50 Books Challenge 2023 Part Ten

41. Dadland by Keggie Carew
It's a pleasure to finish the year with this one, because I think I read about it on here. 4 or 5 years ago I started a phone note called Wanted Books, and this was the first book on it. Whenever I have the chance to ask for presents or buy books, it's the list I go to. It still took all that time for me to feel like requesting this one.

It's good, first of all, but it's also quite sprawling and I certainly end up not really liking the Carew family. Tom Carew, Kevin Carew's Dad, was deep into dementia when she researched his life. He was a Jedbergh commando in WWII and had a complex series of careers, marriages and children afterwards. He's a fascinating character but the trail of destruction he leaves behind him is shudderingly familiar territory from my own dad and I ended up feeling quite alienated from his story, and sorry for the women involved despite their very obvious flaws. The details of the Burmese campaigns are the most gripping.

Congratulations @LessObviousName I definitely had a bit of a reading slump after having DD

Pretty good excuse for not meeting reading goals, @LessObviousName !

The White Spider by Heinrich Harrer
A re-read after many years, and I didn't find it quite as good as it was in my memory. It's basically a history of people trying to climb the North Face of the Eiger, with the writer being part of the first successful team in 1938.

My edition had a very good intro by Joe Simpson, and the first half of the book is, indeed, as masterful as I remembered. The awful death of Toni Kurz in 1936 is especially well done. However, I found the second half a bit petulant and occasionally oddly discriminatory: he seemed to have a real bugbear about Italians for some reason, which took up a good few pages in a rather tedious way. I didn't think the book ever really found its way back after that.

If you're interested in mountaineering books, though, and have missed this, I'd highly recommend getting a second hand copy and reading the first half, even if you don't read all of it.

Congrats @LessObviousName, lovely news!

Congratulations @LessObviousName

Congratulations x

Congratulations on the birth of your baby @LessObviousName 🌺

I fell off the thread half way through the year after having a baby. I was well on track with my reading before June then it all went sideways. I’m finishing off on 32 this year which is a slight improvement on 2022. I hope to increase it next year, I have stuck to my plan of not continuing books I don’t enjoy. I really also need to make my focus trying to make a significant dent in the books I have and stop buying more….unless they are good ones I find in the charity shops as who can resist a bargain whilst also helping a good cause.

77. Soldier Sailor - Claire Kilroy
My book of the year, by a mile. A first person narration of new motherhood. The exhaustion, brainfog, and loss of self are all there, as is the strain on the narrator's relationship with her husband as she focuses on her child to the exclusion of almost every other consideration. There is so much more here, though, with motherhood ultimately being the thing that makes death a reality. The book starts with a shocking act which thankfully doesn't come to fruition, and if you read this I would urge you to keep going past the initial episode. It's very funny in places, but also describes the terrifying moments, the child wandering off, the temperatures and rashes, all of that. I am rambling because I've just finished this book and it absolutely did me in. I don't really know how to review it, but just want to say it is highly recommended.

I’ve made 45 and I think that’s probably me for the year.

84 Charing Cross Road Helene Hanff
This has been reviewed many times and my edition came with her diary from her visit to London titled The Duchess of Bloomsbury which I rather liked.

I enjoyed Year of Wonder for the same reasons as @Welshwabbit and @FuzzyCaoraDhubh It helped me to rediscover my love for classical music and discover some new composers and pieces. Tbh what Clemency wrote was just background to the music itself.

Year of Wonder. I took more notice of the first book. It became a bit predictable second time round. I agree with the lack of commentary on technical detail and that it was emotive on the author's part. However, I loved the music both times and it really broadened my listening experience. There was rarely a piece that I didn't like. I think I'll go back to those playlists and delve deeper into them. There were so many composers 'old and new' that I really loved.

My final total this year is 53. My standout books:
A Swim in the Pond in the Rain - George Saunders
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith
The Mirror and the Light - Mantel- by far my favourite of the trilogy
Someone at a distance - Dorothy Whipple
Prairie Fires - Caroline Fraser which led me to read some of The Little House series including the wonderful...
The Long Winter - Laura Ingalls Wilder

I am glad I read Another Year of Wonder but tbh I preferred the first book. This one seemed to be apologising at times for including any white male composers. I found it a bit jarring!

72 Death Called to the Bar by David Dickinson

A Christmas present, this is the 5th in a turn of the century detective series featuring aristocratic investigator Lord Francis Powerscourt. I haven't read any of the others, but although there were references to earlier cases, that didn't matter. Light and frothy, I liked the scenes from Powerscourt's family life and the sweet romance between two minor characters. The mystery wasn't terribly exciting but was sufficiently interesting to keep me turning the pages.

I am another one like @BaruFisher who enjoyed the Year of Wonder books. @CoteDAzur is aabsolutely right that there is little on the technical musical side. Sometimes I found the author's comments interesting and at other times less so. But the huge benefit to me was introducing me to new composers and artists, last year Jan Dismas Zelenka and this year, the wonderful harpist Catrin Finch. Even if there had been no other discoveries (there have!), those two alone would have been worth several times the purchase price.

143. Tangerine. Christine Mangan
Single White Female type mystery set in 1950s Morocco. Fairly bog-standard.

144. Another Year of Wonder, by Clemency Burton-Hill
I know nothing about classical music, and she does make it more approachable. I like the daily routine aspect. This made my year a little bit better.

Currently partway through Femina and Why Mummy Drinks at Christmas - just need to finish one to beat last year's book total. Probably the latter as I'm a bit bogged down in the Cathar chapter of Femina, and burnings at the stake lacks that festive glow.

Thanks all, cover now ordered!

I would also get a cover and over time I’ve come to think that Amazon’s own covers are better. They just seem to fit nicer but maybe that’s the ones I’ve tried.

@Sadik I’d say definitely get a cover. Makes it nicer to hold imo.

Hi all, I went away for Christmas and the thread moved on a mile! Loved hearing about all the Christmas book hauls (and from them I've added a couple more to my wish list). I got:

• Making it So by Patrick Stewart
• Voices of Rome by Lindsey Davis

Can't wait to start these. In the meantime I've probably finished my last book of 2023.

66 Mischling - Affinity Konar

One of the best fictions I've read this year but not an easy read by any means. In late 1944 12 year old twins Pearl and Stasha arrive at Auschwitz. They are Jewish but have fair hair, hence the Mischling of the title, referring to a perjorative slang word for those of mixed blood used in Nazi Germany. As twins the girls are brought to the attention of Josef Mengele for the purposes of experimentation in his "zoo". How will they survive the unspeakable horror and cope without each other?

The chapters switch between each twins' perspective. Harrowing in places, the book deals with the hierarchy and ways of survival even in the horror of the camps; what would happen to the survivors of Auschwitz in the immediate aftermath of its liberation in January 1945; the fate of refugees, particularly the vulnerable such as orphans in a country where being Jewish is still extremely dangerous; and how language can be used as a memory tool as well as a weapon in the darkest of times. A story that will stay with me. Not very Christmassy though!

My cover can stand up which is brilliant for when I’m eating lunch or similar as I don’t have to hold it.

I'm definitely planning on taking it on train journeys (main reason I've bought one) so will get myself a cover!

I would get one @Sadik to protect the screen. I got a new paperwhite for Christmas. It's lovely. My previous one had got so sluggish. I've given it to ds as it's still functioning.

@Sadik i would if you’re planning on taking it out and about with you but you don’t need one if only reading at home I reckon.