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?

39 Dead Lions by Mick Herron

Second in the Slough House series - not as good as the first, I thought (the plot was just that bit more ridiculous) but a rollicking enjoyable read nonetheless.

Biblio - I need to go and find Steve Busatte's mammals book! His dinosaur one reignited a childhood obsession 😂

45 Some Assembly Required - Neil Shubin
I suspect I just wasn't in the mood for this explanation of the mechanisms of evolution. The underlying idea was that change never occurs when it appears to - the origins of a new feature always lie further back in time than you intuitively expect. For a popular science work, its storytelling seemed a bit disconnected, but I had a heavy cold at the time I was reading it, so it might just have been my bunged-up brain that wasn't joining the dots.

46 Immune - Philipp Dettmer
An introduction to the complexities of the immune system, by the creator of the YouTube channel Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell. It was absolutely fascinating to see how intricately the cells of the immune system co-operate to ensure a response to pathogens that's strong enough to kill off the bugs but (hopefully) not strong enough to do you too much damage. It was necessarily complex at times, but Dettmer does a brilliant job of leading you through the labyrinth, repeating and summarising the difficult bits, and openly admitting when he's simplified it a bit for a general reader. The quirky diagrams are indispensable to understanding - this is definitely one you need in hard copy.

36. Best Easy Day Hikes: Olympic National Park by Erik Molvar

I am travelling to Seattle and spending two weeks in the Pacific Northwest and doing a lot of hiking so I read this book as research. I don't get long in each area so any hike needs to be the absolute best.

I read every single word of this short book just so I could count it here 😀mostly because I get annoyed when I just read relevant chapters of Lonely Planet and spend hours pouring over it and can't count it in my total.

Obviously I only recommend this book if one is visiting Olympic National Park and intending to hike!
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That sounds amazing @RazorstormUnicorn.

I went there 20 years ago and it is brilliant @RazorstormUnicorn Everywhere you turn is stunning, so don’t worry about missing the best bits.

50: Rummage - Emily Cockayne

This is a quirky and endearing history of salvage, re-use and recycling through the centuries, written (and told going backwards in time) by a historian who's so attached to the subject that most of the photographs in the book are from objects in her own collection of weird and wonderful repurposed articles.

There’s lots to learn here, from the now-forgotten rivals to linoleum (who remembers kamptulicon or boulinikon?) to the extraordinary bois durci , a wood substitute made of sawdust bound with blood. All used ingredients that might once have been waste products, but were snapped up and turned into profit by the thrifty Victorians (the age, of course, of Dickens's 'Golden Dustman').

Then and earlier, priceless historical manuscripts were lost forever by being sold as scrap paper for wrappings - cheese shops were particularly notorious as places where a page of ancient parchment might be enclosing your lump of cheddar. But fast forward to the First World War, and lessons hadn’t been learned - Sir Francis Fox gleefully destroyed countless unique blueprints to salvage their cloth backings for bandages, consigning huge amounts of railway and industrial history to oblivion.

It took me ages to finish this, as I seem to have lost my reading mojo completely what with the heat and other life stresses, but I’m very happy to have hit the 50 mark at last.

I've been reading rubbish recently, if I've read at all. I haven't got a list as I cba to do one, I've been seriously unwell.

Terpsichore, thanks for the review of Rummage as it's on my wish list.

Sorry to hear you have been unwell bett - hope you are recovering.

49. Clothes …. and other things that matter - Alexandra Shulman

Just realised I forgot to post a review on this book. Alexandra is the former editor of Vogue and the book is divided into chapters about different items of clothing and she then writes about the item (such as little black dresses or bikinis) and links it to events in her life both personal and professional. It’s not an autobiography but it does give insights into her life and career. I enjoyed it but can see that some might feel it’s not one thing or the other (not a book about fashion or her life)

Very sorry to hear you’ve been so unwell, bett, I hope things are improving now.

I hope you are on the mend, bett.

Sorry to hear that bett. Reading is so much a part of my life that I find it very difficult when I can't settle to it. Wishing you a swift recovery.

51: The Blank Wall - Elizabeth Sanxay Holding

Having said I was finding reading difficult at the moment, I’ve just torn through this Persephone reprint in half a day, and it’s a belter. Wife and mother Lucia Holley is devotedly looking after her two teenage children and elderly father, holding the family together while her husband’s away fighting in WW2. Life is full of humdrum but satisfying concerns…until, one day, beautiful 17 year old Bee falls in with thoroughly disreputable, married, 30-something Ted Darby. Suddenly, Lucia is plunged into the fight of her life to hold her family together.

This has distinct echoes of Patricia Highsmith in the way Lucia’s placid life unravels with remorseless logic, and I read it with my heart in my mouth, genuinely not sure how it was going to be resolved. I also really liked Lucia’s deep and loving relationship with the family’s ‘help’, Sibyl, who was portrayed with great dignity and insight. Really recommended. PS I haven’t detailed the plot for fear of spoilers, but apparently in somewhat updated form - the original was published in 1947 - it was the basis for the film ‘The Deep End’, which I haven’t seen.

Hope you feel better soon, bett.

Ladybird, if you liked the dinosaur book, you'll like this one. I liked that he paid tribute to many female scientists and those from outside the anglosphere. Also, there's something consoling about the enormous stretches of time and all the upheavals the planet has been through already.

86. Grandad, There's a Head on the Beach, Colin Cotterill
Second in the series of Thai-set crime fiction. Quirky characters, a feel for the human cost of the real misdeeds around which the plot is centered (forced labour for Burmese immigrants), without being pious. A good read.

42 The Devil In The White City - Erik Larson

fascinating account of two parallel figures during the 1893 Chicago World Fair - architect Daniel Burnham, who achieved the seemingly impossible and created the Fair, and serial killer Dr HH Holmes who used the Fair's lure to find his victims.

@RoseHarper

I don't think I can claim credit for recommending it but I read The Great Believers a few months ago too. I got an advance review copy (paper) but bought on Kindle, but took years to even get round to reading it. The characters are a group of gay men in the US in the 1980s and their friends, and also the sister of one of the men - and there is a present day storyline too. I liked the book very much but it's one of a huge number of books I should really review and already I'm forgetting the characters' names and which US city!

@bibliomania
Because a few people have mentioned enjoying "nunlit", I did mention seeing that one of Alison Joseph's books was on offer FREE and that several others were 99p or £1.99 on Kindle. I've not worked in a church organisation but there is lots for anyone who's done volunteering, or worked in the voluntary sector or local government, for example. They are crime fiction but I just liked the character of Sister Agnes and her friends, particularly Jules and Agnes's glamorous and worldly Greek (?) female friend whose name has completely escaped my memory!

@ABookWyrm
I confess that I love the novel Another Country. I first read it by mistake when I was 14 - I borrowed a hardback from my local library with no dustjacket, no blurb - I think I thought it was connected to the Rupert Everett film - I've never even seen the film and I think they only have a title and gay themes in common. Anyway, by the time I realised my mistake I was totally hooked.

I found my own copy and bought several of his other books but it's only quite recently I've got round to rereading (probably 2016 or 2017 - I suggested it for a book group), and I've read some of his other novels. Still have several of his books and two biographies TBR.

I find it hard to explain why I found it so compelling at 14 or even at c 48 (second reading) though, and I can't disagree with you that it's quite bleak

Thanks, elkie, it was your post that put me onto Alison Joseph. Summer holiday reading sorted!

Thanks @Bibliomania for letting me know that you enjoyed the book. I first heard her speak some years ago at Crimescene, a book event that used to be held on the South Bank - I first heard of quite a few of my favourite crime writers there. It was quite hard to get hold of her books and I borrowed most from the library then gradually acquired my own copies later.

41. Prospero's Cell - Lawrence Durrell

To complete my trilogy of Durrell books read this year.

It is subtitled "a guide to the landscape and manners of the island of Corfu", though in actual fact most of the book is a series of diary entries made by the author in the mid to late 1930s. Some are short and relate day to day life on the island, others are longer musings on aspects of Corfu's history, mythology, customs and people.

Lyric, wistful, atmospheric and poetic, with descriptions of a lost way of life, this was a beautiful read in places. The epilogue, written during the Second World War, is quite moving in its remembrance of happier days.

This does sound fascinating. On the list it goes! along with 15 million others

In googling it, I came across something about it being made into a TV miniseries with Keanu Reeves. On Hulu in 2022. Couldn't glean anything about if it's aired/when it's airing.

Really fell off the last thread so only just bringing my list across

1. The House at Riverton; Kate Morton
2. The Murder in the Tower; Jean Plaidy
3. The Baby Group; Caroline Corcoran
4. An Invincible Summer; Mariah Stewart
5. The Bourne Identity; Robert Ludlum
6. One Small Mistake; Dandy Smith
7. All the Rage; Cara Hunter
8. After the Last Dance; Sarra Manning
9. Family Money; Chad Zunker
10. The Killings at Badger's Drift; Caroline Graham
11. Death of a Hollow Man; Caroline Graham
12. The Lost Tudor Princess: A Life of Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox; Alison Weir
13. Uneasy Lies the Head; Jean Plaidy
14. The Covent Garden Ladies: Pimp General Jack and the Extraordinary Story of Harris' List; Hallie Rubenhold
15. The Corpse Played Dead; Georgina Clarke
16. This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor; Adam Kay
17. The Night Burns Bright; Ross Barman
18. The Windsor Knot; S J Bennett
19. The Lady of the Rivers; Philippa Gregory
20. The White Queen; Philippa Gregory
21. The Red Queen; Philippa Gregory
22. The Kingmaker's Daughter; Philippa Gregory

I've been continuing my PG marathon and it's not going quickly. Probably a mistake to read them all in one go but I'm stubborn so now I've started I'm determined to finish

23. The White Princess by Philippa Gregory
    This follows Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward V and Elizabeth Woodville, sister of the Princes in the Tower and wife of Henry VII. This is another one I struggled to get properly into, although not as much as The Kingmaker's Daughter

24. The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory
    This one follows Katherine of Aragon from her childhood in Spain, her arrival in England and marriage to Arthur, her widowhood and eventual second marriage to Henry VIII. This is one of my favourite books of the series, I think Gregory really captures Katherine's personality and her unwavering belief in her divine right to be queen of England. In terms of the question of Katherine and Arthur's marriage and the consummation, I personally agree with Gregory that the marriage was in all likelihood consummated. If you have a differing opinion then this may not be the book for you

22 The Collected Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Exactly what it says on the tin, this is a collection of Fitzgerald's short stories. It's a little overlong for me, I got a bit bored of the tales of rich folk and their tribulations regarding love, work and alcoholism in 1920s/30s New York/Hollywood. I DNF a section in the middle comprising the tales of Pat Hobby (a down-on-his-luck scriptwriter struggling to cope with the demise of silent movies)

It would have been better to take these as an occasional read, one or two stories at a time rather than ploughing through all 42 of them (32 if you discount the Pat Hobby tales I lost patience with)

The Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr

The follow up to The Alienist. Set in New York in the late 19th century, this is a crime novel centred on the idea of an 'alienist' (a psychiatrist) and his friends attempting to prove that a woman has not only kidnapped a child but also potentially killed many more, including her own children.

I enjoyed this - it was a bit clumsy in places and overlong, but I was interested in the characters and the period detail.

159 An English Library Journey, With Detours To Wales And Northern Ireland by John Bevis

The author decides to try and collect a library card from every library authority in England (plus one in Wales and the Northern Ireland one). If you want to know about the architecture of various libraries and the design of library cards, this is your book! As someone who likes books about books and reading, I enjoyed this. However, I was disappointed that he never actually visited a library in my authority (due to some library sharing agreements he ended up in the end just requesting some cards via post).

160 - 163 Redemption Of The Dead, The Network, The Rain Killer, An Imperfect Killing by Luke Delaney

Four separate short stories featuring detective Sean Corrigan, some going back to when he first became a detective (before the proper series starts). Good stories although a bit too short to develop the story properly.

164 Local Gone Missing by Fiona Barton

A policewoman on sick leave ends up investigating the disappearance of a local man. Fine but nothing particularly special.

165 The Guilty Couple by C L Taylor

Olivia has spent five years in prison after being framed by her husband for attempting to murder him. Now she’s out she wants to clear her name. I found this a bit confusing - it’s never explained how she was framed and there’s a lot going on to keep track of. It did keep me gripped though.

166 The Brontë Girls by Garry Kilworth

YA book that I heard about from a thread on here. The three Craster girls, named after the Brontë sisters, have been brought up on an isolated farm and never interacted with the modern world. As they reach their teen years one ends up meeting a local boy which completely unsettles their lives. The name is a bit of a red herring as it’s actually nothing really to do with the Brontës but it’s an interesting story, although a bit unbelievable now (it was published in the 90s when you probably could still believe in people living in such isolation).