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?

Don't worry @MamaNewtNewt I feel the same about Kafka both The Trial and Metamorphosis were very hard work for me.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I don't think I will tackle The Trial for a good while, that's for sure! I think I will slink off for a nice easy read now.

Have ordered tomorrow x3 from Waterstones based on all the recommendations on this thread. Have finished rereading Disgusting Bliss: The Brass Eye of Chris Morris by Lucian Randall today. For those who don't know, he is a extremely clever but very controversial satirist and writer. Randall's writing is pacy and fluent, and you can tell he's done his research on his subject. and I certainly re learnt a few facts about him that I forgot about. I first read this book in my teens so it's been a long time since I unearthed it.

Oh I forgot actor. He played Denholm Renholm in The IT Crowd. 🙂

And I'm up to my twenty book mark on Goodreads now 👍😊

A couple of much read books (on here anyway):

8. Madly Deeply: the Alan Rickman Diaries - Ed Alan Taylor

Little to add to previous reviews. I enjoyed it despite the confusing editing style, and hard to keep up with the relationships to all the people mentioned. I found the afterword very moving though.

9. Small Things Like These - Claire Keegan

@GrannieMainland you're not the last! Beautifully descriptive, lyrical novella; lends itself to an audiobook as I could hear it being read in my head. I liked where it ended, just the right place.

That's one of those books that I associate with slightly smug people who study literature and understand so much better than everyone else... so I've not bothered with it. However early in the pandemic time when Audible had free books to listen to without needing an Audible account, mostly children's stories, it also had The Metamorphosis and DD listened to it, telling me the next morning that she had listened to a story about a man that turned into an insect "it was a bit scary but I liked it" - but did you understand it child??

I think I started Metamorphosis (in German) at university, though it was t one of our set books. Ionesco and his fucking rhinoceros was though, as was the Spanish one where I never did work out if the main character was a man who turned into a dog, thought he was a dog, self-identified as a dog or was treated like one by his wife. He slept in the yard though.

I expect I told potential handsome swains they were my favourites while hiding Judith Krantz under the bed.

Judith Krantz - that takes me back

12. Contested Will - James Shapiro

While I’ve always known that some people held the baffling conviction that Shakespeare didn’t write his plays and sonnets, I’d never really gone into the nuts and bolts of why. Shapiro is an American Shakespeare scholar who wittily explains the history of the debate - basically, some nutcases people couldn’t/wouldn’t accept that it was possible for an 'ordinary' man, about whom very few biographical facts survived, to write such literary masterworks, and insisted that the true author must have been noble and/or learned, hence the campaign on behalf of the Earl of Oxford and Sir Francis Bacon as the secret figures behind the 'upstart crow'. Shapiro calmly demolishes the arguments (imho) and provides plenty of contemporary evidence of Shakespeare being associated with his own plays right from the start - not to mention pointing out the sheer bonkerness of the Baconians and Oxfordians, who at one stage had a theory that Oxford was not only the secret lover of Queen Elizabeth I but also her son (and that she’d had other children as well, including the Earl of Essex). Enlightening and entertaining.

13. May Day - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Long short story or short novella set on May Day in New York in 1919, when in RL soldiers rioted in the streets. This detail forms an integral part of the events leading to a fateful evening party at Delmonico's, bringing together a disparate cast of characters in an impressionistic tapestry that ends in a tragedy. I haven’t read much Fitzgerald, just a few short stories many years ago, and I’d kind of forgotten what a good writer he is, but dark - nay, bleak.

I've brought A Spell Of Good Things and Stay With Me Just now too. Thanks @HikingforScenery! 🙂

Just reading the chat about the GoT books, is anyone else (and sorry I know this is a bit grim and morbid) thinking that there's a good chance GRRM won't complete the series? I realised a few days ago that he's now in his mid-seventies and it's been over a decade since his last book was out. Apparently he's three quarters through writing the next one, but what if it's potentially another decade in the making for the final one in the series?

I've finished books 2 and 3.

1. Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson

I'm a big KA fan. I loved Behind the Scenes at the Museum, Life After Life and A God in Ruins. I also liked one of the Jackson Brodie books. I didn't care for this one much. It's set in the Roaring '20s in London. There are three main characters. Nellie Coker (newly released from prison) runs an empire of nightclubs. Detective Frobisher is investigating a series of murders of young women. Gwendolen Kelling has agreed to work as a spy for Frobisher whilst she investigates the disappearance of two friends from home. The book follows these three characters but there's a huge cast of minor characters, including Nellie's six children. There are also multiple sub-plots. It took me a while to get into the book because the narrative kept shifting from one character to another and from one sub-plot to another. If you plan to read it, I'd recommend you draw up a list of the characters as you go along and keep it close by for easy reference. The book paints a very vivid picture of the era and I got the impression that Atkinson had done a huge amount of research. It also demonstrated how dangerous London was for vulnerable young women. I thought the book ended very abruptly and the ending wasn't one I would have chosen.

1. While She Sleeps by Arlene Hunt

This book was a Christmas present. I don't usually read thrillers because, at the risk of sounding sanctimonious, they usually feature the murder of a woman (or several women) and there's so much of that in real life that I don't really relish the prospect of reading about it as entertainment. Anyway, like I say, it was a Christmas present so I figured I'd read it in case the giver (family member) asked me about it. Despite my reservations, I quite enjoyed it. A woman has been attacked at her home and is in a coma. Detective Inspector Elliot Ryan has been teamed up with Sergeant Nicola Kane to investigate the assault. It seems to be a straightforward case - everyone is convinced that the victim's ex-husband is the assailant. But is there more to the case than meets the eye? Will the victim survive? Meanwhile, Ryan is trying to make amends for a lapse from his past. There are some very satisfying twists and turns and Ryan and Kane are very likeable characters - their different qualities and strengths enable them to work together effectively to solve the case. I really liked the fact that the book is set in Dublin as it meant I could visualize the streets and suburbs etc.

I've totally given up hope of GRRM finishing the GOT series. At this pace, and at the pace in his books, it would take a good few decades to get to the end.

3 The Porpoise - Mark Haddon
Angelica is born at the scene of her mother's death in an aeroplane crash. Her father, a wealthy man with unlimited resources, hires nurses for his daughter and keeps her insulated from the rest of the world while he uses her for his own abusive purposes. She becomes a beautiful young woman and her father, beset with jealousy, attacks the handsome young man who attempts to rescue her. The rest goes off on a strange tangent, the modern hero (assumed killed by Angelica's father) becomes Pericles, an Ancient Greek prince who marries, apparently loses his wife in childbirth and abandons his baby daughter with a noble family while he wanders the known world searching for himself.

I think the Pericles story is supposed to be Angelica's imagination, she's living in his world in order to escape from her own. We return the Angelica frequently as she first stops speaking, then eating and the book ends in tragedy for Angelica but with hope for Pericles.

It's a strange book, it might just be too clever for me! But I enjoyed in nonetheless and will likely return for a re-read at some point.

I'm another who has made peace with not getting a book (or 2) to round off GOT. As Neil Gaiman famously replied to a question on GRRM's blog about GRRM's responsibility to finish the series (in 2009) I've accepted that "George RR Martin is not your bitch"
journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/05/entitlement-issues.htmlNeil Gaiman

I sighed when I read a few years back about the 5 year mega deal GRRM had signed to develop content for HBO and all the other irons he has in the fire. He even had input on a game my son played last year "Elden Ring."
www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/george-r-r-martin-signs-massive-five-year-overall-deal-with-hbo-exclusive-4155921/

So many exciting opportunities have opened up for him late in life, not surprised he is taking them.

I enjoyed both The Trial and Metamorphosis as well as The Castle but I used to be a pretentious literature student. I'm not particularly clever, but I thought they were quite fun!

so far I'm on track...

1. Ink Black Heart
2. The Cuckoo's Calling
3. The Silkworm
4. Career of Evil
5. Lethal White
6. Troubled Blood
7. Ink Black Heart (currently reading again, 2-6 were first time reads as I started with book 6)

I think my favourite was Troubled Blood, I too found the 'cold case' element really effective. Thriller/murder mystery not typically my thing although I had an Agatha Christie phase in my youth, but I did really enjoy these.

10 Dear Reader by Cathy Rentzenbrink
Memoir of reading, bookshop work & the author's life, already reviewed by several people on here. It took me a while to get into this, but once I did I absolutely loved it. I'm a very similar age to her, & I worked in a bookshop as a Saturday girl in my teens, and although it was rather different (small independent bookshop in a rural market town) lots of the bits about the joys of ID-ing 'it was mentioned on Radio 4 sometime last Thursday morning - or maybe it was Radio 2.... I think it's got a red cover?' and enthusing about much loved books to customers really resonated.

11 Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
My apologies to those who warned me off, but I have to confess I rather enjoyed this. It's a pretty standard chick-litty plot, but I liked the flat, unemotional tone (such a nice change from the typical bubbly chick-lit style). I also liked the small cast, and found the women in particular very plausible in their rather incompetent adulting. I'll give it a gap, but I'd certainly pick up her others if I saw them in the library. (If nothing else it makes me feel better about the disadvantages of being a grumpy menopausal older woman remembering that being 30ish wasn't all roses either )

4 The Hero of this Story, by Elizabeth McCracken. This is sufficiently hard to describe that I'll go with the blurb: Ten months after her mother's death, the narrator of The Hero of This Book takes a trip to London. The city was a favorite of her mother's, and as the narrator wanders the streets, she finds herself reflecting on her mother's life and their relationship. Thoughts of the past meld with questions of the future: Back in New England, the family home is now up for sale, its considerable contents already winnowed.

Not a memoir (but it is really), this is a lightly fictionalised version of Elizabeth's relationship with her extraordinary mother, and also a reflection on writing, truth, and who gets to tell a story. That sounds wildly pretentious, but it isn't (or at least I didn't think so).

I think I would have loved this whenever I read it, but as someone who became motherless in the last few years, I completely adored it. This was a library borrow, so I'm now buying my own copy to keep and revisit, because some of the prose is so resonant and beautiful.

15. Last Night by Mhairi McFarlane

I can’t remember who recently recommended this author but this book was just what I needed. This had all the ingredients of a good rom-com, a few laughs, some heartbreak and of course some romance. The only thing I wasn’t keen on was all the odd words to describe laughing (honking was used a lot!) but I’ll definitely read more by the author.

13. City Dark by Roger A. Canaff Amazon first reads freebie. This book follows Joe DeSantos, a lawyer based in New York who is rapidly spiralling into uncontrollable alcoholism. He's just about holding down a job in the attorney general's office but frequently suffers blackouts at night. Chapters are interspersed with flashbacks to the New York blackout in 1977 when Joe, then aged 10, and his brother Robbie (15) were abandoned on the street by their mother and had to try and find their way in the dark across New York to their uncle in Staten Island. In the present day Joe and Robbie's mother, Lois, who they haven't seen or heard from since the night of the blackout, turns up dead on the beach with Joe's business card in her possession. Unfortunately for Joe he can't remember anything about the night and he's soon implicated in the murder when another body shows up

This book was average. I found every single character unlikeable but I think that was the point. I think it's probably a realistic portrayal of how childhood trauma can fuck you up into middle age and the path of joe and Robbie's lives is very believable. I dislike that every single woman in the book is described as some variation of "plump" or "fat" and really really dislike the description "plump but lovely". There was an interesting twist which I didn't see coming but ultimately I found the conclusion far-fetched. It also left lots of unanswered questions about Lois's initial disappearance which I found intensely irritating. It was like the author couldn't think of a good enough reason for why she walked away from her sons so just didn't bother to write one

@SapatSea

I do get the GRRM is Not Your Bitch thing to a point, but I also think that it's bad form to repeatedly promise publication dates for a book that still hasn't seen the light of day 11 years later and then get pissy and precious with your fans about it. The single biggest reason why the end of the TV series was so bad is the absence of source.

To bring @InTheCludgie in, I don't personally think we'll see either book and definitely not A Dream Of Spring I saw a theory doing the rounds which I find very believable that part of the issue is that he no longer retains all the detail in the world building like history, geography, genealogy etc and has needed to rely on Westeros website founders Elio Garcia and Linda Antonsson for support and fact checking.

Linda and Elio are divisive within the fandom for a few reasons.

So yeah, I've also made my peace with not seeing the end.

There are certain storylines active in A Dance With Dragons which are worlds apart from where things went in the show.

Actually now that I've said that I can conceivably see them being published posthumously as by George RR Martin with Elio Garcia a bit like James Patterson etc

Yes it would have been good to see the 'proper' resolution to GoT, seeing as GRRM said that the ending of the series would be reached via a different route to the books.

Now if we don't see the end of the Strike books, I will be properly upset! @howdoesatoastermaketoast I'm currently doing a reread of the books while I wait on my copy of The Ink Black Heart from the library and I'm loving all the extra details I missed first time around. I'm overly invested in 'Strellacott' and need to know what happens next!