2022 50 Book Challenge

[FlyingMonkey]

70. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World, by Elif Shafak.
This is a daring, heartbreaking and brilliant book, the first part of which is written from the point of (immediate post-mortem) view of Leila, a 40-something woman who has been murdered and stuffed into a garbage bin in Istanbul. It's based on the idea that consciousness might be able to continue for up to 10 minutes and 38 seconds after the point of death as we usually understand it. We see her life and those of her five equally eccentric and damaged friends, her city, and what led this fierce, troubled, independent woman to this point. I will read more Shafak for sure!

 

[Fueco]

51. Our Missing Hearts, by Celeste Ng

 

[FlyingMonkey]

71. All About Love by bell hooks

This beautifully written work is worth everyone's time, especially men who are certain that they understand what love is all about (and that's most of us).

 

[Geoffrey Firmin]

71. All About Love by bell hooks

This beautifully written work is worth everyone's time, especially men who are certain that they understand what love is all about (and that's most of us).

🤔 after 32 years with Ms GF I described our relationship as akin to a well upholstered comfortable sofa..

 

[Fueco]

🤔 after 32 years with Ms GF I described our relationship as akin to a well upholstered comfortable sofa..

So, it’s been farted on for years?

 

[Geoffrey Firmin]

So, it’s been farted on for years?

I will neither confirm or deny…however you have a strange idea of love.

 

[Fueco]

I will neither confirm or deny…however you have a strange idea of love.

I have a preschooler and a kindergartner who go on and on about farting.

 

[Geoffrey Firmin]

I have a preschooler and a kindergartner who go on and on about farting.

I have grandchildren who don’t go on about farting…yet🤣

 

[FlyingMonkey]

72. The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
Another Shafak, this one is her latest and it is based around the partition of Cyprus and its effects on people, place and particularly on trees. The main characters are a family made up of a Greek Cypriot man, Kostas, and a Turkish Cypriot woman, Defne, who fall in love as teenagers, are parted and then find each other again a decade later; their daughter, Ada; and their fig tree, which Kostas beings to London with them as a cutting from Cyprus. The fig was previously at the centre of a lively tavern run by a gay Greek-Turkish couple, and she has seen and heard a few things in her time. She's also in love with Kostas, who is lonely after the death of his beloved wife! There's so much in this book, emotional, social, political, historical and biological, almost too much, but is somehow holds together and has at its heart a beautifully sympathetic vision of one of the world's so unnecessarily damaged places: Cyprus.

 

[Fueco]

52. Far Appalachia: Following The New River North, by Noah Adams

 

[mak1277]

45 - The Wall, Marlen Haushofer
Interesting, if a little boring, existential novel from the 60s about a woman who becomes completely isolated except for the company of a variety of animals.

46 - Astream, various
Anthology of essays on fly fishing. If you're into that sort of thing, this is one of the best such books I've read (more enjoyable, to me, than similar essay collections from single authors).

47 - Liberation Day, George Saunders
Brand new collection of short stories. I've read three books of his short stories this year and there are certainly some repetitive concepts/situations that he delivers, but these are still good reads (and often hilarious).

 

[Fueco]

53. The Practicing Stoic, by Ward Farnsworth

 

[mak1277]

53. The Practicing Stoic, by Ward Farnsworth

How does one square the Beat philosophy with Stoicism?

 

[FlyingMonkey]

73. Three Daughters of Eve, by Elif Shafak

Last Shafak for a while. This one has an interesting set-up with three very different but all brilliant Middle-Eastern, Muslim women who meet at Oxford University and come under the influence of a charismatic Professor of Religion, A.Z. Azur. There is Shirin, the glamorous, fiercely aetheist Iranian who has barely lived in her home country, Mona, a feminist religious Muslim and a hijabi by choice, and Peri from Istanbul, who had faught every step of the way to get to Oxford, and doesn't really know what to think about religion. Told from the point-of-view of Peri, the story flashes back to her childhood trapped between a proudly secular, nationalist father and an increasingly pious mother; her time at Oxford in 2000-2002, where there are hints of a scandal, and present-day Istanbul, with its messy streets and messier politics, where Peri is now uncomfortably ensconced as a respectable mother and housewife. It doesn't always work in its plotting, I wanted more character development for Mona and Shirin, and the ending is poorly-executed and almost perfunctory. But still worth reading.

 

[SixOhNine]

41. Beggars In Spain, by Nancy Kress
This was a highly praised novella, and I remember utterly loving it when I first read it a long time ago. In the future, scientists are able to manipulate genetics in vitro for those who can afford it. Scientists develop a new mod- turning off the need to sleep. The story focuses on one of the first generation of kids with that change, called the Sleepless, as she grows up in a world that both envies and distrusts her and the others, especially as they discover there are unexpected and beneficial side effects from the alteration. On re-reading, I still enjoyed it, but I was kinda surprised to realize that there's a massive libertarian theme running through it that I totally missed as a kid.

42. Red Rising, by Pierce Brown
Sort of a Hunger Games-ish thing. Set on Mars hundreds of years in the future, society is stratified into a very restrictive caste system, designated by color. Genetic modification and restrictive breeding for generations makes each Color distinctive, with Reds on the bottom as little more than slaves, and Golds on top. The protagonist, Harrow, is a Red that gets surgically rebuilt into a Gold so that he can infiltrate the upper echelons and lead a revolt to bring the whole system down.

There are several more books in the series; I liked this one well enough, but I'm not sure I want to follow it to the end.