50 Books Challenge 2023 Part Ten

@BestIsWest mentioning Richard E. Grant's recent book reminds me that this would be a good time to mention:

83: With Nails - Richard E. Grant

This is a memoir - based on the diaries he's always kept - of his early days in films, starting with the cult success of 'Withnail and I', which launched his career and soon saw him jetting around the world, hobnobbing with Hollywood stars and directors and acting in some pretty big films (even if the parts weren’t always that stellar).

I was charmed by his sparky writing, genuinely fresh and funny, and his often-hilarious tales of hanging out with the stars. My favourite was his account of spending a week at Francis Ford Coppola's sprawling country estate with the cast of Dracula, on an extended and intense research-cum-bonding exercise prior to filming with assorted fellow-actors; Anthony Hopkins turns out to be hiding a fearsome intellect behind a self-contained facade; Tom Waits is a delight to work with, while Gary Oldman - the star, and a friend of Grant's - eventually throws epic tantrums with the director. It’s all fascinating stuff if you’re interested in what goes on behind the scenes in films.

As Best says, Grant's wife Joan died recently, and it was poignant reading this book with that knowledge, especially the chapters written around the birth of their baby daughter, a beloved child born after many miscarriages. A very accomplished book from a surprisingly modest, likeable man, and a good read.

Another one who just did not get the fuss about The English Patient and can remember very little, and what I can is from the film.

Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
I joined the read along for this, but then got behind and didn’t prioritise as I have read it before. However, I’ve finally finished and once again think it is a great piece of literature, allowing for translation. The ideas, struggles and general unlikeable nature of most of th characters makes it wonderfully compelling. It’s the sort of book you get something different every time. Suspect no one needs a précis since a number of us read it together.

I’ve hit 39 so feeling confident about a nice round 40.

@noodlezoodle Covenant of Water definitely on the right lines, but I have it in my library haul for both of us to read over Christmas!

The same @TattiePants and @YolandiFuckinVisser
I skim read TEP. I didn't get along with it at all.

@YolandiFuckinVisser i read The English Patient earlier this year and had exactly the same thoughts as you. In fact I skim read the bits in the desert as I just wanted it to end.

26 The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
Not sure how I've never read this one before. I think I've seen the film (some of it was kind of familiar). I was glad to finish this one, to be honest. Some lovely descriptive passages, but the only character I liked was Kip and far too much of the description around him was about just how brown he is. I found myself glazing over while the English Patient himself was recounting his former life in the desert with his colleague's wife. I just didn't care whether he was actually a Nazi spy or not. I didn't care about Hana's attitudes to life and men. I didn't care about Caravaggio's past life and morphine addiction. Happy to see the back of the lot of them!

A Pocketful of Happiness - Richard E. Grant

Richard E. Grant lost his wife of 35 years, Joan Washington, to lung cancer in 2021. This is his diary of the time from her diagnosis to her eventual death interspersed with memories of their time together from first meeting.

It is sad, sweet, poignant, heartbreaking as you would expect, all read in his beautiful voice. It does get a bit name-droppy at times but I loved his sheer delight at getting an Oscar nomination and better than that, the possibility of meeting his all time idol, Barbra Streisand.

I'm glad you enjoyed Gentleman @RazorstormUnicorn I liked the Count very much and there were a few references to War and Peace that I liked as well, having done the readalong for that previously.

Thanks for the novella recommendations!
Lots of good ones there.

I read Rizzio last night. I thought it was very good. It was a very compact read at 189 pages, but it was atmospheric and it felt like a real novel, just in miniature. I think I'll read more by Denise Mina next year.

@Sadik might he like The Covenant of Water? I read it recently and thought it was wonderful.

Thanks for the recommendations Chessie & Janina. I think DP has read all of William Boyd, but will try & figure out about the others (Kindles make it hard compared to bookshelves!) With a bit of gentle prodding, I've also established that he's not read the Slow Horses books, so I'll get the first one of those for him too.

For novellas this list might be a good place to start: World's Greatest Novellas. I'd recommend the following for novellas that are readable:
Beryl Bainbridge (all her novels are on the shorter side)
The Thirty Nine Steps by John Buchan
The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre
The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro
The Employees by Olga Ravn
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
A Maigret Christmas by Georges Simenon
Candide by Voltaire
Wodehouse is often short and readable
Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

For East Africa these might all be old but what about:
An Ice-cream War by William Boyd
Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe)
Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga (Rwanda)

I have been AWOL thanks to work, family and carol singing commitments

Here's my list. Unlikely I will reach 50 this year but that's ok, 44 seems to be my sweet spot and I should just about manage that before Dec 31st!

1. The Christmas Bookshop – Jenny Colgan
2. Les Cahiers d’Esther : Histoires de mes 10 ans – Riad Sattouf
3. The Pants of Perspective – Anna McNuff

1. Beautiful world, where are you? – Sally Rooney
2. This book could save your life – Graham Lawton
3. Lessons in Chemistry – Bonnie Garmus
4. The Foundling – Stacey Halls
5. The Paper Palace – Miranda Cowley Heller

Currently reading Confessions of a forty-something f-up by Alexandra Potter and listening to Notes to self by Emilie Pine. I'm finding the latter very tough due to all the issues she's dealing with. It's well written and well narrated, by the author, but I need to know there's some light at the end of the tunnel for her.
Might need to start something more festive soon!!

Ooh I’m glad to see your good review of Mrs S @Welshwabbit I’ve had my eye on it for ages and grabbed it when it was recently reduced. Might save that one for the holidays.

I realise I left Reputation by Sarah Vaughan off my list, so it should be 67 not 66. Which takes me closer to 75!

We have got through so many threads this year!

Here's my list. I'm hoping to get past 70 by the end of the year, and with a bit of luck, to 75:

1. After Henry – Joan Didion
2. Year of Wonder – Clemency Burton-Hill
3. Motherwell – Deborah Orr

And my latest read:

66. Mrs S by K Patrick

I finished this a few days ago, so these are slightly more distant impressions than usual. The main things I remember about it are the sense of an oppressively hot summer, very well done, and an equally impressive capture of that feeling when you fall head over heels for someone, and then something happens that makes you realise you're from different worlds that can't be bridged. I wasn't wholly won over by the lack of speech marks, which as others have said, was confusing in places, although it did add to the breathless heat of it all. I also thought the book was too long; the build up was excruciating, as I think it is meant to be, but it tipped over into "oh get on with it" for me. But a really interesting book and I agree with (some) reviewers that there is a touch of Virginia Woolf about it.

Late to the new thread & still not reading much. Adding my list to keep track, but will save bolding for the round up (too tedious on the phone). If you want to boost numbers with domething short, my latest The Many is very slim, but only if you like ambiguous and weird (very weird).

1. One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow, Olivia Hawker
2. Passing, Nella Larsen
3. Take My Hand, Dolen Perkins-Valdez
4. Abide With Me, Elizabeth Strout
5. So Sweet A Changeling, Ruth Adam
6. Im Not Complaining, Ruth Adam.

1. Human Kind, Rutger Bregman
2. Tall Bones, Anna Bailey

The Vanishing Half Britt Bennett

I don’t know why, but I didn’t expect much from this book. However, I was pleasantly surprised and enjoyed it. It’s not really standout and I read it directly after Passing which was just astonishingly powerful.

I think most are familiar with the plot - two light skinned black sisters leave their small town and one leaves their life and begins passing as white. It’s a family saga, touches on race, gender, domestic violence, trans, death and probably some things I’m forgetting. You have to suspend belief for some of the storylines to come together, but overall a decent 3 star read that I would recommend.

@sadik my DH also likes Bernard Cornwell, and he also likes Angus Donald so maybe have a look at them if your DH hasn’t already read them?

Finished One of Them by Musa Okwonga. This is a very fragmented memoir, really, of a black boy's experiences at Eton, and beyond. Interesting in parts , I found it frustratingly unreflective, actually, about Eton itself, which he seems uncritical of as an institution , until the end , and then that's mild. He genuinely does believe he received a first class education. Ironically, despite realising he is an outsider, he led a cosseted life at Eton and was still an affluent young man on the whole and never really articulates that. I think this came across to me when he, for example, states baldly that all of his year, virtually, got the places they applied for at Oxbridge, himself included. The book feels very thin next to the excoriating Chums. I am never really sure what he is saying.

146 Amongst Women- John McGahern
The story of the family of Michael Moran, veteran of the Irish War of Independence and farmer in a small Irish town. The focus is on relationships in his family and his control of his three daughters, two sons (one estranged) and his second wife Rose (the children’s step-mother)
The story is both menacing and heart-breaking. One I’ve meant to read for years and glad I finally got around to it. A definite bold and one of my top reads of the year.

147 A Christmas Carol- Charles Dickens
Read by Hugh Grant and free on audible. Everyone knows the story- nice for a little nod to the festive season and Grant reads it well.

148 The Secret Dead (and other stories) SJ Parris
Three novellas set in Paris’s Giordano Bruno series (Bruno is a spy for Walsingham in Elizabethan England). The three stories are set in Bruno’s past as a Dominican novice in Naples. They’re fairly enjoyable but unsurprisingly don’t have the depth of the mystery series (which I highly recommend for fans of Shardlake or other historical crime).

I will pass the 150 by the end of the year as I will definitely finish

• A Poem for the Day 2 and Year of Wonder (by Clemency Burton-Hill) which I’ve been reading daily.
• The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright (current read)
• Small Things like These by Claire Keegan and Standing by the Wall by Mick Herron- I plan to read these two short reads on Christmas Day while DH is doing his late shift.

I hope to also finish two books I’ve been reading for a while

• Plato’s Republic which is a slog and
• Bleak House by Charles Dickens which I’m loving. (My commute read at the moment)

Checking in, will do my list on the other thread/EOY.

I think I am basically in finishing up mode now. I’ll definitely finish:

soon

• The Vanishing Half, Britt Bennett
• Madame Bovary, Flaubert
• The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Joh Fowles

possibly

• The Lemon Tree Hotel (or some similar nonsense)
• book 3 of The d’Artagnan Romances
• some Chekhov short stories

probably not

• The World, Simon Sebag Montefiore (interesting characters but feels like a slightly more sophisticated Wikipedia - won’t rush to finish)
• something about 100 Romans we should know about - meh

will prob start

• Louis de Berniere’s new book, suspect the kids are buying me this
• Mrs Caliban, because I found it lying about at work and it’s small so seems like fate

I think this means I’ll almost definitely hit 40, but my goal was 26 and I’ve very much read what took my fancy rather than focussing on numbers so I am
happy with this.

Something like The Last King of Scotland but not that would be perfect (but other places / eras also fine!)

Yes, I'm pretty sure he's read all of them. I should have said, it probably needs to be something reasonably recent, otherwise he's likely read it!

@Sadik Has your DH read the Patrick O'Brien books. There's loads of them - Master and Commander was based on one of them