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 no really? I love the film of this (Joan Plowright & Rupert Friend) - it's such a comfort watch, so I've always wanted to read the book. Heard great things about Elizabeth Taylor (the writer not the Hollywood star

2 Foster by Claire Keegan. A short, powerful book about the experience of a girl going to foster parents in rural Ireland.

I've just snapped up A Terrible Kindness after reading the comments above - thanks all.

I've got my first DNF of the year. The Fourth Enemy by Anne Perry. Hmmm. So.

Yet another book that didnt say when it was set. It was a new book in the library, published in 2022 and it made reference to a character being a KC rather than a QC. Given that they were quick off the mark to change after the Queen's death, I made the assumption that it was modern day. It isnt.

I did a bit of Googling to narrow down the timeline and I read a bit about the author who I hadnt heard of before. She murdered a woman as a 15 year old along with a friend in New Zealand. She served 5 years. She was given a new identity and moved to Scotland. The film Heavenly Creatures is based on her story and she is played by Kate Winslett.

I understand that she isnt the person that she was in 1954 but I had such a reaction to reading this information, that I put down the book. I'm not reading it. I'm going to read a nice, wholesome Chalet School book now.

I remember my Aunt telling me that years ago, @Tarragon123 . I’ve never fancied reading Perry’s books because of it. Rehabilitation fine. Making a living writing about crime and murder after living out a fantasy with your friend? Not for me, thanks.

I remember my Aunt telling me that years ago, @Tarragon123 . I’ve never fancied reading Perry’s books because of it. Rehabilitation fine. Making a living writing about crime and murder after living out a murderous fantasy with your friend? Not for me, thanks.

I won't laugh at you. I almost joined a North and South thread but realized a few pages in that the posters were discussing the book by Elizabeth Gaskell and not the John Jakes book which inspired the mini series .

Bloody hell @Tarragon123 I didn't realise that is who she was, it was her Mum, or her friends Mum, that was murdered if I recall correctly. I totally agree, her making a living from writing from books seems in pretty poor taste to be honest. I don't think I could read one of her books knowing her background.

Lost my first attempt at saying hi so this is much briefer to say I have got off the mark and finished Cloud Cuckoo Land which I loved.

A comment further up about it's similarity to Station 11 confused me, as I was sure I enjoyed Station 11, but a quick Google points out I cannot remember much of the plot at all, so it obviously hasn't stayed with me.

I think Cloud Cuckoo Land will stay with me and I am delighted to start the year with such a good story. I feel like 2022 was the year of three star reads, and I want five star stories please! (Or at least four!)

I'm not alone then @Taytocrisps I haven't heard of John Jakes myself but I've definitely got the wrong end of the stick on a thread before and been pulverised! Not on this one, it's too good natured.

Got to ask ROI Tayto or NI Tayto? only one right answer!

Sorry @EineReiseDurchDieZeit, I feel at least partly responsible for your Crow Road disappointment!

Thinking about it, my sweet spot is multi-generational family sagas that are often very slow. I shall henceforth think of them as Extraneous Wafflers

And yes, Prentice is a wee shite.

Is that the miniseries with Patrick Swayze? Loved that as a teenager, I had such a crush on him because of that.

I came across the mini series before the novel too. Love both of them!

I've got the paperback of the book of the mini series and also first developed my Patrick love there.

Euw to Anne Perry. Wouldn't be for me either. Write transparently about your own life if you want, but any murderer turning to writing fiction about murder (and I don't care at what age the crime was committed) gives me a big chinny reckon. But then I rarely believe people who have been rehabilitated.

4. Célestine: Voices from a French Village - Gillian Tindall

This is a wonderful book. It’s been on my tbr pile for ages and I've been half-conscious of saving it because there are only (I think) two more Tindall non-fiction books I haven’t read, and I don’t want to come to the end. Her speciality is patient, expert burrowing into a topic, often a tiny area of history that takes her fancy, and producing a tapestry of past lives of extraordinary detail and interest.

In this case she happened to be offered an old needlework footstool from the abandoned house of a long-dead villager in the tiny French hamlet of Chassignolles, where she and her family eventually also had a home. On collecting it, she picked up a case that turned out to contain seven letters from suitors written to one of the house's 19thc occupants, Célestine Chaumette. From those letters, she spins an amazing portrait not just of Célestine, but of this rural settlement and every aspect of its history over more than three centuries, its families - many still living there even today, who became her neighbours and friends - and the changing face of La France profonde. A top read for me for 2023 already.

Be Frank With Me - Julia Claiborne Johnson. Publishing assistant, Alice, is tasked by her boss to go and look after 9 year old Frank, so that his mum -reclusive author M.M. Banning - can finally deliver her long-awaited book. So, Alice travels to L.A and meets Frank, the natty dressing, eccentric, accident prone star of the story...

A lovely, heartwarming story with some flawed but loveable characters. It was one of those books where I found my eyes kept leaking, so whilst a recommended read, maybe not one for reading in public.

That sounds wonderful @Terpsichore - I shall add Gillian Tindall to the wishlist

@Terpsichore I'm off to France for 6 weeks in April. I'll add Celestine to my list. I love to read books that are set in the country I'm visiting and I thought I'd exhausted the French ones

1. Take My Hand Dolen Perkins-Valdez

I chose this based on it being reviewed on BBC's Between the Covers. It follows Civil an idealistic young nurse in early 1970s Alabama. She takes a job at a family planning clinic with intention of supporting women. However, she quickly discovers terrible unethical practices. Based on the real Relf vs Weinberger case it explores the horrific reproductive injustices that occurred in the US. The book does an excellent job of shedding light on the terrible abuses of poor women (and girls) of colour perpetrated by government agencies. The stlyle is very straightforward & direct - i raced through it. Civil's character is used to explore issues of paternalism and consent. Sometimes I felt these aspects and Civil's relationships with the supporhing characters could have been explored more. The book prompted me to research the real case online. As I often do when fiction is based on real events, I was left pondering why some aspects were kept and others changed. About to be very busy at work so my reading rate will doubtless slow down.

3 The Witches by Stacy Schiff
An attempt to clear some of the Kindle backlog – I remember thinking this would be really interesting when I bought it. In truth, it was somewhat interesting, but far too long for what I was looking for. It’s an account of the Salem witch trials (familiar to me in outline from The Crucible – and the characters there were real people which perhaps I hadn’t fully appreciated until now). While I can appreciate the scholarship involved in a book like this, I’d have liked more analysis and less detail – I still don’t have a good sense from the book of why Schiff thinks Salem suddenly suffered these convulsions and lapsed into what looks in retrospect to have been some kind of mass hysteria or what the longer term impact on the US was culturally and socially.

4 The Death of Grass by John Christopher
I’m such a sucker for a Backlisted recommendation but they are usually spot on and this one – from the Christmas edition (which as a side note was a joy if anyone has yet to listen to it – grown men embrace the delights of Ballet Shoes and do it justice as a serious book) wasn’t an exception. But I have to say it is exceptionally bleak. I don’t mind a bit of apocalypse fiction and happily read The Stand in March 2020 as the world fell apart but this really got to me.

A virus in China causes widespread crop failure, and mutates and spreads. Mass famine ensues and civilisation collapses. John Custance, an engineer, tries to get his family and friends out of London to his brother’s farm in the north of England where they hope they will be safe, because his friend Roger is a civil servant and has inside information about what will happen to those who stay in London (spoiler alert: IT’S NOT GOOD).

What is particularly horrifying is the speed with which everyone, even good people, abandon moral codes when faced with difficult challenges. There is no heroism in this book – it’s every man and woman for themselves in a terrifyingly short space of time. Equally dark is the first half of the book – the dispassionate and detached observation of the problems unfolding in Asia and the sense that it couldn’t happen here. Shades of three years ago, there.

It’s a beautifully told story, very spare and easy to read. I loved The Tripods by the same author as a child and he really does write very well. There’s a whole lot of trigger warnings needed – some really unpleasant misogyny, explicit and implicit and some fairly brutal incidents – but I think this deserves to be more widely read because it really is very very good.

@PepeLePew The Death of Grass was one of the first books I ever read on my Kindle. That was almost 13 years ago, so might be time for a re-read. I’d forgotten how good it is. Also a fan of Empty World by the same author, although it must be over 20 years since I last read that.

First finished book of the year- Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams. Thoroughly enjoyed this- picked it up off the back of recommendations here, so thank you whoever mentioned it! I started it thinking I knew where the (predictable) story was going- as it happened, I didn't and it wasn't. Loved the character of Kyazike too, could have happily read an entire novel about her.

Just finished 3/50 Three Hours - Rosamund Lupton
This was a great read, I couldn't put it down and it made me really emotional towards the end which is an achievement.
A weird question perhaps - but can anyone recommend anything similar i.e. a book centred on a mass shooting? I read 'We need to talk about Kevin' when I was a teen and loved that also.

Going to start book 4 of the year later, probably Priory of the Orange Tree.
**

@PepeLePew I've got The Death of Grass on my wishlist too - it’s been on there since before the Backlisted episode, which was very amusing to hear in conjunction with Ballet Shoes!

I remember going on a nice holiday with DH to a pretty cottage in Rutland and driving round all these picturesque little villages listening to The Death of Grass as a Radio 4 drama. That was a bit surreal. I just looked it up and blimey, it was 2009. David Mitchell was the narrator and he did it really well.

Whatever you do, don't read her others, they're shite.

@Panda89 if you can find a copy in a charity shop or similar, Rage by Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman is the best example of that type of book. He withdrew it from publication after the Columbine shootings iirc so it doesn’t appear in any reprints. It doesn’t laud the actions of the main character in any way, but I seem to remember reading a perpetrator of a rl school shooting had it in his locker? It’s more about the mental state of the teenage protagonist, Charles Everett Decker than a sensationalist story.
I read it as a teenager and my battered old copy of the original Bachman Books is one of my most treasured book possessions.