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?

@Decafflatteplease I wouldn’t describe it as harrowing because the whole topic is very sensitively handled and I was quite moved by it. However it’s such a difficult call to make on how someone else might find it.

I feel exactly the same about A Terrible Kindness @AliasGrape- will maybe come back to it in future. Another one like this is The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler- I've* *heard such brilliant things about it but every time I give it a go the subject matter (loss of his son) puts me off. Glad to know it's not just me! I'm sure I used to be tougher when it came to reading difficult subject matter.

@Decafflatteplease I'd agree with BestIsWest, of course it is poignant and emotional given the subject matter, but it handled very sensitively. Also the Aberfan sections aren't a massive part of the book itself, although the impact on William is felt throughout. I'd personally say it is definitely worth 99p if it appeals to you, but maybe one to save if you aren't feeling up to reading something sad right now. I know there are times when I'm feeling too vulnerable to deal with something so poignant, and other times when reading something emotional is just what I need.

@Decafflatteplease I found it quite harrowing tbh. Almost like 2 different books bolted together. The story arc of the main character was a decent tale and I would have preferred that to have been the main focus, with a fictional tragedy to drive his career choice. It’s not that the Aberfan sections were mawkish, or badly written. On the contrary, they were sensitive and horribly realistic. I just question whether they belonged in this book as the real life event.

4 A Litter Of Bones, JD Kirk. A couple of weeks ago the author popped up on a thread where posters were taking the piss out of his representation of Mumsnet as a crime novel plot device. He said he often half-arses his research so MN shouldn’t feel singled out . I like a gritty crime novel and Mark Billingham doesn’t write his Tom Thorne books fast enough. Stuart MacBride seems to have turned the wackiness up to 11 recently, so I’ve gone off him. DCI Jack Logan adequately fills the gap. Lots of crackling dialogue, some grim crimes (book contains child abduction and murder, plus animal torture, for those who like a content heads-up) and a pacy plot. Perfect! It’s part of a long series, so I’ll be buying them to sprinkle between the more demanding books in my tbr pile.
On further investigation I discovered I am familiar with the author under his real name of Barry Hutchison, as he writes for children too.

I've always had a slight inclination to hide away from the really hard stuff, but wasn't always this bad.

I'm inconsistent with it, and things that should set me off sometimes don't whereas something that should be fairly innocuous get under my skin and upset me for ages. Sometimes I'm ok with being upset by a book/ other piece of media, but at the moment I really need to keep things on an even keel if I can.

Anything to do with losing a child is out for the time being though - I had terrible postnatal anxiety after having DD which really fixated on this, and for whatever reason I've felt it resurfacing a bit recently. I'm fine and know how to cope and that it will settle again like it did before, but no point poking the bear in the meantime!

I have however ordered the book whilst it's 99p, it can sit on my kindle until I'm in a better place!

@BoldFearlessGirl I saw that thread about J D Kirk - he seemed like a good sport when he commented on it! 😄

4 The Plant Hunter - T L Mogford An employee in a Chelsea plant nursery in the 1860s wants to become a plant hunter - the intrepid adventurers who seek out rare specimens in exotic and dangerous parts of the world. He ends up in the wilds of inland China, hunting for a unique and beautiful plant with a map given to him by a dying man.

This could have been so good, given the subject matter, but disappointingly it was only average. The writing was perfectly acceptable but it’s certainly not great literature - nothing about it really enthused me. It’s ok for passing some time if you want something lightweight (damning with faint praise there!).

I do understand- I’ve had to shy away from anything that involves young men and war recently. I had to stop watching the recent film of All Quiet on The Western Front and I’ve been in tears reading Into The Silence because my DS is the age of the young men involved.

3 - The Pants of Perspective - Anna McNuff
I am NOT, nor have I ever been, a runner. I did however enjoy running 3000km vicariously from the South to North of New Zealand. McNuff read the book herself on audible which worked really well. Highly recommended to any armchair travellers/athletes/adventurers. I will definitely read about some of her other adventures at a later date.

Glad you're on an even keel @AliasGrape, I'm definitely more anxious since having kids too, probably natural to some extent but not poking the bear is very wise I reckon! Interesting about the war books/films too @BestIsWest, I'd 100% be the same if I had sons that age.

I would like to join if that’s ok - not sure I’ll be able to read 50 as it’s double what I read last year, but I have a humongous TBR (can’t resist a bargain) and just love to lose myself in a book.

I’ve just started Anna Karenina (taking part in the one-chapter-a-day readalong). I’ve just finished Fraud by Anita Brookner, which I loved, and I would really like to read every one of her books. Hotel du Lac is a favourite of mine and I read a few others years ago, so would love to read every single one eventually.

Favourites from last year:

Small Things like These - Claire Keegan
Treacle Walker - Alan Garner
My Name is Lucy Barton - Elizabeth Strout
Eileen - Ottessa Moshfegh

1 Shrines of Gaiety - Kate Atkinson
A librarian from York leaves her job to pursue 2 runaway teenagers in 1920s London, teams up with the dour Police Inspector Frobisher and becomes embroiled in the underworld of nightclubs, drugs, prostitution and missing girls.

I quite enjoyed this, I love Atkinson's early books but they've been going downhill in my estimation for a while. I hated Transcription but thought I'd give this one a go just in case. Not up to standard compared to her best, but an enjoyable read nonetheless.

Thanks so much ChessieFL I wouldn’t have looked otherwise. I managed to grab a few and this makes me so happy:

Big Girl, Small Town - Michelle Gallen
Anxious People - Fredrick Backman
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
Foster - Claire Keegan
Amy & Isabelle - Elizabeth Strout
Jane and Prudence - Barbara Pym
The Talented Mr Ripley - Patricia Highsmith
Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont - Elizabeth Taylor
Good Behaviour - Molly Keane

Just bought the Joan Aiken one on Emma Watson which I hope will be substantially better than the awful thriller of hers I reviewed last week. I've liked her other Jane Austen ones.

Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont was a dislike from me, but mostly because I expected it to be something in particular and was a bit cross when it proved to be something else! I felt like I'd been tricked, which I know is me being ridiculous. Don't read it if you want fluffy!

@Decafflatteplease After the very first section about Aberfan (which obviously is quite harrowing), it isn't too harrowing. That is just the taking-off point for the book, the entire book isn't about Aberfan and its impact.

Exactly my experience!

3. Motherwell by Deborah Orr

Orr's memoir of her formative years in Motherwell is searingly good in places and there were many reminders of what we lost with her early death from breast cancer. "Perfect" elder daughters will find much to empathise with here. Orr writes great rants too. But this is too long just to be a rant and like previous readers on past threads, I found the constant focus on narcissism too much. Orr seems to mean different things by narcissism at different times and I think the book would have been more effective (and less repetitive) if she had stopped trying to shoehorn everything into "narcissism" and had used just her wonderful turn of phrase rather than jargon to describe what happened and why it was so damaging.

Thanks all I think I'll give it a go!

@Thon I liked Big Girl, Small Town by Michelle Gallen

Thanks for flagging the deals - I may get Foster and the Pym. I don't think An Accidental Tourist dwells on the loss of his son. It's more about his weird quirkiness and bonkers relationship @AliasGrape

Just finished The Sentence by Louise Erdrich which I absolutely loved. I've never read anything by her before but will definitely look out for her stuff. It's about a woman Tookie who is sentenced to jail for 60 years. Her sentence is commuted and she comes out and gets a job in an independent book store (owned by the author Louise who in a meta way does in fact own a book shop). This is a love letter to books in many ways - Tookie is a great salesperson and can work out what book a person wants. Her favourite customer is nicknamed "Dissatisfaction" as he's never satisfied with the books she gives him. The story is set from All Souls Day 2019 to the same day in 2020, and is about a ghost haunting the bookshop. It's also about the pandemic, George Floyd, native Americans and lots of other things. I was also inspired by Tookie's books by her bed split into the "hard stack" and "lazy stack".

On the Kindle Deals I got Kindred by Octavia.E.Butler I'll probably end up watching the TV adaptation when it gets a release here. I also clicked on on 5 other books but helpfully Kindle let me know I had already purchased them in the past.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit Always good to see a kindred spirit! It wasn't a bad book at all - I just expected it to be a 'nice' book.

I really enjoyed Kindred and didn’t know it was being made into a TV series.

Yes and laugh at me all you like but I thought it was written by Dame Elizabeth Taylor and would therefore be full of glamour and handsome men.

A world away

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit Oh dear! Your expectations were even further from reality than mine were. I'm sorry you were so disappointed in your quest!