50 Books Challenge 2023 Part Five

[Southeastdweller]

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

What are you reading?

Thanks for the new thread southeast!

Ooooh, new thread. Thanks @Southeastdweller

Bringing my list over:

1. After Henry – Joan Didion
2. Year of Wonder – Clemency Burton-Hill
3. Motherwell – Deborah Orr

4. Just Kids – Patti Smith 5. Best of Friends – Kamila Shamsie 6. Macbeth – William Shakespeare 7. Wyrd Sisters – Terry Pratchett 8. War Gardens – Lalage Snow 9. Soul Music – Terry Pratchett 10. Daisy Jones and the Six – Taylor Jenkins Reid 11. The Eyre Affair – Jasper Fforde 12. How to Train Your Dragon 11: How to Betray a Dragon’s Hero – Cressida Connolly 13. Trespasses – Louise Kennedy 14. The Brexit Tapes – John Bull 15. Real Tigers – Mick Herron 16. The Sins of Our Fathers – Asa Larsson 17. Ordinary People – Diana Evans 18. My Pen is the Wing of a Bird: new fiction by Afghan women – various 19. A Room of One’s Own – Virginia Woolf 20. Malibu Rising – Taylor Jenkins Reid

Currently reading Becoming by Michelle Obama, which I'm enjoying so far.

Thanks as always southeast

1. The Christmas Bookshop – Jenny Colgan
2. Les Cahiers d’Esther : Histoires de mes 10 ans – Riad Sattouf
3. The Pants of Perspective – Anna McNuff

4. L’Assommoir – Emile Zola

1. Beautiful world, where are you? – Sally Rooney
2. This book could save your life – Graham Lawton
3. Lessons in Chemistry – Bonnie Garmus
4. The Foundling – Stacey Halls
5. The Paper Palace – Miranda Cowley Heller

10. Les Cahiers d’Esther : Histoires de mes 11 ans – Riad Sattouf 11. How to be famous – Caitlin Moran 12. The land where lemons grow – Helena Atlee 13. Just Kids – Patti Smith 14. Trespasses - Louise Kennedy 15. Sheltering Rain – Jojo Moyes

Almost finished reading The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak which I'm loving. I'm behind on the The Old Curiosity Shop chapters for this month and have also been listening to Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe which is great to pass the time on my multiple taxi fares car trips.

Thanks as ever @Southeastdweller
Am early enough to post my list this thread which I'll get later.

Pepe isn't here yet, so I can't tag, but I agree with liking this Dark Academia thing, but less the generic student gets clobbered and friends turn out to be frenemies laziness.

In other news, discovered this morning that someone on a shared interest FB group I'm in is a well-known writer whose books I've certainly been less than favourable towards in recent years. 😂 Oops. Hey ho.

Here I am! In reality, nothing is ever going to be as good as The Secret History, which just came at the perfect time for me - I was still at university, I thought I was oh-so-clever, and rarely read fiction at that time, so it was like falling down a really pleasurable rabbit hole. I think Ruth Ware was trying to do something very different in The It Girl (generic pretty girl gets murdered, wrongful conviction, "will she die, won't she die" denouement when the plucky protagonist figures it all out - hope that is not too spoilery) but plenty of people seem to have pitched novels on the basis that they are The Secret History for Gen Z. I did not hate The Cloisters, but there was some really terrible one about a bunch of students in some windswept modern university that I read last year that should never have seen the light of day.

Any recommendations for great books with a touch of noir set in universities are very welcome!

Morning all!

@Southeastdweller Thank you for the new thread.
@So1invictus Oops.

1.The Downhill Hiking Club - Dom Joly

1. In Praise of Walking - Shane O'Mara

3. One By One - Ruth Ware

1. The Will - Rebecca Reid

5. The Palace Papers - Tina Brown

1. To the Land of Long Lost Friends - Alexander McCall Smith
2. Dear Reader - Cathy Rentzenbrink

8. Valley of the Dolls - Jacqueline Susann 9. The Sentence is Death - Anthony Horowitz 10. The Journey Through Wales - Gerald of Wales 11. The Description of Wales - Gerald of Wales 12. More Than a Woman - Caitlin Moran 13. The Broken Afternoon - Simon Mason 14. The Plant Hunter - TL Mogford 15. A Fatal Inheritance - Rachel Rhys 16. In The Shadow of Vesuvius - Daisy Dunn 17. The New Puritans - Andrew Doyle 18. Mad About You - Mhairi McFarlane 19. The Premonitions Bureau - Sam Knight 20. The Secrets of Wishtide - Kate Saunders 21. One of Our Ministers is Missing - Alan Johnson 22. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret - Judy Blume 23. The Undomestic Goddess - Sophie Kinsella 24. It's Not Me, It's You - Mhairi McFarlane

I haven't been posting reviews because work has got in the way (so inconvenient), but I want to give a strong recommendation to The Plant Hunter. Loved this so much. Set just after the opium wars, it's the story of a young man who sets off for China in search of a mythic tree which he hopes will make his fortune on the London plant market. For me it was the perfect mix of historical adventure, beautiful locations and a bit of romance. I nearly ditched it early on because something unpleasant happens to the hero's Jack Russell, but I'm so glad I kept reading. Wilberforce's revenge is one of the highpoints of the book.

Currently reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, The Bookseller's Tale by Martin Latham (a fab miscellany about books, booksellers and reading - I keep wanting to underline things) and War Doctor by David Nott. I seem to have regained some emotional resilience after a torrid spell at work, and I finally feel able to read more challenging subject matter.

Thanks for the new thread Southeast

My list so far:
1 The Furies- John Connolly
2 What is Remembered- Alice Munro
3 The Woman in White- Wilkie Collins
4 A Crown of Swords- Robert Jordan
5 Elements of Style- Strunk and White
6 Exiles- Jane Harper
7 Sorrow and Bliss- Meg Mason
8 The Field of Blood- Denise Mina
9 The Mist- Ragnar Jonasson
10 The Iliad- Homer
11 An American Marriage- Tayari Jones
12 The Great Gatsby- F Scott Fitzgerald
13 Unfettered (Anthology)
14 Olive Kitteridge- Elizabeth Strout
15 Breakfast at Tiffany’s- Truman Capote
16 House of Ashes- Stuart Neville
17 Desire- Haruki Murakami
18 The Odyssey- Homer
19 Widowland- C J Carey
20 Desert Star- Michael Connolly
21 A Streetcar Named Desire- Tennessee Williams
22 Empire of the Vampire- Jay Kristoff
23 Slouching towards Bethlehem- Joan Didion
24 North and South- Elizabeth Gaskell
25 Trespasses- Louise Kennedy
26 Mrs Dalloway- Virginia Woolf
27 I’m a Fan- Sheena Patel
28 Children of Paradise- Camilla Grudova
29 The Marriage Portrait- Maggie O’Farrell
30 Joe Country- Mick Herron
31 Memphis- Tara M Stringfellow
32 16 Ways to Defend a Walled City- KJ Parker
33 Five- F Scott Fitzgerald
34 Agamemnon- Aeschylus
35 A Room of One’s Own- Virginia Woolf
36 Empire of Pain- Patrick Radden Keefe
37 Wastelands (Anthology)
38 Demon Copperhead- Barbara Kingsolver
39 The Metamorphosis- Franz Kafka
40 Wandering Souls- Cecile Pin
41 Bandit Queens- Parini Shroff
42 Dirt Town- Hayley Scrivenor
43 The Remains of the Day- Kasuo Ishiguro
44 The Confession- Jo Spain
45 Animal Farm- George Orwell

I’ve a handful of reviews to catch up on.
What does everyone think of the Women’s Prize shortlist? I was disappointed not to see Wandering Souls and Bandit Queens. I was surprised to see Pod as I’ve seen so many bad reviews. I haven’t read it, Fire Rush or Black Butterflies. I will read the last two but I’m not sure about Pod. I found the talking animals hard enough to deal with in Animal Farm without hitting another so soon after it.

1 Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante. Translated by Ann Goldstein
2 The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante. Translated by Ann Goldstein
3 Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden
4 The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre. Translated by Stephanie Smee
5 Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
6 Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree. Translated by Daisy Rockwell
7 Kristin Lavrandatter II: The Wife by Sigrid Undset. Translated by Tiina Nunnally
8 Children of Paradise by Camilla Grudova

Currently reading Heaven by Mieko Kawakami which is brilliantly harrowing. Then last night DH and I went to see Good by CP Taylor (NT Live with David Tennant who is fantastic in it) which is also harrowing. I'm beginning to question my cultural choices, I need something with no darkness in it to recover.

Thanks for the new thread @Southeastdweller !

1. Unmasking Autism: the power of embracing our hidden neurodiversity - Devon Price
2. Lolly Willowes - Sylvia Townsend Warner
3. Act of Oblivion - Robert Harris
4. Asperger’s and Girls - Tony Attwood et al
5. And Finally - Henry Marsh
6. Ask A Historian - Greg Jenner
7. Riddley Walker - Russell Hoban
8. An Immense World - Ed Yong
9. Head First: a psychiatrist’s stories of mind and body - Alastair Santhouse
10. A Million Years in a Day - Greg Jenner
11. The Dangerous Kingdom of Love - Neil Blackmore
12. Side Hustle - Chris Guillebeau
13. Feminism for Women - Julie Bindel
14. I’m a Fan - Sheena Patel
15. Exercised - Daniel Lieberman
16. Fairy Tale - Stephen King
17. Children of Paradise - Camilla Grudova
18. Woman, Eating - Claire Kohda
19. The Sensory-Sensitive Child - Karen A. Smith & Karen R. Gouze

Currently reading Less is Lost and loving it, after enjoying the original Less book a couple of years ago.

Thanks for the new thread! I'm still shamefully behind on posting, so apologies to all for that. Marking my place for now but promise I'll be back.

Thanks you!

I see Woman's Prize Shortlist is out. Haven't checked against prior thread to see if predictions were correct! But I know Trespasses and Marriage Portrait were hotly tipped.

https://www.waterstones.com/category/cultural-highlights/book-awards/the-womens-prize-for-fiction?utm_source=wswpffshortlist260423&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=award&utm_content=CTA

Thank you southeast. Bringing across my list:

1. Old Filth - Jane Garam
2. Sad Cypress - Agatha Christie

3. Three Hours - Rosamund Lupton

1. Light Perpetual - Francis Spufford

5. Trespasses - Louise Kennedy

1. Crossfire - Felix Francis
2. Long Story Short - Jodi Taylor
3. A Storm of Swords - George RR Martin
4. Partners in Crime - Agatha Christie

10. Back Trouble - Clare Chambers 11. The Man in the Queue - Josephine Tey 12. Joe Country - Mick Herron 13. To Live - Yu Hua 14. Gamble - Felix Francis 15. The Lamplighters - Emma Stonex 16. The Moving Finger - Agatha Christie 17. Stone Blind - Natalie Haynes 18. Faro’s Daughter - Georgette Heyer 19. Excellent Women - Barbara Pym 20. About Time - Jodi Taylor 21. The Skylark’s Secret - Fiona Valpy 22. Agent Zigzag - Ben MacIntyre 23. The Forgotten Garden - Kate Morton 24. Sparkling Cyanide - Agatha Christie 25. Bloodline - Dick Francis 26. After the End - Clare Mackintosh

Currently reading the fourth Game of Thrones book and Great Expectations at the moment.

Cassandre your predictions were pretty accurate! Fortuna I can't remember if you posted a prediction?

Hi southeast thanks for the thread

My List :

1.	Peace Is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh
2.	The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
3.	Good Pop, Bad Pop by Jarvis Cocker
4.	Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
5.	<strong>Nightcrawling</strong> by Leila Mottley
6.	Under Country by Jonathan Trigell
7.	The Crow Road by Iain Banks
8.	<strong>Take My Hand</strong> by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
9.	<strong>Build Your House Around My Body</strong> by Violet Kupersmith
10.	Spare by Prince Harry, Duke Of Sussex
11.	<strong>Pachinko</strong> by Min Jin Lee
12.	Furious Love by Nancy Schoenburger and Sam Kashner
13.	<strong>Our Wives Under The Sea</strong> by Julia Armfield
14.	Maggie Cassidy by Jack Kerouac 
15.	To Paradise by Hanya Yanigahara 
16.	Friends, Lovers And The Big Terrible Thing by Matthew Perry
17.	Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
18.	Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng
19.	My Life In Orange by Tim Guest
20.	You Made A Fool Of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi
21.	When The Dust Settles by Lucy Easthope
22.	French Braid by Anne Tyler
23.	The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley-Heller
24.	Babel by R.F. Kuang
25.	Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
26.	The Lonely Londoners by Samuel Selvon
27.	War Doctor by David Nott 
28.	A Net For Small Fishes by Lucy Jago
29.	<strong>Hazards Of Time Travel</strong> by Joyce Carol Oates
30.	Tin Man by Sarah Winman
31.	Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson 
32.	Wool by Hugh Howey
33.	Shift by Hugh Howey
34.	Dust by Hugh Howey
35.	Under The Dome by Stephen King
36.	The Snakehead by Patrick Radden Keefe 
37.	My Body by Emily Ratajkowski 
38.	Greenwood by Michael Christie
39.	Trespasses by Louise Kennedy
40.	<strong>Stay With Me</strong> by Ayobami Adebayo
41.	Women Talking by Miriam Toews
42.	<strong>Burntcoat</strong> by Sarah Hall
43.	The Devil In The White City by Erik Larsen
44.	<strong>Difficult Women</strong> by Helen Lewis
45.	I&rsquo;m A Fan by Sheena Patel
46.	<strong>Wild</strong> by Cheryl Strayed 
47.	<strong>Woman, Eating</strong> by Claire Kohda
48.	<strong>Sankofa</strong> by Chibundo Unuzo
49.	<strong>A Terrible Kindness</strong> by Jo Browning Wroe 
50.	Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan
51.	Why Did You Stay? by Rebecca Humphries 
52.	The Raptures by Jan Carson
53.	Possession by AS Byatt
54.	My Fourth Time, We Drowned by Sally Hayden
55.	How High We Go In The Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
56.	Chocky by John Wyndham 
57.	The Ruin Of All Witches by Malcolm Gaskill
58.	<strong>Old Filth</strong> by Jane Gardam
59.	Children Of Paradise by Camilla Grudova
60.	Hot Milk by Deborah Levy
61.	In Pieces by Sally Field
62.	The Strangest Family by Janice Hadlow
63.	The Colony by Audrey Magee 
64.	<strong>All The Light We Cannot See</strong> by Anthony Doerr
65.	The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave
◦	

God that was a nightmare to do, I'm just doing bolds next time.

My list hasn't moved on since the last thread. Still ploughing through book number 8. Very slow this year!

Thanks SouthEast

Thanks for new thread southeast. Not much reading here as it's finally (finally!) dried out so very busy with work. Many thanks to the 50 bookers who recommended things on my audible thread - haven't yet had time to go through, but in the mean time listening to With The End In Mind recommended on the previous thread, which is wonderful & very well read.

Thanks for the new thread.

1 The Snow Child, Eowyn Ivey
2 What Could Possibly Go Wrong, Jodi Taylor
3 Lamentation, CJ Sansom
4 City of Girls, Elizabeth Gilbert
5 Tombland, CJ Sansom
6 House of Glass, Hadley Freeman
7 Sorrow & Bliss, Meg Mason
8 A Terrible Kindness, Jo Browning Wroe
9 10 Minutes, 30 Seconds in This Strange World, Elif Shafak
10 The Garden of Evening Mists, Tan Twan Eng
11 Lies, Damned Lies and History, Jodi Taylor
12 Love in a Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford
13 Carrie's War, Nina Bawden
14 Things Fall Apart, Chinus Achebe
15 Human Croquet, Kate Atkinson
16 The Railway Man, Eric Lomax
17 Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain
18 Stay Where You Are And Then Leave, John Boyne
19 Queenie, Candice Carty-Williams
20 Pompeii, Robert Harris
21 Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller
22 Beartown, Fredrik Backman
23 Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin
24 Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe
25 My Name is Why, Lemn Sissay
26 The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, Shehan Karunatilaka
27 A Monster Calls, Patrick Ness
28 Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders
29 Master Georgie, Beryl Bainbridge
30 The Bell, Iris Murdoch
31 A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
32 And the Rest is History, Jodi Taylor
33 Trespasses, Louise Kennedy
34 Jews Don't Count, David Baddiel
35 My Father's House, Joseph O'Connnor
36 The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
37 Five Chimneys, Olga Lengyel

Despite planning on reading something a bit lighter after my last book I've somehow found myself halfway through A Village in the Third Reich!

Thanks for the thread @Southeastdweller

Currently reading The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald and listening to Coal Black Mornings by Brett Anderson.

Waiting for my first Mr B’s delivery- an author I’ve never heard of so am intrigued and also trying not to Google!

16 - The Island of Missing Trees – Elif Shafak

Loved it!

Nature
Recent history
Set in beautiful Cyprus
Love story
Recommended.

I generally avoid fantastical stuff and had removed this from my TBR list due to rumours of a tree POV but my sister-in-law book guru convinced me I'd love it - and I really did!

Thank you for the thread

1. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
2. The Beautiful Visit by Elizabeth Jane Howard
3. The Promise by Damon Galgut
4. At Home by Bill Bryson
5. Less by Andrew Sean Greer
6. Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
7. Someone at a distance by Dorothy Whipple
8. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
9. Boy Parts by Eliza Clark

10. A touch of darkness by Scarlett St.Clair 11. The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas 12. Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe 13. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry 14. The Yellow Wallpaper and other selected writings by Charlotte Perkins Gilman 15. If I had your face by Frances Cha 16. The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins 17. Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver 18. Red Famine by Anne Applebaum 19. Children of paradise by Camilla Grudova 20. My Body by Emily Ratajkowski 21. Before the Coffee gets Cold by Tashikazu Kawaguchi 22. The Fortnight in September by R.C. Sherriff 23. The awakening and other stories by Kate Chopin

24. Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet
    I read and enjoyed His Bloody Project by the same author a few years ago and Case Study also presents fiction as fact and causes you to search for people online that didn’t exist.
    This is set (for the most part) in the 60s where Rebecca Smyth begins to see the therapist Collins Braithwaite as she believes the therapist was responsible for her sisters death. The book is mostly made up of Rebecca’s notebooks interspaced with a ‘biography’ of Braithwaites life.
    Some of the mysteries don’t really go anywhere which I can see will really frustrate readers but I personally found this a page turner and very much enjoyed the ride it took me on. I don’t think its as good as His Bloody Project but if you enjoyed that then this is worth a read.

25. The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
    Bauby was in his 40s man with two young children who suddenly had a stroke leaving him suffering from locked in syndrome. He was able to blink with one eyelid which is how the book came to be written (someone would read out the alphabet and he would blink at the right letter) During this short book Bauby does sometimes talk about his past and what he misses but it mostly focuses on his present situation, the members of staff, the other patients, how much he enjoys visitors, the agony of listening to his children on the phone but not being able to respond etc.
    The book isn’t going to give you life’s answers (which a lot of disappointed readers on Goodreads appear to have expected) it’s the experience of one man with locked in syndrome and obviously not a cheery read.

Currently reading The Paper Palace and To Paradise

Thanks for the new thread SouthEast
In contrast to others I now have plenty of time for reading as I decided to take early (ish) retirement and finished work at Easter. Loving it so far.

Currently reading Stuart Maconie - The Full English

Thanks for the new thread @Southeastdweller

I'm just going to add the books I've read since last time:

18. Trespasses -Louise Kennedy
19. I'm A Fan -Sheena Patel
20. Children Of Paradise - Camilla Grudova
21. Pod - Laline Paul
22. Go, Went, Gone - Jenny Erpenbeck
23. Miller's Valley - Anna Quindlen
24. Memphis - Tara Stringfellow
25. The Bandit Queens - Parini Shroff
26. Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies - Maddie Mortimer
27. Demon Copperhead - Barbara Kingsolver
28. Burntcoat - Sarah Hall
29. Wandering Souls - Cecile Pin

It's been a good few weeks reading wise for me. @EineReiseDurchDieZeit I saw you've read Burntcoat and bolded it too. I was very impressed by how much she managed to get in to such a small book, and how easy it was to visualize the characters.

I was disappointed not to see The Bandit Queens on the Women's Prize shortlist, and I guess having both Kingsolver and Farrell feels quite safe. Then again they've gone with Pod, which I actually really liked, and two other debuts.

I haven't read Fire Rush, The Marriage Portrait or Black Butterflies so will try and get through those before the winner is announced.

I've read everyone's reviews of the Kingsolver and know it is popular. I just cannot bring myself to read it as I love David Copperfield so much. Will it spoil it for me?