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?

10. The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn

This has been reviewed a fair bit so I won't bother with a synopsis. It was overlong and I liked, rather than loved it

I read Cold Comfort Farm aged 16 and found it tolerable.

Haven’t read Jean Brodie but should.

I like dogs and grew up with spaniels, hope to get a King Charles Cavalier this year.

Live in a detached house 25 min walk from the city centre. Think I made bread and butter pudding once but not a big fan.

Like some early Coldplay eg The Scientist and Clocks. Watched Friends in the 90s but mostly because my friends did.

Can speed-dry pants in summer in NZ just by putting them in the sun for approx 0.05 seconds. Radiators have not reached us yet

In other news, finally called a plumber to fix the hot water supply to the bath and can read in the bath again! This should significantly increase my reading rate.

I like Coldplay, Friends and bread and butter pudding. No dog. But it’s so long since I read CCF that I can’t remember what I thought about it…

TattiePants - you’ve probably started by now but I rate both Love in a Cold Climate and A Gentleman in Moscow.

I have quite a soft spot for Don’t Tell Alfred and have read it more than once.

I’m halfway through Love in a Cold Climate and loving it. I’ll read A Gentleman in Moscow next as I started it in lockdown then put it down for some reason and didn’t pick it back up.

@Stokey I really enjoyed Transcendent Kingdom, and I agree with you that her job as a scientist added something different to the more 'typical' plot themes of identity, racism, addiction.

Joining a bit late this year!

Here’s my list so far

1. The Lives of Christopher chant - Diane Wynn Jones
2. No Such Thing as Normal - Bryony Gordon
3. One Last Secret - Adele Parks
4. Dear Edward - Ann Napolitano

Am currently trudging through Spare, but by this point I’m basically ready to give up. At first I was enjoying the insights into royal life, but now I’m rolling my eyes and sighing every two minutes at the griping and how repetitive it is.

I really disliked Love in a Cold Climate.

Here are some of my recent reads:

Courtiers by Valentine Low
Revenge by Tom Bower

After reading Spare I wanted to get a different perspective. These are both worth a read if you’re interested in how the Royal Family works. Harry and Meghan don’t come out of these books well.

The Vanishing of Margaret Small by Neil Alexander

I enjoyed this although some of it was quite predictable. Margaret is in her 70s and suffers from learning difficulties. She starts receiving letters and money from someone calling themselves ‘C’. This leads Margaret to reflect on her life growing up in an institution. One of the ‘Eleanor Oliphant’ genre.

Mr Wilder & Me by Jonathan Coe

This is a bit different from his usual ‘state of the nation’ books. Here a young Greek woman ends up working on film sets with Billy Wilder and reflects back on this in her later life. Despite knowing nothing about Billy Wilder I enjoyed this apart from a weird scripted episode in the middle which felt jarring compared to the rest of the book.

I’ve had Conference at Cold Comfort Farm on my TBR list for a bit so given recent discussions I’ve dug that out!

Right at the end of the month- two five stars arrive for me.
I’ve been listening to The Iliad, (book 10 for me this year)* and wasn’t expecting to love it as I already know the story so well (I’ve read three of the retellings- The Song of Achilles, The Firebrand and The Silence of the Girls*). But I enjoyed it very much and see so much of our current society’s obsessions with beauty, fame and heroism having its beginnings back then. 5/5.

The other 5 star (which I’m way behind the times in reading) and my book 11, is An American Marriage by Tayari Jones. Roy is imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. The book follows his relationship with his wife Celestial through his imprisonment and eventual release. It looked at themes of race and fatherhood too and I found it moving and thought-provoking, despite neither main character being particularly likeable.

Thanks for the birthday wishes everyone, @ChessieFL agree Deborah Sugg Ryan is fab, always found her sections in the House Through Time series fascinating.

Whoops name change fail!!

Book 7 wolf Hall Hilary Mantel this has been on my tbr pile for about two years and I've been avoiding it thinking it would be heavy going but how wrong I was. How cleverly written and observed. My big decision now is whether to buy the next one and dive straight in

@BaruFisher I really liked An American Marriage too.

Do It!

10. The Pocket: A Hidden History of Women's Lives, 1660-1900 - Barbara Burman & Ariane Fennetaux

After the massive frustration of having no pictures at all in Clare Hunter's book about embroidery, I decided to treat myself with this sumptuous volume crammed with delectable photographs. It’s an academic study really, and the language is often as you’d expect (eg ‘drawing on phenomenological notions of the body image that may incorporate inanimate objects, we can see that various aspects of the user's experience of the pocket meant pockets were part of the embodied experience of the wearer') - but the history of women's pockets, which were traditionally made as separate items and tied round the waist under the skirts, is so fascinating, and packed here with so many quotations from diaries, letters and Old Bailey trial records, that it was irresistible. And the illustrations in this beautifully-produced book are superb.

Hi @cassandre Good to hear from you :) I'm interested in reading one of her novels next. Maybe Passion Simple.

Just catching up....

Never read Cold comfort farm but may have to add to TBR. Adored friends and it is one of my comfort shows but agree lots of jokes hit differently now. Not a coldplay fan - want a dog and can finally get one after years of renting! Bread and butter pudding is fine but wouldn't ever make it myself and new house has no mould in bathroom but previous flat did due to a leak from upstairs that my landlord didn't fix for 2 months!

Just catching up - like others I'm not doing so well in keeping up this year. Work is truly horrible at the moment. I'm reading to distract myself but feeling very out of sorts. Also, building works - we were without a bath for several months while our bathroom was being redone and it really cut into my reading time. I have five books on the go, although one of those is Anna Karenina (so just one chapter a day, and again I'm AWOL from the readalong thread). The others are The Valley of the Dolls, The Plant Hunter by TL Mogford (brilliant so far, would probably appeal if you liked Miss Benson's Beatle, though I think this is better), The Sentence is Death (thanks for the Anthony Horowitz chat - I'd forgotten how much I liked him) and Dear Reader by Cathy Rentzenbrink.

Bread and butter pudding - no thanks, but the savoury versions look good. Anything with cheese and bacon is fine by me.

Nancy Mitford - I want to find her hilarious but I'm lukewarm.

Haven't read CCF. Usually like that era so will read it at some point. Interesting that it's a satire on Precious Bane - a lovely friend lent me that ages ago and I've never got past the first few pages, so may I need CCF as an antidote.

Coldplay - if you want to see how far up himself Chris Martin is now, check out the BBC's documentary on Claridges, where he sings "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" to a group of bemused housekeeping staff in the new penthouse suite. I couldn't have cringed harder.

6.To The Land of Long Lost Friends - Alexander McCall Smith
One for fans of the series - I enjoyed it.

@StColumbofNavron I found l’Assommoir grim, grim, grim but absolutely amazing! So much so that I’ve just ordered the very first in Zola's series about the Rougon Macquart family La Fortune des Rougon from the library. I think that l’Assommoir is the 7th so I have some catching up to do.
For @cassandre, @PepeLePew and anyone else who has read l’Assommoir I thought you might like to laugh at my current ridiculous juxtaposition of life and reading choices: Having said I needed something a little more upbeat next I picked up Rooney’s Beautiful world, where are you? from the library yesterday. I have since been marvelling about 2 points. A) this would have a made a great alternative title for l’Assommoir 😂 and B) our preoccupations have changed somewhat in the past 150 years! Starving bellies vs navel-gazing.
PS this is not to say I’m not appreciating my current read, just that, as is often the case, my previous read and my current mood are certainly affecting my thoughts about it.

Sorry you’re having a crappy time at work @MaudOfTheMarches

I’m lukewarm about Nancy Mitford too, that’s my ‘will I be kicked off the thread?’ equivalent to Cold Comfort Farm and the Provincial Lady question, so I’m glad I’m not alone there.

I’ve got Hons and Rebels on the tbr pile (admittedly it’s been there about 4 years now) so will be interested to see if I get on better with Jessica.

I started (in actual paper book form) Queenie last night. My friend sent it to me in a box of non baby related things ‘because you’re still you’ when I first had DD, who is now 2.5 and I’m finally getting round to reading it. It’s not the paper book I’ve had longest unread on my shelf, far from it, so hoping I can clear a few of those too this year now I can have a reading lamp on in bed again!

1. So Sweet a Changeling Ruth Adam

Would like to thank @Terpsichore for her review of this. I would never have read it without these threads, but something about the review sparked my interest. I bought a second hand copy from Abe Books. It is an old hardback from the 'Boots Book Lovers Library' - whatever that once was. Really enjoyed reading a real book for a change - it's nearly always tablet or kindle these days. Have just finished reading it in the bath :-). I found it a real oddity/curiosity. For those who havent read terp's review, it is about a staid middle aged couple (Bernard & Alma) who attempt to adopt the daughter of Cherry (a single nurse). From the synopsis you might expect something gritty along the lines of A Taste of Honey (that I think was also written in the 50s). However, they couldn't be more different. Apart from one violent incident early on (that is rather incongruous with rest of the novel) it is all very gentle. Nobody gets emotionally overwrought about anything. Alma and Bernard are very stiff upper lip and Cherry seems very emotionally detached from her child and situation. The attitudes and behaviour Cherry experiences seem rather sympathetic for the time (presumably to further nudge our sympathies towards Alma & Bernard) and you have accept a rather unlikely stream of events as the novel progresses. Despite all this, I quite enjoyed reading it. Although problematic and hideously classist, the 50s world presented is very different from something contemporary - I found it intriguing. At one point Cherry reclaims the child & Alma rather than falling to pieces remains stoical and attempts to cheer herself up by visiting the Chelsea Flower Show (not forgetting to arrange for -'a women in the village' to see to Bernard's dinner) at another point she sees off some rather inconvenient lower class relatives of Cherry's by serving them tea in the front room (unaccustomed to these niceties they spill their tea before skulking off embaressed). I cant quite put my finger on why, but it kept my interest. She's written some other novels that I might seek out.

In other news:
Like bread & butter pudding and bread and gravy. In fact, I'm yet to meet a form of bread I dislike. I'm neutral towards dogs & Coldplay and have never seen a complete episode of Friends. Havent read either CCF or TPOMJB. Although, I think I saw the film of the later on TV when I was much to young to understand it.

Thanks @AliasGrape. Just feeling sorry for myself. This thread is such a tonic compared to the rest of the internet. Lovely to see all the new people.

I've been feeling the same, @MaudOfTheMarches ❤️

I'm halfway though 'Evil Star.' By Anthony Horowitz. It's the second book of the Power Of Five series. It's okay so far, quite different to the books he's written that I'm more used to. I've never read any supernatural literature, so it's a new genre as well. I'm going to spend the series out because I can't read books of a series one after the other, or I get overloaded. I've got 'This Book Kills.' By Ravena Guron, and 'A Terrible Kindness.' By Jo Browning Wroe to read next 🙂

I really love this thread, by the way. It's so lovely just to be able to talk books and relax ❤️

I made a list of books I fancied trying from this thread and took it to my library when I returned Silverview (John le Carre) and My Name is If (Lemn Sissay). They didn't have any of them, so I chose Kit de Waal's 'My Name is Leon' and have only just noticed the similarity, both in the title and the subject matter. I remember watching My Name is Leon on TV a while ago. I don't remember the end, but despite his problems he was having a better time than Lemn Sissay, whose book will stay with me for a long time.