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?

I was also wondering where Cote is. Perhaps we can conjure her up by starting a row about The City and The City? 😂

KLAXON - new Advanced Search is here and it's such an improvement! Don't know why they haven't announced it, I stumbled across it unexpectedly.

Yes, I found the new search too. Hallelujah.

Hooray for the search!

Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith I love JKR and I love Strike and Robin. Yes it’s long and no I couldn’t keep track of everyone but she had me in the palm of her hand all the way through. She plots brilliantly, the social media pile-ons and trollery are spot on, and she clearly managed to appreciate Aurora Leigh which surely merits a medal in itself. My local charity shop beat the library on this and I was glad to read a physical copy for the multi-column chatroom sections. As a bonus, I’ve returned to War and Peace which I hadn’t touched since starting this, and it feels positively featherweight in comparison.

Great idea.

I'll start - work of genius. Sublime use of symbolism to make profound comments about what humans can learn to cope with in order to survive. Made me think lots about, 'Mauer im kopf'. Let itself down a bit at the end.

Come on Cote - you know you want to.

Personally I thought that Never Let Me Go was a realistic depiction of the way that anyone would behave if they found out they had been cloned for the purposes of organ harvesting.

Cote, do you agree...?

NLMG has just been evicted from the AQA GCSE spec. I suspect cote.

But does it match the convincing realism of Neville Shute's On the Beach, Tara? That sets the bar very high, surely?

Surely I'm not the first to whisper Station Eleven ?

Links below for the previous threads if anyone wants to catch up or refer back:

The first thread of the year is here, the second one here, the third one here, the fourth one here and the fifth one here.

33. Shrines Of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson

The New KA. The Roaring Twenties. London.

As the novel opens we are introduced to a huge cast of characters.

Nellie "Old Ma" Coker is released from Holloway. Coker runs nightclubs referred to as "dens of iniquity" and is said to be part of the "criminal underworld"

We are also introduced to her six kids who participate in the business

John Frobisher is watching. He intends to infiltrate the Cokers and hopefully expose bent cop Maddox in the process.

With Frobisher is total and utter "Mary Sue" character, Gwendolyn Melling; Gwendolyn is a librarian from York who is looking for :

Florence and Freda two teenagers from Yorkshire who've run away to the bright lights.

Gwendolyn proves implausibly natural at everything and even money worries are brushed aside by an unexpected inheritance.

Of the Coker brood, the girls (even Edith who is said to be heir to the throne, are very thinly drawn) and only the two boys, incompetent cokehead Ramsey and enigmatic Niven get much fleshing out.

The first 200 pages of this is basically exposition, just establishing each character and their setting.

After this, its like nothing really pays off, there are two baddies as such, but they barely come off the page and are very easily dispensed with. There's no sense of tension, danger or high stakes.

The criminal Cokers don't actually do that much in the way one might expect of denizens of the underworld to behave, especially when it comes to discovering they have been spied upon.

The Florence and Freda subplot actually goes nowhere and doesn't add to the plot other than to manoeuvre Gwendolyn into position. The more that I see the two names together, the more I wonder was she inspired by Tesco.

None of it stands up to the merest scrutiny. Despite this it was a good yarn, I started it at 6pm and have now finished. Is it alright? Yeah. Is it Life After Life? No.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit Glad to read that review, as I was wavering and thinking I might try it even though I'd vowed I was done with Kate A, because the setting appealed to me. I'm no longer wavering.

The Man Who Died Twice - Richard Osman Completely daft and I had no idea what was going on at times. Really enjoyed it though.

Now reading And In The End - Ken MacNab as recommended by @Terpsichore . l am very much enjoying it, especially as I can relate it to the Get Back documentary. Good recommendation.

I think I am also done with Kate Atkinson unless she writes another Jackson Brodie.

The tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte

Found this highly readable and feel that if any book would make a great modern adaptation it would be this one.

Would rather that Helen remained single and independent but I guess the Victorians wanted a happy romantic ending.

Magpie by Elizabeth Day

Oh dear. I had just finished some heavy going slow reads so wanted a quick silly thriller - this one really tested me to its believably and as another poster mentioned, was the read meant to sympathise and be on the side of the couple? It also was packed with bad female cliches such as the evil mother in law, mentally ill unstable women and desperate for a baby they would do ANYTHING women.

@nowanearlyNicemum I've just added The Island to my wish list. I visited Spinalonga as a child and something about it really stayed with me. Definitely interested in the reading the book

Tenant is one of my favourite novels

Tenant is my favourite Bronte by a country (moors) mile.

Black Money by Ross Macdonwald
Another hard-boiled crime novel. Nowhere near as good as the previous one, for me. Too many characters, and nobody I could really give much of a toss about.

I read all the Brontes so long ago I've forgotten the plots of them all. Maybe rereading all the classics I know I loved in my 20s should be a project. Maybe in 101 years when I eventually retire.

@Piggywaspushed @EineReiseDurchDieZeit I have the new Maggie O'Farrell and Kate Atkinson books reserved at the library, I'm excited to read both.

47. Ruth and Pen by Emilie Pine. Follows two women across the course of a day in Dublin - Ruth is considering the future of her marriage after a string of unsuccessful IVF attempts and Pen is an autistic teenager planning to ask out her best friend. Both stories were very raw and poignant and I thought she inhabited both characters well. Their paths only crossed once though and I didn't see many connections between the different strands, so it could have been a bit more coherent.

48. Free Love by Tessa Hadley. I always like Tessa Hadley novels so no surprises here! Phyllis is a suburban housewife in the 60s who makes an impulsive decision to start an affair with a younger man, and is drawn into his bohemian circle in London, while upending the lives of her children and husband.

As ever with Tessa Hadley, it's very delicate and perceptive, especially about its women characters and their sense of self. It left some of its plot lines unresolved which was a shame, I'd have liked a few more pages.

I like both of Anne's novels best of the Brontës, with Tenant probably my favourite

Advanced search, hallelujah!

51. Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility 4/5
    A timely read given that people are thinking of Cote! And indeed I thought of her when I read this. I hope she’s well, even though she would hate this review. 😜 Anyway, this is a spare and beautifully crafted story, with short narratives that fit into one another to make a sort of concentric circle. It’s about time travel and a pandemic, but mostly it’s about, well, what it means to be human. I didn’t realise at first that the book forms a kind of a trilogy with Station Eleven (which I loved) and The Glass Hotel (which I haven’t yet read). I want to read all three in sequence now, starting with a reread of Station Eleven.

52. John Banville, Snow 4/5
    A proper murder mystery, very well-written, even though some of the sex scenes struck me as unnecessarily graphic and/or brutal, and I could see the main plot development coming long beforehand.

53. Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score 5/5
    I’ve been meaning to read this work on trauma for a long time, and it is a remarkable book, though I had to take it slowly as some of the case studies are utterly gruelling to read. I liked the fact that so many different approaches to helping people recover from trauma were discussed; there’s no dogmatic one-size-fits-all solution. Van der Kolk’s perspective is pragmatic and humane. I will likely dip into this book again as there is far too much in it to digest at one go.

I need to post more frequently, I've completely lost where I'm up to.

Haven - Emma Donoghue
A monk has a holy vision that he is to withdraw from the world and found a new order on an isolated island. His prior gives him permission to seek this place taking two other monks with him.

This one is a very slow burn, more character than plot. if you've ever had a manager who makes madcap decisions for unfathomable reasons, then this is for you. I could feel the rage as I read it.
I'm not convinced this is her best work, but she does do pretty things with words throughout, evocative and emotive.

Morality Play - Barry Unworth
Medieval times. A runaway monk joins a troupe of players to travel in safety but ends up on the stage with them. They pass through a small town where the murder of a child has taken place and a woman is due to hang for it. They hear a great deal about it and decide to stage a play based on the information they have which puts the whole crime into question.
I loved this, I wasn't expecting murder mystery as such when I started it, but it was very well done. It explores the changing society of post plague England.

21 Lessons for the 21st Century - Yuval Noah Harari
He explores the most pressing societal and political issues if our age, looking to the future of what could happen if things are left unchecked.
I've mixed feelings about this one. I don't think I was really in the mood for it. It was well researched, well thought out and poses some interesting questions, but I wasn't as engaged as I was with Sapiens.

Intact: A Defence of the Unmodified Body - Clare Chambers
I reserved this on Borrowbox without realising that it wasn't by novelist CC, but an academic with the same name. Decided to listen to it anyway. She puts forth an argument for people, mostly women to leave their bodies alone and not be pressured by society into making changes for ridiculous reasons. She discusses the politics and power play behind much of it.
There are some really interesting points made in this, but I wouldn't really recommend this unless you are particularly into academic feminist texts It's long winded and repetitive at time.

Offshore - Penelope Fitzgerald
Set on a houseboat community on the Thames in the early 60s. She explores a community built among those with little in common, each with their own issues. All character and no real plot. The scene is well set. This was quite short and I neither loved nor loathed it.

Long Live the Queens: Mighty, Magnificent and Bloody Marvellous Monarchs History's Forgotten - Emma Marriott
Short chapters on queens through the ages bringing in lesser known women and not concentrating on the usual suspects. . I liked that it wasn't euro centric but the organisation left a lot to be desired. There was no coherent order apparent in the audiobook and it would have suited being chronological to give context. It's a lightweight introduction rather than being for the more serious historical reader.

218 Mr Nobody by Catherine Steadman

Intriguing premise, started well, ending a massive letdown. A man is found on a Norfolk beach with no memory. Emma is a doctor hired to work with him. However, Emma grew up in the area he was found and hasn’t been back since An Event - is this man connected? Of course he is but it’s for a really stupid reason that makes no sense. Don’t bother with this.

Dis anyone get anything in the monthly deals? I got The Road to Lichfield which I know several people have read for the rather dated book club on the other thread. I spotted Jamaica Inn in the deal for anyone who hasn’t read it yet.