50 Books Challenge 2023 Part Four

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the fourth 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, the second one here and the third one here.

What are you reading?

My list:

1.	Silverview - John le Carre 
2.	Less - Andrew Sean Greer
3.	A month in the country - JL Carr
4.	Act of oblivion - Robert Harris
5.	I feel bad about my neck - Nora Ephron I
6.	The highly sensitive child - Elaine Aron
7.	Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone (French translation) - JK Rowling
8.	Small things like these - Clare Keegan - 
9.	Slade House - David Mitchell
10.	Trespasses - currentl

Agh, ugly font! This is from copying over from iPhone Notes.

I'm really struggling with the reading. Going through a very stressful time right now and I can't focus and have fallen behind.

I think "at least it's not drugs" should be the motto for this thread!

I shall also use that line on DH who is wondering why I have spent £250 on clothes this weekend...

44. Difficult Women : A History Of Feminism in 11 Fights by Helen Lewis

This divides itself into sections like : Work, Love, Sex and then chooses a woman from history like Lily Parr or Erin Pizzey as the example and give a potted biography and wider context.

I thought it was excellent, I really did and much more accessible than Invisible Women

Of course there are times it is absolutely anger inducing as well such as the section about the death of Savita Halappanavar, but it also gives hope that there are and always will be Difficult Women fighting the good fight.

Recommended

🤣

I have failed the TBR Taming before it's started by buying three books from charity shops and one secondhand from Amazon yesterday. On the plus side at least it's not drugs I read page 67 of two other and rejected them both. Progress of a sort.

I've read the same 99p Women's Prize books as everyone else so I won't labour the plot summaries!

20. I'm A Fan by Sheena Patel. I thought this was clever and zeitgeisty. Some of the philosophical sections on culture and race zipped by too fast for me to take in, but it's not a book that encourages reading slowly - it felt like scrolling through social media. I could have done with a little more plot or development.

21. Children of Paradise by Camilla Grudova. I'm definitely in the too gross and weird camp! That said I thought the cinema takeover was well done and I liked the lingering ambiguity about the narrator. Certainly memorable.

I can't say I particularly enjoyed the experience of reading either book but they're both interesting and original and I'm glad they are nominated.

And an entirely different book... 22. Saltwater by Jessica Andrews. A young woman with a difficult family from the north east goes to university in London, expecting to find her true self. When her grandfather dies, she inherits his house in Ireland, where she spent her summer holidays, and returns there alone. She starts a relationship with a local man and gradually starts to build a sense of who she is. It's told in tiny lyrical vignettes, often just paragraphs, of scenes from her present, her time in London, her childhood, then snippets from her parents and grandparents' lives. It's about finding identity and roots in family history and place. Completely beautiful.

At Least it’s not Drugs will be my mantra too!

Rizzio by Denise Mina Thanks to everyone who recommended this. I was vaguely aware of the predicament of Mary Queen of Scots, at the mercy of scheming and brutal ‘noblemen’, her husband Darnley among them. This short book tells the true story of the murder of one of her advisors and really brings alive the brutality of court life, where ladies in waiting have had sons executed by the queen they now attend, and where that queen herself is in such danger.

At least drugs don't take up shelf space though... I've been adding copiously to my (at least mainly virtual) tbr list all the way through:

23 Manifesto on Never Giving Up by Bernardine Evaristo
Short but really engaging memoir by Evaristo that I picked up by chance in the library. She's had a fascinating life, starting with her childhood in 1960s London as one of 8 children, where they & her Nigerian father & white British mother had to deal with racism not just from neighbours, but also from her mother's family. I liked Girl, Woman, Other a lot, & I'm not sure why I'd not thought to look out her other books. She also talks about other authors who've influenced her over the years (yet more additions to the tbr list).

I've given up on Trespasses - I know others have loved it, but I'm just finding it depressingly predictable rather than fresh and new. I figured I'm just going to take it back to the library, as there's doubtless people waiting for it, rather than have it linger & look at me reproachfully.

it is. and so sad. worse because we cant do anything about it.

13 Feminism for Women - Julie Bindel

I’m broadly sympathetic with Bindel’s viewpoint on a lot of issues, but this was just 150 pages of telling every other sort of feminist what they’re doing wrong. I understand she’s angry, but I don’t think you can motivate people to practical, positive action through such a negative diatribe. Also, the style was very haphazard making it difficult to follow her arguments, and a lot of the stats made absolutely no sense. ‘During 2019, there were twenty-three billion visits to the website pornhub, which equates to a collective forty billion centuries of porn being viewed.’ So each visitor watched porn for nearly two centuries? Must have had a sore wrist after that.

Belated thanks to @Southeastdweller as I'm just jumping into this thread on page 10!
@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I was really interested to see your comments on Greenwood. I read it a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it, and I've found myself more interested in trees and woodland since I read it. The structure was intended to represent the rings in a tree as you move through the trunk, from the future timeline back through the different generations and then forward in order to finish in the same period that we started in.
@agnesmartin I'm keen to read Fern Brady's book and was pleased to see that you rated it highly.
@Tarragon123 and others who have recently mentioned Fiona Valpy - I read Sea of Memories last year and liked it more than I had expected (it was a gift from my Mum and her recommendations don't always work for me). My local library has another couple of hers but when I read the cover it sounded like they would be quite similar, so I decided that while I quite liked Sea of Memories, it would be good to leave some time between her books so that they didn't feel too samey.

@RomanMum, I have Bibliomaniac waiting to be read, after Robin Ince gave a talk at our local independent bookshop.

I'd never heard the guy speak before. I expected an evening of gentle chat about meandering around bookshops and to get some ideas about where might be good to visit myself. Instead he launched into a crazy random monologue at top speed and kept it up for over an hour. No bookshops were mentioned although he did wave an assortment of books in the air while describing why he'd bought each one .. he'd done a trawl of the charity shops in the village earlier in the day.

He's quite incisive politically and also very open about his personal life including living with ADHD. It was the most unusual author event I've been to but very very entertaining.

Two recent reads...
13. The Last Green Valley by Mark Sullivan
This is the story of a family fleeing their home in Ukraine during the later stages of World War 2, as the Germans are retreating and Stalin's forces are advancing to regain land for themselves. The Martell family face danger from all sides as they strive to stick together and head west to a life of freedom away from the influence of both Stalin and the Nazis.
There's an extraordinary story in here, a novel based on the experiences of a real family, and it covered aspects of history that I wasn't familiar with. However, it is not well written. It kind of has one pace without highs and lows. The author repeats things as if he doesn't trust the reader to get the meaning the first time. There's also a political and religious angle that started to feel like it was reflecting the author's agenda rather than necessarily the views of the characters. Don't think I'll be returning to this author in future.
14. New Girl In Little Cove by Damhnait Monaghan
Rachel's life has taken a couple of really difficult turns, so she leaves big city Canada to take up her first teaching post in the tiny village of Little Cove, Newfoundland. This is a fish out of water romantic comedy with Newfoundland accents and phrases, traditional music, humour and only mild peril. It was just what I needed - gentle, uplifting, predictable in a good way. I could picture it all as a film with stunning scenery and a fab soundtrack of Newfoundland music. A couple of plotlines wrapped up as if the author had sort of run out of ideas, but overall this was perfect for a quick read over the weekend and a great change from heavier reads. Liked it a lot.

5 The Mirror and the Light - Hilary Mantel
Final part in the Thomas Cromwell trilogy. I found this hard going, having loved Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, this one seems to drag along a bit. I think it could have been split into 2 seperate books, which would have been more manageable for my attention span! Lovely sense of place though, and I enjoyed the descriptions of what they were having for dinner (lamprey pie - yum!). I felt a bit emotional when Cromwell was in the Tower waiting his death and hoping for a reprieve.

Hi @CluelessMama yes, I understood about the rings and the tree and the cycle, there was a picture in the book.

It's just when it turns back to 2038 which it needs to to complete the cycle, I didn't feel that that last 10% was at all well done.

I agree about thinking about trees

@YolandiFuckinVisser (and any other Wolf Hall fans out there) - what was it about the first two novels that you loved? I am about half way through Wolf Hall and would say I'm moderately engaged. I don't hate it, but I'm not desperate to get into bed each night to lose myself in Tudor England. It's progress as I've never made it beyond the first few chapters before, so I will definitely finish it this time, but I'm still a bit baffled as to why so many people speak so highly of it. I will certainly acknowledge it is an extremely well done piece of literature in terms of style and construction, but I'm not hooked in the way that everyone else seems to be.

21. The New Countess by Fay Weldon Finally cleared this trilogy off my tbr. I found this final book slightly more engaging but maybe it was just the excitement of nearing the end of the trilogy that kept me reading. We're back to the main Dilberne family, Rosina returns from Australia a wealthy widow, Arthur and Minnie's marriage is in trouble and Robert is once again being unfaithful to Isobel. But Isobel has her own unsuitable flirtation to distract her. The entire plot is based on people being completely incapable of having a simple conversation, leading to misunderstandings. The most frustrating of all plot devices. It takes a family tragedy for them all to sort themselves out

@PepeLePew

I can only speak for myself but I was drawn in by his scrapper status and yet the world he's built at Austin Friars and the responsibility he holds for others and the stuff with his wife and children. A real sense of how middle class life worked at the time

@PepeLePew I don't think I was hooked on Wolf Hall in a page turner way. But just thought it was a very original way to write a historic novel that brought the characters to life as well as giving a fresh perspective on a very over researched period of history.

So carrying on with the women's prize longlist, my next read was Pod by Laline Paull. This was the most bonkers yet. It's told from the PoV of various ocean creatures, the main one being a female spinner dolphin Ea. She gets separated from her pod and it follows her. I started off thinking I would hate this but found it quite compelling and finished it in a couple of days. I never expected to read about dolphin sexual abuse, a gender fluid Wrasse or the sex appeal of clams, but there you go. I'd be surprised if it made the shortlist but it's certainly original.

@PepeLePew for me it's the mundane domestic stuff that I love reading. Cromwell's household, his family, his working life, dinners, dogs. The death of his wife & daughters is beautifully portrayed and humanises the man behind the Holbein portrait. It brings to life a real historical character about whom I'm not sure I'd ever heard of before. The political intrigue and the difficulties around working for Henry is excellently portrayed from Cromwell's point of view.

If you haven't seen the BBC adaptation of Wolf Hall with Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell I can heartily recommend it. I had had a couple of failed attempts at getting to grips with the book but finally got on with it after the TV series.

13. Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo

I'm adding my voice to those who loved this story. I don't want to say too much but I was really rooting for the characters despite them having some big flaws and failures as humans. I guess we all make mistakes, and it made them very relatable.

I decided to use my ‘Mother’s day’ benefits to get through some reading so chose

17. Children of Paradise - Camilla Grudova

Reviewed many times I am not sure anyone needs a rehashing of it by me. I have spent today wondering how I felt about it. I loved it but I don’t know why. I suspect it will stick with me in the same way A Secret History did where I will find myself wondering how they characters are getting on before remembering that they are fictional.

45. I'm A Fan by Sheena Patel

We all seem to be reading this right now, so I will just say that I enjoyed the chaotic, toxic protagonist but the writing style got annoying and repetitive by about halfway and I was glad when it ended.

I've joined a queue for a library ebook of Bibliomaniac by Robin Ince after the review here.