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?

I think there were quite a few like The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Siddhartha that I adored as a teen and would find extremely pretentious now.

Even The Great Gatsby, I can't quite fall in love with the way my 16 year old self did.

And this is why I rarely re-read things. I do reread some classics, Jane Austen, Wuthering Heights, To Kill a Mockingbird and get some new every time, but books I truly cherish the memory of reading - nope. I have read everything Louis de Bernieres has written, I will never reread them because (currently) I cannot comprehend losing that love. Also, my TBR pile is predictably huge.

The Austen’s and the Brontes feel like comfort reads that I know won’t let me down.

@StColumbofNavron

You have just put me in mind of Captain Corelli I think I read it several times and thought it was amazing between 17-21. I wonder what I would think now 20 years later? As such, it's best not re-read than disappointing.

It was part of my first flush of "proper books" and feeling like an adult because you were reading the same novels as teachers

I have The Great Gatsby, The House of the Spirits and Wuthering Heights all sitting unread on my bookshelf. Hmm, should I bump them up the TBR pile?

One of my top ten books is The Color Purple based on my love for it when I was 16-18. I’ve never dared read it since in case I no longer feel the same way. On the other hand, I definitely missed the window to read Catcher in the Rye. I finally read it in my forties and spent the whole book thinking “shut up you whiny twat”.

Foster by Claire Keegan Pleased to see this was on the ‘most-bolded’ list of 2022 as I’m adding to the love! Having been blown away by Small Things Like These last year I’d been looking forward to this and it was just as wonderful. Only about 80 pages but deeply moving.

Small Things has very much stayed with me in the months since I read it - reflecting on collective guilt and on how few heroes there are, and of the parallels between the Magdalen laundries and the things most of us look away from here today. I don’t mean to suggest the book is a downer, it’s not, that’s just me, but she really is such a powerful writer, I’m sure this will stay with me too.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit discombobulated is a good word for it - I was so certain that this was one of my all time favourites and it would be like meeting up with an old friend. Which it was actually, in that unsettling way where you realise you don’t have that much in common anymore even though you’re still fond of them! Maybe I’ll read it again in another few years and love it again, who knows.

Captain Corelli I did re-read maybe 5 or 6 years ago, and I loved it possibly more than the first time. Again I think I appreciated other aspects of it as an older reader though. I was in Kefalonia and able to visit some of the places mentioned which definitely helped.

I hated Memoirs of a Geisha with my whole being. It left me vaguely uncomfortable and feeling slightly icky about the writer. I can't remember why now.
@BestIsWest Love it 😂

Captain Corelli is on my to reread list too. It's one of the books that I can remember where I was sitting, in which room, what the weather was doing and everything else. I can remember I finished it on a Saturday afternoon, late, in May. 1997 so a long time before Goodreads could tell me when I finished it.
I remember people getting dreadfully snobby about it as well afterwards, especially when the film came out.
I suppose it's like places we revisit. This summer I went back to the place I fell properly in love in and haven't been back to for over 30 years because I daren't in case it sent me doolally. It didn't I found it vaguely grubby now and didn't relate to it at all. Which, in turn, I thought would be devastating, but wasn't. Hey Ho.

I should re-read The Color Purple as I sat through it for A Level when I would rather have been studying wafty Pre-Raff poets and sighing over Heathcliff. The only thing I remember about it was a line where it mentions a toddler farting and we all tried not to laugh and incur the disappointment of our teacher. I didn’t do it justice at 16.

If someone asks me “what’s your favourite ever book?” I probably for a very long time would have said the Trick is to Keep Breathing by Janice Galloway. I couldn’t bear to re-read it as it would be absolutely gutting to learn that adult me didn’t feel the same way. So I suppose teenage passme’s favourite book is The Trick is to Keep Breathing

Now, if anyone dares to slight Behind the Scenes at the Museum which my adult self loved with my whole soul I will hex you secretly.

Thank you for the recommendation for the other Claire Keegan novella. I have than stashed now.

out of interest, has anyone read Pity the Beast by Robin McLean? If so, any thoughts on it? It is in my kindle but I just don’t get good vibes from it.

On the other hand, I definitely missed the window to read Catcher in the Rye. I finally read it in my forties and spent the whole book thinking “shut up you whiny twat”.

Same here. Almost 200 pages of Holden Caulfield’s self indulgent angsting and whining. I persevered to the end, thinking it would improve, because it’s one of those books that’s often mentioned as a classic.

But no. The only good thing I could say about it after I’d finished it was that it was a short novel. I may have felt more positively about it if I’d read it as a teenager, who knows 🤷‍♀️

Now, Catcher in the Rye, I am aware that MN has a ‘whiny twat’ attitude to it generally but I read it in lockdown as a pet of Readalong with some relatives and we all thought it was wonderfully done. I didn’t see a whiny twat, I saw a neglected, albeit privileged teenager who lost a sibling and had no one to share the pain with. (I’m in my 40s and this was my first time). We were also just getting his long stream of consciousness, I reckon most of us will be on some sort of moany spectrum if you just laid out every thought we had. However, it does also come back to the where you were/what was going on your life situations we’ve been talking about too. I’d lost a sibling just before Covid so it’s likely I bought into that element of the story at the time that I read it.

Delighted to see some Corelli love. I’ve met him (LdB) and he was at a concert I was at recently where the singer called him out as one of his best friends. I wooped so loud and clapped that everyone turned to look at me and the person I was with was all ‘what are you doing’. I do have faith that his books will stand up to re-read but I’m not risking it. The stage play of Corelli in London was wonderful too.

I have definitely had very different reactions to books that I have reread years later. Funnily enough I reread The Great Gatsby last year and really enjoyed it, after hating it when I was in my teens.

I had the same experience with The House of the Spirits - adored it from the first page - I remembered the first chapter (Rosa and her green hair!) drawing me in and just loving the whole thing. Nowhere near as special when I tried to reread it (also 20 years later). I was so sad that I stopped reading - I wish I hadn't reread it.

2. The Quantum Curators and the Faberge Egg by Eva St John

This is an alternate history / time travel book that has shades of The Chronicles of St Mary's. The Quantum Curators are sent to retrieve one of the lost Faberge eggs created for the Russian Imperial family, before it is destroyed, but nothing goes to plan. I really enjoyed this and will definitely be reading more of the series, especially as they are included in Kindle Unlimited. This book also sent me down a rabbit hole googling the Faberge eggs, all of which contained a surprise inside, and were absolutely beautiful.

I'm definitely a Rye hater. I've read it twice, once around 17, and then later because I was convinced I mustn't have "got it" - It's not for me

I think he probably did… he more or less says as much in the introduction. I’ll try to read more than the intro soon, and then I can let you know what I think!

Sometimes I wonder if I should go back and revisit books that I loved before. I rarely go back. I'm inclined to move on as I feel there's so many good books to read. I reread The Woman in White recently and was glad I still enjoyed it. Also The Portrait of a Lady and Hard Times. I enjoyed them as well. It's funny to see which parts you remember well, what has stayed with you and what strikes you differently years later.

On Ishiguro, I loved The Remains of the Day, but found Never Let Me Go very underwhelming. Not in the same league at all I thought, but that was a few years ago and there's a chance I could feel differently about it if I read it again...maybe!
Shrodinger's Butler 😅

I do wonder why so many people get upset if others don’t share their opinions. I think there is probably an element of imposter syndrome for some people - if their opinions aren’t widely shared they feel unworthy of being part of the discussion maybe? I also think the teaching of English Lit in schools may have a lot to answer for. I had an absolutely brilliant teacher one year, who exploded by love of the subject, but was followed by a teacher who was absolutely dire the next year. She often called students out for giving “wrong” answers when discussing books - I think having lots of those kinds of experiences would lead to people believing their is only one “right” way to interpret a piece of literature. The exam culture and mark schemes don’t help either. Great to have a place like this for reasonable discussion, even when people don’t agree!

Just to add to the discussion on re-visiting books, I’ve recently had a disappointing experience with a book that for years was one of my favourites - Happy Like Barnacles by Karen Testa (not a well known book at all). It dealt with the subject of death amongst a group of young adult friends. I read it a number of times between the ages of 16 and later twenties and it really touched me and always had me in tears. More recently I read it and saw it as overly romanticised and not at all true to life - the reactions definitely relate to lived experience at different points that I read it. I’m sad though that I’ve sort of spoiled it for myself, but I do remember how it made me feel the first time I read it, and I do still love it for the impact it had on me then.

Catcher in the Rye remains one of my favourites for a similar reason. I can still remember how it made me feel when I read it as a teenager. I haven’t picked it up in a long while, and after this discussion and my reflections on Barnacles, I probably won’t!

@Stokey About Crossroads. You definitely don’t need to read Middlemarch first. They are similar kinds of novels though and I enjoyed them both for the same reasons. Story told from different perspectives, flawed but sympathetic characters and really deep in terms of the themes they explore.
I would like to read The Corrections.

Schrodinger's butler

I'm sure many of us have had one of those moments when choosing what to read next. Mine has come with finally starting on Good Omens.

I love Deborah Levy too and have bought this recently. I might bring it to the top of my tbr.
I’m currently reading Shtum by Jem Lester which is for my book club. Anyone read it? I don’t like it but am ploughing through.

@Nuffaluff Ive read Shtum - it was a while ago and I don’t remember much beyond I didn’t like it!

Agree with @StColumbofNavron about The Catcher In The Rye. I read it years ago and thought it was OK, nothing wildly special. Then revisited it for a recent book club and all I could see was a lost child who was full of grief for his dead brother and had been failed by almost everyone in his life, apart from old Phoebe. I found it almost unbearably poignant.