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.

31. Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson

In Human Croquet we are introduced to Isobel Fairfax, the main narrator and her brother Charles. Their mother went missing when they were children and their father left them to the care of their Aunt. Perhaps.

The plot is diverting enough and there are some nice bits of prose. The experience of Isobel as a narrator is a bit frenetic like an earnest Sixth Former talking breathlessly at you about things you couldn't hope to understand because you are too old. This may annoy some.

I became a bit pissed off by it at about 75% point when it became :

Long story. BUT IT DIDN'T HAPPEN.
Another long tale OH BY THE WAY THIS ALSO DIDN'T HAPPEN

It goes on like this for far too long, until you don't have a clue what did happen and you don't care anyway.

It also has one of these endings:

This Random Character You Gave Not A Shit About?

They grew up to be a twice divorced barrister who died at 52. Cancer.

Those endings rarely work

I only have one KA left unread after this and that is Emotionally Weird

This was decent and actually I would put it as a light reading kind of cosy category, but it isn't amazing or her best.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I read Human Croquet last month and got really pissed off with the ‘this happened, no it didn’t, actually this happened, no that didn’t happen either’ bit. I also felt the Shakespeare bit was shoehorned in and unnecessary. I think this and Emotionally Weird are probably her weakest books for me.

I detested Human Croquet but think I must have posted my review under a previous name and can't find it. I remember the narrator seeming like a very irritating teenager and all the 'This didn't happen' stuff, but little else except a feeling of bemusement crossed with fury throughout reading it.

I don't know why I didn't outright hate it despite it being frustrating and flawed. She has certainly grown and improved as a writer

Stolen Focus by Johann Hari

Interesting enough read. Already reviewed a few times on here. In brief: there are loads of reasons why you can't focus on anything for more than about three minutes, and not all of them are your fault. I already knew quite a lot about the more techy issues, like social media algorithms, phone apps demanding attention and so on, and do some of personal actions suggested anyway.

Johann's bigger point is that putting all the blame on individuals is wrong, that saying to someone who can't focus "oh this is what worked for me, you just have to do the same" is a kind of "cruel optimism". Just like much of the problem of obesity lies with individual's willpower, but a system and environment that makes it hard for people to eat healthily at the same time as scratching out a living.

Many of the underlying causes of poor diet and poor attention are the same of course. And Johann's point is that group action is needed more than individuals just changing their own lives. Successful examples given include unionisation in the early days of the Industrial revolution leading to the five day week; the banning of lead in paint and petrol; and the ban on the use of CFCs in hairsprays.

Here's the thing though: with our current 'government', even talking about group action feels like another form of cruel optimism. "Organise! Protest! This is what worked for us, you just need to do the same" - it's literally the same message, and for me at the moment, it seems as impossible that people will "beat" big tech down as I will be able to resist that blueberry muffin that I know is sitting in the kitchen...

on to t.m logans the curfew now im already in. love his books.

@kateandme I enjoyed The Curfew very much last year. It's the only one of his novels that I've read, so far, but thought it was gripping and very well plotted.

Interesting review Waawo. Good point about his suggested approach being effectively the same thing as the methods he derided!

18. The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman I don't know why I left this series unread on my bookshelf for so long. They are so good. So many books written for children and young adults are just awful, for any number of reasons, and it's good to have something like this that acknowledges children can handle complex plotlines and difficult subjects. Not everything needs to be wrapped up neatly with happy endings all round.

A short break to read my next library book, before continuing on to The Amber Spyglass.* *

9 - Homo Deus - Yuval Noah Harari

Quite a bit of the material is rehashed from Sapiens, going into greater depth in some cases. There is some interesting discourse around humanism. Towards the end there is a bit of ignorance about autism that I personally found unpalatable and also poorly thought through given the context in which it was being discussed - this has somewhat soured the whole book for me and made me wonder about the thoroughness of the author's research.

I found Sapiens quite misanthropic (in am interesting way) and Homo Deus leans towards being nihilistic. I don't think Yuval Noah Harari likes people very much!

Have you seen the BBC series?

Oh then read the others.just as good.one my fave authors.

I've seen the first two series, but holding off watching the third until I've read The Amber Spyglass. It's been done really well, and a vast improvement on the fiasco that was the film The Golden Compass from a few years before.

Currently trying to persuade DS to join me in watching it all from the start. It's just his kind of thing, but teenage boys - not really the thing to watch TV with mum 😆

Ha @RainyReadingDay I watch TV with my teenage daughters and DS (only 10!) will only watch TV with DH. Can recommend Lockwood & Co at the moment for the teenager.

Agree the TV series is an excellent adaptation, I don't even mind where they've changed things because they've been true to the essence of the book. The second (as yet unfinished) trilogy isn't as good but I love Lyra's world so still reading it.

Lockwood & Co looks fun. But knowing DS, he'll probably have already watched it and not told me!

This looks very interesting, relevant to the Roald Dahl discussion too...

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/28/lives-of-the-wives-carmela-ciuraru-roald-dahl

3. The Promise by Damon Galgut
   Winner of the booker price a couple of years ago. I cant say I enjoyed the reading experience of this and at times I found it a chore to get through until the last third. However it has stayed with me and I've given it alot of thought since reading it.

4. At Home by Bill Bryson
   Facts and history about our living dwellings and anything else Bryson wanted to throw in – enjoyable.

5. Less by Andrew Sean Greer
   Amusing and enjoyable, found the end to be moving.

6. Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
   Agreed with another poster that the second half of the book is far more enjoyable than the first.

7. Someone at a distance by Dorothy Whipple
   Read for the dated bookgroup – more detailed thoughts on the thread but overall while the characters were not fully fleshed out for me I did find myself turning the pages.

8. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
   Read for my bookgroup otherwise I would have DNF’d – didn’t really get a sense of who the main characters were or why the main characters were together. Otherwise a fast plot driven read (I did also DNF the authors other book Circe)

9. Boy Parts by Eliza Clark
   This is about a young women with a very troubled background living in Newcastle who photographs men in sexual and disturbing ways. This book won’t be for everyone due to the content and parts which go into the surreal. Overall there wasn’t quite enough commentary on society or sex power dynamics for me but otherwise I found worth reading as I do enjoy a unhinged female main character and there were some funny observations.

I went to an exhibition of the costumes for the BBC series the other day. I particularly liked this green number.

All of Mrs Coulter’s clothes were amazing!

They're beautiful.

I went to the exhibition of the costumes for Wolf Hall, quite a few years ago now. They were amazing.

The author's Goodreads page made me laugh.

Motherhood: poems about mothers
Fatherhood: poems about fathers
Doggerel: poems about dogs

--Oh, can't think of a snappy name for: poems about horses

18. Murder on the Christmas Express, by Alexandra Benedict. Homage to Golden Era crime - murder on a train, locked room, small set of suspects, whodunnit? Liked the Caledonian Sleeper setting and the lead detective, but thought the references to sexual assault rather undermined the attempts at festive cheer. Uneven tone.

19. What Hetty Did, by J L Carr.. I love A Month in the Country by the same author and did find much to enjoy in this book, originally published in the 1980s. A teenage girl finishes school and goes off to start a new life in a boarding house in Birmingham. I suspect this was very old-fashioned even when first published and I'm not sure the author really channels a teenage girl's voice - did girls quote Browning and Tennyson to each other quite so much in the 80s? - but there was a jaunty sense of bouncing back from adversity that I really liked.

20. Fleischman is in Trouble, by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. Late to the party, obviously. The woes of marriage and divorce among wealthy - but not quite top tier - New Yorkers. I rather enjoyed the wisecracking Jewish New Yorker vibe, but I'm not that interested in dissections of marital woes. Not quite as profound as it thinks it is.

@PepeLePew I really liked Alexandra Benedict's book The Christmas Murder Game so I'll keep an eye out for her other one, sounds right up my street.

Sorry that last post was meant for @bibliomania , not sure why it came out all funny there.
@PepeLePew I've been debating reading Tenement Kid for a while. I went to the same high school as Gillespie and I'm friendly with a former member of the band - am curious to see what he has to say about him! Will add it to my wishlist after reading your review.

I was 18 when What Hetty Did first came out, and absolutely loved it @bibliomania I think I aspired to be like Hetty though! My other favourite books at the time were the Provincial Lady series, and I definitely identified with the PL, so perhaps I was a rather odd teenager
More generally, apart from A Month in the Country I feel like Carr's books take place in their own time/world, and you have to like that world to feel the charm? (Thinking of When Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the FA Cup and The Harpole Report in particular.)