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?

Who am I to argue with that?

6 Werner Herzog: A Guide For The Perplexed - Paul Cronin

Ridiculously entertaining collection of conversations with the prolific film director and writer. You don't need to have seen all his films to enjoy his unique approach to film-making, delivering deadpan anecdotes about the extremes of filming in the Amazon with Klaus Kinski, in burning Kuwaiti oil fields or an Antarctic base. Hard recommend for anyone at all interested in film or a creative life lived without compromise.

That sounds really good @MegBusset my husband loves WH and through him I've seen quite a few of his films, esp the ones with Klaus Kinski! It's a shame there isn't an audible version, I imagine that would be a fantastic listen.

Place marking, I've yet to finish a book this year.

Thank you for the new thread @Southeastdweller I think I’ve missed the listing time so I’ll save it for the next thread.

Just finished:

The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
Clearly, I picked this up as a result of the conversation on the previous thread. I have to say I am TeamIshiguro. I really enjoyed it. I loved the lack of pace, unreliable and often oblivious narration, the exploration of loyalty and dignity and the sense of place

After a year of 3s it feels good to have 2 very decent 4s under my belt.

Finished my fourth today, I rather enjoyed it

4: Momenticom by Andrew Caldicott I thought this was similar in flavour to his previous books, a kind of fantasy adventure with a bit of a dystopian edge. Humanity has ruined the planet and most people and all the infrastructure has been destroyed by noxious gases. The remaining people are under the control of one of two competing powerful and despotic dynasties, working to design and create either genetically manipulated or mechanical 'drones'. A small number of particularly gifted 'outliers' are working to resist the evil overlords ... involves airships and Vermeer's Muse of History.

I wrote a TBR 2023 list and have lost it 😬

Me neither bett! Hoping to remedy that this weekend.

12. Furious Love by Nancy Schoenburger and Sam Kashner

A biography of the tempestuous relationship between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

Oddly, I found this really slow moving and stodgy, there was no pace to it at all. As such, I got really bored and frustrated with it, I also found it repetitive stylistically and was glad to come to the end.

I seem to have quite a few sleb type things on my TBR so this might be the year of Sleb Books.

Mick Herron - Slough House books 1-8 I've read them before but enjoyed reading them again.

His voice was reading it in my head all the way through!

5. Until It's Over by Nicci French
Ticking another one off my Nicci French TBR list.

This one involved a young cycle courier, Astrid, who seemed to fetch up in the wrong place just when a murder has taken place, three times, arousing the suspicion of the Police as to how she could be connected.

The novel is split into two parts, firstly from Astrid's point of view and the killer's.

Nicci French are always good at creating interesting characters and this time they were all living together in a shared house in a slightly shabby street in Hackney. When theyre not shagging each other, they're bickering amongst themselves.

A solid 4 stars, despite the ending being just slightly too quickly resolved.

Book #5 soul music, Terry pratchett. Focuses on Susan as a teenager temporarily called in to do grandad's job but she develops feelings for the person who's soul she needs to set free. Meanwhile the powerful and somewhat malignant force of music is out and about in Ankh Morpork. Amusing, some clever references, not one of his best.

5 Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie

This is a book of two halves, both in terms of the story and (in my view anyway) the quality. Maryam and Zahra are two girls growing up in Karachi - both part of the elite (although Maryam is enormously wealthy in a way Zahra isn't). Both 1980s Karachi and their teenage friendship are beautifully portrayed, and I loved that part of the book. The friendship feels very real. One night after a party, something happens that sends fracture lines through their relationship. The repercussions carry through to the second half of the book by which time Zahra and Maryam are in their early forties, both living in London having become immensely successful in different ways. They are still very close, but the tensions bubbling underneath erupt towards the end.

The difficulty I had with the second part of the book is that (as almost every review I've read said), it just didn't have the life and the heart of the first. At points, you wonder why Zahra and Maryam are still friends, and there isn't really a convincing answer. The description of their high-flying careers feels superficial; it felt as though Shamsie didn't have a deep enough understanding of either of the professional worlds she writes about to make them convincing. There were still some good set pieces, but the denouement, which had been such a long time coming, felt a bit artificial and cliched when it came (although I was still gripped, to be fair). And there's a tag on ending that - well, I see why Shamsie did it, but it felt a bit half baked.

So overall, the first half was great, the second half not so much. Really wanted to love it, but it din't qutie get there for me.

@JaninaDuszejko yes you’re right sorry, currently reading the Tea girl of hummingbird lane and had china on my mind when I wrote that.

I finished listening to The World I Fell Out Of by Melanie Reid yesterday. It was absolutely brilliant. I roared with laughter at some of the descriptions of Glaswegian patients and cried at the frustration and despair. I need to have something a little make lighthearted next as with listening to this along with reading The Five I feel like I am being followed by a general fug of life’s unfairness and brutality.

I saw a book group poster for Unwell Women by Eleanor Cleghorn and both thought “that looks right up my alley” and “absolutely not at the moment”

Unwell Women is fabulous but, yes, not an easy read.

I have just finished Emma Donoghue's Haven. This is quite a short novel at 250 pages but very intense. At first I thought it would be boring but it becomes more and more involving and I did find myself rooting for and caring about two of the characters. It tells the story of three 7th Century monks who go to find an island gifted by God to worship him there and happen upon a bird covered island. The lead monk (the Prior) is in almost every way a repellent character, so the novel questions faith, belief, self-sacrifice ,leadership and obedience in interesting ways. The perspective switches between the three men (although always in a detached third person) and , once they leave their monastery, these are the only three characters. The passages where birds are slaughtered are not an easy read, and this is deliberate.
It's written in the present tense, just to warn some of you! But in this case I genuinely do thin this adds to the immediacy and claustrophobia of the novel .

Babel is 99p on Kindle today

Thank you!

I've never read a Kate Mosse novel so I thought I'd give it a go. It's set in 1912 in Sussex but is FULL of Americanisms which I'm finding jarring. Is she widely read in the US?

7 Autumn Journal - Louis MacNeice

OK, it's a poem, but Backlisted counted it as a book so I will too. Having not actually listened to the podcast in question, I think I was expecting something more pastoral - this is rather a depiction of the last months of 1938 in London, including politics, philosophy and the poet's love life alongside the gathering shadows of fascism in Europe. Full of incidental details, I found it richly evocative of the time.

I read a Kate Mosse when I was desperate on holiday once and found it in the apartments. It was dreadful. Think it was called Labyrinth or similar?

That's the one I'm reading. Dual timeline, present day and 12th century historical/Cathars/holy grail shenanigans.

I hated it @SolInvictus Hope you can get more out of it than I did!

I'm always a bit worried that pseudo-historical novels are going to go a bit Philippa Gregory rather than Sharon Penman, but it's not so bad so far..

Can I join in please? Little late to the party, I know. I love reading, and for some reason I hardly read anything (besides a good few cookbooks) last year.

Ive only just started my first book of the year today, and I’m loving it so far. Taste by Stanley Tucci. Sort of a childhood/family memoir (well, at least it is so far) based around food, with an occasional family recipe thrown in. I’ve ordered another copy already for my lovely Italian Canadian sister in law, as some of the stories and conversations I can just imagine her and her lovely parents having from visits we made to them.

Ok, so, now I’m going to look back through the thread to get some inspiration for what to add to my list.