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?

Thank you for the new thread @Southeastdweller. I'm not sure I'll make 50 this year - managing approximately one a week seems quite ambitious. Regardless, these threads keep me motivated to read more than I would otherwise. Always love reading the reviews - especially when it's something I've read. I'm hoping to complete one adult novel published before 1900 this year, something I haven't managed since GCSEs (which is some time ago).
Really hope you enjoy Anything is Possible @FuzzyCaoraDhubh it was one of my favourite reads of 2022. Off to sort through the half finished titles spread accross borrowbox and my kindle to prioritise what will be number 1 in 2023.

@OldCrone22 Sounds like you've been through a very tough time. For an easy read you might want to try Kate Saunders' Laetitia Rodd mysteries, featuring a Victorian amateur detective. Not literary but nicely written, and they're not gory or upsetting. Also strongly second the Lissa Evans books.

My first finish of the year:

1. The Downhill Hiking Club - Dom Joly
Dom Joly's family history is interesting - born in Lebanon to parents who were both on their second marriages, and who divorced again when he was eighteen, Joly was sent to boarding school in the UK. His family owned a successful shipping company in Beirut and this trip was an attempt to reconnect with the country of his childhood. He paints a lovely picture of the Lebanese landscape, but sometimes relies a bit too much on the male equivalent of jolly hockey sticks bantz. He is travelling with an old school friend who is unable to compute that cereal is not available for breakfast, and a second friend who has brought a "travelling blazer" and a portable Nespresso machine. In between bouts of walking Joly attempts to fill us in on Lebanon's complex history, but doesn't really have space to do it justice. It did make me laugh, though.

My first read of the year is Ordinary Monsters which is currently in the Amazon sale at just £1.79 for over 600 pages. I'm about half way through and really loving it so far. It's a bit YA (although I don't think it IS YA) and rather like a darker, better version of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Would recommend (on current evidence) to anybody who likes Steampunk (it isn't Steam Punk but is set in the late 19th century) or the Philip Reeve Mortal Engines series.

The Alan Rickman Diaries
Somewhat mixed feelings about this. Initially I found it irritating - lots of flights here and there, lists f dinners with with Maggie S and Emma T or lunch with Neil and Glenys, scathing criticisms of plays or films he’s seen, all very luvvie. I kept having to look things up. But after a while I started to enjoy it for what it was. Of course it’s also sad because you know how it ends.
I think I’d have liked more context for some of the entries and we certainly don’t know how much was edited out. I will say that his illustrations are beautiful, he was clearly a talented artist and I’d love to have seen more.

Happy New Year to everyone.

I'd like to join please.

Thank you for the thread and the recommendations.
I've just finished Boneland by Alan Garner - probably sacrilegious to say but I didn't enjoy it. Fortunately it's short so pushed on to the end.

My stand out books for 2022 were
The Empty Men and The Stone Giant, by Luke Smitherd*
The Bees by Laline Paull

I'll be starting another this evening - still deciding !

@eitak22 - I did the Agatha Christie challenge last year. Most of the books were less well-known so interesting in that I hadn’t read them (or not for many years) but some were not as good (in my view) as some of the more famous books.

I’m in for this year. Nearly managed 50 last year but not quite.
I’m currently reading Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen. It’s a brick of 550 pages but I’m doing well and loving it.
Aiming to read more non-fiction and classic novels this year.

Hello and happy new year!

I have participated and lurked on these threads in the past and have found them really inspirational. I think its unlikely that I will manage 50 books but if I don’t aim for something then I will never get my reading mojo back.

I am currently 70% through mythos by Stephen Fry. I am really enjoying it - it’s written so conversationally that it’s like having a lovely chat. My TBR pile is frankly enormous with my next up a Denise Mina Novella which should get me off to a good start.

ok - now I have hung my colours to the mast I am off to catch up on what others are up to.

I'm in too! Like a lot of people here, I'm a long time lurker on this thread and have picked up so many brilliant recommendations here. For anyone trying to avoid doomscrolling, I'd really recommend the Forest app too, has really helped me up my reading time/avoid phone distractions this year.

Happy New Year all, I'm new to this thread too but always have a book on the go.

I've just started Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, lent to me by a colleague who loved it.

I'm only a few pages in but enjoying it so far.

@Purpleavocado Ooh that sounds interesting but not sure I'll do 52 in a year.

@TimeforaGandT I thought that might be the case so will see what I make of it.

Thanks southeast. Happy New Year 50-bookers and welcome to all newcomers.

I'm currently reading The Christmas Bookshop by Jenny Colgan and listening to The Pants of Perspective by Anna McNuff.

Also started the Anna Karenina readalong and will go out and buy a copy of The Old Curiosity Shop next week.

Start as you mean to go on nowanearly!!

Happy New Year & many, many thanks to southeast for all the work to keep this going.

I am still re-reading books in French* so have little to add but will still lurk & so love this thread. When I feel my French is good enough to start reading in English again I have a wish list as long as my arm.

*I moved to France, permanently, a year ago & am not reading any English books as am determined to become as fluent in French as I can & I need all the help I can get as am closer to 70than 60!

Can I join?!
My kids bought me The Twyford Code for Christmas so that's my first one to read. It's the first time they've ever bought me a present without DH being involved so they are keen for me to get on and read it.
My mum gave me Hamnet and Seven Moons of Maali so they will be books 2 and 3.

I’ve just finished The Ink Black Heart, Robert Galbraith
Loved it, and am a huge fan of the Strike series.
Now I’ve got Ducks Newburyport ready to start and it’s been on my TBR list for ages so am looking forward to it.

@NoWrecksToday, this is the year I will read Ducks, Newburyport! It's much loved on these threads but so far I've been a bit intimidated by it - I think it's time.

Thanks for the thread @Southeastdweller and HNY to 50 Bookers old and new! My resolution for 2023 is not to buy any more books aside from my Audible subscription - I have a stack of TBRs plus a big wish list from the library which ought to see me through.

First couple of finishes for me:

1 Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar - Simon Sebag Montefiore

Despite misgivings from @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I found this very readable, albeit in small doses. Its tight focus on Stalin's claustrophobic inner circle assumes prior knowledge of what was going on in the wider Soviet Union during the book's span (from the 1930s to Stalin's death), and I had to Google some of the facts to remind myself of eg the Ukraine famine and just why Bolsheviks hated the kulaks so much. Anyway, it captures the horrors, paranoia and extremely short life expectancy of the period in vivid and well-researched detail.

2 Fat City - Leonard Gardner

My 'light relief' from the above. A Backlisted recommendation, set in the boxing underworld of 1950s California, it's a top-quality, if bleak evocation of the world of seedy hotels, barflies and men trying to fight their way out of desperate situations.

Now on The Gold Machine by Iain Sinclair which isn't any more of a light read than either of these!

@MegBusset
Congratulations in completing the Montefiore monster.

This will be both our year for Ducks then noodle!
It does look a bit of a brick, but as you say it’s had a lot of love on here.

I bought Montefiore’s new one ‘The World’ the other day. It is a monster but was half price in hardback and I had vouchers. I met him when he was promoting his Romanov’s book years ago. I like his fiction too, though I have got to book 2-3 in the trilogy because I’m not great with a series and the first one was sensational, but harrowing.

I'm tempted by the Romanovs and Jerusalem books - maybe later in the year when I've got a few lighter reads under my belt!

1. Peace Is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh

Around Christmas time I always end up musing on the age old problem presented in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina "All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" Sometimes I have anger and nowhere to put it, hence this.

This is short and will be very re-readable but it is oversimplistic, Hanh declares that once you understand why a person behaves the way they do, love and compassion follow. I don't think this is true. I think that you can understand why an adult is an arsehole, but that does not make them less of an arsehole or any easier to deal with (in my experience any way )

But, this is me trying.

I would welcome any and all recommendations about anger, difficult families and boundary setting.

@noodlezoodle @NoWrecksToday

I DNF'd Ducks, Newburyport last year, on paper I should have loved it, but I just couldn't cope with it stylistically.

Anyone know why we are getting bullet points when it should be a number?

Yes @EineReiseDurchDieZeit I can understand why that would be. I’m hoping to harness my New Year momentum to get me through it. Let’s see!

Placemarking all you lovely people