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?

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit what a shame the book had its problems - it sounds really interesting

@BadSpellaSpellaSpella

Oh it's definitely worth a read, there's some fascinating stuff in there, but it was like the author needed to make sure all the research she did got used and was therefore worth it.

32. Get A Grip, Love by Kate Lucey

This is about Lucey’s experiences of living with depression, and her views on some of the advice people tend to give about dealing with depression.

@Natsku iirc that's one of the early Nicci French ones and one I really liked. Actually I thought they were all really good until the Red Room (I think it's called) when they went crapola and like every other psycho nutjob thriller (for which, as they've been writing for over 20 years now, they should probably take a bit of the blame 🤣) Secret Smile was great, as was the one with something about Memory in the title. Might have a reread.

I shall have to look for more of the older ones then. There was a snippet of The Red Room at the end of the book actually, I'll not bother with that one though!

31 Crashing Heaven by Al Robertson
One from the taming the TBR thread (thanks Biblio ). Cyberpunk SF thriller The AI gods of the Pantheon rule Station, now home to humanity after earth has become uninhabitable.

Jack Forster was a forensic accountant, but was made into a puppet master by his patron god, with virtual puppet Hugo Fist installed in his body & brain. The pair were sent to fight in the 'soft war' against the Totality, a competing AI based society. At the start of the book they return home, disgraced ex-prisoners of war, having surrendered to the enemy & been freed after a ceasefire. Jobless & friendless, Jack tries to track down his ex girlfriend, and to untangle the case he had been working on when he was suddenly removed from his job & sent off to war.
I liked but didn't love this. The first half of the book is pretty much just Jack & Hugo Fist interacting (because no friends etc), and without a third party to bounce off the story & relationship don't really get going. Once other characters get involved, it picks up, & the second half is much more interesting. I did like the society ruled by AI gods, obviously very topical right now (though this was written in 2015). I'll probably read the sequel, but maybe wait a bit to do so.

I meant to say, I was sure Cote had read & reviewed Crashing Heaven (positively), but I can't find the review at all.

32 Together, Again by Milly Johnson
Chick-lit with three estranged sisters meeting up after the death of their cold & difficult mother & rebuilding their relationships (plus meeting some rather charming men). Everything works out implausibly well, which is obviously very much the point of this kind of book. Work is really taking up all my brain space right now, & it was just what I needed. It's the second of MJ's books I've read now, recommended on a thread on here about romance authors, & I'll definitely pick up more of them when I need something proper easy-reading. (In both cases the protagonists were very much middle aged been-round-the-block-a-bit, which also ticks my boxes)

Catching up on Women’s Prize longlist reviews:

1. Trespasses, Louise Kennedy 5/5

Much reviewed on this thread already. This tender story of an extramarital affair set in 1970s Belfast is my favourite novel on the longlist. The characters are utterly believable from the beginning. I particularly enjoyed the conversations between the heroine and her alcoholic mother; they seemed so real. I saw a clip this week where Kennedy was being interviewed by Waterstone’s, and she cited three other novels that influenced her when she was writing Trespasses: Annie Ernaux’s Passion simple, Greene’s The End of the Affair, and Iris Murdoch’s The Black Prince, which was shortlisted for the 1973 Booker Prize. Interesting. I’m particularly taken with the Kennedy/Ernaux connection, but I also remember loving The End of the Affair.

1. Fire Rush, Jacqueline Crooks 4/5

This novel really deserves to make the shortlist IMO. The story is gripping, and the language is extremely inventive. The distinctive style imitates both Jamaican patois, and the musicality of the environment it describes: the underground raves and dub reggae happening in 1970s London. I’m extremely ignorant of this musical tradition so I think the full effect of the language was lost on me, but I admired the novel and the voice of its female protagonist anyway.

1. Bandit Queens, Parini Shroff 4/5

A fast-moving, entertaining read, with a cluster of complex (and not always sympathetic) female characters at its centre. The Indian setting was very vivid. I read some reviews suggesting that the India depicted was one that fit too easily into the stereotypes of Western readers, and I suspect this is true to at least some extent. Some of the women’s conversations sound like American/Californian slang (and made me laugh for that reason, for example when the women are reiterating that motherhood, you know, is always just SO fulfilling). Anyway, the plot and writing style are quite distinctive, and even though the violence reaches disturbing levels in places, comedy and satire predominate.

1. I’m a Fan, Sheena Patel 4/5

This wasn’t exactly an easy read, because it’s short but very dark. However, it’s certainly thought-provoking. It paints a convincing picture of what infatuation and obsession can look like, with reflections on colonialism and racial inequality mixed in. The shallow discourse of wealthy instagrammers is skewered very effectively. It’s hard to sympathise with the narrator on one level though, because the man she is obsessed with is so self-centred and disengaged. We’re told he’s a famous artist, but we never see any evidence of his talent, only of his selfishness and passivity.

1. Dog of the North, Elizabeth McKenzie 3/5

Quirky, whimsical, fun. The heroine is caring but hapless, and I enjoyed the California setting. On the other hand, the plot seemed to peter out a little toward the end rather than reaching a kind of resolution.

1. Memphis, Tara Stringfellow, 3/5

The concept of this book (a multi-generational saga set in the city of Memphis) is promising, but personally I found the novel a bit underwhelming. It felt very Hollywood-like, with some lurid bits and some glamourous ones. The story is told from the perspective of three women of different generations, but their voices were quite similar (as someone else on these threads observed). The novel itself aside, I was put off by discovering about how badly the author responded to online readers who criticised her book (I’m reminded of the Kate Clanchy Goodreads saga here). The tone of her defence was troublingly immature (‘I’m in Italy, draped in Gucci and drinking aperol spritz!’). More confirmation of the fact that trying to squelch negative reader reviews is an enterprise fraught with peril, and can make an author end up looking worse.

@StColumbofNavron said, Flaubert was all about the art, so generally pretty unhappy, Zola was happy serialise and get out there because he needed to live and Sand from my understanding was the same.

Sorry for the late reply but your summary of Flaubert made me laugh because it was so succinct and true! You expressed what I've read about Flaubert elsewhere but in a lot fewer words, ha.

And yes, Sand definitely wrote to make a living, and the pressure to fulfill her contracts (some of which I gather were amazingly lucrative for a writer of the time) was certainly a big part of what made her so prolific.

The Memory Game! That was it. Very good those 3.
The others not so much.

Finally I finished book 1!

@cassandre the Sand book arrived yesterday. Alas, I prob won’t get to it for an age, but at least it’s here when I do.

Hi bett, hope it was a good one!

Morning @bettbburg, good to see you!

Hi @bettbburg!

Couple of reviews to add from me:

18 My Pen is the Wing of a Bird: new fiction by Afghan women – various

A bit behind with my Shelterbox books. I am not generally a fan of short stories; I keep wanting to like them but always seem to end up feeling a bit dissatisfied. I'm glad I read this book, though, as this was a really accessible way of understanding something about life for women in Afghanistan. There were a number of stories about domestic life which formed a general picture for me, but the two individual stories that will stay with me are the ones about a newsreader and a headteacher, both trying to keep going in the constant knowledge that the next truck that passes could blow them to smithereens. There were also two stories based around specific bombings, one from the perspective of the bomber and one from the point of view of a schoolfriend, which were very moving. Definitely worth a read and the account of how the stories were obtained from the authors is fascinating and a testament to everyone involved.

19 A Room of One’s Own – Virginia Woolf

It seemed strangely apt to read this account from, of course, a very privileged, Western perspective, of the difficulties of writing as a woman alongside the Afghan women's short stories. Really rather late to the party, I know, but I thought this was brilliant. I love the way it is structured, the argument and the writing. It's much funnier than I expected. And I absolutely loved this passage:

"...to catch those unrecorded gestures, those un-said or half-said words, which form themselves, no more palpably than the shadows of moths on the ceiling, when women are alone, unlit by the capricious and coloured light of the other sex."

So good. After loving this and Mrs Dalloway I might even be tempted to try To the Lighthouse again, which put me off Woolf for years when I was a teenager (I also read Mrs Dalloway when I was a teenager and didn't get it at all).

Anyone who's into historical fiction, My Father's House by Joseph O'Connor is in daily deals today- it looks brilliant.

Thanks @Whosawake I’ve just picked it up.

My recent reads
38 Demon Copperhead Barbara Kingsolver
I know this has been reviewed many times. A retelling of David Copperfield in modern Appalachia. I enjoyed Demon’s voice and haven’t read David Copperfield so the story was new to me. I feel having read Empire of Pain (non-fic about the opioid crisis) so recently added to it. However, there were times I didn’t want to pick it back up as it was so unrelentingly tragic.
39 Wandering Souls Cecile Pin
A tale of Anh and her family who escape Vietnam at the end of the war and live as refugees in Hong Kong and then London. The book is written from the POV of Anh, her deceased brother and a third narrator whose identity becomes clear later in the book. This was really moving, it made me cry more than once. I think it could have done with one less POV however and would have liked more about how Anh and her brother’s lives developed.
40 Bandit Queens Parini Shroff
A darkly witty book touching on some really important themes and the comedy doesn’t take away from their seriousness. Set in an Indian village riven with domestic and sexual abuse, Geeta gets asked to help her friend bump off her husband as everyone assumes she murdered her own husband 5 years previously.

I’ve now read 8 of the Women’s Prize longlist. This is the first year I’ve really engaged with it and I’ve really enjoyed the experience, reading some books I might not have engaged with otherwise.
My favourites have been the three above, Children of Paradise and Memphis. My least favourite was I’m a Fan, and the other two I read were enjoyable but not brilliant (The Marriage Portrait and Trespasses)
I’ll be interested to see what makes the shortlist and hope to read any that I haven’t read already at that point.

20. Wanderers, A history of women walking by Kerri Andrews

This was a Christmas present (in 2021!) from my brother and he was so proud of himself to have found a feminist walking book combining two things I care about.

I hope he never thinks to ask me for a review as I was bored and it's taken 2 years of dipping in and out to finish.

There are 10 chapters on female walkers who also write, and Kerri Andrews then writes about their writing and what it meant. I think I just find people writing about other people's writing quite tedious. The book is also full of really long words in a way that reminds me of my childhood/teen writing when I would use a thesaurus to find more grown up sounding words.

Or perhaps I am just not very clever and it was all a bit too deep for me with characterisation of the landscape and such. I go hiking because I like looking at pretty views which is simple and works me.

The best I can say is that it's a good reminder there were women out here walking and writing about it, it's just we don't talk about them or see their books and there are no statues.

@RazorstormUnicorn I'm currently reading The Bronte Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects and there's a section about women walking. I hadn't realised that walking was a feminist thing, back in the days when it was unusual for women to venture out unaccompanied. Sometimes it feels like there's a long way to go with feminism, but this was a reminder to me about the progress that has (slowly) been made! (In most countries, anyway.)

Thank you @Whosawake ... I've heard good things about that one.

Adding thanks to @Whosawake. Have also heard good things and I think this is the start of a trilogy, so will be very interesting. I downloaded the sample and it looks great.

Thanks @Whosawake, just purchased. I’ve just finished a book and was wondering what to start next so I’ll give My Father’s House a try straight away.

I bought My Father's House earlier and also the fantasy one. The true life crime one looks interesting too but I googled the events and they're horrific - decided against it for that reason.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie is the true crime one by the American Dirt author? I hovered over that too but decided against it. I was also tempted by an Anne Tyler one but I’m sticking to my wish list and refuse to be swayed!

32: Exiles - Jane Harper

Another book featuring detective Aaron Falk. The christening of his godson, child of his former colleague Raco, takes Falk to the wine region of the Marralee Valley. The christening had been postponed for a year because of the disappearance of Raco's ex sister-in-law Kim, still unsolved with no sign of her, and Falk finds himself drawn into the continuing fall-out of the event.

I've enjoyed most of Harper's previous books but tbh this felt quite effortful and bogged down in a lot of extraneous, not to say dull, detail, not least Falk's burgeoning romance with local woman Gemma, which verges on the cringey at times.