50 Books Challenge 2023 Part Eight

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the seventh thread of the 50 Books Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2023, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, it’s not too late to join, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

The first thread of the year is here, the second one here, the third one here here, the fourth one here, the fifth one here, the sixth one here and the seventh one here

128. American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin (Audible)

The Oppenheimer biography. Any compliments you can pay it are also to its detriment eg it's thorough and well researched/it's exhausting and exhaustive It's very hard work.

I was right that switching to Audible helped, I think it would have been a DNF without but hey, I HAVE ALSO SLAIN THE BEAST @PermanentTemporary

It’s fine Bold, life would be dull if we all liked the same things! It’s generally got great reviews on Goodreads so it’s me that’s out of step with the majority in not liking it.

50 Equal Rites - Terry Pratchett (read to the DDs) Number 50 could have been Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, but I’m miles off finishing that…instead, I finally finished reading the third Discworld book to my daughters (aged 9 and 10) after many months of not having a bedtime story because we were busy watching (almost) all the Marvel films. They enjoyed it, and it’s a great book, but there were bits that were very dated and the odd bit that was a bit old for them (unlike the Tiffany Aching books, this is not meant to be a children’s / YA book). I’m glad we read it, as it sets up the back story of a character who will be important in a later Tiffany Aching book which I’ll read to the girls soon.

In the meantime, I thought I might start on His Dark Materials, but I had forgotten how enormous the book is - I don’t think I can face reading that aloud! So I’m going for The Eagle of the Ninth for now - hopefully they’ll like it and it will be a total change!

I’ve been reading short reads while taking on The Brothers Karamazov (which I’m enjoying but will be a months long read as I’m only doing a chapter a day). I’m enjoying the shorties so far

104 Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
The tragic tale of an American in Paris who falls in love with a young man while his girlfriend is away travelling. He is in denial about his homosexuality through a lot of the book which can make him unlikeable in the way he treats those around him. Beautifully written and heartbreaking. A definite bold.

105 The Drop and The List by Mick Herron
Two novellas set in the same world as the Slough House/ Slow Horses books though those characters are only tangentially involved. Amusing and tense as always though I think long format suits these books better.

106 The Lottery and other Stories by Shirley Jackson
I’d heard a lot about The Lottery before and it doesn’t disappoint. A short chilling story with an unbelievably tense atmosphere. The other stories are a mixed bag, some excellent, some just okay- many based on characters who are drenched in or railing against social norms. I listened to this on audio (free on audible) - the two women narrators are great, the male narrator is a bit bombastic but thankfully he doesn’t read many.

107 The Madness of Grief- Rev Richard Coles
The terribly sad story of the loss of the author’s husband at 43. The story of his life with David is beautiful and tragic. I read this as I generally like the rev on tv and have a friend who has lost his wife recently at an equally young age. I had wondered if the book may help him. It does contain some wisdom and it brought a tear to my eye on occasion, but I found some of the other sections of the book a bit too name-droppy for me. I was also very taken aback at how long it was between death and funeral (as I have now discovered is common in England) and think this must be very hard on the bereaved (usually 2-3 days in between here in Ireland).

108 Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck
My third Steinbeck this year and again I enjoyed it immensely. This is the continuation to Cannery Row and while it is less chaotic than its predecessor, it still keeps the warmth. Suzy and Fauna are his best written women characters I’ve met too.
I will definitely be reading more Steinbeck but will leave the next one for 2024 I think.

Interesting about the Duggar memoirs. I had a spell of watching 19 kids and counting..... it got taken off air here in the end after stories about Josh, before he was sent to prison. Apparently he was also found to be using a specialist cheaters' online dating site (and that was more shocking after watching the family on TV for a while to realise the level of disparity between what they claimed.

I hadn't realised that both Jill and Jinger had rebelled to that extent, not quite sure I want to read the memoirs but am definitely going to try to find out more, so thanks for the reviews. There's a forum called FreeJinger with discussion of all the religious cult families etc on TV and lots of other stuff - some posters were brought up with it all, some want to discuss the issues and there are various viewpoints.

Reading an Education thread yesterday a book was mentioned which I read a few years ago on experiences of mid 20th century girls' boarding schools - and that reminded me it's one of this month's Kindle deals - I bought it at the start of this month but Terms and Conditions by Ysenda Maxtone Graham is still on offer at 99p. If you like reading women's writing from this period (1939-1979) or school stories and about middle/upper class women's lives, this is well written etc but not at all difficult reading.

Ok I started Autumn by Ali Smith, am 20% in and I’m bored, bored out of my teeny mind. Does it get any better and less pretentious?

@elkiedee I just got Terms & Conditions. Thanks for the heads up. I read British Summer Time Begins last year. (= Posh people go on holiday and live frugally which seems to be a weird posh person thing. Camping and staying in great aunt Dorothea's crumbling mansion which smells of dogs. Nobody ever goes abroad unless it's to camp in France)

Oh dear @MamaNewtNewt I was going to have a little dip today. Is it in chapters? Could I face one chapter a day? If it's stream of consciousness I might do 10 pages a day.

@BaruFisher Giovanni’s room is devastatingly sad but so so good.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit , very interesting reviews of the two Duggar memoirs! I recently watched the documentary Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets on Amazon Prime, and thought it was very well done. It was a bit sensationalist, but quite thoughtful as well. Jill and her husband appear in it. It's not only about the Duggars but also about the larger Quiverfull / Bill Gothard movement they were part of.

I confess I have a very personal interest in this stuff because I was home educated (homeschooled as they say in the US) by American Christian fundamentalist parents. (They weren't full-on members of the Gothard cult, but we had Gothard's books on our shelves and he was a revered household name). It was a long time ago now, but needless to say a childhood like that has a lifelong impact. What I didn't understand until later in life was how many other American kids had stories similar to mine. It was (and to some degree still is) a whole religious/social/political movement, of whom the Gothard cult constituted only one branch. The documentary brings that out really well, by interviewing adults who grew up within these extremist right-wing religious families, and then managed to break away.

I could talk endlessly about how damaging and toxic that 'purity' culture is, and how it ends up fostering scenarios of abuse, and oppression of both women and men (who are forced into a model of toxic masculinity).

It's ironic that Gothard, who never married or had children, created a massive industry based on instructing people how to deal with marriage and parenting. He turned out to be a child abuser as well, but has never been convicted for it.

And it's ironic that the Duggar family, who didn't allow their children to watch TV (because it's part of the evil secular world), were so willing to exploit their children by turning the family into a heavily edited spectacle on the telly.

I always used to think that maybe I would write a memoir about my childhood, how messy and painful it was. But I don't think I have the energy any more. I'm just very grateful that I've escaped and have had years of therapy to come to terms with the trauma. Every time I see women like the Duggar daughters writing about what they experienced, I feel happy that they have finally found a voice.

'of which' not 'of whom', oops

Some recent reads:

Mayflies - Andrew O'Hagan. A novel about male friendship, set in 1986 and 2016. The early part is about a group of Scottish friends who make a trip to Manchester to see the Smiths and New Order. In the second part we see the boys as middle aged men, one of whom has terminal cancer. I enjoyed the 80s nostalgia, but found it emotionally unengaging in general. I don't think he's for me as I found his writing in The Illuminations similarly anaemic at times.

The Ink Black Heart - Robert Galbraith. This was the least enjoyable of the four books in the murder mystery series I've read, mainly because it was ridiculously long and convoluted. She's obviously (and understandably) got an axe to grind about online trolls, but I felt in this context it felt increasingly self-indulgent and tedious. The unnecessary length fuelled feelings of apathy I'd formed from the half-way point and by the end I didn't care whodunnit or why. I wonder if she's got a new editor because I see her newest book, out in less than two weeks' time, isn't quite as chunky as this book and Troubled Blood. Maybe I'd have slightly enjoyed it if I had a tiny fraction of interest in gaming.

A Heart That Works - Rob Delaney. I agree with Best who reviewed this a few months ago. This is an exceptionally well-written from the actor and comedian, very harrowing in places, about the aftermath of his one-year-old son's brain tumour diagnosis.

I'm about to start on the latest Kate Atkinson book, Normal Rules Don't Apply.

@elkiedee

Jill and Derek are barely on speaking terms with Jim Bob and she was barred from the house if he wasn't present.

Jinger calls hers "disentanglement from false prophecy" basically rejecting the IBLP sect they grew up in and all it stood for in preference to Bible based faith. So her book is a lot Bill Gothard said this but the Bible said that but I still very much love my parents.

Jill's is the rebellion fuck this one but still quite tame in a way (although Jinger even rang her parents over her decision to wear trousers !!)

She knows about Free Jinger and it's why hers is called what it's called.

Shockingly Jill and Derek even drink these days and have chosen not to homeschool. Huge from them

I have paid a price by the way in the form of estrangement from whole sections of my family of origin. It's bloody well worth it though.

I

@cassandre

Wow that's so intriguing

I find it all fascinating

Jinger talks about being in a constant state of anxiety or imposter syndrome and that a lot of her teenage years her faith was performative not genuine and she just felt scared of being found wanting. Jill says similarly that she just played a role of who she thought she ought to be until she was.

Did you feel like that?

You should write about it

Shockingly Jill and Derek even drink these days and have chosen not to homeschool. Huge from them

❤❤❤

@MamaNewtNewt @SoIinvictus I'm over half way through Autumn and I'm not sure what I make of it to be honest.

I really disliked the start, but then the friendship described between the two main characters became quite interesting and touching, and I really liked the character of Daniel and the way he spoke to the child in an intelligent and unpatronising way. The description of him towards the very end of his life feels well-written and sad. Some of AS's insightful observations remind me of Elizabeth Strout, a writer I admire but don't particular enjoy (damned with faint praise!)

However, the stream-of-consciousness passages I'm not enjoying. I'd rather read a straightforward narrative; that's just my personal taste. My first Ali Smith book and the jury's out on whether there'll be another.

Ha @EineReiseDurchDieZeit , if I really got started talking about this, I don't know where I'd stop. It's complicated and even though I'm now in my 50s I haven't got my head round it.

Yes, my family was super tense and unhappy, but I still believed 100% in the Christian fundamentalist version of God. My parents' big 'mistake' was letting me go to a secular university. I then had a big crisis of faith because according to what I had been taught, all my newfound friends and professors were destined for hell. There was then an anguished period of transition when I slowly started rejecting the idea that everyone at my uni was going to hell 😂. I had lots of full-on dreams about demons taking me away.

My family was always unhappy (the kind of family you read about on the Stately Homes threads in MN) and I sometimes think that that enabled me to break away from that whole world view. If my family had been more functional, I probably would have married a pastor and become a pastor's wife and had a completely different life trajectory. But because every single member of my family (parents and siblings) was unhappy, I was vulnerable to the idea of living my life in a different way. I still have facebook 'friends' who grew up in calmer fundamentalist families, and they haven't left the faith. They've carried on submitting to their husbands and homeschooling their children. Weirdly, it was the dysfunctionality of my birth family that ended up setting me free.

Watching the Duggars documentary, I noted that a big difference between my parents and the Duggars was that my parents really valued reading and learning. Our house was absolutely bursting with books. My impression is that the Duggars (I feel snobbish in saying this) didn't really care about education. So the women I saw on that documentary never really received a proper education. They were just given Bill Gothard's crappy workbooks. I on the other hand was encouraged to read and learn. My parents were enormously disappointed that the reading and learning they had encouraged resulted in me abandoning fundamentalism and crossing over into the secular world. From their own perspective, they had failed. From my perspective, university set me free. So did moving to the UK and marrying a secular academic.

It has not been an easy ride though and I have battled mental health issues for the whole of my adult life. That's OK, I accept that for what it is and I do feel enormously lucky.

I just wish I were not estranged from siblings and nephews and nieces who think I've embraced Satan 😂😥 . But it is what it is.

Sorry for the long autobiographical essay!

I should keep a list of memoirs by fundie kids who have broken away:

Frank Schaeffer, Crazy for God
Tara Westover, Educated
Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

I will add the Duggar women to this mental list!

@cassandre

No on the education side they really don't for either sex, one of the few episodes I did see involved them going to an anti evolution museum.

I would add Unfollow by Megan Phelps Roper to your list. What a culture shock the Uk must have been!

Thanks Eine, I haven't heard of Unfollow; I will definitely read it!

Yeah the UK was a massive culture shock 😂I honestly think that the therapy I received as a young woman, at the university counselling service of my UK university, saved my life.

Jinger talks about being in a constant state of anxiety or imposter syndrome and that a lot of her teenage years her faith was performative not genuine and she just felt scared of being found wanting. Jill says similarly that she just played a role of who she thought she ought to be until she was.

That's interesting too. My dad was a pastor and my parents were constantly reminding us that we had to behave well at church and not give any indication of the problems at home. Otherwise my dad would lose his job. So yes, there was definitely an element of performativity. On the other hand I was also desperate to believe that our faith was real and that we were just sinners who were not managing to live up to it properly 🙄

After I went away to uni in the UK, things kind of fell apart and my dad did in fact lose his job after decades of being a pastor. That was difficult, but quite freeing for everyone to be honest.

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. (John 8:32)

My mum taught at a Bible college for awhile. She taught classes explaining why evolution was a myth. !!!

That's so traumatic @cassandre I'm glad you got through it relatively unscathed but it sounds very difficult.

Thanks Fuzzy, that's kind of you. Honestly time is the best healer, and I have now lived outside fundamentalism for far longer than I lived inside it. But sometimes I do get dramatic flashbacks. And I'm way too involved in stories like the Duggar stories!

OMG the rage.

@cassandre

You're amazing. ❤️

I have got A Heart That Works by Rob Delaney in my 'to read' pile @Southeastdweller but I know I will have to be in the right frame of mind to read it. 2023 hasn't been the best year, so it may sit there for a while!

It's no wonder how you have such empathy and insight when discussing the difficult lives of characters in books given what you went through @cassandre

There's great credit due to you girl, as we like to say in my neck of the woods.