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?

It's annoying because she often writes about things I'm very interested in, but I just can't cope with her.

I've already started it Agnes and so far so good. I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle ages ago, but remember enjoying it a lot. I eat seasonal vegetables all the time as basically eat what I grow (on a few acres plus tunnels, and as my job, which is possibly cheating ) but don't really eat any wild foods other than mushrooms & the occasional invading rabbit. So looking forwards to some inspiration there, especially for seaweed as right by the coast.

Hello all! Thanks for the new thread, Southeastdweller! Here is the continuation of my list since the last thread.

10. The Whalebone Theatre: Joanna Quinn 11. Walk the Blue Fields: Claire Keegan
11. Qijong and the Tai Chi Axis: Mimi Kuo-Deemer
12. The Diary of a Bookseller: Shaun Bythell 14. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day: Winifred Watson
13. Nocturnes: John Connolly
14. La Guingette à Deux Sous (Maigret #11): Georges Simenon
15. Still Life: Sarah Winman.

I'm going to read on with Anna Karenina before thinking of what to move onto next.

Has @Gingerwarthog been about? I wanted to know what her March Mr B's was

Thanks Southeast for the new thread

My list (I think, left off some DNF's whose names escape me)

1. Old Baggage – Lissa Evans
2. Crooked Heart – Lissa Evans

3.V for Victory – Lissa Evans

1. Early Morning Riser – Katherine Heiny
2. The Memory of Animals – Claire Fuller
3. Panic# - Luke Jennings
4. Half a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozie Adeiche
5. Greek Lessons – Han Kang
6. Amazing Grace Adams – Fran Littlewood

10. The Maiden – Kate Foster 11. The Anniversary – Stephanie Bishop 12. Kindred – Octavia E Butler 13. The Carlingford Chronicles – Margaret Oliphant 14. A Spell of Good Things – Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ 15. The Colony – Audrey Magee 16. In a Good Light – Clare Chambers 17. Burning Questions – Margaret Atwood 18. Learning to Swim – Clare Chambers 19. Cloud Cuckoo Land – Anthony Doerr

@ICrunchCrispsNotNumbers Hope you have recovered from your illness

It's me. I'm back.
March's Mr B was Old Filth by Jane Gardam.
I loved it and polished it off in two days.
What was yours?

Mine was Greenwood by Michael Christie - it was a multi generational saga with trees at the centre - it was 90% brilliant but the ending just didn't play out.

Thanks for that. I'd not seen it yet.

I don't recognise any names on there this year, I usually know one or two. Some interesting looking books though.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit
Just googled that and it looks good.

When I visited the shop last year they recommended Good Girl, Bad Girl by Michael Robotham which I have just started.
It features a forensic psychologist working with a damaged young girl. Will post more as I get further into it.

@agnesmartin I blinking love Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Enjoy!

@Stokey thanks for that list. I've only heard of Maryse Condé but not read anything by her. Just looked up some info about the book and I think I'll pass ;) probably not for me! I have however just reserved the Laurent Mauvignier at the library.

20. Long Live the King by Fay Weldon Second in this "Love & Inheritance" trilogy. We've skipped forward in time to 1901 and the planning of the Coronation of King Edward VII. This time the focus of the book is on Adela, the Earl of Dilberne's niece. Again, a fairly ridiculous storyline with a painfully neat ending. The worst part is the truly terrible description of childbirth. I presume the author has never actually birthed a child or she would know the placenta doesn't follow the baby within 10 seconds. Also we're supposed to believe one of the main characters has the ability to bring people back from the dead.

The Bandit Queens - Parini Shroff
Set in a small Indian village. Geeta's husband disappeared years earlier and everyone assumes she killed him. While she enjoys the freedom and notoriety this brings her, it also means most others shun her. It does however attract those who want her to help them bump off their own no good husbands, but not all requests are welcome.
This deals with all of life and is a commentary on the place of women in Indian society and the personal struggles they face. While it deals with some very serious and sad issues, it's written with an element of dark humour and is a combo of murder, mystery and mayhem. One of the characters is based on a real woman. I found it really interesting and a good character study, but at the same time I didn't love it. It took a long time to build up and get going. I would recommend it though. For me it's a wild card for the short list, but I still have 5.5 books to go.

17. Still Life: Sarah Winman

This is a novel that follows the fortunes of a small group of friends whose lives are so closely bound up with each other that they become each others family. It is a celebration of friendship, love and endurance and it's meant to warm the cockles of your heart.

Did it warm the cockles of my heart? Well yes, eventually. It took me a while to get used to Winman's writing style, which leans heavily on a near constant stream of dialogue, so much so that Claude the parrot hardly gets a word in edgeways! The modern convention of dropping inverted commas didn't bother me. I figured out who was speaking, so it wasn't confusing, but they only stopped talking to sleep, eat and engage in amorous activities.

There was a strong evocation of time and place, from London's gritty East End to postwar Florence and I thought the description of the devastating floods in that city during the sixties was really good. There was a great sense of panic, urgency and people working together to put the city back together again.

This is a lengthy novel and it's full to the brim with descriptions of the sights, sounds and smells of Florence; museums, art, food and drink. There's a fair amount of pontificating about art as well and my eyes started to glaze over towards the end. However, I liked the characters enough to feel I cared about what happened to them and while it was a bit schmaltzy at times, it was quite an enjoyable read.

@Stokey I've not read any on the list (my TBR list is so long I've been avoiding book blogs so not up to date with the latest releases) but Andrey Kurkov is probably Ukraine's best known writer in English speaking countries and a lot of the 50 bookers enjoyed Death and the Penguin last year. Maryse Conde's best known book is Segu which is a historical novel set in the African kingdom of Segu, she's won the international booker before in its previous incarnation where it recognised a body of work (like the Nobel). Those are the two big hitters on the list I'd say.

Bringing my list.

My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh
Before the Coffee gets Cold, Toshikazu Kawaguchi trans by Geoffrey Trousselot
Remains of the Day, TeamIshiguro
Ask a Historian, Greg Jenner
The Marriage Portrait, Maggie O’Farrell
The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
Quite, Claudia Winkleman
Malibu Rising, Taylor Jenkins Reid

Currently reading too much to actually finish anything.

Thank you for the new thread @Southeastdweller

i ended the previous thread having just finished a book so I will bring over my list just to mark my place

1. Mythos - Stephen Fry
2. Small Things Like These - Claire Keegan
3. Rizzio - Denise Mina
4. Hex - Jenni Fagan
5. A Thousand Ships - Natalie Hayes
6. Foster - Claire Keegan
7. Kid Normal and the Rogue Heroes - Greg James and Chris Smith
8. The World I Fell Out Of - Melanie Reid
9. Heroes- Stephen Fry

10. The Five - Hallie Rubenhold 11. The Way of All Flesh - Ambrose Parry 12. The Penelopiad - Margaret Atwood 13. For Thy Great Pain have Mercy on Thy Little Pain - Victoria Mackenzie 14. The Art of Dying - Ambrose Parry 15. The Wyrd Sisters - Terry Pratchett

16. A Corruption of Blood - Ambrose Parry

20. Foxash – Kate Worsley I really enjoyed this book. I picked it to read because I liked the cover illustration in black, white and orange with its depiction of lush countryside and a farmer on a tractor taming the wildness. Inside the covers is an unsettling, visceral, dark tale.

The story is set in the 1930's in England and starts with Lettie, a young married woman arriving to join her husband, Tommy, who has signed up for a government scheme (that really did exist) to train unemployed men to farm with financial assistance and the lease on a small holding provided by the Government. There are hints that something else happened to Tommy and Lettie beyond their descent into poverty after Tommy lost his mining job. Lettie arrives at Foxash farm to find their accommodation is joined to another house and isolated from the families with children in the central zone. Their neighbours are an older couple Adam and Jean who grew up farming and are seemingly in tune with the rhythms of nature. They set out to win over a suspicious Lettie as they seem to have done with taciturn Tommy.
Jean gives Lettie a delicious lettuce to eat and a green potion to imbibe to"build her up" which seems to have aphrodisiac and psychotropic properties. Like the Tale of Rapunzel, Lettie cannot resist Jean's lettuce and late at night is driven to steal one from Adam and Jean's glasshouse. The consequences of this theft reverberate throughout the story as the couples get to know one another better and attempt to bring forth "fruit from the land" and their real characters and motivations start to be revealed.
I was drawn into the narrative and although it was signposted in parts what was really going on, it helped to whet my appetite in anticipation of finding out how matters would be resolved.

Thanks for the thread @Southeastdweller

I’m currently reading The Ship Beneath The Ice (bit bored of this but quite near the end), Living With Buildings by Iain Sinclair, and Pandamonium by NME journo Simon Williams.

Still not spent anything on books yet this year. If I make it to the end of the year I might treat myself to a Mr B’s subscription.

@Tarragon123 - I read The Dressmaker’s Gift by Fiona Valpy a few years ago and bolded it at the time. It’s set in Paris during WW2. I keep meaning to read more by her so you might have nudged me towards doing that…..

19. Excellent Women - Barbara Pym

I have previously only read Quartet in Autumn but picked this up in a recent Kindle deal. The excellent women referred to are those who are heavily relied upon but are given little (or no) recognition for their efforts. Mildred is the unmarried, orphaned daughter of a clergyman who lives alone with her limited means. She is a stalwart of the local church (and good friends with the unmarried vicar, Julian, and his sister, Winifred) and volunteers for a distressed gentlewoman charity. Mildred’s flat, above an office, shares a bathroom with the other flat in the building and life changes when Helena Napier (an anthropologist) and Rockingham Napier (a naval officer) move in. and introduce her to Helena’s colleague, Everard Bone. Mildred provides tea and sympathy to both of them together and separately and falls slightly in love with Rockingham whilst the Napier marriage is hitting the rocks because Helena is in love with Everard. At the same time, confirmed bachelor, Julian, unexpectedly becomes engaged and Mildred is expected to provide moral support and potentially a home to Winifred. This a gentle book with a wry sense of humour and well-drawn characters. Worth a read.

There's quite a few good books on 99p. I just bought 8.

@TimeforaGandT

Funny, I have Excellent Women and have only read Quartet In Autumn too

Thanks @Sapat. ❤️I've got cerebral palsy and suspected fibromyalgia so life's a bit of a struggle for me at the moment. It's why I get so much enjoyment out of reading! X

The Ship Beneath the Ice could have been so much better. The writer strikes me as being quite a boring man.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit What did you buy?

I was at school with Lucy W, so I can’t make myself watch/listen to her programmes, or read her books. It just feels too awkward somehow. And she still looks exactly the same as she did when she was ten.