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?

Reread even, what’s a few-read?

Sounds like another word for a readalong :)

Would really recommend Glass Town by Isabel’s Greenberg - it’s a graphic novel about the imaginary worlds The Brontë siblings created as children.

Eine, thank for your thoughts on Wuthering Heights and Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which are really interesting to read. Another here who read WH at school and while it wasn't presented as a romance, the unhealthy nature of the relationship wasn't commented on either. It would have been entirely appropriate to say that this is not okay and Cathy should take a giant step back. I haven't read Tenant but I intend to now, perhaps along with a reread of WH.

I haven't read Tenant but I intend to now, perhaps along with a reread of WH.

I'm now going to reread both. Maybe it should be the next readalong! Thanks Eine, that was really interesting.

Very insightful. I always thought of it as a love story too.

Eine, thank for your thoughts on Wuthering Heights and Tenant of Wildfell Hall, I like both. I always thought off WH as a love story but one in which two very dysfunctional and damaged people fall in love. I agree Cathy needed to step back 100 paces!

Yay to making loads of you read Tenant - its an unsung hero in my book.

To pick up on comments about Heights I think the reason it thrived while Tenant was suppressed was because the dramatic and over the top nature of it, plus the haunting element, made it more fantastical and less realistic, more of a fable. Tenant could not be so easily dismissed.

I had another thought too about Victorian values and Heathcliff. It could be said to have a dark moral lesson eg.

"Take pity on a gypsy child and let them be a cuckoo in your nest" ??

"This is the kind of disaster that awaits you and yours!"

So yes, much less threatening than a woman successfully escaping domestic abuse

Yes, I think WH probably predates the Wilkie Collins school of sensationalism somewhat, rather than fitting into the romance genre.

For what it's worth, I can't abide the bleeding thing.

I loved WH when I studied it at A-level. Dark passionate forbidden love was just my cup of tea at the time. (I progressed to a strong identification with Emma Bovary in my 20s, before becoming semi-sensible in my early 30s.)

These are the books that will be discussed on the next series of Between the Covers on BBC2. Series starts in November.

The Perfect Golden Circle - Benjamin Myers
The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudsley - Sean Lusk
Sometimes People Die - Simon Stephenson
The Night Ship - Jess Kidd
Take My Hand - Dolen Perkins-Vaidez
The Dance Tree - Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
Snap - Belinda Bauer
Andrea Levy - The Long Song
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
Moon Tiger - Penelope Lively
Us - David Nicholls

Interesting, I enjoyed Between The Covers last time, and have read 4 of those. Is this the second series or have I missed one?

More than one! They're on season 5 next.

42. Charlotte by Helen Moffatt
I was always going to enjoy this, but it did come as a huge relief after finding Small Angry Planet such a grind. The story of Charlotte Lucas after her marriage to Mr Collins. Satisfyingly crafted and well thought through, tracking a long long way from Pride and Prejudice but I was quite happy to be led away. Made me reflect again about the mix of cruelty, humour, satire and compassion in Austen - quite inimitable as far as I can tell, and completing authors tend to be drawn to the compassion side. I think that's wise. Read by Isabella Inchbold who did an astounding job. Recommended.

57 The Axeman’s Jazz - Ray Celestin A murder mystery set in New Orleans in 1919. I enjoyed this - the plot was good and the ending worked well, and I felt like I really got to know the New Orleans of a hundred-odd years ago. The only criticism is that I didn’t feel compelled to keep reading late into the night, and I think that was because it jumped about too much between the viewpoints of different characters.

This is the first in a series (of four, I think) and I’d be very happy to read the others.

Really interesting to hear that about Tenant - thank you @EineReiseDurchDieZeit I know I have read WH, because I read all the novels when I was younger except The Professor (though Villette required a certain amount of perseverence ) but I was a grumpy cynical teen and hated it even back then.

221 The Skeleton Key by Erin Kelly

This is inspired by the 70s book/treasure hunt Masquerade, where people had to solve clues in a book to find a real golden hare (?) buried somewhere. Here, two families are torn apart by The Golden Bones, a treasure hunt book to find the parts of a golden skeleton. I really liked this, although the amount of jumping around between time periods got a bit confusing at times.

Oh @ChessieFL I just finished The Skeleton Key too! I enjoyed it, a really original set up and very creepy. I agree it got a bit confusing, I also lost track of some of the treasure hunters and their various theories a bit. But great fun overall.

@ChessieFL I was very excited to find a first edition of Masquerade for 50p in a charity shop. And then very cross when I couldn't find all the hares!

35. Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell

4 disparate musicians are brought together by a manager to become the Next Big Thing in the Swinging Sixties.

And it manages to be both boring and repetitive, to have a "working class man" who is a cringy cliche, and the reader can of course confirm his class by the fact he always says 'yer' not you. The drummer has no personality, but maybe that's a joke. The character called Elf, yes really, is probably the most detailed but even she is just girl next door material. Gifted guitarist but likely schizophrenic Jasper is a different issue and I'll come back to it.

David Bowie and Janis Joplin among others turn up as "themselves", which just feels wrong. The epilogue is quite good, but the final third may as well be in neon lights it's so obvious where its going.

Like, if this was a debut I'd get it or even the work of a more mainstream male author, such as David Nicholls, I'd be like Ok, average contemporary, fair enough. But this is the man who wrote Bone Clocks, Cloud Atlas and Slade House - he's more than proven he can do well written, original, high concept, so what's this ten a penny music scene trope fest?

The character Jasper, is a descendant of Jacob de Zoet (a weird and plotless book with a disturbing sequence about nuns) - when having what he thinks is a mental health episode, Dr Marinus, a featured character across several of Mitchell's novels comes to his aid.

It struck me that if Utopia Avenue was your first David Mitchell, it's really a meaningless and confusing interlude for the reader. But even fully versed in that universe it doesn't really add anything special or of note, and doesn't really need to be there.

Very very disappointing, both taken on its own merit, and against his general body of work.

IIRC at least 2 other 50 Bookers have read this, do @ me

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I’ve never properly seen the Masquerade book - I think in-laws have it so maybe I’ll have to borrow it from them.

76: A Village in the Third Reich - Julia Boyd

I think quite a few on the thread have read Travellers in the Third Reich - this is the author’s follow-up. The small, picturesque tourist village of Oberstdorf, in the Bavarian Alps, had a tightly-knit community and families which had lived together harmoniously for generations. The advent of National Socialism changed all that, and soon Oberstdorf was living under the Nazi yoke - with many villagers enthusiastically embracing everything Hitler stood for, while others, unable to show outward opposition, somehow picked their way through the nightmare that the 1930s and 40s became…with varying degrees of success. Dachau was very close by, and the threat of being sent there was a very real one for any dissident villagers.

Thanks to an exceptionally rich archive, Julia Boyd has traced the village’s history from the period after WW1 (itself a difficult and traumatic time) through to the immediate post-war years. This is a really interesting book - you do have to work a bit to remember who everyone is, but it’s definitely a rewarding read. And parts are, of course, utterly heartbreaking and enraging. Recommend.

Gosh Masquerade! I remember poring over the pictures as a teenager in the 70s. Wasn’t there a big scandal about who found the treasure? Have downloaded the sample.

Just finished And In The End - Ken McNab which follows the Beatles through 1969, the year they broke up, month by month as recommended by @Terpsichore. And an excellent recommendation too.

Glad you enjoyed it, Best! And I finally managed to watch Get Back, too - loved every minute.

Wasn’t it fab!