50 Books Challenge 2023 Part Three

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the third 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 and the second one here.

Just looked again and they also offer overdrive as well.

Overdrive is being pulled next month. It will stop working. Libby is the replacement.

For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain by Victoria Mackenzie Don’t be put off by the title for this is a gem. There was an interesting discussion on here about The Book of Margery Kempe a little while ago but that was all I knew of her. This book tells the stories of Kempe and her contemporary Julian of Norwich, an anchoress shorn of her own name who lives her last decades bricked into a cell attached to the church whose name she adopts. The stories alternate and we get a few paragraphs or pages of each in turn. At around 150 pages of well spaced paragraphs this is a short book, very readable and very powerful. The 2 women each left a book (Margery’s dictated as she couldn’t read or write) and this book is described by the author as ‘a creative engagement with both texts as well as a work of imagination’. Mackenzie is a poet and the book is beautifully written. Brings alive the perilous medieval period of disease and grief and the real risk the women ran of being denounced as heretics. The women themselves with their visions of Jesus and their seemingly incomprehensible life choices become fully plausible, tormented living characters. The anchoress is visited by lost souls who come for succour - including, at the climax in the last few pages - Margery, as she did in reality. There is humour too. Margery prays, 14 children in, for a chaste marriage and almost becomes an irritation and a figure of fun sometimes as she must have been in real life as she wailed her way along her pilgrimages. The note at the end characterises Kempe’s voice in her own text as ‘boastful, troubled, scorned and lonely’ and this is brought out here. I’d wondered if a reader would need to know more about the original texts to enjoy this book but needn’t have worried. I’ll return to this and seek out the 2 women’s works. Highly recommended.

Great review Cornish, that sounds really interesting.

That sounds right up my street @CornishLizard I will take a look

@CornishLizard I read Margery Kempe last year and remember the discussion well. Was a great experience though Margery would have been insufferable to have around - an enormous drama llama as DD said who also read it. But this sounds excellent so I am going to check it out.

💐to Meg. I had a particularly traumatic 2022, which is still having repercussions now and I actually stopped reading altogether for a while, and I got back in by relistening to the Strike novels on Audible. Love Bill Bryson too, as well as the Harry Potter books read by Stephen Fry.

7. The House Of Special Purpose by John Boyne

“The House Of Special Purpose”, is the second book I’ve read by John Boyne (having put The Heart’s Invisible Furies as one of my top books ever). This one is narrated by Russian Georgy Jachmenev on two timelines, one in the early 20th century around the time of the Russian Revolution, when he was brought from his rural life as a young farmer to join the Imperial Guard as a personal bodyguard to the young Tsarevitch Alexei, and the other in London in the 1980s as an elderly man when he has retired from his job at the British Museum and now caring for his wife Zoya who is suffering from cancer.

From what I know of Russian 20th Century history, which is a reasonable amount, the historical narrative was reasonably correct. It was well written and a thoroughly enjoyable read. The characters of the Imperial family were well drawn and believable, and the story moved well without getting bogged down with history and politics, but someone who didn’t know the background may find the lack of it a bit frustrating.

The Crow Road by Ann Cleeves

I love a crime whodunnit, but watch them mainly on TV, and I am trying to find something in book form which replicates my favourite series such as Broadchurch, Unforgotten or Happy Valley. Ann Cleeves has been recommended a few times, so I went for the first in the Vera Stanhope series (having also seen this on TV). It was OK, but honestly it didn’t really hit the spot for me. Mainly because I just didn’t get invested in who did it. It was a very slow start, long back stories into a large number of characters. A group of scientists are staying at a cottage to do some wildlife survey work. One of them, Rachel, has just discovered her best friend’s body hanging in the next door barn, having apparently committed suicide, but she seems remarkably calm and even when one of the other scientist is found dead. The story then slows down considerably and we go back through the whole life story of the dead woman.

It wasn’t terrible, but I am still searching for my new favourite series – still bereft after finishing the Strike series.

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummings

I am slightly ashamed to say this has taken me a very long time to read, especially as it is not particularly long or difficult to read.

It has been much reviewed, but it is the story of Mexican bookstore owner Lydia, whose husband and entire extended family is killed at a family party by a drugs cartel in Acapulco. She escapes by hiding in a bathroom with her young son Luca, and then makes her way as a migrant towards the USA border. Lydia’s son Luca becomes a powerful character in himself.

It is a tense story, with Lydia permanently on guard against the drugs cartel and the tension comes through in the writing and characters. The people she meets along the way are believable and I ended up rooting for them all.

@OldCrone22 I read the Vera Stanhope books out of order, but found The Crow Trap (the first one) to be the weakest. I would give one of the others a go and see if you get on with it more. The Shetland ones are good too.

Re other series, I'm enjoying the LJ Ross DCI Ryan books, though the first ones in the series are linked to police corruption. Elly Griffiths' Ruth Galloway books are quite popular.

I'm also working through Joy Ellis' Jackman and Evans series, Kate Ellis and the DI Wesley Peterson books, Kerry Wilkinson, Jacqueline Winspear and the Maisie Dobbs series and the books by Verity Bright - though these are more cosy crime if you prefer the grittier stuff.

I will stop there 😆 as I could go on.

I'd be interested in what others recommend too.

@InTheCludgie Libby does have the "defer loan but stay at the front of the queue" option

@RainyReadingDay There is an app for Libby that works on Kindle Fire, I use it all the time

Waawo what is the app called please?

@Wolfcub search for “Libby” in the Google play store (not the Amazon App Store)

A bit late in the day for my list, but I’m only 5 books in (my goal is only 26).

My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh
Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Toshikazu Kawaguchi trans. Geoffrey Trousselot
The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro

Ask a Historian, Greg Jenner
Reviewed on the previous thread by @LadybirdDaphne I think. I’m a fan of Jenner and have read his other two books which I enjoyed. I also like his podcast and follow him on Twitter and have met him (have photographic evidence). This one fell a little flat for me, like history speed dating or something. It was sort of like a better version of something you might pick up in The Works titled, Top 50 events in History or similar. Jenner is better than this, but I think his existing platform allows him to publish this really. I really appreciate the work he does to skew the lines between academic and popular history as a public historian, but this just didn’t really contribute to either. I continue to enjoy Jenner though.

The Marriage Portrait, Maggie O’Farrell
Not for me. I think this has probably been reviewed a few times and if not for book club I wouldn’t have read this for a few more years probably. This is the story of Lucrezia who ends up marrying her sister’s betrothed. She is neglected as a child and her husband is controlling and a bit sinister than a really nasty piece of work. For me, this was trying too hard, the sentences were so long and meandering and it just didn’t work for me. I liked a very small portion where we are introduced to Alfonso’s sisters but that was it. The ending was just so WTAF. It hasn’t totally put me off trying O’Farrell again, but I’m in no rush.

@OldCrone22 re detective series I've really enjoyed the Maeve Kerrigan series by Jane Casey - just spotted that a new one is coming out at the beginning of March - and also Denzil Meyrick's series set on Kintyre.

I do enjoy Anne Cleeves as well.

@SilverShadowNight Thanks, maybe I'll give the next one a go as well.
I don't mind gritty.
I quite enjoyed the first Thursday Murder Club, but didn't think the second one was great.

@agnesmartin Thanks, I'll look at those too.

I've got a couple of train journeys this week, so have treated myself to some real books:
www.theguardian.com/books/2018/dec/23/nein-by-paddy-ashdown-review-hitler Nein!]]
My Policeman

Remus

I read My Policeman last year, it came very close to being a bold but I had some stylistic issues with it. Interested to see if the same problem gets to you, I suspect it might.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I don't remember ever hearing/seeing anything about it. I was taken in by the cover! Hopefully, it'll do for the train anyway.

I reviewed it in July 2022 but I won't link - go in fresh I say

Will do! :)

Book 13 - Wahala by Nikki May. Three British-Nigerian women who've been best friends since university grapple with marriage, motherhood etc. The usual stuff. Then glamorous Isobel, an old acquaintance, returns to their lives and it becomes a psychological thriller as she appears to know secrets about them all.

This was enjoyable enough but pretty thin, the revelations were obvious a mile off. I do think it's a very positive thing that commercial fiction of this sort is becoming more diverse though.

However - one thing that really wound me up was that it's intended as a celebration of Nigerian food, with one of the characters an excellent cook and her recipes are even printed at the back. Yet her friends are constantly talking about how big she is, how much she eats, how much she loves food. There's never an opportunity missed to refer to something she's eating. So that felt really jarring.

I just reread your Kempe review Pepe and think I’ll pick up a copy next time I’m in the bookshop!

@kateandme ditto 😍

Spark Joy by Marie Kondo

This just happened to be available on my local library’s Libby straight after I finished Marie’s first book. Alas, there isn’t really anything new here, it’s a slight expansion I guess, but only at the very end is mention made of the point of doing the tidying: putting your house in order, to make the head space to put the rest of your life in order.

I forgot to mention when I talked about The Life Changing Magic… that she does have something to say about books that seems appropriate here, where so many of us have extensive tbr piles. According to Konmarie, unread books sitting on shelves are little more than clutter. The time to read a book is the time that you bought it, presumably because it sparked interest for some reason, whether because of a recommendation or because you liked the cover in the bookshop. The longer it remains unread, usurped by more recent acquisitions, the less likely to ever be read it becomes, and the more of a chore and a distraction it becomes.

Also, I liked this section heading from late on in the book:

A belated 💐 to Meg.

Hmm, not sure I agree with Marie on the TBR shelf, Surely unread books represent a choice of what to enjoy next, depending on many factors including our mood, what we have just finished, changing interests, time and circumstances etc. That in itself sparks joy and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Anyway, back to books! Weekly check in:

11. Tell me Who I am Before I Die - Christina Peters

This was a bleak memoir of a lady who developed multiple personalities after a series of childhood traumas. It seemed so extreme I wasn't sure how much was exaggerated. She was born in the USA in 1942 and the book was published in 1980: I hope with the advances in medicine and understanding of mental health her experience would be different nowadays.

12. The Grove of the Caesars - Lindsey Davis

I'm three behind on the Flavia Albia series and was ill in the week so needed something familiar. Really enjoyed this despite the grim subject matter. Like a big warm Roman hug.

13. How do You Want me? - Ruby Wax

A memoir published in 2002 about Ruby Wax's early life and career. It made me appreciate my eccentric family all the more, and goes to explain a lot about her character and writing.