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?

Oooo my dad had an old copy of the Bachman Books! I remember stealing it as a teen and reading The Long Walk which was incredible. I don't think I read Rage though, so will have to borrow it again when I visit him next! Thanks for the tip.

@BoldFearlessGirl are you my DD? She has a treasured and battered copy of Bachman books too.

@BoldFearlessGirl @Panda89 Roadworks (which IIRC was in the same collection) is pretty ace too

There’s a few copies around then

The Long Walk is astounding. Beats The Hunger Games into a cocked hat. The Running Man bears no resemblance to the Arnie S film (a good thing). I should probably revisit Roadwork now I’m this side of 50, although even at 16 the impotent anger of the main character as his world is demolished around him steamed off the page.

I firmly believe King’s effective self-cancellation of Rage was a cowardly act. It gives a book power to be Banned and he should have stood by it.

@Panda89 Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult is about a school shooting in the US. A bit of a different take but I’d highly recommend A Mother’s Reckoning by Sue Klebold who is the mother of one of the boys responsible for the Columbine shooting.

@Panda89 Three Hours took me a bit by surprise too, really enjoyed it. Like TattiePants I was going to suggests Nineteen Minutes. Although I read that when I was deep in my Jodi Picoult phase in my mid-twenties and have gone off her work since - not sure if that is down to a change in what she writes or a change in me. Nevertheless, I remember really rating it at the time that I read it. I also read One Breath Away by Heather Gudenkauff a few years ago, which is about a school shooting. I think I enjoyed it at the time but I can’t really remember it much now.

The book that relates to a school shooting - or rather the aftermath - that really blew me away was Only Child by Rhiannon Navin. Completely different to Three Hours as it’s not a thriller, and instead focuses on those left behind after the event. A very emotional read that isn’t for anyone feeling fragile at the moment, but otherwise I would very highly recommend.

Just finished The Edinburgh Skating club by Michelle Sloan, given to me by DSM. I don't even want much to relate the plot of this, for fear the book sounds better than it is. Because indeed the concept (of the provenance of the famous Edinburgh painting The Skating Minister) is promising but then Sloan shoehorns in female and gender identity, a bit of cross dressing, two time frames, middle aged historians and art historians, neither with any other commitments it seems racing around like Nancy Drew, blackmail, subterfuge, wine, giggling, anagrams, and cameos form Burns and Hume.

God, it's awful.

Sloan was previously a children's author, I gather , and it really shows. This could easily be read by 12 year olds. There is nothing adult enough for that not to be. Why are authors not satisfied for writing for children? Are they trying to cross over a la JKR, perhaps? Kiran Milwood Hargraves seems to have succeeded . I am afraid Sloan has not.

There isn't even a note at the end to properly explain whether there even is a story surrounding the painting.

I have just taken delivery of a book released today, hotly anticipated and extremely exciting! No, not That book but Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo. I loved The Ninth House and I’ve immediately promoted this sequel above The Marriage Portrait as my next fiction read.

Just to say I managed to find a pdf copy of Rage online a few years ago when I began my reread of Stephen King books in order. As I recall it was pretty tame compared with some school shooting books and some of his other books.

Yep, it was her friend's Mum. It was also a really gruesome murder, I mean, all murder is gruesome, but this was particularly nasty. I wont go into details, its all out there if anyone is interested. Not because the Mum was abusive or anything, but because they thought they could stay together.

She's now 84. Time to retire and enjoy the very long life that she stopped another woman from having.

6. Good Pop, Bad Pop by Jarvis Cocker

This has been reviewed a few times on this thread and I am firmly in the love it camp. Jarvis takes us through his early years through the medium of tut that has been stored in his loft. I was already a big fan of Jarvis and Pulp and this book just made me love him all the more. I found it interesting and funny, there’s clearly going to be a Vol 2 and I can’t wait.

I'm not sure if I'm picking better books (probably as my current TBR list is pretty much based on bolds from this group) or just in a good place reading wise but I'm on a bit of a roll at the moment and am loving what I am reading.

@PepeLePew As I recall, The Death of Grass is one of the first books that @CoteDAzur and I argued about! In my possible nativity, I thought he made people go crazily amoral too quickly. I read it before we actually had people fighting over toilet rolls in lockdown or some new drink in Aldi recently!

Whoever said that King was cowardly for taking Rage out of circulation - sorry, but I can't agree. He took a considered response and chose to remove it. We may or may not agree with the conclusion he formed, but I can't see that as cowardly.

Bit late but can I join in please? Am absolutely loving all these recommendations although also concerned I am a slow reader and there are so many good books to read!

1, Lessons In Chemistry

Currently reading Once Upon A River - am really trying to read more than I have previously. To make a conscious effort to fit in reading times here and there.

1. Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Seems that by coincidence me and @Owlbookend have finished this at the same time. So, everything said below plus my tuppence worth which is:

I really enjoyed this book, I liked the voice, which I found authentic. The forced medical experimentation on black people in America is such an important subject matter and I believed in it's world and characters. It's really nice to have a bold this early after so few fiction bolds last year.

I want to point out as well, that if you've read Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks which is a non fiction similar subject mattef and thought that was brilliant like I did, this might be the fiction for you.

Sadly, it's back up to £8.49 on Kindle, I feel lucky to have got it for 99p

@Whosawake I loved Queenie last year it might have been me. It was 1 of only 3 fiction books I was willing to "bold" last year.

The Long Walk is so good, isn't it? I wish he'd done more of that short pithy punchy fiction. It's all that's so good about King distilled into a waffle free novella. And none of the "didn't know how to finish this so brought in some pointy headed leather aliens with magnifying glasses". I won't name the book for fear of spoilers but it's the closest I've ever come to chucking a book across the room.

And @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I agree it all falls apart rather quickly in Death of Grass which was one of the things that really struck me. My conclusion was that the big horrible event in London (or threat thereof) was what did it. But I suspect civilisation is very fragile indeed and it doesn't take much for it all to unspool.

This thread is not good for my ever increasing TBR pile. That’s The long walk and Take my hand added.

I’m currently reading City of girls by Elizabeth Gilbert and really don’t know what to make of it. It’s a light and easy read which is what I need and I’m interested to see where it goes but by god, I’m finding the main character annoying!

@PepeLePew And it was such a good book until the aliens came into it. 😂

Agree that The Long Walk is outstanding.

Speaking of King his The Green Mile is in the Kindle deals, I’d anybody fancies a full box of tissues read.

I read The Death of Grass years ago, it’s often brutal and disturbing but it’s an excellent dystopian book.

Things do fall apart quickly, but especially after having seen all the panic buying during lockdown, it doesn’t seem that implausible. I’d agree that the event in London sped the disintegration of civilisation up, but probably not by all that much.

Meant to say to @Panda89 if you are up for non fiction then Columbine by Dave Cullen

Can I clarify that The Long Walk is the one by Richard Bachman? I did an Amazon search and it's available as audio and paperback, but The Bachman Books shows for Kindle

I can't recall now if it was actually in one of my editions of Bachman Books, or something else altogether - maybe Different Seasons - that King wrote an introduction (many years after the fact) describing how in the 70s in particular, even for a writer like him, novellas were a really difficult pitch. "Ah, welcome meeestar, to novella airlines" or somesuch 😀

Vernon God Little is about a school shooting. I seem to remember hating it though!

No worries I have self clarified

Damn it. Too many interesting sounding books on here! This thread is not good for me.
The Sentence sounds really good and the one about the French village. The title reminds me of A Village in the Third Reich that I recently bought (not read yet) which is a follow-up to Travellers in the Third Reich - loved that book.
I’m currently reading The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain. It’s great so far. I read Double Indemnity recently and absolutely loved it.

@stokey I hated Vernon God Little too!

4. A Hero’s Guide to Deadly Dragons by Cressida Cowell

DS1’s current favourite book series. I’ve just finished reading this one to him.

It’s Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third’s birthday, and following an unfortunate book eating incident with his dragon, Toothless, Hiccup and his friends Fishlegs and Camicazi set out on a mission to steal a replacement from the heavily guarded Meathead Public Library.

Lots of action and adventure. DS1 loves these books, they’ve really captured his imagination.