50 Books Challenge 2023 Part One

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the first thread of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2023, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

If possible, please can you embolden your titles and maybe authors as well of books you've read or going to read? It makes it much easier to keep track, especially when the threads move quickly at this time of the year.

Who's in for this year?

Oh nice! Yes please. The book I'm reading right now is absolutely terrible though, definitely need to find something else right away!

Checking in! Happy New Year to all 50 Bookers!

Thank you @Southeastdweller - I’m in! Happy new year!

Happy new year all and thanks* for the shiny new thread Southeast.*

I have already finished my first book of 2023 (I had hoped to finish yesterday but didn’t quite manage it!). This was The Beautiful Visit, which was Elizabeth Jane Howard’s first novel. Her Cazalet Chronicles are among my favourite books and I’m gradually working my way through her others. I hadn’t read this so when it was suggested as January’s book on the Rather Dated thread I was pleased. I enjoyed this, although you can see it’s not as developed as her later works. This is set in the 1910s and told from the point of view of an unnamed heroine, who lives a very dull life until she pays a visit to the Lancing family where she realises life could be much more interesting. The heroine reminded me of the heroine in Rebecca (partly because they’re both unnamed but also both very passive). The ending was a bit odd but other than that this was a good start to the year!

I’m also still reading The Whalebone Theatre and Jennifer Grey’s autobiography that I started last year, and have now also started Anna Karenina for the readalong.

I'm in! I managed 50 books last year although I wasn't on the thread. I'm currently reading A Summer Bird Cage - Margaret Drabble thanks to the Rather Dated thread. It's not something I would normally choose but I'm really enjoying it. It's also making me feel nostalgic for a London I actually never knew.

And thanks for the thread @Southeastdweller !

Thanks for the new thread south

Finished my last book yesterday so will be starting with a fresh book today which feels very neat. Not sure what it will be yet, will use a random number generator later. I'll be sticking to kindle only for a bit longer so I can read during night feeds

I'd like to join. I've just started Lady Glenconner's memoir: Lady in Waiting. I'm not a massive RF fan but love the historic details revealed in Royal-adjacent memoirs.

Happy new year, 50 bookers new and old.

I have joined the library this morning - it's just down the road from the office so no excuses. And a book I wanted is on their shelves so I will call in on Wednesday instead of buying it. Although I do have book tokens to spend, and am meeting a friend in the local bookshop tomorrow.

Book one (started last year) is Au Revoir, Tristesse: Lessons in Happiness from French Literature by Viv Groskrop. I read her Russian one a while back and Father Christmas put this in my stocking. I had read (and studied) some of the French classics she covers but others were ones I'd never read but now will. I feel emboldened to try Balzac on the basis of her rave review, and am going to revisit L'Etranger which I haven't read in many years. It's less a book about finding happiness although that is there and more a set of essays on great French novels. If you have any interest in French literature I would strongly recommend this, not least for her entertaining anecdotes and dash of memoir that she includes along the way.

Happy New Year Fifty-Bookers! Thank you for the new thread Southeastdweller.
I'm place-marking with my library copy of Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout.

Kicking off with Klara and the Sun by MN favourite Kazuo Ishiguro.

Happy new year everyone!

Ooh, I’m in! Happy new year, and thanks as always to Southeast for keeping these threads going!

It’s been a strange few years for me, last year I made some kind of effort to read more at the start and the end of the year, and finished seventeen books - which was a considerable improvement on 2021’s total of zero!

I don’t have a target in mind - but this year I’m determined to do less doom scrolling and also to actually read some of a frankly ludicrous tbr pile - both seems to be common aims for Jan 1st :) I’d love to get back to a place where I can really
lose myself in a book - for many years reading was as natural as breathing, but since about 2018 I seem to have been right off kilter somehow :/

Speaking of “targets” - read this earlier: www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/31/new-years-resolution-more-books

I actually finished the first book of the year this morning (started during the Christmas holiday): Happy by Derren Brown. This was suggested on another Mumsnet thread about self help books, but it’s not really SH - it’s a very non- prescriptive run through some stoic ideas in particular, and more an invitation to think about how those ideas might improve one’s outlook. There’s certainly no “step 1 step 2 step 3” nonsense as seen in many SH books.

Onwards to Mount tbr to pick another book :)

Can I join? I read alot but have never tallied up the total so will be interesting.
Currently reading Babel by RF Kuang and then have my next few lined up.

Happy New Year 50 bookers!

thanks @Southeastdweller and congrats on finishing your studies.

I caved and bought Ink Black Heart as I read the last Strike novel first in Jan last year and enjoy the symmetry of starting this year with the next.

Please may I rejoin this lovely community?

I was on these threads about three years ago and really enjoyed hearing about what books other folk were enjoying, or sometimes not. I can certainly credit the 50 book thread for introducing me to several books that I would never have picked up but turned out to be life influencing in one way or another.

I had to stop contributing as my bloody master’s degree sucked all the joy of reading out of me, but hurrah that is now completed and I hope that 2023 is the year my reading mojo returns.

I’ve got the new Kate Atkinson Shrines of Gaiety lined up as my first book of the year.

I would like to join please S what to read more and reduce time staring at my phone. I'm reading 1. Secret smile by Nicci French I really enjoy their books and picked up a whole stack of them and Ruth Randall's from a charity shop last month

Happy New Year everyone!
I've nearly finished my first book too; All the Broken Places by John Boyne. Next one is A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe.

Happy New Year to you all ! And thanks as ever to southeast for keeping us going.
I never manage to keep up with these threads in January, but I'm hoping for two good ones with my first books started, Anna Karenina for the read along, and the final Terra Ignota book by Ada Palmer, Perhaps the Stars.

Happy New Year to all and many thanks as always to Southeast.

Not a full list, but my top reads of 2022 were:

Non-fiction:
Red Famine by Anne Applebaum
Free by Lea Ypi
Putin's People by Catherine Belton
Giving up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel
A Man's Place by Annie Ernaux

Fiction:
The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker
Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
Childhood, Youth, Dependency by Tove Diletsen
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Thank you southeast. Happy new year everyone.

I have just started Old Filth which was recommended on last year’s thread.

Thanks for the new thread southeast Signing in for 2023.

Im keeping my target at 50 for now, will see how the start of the year goes and may increase it.

I’ve got a collection of Christmas themed Val McDermid stories on the go, not particularly enjoying them so in two minds whether to finish or start something new for the new year.

Happy New Year 50 Bookers, and thank you to Southeast for the new thread. Hoping to finish Dom Joly's Downhill Hiking Club today. Also have Tina Brown's Palace Papers and One by One by Ruth Ware on the go, and will be starting Anna Karenina today for the readalong.

Count me in, have the new Graham Norton to start the year

Joining!

Thanks for the thread @Southeastdweller.

I love these

@Sadik
I adore the Terra Ignota books. They are some of my very favourite books of the last few years, if not ever. I’m so glad that I’ve found someone else who likes them enough to want to read all four. Now that I’ve put a huge amount of pressure on you, what are your thoughts on the series in general?