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?

65: The Bookshop - Penelope Fitzgerald

Widowed Florence Green persists in her quiet determination to open a bookshop in the insular Suffolk fishing village of Hardborough, to the disapproval of local would-be patroness of the arts, Mrs Gamart, who wants Florence's house for her own grand schemes. But can Florence, a woman of courage and intelligence, hold out against the opposition of the neighbours?

Much praised on here, and rightly so: a perfect little gem of a novel. I love Fitzgerald's depiction of gawky, almost-11-year-old Christine, her sometime assistant. She writes children so well.

42. You Be Mother by *Meg Mason
*
I loved Sorrow and Bliss so was very keen to read this, her first novel, when it was reissued (or in this case in the 99p deals!) Troubled student Abi accidentally falls pregnant by an Australian on a semester abroad, and follows him home with the tiny baby to try and make things work as a family. She ends up isolated and hot in a Sydney suburb, when she runs into wealthy older woman Phyllis and becomes drawn into her complicated family.

I really didn't know what to make of this book. I found much of it frustratingly slow and it had a real mean streak - we were constantly being reminded of how much thinner and cleverer Abi was than everyone around her which wound me up. Lots of talk about 'chavs' and 'pram faces' as well which are not words I've heard in many years. Some of the plot lines were completely implausible (paparazzi chasing round someone who directs plays at the Barbican?! Not what normally passes for a celebrity in the tabloids!)

That said, I found the ending quite moving and did ultimately care about Abi and what happened to all her relationships.

I think Meg Mason developed as a writer a lot by S+B so I'm looking forward to seeing what she does next.

73. Eva Luna by Isabel Allende trans. Margaret Sayers Peden
    Eva is a born storyteller whose life undergoes many changes during a turbulent time in an unnamed South American country. Beautifully written magic realism.

74. The Conductors by Nicole Glover
    In an alternate post civil war US magic is another thing that is segregated. Hetty and her husband are trying to find Hetty's sister who went missing while escaping from slavery before the war and also investigating a series of murders in their local community. It could have been a good story but the writing is often clunky meaning the characters don't come alive and the magic doesn't sparkle.

75. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
    A memoir of Paris in the 1920s and the writers Hemingway met there. Written mostly short chapters that are snapshots of his life, it's an evocative glimpse of a another time and place.

Eva L was the first Allende I read, iirc. I've fallen out of love with her since, but Paula is just wonderful (and sad) and her book about Chile is really interesting.

I've been wallowing with Jeeves over the last couple of days. If you know, you know.

20. Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller
Julius and Jeanie are 51 year old twins still living in their family home. Julius undertakes odd jobs while Jeanie tends the smallholding. Life changes dramatically when their mother Dot dies suddenly. The twins have to find their way in the world for the first time, both socially and economically, and struggle to come to terms with modern life and the secrets of their family's past.

This was dark and bleak, with the rural setting mostly harsh and challenging. The twins are fascinating, with Julius at first seeming better able to adapt to their situation, but Jeanie eventually finding strength and confidence. However I didn't like the uneven pacing - the last few chapters felt as if they were on fast forward, with a drive to tie up every loose end. I would have been happier with some ambiguity I think, or a longer novel to dwell properly on the later issues, as this certainly wasn't overly long.

Desperately trying to join in some semblance of a social life.
I finished a Jodi picoult book, I can't remember the name but it's the one about covid,

Quite different from her usual books, no legal case. I think it was ok but I'm not sure what I made of it.

I like the Sarah Moss Iceland book. The book about the Florence bookshop woman sounds good mentioned up thread but I can't remember the name now.

Sorry.

Good to hear from you, @bettbburg - don’t worry for a moment about feeling you have to read it, but if you fancied it, the Penelope Fitzgerald book with Florence Green as the main character is very short. It’s called The Bookshop. I finished it in an afternoon or so (when I didn’t have anything else to do).

Hope you’re OK.

19. Untold Night And Day by Bae Suah

If there was a point, plot, or purpose to this, it completely eluded me.
Vaguely, it is about a former actress in Seoul who works in an audio theatre. My experience can best be summed up as "there were some words on a page and I read them." By rights, this should have been a DNF, but I just refused, completely, to be defeated by only 156 pages however utterly torturous they were.

20. Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore

Hmm. A tough one to review.

A fourteen year old Mexican girl is raped in a Texas town in the 1970's. The novel then depicts as a kind of ripple effect vantage point, vignettes of the lives of women and girls in the town.

It was a bit frustrating as some of the viewpoints are not connected to the main plot and do nothing to further it, just incidental.

It is well written, but I did not feel it was either doing or saying anything original. I had a strong feeling of familiarity, whilst I definitely had not read it before I felt like I'd read very similarly done novels. I got a bit skimmy near the end.

Apeirogon is added to my wishlist. A travel influencer I follow went to Israel earlier this year and tried really hard to show both sides of the conflict and did historical tours in both Palestine and Israel. She must have done a good job as she annoyed people on both sides of the fight. It made me realise I dont understand the issues as well as I should, so pleased to have a book to help me delve into it (though probably won't get round to reading it for a while!)

96. The Dying Light
97. The Darkening Sky, by Alison Joseph
Two more Sister Agnes crime fiction novels. I'm never entirely sure what is happening with the plot - too many incidental characters. I do like the central trio of Agnes, Julius and Athena and I find it soothing to spend time with them.

98. Mrs Gaskell and me: Nell Stevens
A memoir of the author's relationship interspersed with imagined interludes relating to the Victorian author. Wildly self-indulgent but I enjoyed the sections about her PhD, which I thought were quite skewering.

99. Making History, by Richard Cohen.
The author says he's interested in how historians' accounts are affected by their own bias, but loses sight of his thesis for long stretches in favour of anecdotes about their appearance and life stories. Readable but all a bit shallow. I muttered darkly at one line which attributes Irish population decline between 1750 and world war II to the fact that "people married ever later, got drunk most Saturday nights and so hardly ever touched one another - a startling but incontrovertible finding...". I think you'll find famine and mass emigration might have rather more explanatory power, Mr Cohen.

100. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot
Read by quite a number on here a few years back, this is the story of how cells taken from a dying woman in 1951 transformed medical research. It's told primarily through the prism of medical ethics and asks important questions about informed consent. I gather that not all family members are happy about their portrayal and there are further, unexplored issues about journalistic ethics. Ultimately, who owns a story anyway? Thought-provoking.

Don't know why the first two titles appeared in italics - not intentional and not a sign that I disliked them.

Hope you’re ok bett. I love the Iceland book too and have The Bookshop on the tbr.

Hello.
I’ve not been recording my reviews over the summer as life got in the way but have been enjoying others reviews.

I saw Deal’s Oxfam bookshop mentioned - can I do a shout out to down the coast Folkestone’s Oxfam bookshop.
I go 3/4 times a year and ALWAYS find something.

39. The Waves: Virginia Wolf. I listened to the audio of this and am a little conflicted. It’s an experimental novel about the inner thoughts of 6 characters that grown up together.

Aside from Bernard I found the characters indistinguishable from one another and for that reason it was a little inaccessible and I felt a bit dumb.

On the other hand the prose was very beautiful and so I enjoyed listening as I would a Radio 4 piece I wasn’t quite following.
As I said I enjoyed Bernard’s character and there were some particularly moving scenes midway through.
A partial success for me.

I have 2 weeks off between jobs now (including 4 days after school goes back with no plans!) so am spending far too much time deciding my tbr.
I’m keen to reread a Rushdie having been so shocked by his recent attack - probably The Ground Beneath Her Feet as that was my favourite.

@bett hi! I’m rather partial to a Jodi Picoult every now again.
Although she can be hit and miss.

44. The Penguin Book of English Short Stories, edited by Christopher Dolley.

A collection of sixteen short stories with recurring themes of alienation, affliction, lunacy, lust and greed. Not exactly light summer reading, but I thought some of these were good.

I have noted the recommendation for The Bookshop, thank you for that!

I love the title of 'Bleak Health' on Dickens and all his ailments :)

@RazorstormUnicorn Another good book for a perspective is Susan Nathan's The Other Side of Israel . The author is Jewish and relocated to Israel, living first in Tel Aviv and then moving to Palestine. It's written very compassionately and describes her journey from viewing the conflict through Israeli eyes and them from the other side of the wall.

Just checking in/ keeping up with the thread.

I finished A Gentleman in Moscow and can confirm that, whilst I found the first third or so difficult to get into, I did eventually fall under its charms. It took me a while to get on board with the various digressions - I am an impatient reader who just wants to be told what happens next, my fault and not the book’s. Also the character of Nina was a stumbling block for me - I just find precocious children tend to switch me off from a book these days. I had less of an issue with Sofia as was far more invested in the story by then I suppose. I wish I hadn’t read this on BorrowBox in some ways - the footnotes are awkward in that format and I always feel rushed to read and return, whereas I feel like this one might have benefited from a more leisurely reading pace.

I’ve also added The Bookshop to my list - did they make a file of it or have I imagined that?

Thanks Alias. I'm definitely interested in A Gentleman in Moscow now.

They did make a film, apparently, Alias, in 2018, but I haven’t seen it. The director, Isabel Coixet, is Catalan. My favourite film critic, Peter Bradshaw, called it a 'rather miserable' adaptation, but in a funny way he seems to have quite liked it. The cast seems to be a slightly odd English/American/Spanish mixture, including Bill Nighy.

Yes! I think I've seen it now you mention Bill Nighy, memory is hazy I suspect it was during mat leave - watched a lot of stuff during night feeds or just when the baby was napping on me, but I definitely remember Bill Nighy and a bookshop.

37. Empire of Pain - Patrick Radden Keefe

Highly recommended account of how the Sackler family precipitated/exploited the opioid crisis. I started off thinking that individual family members couldn't possibly have been culpable, but this book makes a pretty convincing case that they were. The arrogance is staggering, with one family member asking Courtney Love, of all people, to endorse her fashion brand. (CL gave a predictably robust response.) There have been some great reviews of this upthread but I can't find them - thank you, whoever recommended this.

38. Hidden Hands - Mary Wellesley

Also much reviewed on here. I liked this but didn't love it. The prose didn't flow for me and it took me ages to get through.

Kit Yates - The Maths of Life and Death : really interesting and definitely not just for mathematicians. He is a biological mathematician solooks at real life applications of mathematical modelling. I found the chapters on counting and number bases, and the one on epidemiology and pandemic modelling really interesting. He wrote it about a year into Covid so is a bit cautious on what he says. He has since had a good deal to say on Twitter! It's well written, not often bamboozling and nice to see the human face of maths! The real life examples he gives of where things have gone wrong or right are excellent. Including why everything should come in 12s...

Thanks, Piggy, that one has gone on my Kindle wishlist. I have David Spiegelhalter's Covid by Numbers on my Kindle but haven't got round to it yet - I find maths, statistics and economics fascinating but need a readable guide, as these are not my areas at all.

Nor me! This is definitely readable!

Thanks @elkiedee I've messaged you.

I've started Old Filth and am enjoying it, thanks for the recommendation @Welshwabbit.