50 Books Challenge Part Three

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the third thread of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2024, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

If possible, please can you embolden your titles and maybe authors as well of books you've read or going to read? It makes it much easier to keep track, especially when the threads move quickly at this time of the year.

The first thread is here and the second one here.

Reading Chekhov: A Critical Journey Janet Malcolm

I occasionally dip into Chekhov’s short stories and adore his plays so I was looking forward to this. Malcolm is a journalist and, it turns out, particularly known for reporting and writing in the first person, considered a character and a construct. There is some interesting and readable detail about Chekhov and some of her thoughts or references to critics were enlightening for me. However, this was mostly overshadowed by her utterly condescending, patronising attitude about Russia and the Russians that she meets. She comes across as a sort
of characature American who thinks they are better than everyone else and (writing in 2001) has a massive axe to grind against the Soviet Union and Russia. I spent a good deal of time infuriated and I don’t really believe she had any interest in or love for Chekhov’s works. Utterly disappointing and it will go to the charity shop, though it really belongs in the bin, but it certainly doesn’t deserve a place on my Russia shelves.

Strong Female Character - Fern Brady.
I was very disappointed with this memoir. I didn't really believe some of her anecdotes, and her generalising on autistic traits, lack of self-reflection and horribly judgemental views on others almost wore me down. She's a comedian, but nothing about this often dull book was funny. I'm glad I resisted the temptation to buy the paperback.

10 Heresy - SJ Parris This was a book club choice (an online, but Oxford-centric book club), and to start with it reminded me very much of An Instance of the Fingerpost, which was a previous choice of the same book club - set several hundred years ago, a smug foreigner goes to Oxford and stumbles on a mystery. But it’s much more lightweight than Fingerpost and ended up being more like In the Name of the Rose (albeit less good!).

It is a lightweight (though quite gory) murder mystery set in the Elizabethan era, heavy on the religious conflicts of the time. The (very few) female characters are 2-dimensional, but I suppose a story set in an Oxford college in that era, with a male narrator, was always going to be strongly male! I hadn’t realised until finishing the book that the main character, Giordano Bruno, was actually a real person - I like the way the author wove historical facts into the story, but the history just provides the bare framework for what is 99% fiction. The other books in the series appear to follow Bruno’s real-life trajectory, although again I’m sure the fictional element will be significant.

Lots of the reviews I have read after finishing the book say that the Shardlake books are much better - that, coupled with lots of good reviews on these threads, makes me more interested in reading the Shardlake books so I will add them to my list.

Next up is Rory the Tory - I’m quite apprehensive about it after some of the reviews on here! I like his podcast with Alistair Campbell and I hope the book doesn’t put me off him. At least I don’t have an audio version - the podcast had a sample of him reading his book and I had to switch off after a few seconds, he put on an even posher accent for reading than his normal voice and it just sounded unbearably smug!

Haha! I do love the idea of really posh people still having a 'phone voice'!

17. A Sort of Traitors - Nigel Balchin

This was an odd one - I really love Nigel Balchin’s wartime novels (The Small Back Room, Darkness Falls From the Air) but this is a bit later, published in 1949, and instead of focusing on one main character as previously, there’s a group of protagonists, all scientists working in a lab on a never-quite-explained cure for bacterial disease that could aid all mankind.

Chief scientist Professor Sewell is a touchy, rebarbative character who reacts very badly when told he can’t publish his findings on grounds of National security. Under him are younger staff, idealistic Marriott and the only woman, Lucy Byrne, whose home life is dominated by the need to care for her former fiancé, Ivor. Shot down in the war, he’s lost both arms and is a tormented soul, often bitterly hostile to Lucy, while knowing he couldn’t exist without her quiet, patient help in every aspect of his life.

The central drama arises when a shady acquaintance of Ivor’s tries to exploit one of the team to leak the vital findings, possibly to a foreign power…but they don’t know they’re already being watched by Government forces, fully prepared for such an eventuality.

There was a lot of great writing in this, often very funny, but also a lot of dull speechifying about duty to one’s country - plus, the attitude to women demonstrated by some of the characters (I hope not shared by Balchin himself) enraged me. My sympathies were entirely with Lucy, a young intelligent scientist trying to forge a career while juggling an impossible commitment, and getting zero thanks or credit from anyone. Interesting but flawed.

10 The Running Grave, Robert Galbraith

Bold ++. This had everything. I don’t care how overlong it is. I will happily live in this world with these characters. I watched the BBC adaptations and my DH made me laugh by saying ‘There’s too much gazing at each other... I just want them to get on with the murders...’ So while he is ‘only in it for the murders’ I am very much there for the rest of it.

In fact I was so bereft upon finishing that I just started back at the beginning of Ink Black Heart and then listened to the last two again, back to back. So those three are probably over 90hrs of audiobook time... Which does explain why I haven’t got back to the thread for a while!

11 Be Useful, Arnold Schwarzenegger

Arnie’s first autobiography was a 50 books favourite a few years back and something I never would have touched were it not for this thread. This is not as good but I did still enjoy it. It was read by Arnie himself which meant that my internal monologue for a few days was in his voice. Which was strangely enjoyable. I’m a bit of a sucker for a motivational book (eg David Goggins) and while this was not earth shattering there were a few gems in there. I’m very committed to exercise anyway but this has increased my motivation further for now. Not a bold but recommend if you like that sort of thing.

12 Case Study, Graeme Macrae Burnet

I’m not sure what to make of this. A young woman makes an appointment with a therapist under false pretences to try to find out why her sister killed herself under his care. It is told through a series of ‘found diaries’. The storytelling was very cleverly constructed and the ‘rather dated’ world of the 50s/60s was depicted brilliantly but I just wasn’t fully invested somehow.

Now I am still struggling on with Babel but in contrast to many people, I am finding the last half more enjoyable than the first. To be fair that’s not hard....

@BarbaraBuncle I enjoyed Cat Lady. I find Dawn O’Porter is a reliable light read. Trashy enough to be light but well written enough to have a bit of heart and characters and plot you care about. I seem to remember being quite tearful at points in this which is really not my style!

Three Worlds, Memoirs of an Arab-Jew by Avi Shlaim AS was born into a prosperous Jewish family in Baghdad in 1945. His family were part of a flourishing Jewish community in Iraq which traced its history back 2,600 years but has now largely vanished. His parents had many Muslim friends and had a strong sense of belonging. After the foundation of Israel in 1948 the situation changed radically, with a surge in anti-Semitism in Iraq and pressure from the Zionist movement for Jews to emigrate to Israel. In 1950 he left Baghdad for Israel, along with his maternal grandmother, mother and two sisters. His father followed later. Living conditions were extremely difficult, they had lost most of their wealth and found that Israel had no understanding of the Jews arriving from 9 different Arab countries; moreover Jewish-Arab culture was looked down on as decidely inferior while the European character of Israel was emphasised. This led to his deep sense of inferiority and difficulty at school. However, thanks to his mother's determination, he was sent to London at the age of 16 to a Jewish school. He worked hard for the first time in his life and succeeded in winning a place at Cambridge, although he first had to complete 2 years national service in the Israel Defense Forces.

This was a really interesting examination, from both a personal and political perspective, of a community that is not often spoken about. His politics changed through the book as he acquired, as he puts it, "a more sophisticated understanding of the diverse ingredients that make up the Arab-Israeli conflict". It was published in 2023, and thus written before the events of 7 October and its continuing aftermath. One can only hope that his concluding faint optimism will eventually prove justified.

18. Two Sisters - Blake Morrison

This was a desperately sad book. I’ve read Morrison's two previous memoirs about his parents, who were both well-respected GPs in their small Yorkshire town; his father in particular was a larger-than-life, difficult character and it’s hard to avoid feeling that his influence looms large in this book, which is primarily about Morrison's slightly younger sister, Gillian.

Her life took a very different path from his: she never moved away from their small village successfully, never had a fulfilling job, got married and - stuck at home with young children - started to drink. The onset of unexpected sight problems (she eventually became almost blind) didn’t help and, tragically, she died in her 60s after years of alcoholism.

There’s another awful element to this, though - the girl the Morrison children grew up knowing as the daughter of a family 'friend' was actually their half-sister, the product of their father’s long-running affair. Much later, Morrison worked this out, but it wasn’t confirmed until after both his parents had died and Josie contacted him as an adult asking for a DNA test. In a horrible coda, Josie fell into depression when her marriage was in difficulty, and killed herself.

All this becomes very hard to read at times. Morrison bulks the book out with literary examples of brother-sister relationships, which don’t add a massive amount to the narrative. Ultimately I was left with a sense of profound sorrow at the tragic course of Gill's life, while wondering quite what this book about very private family relationships was meant to achieve.

@Terpsichore

I felt like you do about Morrison's book about his Dad, nothing was sacred and it was all a bit unseemly, if that makes sense?

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit yes, tbh I can't remember a huge amount about the previous books as I read them years ago, but I started out thinking this one was all reasonably interesting - then gradually felt more and more uneasy at it. By the end it was just….why are you doing this?

52 The Last Dance by Mark Billingham

This is the start of a new detective series. The main detective, Declan Miller, is grieving his murdered wife and does ballroom dancing as a hobby. I enjoyed this. I’ve only read one Billingham before which I think was a stand alone so don’t really know how this compares to his previous detective series. I’ll definitely read the next in this series and might now go back and read some of his others. One thing I especially liked about this was Miller’s insults for his boss - ‘incompetent wankspangle’ was my favourite!

53 Crypt by Alice Roberts

Non fiction looking at what old bones can tell us about diseases and how people with those diseases were treated. Looks at leprosy, the plague, and syphilis among other things. Really interesting.

23 Olive, Again - Elizabeth Strout

Continuing the series of connected stories with the often blunt and irascible Olive Kitteridge at the centre or in some way linked, within the town of Crosby, Maine.

Olive is now elderly, and the novel sees her age from her early 70s to late 80s. She is widowed twice, struggles with her failing health, the often difficult relationship with her son, and the more difficult decision to move from her home into assisted living.

I loved this even more than the first one. Elizabeth Strout manages to make Olive someone you genuinely care about and love, despite her many faults. I actually felt bereft when I'd finished it, wanting to spend more time with Olive.

35 Leaves of Grass- Walt Whitman
Ive been reading this since January as part of an online book group and really struggled with it at the start. Reading aloud made my fall in love with it. Whitman was forward thinking for his time and his love of mankind and nature are strong themes in his poetry. I will probably continue to go back to these poems again and again - The Sleepers and When Lilacs Bloomed were my favourites. Bold for me- and I never thought I’d say that about a book of poetry.

36 Faust (Part 1) by Goethe
I only read this as preparation for reading The Master and Margarita (the current online book club read) The story is fairly well known- Faust sells his soul to the devil. It was okay. I would possibly have enjoyed it more in a better translation.

37 All the Sinners Bleed by SA Cosby
Cosby’s three thrillers have all been very different but his writing ‘voice’ is so distinct. Titus Crown is a black sheriff in a southern US town, investigating the school shooting of a beloved white teacher by a black addict. The investigation reveals much about the town and its relationships. I loved this at the start but was disappointed when it became more of a 1990s serial killer book with all the gore that entails. I will read more of his books when they come along though as I like satiating.

Also a DNF- The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith- the tale of a vicar and his family who fall into poverty- supposed to be gently satirical but I found it dull and its pace glacial. I stopped at 38%.
Now it’s onto Women’s Prize reading- some fiction and non-fiction.

@BarbaraBuncle i also recently read and loved Olive Again. Hoping to get to more Elizabeth Strout this year.

I've been reading quite slowly this year, mainly because I've started watched TV, have been re-reading but not counting the Chalet School books, and have been reading on different mediums - I currently have a paperback, audio and Kindle book on the go and feel like I'm not really focusing enough on any of them!

But I did manage to finish my second Woman's Prize book Western Lane by Chetna Maroo. Shortlisted for last year's Booker, this is a good one for boosting numbers as it's very short. It's about Gopi, an 11 year old whose mother has recently died. Her father's way of coping with grief is to train her and her two older sisters to play squash. It's a very implicit book as all the characters are dealing with grief in different ways but everything is left unsaid and under the surface. I think it's an interesting style but not sure if it's one I'll be pushing on other people.

all scientists working in a lab on a never-quite-explained cure for bacterial disease that could aid all mankind.

That would be an antibiotic. A process for manufacturing penicillin was developed in the early years of the war in Oxford (first patient received it in 1941), when America entered the war they started scaling up production to commercial scales and by 1943 were making enough for the Allied Forces. The Nobel prize for the discovery was awarded in 1945 and there was a big rush to find other antibiotics. It was a massive leap forward in drug development (before antibiotics the largest wards in hospitals were infection wards full of people with bacterial infections) so it makes sense that a contemporary novel about scientists would have them working on an antibiotic.

I was thinking when reading the discussion above all the lockdown novels that it's surprising there's not been one about developing a vaccine.

That’s fascinating @JaninaDuszejko. Balchin keeps everything very vague in terms of what the actual research is, and part of the battle with the government side over keeping it under wraps is their argument that the information could be used for nefarious means by a potential enemy in case of another war. But given the dates it sounds highly likely that he was drawing on the development of antibiotics for his basic storyline.

Actually, on digging around a bit further, I’ve just found that he meant the book to come out in 1945 and it was probably based on his own experiences working in the Army's scientific section, so yes - it sounds highly likely that he was well-informed on the development of antibiotics.

It's quite amazing that penicillin wasn't produced until 1941. That's not even 100 years ago!

22 North Woods by Daniel Mason

If, like me, you often think of an area of land and all the regenerative, teeming life (human, animal, plant) that has attempted survival through the ages on it then this might be the book for you. Mason has chosen a patch of land in New England and the novel is split into sections as time ticks away. Settlers, Native Americans, soldiers weary of fighting and searching for the perfect apple, jealous sisters, hunters of runaway slaves…….on and on it unwinds, with recurring characters, not all of them corporeal.
He gives equal weight to the non human inhabitants (tbh I could have done without the extensive section on sex-crazed beetles but I suppose it does add to the narrative). Native plants give way to apple trees, then chestnuts, continually threatened by nature doing what she always does (change, change, invade, change again). A catamount stalks all the time frames. The language is rich and indulgent but stays the right side of Purple Prose.
Some of the sections were over too quickly for me and other writers would have been content with spinning them into a whole novel but Mason pushes relentlessly on, elegantly illustrating that time waits for no man, woman, flora or fauna.
A bold for me, even with the boring sexy beetles.

I know one of my mum's childhood memories was of the miracle of a neighbour being treated with antibiotics for TB - & getting better. I guess that would have been late 40s.

So scary to think that we're losing these miracle drugs to resistance (largely because of routine use in healthy animals in industrial farming, for all the blame that gets put on individuals).

Blaming the individual rather than big business is too common in many areas, really annoying.

My mother remembers her own mother screaming in the hospital in 1945 when her six month old baby sister was diagnosed with TB and given months to live. Thanks to antibiotics she survived. A miracle.

@BarbaraBuncle I thought much the same as you, to be honest. It was an easy quick read, nothing too silly or overblown. I thought it was okay, but I didn't absolutely love it. I gave it a 3.5 on StoryGraph. ❤️

New reads:

Please Don't Take Mummy Away- Maggie Hartley
Queenie- Jacqueline Wilson
*Love Untold- Ruth Jones
*
Now Reading The Story Collector- Iris Costello

'Love Untold' should be a bold one. My bold doesn't seem to be working!

I'm up to 30 books on my reading challenge list, so I'm halfway there! ❤️