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?

I agree that it is too long and preachy and over-rated as Eine said.* *

Happy belated Christmas, 50-Bookers!

I see we are posting our lists for the year which is surely our Christmas present to our lovely Remus who loves them so

20.. Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky

565 pages of long-winded rubbish How can an author write great books like Ogres, Dogs of War, and Cage of Souls with original themes and impressive execution and then bomb so pathetically with a vague space opera that goes nowhere?

This took me a month to read just because I had no interest in finding what was on the next page and just slogged through it because I thought the story would get somewhere at some point. It didn't.

NOT recommended.

21.. Better Off Dead (Jack Reacher #26) by Lee Child and Andrew Child

I needed a palate cleanser after the slow torture that was Shards of Earth and this brain-dead gorilla action fit the bill. I wouldn't recommend it for anything else, though.

Number 53 was Yvette Cooper's anthology of speeches by women. I'm not sure I'd read a book full of speeches again as I do think they are lost in the transcription but it was a well curated anthology with an update which includes the Queen's Covid speech. I think Jo Cox's maiden speech is the most poignant inclusion and Greta Thunberg's the most fiery. Ellen DeGeneres' was the one that caught me off guard and made me well up a little.

22.. All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshima Sakurazaka

I picked this up after reading that it was the basis for Tom Cruise's 2014 film Edge Of Tomorrow and it was pretty good! You will probably not be surprised to hear that it was substantially different, less chest-thumpy and more intelligent than the film. The ending was a bit rushed but I am still happy to have read it.

A bit late to the Christmas round-up…house guests now departed and returning to normality. Good haul of books - some requested, some not…..

😂😂😂
Great to see you, as always! Hope you had a lovely Christmas and are all geared up for fighting over books and lists for another year.

72 The Railway Children - E Nesbit (read to the DCs) Such a lovely book! I really enjoyed introducing my girls to it. As expected, I cried at the end - I had to get DD1 to read the last two pages, as I wept while they laughed at me 😂

109. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I really liked this, but think I would have liked it more if it had been a bit shorter. I found the musings on race interesting and enlightening and found the blog posts an interesting way to do this. The star crossed lovers aspect definitely felt secondary, but I didn't mind this, as I preferred the sections when Ifemelu was in the US. I can't say I exactly like Ifemelu, but I think she is one of the most rounded and alive characters I have come across in a long time. Will definitely read more by the author.

22 The Paris Apartment - Lucy Foley

Fleeing a drama at home, Jess arrives in Paris to stay with her brother Ben, who has abruptly stopped answering her calls, messages and his front door. Upon gaining entrance to the shabby-chic apartment block Jess meets the other peculiar residents of the building, each with dirty secrets and a reluctance to help track down her missing brother. Naturally, everyone is in on it.

The characters develop nicely and their motivations are gradually revealed as the plot races along, in part helped by the really short POV chapters.

This was enjoyable enough, fun escapist fluff, and generally better developed than The Hunting Party

@DuPainDuVinDuFromage I remember weeping while reading the end of Charlotte's Web to my DD. She looked at me baffled "why are you crying mummy?"

I went to see Up with DS2 who must have only been about 7. Bless him, he patted me on the knee.

He cries at books too mind, especially Animal Farm. We subject children to terribly sad books!

The saddest book I've read in my life is a childrens book. A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness. I didn't just shed a few, I broke down.

It’s funny how it’s different things which make you cry as you get older! For me these days it’s parent-daughter stuff, and sister relationships too - I only have a brother (who is lovely) but seeing the relationship between my girls makes me all weepy when I read or see sad situations involving sisters (Frozen 2!! 😭😭)

Oh, goodness, yes. Even sadder given its author.

It's a brilliant book of course, Siobhan O'Dowd and then completed by Ness. Ness is an excellent writer but there are several I haven't yet read. He was last I heard the screenwriter chosen for a Master And Commander series

I took my children to see the stage adaptation of A Monster Calls. Completely harrowing; we were all weeping uncontrollably by the end. DS had studied it at school and was completely bemused by my buying tickets but hadn't thought to challenge me.

The Rising Tide - Ann Cleeves

Latest in the Vera Stanhope series. There’s something very restful about them even if they are about Murder. Perfect for reading while stuffed with chocolate and with g&t in hand.

Now for Mr Rickman.

I also just finished The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley, & your review is spot on for me @Zireael - my favourite of the three of hers I've read so far

Also Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. This was my one book Christmas present, from my dad, and while you definitely need to go heavy with the suspension of disbelief it suited my tastes nicely as a light holiday read.

I'm not likely to finish any more books this year, so here's my end of year round-up!

Books read: 51
Women 61%, men 39%
Fiction 57%, non-fiction 43%

Top 5 fiction:
The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
History of the Rain by Niall Williams
The Last Migration by Charlotte McConaghy
The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver

Top 5 non-fiction:
The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson
The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters by Charlotte Mosley
Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe
Into the Silence: the Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest by Wade Davies
The Devil You Know by Gwen Adshead and Eileen Horne

Stokey, I think you’ve put your finger on it. I can cope with unsympathetic/satirical characters as long as there’s some plot, but the relative absence of plot (at least in the 1st 100 or so pages) made the book too much hard work.

Bett and Cote, it’s lovely to see you.

Pass me the smelling salts, how dare people critique my beloved Jane? Seriously, I read and reread Jane Eyre as a child, and when I reread it as an adult, I still loved it. Jane speaks truth to power. I love the way she banters with Rochester and holds her own against him so well. I also admire her critique of religious oppression and hypocrisy, as embodied by various characters (Eliza Reed, Mr Brocklehurst and of course the smug, self-satisfied and utterly repellent St John). (I grew up in a repressive religious household so as a child I think I must have identified quite a lot with Jane. I would be physically punished for having a Bad Attitude, for example. And yes, my attitude was bad. Extremely bad.) I know there are problems with the book, namely Mr Rochester as a domineering, brooding Mills and Boon type hero. And the (Creole!) madwoman in the attic. But Bertha in the attic seems to me in some ways to be a dark double of Jane: another woman who doesn’t fit into the role a patriarchal society prescribed for her. In short, I will never not be a fan.

I'm Team Jane Eyre Is Cack, I'm afraid. Still get flashbacks to having to do it for A Level English shudder

Nice to see @bettbburg and @CoteDAzur :)

I've got a few books on the go but will hold them over to the new thread as I'm likely to finish over the weekend. So my roundup of the year goes like this;

65 books read (22 fiction, 43 non fiction)

Top non fiction:
Faith, Hope and Carnage - Nick Cave and Sean O'Hagan
Fall -John Preston
Beastie Boys Book - Michael Diamond and Adam Horowitz
Nina Simone's Gum - Warren Ellis
Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain

Top fiction (much slimmer pickings)
Bomber - Len Deighton
The Terror - Dan Simmons

Hey cassandre! I was wondering earlier today if there were any fans of Jane Eyre and here you are :) * *I wonder if Jane is one of the earliest heroines in literature. I did admire her feisty attitude and the way she railed against the establishment. However, I don't think I would read the book again. Parts of it are hard going.

I liked the intrigue surrounding Mrs Rochester and wanted to know more about her. She was just dismissed as 'mad'. It occurred to me too that she could have been Jane's dark mirror image and how things might have gone badly if Jane had 'married' Rochester earlier on. I think there is a spin-off book that might put forward more about his earlier life (Mr. Rochester) but I'm not tempted to go there, I don't think.

When I read the family biography a few months ago, it was clear that Jane Eyre was a sensation at the time, and people actively commended the moralistic side.

What amused me was that when the novel spread to Yorkshire people immediately identified both Lowood and its teachers, and it caused much talk, apparently in Charlotte's works there are also several vicars that are just pisstakes of her fathers curates, and they too were identified.