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?

Finished An Utterly Exasperated History of Modern Britain by John O'Farrell who is , indeed, thoroughly bewildered. It's entertaining , and at times thought provoking (with some humour misfires that grate) but ends at Gordon Brown. I'd love to see what he'd do with the time since then!

Particularly ironic are his comments on British people's general non botheredness and indifferent shrugging when others got aerated about EU. he definitely could not see what was coming there! Some sadly ironic stuff on NI, too.

I’m checking in for a bit of accountability if nothing else. In the past few weeks we’ve been to the caravan for 4 days, home for a couple, I then went away with friends for 2 nights and then straight from there to stay with in-laws in Dorset for just over a week. Hectic the way it all fell at once, but all were lovely. Not in any way conductive to getting any reading done though, not in the way holidays pre toddler used to be. I’ve been plodding through Rosamund Pilcher’s September but not got very far with it I have to say.

@Remus
A travel memoir that I really loved was 12. The Shadow of the Sun - Ryszard Kapuściński

There’s a fantastic Richard Gott one on Cuba too, if that’s of interest.

My aunt, who is 86 and has been travelling the world intrepidly since she was around 30 reads a lot of travel writing. She is forever recommending Bruce Chatwin to me but I haven’t got round to reading any yet!

Thanks @AliasGrape I've read some Bruce Chatwin but found some of it rather hard work, if I'm honest!

Can't find the Gott on Kindle.

Will get the sample of the African one.

Remus, I can't find your post about looking for non fiction about travell. Someone already recommended Dervla Murphy -,my favourite is probably Silverland although it's a kind of sequel to Through Siberia By Accident - though I guess these aren't novels so it doesn't matter, it's not a plot spoiler, just a continuation in terms of her travels. DM died aged 90 earlier this year and the journeys here took place a few years after Putin first came to power - she was definitely in her 70s here.

I've also enjoyed some of Sara Wheeler's books - some still TBR - my favourite of those I've read is The Magnetic North about travelling to the North Pole but also within the region. There is lots of history of polar exploration in this one, more so than in the other books by her I've read.

PiggyWasPushed
John O'Farrell's 2nd of his two memoirs of being a Labour Party activist goes up to 2017 or so, I think. It's called Things Can Only Get Worse (because it's a sequel to Things Can Only Get Better, which goes up to 1997). I was a bit annoyed by the last part but I have a different view from John O'Farrell - I think the current Labour leadership and its supporters did a lot of harm - see the Forde report and whatever revelations have actually got out - and I'm not really in a mood to be forgiving - especially after some rather sad events in the last couple of months (not ones to have been news headlines).

I'm sure I've recommended this before Remus but my favourite travel book, The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron is currently 99p on kindle

Remus, Paul Theroux's account of walking the British coast paths (Kingdom By The Sea) is a grumpy
Bill Bryson analogue. It was done during the Falklands War and is an interesting insight into the early 80s while also feeling very familiar at times.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

This classic of African literature is about a 19th century Igbo warrier and his reaction to the coming of the white man. It is widely considered to be the first novel written about the European invasions from the viewpoint of an African. Devastating.

Thanks @elkiedee I've read The Magnetic North.
The Dervla M ones don't seem to be on Kindle, unfortunately.

Thanks @Sadik Ideally I want modern writing with historical details, I think. Sorry to be so fussy.

@PepeLePew Have read and enjoyed The Kingdom by the Sea butb y gods, he's a grumpy old sod. I've read a few more of his too, but that one by far the best imo.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I came on to say Patrick Leigh Fermor but see I've been beaten to it! Far superior to the overrated Laurie Lee imo.

Also enjoyed Bruce Chatwin's Songlines and In Patagonia. And I like Paul Theroux although he is a grumpy bugger.

Ooh@Sadik I've got The Road To Oxiana on my TBR

And if you like your travel writing with a mountaineering twist then Annapurna and Seven Years In Tibet both recommended.

Mark Twain - A tramp abroad / Innocents abroad

Another Dervla Murphy fan here - South of the Limpopo (South Africa just before and after the end of apartheid) and A Place Apart (Northern Ireland, 1970s) are great.

More, ahem, lightweight - Around the world in 80 dates by Jennifer Cox is good fun.

These are 2 dippy in dippy out type books

37. Madly, Deeply : The Alan Rickman Diaries ed. Alan Taylor

I came to this, by way of a thread here. Apparently the Audio is read by Tom Burke from Strike, who was his godson, but I couldn't conceive of hearing someone else's voice.

The excerpts in the Guardian are pretty much the spoils so I'd start there if you want to see if its for you.

My take homes were :

I would never have put him as best mates with Ruby Wax but they were, she features more than any other named sleb

How generally cliquey being famous is.

He really was passionate about acting as a craft, and was politically left, declining gongs.

He maybe didn't like Emma Watson, loved Emma Thompson but also found her hard work. Late on, there's quite a cutting remark about Kate Winslet that is left in, which is surprising because some years have lots of redactions.

In conjunction with Miriam Margolyes autobiography This Much Is True it seems that all the British Acting Greats on Harry Potter pretty much hated working on it, finding it basic work, drawn out and dull. Rickman tried to quit several times and had to be persuaded to see it though.

You'll know off that description, whether it's for you or not

38. The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green

Some of you will have heard of John Green either as the author of The Fault In Our Stars among others, or as the brains behind the YouTube Channels Mental Floss and vlogbrothers or both.

So The Anthropocene is a proposed geological epoch dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth's geology and ecosystems, including, but not limited to, anthropogenic climate change. (Thanks Wikipedia)

That's one thing, and then it is explained that John and his brother Hank were amused by modern review culture, and random things that get reviewed. John then decides to apply Reviews Based Out Of 5 Stars to "the Anthropocene"

As heady and intellectual as all this sounds, the resulting book is just a scattergun mish mash of crap, like he didn't know what to write about, it also becomes part memoir. Significance to "the epoch" fast becomes "significance to John Green's personal experience within the epoch"

There are 2 chapters on Hot Dogs, 2 on Liverpool FC and 1 on Diet Dr Pepper

Statements of the obvious like illnesses getting 1 star, his favourite band gets 5 stars and so on.

What this most reminded me of was something like Quite by Claudia Winkleman from a couple of years ago : Celebrity Has Book Coming Out For Christmas, Any Old Guff Will Do.

I do sort of feel bad for John Green as I do know he has mental health difficulties, and I do know he suffered from severe writers block after the mega success of The Fault In Our Stars I did think maybe he had a publishing contract that had to be honoured.

Very firmly in Money For Old Rope territory.

Sometimes I swear Amazon (or publishers' promotions teams) watch these threads. A Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing, reviewed by Stokey upthread, is 99p in today's Kindle deals.

I read Things Can Only Get Better by John O'F in the run up to each General Election. So much always resonates.
It's funny to read how he was doing exactly the same as me at the time (particularly the mid-late 80s) marching ineffectually but with hope in your heart and sitting in pub back rooms with earnest local activists. (we were students in a gritty northern town and our local activist bar none was an eccentric who sat on deckchairs outside anywhere that needed a lefty protest for a bit. He used to sigh happily and say things like "you know, I don't know what I'd actually do if they did ban the bomb (etc) what would I do all day?"
Happy days..I didn't like the sequel so much because yes, my Labour Party had gone by then. Hey ho.
Both his exasperated history books are good- I might be due a re-read of those.

I reckon they do pick up on things, Maud. After The Road to Lichfield was chosen as the first book for the inaugural MN Rather Dated Book Club, lo and behold it popped up for 99p…

I noticed both those books coming up as deals and was slightly freaked out.

Maybe discussion here just sparks lots of searches and that drives the deals. I must admit it would be nice to think the 50 bookers were that influential! I wonder if the same thing happens on the 26 books thread?

It is a bit spooky but as you say Maud it’s probably just increased searches on Amazon driving it somehow.

If Black Narcissus is in next month’s deals we’ll know there just somehow be a connection!!

Another one who enjoyed Things Can Only Get Better. Read it when it was first published in what now seems like an incredibly distant hopeful time. Can remember laughing out loud.
On to number 7.

1. Mrs England, Stacey Halls

Really not sure what to make of this. The story focuses on children's nurse Ruby May who goes to work for the mill owning England family in early 1900's Yorkshire. My initial impression was that it was enjoyable, but quite slight* *and undemanding. In some ways the style reminded me of YA fiction. I can often struggle with dense/difficult stuff, so i didnt find this a problem. I was happy enough learning about the dynamics of the family and Ruby's working life in the early sections. It is obvious from the start that 'something isn't right' with the England's relationship but although it didn't drag, I didn't feel much building menace. Despite finding lots to like in the early sections, i found the ending problematic. Everything seemed to get wrapped up a bit too neatly and easily for my liking. I found myself questioning how plausible the actions and motivations of the characters were in these final stages. It wasn't so much the enigmatic final sentence, rather the events leading up to it. It did make me re-read sections to see if the characters earlier actions were consistent with later revelations (probably not a bad sign). However, overall verdict - not sure.

I think that the Other People Also Bought function is in play here, I noticed it when I bought recs from YouTube that some others came up

I've read both of these - love a mountain disaster, in particular!