50 Books Challenge 2023 Part Three

Just finished book 17, Birnham Wood by Eleanor Catton. Her last book The Luminaries is one of my all time favourites but I know it's a real marmite novel so not sure what people will make of this one!

The premise is a bit bonkers sounding. An eccentric tech billionaire moves into a remote farm in New Zealand, in theory to build a bunker but with secret nefarious purposes. He comes into contact with a sort of radical gardening collective who plant up abandoned spaces then give away the produce, and offers them the use of the farm.

It starts off as a social satire (lefties vs billionaires) then becomes a thriller after a disaster takes place that they need to cover up. The final sections become very dark and Shakespearean, hence the name.

I loved reading this. I enjoyed the satire and the thriller parts, and the ending felt shocking. I would have liked a bit more delving into the characters' motivations, not least as there is a lot of lying and double crossing.

A hard book to categorise and I suspect it will divide opinion again. But for me one of the most enjoyable reads so far this year.

*big problem

@Remus I find that's sometimes a bit problem with text email based books. Apparently all the online threads are to do with the plot so probably you have to read them 😂😂 not feeling very hopeful I'll like it now.

I've watched Strike on TV rather than reading them, and none of the reviews on here are making me feel that's a bad choice

@RainyReadingDay I'm a serial DNF-er, I'll give a book a fair trial, but if I'm not enjoying it by a few chapters in then I'd rather move on and read something I'll find more interesting.

I have just completed The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho by Paterson Joseph, another actor branching into writing (who - ahem - fails my 'can they spell minuscule ?' test)

I really really wanted to like this. It's a fascinating true story, that of the black population, much larger than anyone thinks, in 18th century London : and how they were by turns accepted, infantilised, protected, reviled, petted, respected and maltreated. But it's quite tortuously written. Part of the point is that Sancho wrote very elegantly and was , in truth, a bit of a literary snob, according to Joseph. He frets over women perhaps being beneath his station , intellectually, then finds the love of his life who can - ta da!- read and write. He has extensively researched this but bits feel like plotholes (the Irish names of characters who I am lost as to who they even were seem terribly anachronistic, for example). Bits of the tale feel overly long, and others very rushed.

He throws in loads of Shakespeare allusions and constantly refers to his anxieties about his 'girth' (based on a Gainsborough painting ) and this becomes repetitious. He also alludes to picaresque novels and at first I thought this would be a jolly jaunt - but Sancho never really goes anywhere. The novelist has to despatch his beloved to the Caribbean for a change in tone, scenery and theme. There is a huge amount of rather tedious name dropping and a very exciting , celebrated court case that is done and dusted in 4 pages.

It was fine, but I can't help thinking in the hands of a truly accomplished novelist, this would be a brilliant story. Part of the problem of British writing is we may not have -yet- that fine, accomplished novelist who is black , or interested in black voices and history so the history and storytelling remains on the margins. Except perhaps Andrea Levy and Zadie Smith?

Speaking of which, Smith has a new novel coming out and it's historical which should be interesting.

Well I skimmed them Remus, don’t think it made too much difference. TBH I was only in it for Strike and Robin.

@ICrunchCrispsNotNumbers It’s pretty bloody awful so far. Some really terrible working class accents designed to make ordinary people sound as thick as pigshit and the pages and pages of online stuff are pretty much unreadable.

People who’ve made it to the end. Do I HAVE to read all the boring internet threads?

@TattiePants
Have read all of those Maupin's - wonderful.
I just finished Towles' Rules of Civility which I preferred to A Gentleman in Moscow.

*my tbr pile rather! 😂😂

Oh dear @Remus. I've got this on by tbr pile too, but I want to make sure I've got ample time to read it. A friend of mine listened to the audiobook, but she found the rapid switching of characters annoying.

@Tattie loving your book haul! I've got at least four on your pile! ❤️

@RainyReadingDay I rarely DNF a book unless it's slow or getting too involved. Mostly I read till the end.

That's a shame. It takes a lot to get me to DNF a book, but I never regret it when I do. There's so many more books out there. I'm always fascinated by people's reasons for DNFing books.

@Piggywaspushed I think I'll stick with it then. I do like a long novel, where a story takes its time to unfold and, as you say, the plot moves on into wartime, so it sounds like it will get more interesting. I was just getting a bit frustrated with the bit I'm on at the moment and am glad it moves on from there. * *

@RainyReadingDay TWT was a DNF for me. I just found it too long and plodding and couldn't get into it.

It moves forward in time and there is a war section.

It's one of those quite 'restrained' books so if you are expecting some kind of big drama, I'm afraid that's not incoming.

I liked it but it seems to be a Marmite book.

Finished number 30: 'The House with The Golden Door.' By Elodie Harper.

This is the second book In a trilogy, about a former slave and prostitute in Pompeii. I enjoyed it, but not as much as the first book. The ending also felt a bit flat for me.

Just started 'The Mother.' By TM Logan.

• Spoiler, not spoilers.

I'm about a third of the way into the audiobook of The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn and I'm really not feeling that enthusiastic about it so far. We're at a point where a bunch of eccentrics and their children are putting on a play and it's all dragging on a bit. And it's narrated in the present tense, which I'm finding grating.

Does the rest of the book pick up and get more interesting, or is it more of the same? I don't mind a spoilers.

Meanwhile, I’m 5 chapters into The Ink Black Heart and precisely nothing has happened.

I DNF Wool.

@TattiePants I've just recommended A Place of Greater Safety to one of my students. One of those kids who teaches himself German because he wants to read German literature and translates ancient Greek into Latin for fun. (I recommended it to him because we were discussing Dantons Tod by Georg Büchner which is one of the books he learned German for 😅)

It might be due my 5-yearly reread.

32. Wool
33. Shift
34. Dust

by Hugh Howey

The Silo Trilogy - there's been a few threads about this lately, and I noticed a series is coming out. Wool has sat on my Wishlist for years I think and I decided to get it done.

Wool shows us a US dystopian future in which people live on top of each other in deep silos. The usual structure of social class and assigned roles found in dystopias applies. Those who question the silo's governance are invited to take a cleaning role, a euphemism for compulsory execution.

Following an alarming factual discovery, a power vacuum emerges when the Mayor, the Sheriff, and the Deputy all become compromised

Juliette Nichols is poised to take the reins, but not if Bernard from IT can stop her. What does he know? What are the secrets of the silo?

Book 2, Shift initially serves as a prequel, and is a bit "Season 2 of The Wire" in that it doesn't really continue with the characters of Wool but shows what was happening in the buildup to the silo through the eyes of average Congressman Donald Keene. At a later point it then switches between two existing settings and covers the background of a character introduced in Wool - these chapters felt somewhat of a waste as it was already quite easy to infer what had happened, and broke "Show Don't Tell"

Dust amalgamates the characters from Wool and Shift to draw a conclusion. There's a lot of pointless messing round (the religious group particularly) it's a bit too overkill, literally, and a bit anti-climactical.

The good thing about the Silo Trilogy is that it is totally a full on pageturner, I blitzed through Wool. It reminded me a bit of certain Stephen King's (in a good way, though I'm not keen on King), and I also really enjoyed Shift though sadly as is often the way with these trilogies Dust is the weak link.

Is it very, very, easy to poke a Swiss Cheese of plotholes in the setup here by just posing basic scientific questions to yourself about how these characters live?

Yes.

Should you not do that and just enjoy the ride?

Yes

It's Good, But Not Bold

17 Where Did It All Go Right by Andrew Collins
What can I say - this was only too true to my memories of growing up in Northamptonshire in the 1970s & 80s. Some entertaining bits, but mostly very dull (I skimmed the diary sections), plus reminders that I didn't need of the ubiquitous racism, homophobia & ableism.

I think that Trespasses might be a monthly deal, but they came through gradually during the day on 1 March, into 2 March. There are often price drops through the month outside daily deals as well.

If you're willing to take the risk of spending too much money on books, ereaderiq.co.uk is a really useful website for stalking deals - you can set a maximum price in pounds though I do wish I could set a max price between £2 and £3 or between £1 and £2 - as I have to look carefully among the long term £2.99 offers. You can also look up the tracking history so that you can see if a book currently £2.49 has a history of being offered at 99p quite often. Though I've been waiting absolutely ages for a book I accidentally deleted (instead of removing from my Kindle but keeping it available if I wanted it) to come up on offer again, and it used to be offered several times a year.