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?

I assume you've read Fangirl Eine?

I've got Fangirl @Sadik and I haven't got far. I read Attachments two years ago and didn't rate it.

Mark you need those two in your life

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I haven’t actually read it yet so could be suggesting a huge pile of crap but The Reading List may be a possibility (caveat I also haven’t read John Green etc). The Reading list also got me thinking of 84 Charing Cross Toad if you haven’t read it already.

I can recommend Looking For Alaska by John Green actually I think it would hit the spot for a lot of people

Charing Cross is a shout, not read it

Oh, turns out I have read, and liked, a John Green (The Fault in our Stars).

I'm loving Fire Rush on audible Eine, but think the listening really makes it for me (as it's about music).

I liked The girl's guide to hunting and fishing last year which seems like chick lit but isn't really, and is a good collection of short stories, but featuring the same characters so feels like a novel. Nora Ephron may work too along the same lines.

84 Charing Cross Road is perfect, but the Toad sequel sounds even better. 😂

Have you read Miss Pettigrew @EineReiseDurchDieZeit ? It’s funny and clever and if it doesn’t irritate you for being a bit silly/frivolous it could be perfect.

Oh and Heartburn by Nora Ephron

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

Shamefully before my days on the thread my copy of Pettigrew went unread into the charity bag. I have read Heartburn at some point

@MamaNewtNewt our reading lists match! I very recently read If I Never Met You, though I quite enjoyed it.

And then my book 31 was Memphis. The writer set out, I think, to capture the voices and culture of generations of black women in Memphis, and she does this really well. It's full of life and joy as well as the horrific racism and hardships they face. However it does have a lot of distressing content - much of it realistic I'm sure, and the most upsetting incident was necessary for the plot, but some bits seemed gratuitous. Not an easy read.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit have you read any of Eva Ibbotson's young adult books? I think they might fit your description.

I second Rosamund Pilcher as well, I was consumed by Winter Solstice when I was ill at Christmas.

I did love Coming Home by Rosamund Pilcher but haven't read anything else

I second the Miss Pettigrew recommendation, I absolutely adored that book, I was very emotional by the end and I'm a woman with a heart of stone 😊 It's one of those books that I really wish I could read again for the first time.

@GrannieMainland I think it was you who originally recommended Mhairi McFarlane on the thread wasn't it? If so then thank you as I've really enjoyed most of her books and still have a couple more to go, so looking forward to those.

I think I focused a bit too much on the negatives in my review of Memphis as I really did enjoy it and thought it was very well written. I agree that she captures the joy, the family, and the community, as well as the more traumatic elements, I think the bit I struggled to get was the fact that Miriam obviously loves her daughters but I can't see why she would take them to that house after what happened there. Surely there were other options?

In other news I have given up on M Train by Patti Smith, well for the moment anyway. Just Kids is one of the best books I have ever read, and I reread it recently, so maybe my expectations were just too high. I'm not going to bin it, but am going to take a break so it does not suffer by comparison, as I was finding it incredibly tedious.

Echoing many of those suggestions for you Eine (especially 84 and Heartburn), and adding on I Capture The Castle if you haven't read it. I'm also a huge fan of The Crow Road which is very engaging but wouldn't make your head hurt.

Read I Capture and did Crow Road in I think January!

Eine have you read Kate Saunders' Laetitia Rood mysteries? A Victorian vicar's widow investigates various crimes, with the help of a cantankerous but warm-hearted detective - there are murders involved but these books definitely gave me the warm fuzzies.

Never heard of them! Will carry on researching. I am just stuck right now, Lucy Worsley's Queen Victoria is proving a bit sloggy, and nothing is taking fiction wise.

I vote Rosamund Pilcher as well. Love The Shell Seekers and it's sort of sequel September.

A few not very nice things happen but there's lots of descriptions of eating roast lamb etc to make up for it.

Though when I want something not taxing I go for dippy in and outy travelogues.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit After the recent Pullman talk, what about the glorious Sally Lockhart series? Nothing like his other stuff.

Or something old school like The Hound of the Baskervilles

How about something big and fun like the Count of Monte Christo

Eine, something like The Wind in the Willows?

A pretty random suggestion, but Letters from a Fainthearted Feminist, by Jill Tweedie is a comfort read for me. Very much of the early 80s, with a light-hearted take on second-wave feminism.

Just finished 42. What Writers Read, by Pandora Sykes. Does what it says on the tin: short accounts by writers about a favourite book. It's for a good cause, and I got it in the library in any case, so it feels unfair to carp - it's okay, all very slight. I didn't end up adding any books to my wish-list.

36. Not A Diet Book by James Smith

This is not a diet book in the sense that there’s no lists of recommended / forbidden foods, no meal plans etc.
It is however a book that talks a lot about weight loss and exercise.
So sort of a diet book, really. With some useful tips in it.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit perhaps already mentioned but how about The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald, A Fortnight In September by RC Sherriff or A Month In The Country by J L Carr?