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?

Non-fiction, please.

I used to love Patricia Cornwell but after five or six they all started to merge into one. I got as far as The Body Farm, I think. The Jack the Ripper stuff was bonkers.

Remus, William Dalrymple's earlier books are more travel than history but with plenty of that too. My favourite of his is about Christian communities under threat in the Middle East - sorry, can't remember the title.

Gosh, yes, I remember the Jack the Ripper documentary she did, and she was starting to sound deranged.

This one started off ok, like putting comfy dead body themed slippers on, but quickly slipped into Kay's weird combination of paranoia and conspiracies real or imagined followed by her making spaghetti marinara and homemade pizza.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

I have all Michael Palin's and really like them.

Maud, that's From the Holy Mountain and yes, it's good.

Remus, two travel books I like are The End of Elsewhere, by Taras Grescoe and The Lost Ark of the Covenant, by Tudor Parfitt. If you're up for some quite dense prose, Patrick Leigh Fermor is the doyen, and Eric Newby has his charms.

And closer to Bill Bryson is Continental Drifter, by Tim Moore.

Thanks for these - will get some samples. I have quite a low tolerance level for anything religious though.

Some of those books refer to religion but more in terms of history and culture than any actual belief on the author's part.

I was thinking Jan Morris?

Also, it is fiction but the first thing that entered my head was Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

I've read some Jan Morris (loved the Everest one but didn't get on with others) and some Eric Newby.

I might start by getting some more Michael Palin stuff.

I also love Patrick Leigh Fermor and Eric Newby.

If you're looking for a compare and contrast, I can thoroughly recommend A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor, the first volume of his travels through Europe in 1933-34 cf As I walked out one Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee walking through Spain, also in 1934, but with far less money and without the rather helpful connections afforded by PLF's background. Both are terrific in their different ways.

I liked the William Dalrymple travel book about Syria too.

Just read
60. A Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing - Melissa Bank. The author died recently and someone recommended this to be saying it looks like chick lit but it's not. And I agreed. There a series of short stories loosely joined by the main character Jane, a some-time assistant editor at a publishing house in New York. Some parts are stronger than others - I liked the idea where Archie figured best - but on the whole, they're witty and poignant, a bit like Nora Ephron. Hadley Freeman has said her second book The Wonder Spot is her favourite book, so I'm tempted to read that too.

61. A Will to Kill - R V Raman. I think this was recommended by someone on here but I'm too lazy to search. It's billed as an Indian Agatha Christie which is pretty accurate - I do love both India and Agatha Christie. It's set in a misty county house in the hills near Ooty where a family gather after the patriarch has had several attempts on his life. There's a typical bunch of characters - gambling husband, scruffy priest, earnest son, maverick father. A little too clichéd for me. I'd have also liked a bit more background explanation, was really confused why some of the family had Indian names and some had Western names, and what religion they were given the chapel.

I really loved The Wonder Spot. I didn’t know Melissa Bank had died, that’s very sad.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie how about Clear Waters Rising by Nicholas Crane? He walked across Europe, sticking to the mountainous areas - I loved the book (and several others of his).

54. Yours Cheerfully - AJ Pearce

Sequel to Dear Mrs Bird which I read in 2019. I think it helps having read the first book as this continues where DMB left off. An easy read, set well within its historical context, addressing some of the issues facing working women during the War (childcare, widowhood, disparity of pay). The main character seems to have calmed down a little since the first book, and has a great relationship with her girl friends in testing times.

It’s years since I read it Remus but I remember enjoying McCarthy’s Bar by Pete McCarthy, in a similar vein to Bill Bryson.

116. Landlines, by Raynor Winn
If you liked The Salt Path, you'll like this, and if you didn't, you won't. Again the author and her husband head out on a long walk, this time from Scotland heading south. This was in 2021, so we have references to lockdown, Brexit, Scottish independence, the heatwave and environmental doom. I love walking and accounts of walking, blisters, manky socks and all, so swallowed it down whole, notwithstanding the self-romanticizing: a few weeks camping in Scotland become "I have lived amongst eagles and stags" and sages are forever popping up out of the mist with gnomic utterances that encourage our heroine to struggle on despite her leaking boots. I counted five occasions where strangers either recognized her as Famous Author Raynor Winn or else didn't recognize her but randomly started enthusing about The Salt Path. Pardonable pride though - hell, I would.

I mock, slightly, but did feel like I'd had a good bracing walk.

24 Seven days of us - Francesca Hornak
Already reviewed by many 50-bookers. This is billed as hilarious. I sobbed my way through a couple of the sections in the final chapters. Maybe too close to home?

I picked up Purple Hibiscus in the kindle monthly deals and I've been wanting to read this for ages so I think that's next on the list...

58 The Midnight Watch - David Dyer This is a novel about the SS Californian and it’s actions (or lack of them) on the night the Titanic sank. The Californian was close to the Titanic and its officers saw the distress signals but made no effort to go and help - arguably many lives could have been saved if they had followed the signals, and the officers were condemned in the official inquiries into the disaster.

The history which provides the basis for this novel is very interesting, and is a side of the Titanic story which I think is probably little-known compared to the sinking of the ship itself. But I’m a bit ambivalent about the book, as it just didn’t really engage me emotionally - it almost felt like a chore to get through it and the more emotive section at the end came too late and was too rushed to have any real effect on me. Admittedly I’m not a fan of disaster narratives generally, but I think the real problem is that it seems to be a book written by a Titanic scholar/obsessive rather than by a novelist (a brief look at Dyer’s biography confirms this - it looks like his only novel, and he wrote it as part of a doctorate after working as a ship’s officer and subsequently a lawyer with the firm that historically represented the Titanic’s owners).

Overall, a reasonably good book but nothing special.

I know the chat about Affinity was a few pages ago but its one of my favourite Sarah Waters, for me it’s the cold close atmosphere that drew me in.

A Tomb with a View: The stories & glories of graveyards by Peter Ross

If you like wandering around graveyards reading the tombs and wondering about the stories behind them then you are likely to enjoy this (although for me it took a couple of chapters to get going). Each chapter focuses on a different graveyard either in the UK or Ireland and talks about the history and some of the more interesting dead residents. Nice to see one local to me get a feature (Arnos Vale)
Something in Disguise by Elizabeth Jane Howard
This is about a family in England following the time period after WWII. I read Falling about 20 years ago which has stayed with me so I’m not sure why its taken me this long to read another book by the same author. I thought this was excellent – not life changing by I loved the writing and where the story went. I’ll definitely be reading more by Elizabeth Jane Howard.

Try Christina Lamb. I've only read The Sewing Circles of Herat: My Afghan Years, but it was great and I'll read more.
I do think it assumes a bit of political/historical knowledge that I failed miserably in having, but she's a compelling and clear writer and she finds and talks to the most fascinating people.

28 Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile - Alice Jolly
A fictional "found memoir" written by an elderly servant at the end of her life, concerning the experiences of her young days living in the Stroud valleys in the Chartist era.

This is a stunning book. I bought it ages ago but put off reading it because the text looks like one long poem. In reality, it's more a collection of short sentences as written by a poorly educated woman in 19th Century Gloucestershire. As such, the grammar and punctuation are sketchy, the language peppered with dialect and religious fervour, but powefully evocative of location in an era which must have been difficult for all, more so for women, and even more so for the physically weak.

Mary Ann, presumably an orphan, is an unfortunate soul; born into poverty with a hare lip and diminutive stature, she is presumed mentally deficient and treated as little more than an animal. When her foster family dies in some sort of plague (cholera maybe?), she takes herself off into town wearing her departed foster-sister's best dress in search of work, where she meets the man who will employ her until his death some years later. Living and working for Mr Cottrell and his young sons, Mary Ann is treated as an intelligent human for the first time and learns to read and write at Mr Cottrell's night-classes for local working-class men once she has finished her housekeeping chores for the day. Thus she grows alongside the 2 young masters of the house, and the tragedy that is alluded to from the start of the book slowly unfolds.

29 The Snow Queen - Hans Christian Anderson
2 children are seperated when the boy (Kay) is affected by the piercing of his heart of a fragment of a broken evil mirror and is removed from his home by the Snow Queen. The little girl (Gerda) endures hardships in her many adventures while looking for him but comes through in the end and the 2 children return to their home triumphant but adult.

Saying hi in order to bookmark, really want to come and catch up with you all but have been struggling a bit with stuff and had a bit of a reading slump (2 weeks or so) last month. Hope to return this evening or tomorrow but am still hoping to pop to the local library to put a couple of in demand library books back into the system so they can go to the next person in the queue.

Sounds so interesting @YolandiFuckinVisser

Thank you. I read the Lee years ago - liked it!

Thanks for the other recommendations - loading up with samples now.