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?

Just read the samples of Wolf Winter and Rosamund P. Neither are for me, sorry.

55. The Brontës by Juliet Barker

At the time of my studies of the sisters, I also had many other books and assignments for my course so I never completed this tome of a biography (1600 pages, the last 500 or so of which are notes)

I was in all honesty a bit disappointed. It's too exhaustive, thorough beyond thorough, to the point of it becoming a bit joyless and certainly repetitive. Obviously, I knew a lot of the story and I have to confess my eyes glazed over and I got very skimmy about :

a) Patrick's parochial activities
b) The juvenilia partnerships of Charlotte/Branwell and Emily/Anne
c) Bramwell's painting career

What was news and what did surprise was information about Charlotte post her siblings deaths (the remaining three within the same 9 months) I actually knew very little about her marriage and her husband.

What did prove quite shocking to me was the way in which people posthumously tried to hang themselves on to the coat-tails of her fame, the way even distinguished people behaved like vultures and her "friends" tried to assert themselves as the custodians of her legacy. The shamelessness of it all and the way her father and husband were overrun is surprisingly modern.

Given that Charlotte lived longest and made the most record of her life, it features her the most heavily. The biography quotes excessively from her letters and I was left with the feeling she was rather judgemental and sneery, some of her letters to her best friend are genuinely bitchy, so that was a surprise too.

There is just too much here though, so much unnecessary lengthy quoting, it is overkill, so one for the ardent fans only, I suspect.

Thank you all very much for your kind messages. Fortunately so far he is a very good sleeper so I get a good chunk of sleep between each feed. Plus dh is still on paternity leave so we're sharing the load. I may become less lucid once he's back at work 😂

32. The Bone Jar by S W Kane No idea where this came from so I suspect it was another Amazon first reads (I'm back to using a random number generator to choose my books). Set in London in the middle of a cold snap it follows DI Lew Kirby in his attempts to solve the murder of an 80 something year old woman who was found brutally beaten in a derelict asylum on the banks of the Thames. There is also the issue of a missing person, an urban explorer whose phone was found at the crime scene. The site is due for redevelopment shortly and the property developer has a lot of local power so Kirby is under intense pressure to solve the crime quickly. Kirby is variously aided and hindered by various characters, including a former patient who still lives on the site, having obtained squatters rights to the old caretaker's lodge; an urban explorer with an emotional link to the site and the recent inheritor of the house next door with a shady past. During the investigation it becomes clear that almost everyone Kirby encounters has some link to the asylum, which has been closed for over 20 years. I think this is the first in a series and it's not bad. Kirby is quite a likeable character and the suspense is well built. The one thing I find totally impossible to believe is the idea that central London would be completely covered in snow for over a week. Let's be realistic, it might show once and cover the ground but within 12 hours it would all turn to muddy slush and it would be raining again. The extreme weather is just not believable and I found it quite annoying when it kept being referenced. Also, it seemed to end a bit abruptly, like the final chapter might be missing. There was one final mystery which was on the cusp of being solved but didn't reach a resolution, which frustrated me. I won't go out of my way to read any more in this series, but if they were to come up for 99p I'd probably buy them

Huge congratulations satelliteheart. 😍

Holiday reading review.

48. 100 Things We've Lost to the Internet - Pamela Paul
What the title says. A mix of losses, from the trivial (the TV Guide) to the more profound (real blind dates, where you have no idea what to expect until your date turns up).

49. The Fortunate Isles - Mary Stuart Boyd
Charming, long 1911 travelogue written by a Scottish woman overwintering in the Balearics. Lovely. Boyd spent three months based in Mallorca in what we would now call "slow travel": walking, visiting small villages and eating good food at simple fondas. This could have become boring and repetitive, but I think her luxuriant pace seeps through into the writing and it made me slow down my reading.

50. How to be a Rock Star - Shaun Ryder
Shaun Ryder's thoughts on fame and the music industry. Caveat: he can't remember long stretches of the last forty years, so some of this may not be accurate. Ryder rambles on like a drunk uncle at a wedding, repeating each anecdote three times while frequently exclaiming, "I'm nearly sixty, me!" It is indeed a wonder he is still with us, Bez even more so, if half the stories are true. Ryder has a down-to-earth streak and doesn't take himself too seriously, and I think that partly accounts for his longevity. The best stories feature Noel Gallagher, who is basically writing his own legend, and the flawed genius that was Tony Wilson. Entertaining.

Hmm, cosy... @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie Cold Comfort Farm maybe? Or I've always meant to read Alison Uttley's memoir A Country Childhood (I think - this is from memory) as I imagine that would be cosy, though of course only as I think of her as Grey Rabbit herself.

84: Manchester Fourteen Miles - Margaret Penn

Couldn’t settle to my latest non-fiction book so after a rummage through the shelves I lighted on this, a charming read and the first of an autobiographical trilogy. It was published in 1943 and widely reviewed as a novel, but its heroine, young 'Hilda Winstanley', was actually Margaret Penn herself, who'd grown up in a small Lancashire village in the early years of the 20th century.

'Hilda' had a rather mysterious background, though she didn’t discover until later in her own childhood that her mother and father weren’t her birth parents; they’d taken her in as baby after her mother died, and there were whispers that her father was a gentleman. Nevertheless she grew up in a loving but very much working-class home, and her recollections of their lives is basically a Northern version of Lark Rise to Candleford - which had been published only a few years earlier. Like Flora Thompson, Hilda/Margaret was a clever girl with ambition and, as the book ends, she's just left school and started work, only to be unexpectedly claimed by unknown relatives in London, and is about to set off on a great new adventure.

I've got the remaining two books so I’m looking forward to more classic comfort reads. Perfect for curling up with on a winter afternoon.

The Corner Shop - Elizabeth Cadell
This might be the kind of thing you’re looking for Remus, light and frothy - It has its faults but it is an entertaining light read full of intrigue, romance, and charming characters.

For cosy crime I like Hazel Holt

Congratulations @satelliteheart 🙂
Like the sound of Manchester Fourteen Miles @Terpsichore will go on the tbr list as a potential comfort read.
It's been a while since I posted because I am struggling to get through One for the Blackbird one for the Crow by Olivia Hawker. It's a rather lengthy saga of life on the American prairie. I'm not really enjoying it that much and am unsure if I will persist to the end. Whilst deciding whether or not to keep going, I finished ...
15. The Rumour Lesley Kara
Haven't enjoyed the last couple of thrillers I've read, but this one set in an English seaside town kept me interested. Joanna & her young son are struggling to settle after moving from London. Despite having misgivings she passes on a rumour about a notorious child killer being resettled in the town. This sets off a chain of events that have unexpected consequences. Joanna's insecurities about wanting her and her son to fit in are relatable and there are enough potential suspects to keep you guessing. You could pick some holes in the plot, but I found it an enjoyable easy to read page turner.

@Terpsichore thanks for your review Manchester Fourteen Miles sounds a perfect comfort read will look out for it and add it on to my list to read.

30. Grasshopper, by Barbara Vine. This was a re-read from a book I loved in my twenties, so I was quite disappointed to find it hard going and it's taken me forever to finish. There are some very convoluted sentence structures where I found myself reading the same passage over and over, and the crux of the book relies on an extraordinary coincidence. Although this is addressed in the book it still stretched credulity to breaking point. Not sure whether it's me or the book, and my concentration is not great at the moment, but I don't think I'll be revisiting this any time soon. I'm going to need a quick and easy palate cleanser next.

Congratulations @satelliteheart on your new arrival. Super impressed you're able to read.

I'm currently feeling rotten with some lurgy my class has given me. I'm reading River Kings - Cat Jarman. It's really interesting non fiction about a mass grave at Repton and the artefacts found there.

@Owlbookend @Midnightstar76 It's not on Kindle, unfortunately, and I've had my copies for years so they were very cheap, but looking around, eBay seems the best place to find a reasonable bargain, followed by Abe Books. Amazon's are all a bit pricey.

Congratulations @satelliteheart. I have very fond memories of reading my kindle with a tiny sleeping baby on me (she's too big and wriggly for that these days)

61. The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson. Two brothers, farmers, who become rivals for a young woman's attention with deadly consequences, in war time Canada. Like her other books, Mary Lawson captures life in northern Canada beautifully, but aside from that I didn't love it. Too much chat about pigs and tractors before anything really happened, about 85% of the way through, and a 15 years later storyline about the town Dr and his son which didn't really add anything.

62. The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell. Much reviewed already and I don't have much to add! Beautiful writing and a very clever, ambiguous ending. I liked it a lot but I can see why some people have found it a bit cold and distant.

@Terpsichore Yes had a look on Amazon for a copy Wow massive difference in price - Abe books is a fraction of the price off to buy a copy now only about £1.60 . Thanks again for the heads up on where to buy and the review

(Whispers...). Not sure if I dare admit that I don't like Cold Comfort Farm.

Thanks, @BestIsWest - I'll check them out.

57. A Start in Life: Anita Brookner.

The third book for 'The Rather Dated Book Club' on this board. I kept mentally inserting the word 'difficult' into the title as Ruth really has a hard time of it with her utterly self-absorbed, neglectful parents. As a lonely child, Ruth takes refuge in the world of books, mastering the classics from an early age. She eventually specialises in the works of Balzac and identifies to no small extent with Eugénie Gradet, a Balzac heroine who also lives a restricted life at the mercy of her parents. The question is whether or not Ruth's will have a happy ending?

'A Start in Life' was well written and an absorbing read. Brookner writes very honestly and spares no detail so it makes for uncomfortable reading at times, but there were moments of humour that helped to lift the mood. I think it ended on a fairly positive note. Well, I would like to think that Ruth will have a happy ending to her story. That will be a matter of debate for the book club!

58. Je Suis Là: Clélie Avit.

This is the highly improbable and overly sentimental story of a man who falls in love with a woman in a coma. Thibault is supposed to be visiting his brother in hospital but can't face seeing him after his brother killed two teenaged girls while drunk driving. He stumbles into Elsa's room by accident and takes refuge in her still, calm presence, falling in love with her almost instantly. Elsa is able to hear and is fully aware, even if she is completely immobile and she looks forward to his weekly visits which soon turn into her reason for living. The story is told from their alternate perspectives.

This is fine once you suspend all belief in the scenario of someone falling in love with a seriously ill person in a coma. It was a straightforward read. I did find parts of it outrageous, for example when Thibault found the hospital chair too uncomfortable so he made room for himself on the bed. Incredibly inappropriate and I wondered where the nurses or security were to safeguard the patients from such creepy behaviour. Also, we didn't need to be told every time Thibault took off and put on his shoes and jacket during hospital visits. Yes, he is strange and needy, but he keeps the sheets clean.

33. A Fire Sparkling by Julianne Maclean Another Amazon first reads and a former DNF that I decided to go back to. I was surprised when I opened it that I'd previously made it through 80% of it, I felt like I remembered only reading a couple of chapters and it seems weird I didn't stick it out, especially as it's not a bad book. It's dual timeline, in 2011 Gillian and her father find some shocking photos of her grandmother from the second World war. They confront her about them and the grandmother, Vivian, finally tells them her story. It's not overly well written and the dialogue is a bit wooden and unnatural but it's an interesting story

127. About Time, by Jodi Taylor
The latest Time Police adventure. I enjoyed it but a few days after reading it, I can't remember very much. Not one of their most compelling outings.

128. Halloween Party, by Agatha Christie
Hercule Poirot does some active investigating in this one and there's even a bit of mild jeopardy in the end. Agatha is clearly finding the modern world a baffling place. Enjoyed it.

Peeking in..seems things are better than I expected.

Hi bett! Glad things are looking up.

Hello bett! How lovely to see you again.

Bett! 🍾

So pleased to hear that bett, lovely to see you

My latest - with Year of Wonder and couple of lead up to Christmas daily read type things underway I’m definitely going to make 50 since the year before I was pregnant - so 2019. Whoop.

49. Good Behaviour- Molly Keane

This has been on my kindle a while, was inspired to give it a go when reading reviews of O Caledonia (my last read) and saw the comparison made a few times. I can certainly see where the comparisons came from, I liked this slightly more I think, although I didn’t love either of them. After the two back to back I am certainly ready to read something with likeable characters and maybe something nice could happen to some/ anyone too.

Anglo Irish society in early 20th century. Like O Caledonia this features an unloved and fairly unlovely ‘heroine’ - Aroon St Charles in this case - with distant parents and an awkward outside status. Aroon’s naivety and (wilful) ignorance of what is going on around her is a little overdone for me, though I can’t help feeling sorry for her despite myself at times. A real tragi comedy and really well written, I just prefer a little more warmth and at least a couple of sympathetic characters.