book 🙄

Just finished The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I haven't read the other one so wasn't sure what to expect. I enjoyed it, found it a quick read but nothing deep or special. I did also spot the twist some way off. There are some odd Book Club questions in the back : 'which husband did you like most?' Errmmm...that's a stupid question!

This strikes me as a beach read and I thought it would be more than that.

I got nightbitch on the kindle deals by Rachael Yoder which looks interesting.

@Piggywaspushed

I've read 3 Taylor Jenkins Reid, they are definitely not of much literary merit, but are very good as "reading junk food" definitely holiday or just needing something light

1. Tokyo Ever After by Emiko Jean.

I have no idea how this got on my Kindle except I must have whim purchased it after it flashed up in front of me. When I realised what it was, its just not something I would have bought. I definitely didn't realise it was YA. I don't often choose YA.

To me, and I know this is catty, its like someone took a few writing classes and then decided to plagerise The Princess Diaries and set it in Japan

It's easy enough reading, its only taken me about 2.5 hours or less, but that's because its lazily written drivel.

I think even the least discerning teenage reader would turn their nose up.

At least, it was so easy to read, that its finally broken the drought of reading actual books over audio.

But It left me feeling slightly like How Did This Get Published? Especially with "all the unnecessary contemporary references which will badly date it."

Avoid

Gah, I thought that once the summer arrived and I had more free time, I would do a better job of keeping up with this thread, but the opposite has happened. Maybe it’s because all of the work-related adrenaline has finally drained out of my body and left me feeling too indolent to write anything, even a paltry book review!

I’m so sorry to hear about your illness, Eine, and I'm very glad you're back.

I agree with others that the Booker longlist looks more interesting than usual this year. I’m delighted that Small Things Like These has been nominated. I’m also a big Elizabeth Strout fan, so I’m happy to see Oh William! on the list. And I’m reading The Colony now and loving it so far.

Of the former Booker winners, I’ve read 28, which is more than I would have expected. I fully agree with @TheTurn0fTheScrew 's designation of The Finkler Question as ‘right old shite’. 😁I also could have done without reading A Brief History of Seven Killings (ridiculously violent, and not brief) and The Narrow Road to the Deep North (too damn harrowing).

Some of my favourite winners were Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore; Keri Hulme, The Bone People; Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda; Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things; and Anne Enright, The Gathering.

Am hoping to post some catch-up reviews shortly. 🙄

I've read 70 of the shortlisted Booker titles (if I counted correctly). I guess I'm a bit of a literary prize book junkie. Like Piggy I do tend to read fast and forget what I've read quite quickly, however 😊. My DH reads fewer books but has astonishing recall for what he's read.

34. Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus 4/5
    This is a real feel-good read, with a satisfying feminist message. The tone is also distinctive and fresh. Bits of the plot seem overly contrived (thus no five stars from me), but I can see why this book is a crowd-pleaser; it’s bursting with intelligence and humour.

35. This One Sky Day, Leone Ross 5/5
    Now that the Women’s Prize for this year is well over, I found it: the longlisted book that should have won! Ha. I found the story somewhat difficult to get into initially – I had it checked out of the library for months – but eventually I read far enough along for something to click and I was completely gripped. The magic realism (which features some invented words), the Caribbean patois, and the intertwining stories of different characters make the novel seem dense, but they also create a world that is incredibly rich once you are immersed in it. Ross in her Twitter bio calls herself an ‘unashamed maximalist’ and if you read This One Sky Day, you can see why. Via lots of playful, sensual description of foods, landscape and people, you find sensitive portrayals of gender and sexuality, class conflict and drug addiction. It’s a weird novel, but a tour de force.

36. Peau noire, masques blancs [Black Skin, White Masks], Frantz Fanon 5/5
    A classic of post-colonial theory that I’ve meant to read for many years. This was a slow read for me as I found some of the French psychoanalytic terminology quite difficult, but it was absolutely worth the effort. Although parts of the work feel dated (eg the chapter on women, and some of the old-fashioned psychoanalytic vocabulary), this is an extraordinary book, packed with insights into how Black people cannot fail to internalise the warped perspectives of white colonialist culture, and how people of all races can move away from their conscious and unconscious prejudices. There is also a lot of bitter humour in it, and searing criticism of psychoanalysis and other academic discourses when Fanon (rightly) sees them as falling short.

37. Violeta, Isabel Allende 3/5
    This was a gift from a dear friend, but I found it a bit underwhelming. The story was interesting, but the voice of the female 1st-person narrator seemed curiously flat. I’ve long felt that Allende’s earliest novels are her best, and this book didn’t disabuse me of that idea.

I have read 35 my favourites were the Mantels and The Siege of Krishnapur. Vernon Godlittle I loathed with a passion that still burns as brightly as it did when I finished it. I gave it to my DH who couldn't understand why I hated it so much until he read it