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?

I'm another who didn't get on with the Sally Rooney books. Thankfully mine was a library copy, but I do delete books from my kindle that I really don't like.

When it first came out and people started saying there was a new must-read novel by an Irish author, I wasn’t paying attention at all and made the terrible mistake of assuming that Conversations with Friends was one of those slightly cosy, heart-warming tomes by a Maeve Binchy type of writer.

Then I read it and found out how very wrong I was 😵‍💫

Sticks head above parapet…

I like Sally Rooney, I think she’s an absolute master at show don’t tell, characters come through so compellingly through their words and actions.

…ducks back down…

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

There's been a lot of chat about this the last couple of days, so when I saw this in a prominent place in the library yesterday what else was I going to do?

A very quick read, and I am definitely a fan! It's a very funny book - not, perhaps, pace The Times "very probably the funniest book ever written" - but I genuinely laughed out loud quite a few times. The parody of popular rural novels of the era is clever but not nasty. I can imagine someone today writing a parody of an entire literary sub-genre would be funny but much more brutal.

As well as the humour though, there's also wisdom here I think, about the differences between regular and dysfunctional families. From early in the book, when our hero is quickly finding out the character of some members of her extended family, comes this, as good a description of narcissists or crazymakers as I've read:

"Persons of Aunt Ada's temperament were not fond of a tidy life. Storms were what they liked; plenty of rows, and doors being slammed, and jaws sticking out, and faces making unnecessary fuss at breakfast, and plenty of opportunities for gorgeous emotional wallowings, and partings for ever, and misunderstandings, and interferings, and spyings, and, above all, managing and intriguing. Oh, they did enjoy themselves! They were the sort that went trampling all over your pet stamp collection, or whatever it was, and then spent the rest of their lives atoning for it. But you would rather have had your stamp collection."

Also - recommendations that just pop up almost out of nowhere like this are one reason why I love this thread!

Hope you're fully recovered soon @ICrunchCrispsNotNumbers !

The Hawthorne books are really interesting @MaudOfTheMarches and it's good to know that famous authors get nervous too!

1: EC Bateman - Death at the Auction
2: Sophie Irwin - A Lady's Guide to Fortune-Hunting
3: Deanna Raybourn - Night of a Thousand Stars
4: Lynn Messina - A Brazen Curiosity
5: Lynn Messina - A Scandalous Deception
6: Lynn Messina - An Infamous Betrayal
7: Lynn Messina - A Nefarious Engagement
8: Richard Armitage - Geneva (audiobook)
9: Hazel Holt - Death of a Dean
10: Richard Osman - The Bullet That Missed

11: Anthony Horowitz - Stormbreaker

Of course it was still great @Natsku

12: Rosie Talbot - Sixteen Souls

Charlie is a teenager in York who can see ghosts after a near-fatal illness - he realises some of them are vanishing and joins up with another 'seer' and some friends to work out what's happening.

It's YA fiction and I enjoyed the beginning and the premise, but then thought it might actually have been written specifically for YA, as I lost the thread of what was going on I mean there's a group of four teenagers, one's gay, one's bi and one's trans (the last is presumably straight!) - is this typical nowadays?! My DC are a bit young for this still so I wasn't sure if it was representative of today's teenagers or just shoehorning the 'cool' issues into the book, and it felt like the latter. Between that and the plot getting ever more convoluted I ended up just skim reading the last third, which was a shame as the first third was great, but the middle third I found overly confusing.

On to Sophie Hannah - Closed Casket, one of the new Poirot mysteries - hoping it's good to make up for the tripe that was Haven't They Grown...

Re Sally Rooney. I read CWF while on holiday in Tenerife a few years ago. Someone at my book club recommended it.

It was okay for a holiday read. I attempted to read Normal People too, but gave up halfway though. Haven't read any of her books since.

I've also attempted to watch the BBC adaptations of NP and CWF, but they were both really dire.

Thanks @Clara! ❤️

And I love all The Alex Rider love on this thread. I thought I was the only adult that read them until I joined up here 😂🙂❤️

My Name is Lucy Barton Elizabeth Strout.
Meh

Conference at Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Set 15 years after CCF, Flora is now a married mother of 5, the farm has been turned into a conference venue and the Starkadders have scattered. This definitely isn’t as funny as the original, but I still enjoyed it. It won’t change your mind if you didn’t like the original though!

Another who is never going to read another Sally Rooney book. I read Normal People, didn’t really like it, but thought I would give her another go as I already had Conversations With Friends on my kindle. Didn’t like that either so won’t be bothering with any more. I really don’t like her writing style.

Haven't they Grown seems to be the book I've read which gets the most "updated" notifications from Goodreads. There is hardly a week goes by that I don't get another "someone else has commented on Goodreads saying "Sophie Hannah just stop it right now. You started off so well all those years ago but it's gone badly wrong now"" notification.

I've got some Sally Rooneys on the Kindle. You lot aren't really selling her to me.

I DID start (re) Wolf Hall and am wondering why I didn't get into it the first time. I think because I was on a beach I cba to look various things up, plus all those Thomases, plus I've read a couple more Katherine of Aragon timeline books since, so all's well. I'm not about to hurl it out of the window which is a relief. Love it.

I'm with you @LadybirdDaphne as the sole Sally Rooney defenders on this thread... in fact I think Normal People is a masterpiece and one of the best books I've ever read...

I'm on to Colleen hoover.
There's so much love for her books so here goes.

Solidarity, Grannie.

I’ve not been drawn to Sally Rooney so haven’t read any of her stuff, I’m always at least 5 years behind everyone else anyway.

I have also never got to Wolf Hall, though I have some of the trilogy when they were in the Kindle sale. I will get to these but they aren’t pressing for me.

I also liked parts of Normal People (& thought the Beeb adaption was fab!). I think she stead characters very well but she lacks a bit of humour, everyone is terribly earnest, and emotionally stilted. There's also some weird older man controlling thing going on which makes me feel uncomfortable ( in CWF & BWWAY).

I actually found the email parts in Beautiful World the least convincing. No-one writes emails like that or speaks like that. For me the second half of the book, when they're all in Ireland together, was much stronger. I'll keep reading, am interested to know whether she'll keep writing the same book at different stages of her life!

DD1 (13) and her mates are very into Colleen Hoover @kateandme . I suspect she's the Jilly Cooper of this time - although without the humour... Maybe more Virginia Andrews.

I'm in the "I don't like Sally Rooney's novels" camp too. I tried Conversations With Friends and was a bit meh about it. I tried Normal People. I finished it because I was determined to but I loathed it. I have no plans ever to read another Sally Rooney novel. Not my cup of tea.

Conversations with Friends left me a bit cold. I loved the TV adaptation of Normal People, though and would definitely give Rooney another go.
I should probably try again with Wolf Hall which is one of the few books that defeated me, rather than me choosing to abandon it. In fact I think the only other one is Ulysses. I don't know why I didn't get on with it - I like that period of history, I know plenty about it and I don't mind some semi-experimental narrative techniques if things are happening.

I loved Wolf Hall. I've read it twice and plan a re-read of it this year, together with Bring Up the Bodies and the Mirror And The Light (which I haven't read before).

I thought the TV adaptation of Normal People was great (and made me a huge Paul Mescal fan) though it sanitised the book a fair bit.

@Stokey you're right on the older men vibes, I think it's intended to be uncomfortable. I see SR's main interest as power in relationships, and I think she has a pretty pessimistic view of our ability to form relationships without trying to wield that power and hurt one another - which I don't share necessarily but I think is fascinating to see explored.

To me her books are part of a fairly long history of novels about people who are unable to love in the way that they want because of the structures they're living in, whether societal or psychological.

I haven't read any Sally Rooney and it's because someone said on one of these threads in another year that she had enough teen angst at home and didn't want to read about it 😄. Put me right off it! Hate teen angst / romance novels and did even when I was a teenager so don't think it's me being an old grump.

4. Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death - C Beaton

A quick audiobook narrated by Penelope Keith. I enjoy these. They're good fun. They are whodunnit type crime novels set in the Cotswolds and they poke gentle fun at the genre (I think). I love Agatha too. Some of it hasn't really aged well, but it doesn't make me enjoy it any the less as it's of its time

Just checking in to join @LadybirdDaphne and @GrannieMainland in the "I like Sally Rooney" corner 👋

I was kind of ambivalent about Conversations With Friends a few years back and it didn’t inspire me to want to read any more Sally Rooney books.

On the other hand I did really enjoy the tv adaptation of Normal People and I wondered at the time if I’d have been as sympathetic to the characters in book form - I have a suspicion not, for some reason I can tolerate the naval gazing angsty teen stuff in tv format but far less patient with that kind of thing in books. Maybe because with TV I can zone out and do other things when I start to find it a bit much.

I wouldn't say I enjoyed reading Sally Rooney, but I appreciate her writing. It's very sharp, cool and poised. All the same, I find her characters very irritating in their ability to express themselves in their relationships. I think Grannie's reference to power in relationships is very true and I agree that the characters are constrained by circumstances.

@AliasGrape that's interesting because I'd say the characters are definitely less sympathetic in the book - not more angsty exactly, but you see more of their thoughts towards each other and they are much less nice, often quite cruel.