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?

Oh and I also just found this

shepherd.com/best-books/british-explorers-freezing-to-death-in-antarctica

Finally catching up on the thread. Enjoyed the ex-boyfriends chat. Occasionally I think about 'the one that got away'. He's probably old and greying now but aren't we all...

Remus have you tried Collins' The Haunted Hotel? I've not read it but noticed it in DM's charity bag. Might rescue for a later read.

61. The House on Vesper Sands - Paraic O'Donnell

Came to this not knowing what to expect, it was a recommendation from an online review of another book. Set in a snowy London of 1893 it is a mystery with a supernatural element. Difficult to describe beyond that. I was worried it would be another Once Upon a River, but not the case - the plotting was tighter and the book shorter. The setting was really well conveyed, and it was surprisingly funny in places, mainly due to the fantastic Inspector Cutter, one of the best policemen I've come across in period literature.

Talking of Collins…..

85: The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

Finished for the readalong. I'll keep my comments for the thread but, needless to say, a cracking read, and it’s not hard to see why this was a roaring success in its time.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I often dream of the office we had to hand our dissertation/ essays into and trying to get past the secretary after deadline.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie probably not quite right but the cosiest book I’ve read this year was oddly The Madness of Grief by Rev Richard Coles - he does a lot of traveling around quaint British villages. I did wonder whether his new fiction book might have cosy vibes but not seen reviews yet.

@Stokey thanks, I'll check it out on iplayer

I'm way behind on reviews, but just popping in to say that Remus you might like Dead in the Water by Matthew Campbell & Kit Chellel about (contemporary) piracy & maritime fraud - it's on Kindle deal for £1.99 which is why I picked it up, & it's a good read. Though I do remember our tastes don't often overlap!

@noodlezoodle

Oh my good god.

I have had some stinkers this year but you were right and I'm pinching your review. The worst book I've ever finished (and I speak as someone who has read The Artemis Code)

The Maidens is so bad it's almost good. I think he could do a "gotcha" and say it was supposed to be like that, a sort of parody.

It's like he got pissed, and did some bizarre mash-up between all those Greek myth books that are suddenly popular, Inspector Morse and Victoria Hislop etc.

The writing in itself is ATROCIOUS. Strangely though, when he's writing men, or going into the Greek myth stuff, it improves. He just can't write narrative.

Grieving widow has niece at university who has friend who gets murdered. GW decides who the perp is based on his hairstyle. Meets bloke on train who, for no reason whatsoever becomes her friend "the only person she can trust" in trying to nail perp. Gets herself involved in investigation by virtue of knowing lecturers who are helping the (very ploddy) plod. Other people get murdered. Etc.

Despite knowing he is a Very Bad Man (what with his hair etc) she goes for dinner with him where he feeds her raw lamb (no, me neither) (I did think we were going to head off into werewolf or vampire territory here as she's got a thing about sharp teeth as well) She then follows another bloke (simply because she's seen him talking to the man with the hair and teeth) who up to that moment had been a perfect gent, over a wall into a cemetery (obviously) and watches him having the worst sex in 99p Kindle history on an old grave.

(NB if Marian Keyes has even dared to say this was a page turner, (and I'm going to check) I'm burning all her books.)

I'm so sorry Sol but quite relieved that you also hated it! This was my full review at the time:

The Maidens, by Alex Michaelides. An absolute stinker; possibly the worst book I've ever finished. I was hoping for something Secret History-esque as this is set in Cambridge and centres around a cult-like group of Classics students, one of whom is murdered. No such luck, this is wooden, clunky, and infuriating. Characters are conjoured up just to act as potential suspects, and then vanish from the story with no lasting impact. The dialogue is dreadful and the women are written as if he's never actually met a woman in real life. A goodreads one star review (not mine, sadly) just says, "Are you fucking kidding me" which are my thoughts in a nutshell.

That site! Amazing.

Under a Pole Star, Stef Penney?

Sol 😂at ‘the worst sex in 99p Kindle history’

Hot on the heels of Solly and noodles hatred for The Maidens, gather round, it's time for a rant.

58. The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett

Seldom have I read a book that has caused me so much instant aggravation. It was sold to me very much on the premise that this book is about Edith Twyford, a very thinly veiled and obvious take on Enid Blyton, and this was about a code she built into her Super Six books which had something to do with Nazi gold. Early on, there is an extremely on the nose reference to Masquerade.

So this is The Famous Five meets Masquerade. I ask you, who among us as a child bookworm doesn't immediately want to read this?

Unfortunately, Hallett takes this genius burning candle of an idea and just torches it to fucking cinders.

An intro tells us that what we are reading are audio files which have been transcribed by a machine so that's the reason for any errors. Must've becomes mustard etc and further excuses are made later.

What it's really an excuse for is for the author to write what she imagines the following character must sound like :

A working class, barely literate man, who grew up on a housing estate, was in Remedial English and has just left prison

If you are imagining a fucking cringeworthy display of cliche, class prejudice and stereotype not just in characterisation but in all round plot, you'd be right. My deepest cringe came at the forelock tugging way protagonist Steve displays his gratitude that his son, at least, attended private school.

I don't know how she maintained this writing style throughout it's got to have been as painful to persist with as it is to read.

All the Super Six and Twyford stuff is buried under the How Much Could I Care Less? "Journey" of the protagonist

When the series of twists and reveals come thick and fast as they do in maybe the last 20 pages, it just provokes, firstly, oh ok, that's quite cool, but then as they keep coming it just provokes multiple reactions of : Oh Fuck Off/What A Total Fucking Waste Of My Time

I could nearly cry for the book this could have been. Wouldn't touch this author again with a bargepole.

Ha! Brilliant! It is tosh.

Ha Eine I too was drawn in by the promise of Enid Blyton but didn’t get even a quarter of the way through. Bloody awful.

@RomanMum The Haunted Hotel is a bit daft, but a fun and easy read.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I've read all of the icy peril ones except Susan Solomon's which isn't on Kindle and the one by the writer of the article, which looks like nonsense!

Also, I'm sorry you had to endure such tosh. Never trust anybody called Janice...

@SolInvictus Loved that review. I'm sorry you had to suffer your way through the novel, but it was worth our while, if not yours.

@Sadik Thanks for the Dead in the Water rec- it's not really my 'period' as I prefer my pirates to be more swashbucklingly historical, but I'll get the sample.

@DameHelena I couldn't cope with Pole Star - too much dreadful sex description if I'm thinking of the right one.

Remus you didn't like my last recommendation, but the historical cross-dressing category (sounds like an Oscar award) made me think if Days Without End by Sebastian Barry. Also the journeying and cross-dressing made me think if Great Circle although that's aviation - you may have to ignore the modern storyline but that's only a small part of it.

How much Agatha have you read? Some Poirot's I like are Taken at the Flood, Three-Act Tragedy and The Hollow.

Was The Maidens the one where they end up in Greece at one stage? Also seem to remember it being utter tosh but loving the reviews.

Just read that the RSC is doing a production of Hamnet which is quite exciting.

I like the dark or hidden iceland books too

Way beyond quite exciting !

Must get round to reading Hamnet before I even think of seeing a play, it’s been on my tbr pile for ages.

86: The Foolish Virgin - Margaret Penn

Second volume in the autobiographical trilogy that began with Manchester Fourteen Miles.

It's 1910 and young Hilda Winstanley (aka Margaret) has been claimed by her real father's family and plucked from her working-class Lancashire background to live in London, to her huge excitement. Aunts Helen and Mildred, and Helen's husband Philip, live in a mansion flat in Chiswick, full of books, lovely furnishings, and wonders that astonish naive, 14-year-old Hilda (she spends some time trying to blow out the lamp before having electricity explained to her).

For all the exciting sights and experiences that bring her joy, there are less enjoyable aspects to Hilda's life, as some of her new family members gradually prove to be a source of tension. Growing up teaches her hard lessons, and this volume ends as war breaks out in 1914 and she bids goodbye to the handsome older Army captain who - she hopes - will come home safely so they can be married.

Not quite as cosy a read as Vol. 1, naturally enough given Hilda's often-stormy passage through adolescence to young adulthood - and hints that all may not be totally rosy in the last book, which I've got waiting….still, an absorbing and touching picture of a young girl's life in London in the early years of the last century.

Has anyone read This Ends With Us - Colleen Hoover? DD1 (Y8) is reading it, along with a few of her class mates. It sounds like a dodgy Mills & Boon with a side of domestic violence from the blurb, but just wondering if anyone had read it so I don't have to

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie in terms of winter children's classics I assume that Winter Holiday by Arthur Ransome is hardly one you're likely to have missed. There is also Fell Farm in Winter by a woman whose name escapes me, but it depends on your tolerance for a group of children who frown with patrician distaste if asked to walk less than ten miles. Cosy though they are.

Tell a lie. Sorry. Fell Farm for Christmas by Marjorie Lloyd, sequel to Fell Farm Campers. I did love them both as a kid.

Calling @Southeastdweller - new thread needed!

Stokey There was an article in The Times about her recently which, iirc, confirms your suspicions. (I only buy The Times - in print - on Saturdays so I'm afraid I haven't got a share token but here is a link in case you can access it.) www.thetimes.co.uk/article/colleen-hoover-from-trailer-living-to-top-of-the-bestseller-list-slbps3d26