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?

Just realised I've hit 150. My reading/listening rate has unsurprisingly halved since starting my new job.

The Dark Flood Rises - Margaret Drabble
An elderly woman facing her own mortality sets forth to get as much out of her remaining years as possible which takes her on journey to visit old friends and family while exploring what it means to age and die.
While not much actually happens it's full of complex and well drawn characters, that help with the commentary on life and death.
I had no idea that Drabble is the sister of A.S. Byatt (whose work I don't get on with). This has made me want to read more Drabble.

Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere - Jeanette Winterson
I've got a bit of a cheek calling this a book as it's only an essay. She discusses the women's movement from suffrage to modern day and how much is still to be done to achieve true equality. Interesting, but nothing groundbreaking if you are well versed in the modern movement. It's a gentle call to arms for the non initiated.

The Miniaturist - Jessie Burton
A reread ahead of her new book. Enjoyed as much this time as the first time round and less frustrating knowing there may be answers to a lot of unfinished business coming up. The first read had me perplexed, wondering what was the point of the book that spent ages setting something up to never resolve it. If there are no answers in the next one, she's going on my banned list.

@AliasGrape glad you enjoyed Pandora's Jar, it's getting to the top of my TBR list (long list!). Liked Children of Jocasta, preferred A Thousand Ships. Another recommendation for her podcast: a new series is due on R4 this month I think.

I'm going to pre-order Stone Blind, due out in September, a retelling of the Medusa myth. I listened to the Natalie Haynes podcast episode on Medusa and found myself getting quite angry and upset on the character's behalf (is that odd?).

While I enjoyed the Pat Barker Trojan novels I preferred Natalie Haynes' writing style.

A quick update of my holiday reads:

87. The Quick and the Dead and 88. A Dark and Sinful Death, by Alison Joseph
Sister Agnes sleuths in between bouts of wrestling with her vocation, snappy exchanges with other nuns, and boozy lunches with her friend Allegra. I'm enjoying this series, particularly the second book, set in a girls' boarding school in Yorkshire.

89. Another Bangkok, by Alex Carr
Non-fiction (to follow the nun-fiction). Long-term expat discusses his life in Bangkok. I don't share all his enthusiasms (dance and flower-arranging) but I enjoyed his rueful reflections on how things didn't quite pan out as he hoped - the professional opportunities that fell apart, the relationship that ended, how his hobby of art collecting turned out to be more morally compromised than he expected.

90. The Axe Factor, Colin Cotterill
Third book in a comic crime fiction series, also set in Thailand. I still chuckle when I think of one scene, a would-be seduction that went unfortunately awry. Good fun.

91. The Palace Papers, Tina Brown
A gawp through the bars at the Windsor zoo. I think she is reasonably compassionate to their situation, while acknowledging that any character flaws become horribly magnified by the set-up. Obviously a lot of the public scandals were familiar, so I was more keen on the less-familiar bits about the individuals around them.

92. Bookends: A memoir of love, loss and literature, Zibby Owens
A biblio-memoir? Count me in! But oh dear, this wasn't good. A woman tells us about her life, from shy childhood via her studies to life with her four children and new husband and her books podcast. The book references are scant, just titles of what she happened to be reading at various points. It's all very self-regarding - she lost a friend during 9/11 but on the upside, her eulogy moved a lot of people who all queued up to congratulate her.

93. Crying in H Mart, Michelel Zauner
Much better - an American woman explores her relationship with her Korean mother, where affection was most often expressed through food. Honest and touching, and she raises interesting questions about being bicultural - what happens when you lose the parent from the "other" culture, particularly when you don't have the language skills to remain connected to that culture in your own right (relevant to a situation in my family).

94. Landscape in Sunlight, Elizabeth Fair
I'm not going to choose my own books any more, just follow Terp around and read what she reads. This was published in the 1950s and is very much in the strain of Angela Thirkell/E F Benson/E M Delafield We're in a small village with a cast of eccentrics, there's a picnic and a church fete (Will it rain? The jeopardy!), and it's all very soothing.

Walking the Nile by Levison Wood
Not as good as the Himalayas and Central America one imo. Much darker (including a terrible tragedy) as I guess to be expected from a continent with such a troubled history, but also much of the walking was quite samey and the countries faded into one a bit imo. I also found him a bit annoying in this one.

Re the comments above about No One Is Talking About This, here's my review from last year:

"No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood. The unnamed narrator is a woman with a job in social media. Her life is all about clicks and likes and shares, until her sister gives birth to a very ill baby and suddenly her priorities change completely. This is an original and powerful book, and is deeply affecting at times. However, the format of small chunks of text jumping from one thing to another, mirroring the bite-size nature of social media posts, made it difficult for me to get fully emotionally immersed in it, despite the desperately sad theme. This was one I respected and admired, rather than loved."

@bibliomania 🤣🤣🤣

I read No One is Talking About This at the start of the year. I did really like it, but feel that there was a possibly an even better book struggling to get out, combining the wit of the first part with the warmth of the second.

Thanks biblio for your review of Bookends - I had downloaded this to my kindle but don’t think I’ll bother if it’s not actually that much about books!

Whoops - I have somehow just posted a review on thread one for the year. Not sure how but am reposting here:

17. Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree. 80 year old Amma is newly widowed, and bedridden with grief. Her son and daughter take it in turns to care for her, often through gritted teeth, but it is a hijra person, Rosie Bau, who connects most with Amma and eventually breaks through the wall of grief. Once out of bed Amma has a new lease of life, and seeks to reconnect with people and places from her youth.

This packs a lot into its 800-odd pages. The prose here is incredibly rich and descriptive. This was mostly a joy, although you can have too much of a good thing, and at points in the first two thirds of the book I got a bit irritated by the Wind in The Willows style lists when describing food, nature etc. That being said, just at the point when I thought this was all very nice but needed to go somewhere, the plot picked up pace.

There are elements of anthropomorphism/magic realism, with the crows in the community taking a view on events. There's commentary on the many problems of Partition, and references to writers from Indian and Pakistan who've tackled them. I'm not well versed in India culture, and so I had to strike a balance between googling some of the more significant references and letting a few things fly over my head in the interests of keeping a rhythm with my reading. There is a wider theme of borders and walls between people that pervades, and much reflection on the roles of mothers and daughters. Despite this sounding a bit heavy, Shree has a deft comic touch and retains lightness and humour even in the saddest parts of the story. Recommended.

I'm not keeping up very well with the thread, largely because I keep picking up recommendations to read whenever I do get here :)

65 Sleeping Beauties by Suzanne O'Sullivan
Reviewed by a few people already. I found this exploration of outbreaks of 'functional' illness and the social /cultural contexts really interesting. It felt like a good companion to the Johann Hari book I read recently about depression, and also to Nathan Filer's This Book will Change Your Mind (I'd recommend the latter to anyone with an interest in our mental states).

66 The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry by CM Waggoner
Charming and incredibly fluffy fantasy novel in which Dellaria Wells, petty thief, con artist and fire wizard takes on a bodyguarding job. There's a bit of mystery & some gentle romance (though Delly's complicated relationship with her mother is equally significant to the story). Overall, perfect holiday reading.

Lily by Rose Tremain
Has anybody read this? Don't remember seeing anything about it.

It was...okay...although I'm struggling to define what I thought. I liked the central character but ultimately it all felt a bit unsatisfying. It felt long but a lot of it seemed like padding in the absence of much of a story. The ending was very abrupt. Don't think it's one I can recommend, but I also didn't hate it.

I was just looking at this in the Kindle deals Remus but had decided to give it a miss and then saw your review.

I didn't love No-one Here is Talking About This. I can see why critics liked it as the "post-Twitter" novel but it didn't quite work for me. The style lacked emotional connection even in the second half.

Just finished Still Life by Sarah Winman. I really enjoyed this story that covers 40 years from the end of the second world war to the start of the 80s. It's basically a love letter to Florence, seen through the eyes of various east-end characters, an art lecturer and poets. There's some fairly unbelievable attempts to weave history into the story - Cressy's bets particularly - but there's a lot of great description and love. Would be a great Tuscan holiday read.

I've read Lily by Rose Tremain. I may have reviewed it back on another thread, not sure. I agree there was quite a bit of padding and not much of a story. I don't necessarily mind that per se, but if that's the case you need a great cast of characters and an immersive world and situations, and I thought those were lacking. Particularly I felt the writing was a bit mannered and slightly in the style of a fairy tale or another stylised kind of story. I can't remember any actual examples, but I think I felt that she was trying to evoke the period through using quite twee language. Neither the dialogue nor the narrative felt that convincing.

45 Words Of Mercury - Patrick Leigh Fermor

A charity-shop find, highly enjoyable anthology featuring excerpts of his travel writing, and articles about people and books. The kind of writer they don't make any more, from a background and lifestyle that seems ridiculously fortunate (public school and classical education, hanging out with the Mitfords, always being invited to someone's parents ' estate in Greece or Spain) but undoubtedly created an exceptional writer who shares his pure joy at people, places and language through his work.

46 Command And Control - Eric Schlosser

History of the development of nuclear weapons, almost entirely from a US standpoint and focusing particularly on their safety (or lack thereof). I found it overlong, with sometimes repetitive detail bogging down the narrative flow. But it's also packed with fascinating, if horrifying details. My main takeaway is that it's an absolute miracle that we weren't all vaporised sometime in the 1960s.

23. Friends and Dark Shapes, by Kavita Bedford. Gorgeous. Our unnamed Australian-Indian narrator is a woman who lives in a shared house in Sydney with three other people in their late twenties and early thirties. Very little happens, but the lyrical writing entirely drew me in. Each short chapter could be a standalone short story, with recurring themes of friendship, grief, heritage, gentrification, and belonging. My book of the year so far.

Lovely to catch up. I've had a bizarre few months without finishing a single book. Coincided with a bout of ?depression/ stress and antidepressants. I came off them a fortnight ago and have just finished a book (though an audiobook).

36. The storyteller by dave grohl
What makes this is DG reading it himself with his inimitable voice (and because it's Dave Grohl! Come on!) Great reader. Some great stories. I lost a huge amount of interest once the Foo Fighters got going and the book settled into a relentless series of 'and then I met Elton John and he was awesome' fluff. Having said that... it's pretty good fluff and can be sweetly entertaining. I can believe it perhaps wasn't ghosted - or not all ghosted - because of the repetitive phrasing ('Joan. Fucking. Jett'. 'Mind. Blown.') The gaps in the story are interesting. I do think it's 'fans only' stuff.

I'm going to have to bow out of this thread, my health doesn't permit. It's been good though.

@PermanentTemporary I hope you're feeling better now. I loved The Storyteller but definitely should have listened to the audiobook than going for the print version I think.

@bettbburg very sorry to hear that. I think of you as part of the fabric of this thread. Of course you must look after your health but perhaps you could pop in every now and then just to say hi without needing to keep up with the whole thread? Wishing you all the best.

Oh @bettbburg, we’ll be sorry not to have you here. As noodle says, can you drop by occasionally even if you don’t post? Adding my best to you as well.

Glad things are better, Perm. Hope things go better for you soon, bett and that we'll see you again when it feels right for you.

72 books so far this year. I've set myself a challenge of 140 but don't think I will reach it.

Last book read - The Family Remains Lisa Jewel.
A sequel to The Family Upstairs, it's actually a better novel and ties up loose ends from the first book nicely.

58: Backroom Boys: The Secret Return of the British Boffin - Francis Spufford

Well, you probably all know by now that I love a good fact-heavy book, and this delivers very satisfyingly. Spufford looks behind the scenes at a variety of science-related areas of British endeavour (some successes; plenty of failures) and tells their stories.

First up is the Black Arrow space launcher of the 1960s and 70s, a glorious failure which just missed out on the lucrative commercial satellite boom. He moves on to Concorde; to the race to perfect mobile telephony; to map the human genome; to land the Beagle on Mars (another colourful tale ending in defeat). I found the most relatable the story of how two young university students, self-taught enthusiasts in the infancy of the computing world, created the first immersive 3D game, Elite, in 1984, and were flabbergasted when it swept the planet.

There's a lot of science and technical detail in here, not all of which I understood, frankly, but Spufford does a great job of explaining it elegantly and with such dry humour that you don’t really need to grasp the significance of every byte and radio wave.

@bettbburg sorry to lose you, but hope you can follow the thread even if not posting.
@PermanentTemporary good to have you back. I've also had a dry spell recently. The Storyteller sounds good. Dave Grohl's mother wrote a book about mums of musicians, which was a nice gentle read and quite touching, as you would expect.

@bettbburg sending love. Hope things are better for you soon.