The New Fifty Books A Year Thread 2020

I have just finished 'The Secrets of Strangers' by Charity Norman and loved it. Unusual plot and theme but the characters were so beautifully drawn, I didn't want it to end. (99p on Kindle at the moment)

My daughter passed a book on to me at the weekend called “Sightlines” by Kathleen Jamie. A collection of her experiences, recollections, essays, if you like, about the natural world, our connection to it, and our place in it. She is a poet, but her prose is mesmerising, intimate and thought provoking. Can’t put it down.

O dear! Last posted in February! So - following on..

12. Tread Softly on my Dreams - Gretta Curran Brown

13. Dear Mother - Angela Marsons

14. Give me the Child - Mel McGrath

15. The Hare with the Amber Eyes - Edmund de Wall (I abandoned this, just could not get on with it!)

16. The Well of Loneliness - Radclyffe Hall

17. Orphan X - Greg Hurwitz

18. The Nowhere Man - Greg Hurwitz

19. The Dare - John Boyne

20. The hearts Invisible Furies - John Boyne

21. The Dry - Jame Harper

22. A history of Loneliness - John Boyne

23. Protected - Elizabeth Naughton

24. Xennor in Darkness - Helen Dunmore

25. The Loney - Andrew Michael Hurley

26. Paris Echo - Sebastian Faulks

27. The Heat of Betrayal - Douglas Kennedy

29. Do No Harm - Henry Marsh

30. Half Way Gone - Matt Padmore

31. In Shock - Rowan Audish

32. Bring Me Back - B.A. Paris

33. The Body in the Dales - J.R. Ellis (Currently reading)

A real mixture but 99% enjoyable.

24 - Unsheltered - Barbera Kingsolver

Slightly behind the mid-year mark of 25 ..

I fell in love with Mary Treat .. ?

This book really hit home ..

I wound up rereading the Salt Path between the last book I read and the one above-

I've lost count! I'm now reading Half a World Away by Mike Gayle which comes highly recommended by other people. I love his books.

Read three good books in a row in July.

Firstly the "The Long Call" Ann Cleeves A new detective, Matthew Venn and a new setting Barnstaple, North Devon. I like the way Ann Cleeves paints a picture of the landscape when she writes, I find that almost as interesting as the plot sometimes. Having been to that part of Devon a couple of times, memories of that area resonated in the way she described them. As with her previous endeavours Jimmy Perez set in Shetland and Vera in North East England this is a worthy new addition and hopefully as series in the offing.

Where the Crawdads Sing - Delia Owens. Absolutely loved this book, almost certainly one of the best I've read this year. I've probably come late to it I think I've seen plenty of reviews so far by other GNs.. Set in North Carolina during the '50 and '60s. Begins in the late 60s with what appears to be a murder of a young man, The story unfolds in retrospect telling the story of young 7 year old Kya and how she ekes out a solitary existence in a deserted shack in the coastal marshlands of that state. The abandonment of her by her immediate family, one by one is an integral part of the narrative, as are vivid descriptions of the coastal waters and wildlife that inhabit them. It's a bleak, moving and ultimately uplifting story. Definitely recommend it.

My third book, the memoirs of Lady Glenconner's "Lady in Waiting" Lots of snippets about Princess Margaret, but the real star of the book is her husband Colin Tennant who whilst amusing at times, as eccentrics often are, was impossibly difficult to live with, umpteen meltdowns and tantrums described, sometimes in hilarious detail. Whilst on the surface it appeared she had it all, her story was unremittingly heart breaking at times, in that she lost two adult sons within a few years of each other, one to HIV and the other a recovering heroin addict contracted Hepatitis which proved to be his death sentence. If that wasn't bad enough her third son came off his motorbike during a gap year, an accident that nearly killed him and from which he wasn't expected to recover from. Happily he did. She has had some spectacular high points but some very low ones too, apart from losing two sons, and nearly losing a third, she also found out that Colin had written all his family out of his will when he died.

Not sure what number I'm at now! Just started "The Flat Share" but haven't really got into it yet.

On the eve of the 75th anniversary of the dropping of the Atom Bomb on Hiroshima I have revisited my copy of The Wives of Los Alamos by Tara Shea Nesbit.
This was a Gransnet bookclub choice in 2014 and you kindly sent it to me. I loved the unique narrative , the wives perspective of a terrible event. Thank you Gransnet Books !

25 - City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert (eat, pray, love)

26 - Too Much and Never Enough by Mary L Trump

Engaging page turner but sad-

32 In Stitches by Nick Edwards. He’s an A&E doctor and recounts tales from his working life. There are also rants about the terrible state of the NHS which is most interesting as it was written in 2007, when Labour was in power and many of the problems are the same as we still have.

33 The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot. This is for my book group this month. I won’t add a spoiler in case anyone is going to read it, but I can say that I wish the denouement had occurred approximately 450 pages earlier! ?

Terribull I loved the Crawdads, too. One of my stand-out books this year.

27 - Calypso by David Sedaris

34 The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien. Depressing stuff.

28 - The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon

Fascinating reading even if you aren't into the series- She covers a lot of her research subjects, how she does her research, how the series came to be and gives a brief autobiography of her life which like the Outlander series is captivating- She is terse and has a dry sense of humor- Enjoyable read-

29. Dead Beat, V McDermid
Enjoyable, but not as good as other books I’ve read by this author. I liked the female detective and her boyfriend though, so will look for more in this series.

30. One Way Out, AA Dhand
A cracking thriller set in Bradford, a city I know well, which added to the enjoyment.

31. Just My Luck, Adele Parks
The (last ever? ) GN Book Club choice, about a family’s experiences following a massive Lottery win. Made me a little less bothered about my twice-weekly flutter ever coming good.

32. Trick of the Dark, Val McDermid
Val at the top of her game!

33. Rock Me Gently, Judith Kelly
Not my usual sort of book and I wouldn’t recommend it, a bit of a misery memoir, set in a convent orphanage.

34. Dear Edward, Ann Napolitano
I loved this. A plane crashes with just one survivor. It intersperses what happens on the plane before the crash and what happens to the bereaved families, and Eddie, the survivor, in the years following. It’s very touching and uplifting.

35. Half a World Away, Mike Gayle
A single parent cleaner manages to trace her long-lost half-brother, adopted as a toddler and now a barrister. Worth a read.

36. I’ll Keep You Safe, Peter May
I loved this one. Set in Paris and the Outer Hebrides. An enthralling story and so well written you feel you can see the city streets and the islands.

35 On Chapel Sands by Laura Cumming.

It’s a memoir of the search for the author’s mother’s roots as an adopted and later, kidnapped child. I loved it.

29 - Into the Wild by John Krakauer -- a re-read-

I don’t usually read detective stories apart from Anne Cleeves but have just read J. M. Dalgleish’s ‘One Lost Soul’, the first of his Norfolk Mysteries. Not top notch but engaging, and I may download another to see how they pan out.
Finished “Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey” by the present Countess of Carnarvon; a biography of the wife of the 5th Earl - he of Tutankhamen fame. Sketchy in parts, but quite illuminating. How the rich did live!

Only read two books in August, but the latter was a tad over 800 pages!

First up "The Flat Share" Beth O'Leary, can't believe I waited ages for this when I was getting my deliveries from Tescos, every week, it was seemingly unavailable due to the demand! Well as far as I was concerned it wasn't worth the wait, just didn't engage me. I suppose the premise was quite good two strangers working out a strategy to share a one bedroomed flat, due to the prohibitive price of renting in London. He's a nurse works night shifts so requires it for daytime and she's in PR or something or other like that, daytime office worker, well she wouldn't be right now of course. Anyway she's just broken up with boyfriend and there's some other stuff concerning male nurse's brother wrongfully arrested. Then he breaks up with his girlfriend, which of course only means one thing they will end up together. They overcome all their trials and tribulations, get together. The end!

Far better was "The Sun Sister" the sixth, but I suspect not the last in Lucinda Riley's seven sisters series, the seventh sister is missing apparently!, but I suspected right from the outset when I read the first book, she was going to be found.
So this one is all about Electra, the sixth and most troubled. due to lots of substance abuse, of the preposterously named D'Apliese sisters, adopted as babies from different parts of the world and named after the stars in The Pleiades Constellation, yes the premise is that bonkers!, but nevertheless, I just can't take it away from Lucinda Riley she writes a really good yarn. The narrative switches between Manhattan, 2008 and 1940s "Happy Valley" Kenya where the sublimely named Cecily Morgan Huntley provides the link between the two continents and the different time periods. The book moves through the war years in 1940s, America, England and Kenya through to the American civil rights movements of 1960s America and beyond. Lucinda Riley canter levers these strands together very well. I've really enjoyed reading these books and this was definitely one of the best in the series. I look forward to the next one which I have no doubt is in the pipeline.

30 - Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

An oral history of the rise and fall of a 1970's rock band -- it's a novel ?

Here's an interview with the author:
m.youtube.com/watch?v=Wfy6hqKHg6U

31 - The Secrets We Kept by Para Prescott

"Secretaries turned spies, of love and duty, and of sacrifice--inspired by the true story of the CIA plot to infiltrate the hearts and minds of Soviet Russia, not with propaganda, but with the greatest love story of the twentieth century: Doctor Zhivago"

That should be Lara, Lara Prescott

37. Clock Dance, Ann Tyler
She's one of my favourite authors and this didn't disappoint. The main character gets a phone call from a complete stranger demanding that she fly across the States to look after her granddaughter, the caller's neighbour's daughter, whose mum has been shot and is in hospital. It's not her granddaughter at all (it's the daughter of a woman her son once lived with, who she's never met), but she goes anyway. It's a lovely book.

38. South Riding, Winifred Holtby
I wasn't looking forward to this (it was a reading group choice). I thought it would be stuffy and old-fashioned, but it was neither. Really well written and an absorbing story with characters you could care about. Winifred Holtby died young and this was published after her death. Such a waste.

39. Last Seen Alive, Claire Douglas
One of those thrillers with a twist (think Gone Girl, but not as good). It kept me entertained for a day or two but the ending was daft. It was as if the author had just run out of steam and stopped writing. And it was a bit difficult to follow as well.

I'm reading The Flat Share now, as reviewed by TerriBull above. I'm glad it was just a middle of the night, wide awake so I'll download a book to get back off, cheap Kindle buy!

36 The Familiars by Stacey Hall. A novel set around the Witches Pendle real life story. It’s a bit daft but enjoyable.

37 Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo. The first couple of chapters, I wasn’t too keen on but I persisted and am so glad I did. One of those books you're glad to have read.

I’ve just finished Shuggie Bain & loved it. Has anyone read it? Heartbreaking story set in Glasgow during the That her years. Shuggie’s mum is an alcoholic. Poverty, the grittiness of the Glasgow sink estates, the mindset of an alcoholic (oh the promises made), the tension and devastating effect on a sweet young fatherless family...

It’s short listed for the Booker - up against Hilary Mantel’s ‘The Mirror and the Light’.

I’d not like the task of being a judge!

That said, this is the author’s debut novel. I think it’s a winner.

Ps I loved ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ too *Terribull. One of my best reads this year without a doubt.

Try Shuggie?