50 Books Challenge 2023 Part Two

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the second thread of the 50 Books 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, it’s not too late to join, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

The first thread of the year is here.

What are you reading?

Also, has anyone read the Jason Steed series by Mark A Cooper? It's similar to Alex Rider. I've read the first two books on Kindle and loved them ❤️

Oops- haven't shared my list so far:

'The Perfect Neighbourhood' by Liz Alterman
'Follow Me' by Angela Clarke
'The Christmas Bookshop' by Jenny Colgan
'The Broken Air' by Lucinda Hart
'An Innocent Baby' by Cathy Glass
'The Kind Worth Killing' by Peter Swanson
'Fledgling: Jason Steed.' By Mark A Cooper
'Britt Marie Was Here.' By Fredrik Backman
'Revenge: Jason Steed.' By Mark A Cooper
'Unwanted by Cathy Glass
'The Reading List' by Sara Nisha Adams
*'River Sing Me Home.' By Eleanor Shearer
'Small Pleasures' by Clare Chambers
*
DNF:
'London with Love' by Sarra Manning
'The Girl with a Clock for a heart' by Peter Swanson

Lost Horizon - James Hilton

This was mentioned in the last book I read as the lead character is loosely
based on George Mallory. A massive seller in its time, the 1930s, I remembered it being on the bookshelves at home.
A group of diplomats in Germany are discussing the disappearance of a former colleague, Conway, who told a strange tale to one of them.

Conway, his assistant, a missionary and an American financier are evacuated by plane from Kabul (disguised as Baskul) when civil war breaks out The plane is hijacked and they are taken instead to a mysterious lamasery in a beautiful Himalayan Valley - Shangri-La. Everything they could want is on hand, good food, music, literature, modern plumbing, the finest of everything. Slowly they discover that a bit like the Hotel California, they can never leave.

Unfortunately the Kindle version is missing the Prologue and epilogue which are key to the story but I managed to find them online though it did leave me a bit confused for a while.

@Wafflefudge

Am sure most people have their own opinion ahead of reading and will interpret the book to match what they expect to hear

That's an interesting thought! I have zero interest in Spare and the RF in general, but I am now sitting here wondering how common it is for people to read in that way, especially books about very current and/or controversial figures. I wonder if some books might even be written to facilitate this? Everyone comes away thinking "see, I was right all along, even this famous person agrees with me!"

@PepeLePew I need to wean myself off my phone too. For me I find I need to have a decent amount of time to read to pay attention to the book otherwise I'm reading but my mind is thinking about other stuff. I will have to try about harder and focus! 😁

I'm also trying to rediscover my reading mojo this year. I'm retired so have more time but it just slips away

Anatomy of a Scandal - this was an easy read but I enjoyed it. Read it in two afternoons

So my list so far:

1 If only they spoke English Jon Sopel
2 Human Croquet Kate Atkinson
3 House of Glass Hadley Freeman
4 Anatomy of A Scandal Sarah Vaughan

I'm in the middle of Lessons in Chemistry and about to start Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen

This is a really interesting Twitter spat:

twitter.com/davidmbarnett/status/1617681757805096960

The changing of the headline and subheading is a fascinating story in itself.

I was reading that earlier Piggy.

So interesting that they had such a deliberately provocative title and changed it, I was very recently told by someone that they would never have so many books in their house like this (my house) and it would be really weird. They backtracked and said for Them but I was like for me no books would be weird

Place marking. Reading Michael Palin in Iraq.

Have opinions on several books mentioned below, but nothing I haven't said before so I'll spare you them.

Crikey, I hope The Haunted Hotel lives up to the hype now 😁

The Haunted Hotel is fun. Wilkie is king.

@InTheCludgie it's a long time since I read them, but I think really the Peter Wimsey / Harriet Vane books are best read in order
Also glad to see the love for A Month in the Country - I think JL Carr is a really under-rated author.

I'm keeping up with my resolution to read more fiction on paper & treated myself to three new proper books in a big Waterstones while waiting for DH to buy clothes including:

1. The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

Linus Baker is a 40-something civil servant who lives alone with his cat. He works at the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, conducting routine inspections of the orphanages that they run. Then, as a meticulous follower-of-procedures, he is selected to conduct an in-depth inspection of a secret institution housing six highly unusual children, and finds his life turned upside down by both the children and their guardians. This is sold as 'a modern fairytale', and definitely walks a very, very fine line between charming and saccharine. There's minimal threat - it's essentially a romance novel, and no doubt that there'll be the appropriate happy-ever-after. It also hits you over the head rather with moral messages. Despite all of this, by the end I absolutely loved it, and I'll unquestionably come back to it again as a comfort read. The romance is actually rather minimal, and the real centre point of the book for me is the relationship between the adults at the orphanage & their children. It's a really beautifully drawn picture of parenting children who are different in some way, and the difficulty of finding the balance between protecting them and helping them find their own feet and deal with misconceptions & straightforward prejudice.

@Sadik That TJ Klune book has been on my wish list for some time now. I also love the cover! Is there a sequel? He has another similar book at least.

Into Iraq by Michael Palin
Regular readers will remember that this was my ‘settle for’ when I failed to find ‘Sex’ in Waterstones.

Sadly, it was not a satisfying substitute. It looks beautiful, but I found it rather lazy and superficial. It’s really short - a lot of the pages are photographs and pretty divider sections, so there’s very little actually said.

Basically, he meets a few people and moans about a few hotels and eats a few fish and feels a bit sad.

I’ve added A Month in the Country to my wish list.

That’s interesting about reading more fiction on paper Sadik - since having DD I’ve read almost
exclusively on kindle and she’s 2.5 now - I’ve finally managed to persuade her into her own room and can have a reading lamp again. I’ve got a pile of paper books by the bed again to start working through but seem to automatically gravitate to the kindle or borrow box stuff first now.

11 Trans by Helen Joyce, I have had this on my kindle for ages and I don't know why I didn't read it before. It breaks the information down into easily read chapters. I would recommend

15. To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara

Having previously thought well of both A Little Life and The People In The Trees (despite their complex and dark subject matter) reading her newest felt like a no brainer. I believe it was @Stokey who didn't get on with this and warned me last year. The plot defies description but I am going to try. It's set in New York, but it's not "our" New York. The civil war was lost and the territory we know as the United States is split into about 6 countries.
(This is never, not once, relevant so why make a point of it?)

So there are 3 sections :

In Washington Square we meet wealthy heir David Bingham in the late 19th Century. In this alternate past, same sex marriage is on equal terms with straight marriage and David is awaiting a marriage offer, just as Charles comes forward, David is taken in by a confidence trickster.

I could imagine this as a whole book, it was engaging enough but I felt that it wrote itself a bit predictably and throughout felt something was lacking

In Lipo-Wao-Nahele which is set in and around the 1990s, David is dating Charles, who owns a big house in Washington Square. They are having a farewell party for Peter who is dying of AIDS. This is juxtaposed against the story of Kawika (meaning David) David's father, in Hawaii and his struggles around trying to preserve indigenous culture. Kawika ends up in the thrall of a man sharing a name with the confidence trickster from Part One (Basically all names and surnames are recycled across sections)

This section, particularly the Hawaiian part, was so boring I nearly DNFd but I'd come too far. Real eyes glazing stuff.

In Zone Eight we are introduced to a future New York, 2090s and a totalitarian state. Humanity has been ravaged by multiple pandemics, Charlie is newly married and working in a lab when she meets a stranger named David.
This section is juxtaposed against a one sided correspondence beginning in the 2040s between Charlie's grandfather Charles and his British friend Peter. It tells the story of Charles' marriage to Nathaniel and their troubled son David.

This is probably the best written section of the book. I enjoyed both Charlie's point of view, and the epistolary part. But it wasn't enough...

Usually when a book is a challenge, you can, at least find something to admire but not here. Despite it being very readable prose-wise all sections have serious flaws and weaknesses. As a whole work, it's not very good to the point of being pointless, the postmodern stuff with the names and everyone being descendant is just eyeroll worthy. It's hugely convoluted, nothing works, there's no satisfying moment where it all comes together. Pretentious doesn't really cover it, it has to be read to be believed

TLDR : Too many Davids

A ghastly disappointment

@dontlookgottalook no sequel to House - I've not seen Klune's other books recommended as much but I will definitely check them out.

@AliasGrape I do like reading non-fiction as an e-book because of being able to highlight passages easily, and it's also much better than poorly printed or very small print paper. Plus of course (as I read on my phone) always having a book with me. But on the whole I think I read more slowly & with more attention on paper.

Having said that I don't know if I'd be better with a 'proper' kindle with the more paperlike pages.

3 Act of Oblivion - Robert Harris

Starting in 1660, royalist civil servant Richard Nayler becomes obsessed with tracking down two of the regicides of Charles I. Colonel Ned Whalley and his son-in-law William Goffe have fled to New England and spend most of the book traipsing tediously around the landscape and hiding down poorly-differentiated holes. This really lacked pace apart from a very unsatisfying, rushed ending, involving a protagonist acting wildly out of character. And the characters in general felt flat and distanced from the reader, although Ned did occasionally show glimmers of being interesting. I understand the plotting was constrained by real historical events to some extent, but this seemed a waste of very interesting base material. Come on Robert, you can do much better!

1. Days Like These by Brian Bilston

I know this is meant to be read one poem a day for the year but I never manage to finish books like that. So I read it all.

There are some really good poems, clever and witty, some with a serious message and some a whimsical tone, and some not so great ones. On the whole it was a 3.5 star read. Likeable, but not especially memorable.

1. The Stubborn Light of Things by Melissa Harrison

A non fiction nature diary covering 2015 to 2020, from living in South London to her move to rural Suffolk. I liked this a lot. There's lots of observation and commentary on nature and wildlife and some shocking facts about the rapidly disappearing species. There's suggestions on what we can do to improve things, however small, like plant insect friendly plants, leave patches of long grass, and nettles for wildlife etc. A solid 4 stars.

Eine it was me. I started reading it on holiday and had to stop as I felt like reading such a boring book was ruining my holiday! I did finish it when I got home but can't really believe how the same author that wrote A Little Life wrote this.

Completely agree with your review.

Stokey - her other books are proper novels that really tell a story in great detail. This is like she had the idea of a novel about a bloke called David, wrote the beginning of three different ones, squished them together and said It's Art, No One Will Notice! I don't get it.

Some of you are flying along. I've just finished my first book The History of Bees by Maja Lunde. This is a dystopian novel. The blurb on the back , compares it to Cloud Atlas and Never Let Me Go. I haven't read either of those books, although I've seen the movie version of Cloud Atlas. At the start of the book we meet Tao who lives in China in the year 2098. Through her eyes and the depiction of her life, we get a glimpse of a harsh future world where the bees have died off and humans have to pollinate fruit trees by hand. The other main characters are William who lives in England in 1851 and George who lives in the US in 2007. William is a biologist who is suffering from depression due to recent events. George is a beekeeper who is passionate about his bees and wants to leave a thriving business for his son.

Although it's a fascinating, if depressing, premise for a book (what will the world be like if the bees all die off), I felt the book didn't live up to its promise. My favourite character was Tao and her story was the one that interested me the most. However, I guessed fairly early on where that story was heading (being careful here not to reveal any spoilers). I was less interested in the other two main characters and their stories were a bit of a distraction from the main event. The characters were a bit one dimensional. A bit disappointing overall.

9. Someone at a Distance - Dorothy Whipple

Read for the Rather Dated Book Club. In post-war England, 40-something Ellen North lives a quiet but happily contented life in a lovely house ('a charming little manor, 300 years old') in the country. Her handsome husband Avery is a partner in a prosperous publishing firm; he dotes on their teenage daughter, horse-mad Anne, and son Hugh, doing his National Service. Everything is perfect.

Into this idyll, as a companion to Avery's discontented elderly mother, comes the watchful and self-contained Louise Lanier, daughter of provincial shopkeepers in a small French town. Louise is brooding over the end of a secret love-affair back home and is out for what she can get. Gradually, sinuously, she interpolates herself into the North family and, when she judges the moment is right, takes Avery - bedazzled, almost hypnotised by her - for herself. Ellen has to face the total ruin of her entire life and everything she took happily for granted.

I first read this when Persephone reprinted it in 1999, before I’d discovered Mumsnet, but there are so many classic MN dilemmas aired here - especially if you’ve spent any time in the Relationships section. Whipple ratchets up the tension brilliantly and the scenes around the revelation of Avery's betrayal, and Ellen's stunned disbelief at the collapse of her 20-year marriage, plus the effect on the children, are gut-wrenching. There are a few rather novelettish passages which is a pity, but I really enjoyed this re-read. And the uber-calculating Louise is a great boo-hiss villain.