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?

"Have you read Sarah Churchwell?"
I haven't, and her books definitely look interesting, thank-you!

@Sadik not sure whether you’d be interested in this but I absolutely loved Charles Nicholls’ The Lodger, which pieces together the tiny bits of information which uncovered Shakespeare’s time living with a family in Silver Street in London. He got involved in a family dispute and made his way accidentally into the records, which nobody noticed until the late19th/early 20th - each chapter is a fascinating dive into everyday life of the time.

Charles Nicholls also wrote a book about Leonardo which is on my tbr pile.

Re Rose George - I know it sounds unappealing but her book about toilets is actually great.

Madhouse at the End of the Earth is in the deals, if anybody fancies peril in the Antarctic.

I've bought The Sweet Roasting Tin and a couple of British Library Crime Classics.

I bought a few things that were already on my wishlist - The Cliff House, The Fell, and Winter Solstice. Now ploughing through the rest of the deals.

27 The man who died twice – Richard Osman
Don't think this needs reviewing. Second instalment in the Thursday Murder club series. I enjoyed this one more than the first, maybe because I knew what I was getting into and was delighted to be back in the company of the 4 over-seventies sleuths. Many chuckles!

Scrolled through the rest of the deals (🙄) and also went for Kathryn Mannix's Listen, and the moral philosophy book How to be perfect.

I’ve bought Tim Marshall’s Worth Dying For in the sale as I like his books.
Have a few things on the go at the moment so restrained myself.

@Sadik some suggestions (don’t know if all available as audio)

The way we eat now, Bee Wilson
Tim Marshall books - eg prisoners of geography
Vaxxers
Shock Doctrine - Naomi Klein (currently listening to)
Black and British, a forgotten history
Difficult women by Helen Lewis
The Death and Life of American cities
Why we sleep, Matthew Walker

28 Frugal Food - Delia Smith
I read a fair amount of recipe books and only count them on this thread if I've read them cover to cover (apart from any chapters on eggs 😬). This was first published in 1976 when belt-tightening was required, then again in 2008. I recently got my hands on a copy as part of a book swap with a foodie friend and some of the advice is certainly still very relevant today. Mostly I loved it as a retro-read though - it could honestly make an interesting entry on the 'rather dated' book group thread. Pretty shocking 1976-based references to bored housewives, dutifully shopping and cooking for their husbands - mainly using recipes with dripping, lard, suet and massive quantities of bacon 😏

66. Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden
Read this for the book club thread – took me a while to get into in but once I did I loved this.

67 & 68 Ghosts and the Ghost stories of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton
There were a quite few duplicate stories between these two books but I read all the stories available in the two books. The set up of the stories are great and Wharton spends quite a long time with the characters before anything really spooky happens. This meant that I got quite invested in the characters lives so ended up being a little disappointed when suddenly a ghost appeared and the story ended.

69. Something Wicked this way comes by Ray Bradbury
Some lovely father/son stuff in this and there were a couple of scenes which were a little creepy but otherwise quite meh.

Finished book 50 this morning!

Spectacles, a memoir by Sue Perkins
Lovely read, mostly funny with some tear jerking moments. Her family sounds lovely and her dog and driving stories had me howling.

I’m on a bit of a roll, managing to finish some books I’ve been reading on and off for a while.
29 Public Library and other stories – Ali Smith
This is, as the title would suggest, a collection of short stories and therefore easy to pick up from time to time. I’m not sure how I feel about this.
The short stories themselves were extremely well-written (no surprises there from Smith) and some of them really struck a chord with me but overall I didn’t really ‘geddit’. I think Smith is just too darned clever for me!!
Interspersed between her short stories are snippets from other writers about how they feel about Public Libraries, past and present, and these were precious.

@BadSpellaSpellaSpella I've also just finished Black Narcissus and it's my number 65!

Really liked this, great descriptions of Indian mountains, isolation and nun angst. Recommend it.

Oh William!: Elizabeth Strout.

While this is a slim book and easy to read, it is steeped in emotions. 'Oh William!' is something that Lucy utters often and you can imagine her saying it in different ways from pity to exasperation to sympathy. The writing is clear and straightforward and it's conversational in tone. It feels like the reader is being drawn into Lucy's confidence from the start.

In the ongoing story of Lucy Barton's life, Lucy is grieving for her second husband and adjusting to changed circumstances. She stays in touch with her first husband, William, who is going through a difficult patch himself. He finds out something about his family background and asks Lucy to accompany him on a visit back to his home town.

There is a lot of reflection about Lucy's difficult upbringing, her low self-esteem, her reasons for marrying William and the ups and downs of their relationship. It's a quiet, thoughtful, immersive read with some very moving moments as it goes from the present to the past and back again to a place of acceptance. I found Catherine's story difficult to read. The detail about William shaving off his moustache at the end made me smile. I like how Stout's writing is down to earth and grounded. I'll read the next installment of Lucy's story soon and there's another Olive book to catch up with too when I get around to it, probably next year.

Thanks @Taswama for suggestions - I've listened to Bee Wilson's How We Eat & really liked it, so I'll definitely have a look at The Way We Eat Now. Vaxxers is also a good thought for audio, it's on my TBR list anyway.

Sorry, the other Bee Wilson book is First Bite, How We Learn to Eat. It's very good, even if I can't remember the title!
Just finished
90 Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
I bought this mostly because it was 99p, & I enjoyed The Code Breakers by the same author, rather than because I have any particular interest in Steve Jobs. It was a good read though, & I now know a great deal more about the history of Apple (which I've paid little attention to despite being a long time mac user).

80: Nomadland - Jessica Bruder

This was a great read but goodness, so…..not depressing, exactly, but concerning. Jessica Bruder wrote a magazine article in 2015 about the growing number of Americans of retirement age and older who basically couldn’t afford to retire - these were people, once comfortably middle-class, who' d lost everything due to recession, or through divorce, or illness, or all three. The solution to many seemed to be to give up their houses and take to the road in a motorhome, van, trailer or even a large car that they could somehow adapt to live in.

Bruder met one of these new nomads, 60-something Linda May, and ended up buying her own old van and taking to the road to document the lives of Linda and many of her fellow-travellers, as they scraped money together working seasonal jobs. These 'workamping' gigs were often pitifully-paid and involved immense physical toil, but allowed them somewhere to park their vehicles; acting as campsite hosts, picking sugar beet, and slaving as casual staff for Amazon were all popular jobs, yet the physical demands were huge - especially working for Amazon, where each day means a punishing round of non-stop bending, stretching and squatting, plus walking many, many miles on concrete floors in gigantic warehouses.

Bruder writes very engagingly and I really wanted to know what happened to Linda and her friends. Actually I discovered that many of them appear as 'themselves' in the film that was made of the book a couple of years ago - which I haven’t seen, but would now really like to. Might be a good one for you, @Sadik - though you might have read it?

48. The Peripheral by William Gibson

I don't read much science fiction or fantasy as a rule, maybe one or two a year, but this looks likely to change for the rest of the year, as once I hit 50 I am going to read some of the longer books I have on TBR , I have a couple of trilogies and the start of a long series.

I started this because of the new Amazon Prime series, which I was intrigued enough by to seek out the book. 99p at the mo.

In a Near Future, Ex Marine Burton Fisher is being paid or so he believes to beta test new games. He believes he is playing a game which emulates security work and seems a bit boring. He deputises a couple of shifts to his sister Flynne. During Flynne's shift she sees a woman die and soon the company are on the phone, and all hell is breaking loose.

Because the Fisher siblings have not been playing a game, they have been running real security in a post apocalypse future London, whose politics they are now dragged into.

The chapters alternate between Flynne and Wilf Netherton a publicist in future London.

I definitely found the future sequences hard to follow. It's the same in the series, unnecessarily overly mysterious, but there was enough there in each section to keep me going. It is slow. I think the first 50% of the book is covered in Episode 1. There are also lots of extraneous characters, that really add nothing and don't need to be there, particularly in Flynne's slightly dystopian America.

I liked the fact that it acknowledges and tries to solve the paradox their time travel creates. It felt believable.

Overall I really liked it. Will probably read sequel.

65 Little Disasters - Sarah Vaughan A paediatric doctor is called to A&E to assess a baby with a head injury, and it turns out to be the daughter of the doctor’s close friend. The friend is acting strangely and her explanation of how the injury happened doesn’t add up. The story of what actually happened, and what is going on in the friend’s life, gradually unfolds throughout the novel.

This was pretty devastating. I’m in quite a difficult place emotionally right now both with my DDs and with my mum, and the book had some uncomfortable parallels with how I’m feeling at the moment in terms of not being a good enough mother or a good enough daughter. Life is complicated and the novel reflects that really well - nothing is as black and white as we might want it to be, and adulting properly is so hard. It felt very real and believable, and I think it was better-written than the last Sarah Vaughan I read (Anatomy of a Scandal). I think I’ll be giving it a bold rating the next time I do my list.

Bit of a trigger warning - a number of horrible things (emotional and physical abuse) happen to children in the book, both in the present-day part of the story and in flashbacks. They are not gratuitous and I think they are dealt with in a sensitive way, but they were hard to read about.

238 Once Upon A Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller by Oliver Darkshire

I loved this! It’s non fiction about working in a rare-book shop in London. I loved the descriptions of the colleagues and customers and the shop itself with all its odd little cupboards and hidey holes sounds wonderful - I may seek it out when I’m next in London with time to spare. I think if you enjoy the Shaun Bythell diaries you will also like this.

239 The Bewitching of Alison Allbright by Alan Davidson

Reread of a childhood favourite after being reminded of it on another thread.

240 Moondial by Helen Cresswell

Another childhood reread, as I wanted something a bit spooky for Hallowe’en.

241 Kind Regards: The Lost Art of Letter Writing by Liz Williams

This was a bit rubbish and not what I expected - it was mainly little snippets of how to write different types of letters and examples from letters from famous people. I was expecting more about how letter writing has developed over time but that’s not what I got.

242 A Life In Broadcasting by Clinton Rogers

Written by a local TV reporter about his career. Probably only of interest if you live in Somerset!

243 Godmersham Park by Gill Hornby

A novel based on fact, telling the story of Anne Sharp who was a governess to one of Jane Austen’s nieces. I did quite enjoy this although nothing groundbreaking.

244 The House: A Portrait of Chatsworth by Deborah Devonshire

I read this because of my fascination with all things Mitford and did find it interesting despite never having been to Chatsworth. This book is now 40 years old so will be interesting to see what’s changed if I ever get there.

245 The Brontës And Their World by Phyllis Bentley

As the title says - didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know but lots of interesting photos that I hadn’t seen before.

246 Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson

I listened to this on Audible which has highlighted that this is not the best format for fiction I’m not familiar with. I find myself zoning out when I’m listening so fiction I’m already familiar with, or non fiction where there’s no plot to lose track of, is better for me. Anyway I did enjoy this but will reread when the paperback comes out to fully understand all the nuances.

247 Why Not Catch-21? The Stories Behind The Titles by Gary Dexter

This explains how 50 books got their titles. Unfortunately I had never even heard of almost half of the books, and only read about 7 of those I had heard of. I enjoyed the articles for the books I am familiar with but was less interested in the ones I didn’t know. Very much a mixed bag.

248 The Wayward Bus by John Steinbeck

This was a little gem. It came up on the daily deals a week or so ago and I hadn’t heard of it but gave it a go as I’ve really enjoyed other Steinbeck books I’ve read. This is a great character study of a group of people taking a bus trip through California and I really enjoyed it.

ChessieFl I still have my copy of Alison Allbright!! Sadly I never managed to convince my girls to read it and they're a bit old for it now.

I'm adding The Wayward Bus to my list. Have only come to Steinbeck in the last 4 or 5 years and am really enjoying this work. Haven't heard of that one so thanks!

*his

19.. The Sentinel (Jack Reacher #25) by Lee Child

Another town, another conspiracy to uncover for the man of military skills and short sentences. This was marginally more interesting than many other JR books, and nicely scratched the itch I sometimes get for reading a mindless dick-lit book.

Black Gold by Jeremy Paxman A history of how coal made Britain ranging from the personal, (including the truly horrendous and dangerous conditions experienced by those working in the mines and the numerous disasters), through to the political (the use of coal in the domestic setting all the way to its importance for industry, empire and war). In other words, a wide sweep of social history. I found this really interesting but hesitate to recommend it unreservedly as it was marred by Jeremy Paxman's rather sneering and cynical tone, which is a shame as it contains a wealth of fascinating information.

DuPain I'm sorry to hear that life is difficult for you at the moment and hope that things will get better. Sending you best wishes.