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?

1 The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
2 Kirstin Lavransdatter I: The Wreath by Sigrid Undset. Translated by Tiina Nunnally
3 Esther's Notebooks 1. Tales from my ten-year-old life by Riad Sattouf. Translated by Sam Taylor
4 Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami. Translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd
5 Esther's Notebooks 2. Tales from my eleven-year-old life by Riad Sattouf. Translated by Sam Taylor
6 Esther's Notebooks 3. Tales from my twelve-year-old life by Riad Sattouf. Translated by Sam Taylor
7 Oldladyvoice by Elisa Victoria. Translated by Charlotte Whittle
8 Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans
9 Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov. Translated by George Bird
10 The Instant by Amy Liptrot
11 The Book of Not by Tsitsi Dangarembga
12 Nick and Charlie by Alice Oseman
13 The Clothes They Stood Up In by Alan Bennett
14 The House with the Stained Glass Window by Żanna Słoniowska. Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
15 Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro. Translated by Frances Riddle
16 Letters written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark by Mary Wollstonecraft
17 The Pear Field by Nana Ekvtimishvili. Translated by Elizabeth Heighway
18 Love after Love by Ingrid Persaud
19 Alexa, what is there to know about love? by Brian Bilston
20 Grey Bees by Andrey Kurkov. Translated by Boris Dralyuk
21 The Owl Service by Alan Garner
22 The Embassy of Cambodia by Zadie Smith
23 My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. Translated by Ann Goldstein
24 Morvern Callar by Alan Warner
25 The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante. Translated by Ann Goldstein.
26 Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo. Translated by Jamie Chang
27 Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands by Sonia Nimr. Translated by Marcia Lynx Qualey
28 Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga. Translated by Melanie Mauthner
29 Hilo Book 8: Gina and the Big Secret by Judd Winick
30 The Road to Lichfield by Penelope Lively
31 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
32 V for Victory by Lissa Evans
33 The House of Ulloa by Emilia Pardo Bazán. Translated by Paul O'Prey and Lucia Graves
34 Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
35 The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
36 The Box of Delights by John Masefield
37 A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas
38 The King and the Christmas Tree by AN Wilson

Male:Female 39%:61%
Translated 45%
Europe 71%
Asia 10.5%
Africa 10.5%
Americas 8%

Standouts:
Grey Bees by Andrey Kurkov
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Kirstin Lavransdatter I: The Wreath by Sigrid Undset

Thanks Remus - will add to my wishlist - which it’s only just occurred to me to sort by price to see quickly what’s been reduced. D’oh!

So glad so many enjoyed Woman In White!

I have so much catching up to do on this thread.

110. The Thief on theWinged Horse
     by Kate Mascarenhas
     An extended family of magic doll makers live on an Eyot in Oxford. When a man turns up claiming to be a long lost relative the cracks in the family begin to show and a shocking theft threatens to tear them apart.
     I really like the idea of the dollmakers on the eyot but the story doesn't really take off and despite being set in the modern day it has a very old fashioned feel which makes it jarring when characters start checking their phones.

111. No Time to Spare by Ursula K. LeGuin
     A collection of personal essays on subjects including literature, soft boiled eggs, politics and cats. She was an amazing writer and a wonderful personality shines through these essays.

112. Lost Acre by Andrew Caldecott
     The final book in the Rotherweird trilogy set in a strange closed town. It's okay, the writing style started to annoy me a bit though. You definitely need to have read the previous books before reading this.

113. Still Life by Sarah Winman
     In
     Tuscany in 1944
     sixty four year old art historian and young British soldier Ulysses Temper meet and leave a lasting impression on each other. I quite enjoyed it, though struggling to think of anything to say about it.

114. Inverted World by Christopher Priest
     Helward lives in a moving city and measures his age in
     miles. As his work takes him outside the city he discovers more about the strangeness of the world he is living in.
     Really good science fiction, very well written, believable but strange and unexpected.

115. Femlandia by Christina Dalcher
     As society collapses Miranda and her daughter have no choice but to try to take refuge in one of the female only communities established by her estranged mother.
     It's okay though there aren't many likeable characters.

116. The Christmas Pig by J.K. Rowling
     Children's story about a boy who enters the land of the lost to search for his missing beloved soft toy.
     Nice story, though quite sad in some ways, about loss and change.

117. Spoilt Rotten: The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality by Theodore Dalrymple
     Quite interesting look at how
     western culture has grown more sentimental. I agree with some of what Dalrymple says, about people like the McCanns or Joanne Lees being unfairly judged by the public because they didn't display their emotions enough, but I think he is harsh in judging people who are emotional and is victim blaming of women in abusive relationships.

118. The Sealwoman's Gift by Sally Magnusson
     In the seventeenth century Asta and her family are among four hundred Icelanders taken by pirates to be sold into slavery in North Africa.
     Well written story that is also about the power of stories, the Icelandic sagas that Asta tells her children and the stories of Scheherazade that she learns in Algeria.

119. The Couple at the Table by Sophie Hannah
     A woman is murdered in a holiday resort after receiving a mysterious warning to beware the couple at the table nearest hers. All the guests and staff have alibis and no one has entered from outside.
     I always get drawn into Sophie Hannah novels by the set up only to be disappointed by the reveal. It wasn't bad to read though, the writing carried me along well enough.

Final book of the year is The Christmas Chronicles by Nigel Slater which I intended to read as a read along type thing day by day but life got in the way because unlike Nigel I have people around me who need attention and I can't spend all day dicking around with pomegranate molasses and wafer thin slices of pear that has ripened to the perfect softness. People need feeding, transporting and yelling at. Nigel never yells - it would shatter the fragile Japanese porcelain he sips his morning tea from while contemplating his velvet slippers sewn by fifteen virgins on the slopes of Mount Fuji.

So anyway, I didn't get further than 5 December. We didn't eat cobnut salad or pickled rhubarb and salmon and I didn't wrap Christmas gifts in soft aged cloths, or buy solid beeswax candles to burn on Christmas Eve. But then Christmas came and went and we coped just fine with a Waitrose turkey and some Lidl red cabbage which I zapped in the microwave and I found time to pick this up again and all my grumpy cynicism went out of the window and I couldn't put it down. Properly lovely, my scoffing aside, and just what I needed. Realistically, I'm not going to make a festive generous convivial terrine on Christmas Eve next year - my guests can have beans on toast if they are hungry between meals - but it was nice to indulge in a fantasy life where I have a rambling house in north London that is filled with well seasoned cast iron skillets and the perfect porridge spurtle.

My last few books for this year;

62. Gay from China at the Chalet School: Elinor Brent-Dyer.
63. A Summer Bird-Cage: Margaret Drabble.
64. War and Peace: Leo Tolstoy.
65. Year of Wonder. Classical Music for Every Day: Clemency Burton-Hill.
66. Jane Eyre: Charlotte Brontë.
67. A Christmas Carol: Charles Dickens.
68. The Cricket on the Hearth: Charles Dickens.

Favourite books this year;

A Place Of Execution: Val McDermid.
Death And The Penguin: Andrey Kurkov trans. George Bird.
The Bread The Devil Knead: Lisa Allen Agostini.
The Book Of Form And Emptiness: Ruth Ozeki.
Small Things Like These: Clare Keegan.
Bleak House: Charles Dickens.
Black Narcissus: Rumer Godden.
A Gentleman In Moscow: Amor Towles.
The Woman In White: Wilkie Collins.

Wishing everyone on this thread a happy 2023 and sending best wishes to Bett🌷

@bettbburg sending

Thank you @Southeastdweller for keeping us on track for the year! And thanks to everyone who has swelled my TBR list with recommendations. Enjoyed the book chat this year, even on books I haven't read (yet) - you guys are a truly lovely corner of MN :)

Definitely won't finish the next book before the end of the year so finally posting my list instead (as I'm at a laptop instead of on my phone for once). An "eclectic" mix, old shelf-blockers, hippy books from DM, others recommended on here or elsewhere. Relatively few stinkers, considering. Roughly 50/50 fiction/non-fiction, 31 of which were library books and I've got rid of 24 this year. Resolution next year to get rid of more, and use the library as first port of call for TBR list.

1. A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini
2. Clairvoyancy: the Truth – Kris Sky
3. Just Ignore Him – Alan Davies 4. Out of This World – Ed. Michelle Abbott
4. London Orbital – Iain Sinclair
5. Island of the Blue Dolphins – Scott O’Dell
6. The Haunting of Alma Fielding – Kate Summerscale
7. The Last Fighting Tommy – Harry Patch & Richard van Emden
8. We Were the Lucky Ones – Georgina Hunter 10. The Secret Life of a Slummy Mummy – Fiona Neill
9. Positive Forces – Doris Collins
10. Folklore of Surrey – Matthew Alexander
11. The Forensic Records Society – Magnus Mills 14. Set my Heart to Five – Simon Stephenson
12. Giants: the Dwarfs of Auschwitz – Yehuda Koren & Eilat Negev
13. The Marlow Murder Club – Robert Thorogood
14. The Women of Troy – Pat Barker
15. The Diary of a Bookseller – Shaun Bythell
16. The Hoarder – Jess Kidd 20. Arthur & George – Julian Barnes
17. Humble Pi – Matt Parker
18. How to Walk Away – Katherine Center
19. Troy – Stephen Fry
20. Life after Life – Raymond Moody
21. Re-educated – Lucy Kellaway
22. Back in the Bag – Ed. Dot Boughton & Kayt Hawkins
23. My Family and Other Animals – Gerald Durrell
24. The Children of Jocasta – Natalie Haynes 29. QualityLand – Marc-Uwe Kling
25. Whatever Happened to Margo? – Margaret Durrell
26. The Gran Tour – Ben Aitken
27. Machines Like Me – Ian McEwan
28. More Fool Me – Stephen Fry
29. The Murders at Fleat House – Lucinda Riley
30. Cardiff and the Valleys in the Great War – Gary Dobbs
31. Murder, Mystery and My Family – Karen Farrington
32. The Thursday Murder Club – Richard Osman
33. The Authenticity Project – Clare Pooley 39. Zippy and Me – Ronnie Le Drew
34. The Choice – Claire Wade
35. Prospero’s Cell – Lawrence Durrell 42. Piranesi – Susannah Clarke
36. The Wolf Den – Elodie Harper 44. Ghost Hunting – Derek Acorah
37. Solve it Like Sherlock – Stewart Ross 46. The Durrells of Corfu – Michael Haag
38. All That Remains – Sue Black
39. The Kids – Hannah Lowe
40. The Etymologicon – Mark Forsyth 50. Mudlarking – Lara Maiklem
41. Pandora’s Jar - Natalie Haynes
42. The House on Half Moon Street – Alex Reeve 53. Four Mums in a Boat – Janette Benaddi, Helen Butters, Niki Doeg & Frances Davies
43. Yours Cheerfully – AJ Pearce
44. Operation Mincemeat – Ben MacIntyre
45. The Wild Silence – Raynor Winn
46. Once Upon a River – Diane Setterfield
47. The Anarchists’ Club – Alex Reeve
48. Toto Among the Murderers – Sally J Morgan
49. The Left-Handed Booksellers of London – Garth Nix
50. The House on Vesper Sands – Paraic O’Donnell
51. Blonde Roots – Bernardine Evaristo
52. Shepperton Studios: a Visual History – Morris Bright
53. Dead Famous – Greg Jenner

56. Magpie Lane by Lucy Atkins
Fairly well read on here i think? I really enjoyed just being gripped by a page turner. I felt a bit of a cop-out by the end, but satisfying nonetheless.

I’m so sorry @bettbburg , thinking of you 💐

Sending you my best wishes Betts

Love your review of The Christmas Chronicles, @PepeLePew. I’m exactly the same - haven’t made anything from it and definitely don’t have a Nigel style Christmas but I do love reading it!

57. Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson
Memoir, borrowed from the library but I'd now like my own copy to dip into again in future. I really like Winterson's writing and her humour. Am currently about a third of the way through Christmas Days which I am also loving.
58. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Audible version narrated by Hugh Grant, enjoyable annual listen to put me in the Christmas spirit :)

Haven't looked too closely at my stats for the year. Total is less than last year but in the same region. Roughly two thirds fiction to one third non-fiction seems to work well for me. And as for many others, my aim for 2023 is to read books I own and reduce the TBR (almost laughing as I type, but it's good to be ambitious!).
Best wishes to @bettbburg
Many thanks to @Southeastdweller
Hope to see you all in 2023 :)

69. The Secret Place by Tana French. Managed to just finish this one today to make it my final book of the year! A detective follows up a past murder on the grounds of a private girls' school following a tip off from one of the students. This is the fifth of the Dublin Murders series which I'm a big fan of. They're all quite tough crime novels but with a slight fairytale edge - which sounds mad but I can't think of a better way to describe it. I enjoyed this. Definitely need a break from crime fiction in the new year though.

😂 I’ve got a Waterstones voucher, so will see if I can find the sex book in the flesh.

Loved that Nigel Slater review. He’s an odd un. I quite like reading him, but all he seems to eat is tomatoes and ice cream.

For anybody who was new to Wilkie Collins this year with The Woman in White I highly recommend No Name as your next read.

Also loving the Nigel Slater review thanks @PepeLePew I have similar feelings about him and, as i mentioned on another thread, have found myself shouting at my kindle on more than one occasion; ‘some of us live in a 2-bed terrace and shop at lidl Nigel’.

I think I gave up on it entirely last year, but enjoying it more despite the sheer fusspottery this time round.

I’m finishing up some seasonal (re)reads which I meant to get to in the run up/ over the main event itself but life just got too hectic.

53 Christmas Pudding Nancy Mitford - I always sort of enjoy Mitford and sort of don’t. As with this. I’m still full of the cold that won’t die and my brain isn’t working well enough to explain what I mean better, but it’s that arch slightly pleased with oneself tone that doesn’t always work for me. I get that it’s comic, but doesn’t always hit the mark for me - though sometimes it does!

54 A Child’s Christmas in Wales - Dylan Thomas Bit of a cheat including this as it’s so short, and a regular re read, but my numbers are low this year so it’s going in. Just sublime and I love the Peter Bailey illustrations too.

If Nigel had ever had to feed a two year old who only wanted to eat dinosaur shaped food he'd have to stop titting about at the farmer's market and get on with real life. Reminds me of a single friend who offered to look after my children when they were small - she asked what to cook them and I said pasta and pesto. She looked in the fridge, failed to find fresh basil or pine nuts in the cupboard, ignored the jar of pesto (or possibly didn't recognise it as pesto) so served them rose harissa instead. One child ate the lot, the other was still sobbing when I got home. Sweet of her to offer and I still tease her about it but not the act of someone who has had to get dinner on the table at 5pm every day for three years for three tiny tyrants.

@CornishLizard Thank you for the Polly Morland review. Have added it to my wishlist. (I'm still bleaching my soul after Adam Repulsive Woman Hating Fuckwit Kaye so to read about a doctor who actually cares about their patients sounds lovely.)

The Whalebone theatre book sounded good until I saw that part of it is written from the perspective of a 3 year old and then the penny dropped that whichever of you said it (Remus I think?) would be spot on. Someone has been asked at a creative writing class to write as if they were a 3 year old, so I'm not even going to try it.

I curled up in bed last night and began no 49. A PD James. Oh ye crime writers of ye 99p psycho thrillers. I'll never tire of saying it. Read some decent bloody crime writing and learn. It's beautifully written, it's a pleasure to read, I already know more about real life crimes in the interwar years from reading 3 chapters of this than any BBC archive or Netflix "the harrowing true crime story of X, a lowly parlour maid, hacked to death on the Wilton carpet for which the son of the lord of the manor was hanged, but now we think it was Albert the grocer's lad" etc. And nobody is even murdered yet. It's fab. It's also clearly a later PDJ as someone is renting a room for £350 a week (!!!) rather than 25 shillings like in her earlier stuff. (Just checked and it's Inspector Dalgliesh 12 and from 2008- I have about 10 Dalglieshes on the Kindle and was going to read them in order at some point but went for random number generator last night and there it was.

Sending kind thoughts to @bettbburg and many thanks to @Southeastdweller - this thread is keeping me reading. I was hoping to finish one more in 2022, but am out all day today so despite having about three books on the go not going to finish anymore this year.
My short list (I'm a latecomer)
1.The Next Time You See Me, Holly Goddard Jones

1. The Kindest Lie, Nancy Johnson
2. The Fell, Sarah Moss
3. The Black Friend, Frederick Joseph
4. A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson

6.Our House, Louise Candlish

1. Anything is Possible, Elizabeth Strout
2. . Mrs England, Stacey Halls
3. Small Things Like These, Clare Keegan

10.Hungry - Grace Dent 11. Ghost Wall Sarah Moss 12. The Silence Susan Allott 13. A Change in Climate Hilary Mantel 14. People Like Her Ellery Lloyd 15. The Rumour Lesley Kara 16.Such a Fun Age, Kiley Reid 17. Black Sunday Tola Rotimi Abraham

All fiction except two and all female writers bar one joint effort and two men.

Cant get the formatting to work today in my list, but standouts were Ghost Wall, A Change of Climate and Anything is Possible. Stinkers * *were People Like Her and Our House (both boring and cliched).
See you all in 2023.

I read the CC every year and I love it. I want to go to Christmas markets in Austria, and pick Christmas trees in Norway and then go to Japan to buy poncey stationery. But yes, I bet he is very very difficult to live with. And I can't watch his programmes because he makes me want to hurl his books at the telly. I've said this before, he breathes in the WRONG PLACE and it makes him sound like he's perving over that "oooh here's a piece of organic, hand made fancy cheese wrapped in handmade paper and wanked over by the cheesemonger to add a bit of uniqueness that I just happened to have at the back of the fridge" I also have the Kitchen Diaries and follow him on Instagram. And he's wonderful, and lovely, BUT. Jeez man, go down the chippy once or twice. And answer me this- how come you go all Scandinavian and don't have the heating on in your old crumbling creaking house, but do your writing by candlelight and wearing gloves and DON'T HAVE MOULD ON YOUR WALLS.

Pepe- your story reminds me of the first time we took dd to a hotel in Wales and they offered to do dinner early for the toddlers. Mine was at the stage where she would only eat spaghetti and tomato sauce or pesto. We were put with a glamourous American woman whose "Chloe" was shovelling broccoli in and asking for more and had to listen to the mother going on about "well Chloe just loves her greens, she couldn't sleep if she hasn't had at least <boak word alert> 10 veggies a day.

Nigel never yells - it would shatter the fragile Japanese porcelain he sips his morning tea from while contemplating his velvet slippers sewn by fifteen virgins on the slopes of Mount Fuji

😂😂😂😂😂

Thinking of you betts

I'm all done for this year. My final total was 112 books

46% women / 54% men
52% non fiction / 48% fiction (but almost all my bolded reads were non-fiction - definitely plan to try to read better fiction next year)

I did succeed in reducing my Kindle buys this year, and use the e-library a lot more. I share a family library with my dad, so do read his kindle books. 80% of my reads this year were e-book or audio, neither of which work well for me for serious fiction, so aim to buy more paper books & use the physical library more in 2023.
Library 8%
Owned / borrowed 12%
E-library 35%
Kindle 25%
Audible 21%

My bolded books when I read them:
Non fiction:
The Art of Fermentation Sandor Elix Katz
A Belfast Child John Chambers
The Life of Stuff Susannah Walker
From Miniskirt to Hijab Jacqueline Saper
The Naked Don't Fear the Water Matthieu Aikens
Land of a Thousand Hills Rosamond Halsey Carr
Cogs and Monsters Diane Coyle
Free: Coming of age at the end of history Lea Ypi
Consent Vanessa Springora
Superinfinite Katherine Rundell
Frontier Grit Marianne Monson
Janesville Amy Goldstein
Amusing Ourselves to Death Neil Postman
The Microdot Gang James Wyllie
If It's Smart, It's Vulnerable Mikko Hypponen
Welsh Food Stories Carwyn Graves
Say What You Mean Oren Sofer
The Islander Chris Blackwell

Fiction:
Shards of Earth Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Golden Enclaves Naomi Novik
A Gentleman in Moscow Amor Towles

Looking back through my list, I think I judged the fiction more harshly, and would add to my list of bolds
Winchelsea by Alex Preston
Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov
Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercey (only not bolded because it was an n-th time re-read)
I've also read quite a bit of enjoyable even if forgettable light fiction.

PepeLePew 😂you have summed up my love-hate relationship with Nigel to an exquisitely perfumed lapsang souchong tea.