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?

23. The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley-Heller

Seen everywhere on social media and in Reese Witherspoon's Book Club, the Palace of the title is a summer house visited by the featured family every year. I think I'm right in saying at least a couple of 50 Bookers have read it?

Elle and Anna are sisters who are much neglected by both parents who put themselves and their relationships above their DC; thrusting them into situations with critical stepmothers, bullying stepdads and abusive stepsiblings. A lot of this isn't really saying or doing anything new. Elle's long standing friendship with fellow holidaymaker Jonas is also a theme.

The novel flashes back and forth between Elle as a married mother and Elle as a child, sometimes the jumps around prove overkill and due to section headings, there were a couple of times I momentarily thought the point of view had changed but it hadn't.

It started so well, I read the first few pages and thought I'm onto something here but in fact it doesn't hold up to early promise.
It's just a bit messy & beyond Elle and Anna characters don't feel rounded, a bit 2D.

There are a few decentish twists, including one near the end. But then the final 30 pages are a bit of a damp squib it just kind of tails off into nothing really and you kind of wonder what the point of the ending was.

@JaninaDuszejko I think I’ve listened to one or two of the You’re Dead to Me podcasts, but will definitely check out more of them now.

thats great thankyou.

great thanks

just to say thankyou to everyone who posted me more older character fiction. ive added far too many now to my growing tbr list!😃

Very much enjoying catching up on the thread and all the Sean Bean love all the Sharpe episodes are on ITVX at the moment, lovely!

Also loving the Outlander reviews - I've tried to read the books several times but can't get on with them - even find the TV series quite dull...

@SolInvictus I started uni in 1994 and can confirm that chat rooms were definitely not a thing. We maybe checked our emails once a week and had to go to the computing room (one room for several hundred students!) to do that, I don't think anyone had a laptop/ PC in their room.

@agnesmartin I thought the second Stranger Times was better than the first one too! The third one's out now and I'm keeping an eye out for it on the Kindle daily deals

@GrannieMainland The Good Girl's Guide to Murder was a DNF for me, I kind of enjoyed it but not enough to not skip straight to the end after the first 50 pages also I kept thinking it was American with the style and content of writing, but was in fact set in a small Buckinghamshire village, if I remember correctly? It was the way the teenagers would 'snatch up their car keys and drive off' and suchlike - most of the teenagers I know have to share their parents' car as insurance is so expensive!

The GRRM info was really interesting @SapatSea , I've been waiting for the next GoT book for eight or so years now but clearly he has better things to be doing

If Patrick Rothfuss is DEFINITELY bringing out the third book soon @howdoesatoastermaketoast then I'll re-read the first two books - it must be well over ten years since I last read them! As I recall I loved them at the time, but maybe I'll think they're utter tripe now?!

A few additions to my list:

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
12: Rosie Talbot - Sixteen Souls
13: Jonathan Stroud - The Notorious Scarlett & Browne

14: Rory Clements - Corpus
15: Rory Clements - Nucleus

The first two in a spy thriller series featuring Cambridge professor Tom Wilde, set just before WW2. I found them slightly slow going considering the interesting subject matter, but that may be my post-DC impatient brain that can only cope with very simple things

16: Sophie Hannah - Closed Casket

A 'new' Poirot mystery which thankfully improves on the appalling drivel that was Haven't They Grown although it would be difficult not to - conclusion was still a bit farfetched but in general it was a nice follow up, considering I've read all the Poirots many times.

17: Karen M McManus - Nothing More to Tell

American teen mystery where everyone is implausibly good looking. Oh yes, and the plot is: a teacher is murdered, three school students find him, and four years later another student starts investigating. There are a few twists and turns along the way but even I guessed the ending, and I'm spectacularly dim at these things.

18: M C Beaton - Devil's Delight

The latest Agatha Raisin (but written by someone else, as I understand?) - just good fun in the same vein, really. I do wonder though how many clubs/ societies/ villages there can be within easy reach of Carsely which have murderous goings-on, though...

19: Alexandra Benedict - Murder on the Christmas Express

Yes, a bit unseasonal but it only just came up on my library app! A YouTube star dies on a sleeper train which of course makes it a locked-room mystery for a former Met detective to investigate. I found the main character Roz a bit frustrating in some ways - plus there were a few unlikely plot twists - but nicely atmospheric.

I hated The Paper Palace. Considering MCH is the sister in law of Zoe Heller and her husband Bruno (Zoe's Brother) Created 'Rome' for the BBC, you'd think she'd pick up some tips on how to write a book!

@coolmum123 🙂

Enjoying catching up with the thread- I wish I was as brilliant at reviewing books as some of you! 😊

Finished 'You' by Caroline Kepnes. A brilliantly written but dark tale. It's also been made into a Netflix series which I'm working my way through. Part of a series of 3 (soon to be 4) novels, The books centre on an obsessive man who's relationships with women are not what they seem. Have started the second book- 'Hidden Bodies.'

Sorry, I'm not sure what happened with the italic font there 😂

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I read The Paper Palace last year and didn't like it much. I couldn't quite decide if it was the book itself or the subject matter. Also, the character Jonas was very one dimensional - I didn't get any sense of him as an adult.

9. Partners in Crime - Agatha Christie

The Agatha Christie challenge read for this month which is a series of short stories featuring Tommy and Tuppence Beresford whilst they are running a detective agency - although there is a storyline which also runs throughout the stories. I generally dislike short stories as I like to become more immersed in a storyline and I find the Beresfords a bit jolly hockey sticks and annoying. It was ok.

10. Back Trouble - Clare Chambers

Following a New Year’s Eve challenge from his brother and a back injury, Philip decides to write a book about his life. The book looks back at his childhood in the 1960s and 1970s and the more recent months of his life as he approaches forty. I have read quite a few books by this author now and find them undemanding easy reads with some gentle humour.

I thought The Paper Palace almost revelled in abuse. I don't think the topic was handled well at all.

It was a page turner in places, but left a very bad taste in my mouth.

I agree with Eine and Fortuna. I thought The Paper Palace was a frustrating read. Unnecessary flashbacks, confusing changes of narrative and unlikeable or undeveloped characters. I didn't care too much by the time I got to the end either.

I managed the first three books of A Song of Ice and Fire then gave up. I found there were just too many stories to keep track of and I was only interested in a few of them, so wasn't paying attention to the rest. I made it to the end of the tv show, but not with any real enthusiasm by the end.

16 Pharmacopoeia by Derek Jarman
A short book that is more of an anthology of poetry and prose poems than anything more structured that was written towards the end of Jarman’s life, after his HIV diagnosis and his purchase of Prospect Cottage in Dungeness. I adore Dungeness and I was pleased to see that he loved the views of the nuclear power station as much as I do. It focuses mostly on the wonderful garden he created in the shingle outside his house, though there are also meditations on life, impending death and the sea. I loved this and will read it again. Sad, wistful and each sentence so well crafted.

17 Bully Market by Jamie Fiore Higgins
I worked in the City for around ten years, and must have started around the same time Higgins began at Goldman Sachs in New York so I was interested in this memoir, as I spent time in an American investment bank as well. Not Goldman, and nothing like the horrific environment she details. I experienced persistent low grade misogyny and it was not a culture that celebrated or recognised diversity in any form, but my experience was (largely) fine.

Higgins experienced sexual assault and bullying on a regular basis, and was held to much higher standards of performance than some of the men around her. She also documents some shocking incidents of racism. It’s an interesting narrative – she knows and recognises her complicity in the system even while being damning of it, and that her failure to speak out made things worse rather than better on several occasions. She didn’t speak up for herself or – worse – for other people because she believed that any rocking of the boat would result in her prospects for promotion being damaged or her bonus being cut. And she’s probably right but neither of those felt like good enough reasons for her behaviour. I realise this sounds like victim blaming but although she’s cagey about money, she does mention that she was earning over a million dollars early in her career, so it’s reasonable to assume that she was making considerably more than that later on, and really, how much money does one family actually need? There’s a lot of “I just needed to stick it out for long enough to ensure my family was financially secure” and “with another baby on the way I needed this next bonus”, but in truth we all manage fine on far less without being part of a toxic system that made her and everyone around her miserable.

Perhaps I’m being unfair. When I decided I’d had enough, I left, and it was fine. My self-worth didn’t depend on my job and my life was considerably better afterwards even though my income dropped (a lot). So there may well be something unique about Goldman, or her part of the business that made it different for her. But I don’t think she’s entirely blameless and it made for an interesting memoir because of the unreliability of the author.

I agree with you on this actually.

@Taytocrisps

Yes one dimensional don't know why I put 2D

Yes I agree. I actually enjoyed it when I read it - it was summer, I found it quite zippy and atmospheric - but the more I thought about it afterwards it was just misery piled on misery, most of which made no contribution to the plot.

I've just received The Paper Palace for my birthday 😥

@JaninaDuszejko Lucy Worsley interviews Greg Jenner on how he makes You're dead to Me on her podcast on BBC sounds.

I bought The Paper Palace last month. Not in a great hurry to read it now.

Sorry Guys x

I'm sorry too xx

I recently bought The Paper Palace in a charity shop. Was feeling quite pleased with myself, and looking forward to reading it.
At least it was cheap and for a good cause. And I will still read it. Who knows, I might be a dissenting voice and love it

I liked The Paper Palace. I particularly liked her descriptions of swimming and the different waters around where she lived. It was a real page turner although I do agree that Jonah was not very well drawn. I don't think any of the characters were particularly nice but I still thought it was a good read, even though the ending was a bit too creative writing class. I'd read another book by her.