50 Books Challenge 2023 Part Ten

Can I ask the thread two Harry Potter based questions or should i start a thread?

That's me as well @Tarahumara no one dares!

I didn't get any books - I think that people hesitate to give me books because they know I read a lot and worry I'll have already read it (and we tend to do surprises rather than lists here).

Remus - I like the new paper wrappers too!

Hope the poorly people feel better soon.

@ChessieFL The Common Years is one of my top 10 books. My original copy fell apart and I have the one you have now. Yes, I have looked up Egliston Road on Street view!

Sympathies to those feeling poorly today - hope you all feel better soon!

I have been very lucky today! This lot will keep me busy for a while (although some of them I have already read and just wanted copies to keep and reread).

I only remember Complicity has some dodgy sex scenes @TattiePants but it’s absolutely years since I read it.

Hope the ill people are feeling better soon. Nice haul @TattiePants In Memoriam and Black Butterflies are two of my favourites from this year. I didn’t get any books but have loads of Waterstones vouchers so looking forward to shopping. Settling down now with a glass of wine and Small Things Like These which I’ve been saving for this occasion.

Sending sympathy to those who are poorly.
I got Cleopatra and Frankenstein and Britain's Best Ever Political Cartoons but a good chunk of book vouchers .

Likewise - All the best to you and yours @PepeLePew

@PepeLePew Sorry, missed your post somehow. Hope you feel better soon.

I got The Button House Archives too @BoldFearlessGirl
Plus a Mowgli Cookbook and Sarn Helen A Journey Through Wales, Past, Present and Future by Tom Bullough.

I hope you poorly people are better soon.

I hope those of you who are poorly have still managed to have a lovely Christmas. Everyone’s gone home now so I’m curled up under my new wool blanket with books and chocolate and I’m not moving for the rest of the day.

New books plus In Memoriam which I’ve misplaced.

Oh no @PepeLePew and @Piggywaspushed , that’s just rotten. Hope you feel better soon.

2 ‘novelty’ type book gifts The Button House Chronicles and Brian Bilston’s And So This Is Christmas. I quite like the latter’s poetry as long as I don’t read too many at once. Also got some more National Book Tokens so I’m lounging around, full of roast dinner, filling bookshop online baskets then emptying them again as I think I’d like to go in physical shops with a neatly ordered list never going to happen not organised enough and shop on a whim sans lists .
I might nip upstairs in a minute and see what Black Shuck Books anthologies I have so I can complete the collection but then again I might nip into the kitchen and have some Christmas Cake……it’s all a distant pipe dream at the moment

Piggy and Pepe, sorry you're both ill for Christmas Day .

Just finished 75. A Christmas Carol.

Only one book for me, Weird Mediaeval Guys - a spin-off from a Twitter account dedicated to medieval manuscript marginalia, including this gem:

Sorry you're feeling ill, @Piggywaspushed

I got Jane Austen, the Secret Radical and a copy of The White Spider as I've been wanting to re-read it.

Hope everyone is having a good day. We're full of lunch and installed on the sofas with Toy Story and the Quality Street. I think I'm the only person on MN who likes the new paper wrappers.

Oh no, @Piggywaspushed - get well soon.
I hope everyone else is carving out some time to read today, whether you celebrate Christmas, or if you'd rather see the back of it. My H got me Eight Months on Ghazzah Street and Mist Over Pendle, and my lovely new boss got me an Amazon voucher as well. I bought H The Prime Ministers We Never Had and will be pickng that up when he's done!

I did reasonably well but am sadly too ill read today .

I thought 50 Bookers would like to hear I bought DS19 TTOD.

Merry Christmas fellow 50 bookers! 🎄🎅 looking forward to seeing the book hauls @PepeLePew hope you and DD feel better soon

Happy Christmas, everyone 🎅🎄

Merry Christmas lovely book people.

Have a lovely Christmas-as a child my favourite part of Christmas were the new books and the Xmas annuals

Merry Christmas to my online book friends!

I hope you all have the most wonderful day and I look forward to seeing your book hauls!

Merry Christmas you lovely lot - thank you for another year making this the best corner of the internet.

I suspect there are some books for me under the tree, looking forward to seeing everyone's book hauls.

@Sadik I have just bought the Lost Rainforests book - looks fabulous.

Pepe I hope you don't feel too poorly and you and DH recover quickly.

Merry Christmas, 50 Book friends.
All our plans cancelled as both DD and I tested positive for COVID so we are hunkering down and enjoying some quiet and gentle family time. I've been up since 7am on the sofa with a mug of tea reading and drifting off occasionally. At some point I will go and wake the DC and we will spend the day eating and reading and watching Taskmaster.
I have a backlog of reviews to catch up on which I will do tomorrow and will post on the round up thread but I'm glad I waited for that as I've just finished what may well be my fiction book of the year.

The Secret River by Kate Grenville
I bought this when it was first published around 15 years ago because I thought I should read it and never got round to it. I've been trying to read some of those books on my shelf that have been making me feel slightly guilty over the past few months and this was next. And I'm so glad it was although it was an immensely uncomfortable read.

Will Thornhill - a boatman on the Thames - and his family are sent to Sydney after he is caught stealing. He earns his freedom after five years and moves to a plot of land on the Hawkesbury River where he falls in love with the landscape even as he and the other British colonialists find themselves drawn into uneasy and often horrifyingly violent encounters with people who've lived on the land for centuries before they arrived.

There's so much beauty in this book, and the story unfolds gently like the rivers it's set on. But there is also horror and hatred in abundance. People who believe themselves to be good make bad choices and have to live or die with them as a result and Thornhill in particular is a character we can't help being both attracted to and repulsed by.

I was born in New South Wales and my parents moved here when I was three. I don't feel Australian and don't have much to tie me to there but this story - based on Greenville's own ancestors - left me feeling extremely troubled by the history of the region. And guilty that I've never really given it much thought. My mother's family made money from trade and mining in the 1800s along the Murray River and in the outback and the issue of whose land it was never came up in the stories of her family. I will pass this on to her and see what she makes of it - her father was an advocate for the rights of Indigenous Australians decades before that was something anyone thought hard about and I will be interested to hear her thoughts on it.

Happy Xmas 50.bookers! Thanks for making this thread the nicest place on the Internet 😊