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?

16 The Sins of our Fathers by Asa Larsson

The final instalment (after a long hiatus) in the author's excellent Rebecka Martinsson series. Martinsson, a city lawyer turned prosecutor in her native Kiruna, has been put through the wringer by Larsson over the course of 6 books. I've always enjoyed her as a prickly, stubborn character who often acts against her best interests. The Kiruna setting is also brilliantly written by Larsson, and is a star of the series. This long final book focuses on the corruption infiltrating the project to rebuild Kiruna which is collapsing in on itself owing to subsidence caused by mining (this is a true life situation which is in itself interesting to read about). A series of murders occur which tie in to Martinsson's early life. The new characters introduced are rounded and endearing and although I thought the book was over-long at 600 pages, everything was tied up in satisfactory fashion. I'm sad to say goodbye to Martinsson but Larsson has done her proud in her final outing.

Get Rich... looks good @Boiledeggandtoast - and also 99p on Kindle.

Just finished
30. Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
I'm very late to the party on the Jackson Brodie books. I've not got on with other KA books I've tried, but thought I'd give these a go. Mixed feelings - I dislike books that rely on bad things happening to young women & girls for emotional impact, & the whole thing felt like a pile of stereotypes. But having said all that, I dashed through it, & I'd definitely pick up the next one if I saw it in the library.

39.;Consumed: How Shopping Fed the Class System, by Harry Wallop

Published a decade ago, this book looks out how market segmentation by the big companies lead to new sets of class markers. The fun lies in spotting yourself, even as you like to think your own wonderfully idiosyncratic choices mark your individuality. That's just another category.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit
Mr B delivery arrived today.
Hannah Kent's The Good People
Set in rural Ireland in the 1800s.
Will report back on this but a good first impression.
(For those of you who have just got a subscription, Mr B book deliveries come beautifully packaged in a bright blue envelope.)

@Welshwabbit that series sounds great, I love a bit of Scandi crime!

Have been reading this since January, and it really isn’t all that big, but was just dipping it but picked up more frequently for commute/lunch recently.

Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages, Guy Deutscher

i really enjoyed this study of language and what informs the way that we use it (or if in fact language informs everything else). It is really well written and I suspect as useful for your undergraduate to get a handle on things as it is for the lay reader as an introduction to various debates in linguistics. I think about language a lot in my own (now recreational) work and this has helped make my thinking marginally more sophisticated than it was. I came to this book because Viv Groskop had mentioned it in Au Revoir Tristesse. Recommend for those interested in this sort of thing.

Did you watch the TV adaptations of the Rebecka Martinsson books, @Welshwabbit - and if so, what did you think of them?

Sorry, that's my tech fail, I was trying to quote bibliomania who had reviewed Get Rich. I only know the author from his reports on Channel 4 News, but he's very good on that and Get Rich looks good too.

I think I may have some of the Asa Larsson books on the mahoosive tbr Kindle pile. Sound just up my street.
I also downloaded some of the Scandi noirs by the writer of Wisting as I really enjoyed the TV series of that. I did go a bit mad by downloading and starting to watch every single Scandi book/series as though somehow they were all going to be Very Magnificent Indeed. Spoiler: they're not always VMI.

Finished my (appropriately) 13th book , Lady MacBethad by Isabelle Schuler, one of the raft of reworkings of female characters, although at least this one isn't Greek!

Schuler has done the legwork, and her author's note at the end helps pad out what we already know about Grouch (I always thought it was Gruach, but there you are...) and how she developed the character. That's an interesting idea. It works well enough. She tells us she left Shakespeare Easter Eggs dotted through the text and I found all of them - I thought it very clunky in fact!

One thing that is interesting is that she makes Duncan an unlikeable man, which is an interesting twist as he is so much the kindly king in Shakespeare.

This started off as a screenplay for a short film - I think it shows, as , after the first maybe 150 pages, there seems o be an awful lot of padding! Schuler is Swiss-American. I d find myself at times wondering if she has been to Scotland. Some of the Fife landscapes didn't sound right and some of the bit part characters'' names seemed wrong to me. And, even a s a Scot, a pronunciation guide of names would have been a good addition to the text. My ears are bleeding even at the thought of what some non Scots might do to the names and place names in their heads!!

I'll be honest, I bought this because I fancied winning the prize draw Waterstones attached to its purchase!

@Gingerwarthog

Nice. Though I don't think I liked Burial Rites enough to be eager to read further - I'll see what you say

I think that the real Duncan was far from the gentle chap Shakespeare depicts, iirc.

It's been a while but I do have 2 updates.

1. The Two Towers - JRR Tolkein In really enjoying reading lord of the rings and am enjoying the story but I do find that the writing style does slow me down somewhat and thus this took me the whole of March to read. Would recommend if you like fantasy but perhaps one that works best as an audio book for many.

1. The Moving Finger - Agatha Christie This was March's book for the reading challenge which is focussing on Motives and Methods. This month's was anger but not sure it fitted the best. I enjoyed this and didn't guess who did it until the end which is always fun in a whodunit. It is the third Miss Marple book but she appears in the last third only, thankfully our protagonist, pilot Jerry Burton was a capable and interesting amateur detective of sorts.

marking time by Elizabeth Jane Howard. secondin the series.

I’m having a perfect bank holiday weekend at the moment, having finally finished another.

A Year of Living Simply, Kate Humble
I have a vague recollection that many of you may have read this a year or two ago. I’m late to every book party. This is basically a year of Kate’s musings around how we might live a simpler life. I think I just bought this on a 99p whim. I’m not hugely interested in living simpler, though post covid I have tried to live more mindfully and a little slower. It struck me that there was a great deal of privilege around what all the people she met were trying to do and it was only really openly acknowledged once by a woman who had had a breakdown from her £160,000 a year job and she openly expressed that her current life was only possible because of her spouse’s salary and savings from her previous career. I enjoyed her trip to the island of Lundy, which fed my obsession with islands.

I know some of KH's family. I can well imagine that, lovely as I am sure she is, her life was so rarefied that she was fairly blind to just how much privilege underpinned the "living simply".

I've always wanted to go to Lundy island - I think I need to stick that on my wish list for this year!

Like Katharine May having to give up work due to one or more (can't remember, don't care) issues but not having to think about universal credit and feeding her kids but instead taking off to Norway to look at the Northern Lights. <grump grump>
(Though I'm sure KH is a much less "it's all about ME!!!" than KM.
(I realized how much KM angered me (probably largely irrationality but I don't even care such is my loathing) when I unfollowed Nigella on Insta after she raved about how wonderful her book is 😂)

55. How High We Go In The Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

This was my Mr B for this month and So Help Me It Was A Shocker.

A genuine candidate for one of the worst books of the year so far and I would go as far as to say one of the worst I've read since I started participating on this thread in 2020.

It starts out OK enough, a man travels to Siberia to finish his late daughter's work on a prehistoric child found preserved.

Unfortunately this child is the carrier of a long died out virus which re-emerges and makes COVID look like child's play.

From here we pass from chapter to chapter through loosely connected characters you never care about engaging in repetitive "how sad and awful life is" navel gazing, often with no real stylistic change to give the appearance of a different voice

As Absolutely Shite Dystopia's go it truly gives Station Eleven a run for it's money, in fact I think it's worse.

Not sure how to break this to the nice lady at Mr B's (@Gingerwarthog )

The Truants. Kate Weinberg.
I think recommended on here a few years ago. Story of a girl at university in a tight knit group of friends and obsessed with her star professor but the group starts to break apart. I found it an ok read but wasn’t gripped particularly by the main character.

The deathless girls. Kiran Millwood Hargrave.
another recommendation from here at some point. Story follows gypsy twin girls kidnapped and made slaves in a land (Transylvania) dominated by ‘the dragon’. Really enjoyed this book.

I’m a Fan. Sheena Patel
also bought this on the 99p sale and wish I hadn’t. It’s seemed to miss making the points the author wanted as any messages were lost on all the ramblings. Did not enjoy it.

@Terpsichore I haven't seen the TV adaptation although I was vaguely aware it existed. Is it any good?

23 The Gift Of A Radio, Justin Webb
Following recommendation on here. What an interesting autobiography! Nothing further to add to the excellent reviews upthread.

@Welshwabbit iirc they were OK but a bit feeble - along the usual lines of 'oh, what’s that ominous noise in the middle of the night, when I’m alone in an isolated cabin in the middle of the frozen wastes? I know, I’ll go out in my nightdress and investigate!' I think I did have a few of the books but they may have fallen prey to a big book-clearing drive in lockdown…

I’ve just checked and actually the TV series is still on All4, if I haven’t put you off!

Shadowlands by Matthew Green

Recommended upthread by RomanMum. The stories of various ‘lost’ towns and cities in Britain, this was really interesting and thought provoking. My favourite chapter was the Capel Celyn one as I have a bit of a fascination with drowned villages/churches. One criticism is that I would have liked more photos.

Night Waking by Sarah Moss

This has been hanging around on my kindle for about 10 years but finally got round to it. I wish I had read it sooner as I thought it was great. I really empathised with Anna’s feeling that she would chop her own arm off if it meant she could sleep, and the isolated island setting really came to life for me.

A Pocketful of Happiness by Richard E Grant

This wasn’t quite what I expected - I thought it was going to be about the period after his wife’s death and how he coped, but it was actually his diary from the time Joan found out she had cancer up to her funeral, interspersed with diary entries from earlier years featuring various career highlights. However I really enjoyed it although it’s obviously a sad story. Very name droppy but also his excitement and enthusiasm for his lifestyle really comes across.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit
That's going to be the difficult bit!!
Telling them you hated it.

I am 70 pages into The Good People by Hannah Kent. It's similar to Burial Rites in her skilful creation of a sense of place, particularly isolated rural societies with their rituals and superstitions.

It's is set in 1825 near Killarney, Ireland and Nora Leahy is bringing up a disabled child (maybe severely autistic) on her own. Nance (who would be a doctor today but was classed as a sort of hedge witch then) tries to help her out.

I was brought up in rural Scotland (about 150 years later!) but I can identify with the sense of isolation, need to fit in and the role of superstition.

She describes the relationship Nora has with the land beautifully- it's muddy, farming is hard work, it's cold, rainy but also incredibly beautiful.

She comes across as very nice and she writes well and it certainly isn’t all me me me, as the other book mentioned seems to be. There was a huge emphasis on the people that she met doing the jobs that they loved, that they’d created and I was pleased for them, but just not possible for so many.