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?

The audiobook narrator did it in full pirate mode, so it was surprisingly entertaining, although lacking a certain element!

As whaling adventures go, I much preferred Ian McGuire's The North Water in which someone did {spoiler alert} end up inside an animal.

Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep:
the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.
Macbeth sleeps with the fishes

@Terpsichore Brilliant!

Terpsichore

Oh Terp. I do love this thread.

You all put something in my eye
Well I finished a book

The other parents by Sarah stove lol. It was ok

Rachel Saunders knows gossip is the price you pay for a rural lifestyle and outstanding schools. The latest town scandal is her divorce – and the fact that her new girlfriend has moved into the family home.
Laura Spence lives in a poky bedsit on the wrong side of town. She and her son Max don’t really belong, and his violent tantrums are threatening to expose the very thing she’s trying to hide.
When the local school introduces a new inclusive curriculum, Rachel and Laura find themselves on opposite sides of a fearsome debate.
But the problem with having your nose in everyone else’s business is that you often miss what is happening in your own home.

Brilliant 👏 😅

Aw, shucks, you kids 🤭

Oh well done Terp

and @Boiledeggandtoast I am definitely going to read more Clare Keegan

Yay @bettbburg! Lovely to hear from you.

@Terpsichore I snort-laughed.

Standing by my theory that this thread isn't just the best place on Mumsnet, but the best place on the internet.

😆 @Terpsichore

And glad you posted @bettbburg x

Wonderful Terpsichore!

Completed The Survivors by Jane Harper.
I've previously read The Dry by her, which I also enjoyed and this was no disappointment. Great sense of place (Tasmania) and a gripping thriller. Charity shop find!

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I just checked on Kindle and Claire Keegan's story collection Walk the Blue Fields is still in the monthly deals at 1.99, should you fancy a punt.

@noodlezoodle it's my happy place 😊

Hope you are OK betty.

I'm on holiday in the Canaries. Its cooler here than home!

I so far have read Maggie and Me , a Glasgow memoir about a young boy growing up in Motherwell amidst Thatcher's milk snatching, Ravenscraig closing, Clause 28 etc. It's also a story of growing up gay, and also one of horrific physical and sexual abuse. It's depressing in places but also uplifting. It reminds one of both Motherwell ( much better than that) and Shuggie Bain. This was written before the latter and I wonder if the Shuggie author read it . If he did, hmmm...might be kind to call it an inspiration for some of the descriptions in Shuggie Bain.

I do recommend this , although his admiration for Mrs T which he tries to explain is a little bewildering. A bit near the end did make me cry.

A trip down memory lane of Scottish schooling...BAGA, Scripture Union, the swimming groups . Probably the same everywhere!

67. Marina by Carlos Ruiz Zafon Trans. Lucia Graves
    When Barcelona schoolboy Oscar meets Marina they are both drawn into a gothic and macabre mystery.
    It's a good story, a bit gruesome in places, but easy to read and Oscar, Marina and her reclusive father, German are all very likeable.

68. The Best Awful by Carrie Fisher
    A sequel to Postcards From the Edge. Suzanne is now a single mother looking for a relationship and struggling with her mental health. It has a light, humourous tone. It's not as funny as it wants to be but is okay as an undemanding holiday read.

69. The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan
    Really enjoyed this one.
    Olivia has a difficult (from her point of view) relationship with her half sister Kwan and is divorcing her husband Simon. Olivia's life story is told in pieces throughout the novel, and Kwan also tells the story of her past life as a servant in nineteenth century China. The book is wonderfully written and the different threads all come together brilliantly. It's about family, love and culture clash.

11. Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman

Teenager Elio is bored by having to give up his room every summer to a visiting student of his father. This summer, however, he becomes enthralled by American Oliver and his movie star looks. A tense, dysfunctional obsession grows between them til it reaches an inevitable conclusion.

I mean, its ok, I wasn't blown away by it, I haven't seen the film and I won't be in a rush. I found Elio rather annoying. Likewise I have seen there is a sequel in Find Me, I suspect it covers different territory as this book contains a time jump that neatly resolves narratives; like the film, the book hasn't given me any great urgency to dive straight in.

12. The Thirty Nine Steps by John Buchan (Audible)

Richard Hannay is visited by a neighbour who discloses state secrets and is promptly killed. Hannay goes on the run, though innocent, he knows he will be chief suspect.

This is apparently "one of the first espionage thrillers and loved by generations.."

I thought it was boring and garbage. Going on the run and adopting disguises seems to consist of bollocking about in a flat cap, other peoples coats and confessing your entire life story to the first random you meet in a pub.

Was less than 4 hours long, had it not been it would have been DNF

13. My Policeman by Bethan Roberts

Marion has a long term crush on her best friends brother. However Tom, a policeman, has also caught the eye of museum worker Patrick

It has a slightly odd style, told by both sides Marion's sections are first person past tense, reflecting on what has gone by; Patrick's are first person present telling events as they happened, in the late 1950's.

Both have affectations I didn't like : Patrick's sections overuse the phrase "my policeman" and we are reminded of who Marion is addressing with her story far too much. It's just this really that stops it being "a bold"

I think its probably the best novel I've read so far this year, I was very absorbed, but it's still early days. Definite 4 star.

59: The Blackbirder - Dorothy B. Hughes

Noirish thriller first published in 1943. Young and beautiful Julie Guille has seen a lot in her 22 years - escaped occupied France and imprisonment at the hands of her Nazi-sympathising uncle Paul, fled to Havana and, by living on her wits, has got illegally into the US. Now she just wants to find her beloved cousin, Fran, who's interned somewhere in the States, and to escape to Mexico. She needs to track down the elusive Blackbirder, who transports refugees across the border from Santa Fe, but a chance, unwelcome meeting sets off a train of escalating events that challenge Julie's survival instincts to the limits.

I bought a batch of Hughes's lesser-known books after enjoying The Expendable Man and In a Lonely Place, which became a successful movie. The Blackbirder is so filmic it could virtually go straight to screen, with Lizbeth Scott as Julie and Humphrey Bogart as the enigmatic Blaike, the man she finds trailing her escape to Santa Fe. The opening chapters in particular are unbearably tense and you can almost hear the accompanying film score racheting up the tension.

It loses focus and becomes a bit baggy in the middle but still a worthwhile and, in places, gripping read. Hughes was one of very few women writing in this genre in the 1940s and she does it so well.

95. Matrix, by Lauren Groff
Set in the 12th century, we follow Marie de France from a furious, heartbroken teenager to towering abbess. It's a sexed-up version of The Corner that Held Them, by Sylvia Townsend Warner, but moves at a sprightlier pace (I have yet to finish the STW book, years after starting it). On the whole I liked this, although the author doesn't entirely pull it off.

I am so, so behind and rather surprised I haven't fallen off the thread.

Catching up briefly...
@Cornishblues I'm so glad you liked Manon Bradshaw
@EineReiseDurchDieZeit sorry to hear you've been ill - lovely to have you back
@bettbburg hope you stick around, really glad you finished a book!

Very belatedly, I think I have read 48 shortlisted Booker novels, 18 of which won. I was quite surprised by this as I don't deliberately read them. Odd thinking about this in the context of the awful news about Salman Rushdie's stabbing yesterday.

My updates are sparse as I've been very busy, but I've really enjoyed a couple of my recent reads.

40 Exposure by Helen Dunmore

Beautifully written and gripping espionage novel set in the 1960s. Simon Callington, a low-ranking secret service employee, does a favour for his mentor (and more) Giles Holloway after Giles is incapacitated by a fall. The seemingly innocuous return of a file, however, is far more involved than it appears, and Simon's consequent actions set in train a sequence of events that devastates his wife, Lily, who came to the country as a Jewish refugee, and his children. There's a good plot here, but the story is secondary to the character development; absolutely everyone, even the minor characters, is perfectly rendered and you feel for all of them (apart from the real baddies). There's a sort of fable-like quality to the book and I agree with reviews that compare it to The Railway Children (don't want to give spoilers, but it'll make sense when you read it). I've not read any of Dunmore's other novels but I will seek them out now.

41 Just for One Day by Louise Wener

Slight but enjoyable and engagingly written memoir of Wener's days with the Britpop band Sleeper. I was a teenager in the heady days of Britpop so this brought back some fun memories.

42 The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

I'd been having trouble getting into books when I picked this up, and didn't expect it to engage me, but it really dragged me in. It tells the story of true historical events, the Vardo witch trials in Norway, through fictional characters, in particular Maren (who is intended as an elision of several real women) and Ursa, a fictional wife for the also fictionalised witchfinder, Absalom Cornet. The tone and writing reminded me of Burial Rites, which I also really liked. The depiction of the storm which kills almost all Vardo's men at the start of the novel is brilliantly done, and I enjoyed every phase of the novel, from the portrayal of the Vardo women's lives, through Ursa's disastrous betrothal and the developing relationship between her and Maren. My favourite character, however, was Kirsten, the Vardo woman who dispenses with social norms and gets the community back on the road after the storm. Given the historical background, none of this was ever going to end well, and I felt the conclusion was rather rushed after the slow build up, so it's not perfect - but it was really very good, and got me out of a reading rut.

Thank you for that @Welshwabbit, those sound great, especially Exposure. If you feel you're behind, you're well ahead of me!

37. My Story by Paul Gascoigne and Hunter Davies Oh my God. What a car crash. But - what achievements. It's quite a distressing read. Gazza, alcoholic, obsessive compulsive, needy, fragile, belligerent, oppositional and also loving and funny and exceptionally, brilliantly talented. Exploited by so many and apt to walk out on anyone who who was good for him and go to those who weren't. I feel quite churned up and conflicted and I just read the book - imagine being his friend or relative.

I think this is expertly written by Hunter Davies but in a way I wish it hadn't been published - he did it to pay off his final settlement to his ex-wife. It's an extraordinary story and captures a lot if terrible things really about the 90s. I think we are still coming to terms with that decade.

43. After The Party: Cressida Connolly

This was a loan from the library, chosen on the strength of its blurb which promised a lot and delivered a 3.5 star read.

England 1938. Phyllis has returned home with her husband and children after having lived abroad for many years. They settle in Sussex near her two sisters, who are not particularly close. All three have very little in common with each other and barely get along. Patricia, a snob, introduces her to people in her privileged circle and Phyllis makes the most of the fine dining and ballroom dancing scene. She lives a sheltered life, is quite naive and comes across as a malleable character.

Nina, the other sister, is an ardent follower of Oswald Mosley and along with her husband, is a member of the British Union (of Fascists). She gets Phyllis and her own husband involved in the running of summer camps and other activities for the Union. Phyllis falls in with it, more out of a sense of having something to do, rather than believing in the ideology behind the cause. So it seems.

There is a lot of ambivalence in the writing. We are meant to have sympathy for mild-mannered Phyllis as she is overtaken by events but she isn't a very likeable character with a distinctly 'oh poor me' vibe. The British Union is portrayed sympathetically through her eyes and she also drops one or two dubious comments which makes you think that there may be more to her than at face value.

The book is a good portrayal of how ordinary people get caught up in an ideology. It's evocative of that time with good attention to detail. The pace is slow to start with, but Phyllis's modern-day narrarative which alternates with the narrative in the past, keeps it lively until the story picks up. Quite good overall.

43 She Speaks by Yvette Cooper

I've been reading this collection of speeches compiled by Yvette Cooper in spurts which I think is probably the best way to read it. Some great speeches in here, including one of my favourites of all time, Julia Gillard's takedown of Tony Abbott ("he doesn't need a motion... he needs a mirror"). The speeches are 50% from UK women, and 50% from other countries. Some are a bit worthy but plenty are surprisingly funny and Cooper has made some efforts to avoid too much political bias (including for example "the lady's not for turning"). It is a bit Labour politician heavy, which I don't mind but others might. And there's a cracking Audre Lorde speech in there that I'd not previously read. A few women fro science too. Interesting and in places inspirational.