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?

I haven’t loved Fitzgerald and the only short story I remember and enjoyed was about a diamond as big as a mountain (Benjamin Button was in my collection, but I really remember it for being Benjamin Button, albeit different to the film).

Just a heads up that Book Lovers by Emily Henry is in the kindle deals today, for anyone who was interested in the chat about her a couple of weeks ago - it's a good holiday read, smart and witty romance, and very self referential about the rom-com genre.

Trespasses has been much admired on here recently and I note the price on Kindle has dropped to £1.79.

What a weekend of absolute bliss, two more books. I needed these 4 days so badly.

The Secret Diary of an Arranged Marriage, Halima Khatun
This was 99p chick lit. It doesn’t pretend to be anything else and I quite liked it as a pass the time lazying about. I really liked the main character’s mum who was traditional but much more open minded that she was given credit for. The premise is basically about the protagonist demsystifying arranged marriages along the way whilst bringing it up to date with Muslim matrimonial dating apps, thinly veiled charity events, paid matchmakers and interfering aunties.

The Tide of Life, Catherine Cookson
It has been years since I read a Cookson, a bit of a guilty pleasure and one of her children’s books my gran bought me one Christmas really contributed to me being a reader and when she died I inherited her collection, though this particular one was a battered old version that apparently cost 20p. For those who have read Cookson or grow up with the TV series this was pretty standard. Emily, is 15 at the start and a series of calamities befall her that she has to work through. She is a strong woman who fights back and won’t be beaten and the book ends on her terms, but happily. I did find Cookson’s writing comforting and I’ll prob go back to some of the others in the shelf. I basically decided to read a book from each shelf and random number them like Kindle and this was what I got for shelf one.

57. The Ruin Of All Witches by Malcolm Gaskill

This short non fiction work concerns an outbreak of witchcraft scaremongering in early New England which predated the witch trials at Salem.

Hugh and Mary Parsons of Springfield, Connecticut arouse the suspicions of their neighbours that they are involved in witchcraft in the most laughable and spurious of ways. Pitchfork mentality ensues.

This was quite good but not outstanding, and the Author's Note at the end was rather self indulgent.

@MamaNewtNewt yes I love seeing other people’s reactions to books I’ve loved (or even hated). I don’t know if I would have enjoyed The Metamorphosis if it had been any longer mind you! I’m trying to read more diversely this year (and I’ve neglected the classics since I was a teen) so I’m glad I’ve tried a Kafka, but won’t be in a hurry to get back to him.

@StColumbofNavron the diamond story was one of the five. I hadn’t seen the Benjamin Button movie so quite enjoyed the story. The other two I liked were Berenice Bobs her Hair and one about Dalrymple (can’t remember the actual title.
Has anyone read any other novels of Fitzgerald’s other than Gatsby? I’m wondering if I should give another a go, and if so, which one?

@BaruFisher I've only read The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald (apart from The Great Gatsby) which I hated. It was mercifully short at least.

17 Children of Paradise - Camilla Grudova

At least it had (marginally) more plot than I’m a Fan, but also a lot more bodily fluids. To be fair, it was very readable and I suspect film buffs would get a lot more out of it. No one should give it a prize though - maybe just a packet of dettol wipes.

@BaruFisher The Beautiful and Damned and This Side of Paradise are both Fitzgerald books I’ve enjoyed. I didn’t enjoy Tender Is The Night as much though.

This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub

Recommended upthread by Whosawake. This is a time travel book - on her 40th birthday Alice discovers she can repeatedly go back to her 16th birthday and change her future. Good premise but I thought the author could have done more with exploring the different types of futures she ended up in, and the ending was disappointing.

The Palace Papers by Tina Brown

Hefty book looking at the last 25 years of the Windsors (up to last year, before the death of the Queen). Focuses on Charles, William and Harry and their various partners. Detailed but not much I didn’t already know.

Last Seen by Lucy Clarke

A boy drowned 7 years ago and on the anniversary of his death his best friend goes missing. Secrets about the drowning then come out. I didn’t like any of the characters and the ending was frustrating with too many twists thrown in.

@BaruFisher I read quite a bit of Fitzgerald in my 20s. The Beautiful & Damned and Tender is the Night were the ones I liked most (much more than Gatsby). Not sure they'd appeal to me as much now in my 50s. I seem to recall there was a TV series of Tender ?

Just looked & it was 1985, so I'd have been 15/16 when I read that & his other books. I have a suspicion they're perfect for angsty teen-agers

Thanks @Sadik , @MamaNewtNewt and @ChessieFL
I may leave Fitzgerald for another while then and prioritise The Beautiful and the Damned if I do go back there then.
I have plenty more on the TBR to keep me going!

Thanks @GrannieMainland - I bought that, am away next week and fancy something light. (I’m in a caravan with a toddler so won’t exactly be a beach read with cocktail in hand, but still).

Finished 2 in the last week:

15 Lessons in Chemistry- Bonnie Garmus
I’m sure I’m late to the party on this one, so probably don’t need to summarise much - Elizabeth Zott is a gifted chemist, whose struggle to be taken seriously and allowed to pursue her research is thwarted at every turn by the prevailing sexist and misogynistic attitudes, structures and employers of the late 50s/ early 60s.

I’m torn on this one. On the one hand I read the first few chapters thinking ‘oh, I thought it was going to be better than this’. There was a lot of whimsy and so many coincidences. We have an astonishingly beautiful AND gifted central character who seems permanently surprised and caught out by the the sexist attitudes she is confronted with, as if she’s been implanted in late 50s America from present day, rather than having grown up steeped in those attitudes as would actually have been the case. A precocious child with abilities far beyond her years (fast becoming a pet peeve of mine in books) AND a bonus precocious dog, heavily anthropomorphised and with abilities beyond his species. Plus it was all tied up a little too neatly at the end.

On the other hand - I finished it in 2 sittings and can’t say I didn’t thoroughly enjoy it by the end! It’s a good story, and I couldn’t help rooting for the characters even as I didn’t entirely believe in them.

In lots of ways it reminded me of John Irving, as did John Boyne THIF when I read they last year. Something about getting the characters entire backstory, and the way they were drawn - plus the coincidences - Irving was one of my absolute favourite authors in my late teens/ early twenties and it did make me wonder what I’d think if I revisited now.

16 I’m a Fan - Sheena Patel
I also finished this one pretty quickly, but mostly because I wanted it to be over. I was constantly battling to make sense of it/ not zone out entirely. I’m very boring but I do feel I need something at least a little bit likeable about at least one of the characters in a book. I genuinely struggled to empathise with her pursuit of such a pathetic example of a man (probably we weren’t meant to) and I struggled to make the link between her obsession with him and colonialism. There were certainly some good points about race, whiteness, privilege and colonialism in there - I just think they’ve been better made elsewhere. Assembly by Natasha Browne for example.

I think you have to be in a state of hedonistic pissed angst and having sex with inappropriate people you fall in love with but who don't love you to appreciate Fitzgerald. 😂 I devoured him in 1991 when I was doing all of the above (usually with the same person tbf) and have much thumbed and highlighted copies that now make me feel a bit wanky. Beautifully crafted writing though. I think the only one I'd read now is Gatsby. (again, mainly because of the highlighted paragraphs especially the last one which is my favourite last paragraph of any book apart from (bizarrely) Bill Bryson's in Notes From a Small Island which makes me cry. 😂

@ChessieFL has Lucy Clarke stopped using the words "salt", "salty" etc yet? I read a few of hers and once I noticed it, I couldn't stop and it did my head in. (as well as the "Libby" ™️ style main characters)

I'm still dipping in and out of A Thousand Ships and quite enjoying it in a non earth shattering way. I might read something more obviously literary about those pesky Greeks and Trojans later. This is useful to refresh my memory but apart from Penelope coming across as a much more "wtf is my husband playing at" than she does in The Odyssey itself, it's all a bit Troy by numbers. It's fine though. (I did an OU course on The Odyssey and the Iliad one summer and Andromache by Racine at A level, but haven't really read anything more despite having them all on that there Kindle TBR pile)

@So1invictus i didn’t particularly notice an overuse of salt/salty - but it was set on a beach so that term isn’t particularly unusual! This is one of her earlier books though so maybe she’s got more addicted to salt over time. I do hate it when authors overuse a particular term - I remember one of the Dan Brown books (maybe Origin) kept repeating ‘sea of humanity’ which got really irritating.

14. Material Girls: why reality matters for feminism by Kathleen Stock
If I could have a wish it would be to stop feeling I must wrestle with This Sort of Thing. But at the moment I don't feel able to do that, so I continue to read books about it. The pleasure of reading a book as opposed to an article or a tweet is so often a greater familiarity with an author's voice as they engage more deeply with an argument (cf reading Shon Faye's book last year) and I enjoy KS's clear, gently sardonic and mildly pedagogical style very much. I'm not 100% convinced by everything she says but I don't have to be. I do 100% agree with 'less theory, more data' but perhaps i have less faith in that than KS does. I have been left very down after reading this. Tbh a world where this book had to be written at all is not particularly interested in data. Perhaps in the end it is people, not data that matter.

22 Between the Stops by Sandi Toksvig. Nice gentle autobiography based around a London bus route. I like Sandi and she comes across as a good and interesting person, but I found this a bit dull compared to some celeb autobiographies.

23 The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward. Recommended on this thread last year. Six year old Lulu went missing 11 years ago and her sister Dee is still trying to solve the mystery. Ted is a strange, lonely man who lives close to the lake where she disappeared. He was a suspect at the time and was eliminated, but is there more to the story than meets the eye? Good stuff, I enjoyed this.

39 The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

Lucrezia de Medici is married off to the Duke of Ferrara when her elder sister, to whom he was betrothed, dies. She doesn’t want to marry him, and we know from the very first page that their union is doomed.

I didn’t love Hamnet. It never quite grabbed my attention in the way I felt it was trying to. By contrast this was much more of a page turner, while also perhaps being less literary in its ambitions. I’m not convinced the writing or structure was as clever as O’Farrell thought it was – and I was frustrated by the ending that felt manipulative and contrived - but that didn’t make it any less enjoyable. I could have done with a bit less of the overblown prose in places, but this did what I wanted it to, which was distract me and take me somewhere a long way away from the damp, cold holiday cottage I found myself in.

40 The World Without Us by Alan Weisman

If humans vanished tomorrow, what would happen to the buildings and infrastructure we left behind, and to the animals and plants that would no longer be subject to our choices? I picked this up after I saw a reference to it in a review of The Last of Us, and was intrigued (spoiler – no depiction of life after the apocalypse gets it quite right). This is detailed and thoughtful and well researched, and I really loved its breadth and imaginative scope. It was both journalistic and lyrical and I found myself really thinking about the environments I found myself in as I read it and what they’d look like in twenty years if everyone were to vanish. It’s a touch on the old side now, and I’m sure the conclusions may differ a little if it were updated now, but nonetheless this is a stand out for me so far this year.

41 I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai

Bodie attended a smart East Coast prep school where her roommate Thalia died during their junior year. Decades later, she goes back to teach a course and is caught up again in the mystery surrounding Thalia’s death. This didn’t quite work for me – there was a lot going on, and I never quite bought Bodie’s decisions, given all we were told about her. And perhaps this is how a lot of modern fiction is going to go over the next couple of years, but the references to Trump and the pandemic felt slightly forced, though I concede that a book where timelines matter does need to at least address some of these issues. It is very much a book about privilege, #metoo and misogyny, and I did think these issues were largely well addressed. I’m not sure it’s quite the literary masterpiece that the cover quotes suggest, but it certainly wasn’t the worst thing I’ve read this year.

42 The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis

Too much chess. Probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but as this was incredibly faithfully adapted by Netflix, it didn’t really do much for me. I wish I’d read the book before seeing the show, as I think I’d have had a very different reaction to it. As it was, it felt like I was just reading a recap of the TV series, whereas in reality I think it’s probably a very good and interesting novel.

I think Tender is the Night is my favourite Fitzgerald novel, and I've read it two or three times not drinking alcohol, most recently in my 40s with my library book group (in which there may well be younger members attending but most of the long term regulars - over about 10 years! - are a bit older than me. Though I may well have been undergoing some emotional angst I'm quite intrigued that it was apparently published in different sequences, though I'm not sure and can't remember whether I've always read it in the same one. One is chronological and one starts in the middle of the story chronology wise and then looks back (the latter sequence is I think the current Penguin edition and it's what I'm familiar with).

West by Carys Davies this was recommended on A Good Read recently. American settler Cy Bellman, widowed father of 10 year old Bess, has read about the discovery of the bones of enormous creatures. He sets off to the uncharted West in search of living ones, leaving Bess in the care of his sceptical sister, the 2 of them at the mercy of the community around them.

I really enjoyed this short 150 page novel. Bellman’s sense of possibility, the vast unknown (to European settlers) territory, the danger to the women left behind, and the plight of the Native Americans are vividly conjured and there is a mounting sense of unease. The story alternates between Bellman’s adventures and his daughter’s life at home, so we see both the bereaved father’s drive to explore (or escape?) and the effect on those left behind. For much of his journey Bellman travels with a displaced young Shawnee boy - neither he nor other Native Americans that they encounter have heard of the giant living creatures that Bellman seeks - but he is undeterred. This novel transported me, and I’m sure it will stay with me.

26. After the End - Clare Mackintosh

I have previously read some of her thrillers which I thought were good but this is a very different subject matter (and sadly draws on the author’s real life experience). Pip and Max’s toddler son, Dylan, is in paediatric intensive care with a brain tumour. The initial part of the book follows them mainly at Dylan’s bedside but the second part of the book follows two different storylines and timelines showing the alternative ways in which Pip and Max’s life could have unfolded depending on the decisions/courses of action taken before Dylan’s death. I found myself getting confused between the alternative storylines as they involve all the same people (but that was probably lack of focus on my part). It’s not exactly cheery content but I thought the first part was very well done and particularly enjoyed the parts told from the doctor’s view and the insights into her personal life. Having said that, the whole book must have had some impact on me as when I woke up a couple of times in the night it was uppermost in my mind.

Bit behind with reviews

11.. The Pelican Brief by John Grisham. A reread from 20 years ago. Grisham has a very 90s macho writing style - our heroine Darby is lusted over by everyone. But this remains a pacey legal thriller and I’m going to revisit some more of his .
12.The Road trip Beth O’Leary. A terribly dull chick lit book, with truly awful characters. A shame as I liked the author’s more recent work. I’m reading her other novel now The No Show and may give up, I was hoping for distracting fun but the heroine just gazed at the love interest ‘from beneath her eyelashes’…what does that even mean?
13.Stone Blind* by Natalie Haynes. Medusa with a modern twist. The stories are good (as they’d have to be to still be being told thousands of years later). But I didn’t care for the writing. Show don’t tell and all that. I find her dialogue a little lazy which is not the same as accessible.

22 Melmoth - Sarah Perry I’m sure this is very good, but I didn’t like it. It jumps all over the place so much that I didn’t connect with the main plot and characters (who were boring and quite unlikeable, and whose friendship was unrealistic), and I didn’t want or expect to be reading a book about how shitty humans are to each other. I’m probably a philistine and should have enjoyed it more, but I just wanted a good story!

18. Before The Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

I'm a bit shy to admit this but I didn't love it. I found the characters confusing as their names all start with K and I was never entirely sure who was who. Also everyone seemed to entirely lack emotion and it was all very clipped. Really big deals were dealt with in just a few paragraphs and we all moved on without a backwards glance.

This is my first book by a Japanese author (I think) so maybe it's the style and I'm just not used to it?

The concept was great but I just didn't have enough connection with the characters. 3 stars on good reads for me.