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?

No problem x

Thank you all - I will keep going!

I have also found Daenerys’s storyline to be less compelling than in the television series - just seems quite repetitive.

I'm off of the ones who really liked You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty @EineReiseDurchDieZeit! I completely see what you mean about the wealth porn but that added to the whole dreamlike atmosphere to me.** I'm quite interested in the trendy romance novel resurgence going on at the moment, no doubt tik tok driven.

Book 10 - Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan. I'm the last person to read this so not much to add to all the previous reviews but yes, it's beautiful and profound and unexpectedly dramatic for what starts out as such a slow moving story. I would almost have liked a few more pages to flesh things out further.

Checking in again... Still reading Lord of the rings but it is slow going (although I'm enjoying it) as I have to reread passages due to the sheer numbers of names.

You seem to think she never drank alcohol or did drugs.

She is well known to have enjoyed cannabis, notably during recording sessions.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit we are aligned. I really wasn't a fan, and the fact that it was basically chick lit marketed as literature annoyed me immensely. It was one of my few italicised reads. ( I did quite like Luster though!)

My review from last year

You Made A Fool Of Death With Your Beauty - Akwaeke Emezi.
Every page of this book tells us how beautiful the main protagonist Feyi is. Also every man that she encounters who naturally all fall for her instantly. She isn't very nice to them but that's ok because her husband died and she's dealing with grief. I found this book increasingly ludicrous, particularly the last third where the final love story was unconvincing.

I gave up on the GoT books last year.

I’d got to book 4, was finding parts of it slow going, and then I thought - the published books I’ve not yet read are massive, plus it’s been over 10 years since the most recent GoT book was published.
I suspect by the time GRRM finally gets round to completing the series, I’ll have forgotten enough of what I’ve read to need to reread the books before reading the last GoT books.

So I’ve put them all to one side. If the final books are ever finished then I’ll probably revisit them.

Number 9 Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
DD's latest book obsession is the Percy Jackson books so I'm catching up so we can chat about them. Rip roaring adventure, enjoyed.

Number 10 The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See
Loved this, found the women divers culture fascinating and I never knew about all the horrors that went on in that time on Jeju. The book was fascinating and devastating in equal measure. Realise now I know so little about Korean history and will probably go down the wiki rabbit hole later.

@Natsku Pachinko is well worth a read if you want to read more books set in Korea. It follows a Korean family through the generations , first living in Korea and then once they’ve moved to Japan.

Thanks for the suggestion @TattiePants just ordered it from the library (and saw that my next two books are on their way to my local library - Picture You Dead and Before The Coffee Gets Cold). After those I better read some of the books I own instead for a while and save money (costs two euros apiece to order books that aren't in my local library, which is very annoying as I've read everything in English in my local library so have to pay for every book)

I hope you enjoy it, it was one of my standout reads from last year. I’ve just remembered another book about Korea (North) called Nothing to Envy. It’s written by journalist Barbara Demick and she follows the story of 6 individuals over a 15 year period about what it’s really like living under a totalitarian regime and their realisation that they’ve been lied to their whole life.

I also need to focus on reading the books I already own instead of buying more.

Might have a look for that book too, sounds interesting.

A Spell of Good Things by Ayòbámi Adébáyò
Wow! I absolutely loved this book and totally devoured it. The title of the novel must be a joke as nothing good happens the people in the story - it is utterly heartbreaking. I learnt so much about Nigerian culture through the narrative and spent time goggling Nigerian terms for items of clothing and hairstyles. The novel is wide in scope dealing with how politcial corruption, cultural norms and family expectations affect both those at the bottom and top of the heap and how no one, regardless of current status is ever safe or secure in the changing and violent political landscape. These huge topics are explored through the story of Eniolá from a poor family and Wúràolá from a wealthy one.

Eniolá, is a teen aged boy of average academic ability who is originally from a comfortable middle class background . His family descend into abject poverty when the State decrees that Humanities are of no use and so are no longer taught and his father loses his lecturing job and falls into a deep depression. Wúràolá, is 28 and from a generationally wealthy elite family. She is under pressure to get married before the age of 30 and is also working gruelling long shifts as a junior doctor in an under resourced hospital. Her childhood friend and now lover proposes marriage which utterly delights her family but he starts to become abusive and she struggles to find the will power to repel him. As events unfold around the choosing of a candidate for a Govenorship election the families fates intertwine.

The prose just flows in this epic novel, it felt like a modern Dickensian tale. I could have continued to read about the families for much longer!

I'll definitely read more by this author, apparently her previous book Stay With Me won lots of awards.

@SapatSea I already have Stay With Me on my TBR but I've added A Spell of Good Things after your review. I've read and enjoyed a few books set in Nigeria in recent years so happy to add another.

9 Whisper Down The Lane by Clay Macleod Chapman

I’ve had this hanging around on my Kindle for a while. It’s pleasingly creepy in places. Richard is an art teacher who has buried his childhood. It’s now coming back to haunt him. In the 1980s he was a young child called Sean, who spun tales he thought the grown ups around him wanted to hear. Through his eyes we see the ‘satanic panic ‘ of the era unfold. I confess to getting a bit bored with the transcripts of Sean’s counselling sessions and also the police interviews in the present day, but the rest skips along nicely (or nastily, depending on your pov).

6. An American Marriage

I’ve been meaning to read this for a while now, since I came across this on Pres Obama’s recommended reading list last year or two ago.

I enjoyed it but as the ending is not what I had hoped for, it left me a bit disturbed. The characters are flawed ‘nicely’ and very human. I like that it also raises awareness on certain issues in America.

I’m yet to choose my next book. Most of the top ones are non-fiction so we’ll see

@SapatSea I adored Stay With Me had no idea she had another book - definitely going on the tbr

10.Brave New World by Aldous Huxley this was another great read. A futuristic dystopia where citizens are bred and engineered for a role in a hierarchical society and subject to genetic, social and psychological manipulation. Written in 1931 I was surprised how modern and relevant the premise and themes were to today's society. A fierce critique of consumerist society. The world building, themes and quality of writing were superior to the story itself which did wane slightly at the end but still a standout read. I think it would be great studying alongside 1984.
11.Who We Were Before by Leah Mercer think this was a freebie through amazon firsts as it doesn't seem the kind of thing I would have chosen. Trying to clear some books off there. This tells the story of Zoe and Edwards relationship and its disintegration following the death of their son. The chapters alternate between Zoe and Edward's voice and slip from different time periods. It wasn't bad but some cheesey bits and clunky writing in places. Seemed that everyone in Paris magically spoke to them both in English at every turn etc.

This sounds right up my street. i’ve just borrowed it from my local library’s borrowbox

Second the Korea book recommendations

@Stokey - we do seem to be finding more and more common ground which is really nice.

Hit me with your current favourite fiction and non fiction

13. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

On paper this is very much my kind of thing. I’m not a big gamer but know enough so that I wasn’t lost, and I’m the right generation (the tail end of Gen X) to get the references, but this didn’t fully do it for me. Over the past few years I’ve come to the realisation that generally, to really enjoy a book, I have to find at least one of the characters likeable and I just didn’t like Sadie or Sam. Marx was lovely, but he truly is a NPC. It was good, just not as good as I expected.

Book 13 Carrie’s War by Nina Bawden. Somehow I missed reading this as a child and also missed reading it with my DCs, although I have recommended it to 12 year old DD. Carrie and her younger brother Nick are evacuated to Wales and live with the unpleasant Mr Evans and his timid sister Lou. They finally settle into their new life after a visit to Druid’s Bottom where fellow evacuee Albert lives. Here they meet the strange Master Johnny and Hepzibah Green who gives them much needed love and tells amazing stories. Just as they’re able to return to their mother, Carrie does a terrible thing that she will have to carry with her for the next thirty years. This is a really simple story (with similarities to Goodnight Mr Tom) but beautifully told. I loved seeing the world through Carrie’s eyes and how she (and thousands of children like her) had to quickly adapt to their new surroundings.

Book 14 Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson. I’ve enjoyed most of KA’s books but this really didn’t do anything for me. I’ve owned the book for at least 10 years but put off reading it as reviews suggested it wasn’t as good as her others and it really wasn’t. The book is described as part coming of age story, part mystery and part fairy tale. I wish she’d stuck with the coming of age, with a bit of mystery and left the fairy tale out all together.

The book moves between different generations of the Fairfax family who have continued to live in the same area. In present day the focus is on teenage Isobel and her unconventional family including her mother that disappeared when she was a child, never to be seen again, quickly followed by her father who went missing for 7 years and returned with a new wife.

Isobel has the usual teenage issues to deal with; annoying family, school, first crush etc plus the fact that she keeps disappearing into ‘time slips’. The past chapters then fill in the details of her parent’s and grandparent’s lives and solves the mystery of why they were missing (although I could see this coming a mile off). At one point, we visit Isobel’s distant relatives in the 17th century and get introduced to Shakespeare! I could see what she was trying to do but it was too ambitious and didn’t work for me. There was also a final chapter that tidied up all the loose ends which was just too neat and implausible.

@TattiePants Carrie's War was one of my favourite books as a child. I loved it, and the TV series too. Such memorable characters and so well written. I still have a copy and your review has inspired me to re-read it.

11. I Found You by Lisa Jewell I like her mystery thrillers and this one was entertaining but perhaps not one of her better ones. The plot didn't quite hold together and bits seemed rushed. But I'd still read more of her novels.

14. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Gregor wakes one day to find he has transformed into an insect. It's a short book where nothing much happens, and yet maybe it does. I expect different people will take different things from this and I can kind of see a few themes - family dynamics, physical defects, social isolation. It's well-written and I can see that it is clever but I can't say I liked it. Maybe I'm just out of practice with books like this (it's many years since my English Lit A Level) as I just have a feeling that I'm not quite clever enough to fully get this and I've been left with a bit of a feeling of inferiority which I'm not all that keen on.

21. When The Dust Settles by Lucy Easthope

Pointed out in the deals by @MaudOfTheMarches as an example of real people doing unusual jobs.

Easthope is a Disaster Planner consulting with the government over wide ranging things such as Grenfell, the pandemic and terrorism at home and abroad.

It's quite the insight. I'm not sorry I've read it but it was an extremely dark headspace to go to and stay in and I think you need a particular mindset to do her job. In her personal life her description of persistent pregnancy loss was quite distressing as well.

It's not long but it's heavy