2020 50 Book Challenge

[Geoffrey Firmin]

28.A Theatre For Dreamers by Polly Samson

Summer 1960 the Greek Island of Hydra. The bohemian expat colony of writers and painters focused upon Charmain Cliff and George Johnson. Into this emotional cauldron wanders Erica her boyfriend her brother and assorted female artists who spend most of the time getting pissed and **********, except Erica who aside from being the muse and sex puppet to young writer Jimmy spends a lot of her time in tears due to the recent death of her mother. Charmain takers her under her wing as she was friends with her mother and introduces her to The Second Sex and generally watches out for her.

Summer. Live. Work.Play.Beach.Descriptions of water based on variations of blue. Night. Alcohol to excess. Sex. More alcohol. Tears before bedtime. An interesting cast of supporting characters including Leonard Cohen who is writing his first book.

When this book came out it received a number of gushing reviews. I enjoyed its well written but I have to question why. Maybe bourgerious fascination with the creative life and its self induced suffering?

 

[California Dreamer]

Spoiler: Previously read

1. Damascus, by Christos Tsiolkas
2. Dr Knox, by Peter Spiegelman
3. The Hills Reply, by Tarjei Vesaas
4. Cold Fear, by Mads Peter Nordo
5. The Drover's Wife, by Leah Purcell
6. The Silent Death, by Volker Kutscher
7. Darkness for Light, by Emma Viskic
8. The Silent Patient, by Alex Michaelides
9. Recursion, by Blake Crouch
10. When All is Said and Done, by Neale Daniher
11. How the Dead Speak, by Val McDermid
12. Goldstein, by Volker Kutscher
13. Saving Missy, by Beth Morrey
14. Hi Five, by Joe Ide
15. Onwards Towards Our Noble Deaths, by Shigeru Mizuki
16. The Real Peaky Blinders, by Carl Chinn
17. Agent Running in the Field, by John le Carré
18. The Good Turn, by Dervla McTiernan
19. Amnesty, by Aranid Adiga
20. Downfall, by Inio Asano
21. Sheerwater, by Leah Swann
22. In a House of Lies, by Ian Rankin
23. The Glass Hotel, by Emily St. John Mandel
24. Pollock Confidential, by Onofrio Catacchio
25. The Brothers York, by Thomas Penn
26. Double Blind, by Sara Winokur
27. The Transaction, by Guglielmo D'Izzia
28. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, by Olga Tokarczuk
29 Journey Under the Midnight Sun, by Keigo Higashino
30 Impostures, by al-Hariri, transl. Michael Cooperson
31 A Walk Through Hell, by Garth Ennis et al
32 The English Civil Wars, by Blair Worden
33 Something Fresh, by PG Wodehouse
34 Killing Eve: Die For Me, by Luke Jennings
35 The Sculptor, by Scott McCloud
36 Puckoon by Spike Milligan
37 Murder in the Garment District by David Witwer and Catherine Rios
38 Unflattening by Nick Sousanios
39 Normal People by Sally Rooney
40 Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock
41 Instructions for the British People During the Emergency by Jason Hazeley
42 Fathoms by Rebecca Giggs
43 Death on a Galician Shore by Domingo Villar

44 Chourmo by Jean-Claude Izzo

In the second of Izzo's Marseilles trilogy, Fabio Montale is contacted by his cousin, seeking his help in finding her missing son. It doesn't take him long to realise that the situation is very bad indeed, made worse by him witnessing the drive-by shooting of a former colleague in the course of his investigations.

In his books, Izzo really nails the description of Marseilles. He immerses you in the sub-cultures, the geography, the food and the music of his home town. In the process he recounts a twisted plot as Montale deals with a range of enemies including terrorists, organised crime and the police. Given this was written in the 1990s, the political aspects of Izzo's tale are quite visionary.

I've no idea why these books are so hard to come by; they should be on the shelves of every bookshop. This is an excellent series, and well worth seeking out.

 

[samtalkstyle]

24. Spy Hook - Len Deighton
Very little happens, but it's kept my interest surprisingly well.

 

[California Dreamer]

Spoiler: Previously read

1. Damascus, by Christos Tsiolkas
2. Dr Knox, by Peter Spiegelman
3. The Hills Reply, by Tarjei Vesaas
4. Cold Fear, by Mads Peter Nordo
5. The Drover's Wife, by Leah Purcell
6. The Silent Death, by Volker Kutscher
7. Darkness for Light, by Emma Viskic
8. The Silent Patient, by Alex Michaelides
9. Recursion, by Blake Crouch
10. When All is Said and Done, by Neale Daniher
11. How the Dead Speak, by Val McDermid
12. Goldstein, by Volker Kutscher
13. Saving Missy, by Beth Morrey
14. Hi Five, by Joe Ide
15. Onwards Towards Our Noble Deaths, by Shigeru Mizuki
16. The Real Peaky Blinders, by Carl Chinn
17. Agent Running in the Field, by John le Carré
18. The Good Turn, by Dervla McTiernan
19. Amnesty, by Aranid Adiga
20. Downfall, by Inio Asano
21. Sheerwater, by Leah Swann
22. In a House of Lies, by Ian Rankin
23. The Glass Hotel, by Emily St. John Mandel
24. Pollock Confidential, by Onofrio Catacchio
25. The Brothers York, by Thomas Penn
26. Double Blind, by Sara Winokur
27. The Transaction, by Guglielmo D'Izzia
28. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, by Olga Tokarczuk
29 Journey Under the Midnight Sun, by Keigo Higashino
30 Impostures, by al-Hariri, transl. Michael Cooperson
31 A Walk Through Hell, by Garth Ennis et al
32 The English Civil Wars, by Blair Worden
33 Something Fresh, by PG Wodehouse
34 Killing Eve: Die For Me, by Luke Jennings
35 The Sculptor, by Scott McCloud
36 Puckoon by Spike Milligan
37 Murder in the Garment District by David Witwer and Catherine Rios
38 Unflattening by Nick Sousanios
39 Normal People by Sally Rooney
40 Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock
41 Instructions for the British People During the Emergency by Jason Hazeley
42 Fathoms by Rebecca Giggs
43 Death on a Galician Shore by Domingo Villar
44 Chourmo by Jean-Claude Izzo

45 Heaven, My Home by Attica Locke

* I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review this book. *

Darren Matthews is a black Texas Ranger who is part of a task force investigating the Aryan Brotherhood. When a boy goes missing at Caddo Lake, his boss Wilson assigns him to the investigation. There is an ulterior motive; the boy's father is a senior figure in the Brotherhood, and Wilson is hoping that Darren can turn up evidence against them in the course of his investigation. However Darren also has his own secrets, and his own ulterior motives.

What Matthews finds when he arrives is a community seething with racial hate, heightened by Donald Trump's recent electoral win. It is made very clear by the local Sheriff that he is not welcome, and is surprised when an FBI buddy of his decides to insert himself into the investigation by playing the race card. In all the plot and subterfuge, nobody seems dreadfully interested in finding the missing boy.

This is a pacy novel with a complex plot and some good strong characters. Locke refrains from turning her protagonist into some kind of shining hero, and she manages to give most of her other characters a similar authenticity. I also liked Locke's descriptions of Caddo Lake itself, mysterious and steeped in history.

46 I Live in the Slums by Can Xue

* I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher of the opportunity to review this book. *

This is a collection of short stories from avant-garde Chinese writer Can Xue. They are set among the dwellings of the poor underclass, but each has its own air of strangeness, and even magic. Sentient animals and trees, shadow people, ghosts, giants, and disappearing buildings are among the devices Can uses. There are some very interesting stories here, such as the title story and "Her Old Home", but the collection as a whole is uneven and may be a bit too much of an acquired taste for many.

 

[Fueco]

48. American Dirt, by Jeanine Cummins

While attending her niece’s quinceañera, a man and his entire family are murdered because of an article he’d written for the newspaper about the local cartel’s leader. His wife and 8-year old son are spared Due to dumb luck.

This book follows them as they seek to escape to el Norte from Acapulco. They encounter much hardship along the way.

The story is captivating and well worth reading.

This book has garnered much criticism because the story is told by a white woman. However, this writer has a personal interest in this story. Her husband was an illegal immigrant, and her grandmother was from Puerto Rico, and faced much racism when she moved to the mainland. As she put it in the Author’s Notes, if you are a person who has the capacity to be a bridge, why not be a bridge?

I've also begun trying to learn Spanish through Rosetta Stone's online service. So my reading time will likely be cut back a little as a I spend 30-45 minutes on lessons each day.

 

[Geoffrey Firmin]

29 Sins as Scarlet by Nicholas Obregon
30 Unknown Male by Nicholas Obregon

I read Obregon’s first novel Blue Light Yokohama in 2018. I enjoyed it for what it was.

I recently came across both of these novels. Both feature Inspector Iwata the first Sins as Scarlet is a classic LA Noir story with multiple complications and competing character interests right out of the classic Noir manual. With numerous original social, political and character moves by the author.

Unknown Male is a “who done it” with an interesting twist in terms of the actual murder and events. This time Inspector Iwata is back in Japan consulting on a murder of a foreign national weeks out from the Tokyo Olympics and the brass want this cleaned up ASAP. So Consultant Iwata at the bequest of the Chief of Tokyo Homicide takes charge which the Tokyo homicide detective bureau do not take kindly too.

But it doesn’t stop there add in a Japanese speaking black female London Detective Constable, a mentally deranged serial killer who has cannibalistic culinary ambitions. A couple of government hitmen, spiders and a North Korean spy. Then add some cultural observations about behaviour, hierarchal power relations set it all against the Tokyo skyline and simmer slowly.

Unknown Male was published in 2019 before the plague came. So editors would have naturally assumed that the Tokyo Olympics would have gone on with out a hitch. Now its odd reading something that uses that particular trope as the impetus for Iwata to go to Japan which is so at odds with the world we are living in. It was the elephant in the room, well for me at least. Both were entertaining.

 

[Fueco]

49. We Were Eight Years In Power: An American Tragedy, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

A look at the presidency of Barack Obama and what led to the rise of Donald Trump.

 

[Fueco]

50. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami

I’ve been reading reviews here and elsewhere of Murakami’s novels, but I chose his memoir about running, triathlon and writing as my first foray into his writing.

As a runner, and retired triathlete, I fully appreciate much of what he writes here. This is a great book for a mediocre runner to be inspired by.

 

[California Dreamer]

Spoiler: Previously read

1. Damascus, by Christos Tsiolkas
2. Dr Knox, by Peter Spiegelman
3. The Hills Reply, by Tarjei Vesaas
4. Cold Fear, by Mads Peter Nordo
5. The Drover's Wife, by Leah Purcell
6. The Silent Death, by Volker Kutscher
7. Darkness for Light, by Emma Viskic
8. The Silent Patient, by Alex Michaelides
9. Recursion, by Blake Crouch
10. When All is Said and Done, by Neale Daniher
11. How the Dead Speak, by Val McDermid
12. Goldstein, by Volker Kutscher
13. Saving Missy, by Beth Morrey
14. Hi Five, by Joe Ide
15. Onwards Towards Our Noble Deaths, by Shigeru Mizuki
16. The Real Peaky Blinders, by Carl Chinn
17. Agent Running in the Field, by John le Carré
18. The Good Turn, by Dervla McTiernan
19. Amnesty, by Aranid Adiga
20. Downfall, by Inio Asano
21. Sheerwater, by Leah Swann
22. In a House of Lies, by Ian Rankin
23. The Glass Hotel, by Emily St. John Mandel
24. Pollock Confidential, by Onofrio Catacchio
25. The Brothers York, by Thomas Penn
26. Double Blind, by Sara Winokur
27. The Transaction, by Guglielmo D'Izzia
28. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, by Olga Tokarczuk
29 Journey Under the Midnight Sun, by Keigo Higashino
30 Impostures, by al-Hariri, transl. Michael Cooperson
31 A Walk Through Hell, by Garth Ennis et al
32 The English Civil Wars, by Blair Worden
33 Something Fresh, by PG Wodehouse
34 Killing Eve: Die For Me, by Luke Jennings
35 The Sculptor, by Scott McCloud
36 Puckoon by Spike Milligan
37 Murder in the Garment District by David Witwer and Catherine Rios
38 Unflattening by Nick Sousanios
39 Normal People by Sally Rooney
40 Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock
41 Instructions for the British People During the Emergency by Jason Hazeley
42 Fathoms by Rebecca Giggs
43 Death on a Galician Shore by Domingo Villar
44 Chourmo by Jean-Claude Izzo
45 Heaven, My Home by Attica Locke
46 I Live in the Slums by Can Xue

47 The Plotters by Un-Su Kim

Orphan child Reseng was taken in by Old Raccoon and trained to be an assassin at the Library of Dogs. Old Raccoon is one of the leading plotters of political assassinations, and Reseng is his prize weapon, his hands and feet.

Reseng is acutely aware of his likely future; successful assassins usually end up on some other plotter's assassination list, and sooner or later he is likely to be killed himself. As the story starts, his missions seem to be getting sloppy; he departs from the script, annoying the plotters who engaged him. He starts to suspect that his time is coming and that he needs to take steps to protect himself. Then he encounters a plotter for the first time, in a most unexpected quarter.

This is a somewhat different crime story with a few clever twists and an engaging protagonist. Good stuff.

 

[Geoffrey Firmin]

50. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami

I’ve been reading reviews here and elsewhere of Murakami’s novels, but I chose his memoir about running, triathlon and writing as my first foray into his writing.

As a runner, and retired triathlete, I fully appreciate much of what he writes here. This is a great book for a mediocre runner to be inspired by.

The Wind Up Bird Chronicle good place to start.

 

[samtalkstyle]

25. Spy Line - Len Deighton

The story properly takes off in this one. If I was given the manuscript or book without an author's title I wouldn't know if it was LD or John le Carre.

Onto the third and final entry in the series.

 

[FlyingMonkey]

The Wind Up Bird Chronicle good place to start.

Probably a good place to finish too because it's by far his best novel IMHO, although Norwegian Wood is fresher, and his earlier works are funnier. He's been trying harder and harder since then, but he's not getting better and I've pretty much given up on him now even though he used to be one of my favourite writers. Non-fictionally, I rate Underground highest: it's actually two short books put together, one which interviews victims of and responders to the Aum Shinrikyo gas attacks on the Tokyo subway, and the second in which he, controversially, talked to cult members.

 

[FlyingMonkey]

Quick round-up of things I missed earlier:

43. Trouble is What I Do by Walter Mosley

The latest New York-set Leonid McGill PI novel delivers a reliably hardboiled crime story.

44. The Squares of the City by John Brunner

Surprisingly fresh and highly sociological South American set new wave SF novel from 1965, with a transport planning consultant - not many novels feature planners as protagonists! - getting caught up in corruption, murder, mayhem, class war and... chess in a supposedly ideal purpose-built city built by a dictator. Recommended.

45. The Strange Bird by Jeff VanderMeer

Set in the world of Borne, this is a typically lyrical, sometimes oblique and always melancholy tale of a genetically-engineered bird-woman who escapes from the laboratory where she was created into the even more dangerous post-apocalyptic world outside. It seems that you either like VanderMeer or you don't. I do.

46. Of Wars, Memories and Starlight by Aliette de Bodard

De Bodard is one of the most interesting contemporary SFF writers. Her stories tend to be highly influenced by her part-Vietnamese heritage and are also queer and feminist, although not always in obvious ways. This is a collection of stories, most set in her Xuya universe, which sees a Vietnamese / Chinese civilization which relies on cooperation with intelligent ships that are (literally) born to Xuya women, up against the growing threat of a growing WASPy empire, which disapproves of AI and particularly, these living ships. There are also a couple of stories set in her Fallen Angels universe in which Paris is occupied by warring factions of, well, fallen angels. These ones aren't so much to my taste, but they are still well-written.

 

[LonerMatt]

Murakami, Matt's take, is a writer with two types of novels: the weird thrillers (WUB, Dance, Dance, Dance) and romantic nostalgic books (Norweigan Wood, South of the Border, West of the Sun).

My personal, high subjective ranking of his works (that I've read)

Dance, dance, dance
South of the Border
Norweigan Wood
1Q84
Kafka on the Shore
Colourless TT
WUB
Hardboiled Wonderland

 

[FlyingMonkey]

Murakami, Matt's take, is a writer with two types of novels: the weird thrillers (WUB, Dance, Dance, Dance) and romantic nostalgic books (Norweigan Wood, South of the Border, West of the Sun).

My personal, high subjective ranking of his works (that I've read)

Dance, dance, dance
South of the Border
Norweigan Wood
1Q84
Kafka on the Shore
Colourless TT
WUB
Hardboiled Wonderland

I very much tend to prefer his shorter novels like After Dark and South of the Border, where he gives himself some boundaries. In my view he tends to go to pieces the longer his novels are and lose all sense of structure or story; for example, IQ84 was trying way too hard IMHO. And here's an only slightly frivolous take: the best 'weird' Murakami novel is actully David Mitchell's Number 9 Dream, which is such a pitch perfect copy of a Murakami novel, that it's better that most things Murakami has written...

I don't think he's Nobel material, but then if Bob Dylan can win, anyone can.