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?

Happy to be back again this year :)
Will be back another time with actual reviews but have been loving the conversation on here so far, especially Shrodinger's Butler and the penis yoga!
Fortuna Sorry to hear you've had such a horrible experience. Hope you're recovering and that a period of hibernation has helped.
Delighted to see lots of people picking up House of Glass - an absolute 5 star gem!

Float as you may of course, I missed that bit

Hope you’re ok @FortunaMajor , it sounds like a terrifying experience.

Thanks All. Getting back on track, I was very shaken for a while. I did a lot of easy reading afterwards.

I don't think it's worth telling you that I read yet another Serrailler/Galloway/Rebus and didn't think much of them and so on. So I'll stick to the decent books and ignore the mundane that don't merit the attention.

I've also dropped another classic clanger. I read Lady Chatterley's Lover and it isn't set in the period I expected. I had something more Jane Austen meets Jilly Cooper in mind and was quite disappointed. [Grin]

@FortunaMajor glad to see you back and hope you're doing OK.
For those of you who've read Troubled Blood would you recommend it? I've held off on watching the BBC adaptation as I wanted to read it first but now I've got it out the library I realise how much of a doorstopper it is!

I tried to tag you too @FortunaMajor when I reviewed Glory as I remember your review from last year. So sorry you've have such a traumatic experience. Take your time and hope books and this thread can provide some solace.

Glad to see you back @FortunaMajor Im sorry that happened to you x

Good to see you @FortunaMajor and sorry to hear about what happened to you. I hope you are getting there now.

That was my favourite Strike book, but I'm a sucker for a cold case, especially one from the 1970s.

@FortunaMajor That sounds terrifying, but good to see you back. I wondered where you'd got to.

@FortunaMajor those near-miss experiences can be very destabilising. Hope you’re doing OK at the moment and good to see you pop back to say hello.

Is anyone else finding the thread impossible to navigate? I have about 185 posts to catch up on - whic I was looking forward to but it keeps crashinG and reloading.

so my apologies for commenting on nothing!! I promise I will go back and read properly.

so far my reads are:

1. Mythos - Stephen Fry
2. Small Things Like These - Claire Keegan
3. Rizzio - Denise Mina
4. Hex - Jenni Fagan
5. A Thousand Ships - Natalie Hayes
6. Foster - Claire Keegan

i will comment on my books shortly as I suspect I am about to get booted again. . .

1. Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith

Like @Stokey said on last years thread this is an extremely strange book, it almost defies summary but I'm going to try.

On the one hand you have this very contemporary literary narrative of Winnie, a Vietnamese American, who has decided to go to Vietnam to teach English presumably in search of roots, herself or both. She finds she can't settle and is having a lacklustre experience.

The other side of the book involves a story set over the course of many years in the Vietnamese countryside.
There we are introduced to a magical realism element. Three children encounter a man whose jaw can open down to his knees and who omits smoke.

How these two are connected doesn't add up til maybe halfway and you really have to keep track of every strand for it to fall into place as you add up which bit of info you got where. It was a bit hard work in that respect. (It does pay off)

I know nothing about Vietnamese culture so I had to wonder if the horror/fable element was part of their folklore. I've only read one other book set in Vietnam and that's Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried (which is brilliant) but that's US POV and set in the War. I was glad to read a book set somewhere outside the usual. It felt like a new underrepresented voice.

I think I probably will bold it because it's the most unusual and original thing I've read since Han Kang's The Vegetarian, it's not every day a book features a possessed talking dog!

Out of interest, since we spoke of it recently, Kupersmith comes from the same UEA stable as Ishiguro and McEwan

Good to see you Fortuna and sorry to hear about your accident. I hope you’re ok. I’m doing similar to you this year - just reviewing books I’ve got something to say about, or books I think others will be particularly interested in, and not bothering with all the average psychological thrillers I read!

@Passmethecrisps have you got your settings to show all posts per page? I also had issues with long threads crashing since the move to the new site so I had to change it to fewer posts per page (Think mines on 50 now). Very annoying but it did fix the problem.

A few of my recent reads:

The Provincial Lady In America by E M Delafield

Continuing my read through of the Provincial Lady series - this is third in the series. This one is also very funny although as with the second in the series I didn’t think it was quite as good as the original. Next up in the series is The Provincial Lady In Russia but I understand from someone else on this thread (sorry, I forget who) that this wasn’t originally written as a PL book but was just the author’s account of her own visit but was later rebadged as a PL book. It will be interesting to see how it differs.

A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe

Just wanted to add to the love for this upthread! I loved this, a very moving book. The Aberfan section is very sad but handled very sensitively, and I really liked the section covering William’s time as a chorister at cathedral school. Definitely one I’m going to reread in future. Not one for those who don’t want to read about the death of children though.

The Secret Diary of Charles Dickens Aged 13 3/4 by Lee Jackson

This was a recommendation picked up from this thread (sorry, again I forget who!) and it was very funny so I recommend this if you just want something funny and light.

Thank you! I think you have solved my problem.

I will catch up later today then.

Sorry to hear about your accident Fortuna, hope you are feeling a bit better now.

My reading is going slowly in Jan as it’s the school summer holidays here and I’m trying to fit working from home round childcare, should pick up in Feb when I’ll have my commute (audiobooks) and lunch break (Kindle) back.

Did manage to finish 2. Lolly Willowes - Sylvia Townsend Warner, as recommended by Backlisted and originally published in 1926. Fed up of being a maiden aunt, Laura Willowes moves to the countryside at the age of 47, where events take a (literally) diabolical turn as she struggles to shake off the limited role her family has assigned to her.

I could have taken or left the first half (a sort of social comedy and really just Lolly’s backstory), but found the second half once she has left London and is exploring her true nature utterly compelling. I think it might be right book at the right time for me (mid life crisis anyone?) - in its closing message that for us as women, letting go of duty and connecting with our actual desires is the core of the sin for which we’ve been branded as ‘witches’ all along. Definitely one for a near-future re-read.

Sorry to hear about your accident @FortunaMajor , hope you’re doing ok at the moment.

Absolutely recommend it. It is a bit of a doorstopper but its the kind of book that you read through quickly because you always want to do one more chapter so won't take long.

Ha, that was me with the Secret Diary of Charles Dickens, @ChessieFL - glad you enjoyed it!

Gosh I can't keep up at all! So sorry you have been having a hard time @FortunaMajor

1. Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie

Zahra and Maryam are growing up in Pakistan on the brink of Benazir Bhutto's election. One night they get caught up in a dangerous encounter and lie about what happened. Decades later they're still best friends and highly successful, well connected professionals in London when the ramifications of that night come back to affect them.

There's a lot in here including a right wing government, racist media and lawless tech companies - I always think Kamila Shamsie's political satire hits a bit wide of the mark so it wasn't totally convincing.

She's very good on relationships though and it's quite similar to the Neapolitan Quartet in its depiction of an intense and ultimately quite damaging friendship. Also very strong on power, different types and how we wield it.

1. Spare by Prince Harry. Couldn't resist skimming this but nothing to add to the INTENSE discourse, except I could have done with less content about helicopters or indeed his penis. No yoga though.

Off to the library to collect Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow today which I've been looking forward to.

Thanks for all the good wishes folks.

Grannie I'm also planning on reading Tomorrow x3 soon. I'm trying to get ahead on the Women's Prize list by predicting what might be on it and getting in before the list is announced. That's highly rated in the eligible books.

I did laugh about your comments on Spare. We haven't received a copy yet in the library, but my colleague is planning to shelve it in fiction.

Thank you @MamaNewtNewt and @Natsku , I did start to watch the series as I had a wobble when I saw how big the book was! I'm not far in and found it really engaging so far, if the book is anywhere near the same I'd definitely prefer to read it first.

Wishing you well @FortunaMajor. A friend of mine went through something similar last August. Take care of yourself.

Your comment on Spare made me smile. * *

OH picked up Spare from Waterstones yesterday at about 11 and was done with it by teatime. "I was only interesting in skimming for the goss". Wonder how many of the people who have bought it are the same?