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?

@PepeLePew I love Breakfast at Tiffany’s - it’s so wistful and lonely and tender. So very different to the film.

Whalebone is not for me. It feels very creative writing class and the present tense was driving me scatty.

Just finished one of my standouts of the year.
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield
Leah is a marine scientist who, with two others, embarks on a submarine research trip that is supposed to take 3 weeks. Six months later, she finally returns to her waiting wife, but she is irrevocably changed by whatever happened to her. This is a dual narrative- Leah’s notes on the expedition and her wife’s description of what is happening to Leah on her return.

If I’m making this sound like nothing much, then that’s true in the sense that there’s hardly any plot. But it’s all so beautifully written that it just holds your hand and gently keeps moving you to the inevitable ending. It’s a love story and a story of the ocean’s hidden mysteries and it’s sweet and moving. I loved it.

Breakfast at Tiffany's is inspired by Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin. I always think it's interesting that two such iconic films were inspired by one set of memoirs.

1989 - Val McDermid Honestly, this was terrible. It takes much that was bad about the late 80s (Lockerbie, Hillsborough, AIDS, homophobia, Robert Maxwell), chucks in a bit about East and West Berlin and the crumbling of the Eastern Bloc and attempts to shape a thriller out of it.
There were bits I liked but overall I was left thinking that Jeffrey Archer would have done a better job.

I bought it after some thought but I'm not sure about it.
I'll be interested to see reviews.
I'm a bit down at the thought of books I know I will not get a chance to read, there's no point in me buying them, sorry.

That made me smile thank you

@bettbburg

I DNF 1979 so didn't bother with 1989 despite it being one of the best years of my life 🤣
Val Mc has really gone downhill IMO. The Tony Hill books and the standalones were great but now - nah. Reminds me of Edward Wozzisname with his shoehorning in of Famous People and Events only even tangentially connected.

@bettbburg

(This post isn't meant to ignore your situation bett you have all our support )

For those who can and want to Check Your Wishlist

I've just managed to get from between 0.99-1.99 each

The Whalebone Theatre
Take My Hand
Furious Love
Sorrow And Bliss
An Immense World
The Night Ship

@bettbburg glad to see you checking in, hope you're doing okay

Oh @bettbburg Sending you as many geeky bookish hugs as you can cope with and wishing you and yours much love.

Popping back to say hello and send all good wishes and hopes to @bettbburg

111. Last Chance Saloon by Marian Keyes

This was always one of my favourite Marian Keyes books, reading it in my early 20s, Fintan, Tara, Catherine and their friends seemed unutterably cool to me. I enjoyed revisiting this but there were definitely some aspects that had not aged well (the comments around weight, inc heroin-chic and bulimia / anorexia, in particular) and there was one instance where a 40 year old man has 'sexual contact' with a 16 year old girl, which was not condoned but would be handled very differently these days. The other issue I had was that I listened to this on audible and the narrator was all over the shop with their accents. This is a bit of a problem when none of the main characters are English. There was lots of the trademark Marian Keyes humour and I had forgotten that this book was where I got the phrase "I speak as I find" which I use quite often in a broad Yorkshire accent.

bett

Yet again I have fallen behind with updates!

289 and 290 Did They Steal A Million Yet? and Wish You Were Here Yet? by James Crookes

More 80s time travel adventures. All very silly but very good fun!

291 The Secret History of Christmas by Bill Bryson

Audible only but others have counted it so I will too! Does what it says on the tin.

292 Christmas Days by Jeanette Winterson

A collection of Christmas themed short stories interspersed with recipes. I really like these stories and this is one I go back to regularly at this time of year.

293 Red Sauce Brown Sauce: A British Breakfast Odyssey by Felicity Cloake

The author cycles round Britain finding out about various breakfast food items. I really enjoyed this.

294 The Children of Green Knowe by Lucy M Boston

Another Christmas favourite!

295 A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Think everyone knows this one!

296 Bootcamp for Broken Hearts by Joanna Bolouri

Average chicklit about a woman who finds love on a romance retreat.

297 Santa Grint by Jodi Taylor

Short story that is part of her Time Police series. I did like this although it wasn’t very Christmassy!

298 Good Taste by Caroline Scott

Set in 1932, this is a novel about a woman travelling around England trying to find out about the history of English food. On her travels she meets a man who proves too much of a distraction - can she focus properly on her book? This was OK - I liked the period detail but the story was a bit slow.

299 The Story Of The Country House by Clive Aslet

I thought this would be about living in a country house but it was more about how the architecture of houses has changed over time. Still quite interesting though.

300 Barefoot Britain: A Running Adventure Like No Other by Anna McNuff

This is a woman who likes endurance tests - she’s previously run the length of New Zealand, cycled round all 50 US states and also cycled round South America. Here, she runs more than 2000 miles round Britain - barefoot. I really liked this although not quite as much as her USA cycling book.

301 The Christmas Chronicles by Nigel Slater

Lovely writing about winter, food and Christmas. Will definitely be coming out again next Christmas.

302 Bournville by Jonathan Coe

If this is my final book of the year I will definitely have finished on a high. This tells the story of the Lamb family who live in Bournville in Birmingham, linking their lives to various high profile events. Part family saga, part state of the nation novel. I loved this but I can see how the state of the nation stuff may annoy some people.

Not sure if I will finish another one before tomorrow night but will be back with all my stats anyway.

300 Chessie Crikey, Well Done!

The Deals I'm seeing are from 12 Days Of Christmas which everybody else is probably already aware of, I got a few more when I realised, it's a good selection the likes of which hasn't been seen in a while

Remus, I was interested in Our Wives Under The Sea until I saw it categorised as 'horror'. Definitely not for me then!

I also passed on Our Wives Under The Sea when it was a daily deal because of the horror label - maybe I shouldn't have.

It's absolutely not horror - no idea why it was categorised as such.

Very best wishes bett

Thanks, Remus, I've put it back on my wish list. It sounded like that French tv programme where people went away and came back zombified - The Returned? Amazon have some very odd categorisation.

@bettbburg. Glad to have raised a smile.

60. Free Love - Tessa Hadley

This was my first Tessa Hadley book and I loved it. Phyllis is a forty year old housewife and mother to Collette and Hugh. A chance meeting leads to an affair with a much younger man, and Phyllis' stable, staid suburban milieu is contrasted with Nicholas' artistic, quasi-revolutionary set in Ladbroke Grove. All of the main characters and their motivations are beautifully filled in - unusually for me, I especially liked Collette's journey from an awkward young teen to tentatively stepping into young womanhood.

61. The Mystery of the Sorrowful Maiden - Kate Saunders
This was just pure fun. Laetitia Rodd is a Victorian amateur detective, and in this instalment of her adventures she investigates a murder in theatre land. An understudy is found dead after a fire, and suspicion falls first on the flamboyant theatre owner, then on his wife and daughters. I will definitely read the rest of the series when I need a comfort read.

Definitely no zombies. If anything, I'd class it as literary fiction. It's the story of two people who fell in love and then one went away and then their lives could never be the same again. I'd love to hear what anybody else makes of it.

Sounds good, Remus, thanks.

End of year review:

I haven't counted properly, but this year I read roughly 75% women, 25% men. Nothing at all in translation, which is unusual for me, but it's just the way my reading went.

Top non-fiction:
The Moth and The Mountain - Ed Caesar
Black Diamonds - Catherine Bailey
Empire of Pain - Patrick Radden Keefe
Fall - John Preston

Top fiction:
Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell
Nine Coaches Waiting - Mary Stewart
The Mission House - Carys Davies
Free Love - Tessa Hadley
Moonfleet - J Meade Falkner
A Lady's Guide to Fortune-Hunting - Sophie Irwin

Finally, have just discovered the Queen Consort's Reading Room (royalreadingroom.uk), which sounds like a Regency romance novel but is in fact Camilla's online "book club". It looks like four books are recommended each month, mostly quite middle of the road but including classics and older books. I spotted Girl, Woman, Other, Atonement and The Woman in White. There's also a section on manuscripts in Windsor Castle Library, with videos, which looks good. Interestingly, the weekly pick for 15th December was Don't Touch My Hair by Emma Dabiri, which seems to address head-on the Lady Susan Hussey/Sistah Space incident.