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?

Watch it on Catch up if you can and watch the 3rd contestant! You will definitely know the answer...

@ChannelLightVessel exactly that sort of thing, very depressing.

I've added Our Lady of The Nile to my wishlist Janina.

Just finished 55. Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart. I wanted to love this, and some of the writing was amazing, but it veered too close to a misery memoir for me. I also wasn't entirely convinced by the pacing and the way the two separate plots held together. There is a near past plot where Mungo, a rather similar character to Shuggie, falls in love with a Catholic boy from another tenement. In the present plot, Mungo's alcoholic mum (sounds familiar?) has sent him off fishing with a couple of men she met through AA. It is a different book to Shuggie Bain but there are so many echoes at the start that it becomes hard to separate them. I found it quite a hard book to read for the violence too.

51 Augustown by Kei Miller

My last book was this month's Shelter Book Club read, and this one is the previous pick, which my friend lent me because she liked it so much. I was highly dubious because she described it as magical realism, which I don't normally get on with at all. But to be fair, I suspect it's not that I don't get on with all magical realism; there are just some authors I don't really get (Salman Rushdie is one of them; also never got on with Isabel Allende). Other stuff that probably is, let's face it, magical realism, I like - so I remember really liking The God of Small Things and Nicola Barker's majestic Darkmans.

Anyway, you probably don't need to know all this, but it serves as background to my absolutely loving this book. August Town is a real place in Kingston, Jamaica (Miller used to live in a more affluent suburb above it), and this book is set in a fictionalised version of it. It skips between two main timeframes: the 1920s, related to us by Ma Taffy (a great character; all the main characters are brilliantly realised), when a preacher, Bedward, told his followers he would ascend to the heavens and the "present day" 1982, when we watch a calamity slowly engulf the community. Miller is a poet and to describe this book as beautifully written doesn't do it justice; it just flows entirely naturally. But on top of that, it's a truly great story, and I was gripped throughout.

And as for the magical realism - well, you get Bedward's story (and indeed the 1982 story, which has parallels) alongside occasional glimpses of the sceptic's view. But for me these lines (I've nicked bits of it from a review) summed the feeling of the book up for me:

“This is not another story about superstitious island people and their primitive beliefs. No. You don’t get off that easy.” Rather than ask yourself whether you believe it, “you may as well stop to consider a more urgent question . . . whether this story is about the kinds of people you have never taken the time to believe in.”

Maybe the best book I've read this year (Mrs Dalloway, Old Filth and South Riding are the other contenders, should anyone be interested).

104. A Violent Act, by Alison Joseph
The last of the Sister Agnes books. Having read them in short order, the formula in many (not all) of them is fairly obvious: Sister Agnes works with a disadvantaged community in London, someone gets murdered, and it's eventually traced back to a family feud in Scotland/Wales/Ireland, Ms Joseph apparently viewing the Celtic regions as akin to the Accursed Mountains of Albania, replete with multi-generational blood feuds. But I like the central characters and overall enjoyed the series.

105. Busy Being Free, Emma Forrest
106. Quilt on Fire, Christie Watson
Two memoirs from women reflecting on midlife. Both are single mothers and are taking time out from relationships. Watson talks more about the perimenopause and her feisty friends, while Forrest talks about her LA days, the lovely marital home and her actor exH. I'm expecting to like these, and was thinking along the lines of Viv Albertine's two books. I wasn't blown away and was left with a vague sense that I'm doing midlife all wrong, as I am apparently not having any profound revelations. Both have new men on the go by the end, you'll be glad to know - possibly another way I'm doing midlife wrong.

107. Dumb Witness, by Agatha Christie
A decent Poirot: one of the central characters is a dog, which adds an unusually quirky note. A perfect read for stretching out on the sofa on a Sunday afternoon.

26 I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith
17-year-old Cassandra narrates this tale of teenage heartbreak and 1930s genteel poverty.

I have read this before, but not since I was Cassandra's age, so I didn't remember the plot in great detail. I enjoyed this, but as an adult reader I'm frustrated by Cassandra's family's attitude to their poverty-stricken status - 5 adults and a schoolboy living rent-free in an actual castle and none of them can possibly get a job except Stephen (a working-class boy who grew up with the family after the death of his mother), leading the eldest daughter to agree to an unsuitable marriage to a man she doesn't love just to remove them all from penury.

O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker This had elements that reminded me of I Capture the Castle, but was so much more. On the first page, 16 year old Janet is found dead in the Gothic Scottish castle which is her home. The novel traces her somewhat unconventional upbringing in a beautifully poetic and, at times, blackly comic account. Apparently this is a favourite of Maggie O'Farrell and I can see why. Wonderful.

The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald Reviewed previously upthread. Classic PF - brilliant writing, fascinating details of life in Russia in the early 20th century, and at times so subtle that I found it quite enigmatic.

Reading Walter de la Mare by William Wootten And speaking of enigmatic, a collection of WdlM poems including the glorious, otherworldly The Listeners. I only had a limited knowledge of his poetry and this is a great book to dip into, with illuminating annotations and commentaries on his life and inspiration.

O Caledonia sounds good. I'll try the sample.

I've started Fairy Tale by Stephen King - really liking it so far.

Another MN buddy recommended that to me recently. Must be good!

I think I'm going to have to give up on Murder before Evensong, by Richard Coles. I've enjoyed his memoirs and parish doings/cosy crime is very much my comfort zone, but it's just not coming off the page. It's oddly hard to place in time - from references to people watching Wogan and Cagney and Lacey, I'm assuming it's in the eighties (unless they're all watching reruns) - there's also a sighting of a mobile phone, described as something exotic. We've got the local gentry in tweeds. Just not working for me, regardless of the ecstatic puff pieces plastered on the cover.

@bibliomania Oh dear - I bought Murder Before Evensong yesterday for 99p. I will give it a go because I like Richard Coles and it will probably do as a comfort read.

I gave up on Murder at Evensong too Biblio and I expected to enjoy it as I like his writing and I like a good mystery.

At 99p, I wouldn't feel too hard done by, Maud - better than buying a full-price hardback! And you might like it - some online reviewers clearly did. It might be a question of being in the right mood.

We agree again Best!

I think it may fill a niche - I have a standing slot for "books that are not actually that good" which is filled by books that are totally unmemorable and can be half-read while falling asleep. So long as they're not so bad as to wind me up, they get a pass.

Yes, it could work for a falling asleep book. Tell us what you think in due course...

Love the idea of this new genre. Books to fall asleep to!

Sadly at the moment that seems to be most books. I blame the hormones...

Ha! Me too. A couple of pages usually does me and I’m out.

26. Prairie Fires by Caroline Fraser

A biography of the celebrated writer Laura Ingalls Wilder, which I know at least 2 50 Bookers have also read.

I found it really interesting. One of the frustrations I had with Little House books as a child was that they had a tendency towards factual inconsistency. (I also really was not interested in 'The Marriage Years)
This inconsistency is really well explained because the content wasn't necessarily written sequentially. I say this, but if asked for an example, I couldn't give one, it's been that long...

It's heartening to know that LIW was essentially middle aged heading for old age when her writing career got going. A lot is also explained by the fact her daughters own writing career which predated Laura's consisted of abandoning the truth in search of a better story, which is why the Little House books became marketed as fiction, though based in the realities of her journey. Very real hardships, deprivations and hunger become The Good Old Days, and very rosy hued. This could also realistically be that the author was writing wistfully and nostalgically about her childhood, being very far removed for it.

The book also provides a pretty thorough biography of her daughter Rose Wilder Lane, who does not come across very well but may have been bipolar. Rose's "writing career" seems to consist of writing lies about famous people for profit, and eventually bastardising her mothers memories for the same. The story of the house she built them is as weird as it is sad, and it seems she frequently caused embarrassment for Laura due to hostile depictions of local townsfolk.

I found too how odd and strange it was that after many years of struggles, once Laura is prospering, she does not really help her living family nor visit often. It's also sad that due to being a success late in life she never really got to properly enjoy it.

This book comes in at over 700 hefty pages, but this is deceptive as the last 200 pages or so are footnotes, so for 500 pages, its very worth your while if you know the Ingalls Wilder story.

<ssh> I did do some skimming <ssh>

49 Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day - Winifred Watson

This was a lot of fun. It's a 1930s kind of screwball comedy in which dowdy governess Miss Pettigrew, who at the ripe age of 40 has nothing to show for her life, answers a help wanted ad and is drawn into the glamorous life of nightclub singer Delicia Lafosse. Inexplicably narrated by Frances McDormand, whose attempts at an English accent are uneven to say the least.

58 The Black Death - Dorsey Armstrong (Audible)
Comprehensive series of lectures covering the epidemiology, history and social effects of the Black Death. Particularly fascinating was the role the plague played in breaking down the feudal structure, and damaging the reputation of the Church, laying down the first steps on the road to the Reformation. Recorded pre-Covid, so ends with some speculation about the possibility of future pandemics...

Now listening to the same author's rather more cheery series about Arthurian legend.

59 The Restraint of Beasts - Magnus Mills
I'd been meaning to read this for a few years as I'd seen it highly recommended as a literary dark comedy. The unnamed foreman and his two underlings Tam and Ritchie travel round the country putting up fences, smoking, going to the pub, 'accidentally' killing the farmers they work for, and repeating this cycle ad infinitum, all the while being pursued by the sinister Hall brothers. It was mildly amusing, but I was left with an 'is that it?' feeling, and wondering if the emperor wanted his new clothes back.

It's narrated by Frances Mcdormand because she played Miss Pettigrew in the film

Really enjoyed this thread as I have been trying to get back into reading. I've always enjoyed books, but increasingly find it difficult yo concerntrate & finish anything. It has given me loads of ideas of things I'd like to read & i'm hoping it is going to motivate me to keep going. My two starters are
1. The next time you see me, Holly Goddard Jones
Easy to read mystery thriller set in a depressed town in Kentucky. Examines the disappearance of a woman. It is told from a number of different perspectives (which I enjoyed) and there are some excellent depictions of different kinds of loneliness. Seemed to peter out towards the end.

2. The kindest lie, Nancy Johnson
Set in 2008 it follows a woman's journey to find the son she had adopted as a teenager. Focuses on class and racial inequalities in America. Thought I'd like this, but didn't. Some of the characters actions felt really unrealistic and there seemed too many unlikely coincidences.

@LadybirdDaphne funnily enough I felt much the same about another of his novels, The Forensic Records Society.

50! Mudlarking - Lara Maiklem

I loved this book. Just my kind of thing, part memoir, part musings on the nature of the Thames, much to be said about mudlarking life and the objects that the river unearths on a kind of travelogue running from the tidal reach of the Thames in the west to the Estuary in the east.

Lots of history/archaeology which I love. I enjoyed the unusual historical snippets about riverside London, some tales I had not heard before. Some photos or more illustrations might have been useful, having said that the descriptions of the finds from the foreshore were clear enough that I could picture them.

A book I lost myself in and was sad when it came to an end.

I think she's well cast in the film and that it's worth a watch, although obviously the book is a far superior beast.

Haven't seen it or read it. But I will do one day.