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?

Absolutely shocked about Hilary Mantel.

Unfortunately they're the ones of his I've read too, so I can't yet offer an opinion on any others! Let's hope we both enjoy whatever we embark on.

Completely devastated about Hilary Mantel. Last interview I read with her, she and her husband were getting ready to move to Ireland. What a shock.

Oh, they're excellent, particularly Silence Grips the Town. She had such an original mind.

Sad to hear about Hilary Mantel.

Thanks southeast.

My list, with bolding changed since last time.

1. The Wisdom of the Ancients, by Neil Oliver
2. The Artful Dickens, by John Mullan
3. Conversation Piece, by Molly Keane
4. Islands of Abandonment, by Cal Flynn
5. Five Little Pigs, by Agatha Christie
6. Paperback Crush, by Gabrielle Moss
7. The Man in the Brown Suit, Agatha Christie
8. The Antidote, Oliver Burkeman
9. Hurdy Gurdy, Christopher Wilson

10. A Change of Circumstance, Susan Hill 11. Wintering, Katherine May 12. Windswept, Annabel Abbs, 13. Coastlines, Patrick Barkham 14. My Mess is a Bit of a Life: Adventures in Anxiety, Georgia Pritchett 15. Why Women Read Fiction, Helen Taylor 16. Death on the Nile, Agatha Christie 17. What to Read Next, Stig Abell 18. Hidden Hands, Mary Wellesley 19. The Twyford Code, Janice Hallett 20. The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich 21. The Madness of Grief, Richard Coles 22. End to End, Paul Jones 23. Can't Even: How Millennials became the Burnout Generation, Anne Helen Petersen 24. Murder on the Links, Agatha Christie 25. One Two Buckle My Shoe, Agatha Christie 26. No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy, Mark Hodkinson 27. Taken at the Flood, Agatha Christie 28. Everything is True, Roopa Farooki 29. The Clocks, Agatha Christie 30. Bringing in the Sheaves: Wheat and Chaff from my Years as a Priest, Richard Coles 31. Peril at End House, Agatha Christie 32. Tiny Churches, Dixie Willis 33. The Moth and the Mountain, Ed Caesar 34. A Pocket full of Rye, Agatha Christie 35. The Locked Room, Elly Griffiths 36. 1922, Nick Rennison 37. How Words Get Good, Rebecca Lee 38. The Button Box, Lynn Knight 39 A Catalogue of Catastrophes, Jodi Taylor 40 Grown Ups, Marian Keyes 41. Operation Mincemeat, Ben MacIntyre 42 Kill My Darling, Cynthia Harrod-Eagles 43 Castle Skull, John Carr 44 General Impressions, E M Delafield 45 Watching Neighbours Twice a Day, Josh Widdicombe 46 Fathomless Riches, Richard Coles 47 Tristram Shandy, Lawrence Sterne 48 Beginners, Tom Vanderbilt 49 How to Kill your Family, Bella Mackie 50 Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, Kate Clanchy 51 A Year in the Life: Adventures in British Subcultures, Lucy Leonelli 52 Headlong, Cynthia Harrod-Eagles 53 Dying Fall, Cynthia Harrod-Eagles 54 Stuff I've been Reading, Nick Hornby 55 British Summer Time Begins, Ysenda Maxtone Graham 56 Crippled: Austerity and the Demonization of Disabled People, Frances Ryan 57 Cruel as the Grave, Cynthia Harrod-Eagles 58 Books v Cigarettes, George Orwell 59 In Search of H V Morten, Michael Bartholomew 60 Have His Carcasse, Dorothy L Sayers 61 Bring your Baggage and Don't Travel Light, Helen Ellis 62 Square Haunting, Francesca Wade 63 A History of Britain in 100 Places, Neil Oliver 64 The Couple at the Next Table, Sophie Hannaha 65 Kiss Myself Goodbye: The Many Lives of Aunt Munca, Ferdinand Mount 66 This Charming Man, C K McDonnell 67 Summer Half, Angela Thirkell 68 Lost Japan, Alex Kerr 69 The Sentence, Louise Erdlich 70 The Seven Ages of Death, Richard Shepherd 71 The Instant, Amy Liptrott 72 An English Library Journey, John Bevis 73 Shadowlands: A Journey Through Lost Britain Matthew Green 74 A Peaceful Retirement, Miss Read 75 The Hollow, Agatha Christie 76 Amongst Our Weapons, Ben Aaronovitch 77 Bad Actors, Mick Herron 78 Tutankhamen's Trumpet, Toby Wilkinson 79 Killed at the Whim of a Hat, Colin Cotterill 80 The End of the Road, Jack Cooke 81 The Rise and Reign of the Mammals, Steve Brusette 82 Riding Out, Simon Parker 83 Keep Her s: Sweet, Helen Fitzgerald 84 Coasting: Running around the Coast of Britain, Elise Downing 85 The Shadow of Death, Alison Joseph 86 Grandad, There's a Head on the Beach, Colin Cotterill 87 The Quick and the Dead, Alison Joseph 88 A Dark and Sinful Death, Alison Joseph 89 Another Bangkok, Alex Kerr 90 The Axe Factor, Colin Cotterill 91 The Palace Papers, Tina Brown 92 Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Literature, Zibby Owens 93 Crying in H Mar, Michelle Zauner 94 Landscape in Sunlight, Elizabeth Fair 95 The Matrix, Lauren Goff 96 The Dying Light, Alison Joseph 97 The Darkening Sky, Alison Joseph 98 Mrs Gaskell and Me, Nell Stevens 99 Making History: The Storytellers who Shaped the Past, Richard Cohen 100 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot 101 The Midnight Hour, Elly Griffiths 102 The Glimpses of the Moon, Edmund Crispin 103 Tourists: How the British went Abroad to Find Themselves, Lucy Lethbridge 104 A Violent Act, Alison Joseph 105 Busy Being Free, Emma Forrest 106 Dumb Witness, Agatha Christie 107 The Rising Tide, Ann Cleeves 108 O Caledonia, Elspeth Barker

Adding to the sadness about Hilary Mantel. She was the greatest living fiction writer imo . I was lucky enough to meet her at a theatre performance of Bring Up The Bodies and she was utterly gracious and charming. RIP.

51 The Maths of Life and Death - Kit Yates

Can't recall if I read about this on here? Anyway it was an ok Audible listen- the early chapters i found a bit basic, the later ones about algorithms and epidemiology were more interesting but I really wanted some deeper maths.

I read the Yates and reviewed it meg. I enjoyed it but am not at all a mathematical mind. I can't imagine listening to it all!

Ah, thanks for the reminder @Piggywaspushed . I can see that it would be a good entry-level read.

Very sad news about Hilary Mantel. I have A Change of Climate on my Kindle and might read it next after I've finished the latest Vera.

Bringing my list over:

1. Slouching Towards Bethlehem - Joan Didion
2. Diary of an MP’s Wife – Sasha Swire
3. Fake Law – The Secret Barrister
4. Buried in Secret – Viveca Sten
5. Truth And Beauty – Ann Patchett
6. Material Girls – Kathleen Stock
7. 1979 – Val McDermid
8. Mrs Hemingway – Naomi Wood
9. Mort – Terry Pratchett
10. Scrublands – Chris Hammer
11. The Other Americans – Laila Lalami
12. The Magician’s Assistant – Ann Patchett
13. Equal Rites – Terry Pratchett
14. Thief of Time – Terry Pratchett
15. The Greengage Summer – Rumer Godden
16. The Pull of the Stars – Emma Donoghue
17. Mrs Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
18. Square Haunting – Francesca Wade
19. Strange Hotel – Eimear McBride
20. Don’t Ask Me Why – Tania Kindersley
21. The White Album – Joan Didion
22. The Long Call – Ann Cleeves
23. The Heron’s Cry – Ann Cleeves
24. The Women in Black – Madeleine St John
25. South Riding - Winifred Holtby
26. A Narrow Door – Joanne Harris
27. An Unsuitable Match – Joanna Trollope
28. Taft – Ann Patchett
29. Again, Rachel – Marian Keyes
30. Slow Horses – Mick Herron
31. The Decagon House Murders – Yukito Ayatsuji
32. The Searcher – Tana French
33. The Patron Saint of Liars – Ann Patchett
34. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café – Fannie Flagg
35. Two Heads – Uta, Chris and Alex Frith and Daniel Locke
36. Here We Are – Graham Swift
37. On Connection – Kae Tempest
38. Remain Silent – Susie Steiner
39. Dead Lions – Mick Herron
40. Exposure – Helen Dunmore
41. Just for One Day – Louise Wener
42. The Mercies – Kiran Millwood Hargrave
43. Summerwater – Sarah Moss
44. Offshore – Penelope Fitzgerald
45. Old Filth – Jane Gardam
46. The Man in the Wooden Hat – Jane Gardam
47. Last Friends – Jane Gardam
48. The Most Fun We Ever Had – Claire Lombardo
49. Still Life – Sarah Winman
50. The Mountains Sing – Nguyen Phan Que Mai
51. Augustown – Kei Miller
52. A Change of Circumstance – Susan Hill

And my two latest, both by the same author so I'm reviewing together:

53. Anthills of the Savannah – Chinua Achebe
54. Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe

I have been meaning to read Things Fall Apart for ages, but my husband likes Anthills of the Savannah better, so I read that first. I think it would have been better the other way round. They are, if you read them in the right order, unlike me, Achebe's first and last novels. Things Fall Apart is the story of colonisation of Nigeria in microcosm, told through the central character Okonkwo. It's short and simply expressed, but there's a lot in the pages. It's not put as good vs bad; there's nuance, and the flaws in Okonkwo's character are plain to see throughout the book. Although the female characters are very much in the background, I think they are the most intriguing, especially Okonkwo's second wife, Ekwefi. I also thought that of the three main characters in Anthills, Beatrice, the only woman, is the best realised (and least annoying!). It's a very different book about authoritarian government in a fictionalised Nigeria. I found some parts really interesting and compelling, particularly in the descriptions of how swiftly political fortunes could rise and fall. But it was hard to get into at the beginning, a bit disjointed, and I found the switches to long speeches or mythology broke up the rhythm. I found the second half of the book better than the first.

Glad I read both, neither's going to be a favourite.

Oh, that's a co-incidence, I've just started Things Fall Apart. Like you I've been meaning to read it for ages.

Thanks as ever @Southeastdweller, and RIP Hilary Mantel.

68.The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers 1804-2011 - Misha Glenny
69.Esther’s Notebooks: Tales from my ten-year-old life - Riad Sattouf
70.Burial Rites - Hannah Kent
71.Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World - Laura Spinney
72.Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis - Wendy Cope
73.Wyrd Sisters - Terry Pratchett
74.V For Victory - Lissa Evans
75.Discovering Medieval Houses - Anthony Emery
76.Richard III - William Shakespeare
77.The Island of Missing Trees - Elif Shafak
78.The Golden Thread - Kassia St Clair
79.Gloucester: Recreating the Past - Philip Moss and Andrew Armstrong
80.Husband Material - Alexis Hall
81.The Book of Form and Emptiness - Ruth Ozecki
82.The Road to Lichfield - Penelope Lively

And the latest reviews:
83.Elena Knows - Claudia Piñeiro
I read this for the bookclub at the local independent bookshop (meeting next week) and had never heard of the author before, who is Argentinian. It’s quite short, and the story of one day in the life of Elena, who has Parkinson’s, in her quest to investigate her daughter’s apparent suicide. I think I found the description of how Elena copes her illness more interesting than the plot.

84.Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line - Deepa Anappara
A nine-year-old inhabitant of an Indian urban slum, and his friends, investigate the disappearances of several local children. The subject matter is pretty devastating, but Jai, his family, friends and neighbours are never just victims, but fully realised individuals, and the hero himself is very lovable: funny, curious, intelligent, irrepressible. An impressive debut.

85.Walks for all Ages: 20 Circular Walks in Nottinghamshire - Jane Broomhead
Guess where I live.

86.Vows of Empire - Emily Skrutskie
Final volume of a space opera/romance. Accomplished, but perhaps a bit too reader-pleasing: there’s a distinct lack of peril.

87.Visitation - Jenny Erpenbeck
The different inhabitants of/visitors to a lakeside cottage near Berlin illuminate the last 100 years of German history. The chosen historical episodes are predictable, but lifted by Erpenbeck’s exceptional writing (and clearly an excellent translation).

88.Letters to Camondo - Edmund de Waal
An interesting and original approach to national identity and the Holocaust. De Waal writes a series of ‘letters’, interleaved with well-chosen photographs, to a wealthy French Jewish collector of Baroque art (a distant relative and friend of his own ancestors), who left his house and its contents to the state as a museum shortly before WWII. De Waal is incredibly readable.

31. Mrs March by Virginia Feito

A book blessed with an excellent premise :

Mrs March is the wife of a celebrated author, but her world begins to slowly unravel into paranoia and delusion; when as she picks up her regular Patisserie order, the server suggests to her that the character in her husbands new novel MUST have been based on her.

Horrified, she runs out, because her husbands new book is about a repugnant French prostitute who no one wants to sleep with.

At this point in Chapter 1 you sort of expect to root for Mrs March, but it isn't to be, she is an unlikeable character, unsympathetically drawn, as if the writer hates her themselves, as if they've forgotten that their protagonist needs a personality and an internal life that is more rounded than cold, shallow, superior and petty; defined even by lack of first name as a mere appendage to a man of letters, though this is somewhat the point.

The final third goes rather off piste for several chapters, only to have an unexpectedly dramatic yet somehow fitting finale.

There were a lot of roads this premise could have taken, so for a good opener and a good closer, the middle feels like wasted potential.

28. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin. Bloody hell. Absolutely ravishing - endlessly quotable, beautifully characterized, incredibly human. I'm going to cheat and quote the blurb - this is a story of Sam and Sadie, "two friendsoften in love, but never loverscome together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality." If that sounds overblown, it isn't - I almost want to go back and start all over again, because there's a lot to this book and I think it will reward a re-read. Probably not one to read if you're feeling fragile - I cried multiple times which is most unusual for me. Definitely my book of the year so far, not sure how anything else will stand up next to it.

Gah, that was supposed to be a dash, not a strikethrough - that's what I get for not proofreading my posts!

Oh RIP HM - I’ve only just seen the news. Sad to have no more books of hers.

remember when she was crucified in the daily Mail for comparing Kate Middleton to Anne Boleyn (fairly!), I think David Cameron even piped up without reading everything she said.

Yes, that was all so ridiculous. People completely missed her point, maybe deliberately.
I think she wrote extremely perceptively about power and royalty and I’d have loved to read what she had to say about the queen’s death/funeral and Charles’s succession. ☹️

I always thought people expected Hilary Mantel to be a bit 'fluffy' and lovely and were then (ridiculously) upset when she turned out to be sharp as a tack.
The Cromwell books were genius.

RIP Hilary Mantel. I was half-way through Eight months on Gazzah Street this summer when I left it on a bus in Crete. Will endeavour to find it at the library so I can finish it. Hope whoever found it was less of an airhead and managed to reach the end of the book!!

Oops, only just realised we're on to a new thread. (I've picked up a bit in my reading, mostly by making an effort to stay off the computer!)

73 Original Sins by Matt Rowland Hill
I must remember two things when picking books - firstly, not to rely on rave reviews in the paper if the author is a journalist, and secondly, that junkies are both really boring and very, very irritating.

Anyway, the author is the child of evangelical Baptists, he wins a scholarship to an exclusive private school (Harrow, though it's never named in the book), loses his faith & becomes a drug addict. Along the way he behaves appallingly to a number of women and also to his family.

Hill writes well, but not nearly as well as Horatio Clare (also a memoirist of posh school / drug addiction / breakdown). However, this was fantastically read on Audible by Daniel Hawksford, and as a result I zipped through it in a couple of days.

74 James Herriot's Dog Stories by James Herriot
I picked this anthology up in the library as a bedtime read, expecting it to feel rather dated, but it didn't at all. Although I've read all the stories (many times) before in my teens they were still just as funny and touching this time around.

75 The End of Bias by Jessica Nordell
A book about unconscious bias (racist / sexist / classist etc) and different ways that individuals and organisations can work to overcome this. It's taken me ages to get through this, although it's an important topic, obviously, and there's lots of useful information in here. I had it on Audible & while I usually find non fiction works well for me that way, this could have done with rather tighter editing, so it might have been better on paper where it's easier to focus on key messages & sections. It was also read by the author, which can work well but in this case I think the book might have benefitted from a professional performer. Overall I'm glad to have read it, though I wish I'd bought it on kindle where I could have bookmarked relevant sections to return to.

76 Emma Watson by Joan Aiken
Another of Aiken's 'Jane Austen entertainments', but a bit different in being based on an uncompleted & less known work. A fun read though, and various characters and families from other JA book pop up as side characters, which I enjoyed.

O Caledonia

Well, after loving the opening of this, I found it ultimately disappointing. A bit self indulgent, some sections were really quite boring but others were pithy and clever. I thought the ending was totally ridiculous.

Hi all. Thanks for the new (not so new now!) thread @Southeastdweller. Waiting till the end of the year for my list as I'm on a phone and my typing finger won't cope 😊. In the meantime:

51. Pandora's Jar - Natalie Haynes

Exploring 10 women of Greek myths, their stories in detail and subsequent retellings, some to the present day, with a feminist viewpoint. Erudite and witty. I'm a bit of a NH fangirl anyway so enjoyed this but in a pick up and put down kinda way.

Just back from holiday and instead of reading the beach book I brought along I read Putin's People by Catherine Belton I found it totally gripping even though it was a struggle to absorb all the facts. It in a strange way helped make sense of the current Russian war. I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone.
I am now reading Russia revolution and civil war 1917 -1921 by Anthony Beevor which is also engrossing.
I can't seem to settle on any fiction at the moment but I do keep buying fiction books

Oh Remus! I agree about the ending, but boring..?!

Sorry you didn't enjoy it.

I'm still glad I read it, but yes, I thought the school sections in particular were very dull.

55 The Rising Tide by Ann Cleeves

Latest Vera - a group of old schoolfriends meet for their five-yearly reunion on Holy Island, one of them ends up dead. Enjoyable twists and turns as ever, although not her best. Bit of a shock at the end, so don't get too cosy.