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?

@Owlbookend - have you read The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett? It's a really interesting companion piece to Passing and must have been inspired by it to some extent I think.

Yes I thought the same @highlandcoo

Thanks @highlandcoo I haven't read The Vanishing Half - will definetely* *put it on the tbr list.

😁

I’ve just spent a couple of hours watching Jack Edwards!

He does know how to do a video you watch in full, so many of them drift off topic and start rambling on and don't think of the audience

A little late, but can I join? I've set aside a bit of shelf for an actual reading list item section this year so hopefully this will focus my mind. Currently reading Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver.

That’s book 3 finished, Lamentation by CJ Sansom. It’s the sixth book in the Shardlake series about a ‘hunchback’ lawyer during the reign of Henry VIII. It’s the final months of Henry’s reign, he’s bankrupted the country after his war with France and people are terrified as the hunt for heretics continues. Queen Catherine Parr writes a confessional book that goes missing and it’s Shardlake’s job to find the book and discover who is trying to bring down the Queen.

It’s nearly 3 years since I read book 5 so it took a couple of chapters to remember what had happened in previous books and who all the characters are. However, you’re quickly immersed into Tudor London with its small alleys, inns, palaces, poverty and smells. As usual there is the main plot full of twists and turns and a side plot that eventually come together. Despite enjoying it, I do think he could have shaved 100 pages off so I think I’ll hold off with book 7 for a while as that’s nearly 900 pages (in hardback!).

I'd like to join please! I read 24 books in 2022 against a target of 40 😳 so I'm going to push this year and try and hit 50 with you guys. I've finished my boom yesterday which was Dear Mrs Bird by AJ Pearce which I thoroughly enjoyed, a light hearted read with some deeper parts around WW2. I've got the sequel being delivered soon.

Now I'm reading Saltwater by Jessica Andrew's ... set in Sunderland/London/Ireland and tells of a womens story moving between the three locations and also between time frames too which is a bit tricky to keep up with. I'm not 100% sold on this yet but will plod on and hope it picks up.

Excited to be joining!

Phew! A good catchup on the thread so far though really I should be reading one of the four books I've read a few pages of each... hello to everyone.

@OldCrone22 it was pages ago now that you mentioned this but in regard to books set in the US... I'm going to recommend Anybody can do Anything by Betty Mcdonald as it's one of my oldest favourites. I love all her books, no idea if they are for you but in this book, a lot of it is about her American childhood but it also tells the story of her leaving her marriage and getting by during the Depression in Seattle. Fantastically entertaining and warm. I also really enjoyed American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld and Future Homemakers of America by Laurie Graham. Best wishes for 2023

Book 2 Regency Buck, this was a re-read, I was first introduced to Georgette Heyer at my all girls secondary school. We had a nun as an English teacher and after finishing Silas Marner she introduced this book. I love it as much now as I did then. A fabulous read

Oh I loved all of those books - Onions in the Stew by Betty McDonald was one of my favourite books as a teenager and left me with an ambition to visit Seattle and the islands in the Puget Sound, Unfortunately I haven't managed to sell this to either my husband or my best friend as a location for a trip

I finished book 1 last night. Darling by India Knight. This was a retelling of Love in a Cold Climate but it didn't quite come off in my opinion. And the end was one of those where you feel the author just wanted to finish the book and sort of just did anything to be able to type The End

Just finished
Death in Devon by Stephanie Austin.
Quite enjoyed as set in Ashburton which I’m very familiar with. Plot a bit silly

There’s a new set of Kindle deals today. I’m thinking about getting Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym and Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor.

Others I spotted in there are the first Time Police book by Jodi Taylor, The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier, and Joan Aiken’s version of completing Austen’s unfinished novel The Watsons.

And funnily enough given recent discussions, Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant is in there although not at 99p.

@minsmum - I love Georgette Heyer and do like to re read them every few years.

Can I ask how you're getting on with it?
I was given it for Christmas.

@ChessieFL - I would really recommend Mrs Palfrey ar the Claremont

Signing in for the third year in a row and determined to make it to the end of the year, even if I don't make it to 50 books. I've had some really good book recommendations here in previous years.

I didn't get any books for Christmas but I've to read 'The History of Bees' by Maja Lunde for my book club this month. I'm a big Kate Atkinson fan so I'm going to order 'Shrines of Gaiety' by Kate Atkinson.

I read more in summer than in winter because of the long, bright evenings my eyesight isn't what it was. And of course, I've more time to read when I'm on holidays.

Sorry, forgot about putting the titles in bold but I'll remember going forward.

Hi Taytocrisps! 👋

Finished my second book, Shtum by Jen Lester. It came out about six years ago. It is based on the experiences of the author. I read it for my book group.
Told from the pov of Ben, a father of a severely autistic boy and his battle to get him sent to a residential school. Ben, a functioning alcoholic, and his wife Emma struggle to look after Jonah, so Ben and Jonah go to live with his dad while they prepare for the tribunal for Jonah’s school.
I really disliked this book. It’s written in present tense which I don’t mind normally but in this case the writing was clunky. Full of over-the-top similes that don’t make sense. Ben gets drunk and feels dehydrated:
’My eyeballs had turned to beach pebbles after crawling into bed at midnight. It was almost worth the dehydration just to have felt the relief as my eyes plumped up, moist and taut like shrivelled tomatoes dropped in ice water.’
Mm.
The characters are mostly unlikeable, especially Ben who is just as judgemental, rude and self-centred at the end of the book as he is at the beginning. His character doesn’t grow in any way- he learns nothing. Jonah his son is portrayed more like an object or an animal than as a person. The author clearly has some major resentment to his ex-wife. Almost all professionals, teachers, social workers or Ed psychs are downright evil and stupid. As if they’ve gone into the job in order to be nasty to autistic kids and their parents.
Sorry, I had to get that off my chest as I expect some of my friends to love it and I’ll have to hold back a bit! They might take it personally and not get that I’m giving my opinion of the writing, not autism itself, iyswim.

@PermanentTemporary I also loved The Future Homemakers of America and may select it as my bookclub choice next time around. Thanks for the reminder.

Hi Fuzzy, have you been watching the programme about bookclubs on RTE?

For any Michael Connolly fans, the latest Bosch/Ballard is down to 99p today.

I haven't, Tayto. I'll look it up on the player :)