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 was thoroughly enjoying the Year of Wonder classical music follow along until October when I suddenly forgot about it and dropped off the thread. But great thanks to @IsFuzzyBeagMise for keeping it going. As someone who knew nothing about classical music, it was great to be introduced to new things and I especially enjoyed discovering that I very much liked some of the more modern stuff (Philip Glass, Steve Reich) as well as a bit of baroque trumpet.
I feel I must finish this year before attempting volume 2 though.

Maud - I didn't really read it every day. Typically, I read a week's worth of music while listening to each of them on a Sunday morning with my coffee, waiting for everyone else to wake up.

My final book of the year was a Dick/Felix Francis - might actually finish re-reading them all next year.

List below. Very little non-fiction (only 6 versus 79 fiction). Majority women (51 of 85). Mostly kindle (60 of 85).

Thank you all for your company, recommendations and warnings. Happy new year!

1. The Long and Short of It - Jodi Taylor
2. The Manningtree Witches - A K Blakemore
3. The Passenger - Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz
4. Midsummer Mysteries - Agatha Christie
5. Real Tigers - Mick Herron

6. The Man in the Brown Suit - Agatha Christie

1. Around the World in 80 Days - Jules Verne
2. A Springtime Affair - Katie Fforde
3. Love is Blind - William Boyd

10. Come to Grief - Dick Francis 11. Behind the scenes at the Museum - Kate Atkinson 12. The Madness of Grief - Richard Coles 13. Death on the Nile - Agatha Christie 14. The Bookshop - Penelope Fitzgerald 15. Love after Love - Ingrid Persaud 16. In a Good Light - Clare Chambers 17. To the Hilt - Dick Francis 18. Another Time, Another Place - Jodi Taylor 19. After the Funeral - Agatha Christie 20. Magpie Murders - Anthony Horowitz 21. Sixteen Horses - Greg Buchanan 22. The Light Between Oceans - ML Stedman 23. What Does Jeremy Think - Suzanne Heywood 24. Travels with my Aunt - Graham Greene 25. 10lb Penalty - Dick Francis 26. Why didn’t they ask Evans? - Agatha Christie 27. Restoration - Rose Tremain 28. Mothering Sunday - Graham Swift 29. The Devil’s Advocate - Steve Cavanagh 30. Spook Street - Mick Herron 31. Cecily - Annie Garthwaite 32. All Change - Elizabeth Jane Howard 33. Open Water - Caleb Azumah Nelson 34. Murder on the Links - Agatha Christie 35. The Grand Sophy - Georgette Heyer 36. Diary of an MP’s Wife - Sasha Swire 37. Operation Mincemeat - Ben McIntyre 38. Invisible Women - Caroline Criado Perez 39. Field of 13 - Dick Francis 40. Murder in Mesapotamia - Agatha Christie 41. Falls the Shadow - Sharon Penman 42. The Reckoning - Sharon Penman 43. Cousin Kate - Georgette Heyer 44. At Bertram’s Hotel - Agatha Christie 45. Half of A Yelllow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie 46. Frenchman’s Creek - Daphne du Maurier 47. A Dry Spell - Clare Chambers 48. Second Wind - Dick Francis 49. Clothes …. and other things that matter - Alexandra Shulman 50. The Evening and the Morning - Ken Follett 51. A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Towles 52. Apples Never Fall - Liane Moriarty 53. The Appeal - Janice Hallett 54. Lethal White - Robert Galbraith 55. Destination Unknown - Agatha Christie 56. The Children of Jocasta - Natalie Haynes 57. A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara 58. Saving Time - Jodi Taylor 59. Daisy Jones and the Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid 60. A Pocketful of Rye - Agatha Christie 61. Detransition, Baby - Torrey Peters 62. The Night Manager - John Le Carre 63. They Came to Baghdad - Agatha Christie 64. Shattered- Dick Francis 65. Under Orders - Dick Francis 66. Death and the Penguin - Andrey Kurkov 67. Anti-Social - Nick Pettigrew 68. Small Things Like These - Claire Keegan 69. Notes on a Scandal - Zoe Heller 70. London Rules - Mick Herron 71. The Jewel in the Crown - Paul Scott 72. The Toll Gate - Georgette Heyer 73. The Secret of Chimneys - Agatha Christie 74. The Marriage Portrait - Maggie O’Farrell 75. The Game of Thrones - George RR Martin 76. 4.50 from Paddington - Agatha Christie 77. My Cousin Rachel - Daphne du Maurier 78. Octavia - Jilly Cooper 79. The Accomplice - Steve Cavanagh 80. The Colour Purple - Alice Walker 81. A Clash of Kings - George RR Martin 82. The Paris Apartment - Lucy Foley 83. The Reluctant Widow - Georgette Heyer 84. Hercule Poirot’s Christmas - Agatha Christie 85. Even Money - Felix Francis

I think the shallow/ anecdotal style was just right for someone like me @CoteDAzur - any actual commentary on the music itself tended to just make me feel a bit thick as I didn’t understand it. For someone who already knows music/ the pieces fairly well I can see it might not be enough ‘meat’.

Alias - I did count it among the books I enjoyed but it was just too flippant and shallow for my personal taste. I like my non-fiction books more meaty, as you say.

The depressing part was that some of it was just wrong and/or showed that the author didn't really know the piece or bothered to find out about it. A recent example is The Long Day Closes - a song very obviously about the end of a long life and death, which she talked about as "lovely" It made me doubt how correct she was on the pieces that I don't know.

Hi @AliasGrape @bibliomania @BestIsWest @CoteDAzur this is IsFuzzyBeagMise, I'm name-changing for the new year, but keeping the Fuzzy part:)
(Caora dhubh is 'black sheep').

I didn't start the original thread of Year of Wonder but I kept it going from early on when it looked like it was going to peter out. I liked the exposure to different genres that I didn't know well, particularly piano, choral and contemporary music, and Renaissance music which was like a an energy burst, it was so joyful. I found my tastes aligned a lot with Clemency's and I really loved many of the pieces with very few dislikes. I have grown fond of the playlist and I think I'll go back again and revisit the favourites on it and delve into them more. I enjoyed going down a few rabbit holes on Spotify :)

I always took Year of Wonder as a coffee table kind of book (although mine is on Kindle!). Yes, the notes were short. Two or three entries were very, very short as in 'Sit back and listen to this. This is amazing'.

I got the impression that Clemency knows her stuff, but chooses to share what she considers interesting about the background of the piece or the composer's life. A lot of it was 'On this day...' I suppose you could call it scratching the surface and veering towards the trivial, but I think it worked for the format. I learned lots of interesting facts during the year and have forgotten nearly everything. Once I read the entry, it left my head. The pieces left an impression on me at least, which is the main thing!

I liked the image of the composer, I can't remember her name, who was a Suffragette. She spent time in prison, but conducted the other prisoners in the yard using her toothbrush. I thought that was fabulous. And there was the choir in Theresienstadt, the concentration camp, who all sang Verdi's Requiem together until too few were left. I think Year of Wonder was good for keeping me interested in the music, but I saw it as an accompaniment to the playlist more than anything else, which was fine.

I didn’t post on the Year of Wonder thread* though I did read it, and I obviously wouldn’t want to comment on Cote's views which are her own and entirely hers to hold, *but just gently popping up here to record as a factual matter that Clemency B-H is English. I knew her very slightly in a former life. She does now live in America, though.

I've not read The Year of Wonder so can't comment specifically on that, but I know Clemency BH used to be on Radio 3 and suffered a serious brain haemorrhage a couple of years ago.

I started The Year of Wonder thread but dropped off in Mar h when I hit a busy period at work. I was really enjoying it so am going to try it again in 2023. Good work @FuzzyCaoraDhubh and everyone keeping it going and making it through the full year.

Happy New Year everyone and hugs to Bett in particular!

I loved seeing so many Jane Eyre fans come out of the woodwork, despite all the reservations.

This is just a quick review dump so that I will have caught up on the year.

62. Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami, trans. Philip Gabriel 4/5
    A book group choice. Quirky and compelling. The characters are fantastic and were the real highlight of the book for me, even when I got a bit lost in the Oedipal plot strands. Reading this has made me want to reread The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which I read and loved many years ago.

63. A Glass of Blessings, Barbara Pym 4/5
    Not my very favourite Pym, because the heroine seemed quite self-centred and privileged, but then I slowly came to realise that that was the point… An excellent read, not least for the rather matter-of-fact portrayal of a gay relationship in 1958.

64. Une femme, Annie Ernaux 5/5
    At some point I will probably find an Ernaux novel that I don’t want to give five stars to, but this wasn’t the one! A moving portrayal of how the author comes to grips with the death of her mother, and a reminder of how terribly unjust dementia is.

65. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy, trans. Pevear and Volokhonsky 5/5
    What can I say, this was amazing. Reading a chapter a day of this novel in 2022 was one of the highlights (the highlight?) of my year. I haven’t read a book so slowly before and I really
    loved the experience. The characters will stay with me for the rest of my life.

66. East West Street, Philippe Sands 5/5
    This is a one-of-a-kind book, a personal memoir/biography/intellectual history. The stories of both perpetrators and victims of the Holocaust converge in the city of Lemberg/Lwow/Lviv. Read at my husband’s recommendation. Extraordinary. It’s hard to believe how recent the Holocaust was, and the vast number of human lives lost. It is the lawyers at the Nuremberg trials who emerge as the unsung heroes.

67. The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins 5/5
    I missed out on the MN reading group but read this anyway over the Christmas hols (and also read the full MN thread about it, which was wonderful). Marian Halcombe and Count Fosco are quite simply some of the best characters in Victorian literature.

Terpsichore - Sorry about that. I assumed she was American because she lives in the US and "sounds" American in the book which is full of casual Americanisms.

No problem, @CoteDAzur - and I suspect the text's probably been edited to make it sound as transatlantic as possible….

Last reviews for 2022 from me. I didn’t think I’d hit 100 but I have!

98: Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind - Sue Black

A detailed and all-encompassing survey of the skeleton and what it can tell us, by this eminent forensic anthropologist. This was great and absolutely fascinating. I’m also very much enjoying her Royal Institution Christmas lectures (only seen the first so far and I’m rationing the others)

99: A Modern Family - Helga Flatland, trans. Rosie Hedger

The author was billed on the cover as 'the Norwegian Ann Tyler' but sadly - no. This was a dull tale of the effect on adult children when their 70-something parents announce they’re getting a divorce. It’s Tyler territory but unleavened by any discernible speck of humour, and with endless screeds of agonising from uptight Liv, childless-and-desperate Ellen, and the youngest, Håkon, whose determination to avoid being trapped in conventional relationships goes awry when he falls for beautiful free spirit Anna. I’m mystified as to why this came garlanded with gushing reviews.

100: These Wonderful Rumours: A Young Schoolteacher's Wartime Diaries - May Smith

Picked up in a charity shop on a whim, but this turned out to be a splendid way to round off my year. May Smith was a young teacher in the small Derbyshire town of Swadlincote and chronicled her life in an arch style slightly reminiscent of her heroine, the Provincial Lady. So obviously this isn’t one for EM Delafield refuseniks, but I was charmed by May's tales of wartime life with lugubrious Mother and Dad, dodging air-raids, her endless quest for fashionable clothes, her gloom at having to go to work ('Noxious and loathsome!'), and especially her hilariously reluctant dealings with boyfriends Doug (in another town waiting to join up, so kept at bay with letters) and Old Friend Freddie. Spoiler: she married Freddie. Great fun.

It's been a lovely year on this thread. I’ll be back with my list later but not now, for fear of going on forever!

Hand up, I'm doing the list of What We Bolded 2022. Plan was to get it finished today but life has got in the way plus there's loads more info to look at on the thread! I hope to get it finished on Monday x

In that case...(thanks Permanent)

1 The Railway Children by E Nesbit
2 State of Terror by Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny
3 Rachel’s Holiday by Marian Keyes
4 Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason
5 Three Twins at the Crater school by Chaz Brenchley
6 The Awakening by Kate Chopin
7 The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
8 The Victorian Chaise-Longue by Marghanita Laski
9 Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar
10 Wildlands by Evan Osnos
11 The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper
12 Trials for the Chalet School by Eleanor M Brent-Dyer
13 Empire of Pain by Patrick Radnan Keefe
14 It Must Be Love by Caroline Kiiwii hihoury
15 Ghost Wall by Sarah oss
16 Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld
17 A Dark Adapted Eye by Barbara Vinen
18 The Bo hi ok of Margery Kempe by Margery Kempe
19 A Fatal Inversion by Barbara Vine
20 How To Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie
21 Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev
22 The Boy Who Loved Books by John Sutherland
23 The Human Cosmos by Jo 🇧🇧
24 Red Famine by Anne Applebaum🇧🇿
25 The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazlewood
26 On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder
27 Priestdaddy by Patrica Lockwood
28 Butler to the World by Oliver Bullough
29 Real Estate by Deborah Levy
30 South Riding by Winifred Holtby
31 Hello World by Hannah Fry
32 All the Devils are Here by David Seabrook
33 Peggy of the Chalet School by Eleanor M Brent-Dyer
34 A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka
35 Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmos
36 To the Island of Tides by Alistair Moffat
37 The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
38 Are We Having Fun Yet by Lucy Mangan
39 Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov
40 Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
41 Again, Rachel by Marian Keyes
42 The Deception of Harriet Fleet by Helen Scarlett
43 A Brief History of Crisps by Steve Barry
44 The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
45 Ghost Signs: Poverty and the Pandemic by Stu Hennigan
46 Extraterrestrial by Avi Loeb
47 My Fourth Time, We Drowned by Sally Hayden
48 Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith
49 Everything You Really Need To Know About Politics by Jess Phillips
50 Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
51 Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne du Maurier
52 Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
53 Angels by Marian Keyes
54 Schindler’s Ark by Thomas Keneally
55 The Bloater by Rosemary Tonks
56 Watermelon by Marian Keyes
57 Cult Classic by Sloane Crossley
58 After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz
59 Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer
60 Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera
61 Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid
62 Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
63 The Palace Papers by Tina Brown
64 People Person by Candace Carty-Brown
65 Fatherland by Robert Harris
66 Faith, Hope and Carnage by Nick Cabe and Seán O’Hagan
67 War Doctor by David Nott
68 The Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith
69 Everything is Washable by Salí Hughes
70 The Escape Artist by Jonathan Freedland
71 Supping with the Devils by Hugo Young
72 We All Hear Stories in the Dark by Robert Shearman
73 Substance by Peter Hook
74 The Day the World Came to Town by Jim DeFede
75 Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
76 Apollo Murders by Chris Hadfield
77 Climate Justice by Mary Robinson
78 Ice Rivers by Jemma Wadham
79 Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing by Matthew Perry
80 Feminist City by Leslie Kern
81 Theodora and the Chalet School by Elinor M Brent-Dyer
82 Red Sauce Brown Sauce by Felicity Cloake
83 Names for the Sea by Sarah Moss
84 The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
85 The Silent Corner by Dean Koontz
86 Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari
87 A Christmas Cornucopia by Mark Forsyth
88 Forever Home by Graham Norton
89 Rubbernecker by Belinda Bauer
90 Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
91 A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
92 The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley
93 The Christmas Chronicles by Nigel Slater

And a couple of curious flags thrown in there for good measure.

Thanks to SouthEast too for keeping the threads going - it's been fun.

Thanks @PermanentTemporary for your heroic efforts - I love seeing these stats in the new year.

I was about to post my list and then realised I've already posted my bolds

I think I am going to stick to books and TV on MN next year, I know I'm not alone in noticing quite the uptick in unkindness and picking fights.

t's been a bad year for me - I have had significant problems, but a good year for this thread, and I was so happy to have this thread as a place of calm and refuge and Books.

Thanks to SouthEast and everyone for your recommendations, condemnations, and banter.

Off to plan January's Reading

Happy New Year

I can’t do my list but read around 60 this year. The only standout was really Mark Lewisohn’s Tune In - The Beatles
I liked Jo Browning Wroe’s A Terrible Kindness and Marian Keyes Again Rachel

Lots of dross (Looking at you Val McD) and lots of light easy reading most of which I enjoyed.

I might just finish Alan Rickman by midnigh.

Jst managed to get one more in before the end of the year.

I've enjoyed reading everyone's reviews and comments on their books this year.

Happy New Year everyone.

120. The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson The story of brothers Arthur and Jake growing up in small town Canada in the 1930s-40s and of Ian a teenaged boy who works on Arthur's farm in the 1950s. It's a quietly devastating novel about family, betrayal, friendship and the effect of World War 2 on the community.

My stand out reads of the year:

Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett
Shakespeare inspired story of witches, kings and intrigue. This might not objectively be the best Discworld novel but it's the one I love the most.

The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas trans. Elizabeth Rokkan
Unsettling yet poetic Norwegian coming of age story.

The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey
Beautifully written story if a mermaid caught by fishers on a Caribbean island.

The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan
Sisters, Chinese-American culture clash and a touch of the supernatural.

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa Trans. Stephen Snyder
Mysterious story of vanishings and memory loss.

Paradoxical Undressing by Kristin Hersh
A memoir of music and mental health issues.

Astonishing the Gods by Ben Okri
A poetic novel of a man on an island of invisible people.

Mockingbird by Walter Tevis
Beautifully told story of a humanity close to extinction that is both sad and hopeful.

Here’s my list, the usual highlights in bold and things I really didn’t enjoy, or struggled with, in italics (well….one):

1. Forever Young - Hayley Mills
2. Mr. Bowling Buys a Newspaper - Donald Henderson

3: House of Glass - Hadley Freeman 4: A Cold Coming - Mary Kelly 5: Will She Do? - Eileen Atkins 6: The Man Who Died Twice - Richard Osman 7: The Dinosaur Hunters - Deborah Cadbury 8: The Victorian Chaise-longue - Marghanita Laski 9: The Life Project - Helen Pearson 10: The Snowman - Jo Nesbø 11: Letters from Hollywood - ed. Rocky Lang & Barbara Hall 12: Tory Heaven - Marghanita Laski 13: Family Secrets: Living with Shame from the Victorians to the Present Day - Deborah Cohen 14: The Dark Hours - Michael Connelly 15: A Year with Swollen Appendices - Brian Eno's Diary 16: Parson's Nine - Noel Streatfeild 17: A Mudlark's Treasures: London in Fragments - Ted Sandling 18: Staring at the Sun - Julian Barnes 19: The BBC: A People's History - David Hendy 20: The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming 21: The Button Box: Lifting the Lid on Women's Lives - Lynn Knight 22: Learning to Swim - Clare Chambers 23: This Golden Fleece - Esther Rutter 24: Hangover Square - Patrick Hamilton 25: Blitz Spirit: Voices of Britain Living Through Crisis - Ed. Becky Brown 26: Small Things Like These - Claire Keegan 27: Kiss Myself Goodbye: The Many Lives of Aunt Munca - Ferdinand Mount 28: Exposure - Helen Dunmore 29: Hidden Hands: The Lives of Manuscripts and their Makers - Mary Wellesley 30: Foster - Claire Keegan 31: Ice Cold in Alex - Christopher Landon 32: No Halt at Sunset - Elizabeth M. Harland 33: The Facts of Life - Patrick Gale 34: This Long Pursuit - Richard Holmes 35: Judas 62 - Charles Cumming 36: Patricia Highsmith - Her Diaries and Notebooks (ed. Anna von Planta) 37: Murder's Little Sister - Pamela Branch 38: Digging Up the Dead - Druin Burch 39: The Late Mrs Prioleau - Monica Tindall 40: A Carnival of Snackery - David Sedaris 41: In a Good Light - Clare Chambers 42: The Private Lives of the Tudors - Tracy Borman 43: Hard Times - Charles Dickens 44: Empire of Pain - Patrick Radden Keefe 45: A Change of Circumstance - Susan Hill 46: Agent Sonya - Ben Macintyre 47: Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Gabriel García Marquez 48: Moonwalking with Einstein - Joshua Foer 49: An Awfully Big Adventure - Beryl Bainbridge 50: Rummage - Emily Cockayne 51: The Blank Wall - Elizabeth Sanxay Holding 52: Swan Dive - Georgina Pazcoguin 53: Bramton Wick - Elizabeth Fair 54: It's All in Your Head - Suzanne O'Sullivan 55: Landscape in Sunlight - Elizabeth Fair 56: The Premonitions Bureau - Sam Knight 57: March to the Gallows - Mary Kelly 58: Backroom Boys: The Secret Return of the British Boffin - Francis Spufford 59: The Blackbirder - Dorothy B. Hughes 60: This Is Not About Me - Janice Galloway 61: This Way Out - Sheila Radley 62: The Library Book - Susan Orlean 63: Overboard - Sara Paretsky 64: Bleak Health - Nicholas Cambridge 65: The Bookshop - Penelope Fitzgerald 66: All Made Up - Janice Galloway 67: Bad Actors - Mick Herron 68: Cold Cream - Ferdinand Mount 69: The Road to Lichfield - Penelope Lively 70: And In the End: The Last Days of the Beatles - Ken McNab 71: French Braid - Anne Tyler 72: All Day Long: A Portrait of Britain at Work - Joanna Biggs 73: On the Side of the Angels - Betty Miller 74: The Trial of Lady Chatterley's Lover - Sybille Bedford 75: Give Unto Others - Donna Leon 76: A Village in the Third Reich - Julia Boyd 77: Bond Street Story - Norman Collins 78: The Devil You Know: Encounters in Forensic Psychiatry - Dr Gwen Adshead and Eileen Horne 79: Black Narcissus - Rumer Godden 80: Nomadland - Jessica Bruder 81: The Past - Tessa Hadley 82: Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder - Caroline Fraser 83: A Start in Life – Anita Brookner 84: Manchester Fourteen Miles - Margaret Penn 85: The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins 86: The Foolish Virgin - Margaret Penn 87: A Summer Birdcage - Margaret Drabble 88: The Dancing Bear - Frances Faviell 89: At Freddie’s - Penelope Fitzgerald 90: Eavesdropping on Jane Austen’s England - Roy & Lesley Adkins 91: Travels with my Aunt - Graham Greene 92: Young Mrs Burton - Margaret Penn 93: The Clothes They Stood Up In - Alan Bennett 94: The Real Mrs Miniver - Ysenda Maxtone-Graham 95: Much Dithering - Dorothy Lambert 96: The Gift of a Radio: My Childhood and Other Train Wrecks - Justin Webb 97: Back Trouble - Clare Chambers 98: Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind - Sue Black 99: A Modern Family - Helga Flatland, trans. Rosie Hedger 100: These Wonderful Rumours: A Young Schoolteacher's Wartime Diaries - May Smith

I’m pleasantly surprised by the number of bolds.
I kept up my 50:50 fiction/non-fiction policy.
33 male, 67 female authors.
I'd hoped to finish with slightly more than 100 but large parts of the year were spent being over-involved with increasingly bonkers current events and hence doomscrolling…….

As ever, this thread was a refuge and a joy. Thanks to southeast and a Happy New Year to all.

I haven't kept a list and can't remember most of what I've read, but two real standouts were:
Dreamland by Rosa Rankin Gee
and
the final read of the year, Our Wives Under the Sea
Totally coincidentally, both of these were lesbian love stories.

Here we go then …

1. Hercule Poirot’s Christmas - Agatha Christie
2. Golden Hill - Francis Spufford
3. The Heart’s Invisible Furies - John Boyne
4. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World - Elif Shafak
5. Sorrow and Bliss - Meg Mason
6. And Away - Bob Mortimer
7. Excellent Women - Barbara Pym
8. Moonflower Murders - Anthony Horowitz
9. The Man In the Brown Suit - Agatha Christie

10. His Bloody Project - Graeme Macrae Burne 11. Diary of a Provincial Lady - E.M. Delafield 12. Death on the Nile - Agatha Christie 13. Cotillion - Georgette Heyer 14. The Corinthian - Georgette Heyer 15. The Sleeping Beauties - Suzanne O’Sullivan 16. A Civil Contract - Georgette Heyer 17. Sprig Muslin - Georgette Heyer 18. Summerwater - Sarah Moss 19. Small Pleasures - Claire Chambers 20. Hungry - Grace Dent 21. More than a Woman - Caitlin Moran 22. Love After Love - Ingrid Persaud 23. Ditching Diets - Gillian Riley 24. Foster - Claire Keegan 25. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke 26. Carry On Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse 27. Rachel’s Holiday - Marian Keyes 28. Still Life - Sarah Winman 29. A Spool of Blue Thread - Anne Tyler 30. Assembly - Natasha Brown 31. Small Things Like These - Claire Keegan 32. Booth - Karen Joy Fowler 33. Pandora’s Jar: Women in the Greek Myths - Natalie Haynes 34. No One is Talking About This - Patricia Lockwood 35. We Were Liars - E Lockheart 36. Jane Fairfax - Joan Aiken 37. Again, Rachel - Marian Keyes 38. Troy - Stephen Fry 39. A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Towles 40. The Fell - Sarah Moss 41. My Family and Other Animals - Gerald Durrell 42. The Library Book - Susan Orlean 43. Troubled Blood - Robert Galbraith 44. September - Rosamund Pilcher 45. How to Kill Your Family - Bella Mackie 46. After Sappho - Selby Wynn Schwartz 47. A Ladies Guide to Fortune Hunting - Sophie Irwin 48. O Caledonia - Elspeth Barker 49. Good Behaviour- Molly Keane 50. A View of the Harbour - Elizabeth Taylor 51. The Household Spirit - Tod Wodicka 52. The Secret History of Christmas - Bill Bryson 53. Christmas Pudding - Nancy Mitford 54. A Child’s Christmas in Wales 55. Year of Wonder: Classical Music for Everyday - Clemency Burton Hill

My bolding has been different every time I’ve posted my list I think - but this is what I’m going with for now. With a question mark over the bold for Still Life which I had quite mixed feelings about but actually in terms of a lovely story that I got engrossed in (the ‘lovely book’ I found myself craving later in the year and so many of you offered good ideas which I will continue to work through in 2023) I think it was one of the better reads of the year. I just wish there wasn’t that parrot ….

Hello 50 bookers. I’ve had a ridiculously slow reading year, so you will pleased to see my list is very short indeed:

1. No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
2. Merivel by Rose Tremain

1. The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper
2. How to Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie
3. The Only Plane in the Sky: The Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett M. Graff

6. Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

1. When Will There be Good News by Kate Atkinson
2. The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson
3. Travels with My Aunt by Graham Greene

10. Pompeii by Robert Harris 11. Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson 12.Big Sky by Kate Atkinson 13 The World According to Colour: A Cultural History by James Fox 14 The Fell by Sarah Moss 15. The Foundling by Stacey Halls 16. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie 17. Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree 18. A Change of Circumstance by Susan Hill 19. Ordinary People by Diana Evans 20. Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller 21. Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford 22. Transcription by Kate Atkinson. 23. Year of Wonder by Clemency Burton-Hill (Adding this twice to make such it’s bolded for the end of year post-match analysis!)

23. Year of Wonder by Clemency Burton-Hill As noted by several of us already, this takes the format of selecting a piece of classical (in the very widest sense) music for each day, accompanied by a few paragraphs of introduction. Sometimes this gives a nod to historical context, other times it looks briefly at musical features or just suggests something appropriate for a particular occasion.

For me this was a successful book. I don’t think Burton-Hill sets out to provide in-depth analysis of pieces, but rather seeks to help the reader to explore the genre more widely. I found that if I enjoyed an extract I would listen to the whole work, and sometimes then do a little of my own research on structure and/or context. Although I have some knowledge of classical music I’ve been thrilled to be introduced to a couple of dozen new pieces that are now firm favourites. Recommended. And I will start the New Year with Another Year of Wonder.

I have read so little that any stats from me would be pretty meaningless. My favourites are bolded above, but I would also like to draw attention to my stinker of the year, The Finkler Question. Just bobbins.

Thanks as ever to all the 50 Bookers for making this a great place to hang out. And a special thanks to @Southeastdweller for running the show so marvellously. I’ll look forward to seeing you all the other side of midnight on 2023’s thread.

Hi all. I've been MIA but will be more involved from tomorrow as my studies are over. I didn't even get to 20 books this year so won't be bothering posting it. I read these books recently:

Putting the Rabbit in the Hat - Brian Cox. Bought for 99p when it was on sale earlier this year, I would have been more than satisfied to pay the usual price of £5.99 because this was pretty much unputdownable, a gloriously entertaining memoir in which the author pulls no punches about some of his experiences and colleagues. This is my book of the year.

A State of Fear - How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic - Laura Dodsworth. A chronicle and criticism of the government's handling of the pandemic in 2020. I agree with her main point that the government and media unnecessarily used fear to manipulate us, but the book is too one-sided to have much impact.

My Rock 'n' Roll Friend - Tracey Thorn. Mostly boring, this is more of a memoir of someone slightly famous who the author was vaguely friends with once upon a time, rather than a history of female friendship, which I was expecting. The problem is that Tracey didn't know her friend well - Lindy Morrison - and so there's a recurring "Why are you bothering to write this?" feeling when reading it. It would have also helped me engage with the book if I knew who Lindy was and had some interest in her music. Shame, as I did love a couple of Tracey's other books, but this was a blunder.

See you all next year!

Just finished one more. A friend bought this for me when I had my first child (now 16) and it’s been on the shelf. I started reading it earlier this year and then left it on a boat! I bought the revised edition and have finally managed it.

Genghis Khan: Life, Death and Resurrection, John Man

Part history, part travelogue, I enjoyed this. As a modernist, I sometimes take for granted sources etc. the conquests were interesting, but what I found even more fascinating is his legacy, which is just astounding. I could have done without the author’s long descriptions of climbing mountains his balancing of the evidence seemed solid.