50 Books Challenge 2022 Part Seven

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the seventh and (and probably) final 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, and even though it's late in the year, it’s not too late to join. Please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

How have you got on this year?

Just popping in to mark place. I’m bad in bed (as we say here ) with my all time comfort read, Bill Bryson’s Down Under. Gets me out of Christmas parties etc I suppose.

72. Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

If not for Remus I think I'd be worrying what to say, I'm aware it is very popular and I expected to follow popular opinion

It's the Womens Prize winner - they said
It's about Shakespeare -they said

I hated the prose style/tone to the point were I thought it was simply badly written

I thought it was deathly dull and also quite insubstantial, a waste of a good premise. The sections set at the beginning of the Shakespeare marriage were marginally better than "the present day" parts, but that's not saying much.

It was my first Maggie O'Farrell, and it well might be my last as much as I like the sound of The Marriage Portrait

Weird experience, feel a bit cheated by it because of the experience of it being so far from my expectation.

Feel free to disagree, I can take it.

I wasn’t keen on Hamnet either, Eine.

285 Beyond The Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up A Wizard by Tom Felton

Tom played Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films, and if you’re a fan this is a great read, full of gossip about filming and the other actors. If you’re not a fan you’re unlikely to be interested in this anyway as he’s not done much else!

286 The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper

I read this for the first time a couple of years ago and didn’t really like it, but wanted to give it another go as it’s so popular. I did enjoy it a bit more second time round but still didn’t love it. I suspect I missed the boat by not reading it as a child.

Eine Don't give up on Maggie O'Farrell just yet - can I suggest The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox?

Suffering a bit of a reading block here. A couple of things started on borrowbox (Black Sunday, The Unheard) , but nothing is really grabbing me. Have stalled with One for the Blackbird one for the Crow on kindle as well.* * Filling my time watching The Traitors and playing candy crush.

Interesting to see all The Dark is Rising reviews. I've ordered a copy that is arriving today to read with DD over Xmas. It was bought with them in mind rather than me. We don't have similar taste. She loves fantasy and with a couple of notable exceptions I don't. Just hoping she enjoys it.

Really loved After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farell. Think I tried one of her others (can't remember which one), but didn't get on with it.

I like Maggie O'Farrell generally, but Hamnet drove me up the wall stylistically. Not everything needs to be described in triplicate, Maggie! It's simple, easy, straightforward. Really, honestly, truly. And no one is mentally reviewing the apples in detail while they're losing their virginity in the apple shed!

She hasn't quite lost me completely - The Marriage Portrait is on my Christmas wish list - I'll give her one last chance!

Another one underwhelmed by Hamnet though the rest of my book club loved it.

The Dark is Rising is a long standing childhood favourite of mine, but a re-read last year reminded me it does go on a bit in places. I love the sinister atmosphere and the descriptions of the countryside and The Grey King (book four I think) is wonderful.

I loved Hamnet! My favourite Maggie O'Farrells are I Am, I Am, I Am and After You'd Gone.

I have only read Hamnet, but I liked it. I felt that I connected with it emotionally, which sounds very corny, but I don't always experience that.

71 The Winemaker’s Wife - Kristin Harmel The synopsis of this novel looked really good so I went for it despite the trite “[unusual profession]’s [family member]” title. It covers two time periods and sets of characters - a champagne house near Reims in WW2, and an American recently divorced 40-ish woman who is whisked off to Paris by her wealthy and eccentric 99-year-old French grandmother in 2019. The subject matter could have made a great book but unfortunately this was hallmark movie-level dross. None of the characters were convincing (especially the numerous centenarians acting like they were in their 70s), there was a ridiculously unlikely romance in the modern-day time period, and the WW2 element was trying to be serious about occupation and the treatment of Jewish citizens in France but ended up as a soap opera. I had to really make myself finish this one, it was so dull.

I’ve only put one book in italics so far this year but I think this might end up being the second…maybe I’ll be a bit more forgiving when I do my final list for the year but if so, it will be a narrow escape. If anyone wants to read about WW2 in France I think it would be much more worthwhile to read the Hadley Freeman memoir mentioned earlier in the thread - I’ll be seeking that one out!

19) The Girl from Bletchley Park by Kathleen McGurl

This was about a career lady called Julia struggling to balance her marriage, career and two teenage boys. She is given some old photo’s of her Grandmother Pamela at Bletchley Park and delves into her grandmother’s history as a wartime code breaker.

I enjoyed this , I listened as an audiobook and was interested enough to find out what the secret was. I did get frustrated with Julia though over her relationship with her husband.
I enjoyed the two stories running along and it time-slipping to the past. I didn’t get lost and it kept pace.

Not a bold but a worthy average read/listen.

Finishing up some Kindle Unlimited reads before cancelling my subscription in the New Year:

132 The Quantum Curators and the Faberge Egg, by Eva St John
Time traveling nonsense but fun, with visitors from a parallel earth visiting our world in search of the titular goodies. Have lined up the rest of the series.

132. A Slow Plodder on the Coast to Coast, by Steph Cooke
133. Hadrian's Wall Path: A Walk through History, by Paul Amess
Self-published accounts of doing the above walks. Undistinguished in literary terms but scratches the itch to be out there actually doing it.

Not intended as italics - that would be unfair given that they don't pretend to be anything more than what they are, long-form blogs.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I'm no longer alone!

Hamnet is soooooo bloody boring.

And yes to the triplicate thing @LadybirdDaphne - so awkward and silly.

It's the only one I've ever read of hers, and it put me off her for life.

I wonder if you really have to have read the Dark is Rising books as a child to love them? I do think that childrens / YA fantasy has on the whole got much more sophisticated since the 1970s, particularly in terms of villains with plausible motivation (as opposed to simply being 'the dark'), and degree of effort required for the protagonists to defeat said villains. (Diana Wynne Jones would be an exception who still reads well I think.)

As a side thing, I'm really intrigued by the rise of the 'italics = poor' thing on this thread. I don't remember it starting. But it's very useful!

@Sadik I don't think it's about Cooper lacking sophistication. I'd say that she's actually a good writer - better than DWJ imo. Maybe it's more a class thing - the children being great flautists and sopranos and knowing how to speak nicely to old ladies and recognise Greensleeves and Latin etc just feels terribly middle class and therefore (to my working class eyes!) not entirely believable.

Anyway - I'm reading Over Sea, Under Stone which I definitely did read as a child and haven't read since iirc. I vividly remember choosing it in a bookshop aged about 8 (attracted by the cover) and lapping it up, but I don't think I ever read the rest of the series until I read The Dark as an adult some years ago.

I always forget to do italics, because it used to be so much of a faff just getting the bolds right, still surprised at how few books I've really been taken with this year. I am a bit frustrated, I don't think I've become more snobby, I think I've become more cynical/jaded by certain tropes.

Hamnet is on my list to read. I’ve read several Maggie O’Farrell books and i particularly loved Instructions For A Heatwave.

Sorry, it's me again, feel like I'm thread bombing. Read this in two hours today.

73. Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

A young woman starts to self destruct after her relationship breaks down.

I loved lots of things about this, it has this anarchic chaotic energy as Queenie lurches about making deeply questionable decisions and mired in mistakes and regrets. We are not, in any respect similar people, but I found myself resonating with the knee jerk catastrophising, self-delusional, self sabotage of it all.

The cause of her spiral is Tom, who just seems like the grimmest most worthless man for her to pine over, it's like NO QUEENIE NO, HIS FAMILY WERE PROPERLY RACIST TO YOU, AND HE STILL BLAMED YOU, WALK AWAY AND LEAVE HIM IN YOUR DUST!

But Queenie blames herself which is a large part of her problem.

I think I will give this a bold, but as has been a major reading problem for me this year, the last few chapters aren't great : too neat, too And Alls Well That Ends Well; when a book like this so filled with a manic as fuck energy deserves an outside the box conclusion

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout I read this, and the follow up Anything is Possible, a few years ago and was pleased when it was chosen in my absence for book group, as it’s the sort of book that I knew would repay a reread (especially after having read AiP) but I wouldn’t otherwise have done so. She’s a very distinctive writer: effortless to read, but you really feel the depth of the souls she writes about. It’s about the aftermath of growing up a social outcast, in a very poor family with traumatised parents in which unspeakable things happen. Lucy looks back on her childhood, her escape from her it to college and her success as a writer, her marriage, and, particularly, her stay in hospital several years earlier when her mother unexpectedly came and spent several days by her bedside - her only contact with her for years before and after. It’s about the effects on her of feeling unloveable, her yearning for connection, and the effect of kindnesses when she is used only to rejection. The book is constructed beautifully, circling things that can’t be looked at so it is a tense read.
I’m conscious this might make it sound like misery porn which it absolutely isn’t, there’s nothing gratuitous.

I haven’t got to the latest Lucy book, Oh William, yet, I think I will revisit Anything is Possible first. I’d recommend Strout to anyone who hasn’t read her but think I would suggest Olive Kitteridge as a starting point to see if you like Strout’s writing as from memory it isn’t as intense.

My tow most recent reads hardly count as books but they, along with my readalong text The Woman In White (which we all enjoyed!) take me up to my 50. Hooray!

First, my annual Carol Ann Duffy illustrated poem 'Advent Street' which was nice but not her finest.

Secondly, the delightful A Christmas Tree a short story by Dickens. Sweet, kind and nostalgic with many overtones of A Christmas Carol in its descriptions of food and ghost and books, and some lovely descriptions of toys.

I have this because e did a second hand book swap as Secret Santa and I got a delightful, illustrated vintage edition of this in a sweet little hardback. I have no idea why someone would give such a lovely thing away (looking at the date of the edition , she has has it since she was a little child!) but she did and I am most grateful.

That's lovely, Piggy. Really gorgeous.

I have Anything Is Possible lined up on Borrowbox if I get around to it. I like your review on I Am Lucy Barton, Cornish, and agree with your comments on Strout's writing. Simple but profound.

I'm making no progress with actual reading but just wanted to echo the love for Strout and to agree that Olive Kitteridge is a good place to start.

The Box of Delights by John Masefield

A reread of a childhood favourite although what I could remember was from the TV show. It all went a bit Bobby Ewing at the end though which was annoying although that did explain the enormous freedom the children had.