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.

Currently watching The Last of Us so anything about fungus scares the bejesus out of me at the moment, I found myself giving an oyster mushroom the side-eye the other day!

@MamaNewtNewt

I am LOVING the Last Of Us, it's brilliant

I’ve seen ep 1 and concur about the fungus.

Oh it is just sooooo good!

7. Still Life by Sarah Winman

This one needed some time to grow on me. At 12% on my kindle I nearly decided to DNF. I wasn't interested in any of the characters and the lack of speech marks was driving me crazy.

However I had no ideas of what I would go on to, so I decided to stick with it and I am sooooo glad I did!

It turned into a story about the beauty and love within a chosen family and I related to the depth of love between these friends who become family. Some of the art was too much for me and I have dismissed as pretentious whereas I maybe could have googled some of it instead. Anyway, I didn't so remain unsophisticated but with a new desire to visit Florence.

Not sure what's next. I really need to finish this slightly boring book about sleep. I'm at about 65% and I just won't let myself DNF here. There must be loads of references at the end, so maybe I'm nearly there?

1. Watching Neighbours Twice a Day: How 90s TV (Almost) Prepared Me For Life, Josh Widdicombe

So I watched Neighbours continuously from being a kid until its demise. I cant believe I just typed that on this thread😳, but I am without doubt a lover of crap TV. I therefore thought this wander through 90s TV nostalgia would be right up my street. However, me & Josh aren't totally in sync in our TV tastes and it slowly dawned on me that this is at least partly because I am a bit older than him and many of my childhood TV memories are from a slightly earlier era ...... Despite it being yet another reminder of how middle aged I am, it did raise a few laughs & was an amiable way to pass a couple of hours (with crap TV also on in the background).

@InTheCludgie I read Turn Of The Key last year I think and I seem to remember it being pretty good but can't exactly remember the ending now so not sure it was satisfactory or not

DNF’d All The Wicked Girls by Chris Whitaker. We Begin At The End was one of my stand out reads of 2021 and I also liked Tall Oaks. This one made me think he’s just writing the same book over and over and over .

@BoldFearlessGirl oh no! I have that one on my kindle. Like you, I loved We Begin at the End.

20 Desert Star Michael Connolly - another solid entry into the Bosch series. These books will never be the best you’ll ever read but they’ll always be really good and fast paced.
21 A Streetcar Named Desire Tennessee Williams. I struggled with this a little at the start as I generally don’t read plays, but by the end I couldn’t stop turning the pages. Dark and disturbing, but a great read and one that will stay with me. I see some parallels between the tragic story of Blanche DuBois and Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany’s which I read earlier this month.

@BaruFisher I love the style and pace of it, it’s just that the characters and plot are too similar to Tall Oaks as well as WBATE. So much so, that I kept thinking I’d read it previously.

@BaruFisher read Christopher Isherwood's 'Goodbye to Berlin'. Holly Golightly is based on Sally Bowes.

I haven’t read Tall Oaks so maybe I’ll get some enjoyment from this one and skip Tall Oaks instead!

@JaninaDuszejko thank you - I will definitely do that. Is that related to Cabaret as well (or have I got the name totally wrong?)

I think Cabaret is based on Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood. I don't know anything about links between Isherwood's books, set in late Weimar Germany just before the Nazis came to power, and American writers like Tennessee Williams or Truman Capote. I know Isherwood later moved to the US.

I've read two books by Ruth Ware, In a Dark Dark Wood after reading a preview chapter at Harrogate Crime Festival a few years ago, and recently I read The It Girl as a library ebook. I've bought most of her others on Kindle as deals, but they are still TBR. I quite enjoyed The It Girl as a bit of a page turner.

Thanks @elkiedee I enjoyed the movie of Cabaret very much so that’s a good sign for Isherwood!

Book 14 finished tonight

The Art of Dying by Ambrose Parry

this is book two of the Raven and Simpson series written by husband and wife team Christopher Brookmyre and Dr Marisa Haetzman. Set in Victorian Edinburgh these stories are a mix of whodunnit and medical history. In this story, people start dying at an alarming rate of an unknown rate. As the medical minds of Edinburgh argue and tussle for position as greatest doctor of the age, Raven balances his own need for self-promotion while living to regret his own decisions while Simpson railes against the mysogony of the age

i REALLY enjoyed this. I have totally fallen for the characters and a genuinely cared about their journeys. Some of the side stories are deeply moving. I found myself properly emoting in the car earlier while listening to this. Then sat tonight to finish it when usually Friday night is telly and Facebook. There is something about how these are written that I find them really compelling. I know they aren’t great literature but I adore the fact that I have found a new series. I really hope that the collaboration lasts a very long time

Fisher! Raven and Fisher!

29. Hazards Of Time Travel by Joyce Carol Oates

My first Joyce Carol Oates.

The first 50 pages or so establish certain parameters. A totalitarian American surveillance state with similar social rules to Mao's China. Persons who are subversive can be exiled, they can be deleted.

I was here for this.

Then it turns out that the punishment of Exile is basically very similar to the plot of the Reese Witherspoon/Tobey Maguire film Pleasantville were they are transported back to the Good Old Days Of The USA when Americans were American, and it becomes a slightly sappy story of a 1950's college and a professor romance.

The ending is a bit disquieting and open to interpretation, but also feels like a completely different book.

Weird. Disjointed. Broadly enjoyed it for what it was but does not live up to the potential of the concept.

@RazorstormUnicorn I had very similar feelings when I read Still Life. The early part in London didn’t do it for me at all but the characters really came alive once they got to Italy and it ended up being one of my stand out reads of last year.

@Owlbookend I felt the same about Neighbours I love humourous dipping in and out of stuff like that but despite that one fitting the bill in theory, our cultural signposts were a decade out. Adam Buxton's Ramble book was much more my age group references.

I've only read one Ruth Ware and remember being pretty meh about it. Might have another look.

yes i read that too. it was brill.
she has this ability to make her books different but i dont no how to describe it. not comical but like she is right in there rubbing her hands together knowing shes writing crime with a good plot,twist and characters and knows she is going to get us. they are really dark but they arent really dark. but they still have that ability to really creep you out.
ha you see i really shouldnt have tried to describe it.

believe it and be proud of it. nothing wrong with a good bit of that kind of program.
i shall join you if you like though.because i loved it. and it holds so much nostalgia for me too.
and i cannot wait for its returned episodes and new ones.
have you watched any of the old eps now available?

im reading a shoe story by jane .l. rosen.
i google every chapter and new pair of shoes and quickly realise how much being a real shoe lover must cost. 1000 for a pair if shoes!slipper.
and i really must no understand fashion. because all of these shoes is see i just keep thinking what?why?no!?

@kateandme I did see on ?Amazon Prime that there are some early Neighbours eps available to watch. Can't wait, nostalgia at its finest! Wonder if Josh will be watching too...