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?

51. The Three Body Problem
52. The Dark Forest
53. Death's End

by Cixin Liu

So this is a Science Fiction trilogy that is going to be quite difficult to summarise and review. It is truly ambitious in its sheer scope, taking place across millennia. I respect the effort and the attempt if nothing else. But...

The Three Body Problem

During The Cultural Revolution, Ye Wenjie escapes persecution by a last minute assignment to an off grid science unit.

Forty years later, Wang Miao, a nanotechnology professor is asked by the police to help investigate a spate of academic suicides. During this he is introduced to a VR type game called Three Body, which seems to be a civilisation simulator.

In an unavoidable mild spoiler, it is revealed that Ye Wenjie made contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life in the 1960's. Though she was warned that this civilisation may be hostile, disaffected with humanity she invites them to Earth. The simulator experienced by Miao, basically seeks to get a group of humans onside for a coming invasion 400 light years away.

I often found this hard to follow, and hated the in-game sequences, which were many.

The Dark Forest

The follow up mainly focuses on a man named Luo Ji, who has been selected along with 3 other men to stand as a Wallfacer, and protect Earth from invasion. Nobody knows why he has been picked least of all him. It is around here that the concept of human hibernation becomes involved, and is used in an ongoing way to speed up were things are scientifically and in terms of where the forthcoming invasion is up to. It becomes lazy an overused MacGuffin for getting from A to B. Basically, after every hibernation, what came before is immediately historic and irrelevant. It is repetitive. Didn't even slightly become invested in the people or events, due to surface level writing and near constant jumping about between characters and/or timelines.

Death's End

Begins by circling back to where the trilogy started, before selecting a new "saviour" type character in Cheng Xin. Humanity spreads out across the Solar System, but the threat of the Dark Forest remains.
I did think this was the best of the three, at least the first half.

The trilogy, I think is rich in ideas, but poor in both a sense of personal resonance, a feeling that you care and credible plot. There are long sections were my eyes just glazed over in a "get on with it way". It's overblown, and forgets "Show Don't Tell"

It does try and focus on the human experience by having a character like Cheng Xin represent an everywoman figure.
If it could have it cut back just a bit on keeping characters alive for hundreds of years to have reintroduction sequence after reintroduction sequence. I just felt there were so many wasted pages, when a bit more subtlety and brevity could have produced beauty and elegance on the page, instead of what often felt like droning on.

Ultimately a trilogy about humanity facing its death knell at the hands of hostile aliens should be quite gripping and it manages to be a bit dull and pedestrian.

About 2 years ago on the thread I saw @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie make what looked like a derogatory comment about this, and I sped by knowing I had it on TBR. I'm now curious now that I have come to the conclusion, over 1400 or so pages that it's Waste Of A Good Concept Problem

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I managed about 4 pages of the first one. I'm impressed at your staying power, if nothing else.

254 The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier

This was not at all the book I expected to get based on the blurb. A plane lands in June, but it’s an exact duplicate of a plane that landed in March. There’s now two of all the passengers and crew - so which one gets to live the person’s life and what might people do to ensure they keep their life? I was therefore expecting a thriller type novel but this isn’t that - instead it goes off into odd philosophical and religious tangents and it just didn’t work for me.

255 Ghosts from the Library: Lost Tales of Terror and the Supernatural

Ghost stories written by crime writers like Agatha Christie. A mixed bag.

256 One Of Those Faces by Elle Grawl

A woman starts getting worried when women who look exactly like her keep getting murdered near her flat. This wasn’t great - too many coincidences and plot holes and the end was confusing - I’m still not sure who killed who.

Remus

I do feel like my perseverance is the only win here. The frustrating thing is there is a beautiful, sprawling epic in there but it's buried in mundanities.

Inspired by a previous poster I read Burntcoat by Sarah Hall.
I can't better the original review of this - this is is brilliant. There are moments where she describes events happening in the pandemic (and how we reacted) that you had forgotten and when you re-read it you recognise that event or emotion.

58 Eichmann In Jerusalem - Hannah Arendt

Subtitled The Banality of Evil, this is an unflinching, fascinating but chilling examination of the notions of guilt and justice surrounding the Holocaust, framed by the trial of Eichmann who was put on trial in 1961 after being kidnapped from Argentina by Israeli agents. Not an easy read but very thought-provoking.

Kindle daily deals klaxon - The Crow Road is in today's deal for 99p - my joint favourite book (along with The Secret History). If you like Iain Banks but haven't read this one, it's an absolute cracker.

Thank you! Bought it.

Have dropped off the thread but found you all. Am I too late to wish @bettbburg all the best? I'll miss you.
I am really behind on reviews but if I try to do them all I will never catch up so will post the ones I have and come back to the others at some point.

69 Everything is Washable by Sali Hughes
I really like Hughes – she’s funny and warm and I think would be an excellent friend. Fan-girling aside this is a fun and useful book that covers a bunch of life lessons from cooking and cleaning to makeup to managing relationships. I picked up some useful tips on skincare, and what to spend money on in the house and what not to and it reaffirmed my view of the life changing magic of female friendships (she says, brilliantly, that though she loves her husband, she’d cope without him whereas her friends are indispensable).
I know a number of young women on the verge of independence and this is going to be my go-to gift to them for a while to come, I think.

70 The Escape Artist by Jonathan Freedland
Strong contender for my book of the year – I’ve read a reasonable number of books about the Holocaust but nothing quite like this. The subtitle is “The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World” and that is indeed what happened – Rudolf Vrba escaped from Auschwitz in 1944 and made it to freedom to tell the world what was happening and try to stop the final transports of Jews from Hungary. He’d seen what happened to the trains full of people arriving there and knew exactly what would happen to any new arrivals, and had a painstaking mental record of the industrialised processes that were leading to mass murder. And he also realised the only way the Nazis were able to make it work was because people didn’t know, and didn’t want to know, what was going to happen to them.

When he made it to freedom, he found he was faced with doubt, denial and obfuscation, though in the end his testimony did indeed save many thousands of lives. The story of what happened to him afterwards is a sad one; he never really found peace or happiness, and he changed his name so that even those people who knew about Rudy Vrba didn’t necessarily know that he was the person responsible. Not a fun read, but a really moving and important story that’s done justice by Freedland’s telling of it.

71 Supping with the Devils by Hugo Young
Political journalism from (mostly) the 1980s and 1990s, read to get the book off my shelf and into the charity shop as it’s been hanging around for years. I found some of it fascinating – the Major years in particular, as I was just a little too young to really remember what it felt like to live through the last years of a government in terminal decline (not any more!) and even more interesting was his portrayal of Major, who he disagreed with politically but respected personally. It was a different time – serious people making serious decisions that you may disagree with, but could at least understand intellectually.

Here are the rest, which means I am up to date and able to show my face again.

72 We All Hear Stories In the Dark by Robert Shearman
101 short stories that are woven together in a way that means that you, the reader, may or may not get to the end – the best way to describe them is a kind of Choose Your Own Adventure for adults. And so everyone’s experience is different. I got thrown out about a third of the way through the stories, and I liked that because I will go back and “re-read” at some point although it won’t be a re-read at all.
Your view of the stories is meant to change as the order in which you read them changes but I fear I am not an attentive enough reader for that to really be meaningful. Some are really frightening, some are a bit creepy and some are cute and funny. Definitely not like anything I’ve read before and a real curiosity, very cleverly done.

73 Substance by Peter Hook
Who doesn’t love a rock memoir? And as memoirs go this it has it all - sex, drugs, music, rivalry, death, bankruptcy, and general mayhem. I always thought Peter Hook was the sullen grumpy one in New Order but if his account of Barney Sumner’s behaviour is even vaguely aligned to reality then he did remarkably well to keep going for as long as he did. He’s incredibly candid but also quite honest which I found endearing. I think the endless discographies and play lists are for the music geeks amongst his readers rather than me, but it meant it wasn’t actually as long as it appeared. Fun and made me go back to New Order’s back catalogue and listen again.

74 The Day the World Came To Town by Jim DeFede
One telling (there are lots) of the planes that got stuck in Gander, in Newfoundland, on 9/11 and how the people of Gander welcomed hundreds of strangers into their homes, despite the chaos unfolding around them. I didn’t really get much out of this because I’d just seen Come From Away which tells you everything you need to know about how generous the Gander residents were in a much shorter and more digestible format. This wasn’t brilliantly written either, which is odd as DeFede is a journalist and should know better.

75 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
Recommended (enthusiastically) on this thread. I can see the power in this as a story and I enjoyed it far more than Wuthering Heights (I am not a fan). I am not an enormous fan of the nested narrative and epistolary approach, much preferring a more traditional narrative but this was really good. I don’t know why it doesn’t get more attention, as it really does address some extremely contemporary themes in a very engaging and engrossing way.

76 Apollo Murders by Chris Hadfield
If you didn’t know Hadfield was an astronaut when you started reading this you would certainly know by the end. It’s ok, Chris, you don’t have to persuade us, we know that you went into space and can fly a plane. A bit of skullduggery and Cold War intrigue then a fairly tedious space battle or two made for a slightly diverting read that I won’t ever think of again now I have written this review.

77 Climate Justice by Mary Robinson
Short and punchy focus on some of the people who have been instrumental in bringing the concept of a just transition to the fore of discussions about climate change, from Canadian miners who have been forced to find new jobs when coal mines shut to a New Orleans woman who lost everything in Hurricane Katrina and a Sami woman who has seen the migratory patterns of deer in Finland change enormously. It’s a little old now, as it was published in 2018 which in climate terms is a life time given the pace of change. But I think the human stories of the consequences of climate change as well as the impact of the decisions ahead of us are not given much airtime by the people who need to make these decisions, so this is an important book in that regard.

Glad you liked Tenant, Pepe x

83: A Start in Life – Anita Brookner

Current read for the Rather Dated Book Club on here. It was Brookner's first novel and sets the pattern of her future fiction and protagonists - lonely, alienated women who find themselves eternal outsiders, often to their own bewilderment. This first example is Ruth Weiss, child of monstrous ex-actress Helen and bookshop owner George, who leech off their own child without compunction.

It's unexpectedly funny despite the lacerating sadness of it all, and superbly written, but I have to be honest and say I’ll never be a committed Brookner lover.

What is it about Brookner that doesn't appeal, Terpsichore?

I am a huge fan and when someone told me they disliked her recently I was assuming it would be something along the lines of "too repetitive" or "bleak" (both fair) but she was enraged by the bourgeois settings, it turns out. I don't think one would expect Brookner to do anything else - I thought it was like saying Dickens didn't have space rockets - but she said she found it unbearably suffocating.

It’s difficult to pin it down, Pepe, but at the heart of it is probably the knowledge that something in me has the capacity to be one of Brookner's lost, lonely women. In another, different life I might have been. I actually find it quite painful to confront. That’s a compliment to her insight and skill as a writer but it does mean I instinctively shy away from her books somewhat.

54. Magician by Raymond E Feist (Audible)

Pug, a young orphaned boy in a medieval style township hopes to be apprenticed to a trade in an annual ceremony. No one is more surprised than he when he is picked by the court magician.

This got off to the perfect start, both the plot and the vocabulary was quite simple and it was perfect as a Book Before Bedtime.

But, it went south for me pretty quick. It's so long and yet I had zero desire to listen to it for more than 30 mins at any time, so I've had it on the go since August.

Where it goes wrong for me is that when you have a book called Magician and it's about a magicians apprentice, you actually expect it to do what it says on the tin, because that's why you are reading it.

It very very quickly becomes Fantasy Checklist : Elves, Dwarfs, Court Politics and a Rift revealing another world to go to war with. Pug seemingly becomes a great wizard off the page, and with very little teaching. He's just that good.

I got about halfway before I was done with it and had no further interest, but considering the hours I'd already put in, it seemed like a literal waste of my time to not continue. It also became part of my night routine. I finally finished it tonight.

This is a trilogy, but I'm going no further. I had a look at the synopsis of the next book Silverthorn and congratulated myself on an excellent decision.

44. Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree. I read this for a book club. The premise sounded great - old woman refuses to get out of bed after the death of her husband. But whilst there was some nice writing it couldn’t hold it for 700 pages long and was ultimately pretty inaccessible.

45-47 The Time Tunnel Trilogy by Richard Todd.
This time travel trilogy focuses on a series of ‘what if’ questions.
Firstly, What If someone could go back in time to prevent 9/11, the next book to prevent the Battle of Little Bighorn and finally to prevent the killing of an American president.
These were quite silly, distracting reads for me, the characters weren’t hugely believable and there were some flaws in the logic. However, I enjoyed seeing the absolute madness of the world created and I raced through these.

48. Kindred Octavia E Butler.
    Another time travel book! Our black main character from 1980s America is repeatedly sent back in time to pre civil war plantation time to save her white ancestor.
    I really loved this and felt it could have been twice as long and still kept my interest.

49. The Death of Francis Bacon Max Porter.
    Very short book about the painters last days - told in Porter’s normal style. This was great on audio.

50. The End of Men by Christina Sweeney-Baird.
    A pacey thriller in which a virus wipes out the majority of men.
    This was fun - the authors note says she had written this just before the pandemic and it was published during.
    You can’t help but compare real reactions with those of the fiction (panic was much quicker than she predicted).
    I felt that the author focused to heavily on privileged women’s stories but none the less it was enjoyable.

51. Happy Go Lucky David Sedaris.
    This was a book club pick, with essays from the author on losing his father with whom he had a complex relationship and his experiences in the pandemic.
    I laughed a lot.
    I remember getting a bit annoyed with Sedaris when I over listened to the This American Life podcast but I loved this and think it was a standout of the year, going to dig out some of his earlier work.

I’ve not really been posting for a while as been a bit poorly but on the mend and hoping to be back on track and post here and finish the Woman in White read along.

So pleased to make it to 50 for the first year in a while.
I’ve just caught up with 20 pages of reviews and bought 5/6 books.

Im currently reading Obama’s Promised Land and In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B Hughes* which I think was recommended here. Both of which I’m enjoying.

Finished The Decade In Tory by Russ Jones of Twitter fame. It's a mammoth book which is rarely depressing , albeit still amusingly written. Russ gives us permission to scream whilst reading. And it has an interesting effect in that it reminds us of many things form about 2010 - 15 that have simply been wiped form collective memory.

I felt I couldn't race through it as it was frequently all too much. I love Jones' various inventive epithets for MPs- he has particular fun with Rees-Mogg. This is an interesting companion to read alongside Hancock's 'redemptive' appearance on ITV. It is a salutary reminder of some of the decisions he personally made.

Definitely not an impartial book: but it doesn't intend to be! He's going to have to write another soon, of course because he didn't see Truss coming!

Edit that should say rarely not depressing!

Adding my latest reads:

77. My Cousin Rachel - Daphne du Maurier

I am guessing most of you are familiar with this. Probably set in late nineteenth century. Following the death of his parents, Philip Ashley has been raised by his cousin Ambrose and they have lived happily together on the family estate in Cornwall. Ambrose winters abroad because of his health and unexpectedly meets a distant relative, Rachel, in Italy and falls in love with and marries her but does not live happily ever after. Philip expects to hate Rachel but human nature is unpredictable. Absolutely loved this. So good at portraying atmosphere and emotion and creating uncertainty.

78. Octavia - Jilly Cooper

A blast from the past. Read all these as a teenager in the 1980s and loved them. Octavia is the ultimate beautiful spoilt brat with a dysfunctional past who has never done a day’s work in her life and gets whatever she wants. When she sets eyes on Jeremy (her schoolfriend, Gussie’s, fiancé) she is determined to have him. However, she reckons without Gareth, Jeremy’s friend, who is determined to stop her. Many elements of this which are not acceptable now but still highly entertaining.

79. The Accomplice - Steve Cavanagh

Eddie Flynn is back and is defending the wife of a serial killer who has been charged with being his accomplice. The regular members of Eddie’s team are all there to support him: Harry, Kate and Bloch. As ever, there are lots of challenges and twists. A page-turner.

A rather random series of reads:

123. The Complete Books of Aunt's, by Rupert Christiansen
A miscellany of memoir and anecdotes of all things auntly. Not as cosy as I expected. The standouts are two short stories by Kipling about aunts bereaved by WWII.

124. Around the World in 80 Novels, by Henry Russell,
A predictable enough selection, but a good excuse to indulge wanderlust in imagination at least.

125. Ghosts in the Library, Ed. Tony Medewar.
Short stories by various big hitters, including MR James himself. Published in magazines when first written, these are ephemeral pieces, but fun if you're in the mood.

126. Bibliomaniac, by Robin Ince
This has my name written all over it (boom tish). The author does a speaking tour in over 100 bookshops around the country, raiding the bookshelves of charity shops as he goes. I wanted to relish this more than I did. We don't share the same taste in books, reducing the vicarious thrill, and his writing is somewhat pedestrian - I arrived here and met this person and had a nice slice of cake and my talk went well. It ends up being more about his self-assessment as a performer than anything else.

It's a rainy Sunday and I've had a busy week so I'm giving myself a day off from responsibility and lounging around reading the latest Time Police book, About Time, by Jodi Taylor, which is perfect for the occasion.

I also just reread The Visiters, by Daisy Ashford, written when the authoress (seems the right title) was 9 years old. I'd forgotten the sheer joy of it.

Blame autocorrect for apostrophe in Book of Aunts.. [shakes fist]

Biblio I think we are book-stalking each other! I have also read Ghosts in the Library, Bibliomaniac and About Time recently.

257 Curiosities of Literature by John Sutherland

Full of random literary things - a good one to dip in and out of. Really liked this.

258 The Book Lover’s Bucket List: A Tour of Great British Literature by Caroline Taggart

Places to visit across the UK with a literary connection - either a book was set there or the author lived there. Many obvious ones (Dickens, Brontës, Shakespeare) but some new ones (I didn’t know there was a Wodehouse museum in Hampshire).

259 What Writers Read: 35 Writers on their Favourite Book edited by Pandora Sykes

Exactly as the title suggests. I enjoyed these little essays even where I didn’t know the book or writer involved because it’s interesting just hearing about why they like the book they chose.

260 The Provincial Lady in London by E M Delafield

Sequel where our titular lady now has a flat in London which she visits frequently. Still very funny but not quite as good as the original.

261 Eliot’s Book of Bookish Lists by Henry Eliot

Another ‘does what it says on the tin’ book - literary lists. More of a focus on more classic literature - I would have liked a few more modern things in there. Another good one to dip into.

262 Then She Vanishes by Claire Douglas

A journalist investigates murders connected to the disappearance of a girl she knew as a teenager. I liked this because it’s partly set in Bristol and I liked the mention of places I know (and it was done accurately which isn’t always the case!

263 Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North by Rachel Joyce

Short novella rounding off the Harold Fry trilogy. Here Harold’s wife Maureen makes her own pilgrimage. At first Maureen is hard to like but by the end this had won me round. You do need to have read the other books first.

264 Landlines by Raynor Winn

I liked The Salt Path but didn’t really enjoy her second book. This is better as it’s all in the UK again. I do get frustrated with them though because a lot of the issues they face are their own doing. She does write beautifully about nature.

265 Bibliomaniac by Robin Ince

Reviewed by Bibliomaniac just upthread (how confusing!!). I really liked this - it is a bit repetitive but I like that, it’s comforting to think that wherever you go there’s a good independent bookshop and cake.

True, Chessie, our tastes overlap. Although you cover so much ground, it might be hard to avoid!

49 Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe. Reviewed by many of you upthread, this is the jaw-dropping and depressing biography of the Sackler family, and how their company Purdue Pharma precipitated the US opioid crisis which has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans. An important book.

46. Friends, Lovers And The Big Terrible Thing by Matthew Perry
**
Got this on audio book as I am exactly the right age to have watched Friends in my teens and had quite a crush on Matthew Perry. Or more correctly I suppose Chandler Bing.

I had a vague idea he had some drugs problem but was pretty stunned by the depth of his struggles. He has made some spectacularly poor decisions and hurt a lot of people. A lot of the biography is apologies! His wealth definitely shielded him from the worst of addictive behaviour (I'm thinking here of early days of a lot of rock bands when they aren't yet famous!) but he doesn't always come across as a nice guy.

If you want inside gossip on the Friends set, this isn't it. He does mention it, but it's glossed over as the big story is his fight against alcohol, pills and cigarettes.

The book itself is a little chaotic, it's mostly in timeline order but there are interludes which tell a stand alone story. Also there are other times he jumps back and forwards a bit which isn't always easy to keep track of.

He is very keen we know just much money he has made, and how famous he is, but he manages to sound sincere enough in his gratitude for these things that I came away liking him overall.

I don't think I'll ever watch an episode of Friends in quite the same way again.

(Hope that's not too much of a spoiler, the publicity around the book kind of gives it all away too!)