50 Books Challenge 2022 Part six

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the sixth 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.

What are you reading?

There you are, @CoteDAzur ! Sorry to hear that you haven't been well. I hope things continue to improve for you.

Pressure's on for Measuring The World then!

15.. Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson

I used to adore Neal Stephenson books to the point of obsession. The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, Anathem, and Cryptonomicon were some of the most incredible stories about the near future that anyone had ever written. Then came a long line of mediocre books starting with his so-called "Baroque Cycle" nonsense. Reamde was nothing special, The Rise and Fall of DODO was rubbish and so was the utter disappointment that was Fall or Dodge in Hell. The one glimmer of hope in this shambolic chain was Seveneves which was genius like Neal Stephenson books used to be, at least until the last 1/3 of the book.

I still had high hopes for Termination Shock. I waited for its price to come down, then held it until the holidays when I could savour it. Or so I thought.

The premise of the book was interesting. Sick and tired of governments' inability to reverse or at least stop climate change, a billionaire who sounds a lot like Elon Musk takes matters into his own hands and starts shooting SO2 into the stratosphere to bring temperatures down.

The problem was the execution. There was none of the intricate construction of a brilliant story line that I used to love this author's books for, and it wasn't even brainhurty. Worst of all, Stephenson seems to have regressed to the penis-driven state of a teenage boy. I'm not sure at this point if he is capable of writing about a woman as a human being. One of the main characters in the book is a minor European queen who is also a pilot and shags some of the other characters and reports back to her daughter about them

I was extremely disappointed with this book. It seems hardly believable that the man who wrote Anathem and The Diamond Age wrote it. I might give his next book a miss.

16.. The Ipcress File by Len Deighton

This was a fun, witty little spy book. Lighthearted yet well thought-out and quite complicated, it was an interesting read.

Recommended.

Cote, lovely to see you. I was just watching Liam Neeson execute his special skills this evening, and you have a remarkably similar way of entering a thread...

44. Affinity by Sarah Waters
This i think is the best Sarah Waters I've read, and the best novel I've read for a while. I feel surprised I hadn't heard of it - I picked it up from a neighbour's lockdown help-yourself box, and it took me ages to get round to it. Set in Victorian London, it's the story of Margaret Prior, who after a loss and a severe illness, is encouraged to become a Lady Visitor at a women's prison as a way of re-entering the world. There she meets a surprising prisoner that she thinks she can help.

I don't often find books creepy - I avoid horror and don't enjoy ghost stories. But this is creepy and emotional storytelling of the first order, with a twist i had no idea was coming. It all fits together like a puzzle box. A superb technical achievement and a real page-turner.

Good to have you back Cote, glad you're on the mend. As you can see, we missed you!

Lol @PermanentTemporary I've just gone back to 2020 to look at my review, I said, I'm glad I've read them all but the first is definitely the worst.

Horses/Courses

36. Witchfinder by Andrew Williams

In the wake of the Burgess/Philby scandal, MI5 and MI6 quietly implode into a paranoid state where potentially anyone can be a traitor and anyone can find a target suddenly on their back. Harry Vaughn is brought back from Vienna to hunt for The Fifth Man

A serviceable spy thriller but nothing special and I will have forgotten it entirely in no time.

Eine, really? Affinity? Lol, well I know I don't have much class when reading. I did think i must not be getting something when I'm enjoying this so much and the writing seems excellent but I've never heard of it before.

1. Our House, Louise Candlish * *

This opens with Fi returning to her lovely London home to find a couple unexpectedly moving in. Between the alternating narratives of Fi and her husband Bram we learn why this has happened. From the blurb, I was hoping for a page turning twisty thriller or something more character driven focusing on the unravelling of superficially happy lives. It delivered neither. The first three quarters of the novel seemed interminably slow. To be fair quite a lot happens in the final chapters, but by then I lost any interest I had in the story. Fi's character never seemed to be revealed or developed and I didn't feel engaged with her predicament. I only kept going as I felt I might as well find out the ending (which to avoid spoilers i wont comment on). Best summed up as boring and unpleasant characters do unpleasant things to each other very slowly.

1. Anything is Possible, * *Elizabeth Strout

Absolutely loved this. I have read and enjoyed My Name is Lucy Barton, to which this is a companion novel/sequel. Not being a fan of short stories, I wasn't sure whether I'd enjoy the structure. It consists of several interlinked short stories that provide a window on the lives of multiple characters living in a small Midwestern town. They all have a (sometimes distant) connection to Lucy Barton. Lucy experienced poverty as a child living in the town and left years ago to become a sucessful writer. Despite my intial reservations about the structure, it really worked for me and I enjoyed the connections between the different characters and the events in the previous novel being revealed. Strout writes about the complexity of familial relationships in a way that is both easy to read and insightful. I wasnt aware that there were sequels to My Name is Lucy Barton before reading these threads, so thank you to everyone who has recommended them.

Currently reading & enjoying Mrs England another title I picked up here - my 'to be read' list is getting a bit out of hand. * *

Have you read Fingersmith ? I loved that and I wrote that Affinity is like an early draft of Fingersmith - I also wrote that I hated "the Peter Quick stuff" - I think it was a ghost?

I hardly remember it, but that I really struggled with it.

I don't believe in book snobbery. Everyone's taste is valid.

I have a bit of an issue with The Occupation's Female Relative and Sad Times At The Happy Cafe type books, but that's more of an issue with naff publishing trends.

All reading is good.

50. Bel Canto: Ann Patchett

This was my first time reading a book by this author and I enjoyed* *it. The story is based on the Japanese embassy hostage crisis of 1996/97 in Lima, Peru. The novel follows the relationships that grow tbetween the terrorists and the hostages in the course of a few months. One of the central characters is an opera singer whose singing captivates the group and who become enamoured with her. (Luckily, they all really liked opera!)

I thought Patchett created the claustrophobic atmosphere of the daily lives of the inmates very well. It was interesting to see how their lives changed as a result of their captivity and sometimes for the better. I found that along with the hostages, I was lulled into a false sense of security and when it came, I found the ending jarring.
I was disappointed with the epilogue. I can understand why Patchett wrote it, but it seemed contrived and unnecessary.

51. Wuthering Heights: Emily Brontë.

Inspired by the recent chat on here, I decided to try and read this again. I loved it. It's wonderful and utterly grim; such a dark tale of destructive passion and revenge. I'll get to The Tenant of Wildfell Hall soon.* *

I'm half way through Wolf Hall, so I'll go back to that now.

I've read The Paying Guests and The Little Stranger and found them both slightly hard work while still enjoying them. I don't remember much about either. I think I liked the simplicity and claustrophobic atmosphere of Affinity. Will definitely give Fingersmith a go.

Welcome home, Cote!

Two novellas to add:

114. Parnassus on Wheels, by Christopher Morley. A pleasing little American number from 1917. Our middle-aged heroine is tired of playing housekeeper to her brother, when one day a funny little man rolls up in his wagon, which is fitted out as a mobile bookshop. Impulsively she buys it and heads out to find adventure, literature and love - irresistible. I accidentally read the follow-up first, The Haunted Bookshop, but I'm glad, as the I loved the narrator of this book and would have been disappointed that she's relegated to a bit-part in the sequel.

115. Small Things like These, Claire Keegan
Man starts to confront the abuses going on in one of the Magdalene laundries. I'm going to swim against the tide and say I was uncomfortable with this. I remember small-town Ireland in 1985 and her account doesn't entirely convince me - it feels like she was harking back to earlier decades in some of her descriptions of everyday life. I know the last laundry only closed in 1996, but by then it was mostly a few older women who had been institutionalized for decades with no place to go rather than a place that was taking in pregnant girls. It's not that I'm denying the horrors, just that I think she's using them lazily and ahistorically and she spells out the moral in six-foot high letters. I get that her theme is the community's wilful blindness and maybe the year doesn't really matter. I don't know - conflicted.

Afternoon all, sheesh where is the year going.
Thanks @Southeastdweller for new thread and apols for my tardiness in landing upon it! I think I missed most of thread 5 completely- gah.
I have been reading though!

I won't clog up the thread at this stage with my list, I'll just add my recent reads.

26 September Rosamund Pilcher
A comfort food reread of Scottish country lairds and ladies. Love it

27 The Family Upstairs Lisa Jewell
This was OK. Didn't make me want to read the prequel. I didn't like the flashback bit as much as the present day stuff. Didn't like the baddies and didn't much like the goodies either. It seemed very two-dimensional and the characters were all presented in rather a "tell" and not "show" way. I used to love LJ's chick-lit when I was still a chick myself, but not keen on her new direction. I filed this on my "99p neither good nor bad" shelf.

28 Once Upon A River Diane Setterfield.
For the first 30 pages this was going to get 5 stars...then it went to 4...by the time I got to the end I was skim-reading and couldn't wait for it to end. I no longer cared what was going on, whose baby it was, nothing. Such a shame as the premise was great, and the personification of the river was wonderful, making it, obviously, THE main character of the book. But, sheesh, Diane Setterfield doesn't half ramble and seems to follow the J.K Rowling maxim of "why write 50 words when I can write 800". I have The Thirteenth Tale languishing somewhere on my unread Kindle pile and will get round to it sooner or later, but it will probably be later.

29 I know you Clare McGowan.
A quick 99p crime psycho nutjob book. I've just had to look up the plot and I only read it three weeks ago, which tells you everything. Split timeline between the US and the UK. The US part read like a badly written CSI plot. The UK part like a three part ITV drama script with Suranne Jones.

30 The Night Visitor Lucy Atkins
Enjoyed this. Lucy Atkins is good, I think, at taking your crime-psycho-nutjob stuff and making it deeper somehow. You learn things from her stories. And they show how normal people get themselves involved in really abnormal situations. Like a modern Barbara Vine.

31 Watching Neighbours Twice A Day Josh Widecomb.
Loved this, but then I love all these nostalgic and retro compendium things. The 90s wasn't my decade, mine was the 80s, and in fairness, many of the programmes he talks about I never saw, but it was engaging and funny nevertheless.

32 It Ends at Midnight Harriet Tyce
More crime psycho nutjobbery. Can't much remember the plot already though. I do recall my main beef with HT is that her female characters all seem to be barely functioning alcoholics. Not sure if that's intentional or not. And called Tess. (see also Libby) (I commented on another thread about unrealistic things in TV and film that I'd love to see the ratio of people called Libby in real life to fictional ones) (There isn't a Libby in this book, but Tess made me remember my ire every time I see one!)

33 The Bone Bed Patricia Cornwell (Scarpetta 20)
Oh my. Pat really needs her typewriter removing. This one is so bad it reads like a parody of itself. I devoured PCs about 20 years ago, but she needs to stop. This one had me (and many other readers according to Goodreads) going "who?" when the perp was revealed- it was a bloke we'd come across simply accompanying another bloke to a meeting and was first mentioned about 400 pages in. No, me neither. Warning: the most annoying lesbian in fiction "my niece Lucy" as well as the strangest sidekick/sexual predator/alcoholic Marino and Robocop himself Benton all figure. I'm late to this (and have another 3 lined up on the Kindle) but have already spotted the shoehorning in of Dodgy Bloke Who Will Turn Out to Want to Murder Kay at some point later on.

34 The Museum of Whales You Will Never See A Kendra Greene.
Beautiful. Just beautiful. Travels round Iceland and a love letter/stream of consciousness for quirky collections in a fascinating country. The writing reminds me a lot of Kathleen Jamie's writing.

Welcome back Cote, hope you're feeling okay. Note: the following book contains feelz.

41. Court of Lions - Jane Johnson

Enjoyable escapism, with a bit of a dark side, set in Granada. This has dual timelines but you get a good chunk of each before switching to the other, so it doesn't feel disjointed. That said, there is very little connecting the two narratives apart from the setting.

In the sixteenth century we have Sultan Boabdil's struggle to hold on to power, and especially to keep the Alhambra out of the hands of Ferdinand and Isabella. By his side is his devoted servant Blessings, abducted from his Berber homeland in childhood and given to the young Boabdil (known to him as Momo) as a companion. This historical part of the book works very well and could easily stand alone.

In the present day, Kate has come to Granada to escape her abusive husband (I should say here, there are brief but shocking descriptions of this abuse). She meets Abdou, a conservator working at the Alhambra, and a relationship develops in which he makes couscous and smoulders in a dark but tender way. Meanwhile Kate's husband is trying to track her down, using her twin sister and son to find her. This story moves at a fair pace so it was no hardship to have it included.

This one was decently written, for what it was, and should definitely hit the spot if you are interested in or have visited Granada.

Unfortunately the rest of Jane Johnson's books seem quite different, an odd split between family sagas set in Cornwall and stories set in Morocco, often involving English women captured by slave traders (er, no thanks). This gets the thumbs up, though.

Fifteenth century, not sixteenth.

I'm reading and enjoying Pole to Pole by Michael Palin - would anybody care to recommend me any more travel fiction, please? I've read everything of Bill Bryson's travel stuff.

Remus, off the top of my head I'd recommend Dervla Murphy and Levison. Is there a part of the world you'd particularly like to read about?

Sorry, Levison Wood. Can't type today.

Thanks @MaudOfTheMarches I've read several of LW's.

No particular parts of the world tbh but I like lots of historical info in my travel writing - have zero interest in middle class people in France etc though.

In that case I would look at Eland Books - they have a mix of modern travelogues and reprints from all eras. Bit pricey sometimes but fun to track down.

Thank you. I just want stuff to read on Kindle really - good for train journeys!

Remus to be clear do you want non fiction like Bryson/Palin or fiction involving travel?

You really took one for the team with that Patricia Cornwell book, Sol. I heartily agree, she needs to stop. I used to read everything of hers until she became very strange, got obsessed with Jack the Ripper and that was it. The moment she bought several paintings by Walter Sickert and proceeded to destroy them in her (groundless) quest to prove he was the Ripper finished her for me.

Actually the books had become pretty unreadable before then, come to think of it.

Another who gave up Scarpetta, probably not read her since the 90s, such a shame they were brilliant at one time