Reading the 20th Century discussion

New year, new discussion thread for 2025


So, what are you reading right now?

I have started Akenfield and am enjoying it. I like the author’s journalistic style and the way he is unfolding the Village culture and telling simple yet poignant stories of the lives of that village. I am a multiple book reader. I read something at night and may have one or two other books that I jump into depending on my mood. I’m reading Trigger Mortis, by Anthony Horowitz and I’m reading a non fiction book on reviewing books. Each book satisfies part of my 2025 reading goals.

Apologies for scattering my New Yorker stories through this thread as I catch up on the issues.

This week's double issue has a wonderful story by a Korean writer, Lee Chang-dong, whom I have not previously read. It is about family, shame and the postwar political divide in South Korea that still persists, decades later, although this story takes place in the 1980's.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...

No apologies needed! I'm loving the fairly recent influx of Korean literature in translation.

I have just finished The Town House by Norah Lofts. I had wanted to read it when I listened to the Backlisted podcast on it years ago; recently I read Bookish: How Reading Shapes Our Lives and Lucy Mangan, who chose the book for Backlisted, was again praising it, so I finally took it out of the library and read it. I'm now planning to get to the sequels much quicker.

I’m about 30% of the way through 48 Clues into the Disappearance of My Sister. It’s my first JCO, and wow. I don’t know why I’ve not gotten to her before. I just read the chapter that recounts the attempted rape and how M’s parents responded. Horrifying and spot on. It brought to mind the hand-wringing over Alice Munro last summer, and my mother’s acquiescence to my father’s sexual
abuse of me (and probably my brother). I am not sure why that generation was so callous about sexual abuse and assault. Clearly their own mothers were too. I’d like to know more.
Meanwhile, I am really appreciating JCO’s unflinching eye.

I'm so sorry to hear that, G - as you say, there are generations of complicity that are finally being talked about. I don't want to make any claims given my lack of experience but it must surely tie up with patriarchy and gender roles and who has the power to do and say what.

I'm so glad you're enjoying JCO. She's such a bold writer who dares to go where others hold back. This means her books can be brutal and horrifying when they need to be and she doesn't shy away from violence, sexual and other. But she's also deeply intelligent and can write about love - all types of love - in a way that is rare and lacking in sentimentality.

My first book of the year was Virginia Feito's entertaining, highly referential Victorian Psycho A fast, accessible read, despite the underlying critique of Victorian society, that plays with the conventional figure of the demure, downtrodden governess. Perfect for fellow slasher movie and/or feminist body horror fans - a film version is already on the way.

Link to my review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Alwynne wrote: "My first book of the year was Virginia Feito's entertaining, highly referential Victorian Psycho"

Oh good, I took a punt on that despite not liking her last book: that cover is so enticing!

Roman Clodia wrote: "Alwynne wrote: "My first book of the year was Virginia Feito's entertaining, highly referential Victorian Psycho"

Oh good, I took a punt on that despite not liking her last book: ..."

It's not desperately subtle and the social critique's a bit obvious/superficial, and some sections - the kennel scene for example - are a bit daft. But at the same time I enjoyed the idea of Jane Eyre/Agnes Grey as latent serial killers rising up against Victorian patriarchy and indulging their deepest, darkest impulses - all very gothic, return of the repressed. And I liked the play on Victorian writers and genres from Dickens to penny dreadfuls. It was entertaining and not too demanding so good for the season!

It is quite gory though - noticed quite a few censorious reviews but some of those were from people who didn't get how it worked in relation to the period/genre/Victorian morality. So, for example, some reviewers clearly upset about the representation of the treatment of children in relation to the "evils" of masturbation and obviously unaware that Feito was referencing what was a commonplace practice and/or that devices not dissimilar to chastity belts were manufactured and used in boarding schools etc

I finished award-winning Japanese writer Kimura Kumi's novella Someone to Watch Over You interesting as a character study centred on anxiety, obsessive guilt and the impact of prolonged social isolation, and an intriguing perspective on Japanese society at the height of the Covid pandemic.

Link to my review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Just started listening to The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America by Daniel Okrent. It is read by the author. Apparently eugenics and nature vs. nurture was originated by Charles Darwin's cousin. He was studying the laws of heredity and this came out of that.

I've just started Rebel Sounds: Music as Resistance by Joe Mulhall. It's a good beginning and a topic that interests me, but at least the chapter on Ireland was more detailed on individual songs I don't know than I need. It will be likely more of a skim with a slowdown on some parts than a full read for me, but I'll see.

Is anyone else planning to read this or are we too busy with other books this month?

Also, I don't see a discussion topic for it.

I am reading Sunlight on a Broken Column by Attia Hosain . At the centre is a feudal Muslim family in 1930s India as they navigate the changing times.

Ooh Ben ...sounds interesting . I was pondering this topic yesterday as my son and I watched a documentary about Robert Mugabe , which made me think of the music . I have a lot of old records and quite a few by rebel artists from Africa and South America which were released into the UK in the eighties . The writer heads up the campaigning group Hope not Hate , an anti fascist in movement with more than it's fair share of work ATM .

Interested to hear what you make of it .

Hester wrote: "Ooh Ben ...sounds interesting . I was pondering this topic yesterday as my son and I watched a documentary about Robert Mugabe , which made me think of the music . I have a lot of old records and q..."

I can see already in the Ireland chapter that there are aspects of the book that will trouble me. Music is a way of expressing solidarity in resistance and calls for freedom, but also can express solidarity in racism and the enforcement of repression. Was the IRA a organisation fighting for freedom or a mafia-like klan? There are hints that the writer will touch on this contradiction but also that he is seeing the role of music through rose-coloured lenses. I will read on.

If the mods create a Buddy Read topic for this, perhaps these posts can be moved?

Here you are, Ben:

www.goodreads.com/topic/show/23006712...

I'd put the book on our shelf but GR seems to be limiting how many threads one person can create in a session so I got blocked and forgot to go back to this.

Ben wrote: "Was the IRA a organisation fighting for freedom or a mafia-like klan?"

Both?

I will be reading this.

Yes, Mulhall is Head of Research at Hope Not Hate.

I finished a classic crime novel Murder at Mt. Fuji from prolific, award-winning Japanese novelist Shizuko Natsuki known as the Japanese Agatha Christie. Interesting as an exploration of toxic masculinity and so-called 'face culture' in 1980s Japan. There were numerous pleasing descriptive passages and some inventive flourishes but found it disappointing overall.

Link to my review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Roman Clodia wrote: "Here you are, Ben:

www.goodreads.com/topic/show/23006712..."

I've set this up three times now and each time it disappears! My post gets the message that it's posted but it's not showing up on our threads and when you click the link you get the 'bad link' message.

I'm going to leave it for a while and will try again later - unless one of the other mods wants to give it a go?

Sorry!

It's not you the site's glitching, I posted a review but took ages kept getting 'bad gateway' and error messages galore.

That's good to know, Alwynne - I just tried to set up threads in another group and the first was accepted but not the second which has gone into a captcha loop - aargh!

Ok, the thread for Rebel Sounds is posted now: www.goodreads.com/topic/show/23006840...

I just finished Stump. I did not expect to like it, but I think it's going to be one of the best books of my reading year.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

That's interesting G, as it didn't look appealing to me but you've made me take a second look.

I've finished Rebel Sounds: Music as Resistance, one of our buddy reads this month - the author, Joe Mulhall, from Hope Not Hate really won me over:

www.goodreads.com/review/show/7206528331

I'm disappointed by Confessions by Catherine Airey - it's been getting so much buzz that I can't say is justified and is, essentially, a multigenerational family saga complete with rivalry and secrets:

www.goodreads.com/review/show/7210780145

Thanks G L . Niall Griffiths made me laugh on a you tube post I watched just now .

He said about Proust's ROTP that it was one of the most addictive things since heroin or Greggs Cheese and Onion pasties .

I had a phase of reading Ben Myers years ago pre his masterpiece , The Gallows Pole , and it feels like Griffiths explores similar territory ? Dark , visceral stories of misfits and hard landscapes ?

Roman Clodia wrote: "I'm disappointed by Confessions by Catherine Airey - it's been getting so much buzz that I can't say is justified and is, essentially, a multigenerational family ..."

That makes me feel better, I avoided it because I'm not keen on novels centred on family dynamics and it sounded as if that was what this was, and seems I made the right call!

Alwynne wrote: "...family dynamics and it sounded as if that was what this was, and seems I made the right call!"

You absolutely did! I'd also avoided it but stupidly succumbed to all the buzz at the last minute. I've never read Maeve Binchy but it feels like an upmarket version of that kind of story about a family of Irish women - nicely written if that's your thing, but I wanted something more.

Too many themes treated in what I felt was a shallow, even gratuitous way (view spoiler)[a half Irish, half African man to allow some race commentary; rape and abuse; unwanted pregnancies; mental illness; women artists; suicide; secret genealogies, even 9/11 to kickstart the story (hide spoiler)] - and just not my taste - I expect it to be a commercial success so don't want to put anyone off but not a good match to me.

Roman Clodia wrote: "Alwynne wrote: "...family dynamics and it sounded as if that was what this was, and seems I made the right call!"

You absolutely did! I'd also avoided it but stupidly succumbed to all the buzz at ..."

I was wondering if I was missing out because of the buzz too, and might have succumbed if my tbr list wasn't so ridiculously long. Sounds really annoying...

Airey has a fluent writing style but it feels like a book with many debut flaws - as we've said before, a strong editor could have sorted out some of the problems.

Roman Clodia wrote: "Alwynne wrote: "...family dynamics and it sounded as if that was what this was, and seems I made the right call!"

You absolutely did! I'd also avoided it but stupidly succumbed to all the buzz at ..."

The only book by Binchy that I've read was Circle of Friends years ago and I'm not even sure if I finished it. It was okay. I read it because of the movie.

I am beginning to feel like I am in some kind of a time lock.
Having made it through the 12 book sequence in A Dance to the Music of Time, Complete Set: 1st Movement, 2nd Movement, 3rd Movement, 4th Movement, and then the two books in the The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate
I am now taking up the second trilogy in the Fortunes of War: The Levant Trilogy And my Kindle has me about 1/3 into The Fox/The Captain's Doll/The Ladybird.

Is possible I have blanketed early to mid 20th century English authorship (multi book edition).
Maybe no one else existed then? Maybe the printing press got stuck there??

I'm in the same time lock / Trilogy lock , my friend .

Let's call it The ADTTMOT Effect .

Here's my current or recent reads

Proust . In Search of Lost Time . Group read here .

The novels of Irmgard Keun . Gilgi . The Artificial Silk Girl . After Midnight .Genius all and can thoroughly recommend. The flip side of nineteen thirties England : lives of independent young women in Germany . Social commentary sneaks in on the back of wit .

Some Isabel Colegate . Statues in a Garden . The Orlando Trilogy . The Shooting Party . All recommended . Like Elizabeth Bowen but witty .

My outliers are

Trollope . The Vicar of Bulhampton. Trollope and a canal . Bliss

Mantel . Wolf Hall Trilogy . I don't want this to finish .

Paul Bailey . Sugarcane . Wonderfully sharp dialogue and characters ( why is no one reading Paul Bailey now ...he explores the margins of London and needs to be republished )

David Malouf . An Imaginary Life . Consistently good writing ,afain exploring the encounter with " the other " , this time imagining Ovid in exile . To be read slowly.

Tolstoy War and Peace . A chapter a day for the whole year ...

I read The Levant Trilogy a couple of years ago back to back with The Balkan Trilogy . Hope you enjoy it . Am planning to read more Manning later this year : The Doves of Venus , School for Love and The Rainforest.

Reading is bliss

Hester wrote:



"Sugar Cane (1993)

by

Paul Bailey


Wonderfully sharp dialogue and characters (why is no one reading Paul Bailey now ...he explores the margins of London and needs to be republished) "


Sounds fab - thanks



One reviewer mentions...

Bailey's 1967 debut showcased his empathy for marginal lives, which he honed through willfully difficult books in the 1970s, and from 1977 with a strong London-based thread. After 1986's 'Gabriel's Lament', this follow-up reprised the character alongside the human flotsam and jetsam of others such as Tonio, Stephen and the grotesque Bishop of Wandle.

Finished Akenfield which I enjoyed for the most part.
Added The Books of My Life, Henry Miller for nonfiction
Perusing The History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell and
The Lexicon, A cornucopia of wonderful words for the inquisitive word lover, William F. Buckley, Jr.

I'm reading The Book of Collateral Damage. Gorgeous story telling, and a wonderful way of conveying the impact of the US invasion of Iraq, and the misguided assumptions that enabled it. I do wish my compatriots didn't insist we are always right, because we are manifestly wrong most of the time, whatever our ideals (and right now it's not even clear we have shared ideals). It's a pleasure to read a well-told story that shows that without screaming at me. Screaming is a legitimate response, but I always enjoy a narrative that can open my eyes through imagination. This does.

Hester wrote: "I'm in the same time lock / Trilogy lock , my friend .

Let's call it The ADTTMOT Effect . Just looks like a typical one of my typos. All Caps included. A hint please?



Proust . In Search of Lost Time . Group read on GR about 2 years back . and followed it up with the major Trollope cycle. As for War and Peace, My favorite re read, I hope you are avoiding the so called original edition.

I had intended for 2024 to be all trilogies, but that kinda got slewed around. Life is what happens when you had something else planned. or so they say

I am old translation avoidant , Phrodrick ,except for The Bible. This after struggling through Death In Venice which was ruined for me by the translation. Am reading Briggs translation . Only 75 pages in and , so far , it's not particularly compelling , but I'm sure that will change .

I'm reading a few books including two related to the Scopes trial. I have been wanting to learn more about it since we are at the 100-year anniversary. Other than the term "Scopes Monkey Trial", I really didn't know much about it. Currently I'm reading Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation and also A Religious Orgy in Tennessee: A Reporter's Account of the Scopes Monkey Trial (essays/columns by H.L. Mencken while he covered the trial). So far these are quite good & I've already expanded my knowledge quite a bit. And, wow, Mencken is acerbic & zingy.

Also working on a couple of other books:
Swann’s Way
In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space

Recently finished:
The Count of Monte Cristo (reread; for irl book club)
Nobody Wants Your Sh*t: The Art of Decluttering Before You Die (because decluttering books are my "beach"/zen reading)
Perfect Happiness (a book translated from Basque so it fits with my translated reading challenge)

Stacia wrote: "I'm reading a few books including two related to the Scopes trial. I have been wanting to learn more about it since we are at the 100-year anniversary. Other than the term "Scopes Monkey Trial", I ..."

Given some of your interests, are you aware of the back story to The Count of Monte Cristo?
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo

Phrodrick is determined to clear a growing backlog wrote: "Given some of your interests, are you aware of the back story to The Count of Monte Cristo?
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo"

I do know of this book & the very vague outlines but I haven't read The Black Count yet. I'm sure it's fascinating & definitely do want to read it. Thank you for the reminder.

Stacia wrote: "I'm reading a few books including two related to the Scopes trial. I have been wanting to learn more about it since we are at the 100-year anniversary. Other than the term "Scopes Monkey Trial", I really didn't know much about it. Currently I'm reading Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation and also A Religious Orgy in Tennessee: A Reporter's Account of the Scopes Monkey Trial (essays/columns by H.L. Mencken while he covered the trial). So far these are quite good & I've already expanded my knowledge quite a bit. And, wow, Mencken is acerbic & zingy. ..."

Your post has made me interested in Mencken's account of the trial and his writing generally. Unfortunately that volume is quite expensive in the UK and not available in the London library system, but fortunately there are several other compilations of his work available on the Internet Archive. Looking forward to your reviews.

At one point in my life I spent time living in squats/liberated buildings so I was excited to see that Jaqueline Feldman had produced a study/cultural history of Paris art squat Le BLOC Precarious Lease. This didn't quite live up to my expectations, I wasn't always fully convinced by her editorial/creative decisions. but was still sufficiently insightful/informative to be worth the time.

Link to my review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Alwynne wrote: "At one point in my life I spent time living in squats/liberated buildings so I was excited to see that Jaqueline Feldman had produced a study/cultural history of Paris art squat Le BLOC [book:Preca..."

I saw your review and thought it looked interesting. I'm not quite sure what a squat is, but from what I've gleaned from story and film, there doesn't seem to be an American equivalent. At least, not that I'm aware of. Given our housing crisis (in which I am caught), we (at least here in the. US) need to think differently about housing, property, and who counts in society.

G wrote: "Alwynne wrote: "At one point in my life I spent time living in squats/liberated buildings so I was excited to see that Jaqueline Feldman had produced a study/cultural history of Paris art squat Le ..."

A squat is basically a reclaimed building and/or piece of land that's being occupied by people who don't own or rent the space legally. Some squats connected to movements who worked to take over empty buildings to be used by unhoused people. Some were primarily a form of political statement so a way of protesting the notion of property or extortionate rents, inaccessibility of many properties because of people being priced out. Hooverville could be classed as a form of squat and I think that squatting in New York during the 1970s post-punk era wasn't uncommon. It's pretty much been legislated out of existence in France and the UK now.

I finished an ARC of Marble Hall Murders, the latest Anthony Horowitz featuring Susan Ryeland: quite dark in places but so fun as well:

www.goodreads.com/review/show/7229872659

Alwynne wrote: "Precarious Lease"

Thanks for posting your review - I've read this and also rated it 3-stars so was interested in your more informed analysis of the topic. I found the lives of the inhabitants interesting but the book didn't amount to as much as I wanted.

Ben wrote: "Stacia wrote: "I'm reading a few books including two related to the Scopes trial. I have been wanting to learn more about it since we are at the 100-year anniversary. Other than the term "Scopes Mo..."

I have Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion and 4 books on/by Mencken - one by William Manchester, The Life and Riotous Times of H.L. Mencken, a biography of Mencken by Fred Hobson, a book by Alistair Cooke and The Diary of H. L. Mencken. It looks like Manchester had several books on Mencken.