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?

61. King Arthur: history and legend - Dorsey Armstrong (Audible)
Comprehensive lecture series spanning the historical origins, medieval development and modern retellings of the King Arthur story. Turns out I'm much more interested in dark age warlords than medieval poetry, but that's not the book's fault. I also now understand slightly more of what Elizabeth Knox was doing with the Merlin story in The Absolutely Unnecessary Book.

62. The Wordhord: daily life in Old English - Hana Videen

Fascinating exploration of Old English as a key to the worldview of the Anglo-Saxon world. Life was a bit grim, rewards were in heaven rather than the here and now, and if you went mad, you were liable to be beaten with the skin of a porpoise that had been worked into a whip. I loved it, although it could have made the point more clearly that what we have from the surviving texts is an elite, poetic and often clerical view, rather than the thoughts of the average Aethelred on the street. Probably not a beach read, but would definitely keep you entertained on a trip to the ears-endu of nowhere.

Love your review of the Hana Videen book, ladybird
Might give that a go!

Wuthering Heights
Tried to read it years ago and abandoned it. Finally finished the whole thing. I don't get the love for it.

I tried reading it once a long time ago.
I didn't get it.
I may try again sometime with assistance from Gradesaver.

I read Wuthering Heights in my 20s and enjoyed it well enough but that was a long time ago. I always think of it as a young person's book, middle age women are just going to say FFS can't you see all the red flags Catherine?

I think you get something completely different from reading Wuthering Heights as a middle age (plus!) woman. In youth I thought it was all about the passion and infatuation, but rereading it a few years ago it felt much more brutal and cruel, and probably a truer reflection of the times, than I had initially appreciated or understood.

Probably worth a reread then.

I should perhaps have added it* was also much darker than I had remembered.

Wuthering Heights

I think that's a really good point BoiledEgg about it being more indicative of the time than people now generally think.

It was horrible people, behaving hideously and yet it seems to be romanticised.

53 Pole To Pole - Michael Palin

Pure listening joy from his 1991 odyssey from North to South Pole. Particularly poignant is the section where he passes through Ukraine, which declared independence just a few weeks later as the Soviet Union collapsed.

@RomanMum Glad you quite liked it. I agree with you that the period feels a bit undeveloped/unclear.

40. Three Women and a Boat - Anne Youngson

Didn't enjoy this much but finished it anyway. It felt contrived, as though the plot came first and then the author wrote the book to fit. Two women, a successful project manager and a dissatisfied wife and mother, each find themselves at a crossroads in their lives. They fall in with an irascible narrowboat dweller (the third woman) and agree to take her boat from Uxbridge to Chester. Nothing happens for a very long time, but by the end of the journey they have each decided how they want to move on with their lives. The end.

Permanent I wouldn't say I loved Small Angry Planet but I didn't hate it. My DD (who would have been 14 or so at the time) read it & passed it on to me, and I enjoyed it well enough in a harmless YA all-worldbuilding-no-plot sort of a way. It read to me very much like Firefly fanfic that had been worked up into a book (I think IIRC was originally self published through a crowdfunder).

I've read the sequels as dd's bought them, and I thought the second book - A Closed & Common Orbit - was much better with a good plot & interesting main character.

@Sadik I think I liked it too when I read it but read her third one earlier this year Record of a Spaceborn Few and found that very dull.

Also disliked To Paradise ,Eine, so interested to hear what you think of it.

Thanks to everyone who has trawled through the deals. I think I'll get Road to Lichfield.

The fourth one The Galaxy and the Ground Within isn't any better Stokey - though I suspect if another one come into the house I'll probably pick it up when I need something mindless to read.

Just catching up with reviews - lots of light reads as I've been busy
77 The Real James Herriot by Jim Wight
After reading the collection of dog stories I looked on Borrowbox to see if there were any other JH books, and picked up this biography by his son. Definitely not a warts-and-all exposé, but a pleasant read.

78 A Spoonful of Murder by Robin Stevens
Another borrowbox one, from the Murder Most Unladylike series. I've found all of them fun reads, but particularly liked this one which takes the two girls to Hazel's home in Hong Kong.

79 The Talisman Ring by Georgette Heyer
Not one of my favourites, but still entertaining.

Just adding a few recent reads:

57. The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life - William Nicholson. This follows various people in the Surrey countryside. There's Laura married with 2 kids but still in love with her uni boyfriend, her husband, frustrated at work and by Laura's parents paying for their lifestyle, a single mum, a teacher, a farmer railing at the loss of the true English countryside. Good descriptions and interlocking plot lines. I liked it but bits felt a bit dated - it was written in the late noughties and there's a protracted scene with a porn phone line.

58. Small Things Like These - Claire Keegan. Much reviewed on here, beautifully written novella set in the early 80s following Bill Furlong, a comfortable coal merchant, who is the son of an unwed mother. His mother was taken in by her mistress and Bill was well cared for. The story looks at what could have been and highlights some uncomfortable truths about the catholic church but is real beauty lies in its everyday description. I loved Bill's home life with his daughters preparing for Christmas.

59. You Made A Fool Of Death With Your Beauty - Akwaeke Emezi. Every page of this book tells us how beautiful the main protagonist Feyi is. Also every man that she encounters who naturally all fall for her instantly. She isn't very nice to them but that's ok because her husband died and she's dealing with grief. I found this book increasingly ludicrous, particularly the last third where the final love story was unconvincing.

I read Wuthering Heights for the IB. I loathed it, hated Heathcliff as a character, hated Catherine and kept confusing similar characters! Not one I'd want to reread.... Pride and prejudice, however, I liked.

Wuthering Heights is one of my favourite books. Definitely not the romantic love story that many people categorise it as.

I've been waiting all day for a moment to post a response. My apologies in advance

As I mentioned on a thread last year I did my dissertation on Wuthering Heights and Tenant

In so far as WH goes I believe that I was very taken by some of the language, but then when I read it 7 years later, could only see it as an abusive relationship.

But Anne Bronte got there before me, and probably influenced that thought.

Both Charlotte and Anne were deeply shocked by Wuthering Heights

In fact, Tenant was written as a direct response to Heights and probably would not exist without it (note the house names)

Anne had been a governess in private households and with her book is basically saying "The likes of Heathcliff romantic? No! THIS. This is what a marriage to a man like Heathcliff looks like!"

Charles Kingsley said of it "every man should read it and every man should prevent his wife from reading it"

It was, and remains, very ahead of its time. An early feminist piece.

The reason its never seemed to rank as highly as Jane Eyre or WH is largely thanks to Charlotte.
If Charlotte was disturbed by WH, she hated Tenant largely perhaps because the content (at that time) would have been unseemly from a young unmarried woman. After Anne's death, Charlotte deliberately suppressed further republishing of Tenant for many years.

And that, is my lecture of the day

Very interesting, EineReise - and I would take Tenant over WH any day.

I do wonder if we're intended to read WH straight though. The narrator adds a note of the ridiculous and I do think the reader is meant to see H & C as being over-the-top.

Very interesting Eine!

I read and loved WH as a teen, but haven't read it since then. Tenant is on my tbr list. Looking forward to it now!

Thank you Eine. I will plan to revisit WH and I haven't read Tenant at all.
I read Agnes Gray recently and I enjoyed it.

Anne is by far my favourite Brontë, but that isn't saying much as I have little time for the other two.

I do wonder if we're intended to read WH straight though. The narrator adds a note of the ridiculous and I do think the reader is meant to see H & C as being over-the-top

WH is one of my favourite books of all time, I re-read it every few years. I’ve never seen it as particularly romantic though, not even when I first read it as a pre-teen. It’s a ridiculous book really, I struggle to sympathise with any of the characters and I’m hard pressed to explain why I do love it so much, beyond it got me at an impressionable age! I read Tenant years and years ago - as a teenager- and it didn’t leave a particularly strong impression, probably went mostly over my head so definitely due a few-read.