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.

I studied The Signalman in year 6 - I remember being terrified by it, and then we were shown the film, which was probably the first actually scary thing I ever watched.

I love Neil Gaiman's short stories - wish I could go back and read them for the first time again.

Ooh I like the look of this. Might see if I can get it from the library.

I love the idea of a Mr B’s subscription but couldn’t really justify the cost right now and my birthday isn’t for a while.

Im not reading anything with my eyes at the moment (sorry that’s what my daughter said when I tried to get her to listen to audiobook story in the middle of the night hoping it would help her go back to sleep - ‘no you have to read it with your EYES mummy’. )

I keep picking things up and they’re just not grabbing me, plus I’ve been really under the weather with one thing and another, and having to use a heated compress thing on my eyes when I get in bed as they’re really swollen and painful at the moment.

Im listening to Adam Buxton’s Ramble Book - he’s a lovely chap and I do enjoy his style usually, but I’m a little way over half way through and just really bored now. My interest in ‘stuff insanely privileged teenage boys did and said to each other at public school’ has definitely waned. I find the examination of his relationship with his dad more interesting and poignant, and his wife sounds very cool, but need a break from young Buckles and his mates for a bit now I think.

Have just seen A Net For Small Fishes is available on BorroxBox for me, result! (Sorry existing kindle and physical pile - back of the queue again!)

13 The Casual Vacancy by J K Rowling
I'm* *a big fan of Rowling but never got round to reading this which has been sitting on the shelf for years. I'd seen the series which was really sad so that put me off and I think I tried at one point but couldn't get into it.
It does take a good 100 pages or so to properly get going. There's a big cast of characters so it takes a while to get them formed in your mind. This is centred on the happenings of Pagford and the parish Council. It was worth persevering as I thought it was great by the end, a mix of social satire, political commentary, allegory and character study. But definitely not an uplifting read, could do with something light and fluffy now.

DNF Something to Hide - Elizabeth George I’ve enjoyed the Inspector Lynley series in the past but they have got worse and worse and I was so irritated by the irrelevancies, the terrible characterisations and the writing in an accent that I wanted to throw it at the wall but was afraid of breaking my kindle. I don’t know if there’s a technical term for writing in an accent but it’s very irritating. JKR is another culprit.

This is me. Permanently at the whim of digital queues and the horror of all your reserves becoming available at once.

I think my reading list would be very different if I didn't have so much digital access.

Thanks for the new thread!

My list:

1.	The Colony by Audrey Magee
2.	Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie
3.	Spare by Prince Harry
4.	<strong>Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin</strong> 
5.	Oh William by Elizabeth Strout
6.	The Agency for Scandal by Laura Wood
7.	The Dance Tree by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
8.	The Good Girl&rsquo;s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson 
9.	<strong>Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka</strong> 
10.	<strong>Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan</strong> 
11.	Last Night by Mhairi McFarlane

Currently reading and really enjoying Trespasses.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I enjoyed A Net for Small Fishes. Sort of a Jacobean Thelma and Louise.

@MrsDanversGlidesAgain @BigMadAdrian I liked both of Laura S-R's books, despite being too long and wildly plotted! But I was also uncomfortable with the depiction of slavery and torture in Blood and Sugar, I think there's a line between being historically accurate and bearing witness to suffering, and just being gratuitous.

I don’t know if there’s a technical term for writing in an accent but it’s very irritating

That's such an interesting question, Best - is there? Does anyone know?

I think it's called eye dialect.

I also don't know @Terpsichore or @BestIsWest but I find it tiresome. See also throwing random idioms into historical novels - I read one recently that kept referring to 'coin' rather than money, in otherwise contemporary dialogue. It was set in 1500s Strasbourg so the characters wouldn't have been speaking anything close to modern English anyway, why bother!

Welcome @autienotnaughty

JKR is also sadly not very good at writing in accents. Hagrid's "voice" is atrociously written. Thankfully Robbie Coltrane managed to sort him out on film. (I shall gloss over the travesty of Stephen Fry doing Hermione in the audio books. Way to go Stephen. For those who haven't had the dubious pleasure, it's a whiny, girly, stroppy, pathetic parody the likes of which 10 year old boys do when they're imitating a girl's voice. Mind you- there's another couple of words where he puts the stress in completely the wrong place. Can't remember what they are now but I even went and looked them up as I couldn't believe our erudite national treasure couldn't pronounce a word he had to say eleventy billion times in the course of 7 books)

@BestIsWest I struggled through a recentish Inspector Lynley last year, but shan't be reading any more.

I think you’ve got the gist of it, @MarkWithaC - Wikipedia says eye dialect may appear in the narrative depiction of altered spelling made by a character (such as in a letter or diary entry), generally used to more overtly depict characters who are poorly educated or semi-literate.

That would cover rendition of accents, I reckon.

Gah, I can’t keep up with these threads at the moment, possibly a good thing for my TBR pile though! Will share my list before this thread gets too far…

1. The Curfew by T M Logan
2. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
3. Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman
4. The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex
5. The Imposter Cure by Jessamy Hibberd
6. Lessons by Ian McEwan
7. Menopausing by Davina McCall
8. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
9. Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham

10. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver 11. River Sing Me Home by Eleanor Shearer

Have had a run of really good reads!

generally used to more overtly depict characters who are poorly educated or semi-literate. Sometimes it’s downright snobbery too.

Definitely, alas

I think that's actually the origin of the term – something about having an eye to the reader to let them know that you the writer know the person speaking is 'lesser'. A side-eye, I suppose!
I wonder why there doesn't seem to be a less loaded term for it, though; it's a widespread concept that I would imagine needs talking about quite a lot, and it'd be nice not to have to use this term for it.

Checking in... not sure if I have already. Been away for a few days and not making quick progress with lord of the rings although I am enjoying it.

Hoping the next few days of half term will help with that!

My list so far....

1. The First Kingdom - Max Adam
2. The Cat who Saved Books - Sosuke Natsukawa.
3. Sad Cypress - Agatha Christie.
4. Bizarre England - David Long.
5. History of the world in Bitesize chunks - Emma Marriot.

Not come across the phrase, 'Eye dialect' before, but it's made me think of Withering Trite and all the many reasons I hate it.

Have now followed up Village in the Third Reich with Julia Boyd's Travellers in the Third Reich. Equally fascinating, and especially so as it deals with so many on the face of it intelligent, highly educated and, frankly privileged people who couldn't- or wouldn't- see what was in front of their own noses. It's rather salutary to read of those youngsters who clearly thought it was all a jolly lark. In some ways I preferred Village as it dealt with a broader spectrum of society and contained some truly tragic stories. But they make excellent companion pieces. Important reads both, I'd say.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

I thought of Utopia Avenue and The Twyford Code it's an affectation I hate anyway

4.. One Day All This Will Be Yours by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Whoa! This was another great story.

The author can be a hit or a miss, and I was sorely disappointed by his Shards of Earth, Walking to Aldebaran and Firewalkers, whereas his Dogs of War, Bear Head and Cage of Souls were very good. This book was a good one.

Time travel is real and at the end of time where time travelers all come to see, there is our protagonist. Alone, he takes drastic steps to protect the timeline which never turns out well for the time travelers who encounter him. Why does he kill them all, though? Why does he go to such lengths to prevent others from time travel? What were the Causality Wars fought with time weapons?

I've read a lot of time travel books but none approached the subject in this way. Recommended.

@MrsDanversGlidesAgain @BigMadAdrian I liked both of Laura S-R's books, despite being too long and wildly plotted! But I was also uncomfortable with the depiction of slavery and torture in Blood and Sugar, I think there's a line between being historically accurate and bearing witness to suffering, and just being gratuitous

Yes, that was my feeling, and I berated myself a bit for it because of the actual documented horrors of slavery, the Middle Passage and incidents like the Zang; I told myself that she was recounting what actually happened. One of the reasons I gave up on the book was that I got the feeling she was - I don't know if 'wallowing in it' is the right phrase. Exploiting it for effect, perhaps.

Both of these were extremely short

25. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

No introduction necessary. Never got around to it previously, as such it's a sad case of failure to meet hype/expectation. Deathly dull, silly and annoying. Controversial of me, I know.

26. The Lonely Londoners by Samuel Selvon

Published in 1956, this is a contemporary at the time account of the first immigrants arriving from the Windrush generation and their experiences of work, racism and life in the UK. Obviously this is an important voice to be preserved but as a reader it's very slight, it seems to be over before it's really begun

Sigh. I could do with another bold

You sound like my kind of reader 😊

Not read either of those - will stay well clear!