52 books challenge - May

So I realise that this is my 200th post and I could make something happy-peppy cheery about it, but the truth is that I haven't been writing nearly as much blog posts as I would have liked, so number 200 should have happened a long time ago. With that in mind, I'll leave a small yay here - yay! - and get down to business.

The business of reading books that is, the 52 new books I'm going to read this year (I keep remembering books that I've already read and want to read again, such as The Casual Vacancy and A Dance with Dragons and Juliet, Naked, but all of those will have to wait until 2016). The standings are as follows:
15 Waarom vuilnismannen meer verdienen dan bankiers - Rutger Bregman & Jesse Frederiks
16 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
17 The Narrow Road to the Deep North - Richard Flanagan
18 Funny Girl - Nick Hornby
As today is the end of week 22, I'm still 4 books behind. We'll not get into that anymore, I'll just have to catch those up at some point.
But what a combination of books to read this month! Brideshead Revisited, one of the classics I've been wanting to read ever since one of my best friends wrote her thesis on Evelyn Waugh, and I finally made it. It contained a preface by the writer himself saying that he would have done everything completely different when given the chance 15 years after finishing it, but I think it was one of the best classic novels I read in a long time - one of the easiest reads, anyway.
Then came The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Wow. I always make a point of reading the Man Booker winner (if I haven't already), and this one must have been the best in a long, loooong time. It's about the Burma railway, and the Australian POWs building that railway, and one horrible day in their lives. But it's also about Australia, and the spirit of Australia, and about love, and hate, and trauma, and about moving on, and about finding yourself in an honoured position with people saying you're a hero while you were only doing what you thought was best and don't feel all that special at all. Also, it's about the other side, about the Japanese and Korean people also working in the camps, and about their culture and sense of duty and honour, and the aftermath of WWII for them. It is so beautifully written, heart wrenching to read, and again one of those novels which everyone should read so that there will be no more wars, or prison camps, or torture.
I didn't know what to read after I finished that one, so when I came upon Funny Girl, Nick Hornby's newest novel, I was sure that had to be the one, because Mr Hornby has cheered me up in the past. Not because his books are funny in a ha-ha kind of way, they have funny lines and ironic nods, but they also give you a vision on life you don't really come across that often. Usually, they're about people in a pretty desperate situation, trying (or not trying) to get out, but in this case, the protagonist's only downside in life is that she's living in Blackpool. Which is not where she wants to be, so she goes of to London and lives through the Sixties, shedding most of her beliefs and customs from back home and turning into a TV comedy star. It is one of his most serious books to date, even though the subject matter is by far the least serious. But it is up there with some of his best.
I now once again find myself wondering what I'm going to read next, but the pile of to-read novels in my bookcase is ever growing, so I'll just finish typing this up, walk back downstairs, and see what's next. Hopefully something short, to make up for those missing 4 books...