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 read The English Patient two summers ago after a friend declared it her favourite book. I found it really hard going. It was during Covid times but I was reading a lot, so I think it was the book and not me.

I read The English Patient a few years ago when it was a book club choice (not mine) and was most surprised to be quite absorbed by it - it’s not really my kind of book tbh (and I was unfairly biased against it by seeing trailers for the film and thinking it was a load of romantic tosh).

A good trick that works for me is to put aside a book I’m not making headway with. I quite often go back at a later point and almost always find it suddenly seems much more readable!

@InTheCludgie

Those two you mention were my favourite Point Horrors 😍

This is ringing a faint bell...

@AliasGrape have you tried the Agatha Raisin audiobooks? They are wonderfully narrated by Penelope Keith (oh how I would love to have a voice like hers!) and don't require too much effort to follow plus if you have a library app they're usually free to borrow!

Thanks for the recommendations.

@Stokey that sounds good, I’m making a note for when I’m a bit more with it!

Sounds like that might be a good fit @ChessieFL thank you!

@Sadik good call, I read and enjoyed Uprooted a few years ago but haven’t tried any of her others

@ClaraTheImpossibleGirl I’ll see if I can get them via Borrowbox - I have some of the actual physical books passed on from MIL too

Bit of a round up.

10. The Marmalade Diaries, by Ben Aitken. When looking for a room in London, Ben finds a suspiciously cheap option; this is because he will be sharing a house and providing companionship to 85-year-old Winnie, recently bereaved. Little did they know that lockdown would begin shortly after Ben moved in. The pair cautiously build an unlikely friendship as the months go by. This is a little curiosity; gentle, real, lovely. Winnie springs off the page, although strangely, Ben is more of a cipher. I think someone else on the thread recently enjoyed this and I did too.

11. Really Good, Actually, by Monica Heisey. The anti-Sally Rooney. Lost woman in her late twenties - check. But otherwise, this is worlds apart, and really, genuinely funny. At 29, Maggie has been in a relationship all her adult life, and is now a 'surprisingly young divorcee' (and a mess). Being twenty years older, this bears no resemblance whatsoever to my life; however I couldn't help but love her as she staggers her way to discovering who she really is and what she values. This is written with a pretty dry sense of humour, and I wonder if the humour doesn't translate for US readers, given some of the savage goodreads reviews.

12. Signal Fires, by Dani Shapiro. Achingly beautiful, both the writing and the ideas. It's short but fully immersive and I want to go back immediately and savour every word all over again. A car accident has far-reaching ramifications for one family, and this book traces them and some of their neighbours down the years. The timeline jumps around a lot, but this is an intentional echo of a central idea that all of time is happening at once and is not linear. I adored this but it has lots of character and not a lot of plot, so beware if that isn't your cup of tea. For anyone that likes family sagas, this may be a hit.

13. The Writing Retreat, by Julia Bartz. Absolutely batshit - one of the blurbs described it as "bonkers in the best way" which seems accurate! Our protagonist Alex finds herself at a monthlong retreat at the spooky estate of a bestselling horror writer. There are five attendees, one of them Alex's former best friend, and upon arrival they find they have to write an entire book over the course of the month, with the best winning a seven figure publishing deal. Madness ensues. I think I must have got it confused with another book because I was expecting a nice quiet book where writers at a retreat politely pit themselves against each other, but instead I got a thriller with overtones of gothic horror. I'm not sure whether I recommend this or not because it was SO wild, but I read it in two days and it was absolutely gripping, so if you don't mind an absolutely unhinged plot it might be for you?!

Checking in onto this thread properly Still plodding through Lord of the Rings: Return of the King but havent been in the right headspace as had a really important interview this week (I got the job!!!) so hoping to finish it this long weekend.

@StColumbofNavron I read loads on my jury duty as even if you are picked there's so much waiting around. Believe I read some of Stephen Frys Mythos series.

@PepeLePew what's the book on biblical translation? Would be a topic my FIL would enjoy.

Regarding His Dark Materials, I hate the first book and attempted the second but couldn't get into it. May be personal bias as a person of faith but I found it never really gripped me.

Im glad im not the only one who found that when they had the most time to read they struggled. I definitely struggled to focus during lockdown and therefore couldn't read. I did a lot of crochet that I could do when watching brainless TV and played a lot of the sims too.

Congratulations on the job, eitak!

Well Done eitak

Well done on the job, @eitak22.
The book is The Word by John Barton. I've actually returned it because it needs more attention than I can give it as an audiobook but I'm going to try to get hold of a copy via the library as it was very interesting, and seemed very engaging as a way of exploring how and why we translate and the consequences of choices that translators make.

I've got a new job too! It's unpaid, but it's working as a HR Assistant for a youth charity. I hope it'll
give me some up to date experience.

I think I'm on 31. 'The Day We Meet Again.' By Miranda Dickinson
Phoebe and Sam meet at St Pancreas Station, heading in opposite directions, and both seeking their own adventures, meeting the love of their lives wasn't part of the plan. So the make a promise: to meet in the same place In a years time if they still want to be together. But is life ever as simple as that?

I read this while on a short break for my birthday, and I thought it was wonderful. Easy reading, warm, emotional and funny. I would recommend this if you like a good romance story.

Congrats on the new job @eitak22.

@noodlezoodle I recently read The Marmalade Diaries and enjoyed it.

@ICrunchCrispsNotNumbers congratulations too! (Sorry the thread updated before I got to the end)

That's great Crunch

70. Humankind : A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman

At the outset of this, I thought I'd be recommending it, as it poses the question Do we live on Planet A were humans look out for one another? Or do we live on Planet B were it's every man for himself?

Apparently most people believe it's B when actually it can be proved it's A.

Examples given were things like Hurricane Katrina were reports at the time suggested social anarchy when in reality research has proven there was mostly heroism

As the book progressed however I felt that many of the examples presented were standard issue and have been hashed over a lot in nonfiction eg from the Christmas Football Game in WWI to The Stanford Prison Experiment. It felt like it was very inspired by other works and there were times I found it a bit patronising.

I am unsure whether depth was lost in translation.

I think it's a good introduction to anthropology and social discourse but I think it's a bit lightweight.

@eitak22 well done. Thanks for the jury tip. That’s what I’ve been told so I’m hoping to use it to my advantage.

Just finished

Amitabh Bachchan, Sunny Singh
I don’t know if we have any Bollywood fans here, but if so, you will have heard of Amitabh Bachchan. I’ve love Indian films and this actor in particular since childhood so couldn’t resist picking this up at a history festival last week. The writer was a convenor for one of the talks and is a literary critic. Because if that this is less a biography and a much more scholarly intervention that considers ‘stardom’ ‘fandom’ against the backdrop of Indian history and politics. It’s a small book, but packs a lot in. My own next academic project is looking at some vaguely similar themes so it was useful as well as enjoyable.

Congratulations on the new jobs.

40 The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
Well I ploughed on with it but think I should have taken @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie’s advice and given up. I appreciated the writing but can’t say I enjoyed reading it and there may have been some skimming over the bits in North Africa.

41 People Person by Candice Carty-Williams
I loved Queenie so had high hopes for her second book but it didn’t quite live up to it. Cyril Pennington, a Jamaican living in London has 5 children to 4 different mothers who he rarely sees. As children, they’re introduced once to each other and have no contact until disaster strikes for one of them 15 years later and they turn to their siblings for help. It’s full of black comedy and I loved the developing relationship between the siblings and how each of them responds to their deadbeat dad. I just wished the ‘bad thing’ that happened had been a bit more realistic as it was quite silly, verging on farcical.

I can see there are congratulations from upthread so I will go back shortly.

this week I decided to give the audio book of Animal Farm a whirl. Narrated by Stephen Fry it was the perfect was to listen to a classic while driving. Everyone knows the general plot so I won’t go over that but if, like me, you haven’t read the book before I found the narration just excellent. My only criticism is that it stopped incredibly suddenly and immediately started 1984 without any pause at all. I was still pondering the plot when I realised I was in a different story

Congrats on your new roles @eitak22 and @ICrunchCrispsNotNumbers 💐

Thanks RomanMum - I remember your review. You posted just as I finished the book and I enjoyed the coincidence

@TattiePants I remember thinking that he’s a good writer whilst being bored out of my mind. So actually, can he be described as a good writer in that case? Maybe he’d have been more suited to poetry or journalism?

23. The Regulators by Stephen King

This was an interesting one. The book before was Desperation which was about a towns brush with an entity called Tak.

The Regulators had a lot of the same characters (including some who had died in the previous book) and then Tak popped up again too. I was confused.

I googled, and apparently Desperation is the Stephen King point of view, and The Regulators is Richard Bauchmanns (his pen name for some books) point of view, so I'm pleased I read these quite close together.

The story is quite surreal and once again leaves you marvelling at Kings imagination and his ability to describe these ghostly/horror/weird scenarios. As is much discussed on here, his view of women's sexuality is odd enough to leave one worrying for his wife (or is it deliberate and part of the horror? Who knows).

I'd never even heard of these two books and am pleased I read them, exactly what I was hoping for from the massive re-read. Coming up soon is another Dark Tower which I am excited about and also The Girl Who Loves Tom Gordon which I think I will set aside an afternoon to re-read in one go as I seem to remember being unable to put it down last time.

Congrats @eitak22 and @ICrunchCrispsNotNumbers on the new posts.

48 Burial Rites- Hannah Kent
I’ve no doubt this is well read on here. It tells the story of Agnes Magnusdottir- the last person to be executed for murder in Iceland. The story is told from Agnes’s POV as well as those of the farming family who had to hold her prior to her execution and her spiritual advisor. The writing is stark and beautiful, like the landscape it is set in. Agnes’s tale is shocking. Her voice is quite unemotional, which makes sense as she had to try and hold herself together knowing what was to come, but it made it hard to engage with her on an emotional level. Margaret, the mother of the family who held her, I found very moving. Not quite a bold, but not far off it.

49 The Libation Bearers- Aeschylus
This is the second play in the Oresteia (I read the first, Agamemnon last month and plan to read the last one in June). In this play, Orestes, the song of Agamemnon, takes revenge on his mother Clytaemenstra, and her lover for the murder of his father. Bloodthirsty and completely over the top, which I’m coming to expect from the Greeks. I preferred the first play.

50 The Double- Dostoevsky
The Russians terrify me with their reputation for dense prose, philosophising and going off on tangents, but I’m determined to read one of the biggies before I turn 50 next year so I started with this novella. The prose is dense, but readable so that gave me some comfort. This tells the tale of Mr Golyadkin, who is already struggling when a seemingly evil doppelgänger appears to make things worse. Dostoevsky does a good job of putting you inside Golyadkin’s head and his downward spiral. Throughout you are unsure whether the doppelgänger exists or is an hallucination, or another part of G’s personality. It wasn’t brilliant but it did make me think, and I’m not as scared of the Russians any more. Now all I have to decide is which of the big ones to go for!

20 Less is Lost - Andrew Sean Greer

In this sequel to the Pulitzer-winning Less, moderately successful author Arthur Less bumbles around on his travels again, this time driving a camper van across the USA. Amusing but not sure it really added anything to the original concept.

21 Trepasses - Louise Kennedy

Brilliantly compelling, straightforwardly-told story of an affair between a Catholic schoolteacher and married Protestant barrister against the backdrop of the Troubles. I have Fire Rush, The Marriage Portrait and Demon Copperhead waiting on the shelf, but they’ll have to be exceptional to top this.

@BaruFisher I haven’t read lots of Russian classics, but what I have read I have found very accessible. If you go for Tolstoy, I can’t speak for Dostoyevsky or others, then a chapter of War and Peace is, on average, 5-7 mins long with the longest 12 mins if I remember correctly. The same is true of Anna Karenina. I’ve read both twice and W&P took me 3
months the first time, but last year I read it one chapter a day and this year am
on thenAK readalong. Read this way you can indulge in other things and personally I find it really allows you to think about and get buried in that world.