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?

The Full English by Stuart Maconie

Stuart retraces the steps of J B Priestley, who published his ‘English Journey’ in 1933. Maconie is a fab writer and this is recommended.

The Last Passenger by Will Dean

I really enjoyed this, in a completely implausible, suspend your disbelief way. Caroline joins a cruise ship with her boyfriend and about a thousand other people. Everything seems normal except the next morning she wakes up and everyone else has vanished - passengers and crew. She’s alone on a cruise ship speeding into the middle of the Atlantic… great premise and while it did get implausible as I said, it kept me gripped to find out what happened to everyone.

Death Of A Bookseller by Alice Slater

I really wanted to like this - the title and the bright cover drew me in. I didn’t end up liking it though. None of the characters were likeable so it was hard to care what was going to happen to them and the plot drags on without nothing much happening before a damp squib of an ending.

Broken Light by Joanne Harris

I’ve had mixed results with her books - some I’ve loved, others I’ve not got on with. I’m still not sure how I feel about this one. Bernie is a menopausal woman who discovers that her childhood skill of being able to see inside people’s minds has come back, and she starts using it to correct some male behaviour she sees, but inevitably things go too far. This was an interesting idea but I’m not sure I quite got all the points Harris was trying to make (there’s a whole section looking back at a teenage event and I’m still not sure what actually happened there) and the repeated use of the term ‘hot flashes’ started to grate quite early on. I do think I will reread it sometime though to see if I get more from it on a second read.

Being Mortal that has been mentioned recently is down to £2.49. It's a big enough discount I purchased to read at a later date. I need to be in the right mood for that one.

26. Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris

I borrowed a DVD from a friend at the weekend and she reminded I still had some books of hers so I better finish and hand them back.

I read most of this on packed trains to and from a work away day. Although I was slightly embarrassed to be holding such a trashy book, it was very diverting and enabled to snuggle into the world of the book which was more enjoyable than the real life train.

At The Table by Claire Powell

This follows a family with adult children over a year or so following the parents’ announcement that they’re splitting up. Each chapter is based around a meal or drinks - could come across as a gimmick but it felt natural to me. This is one of those books where not much really happens but it’s good at explaining the thoughts and feelings of the different family members. I liked it.

58 Bodies of Light by Sarah Moss
This had an A S Byatt vibe to it – a sort of Fabian Society, noblesse oblige, social commentary theme that made me think of The Children’s Book, although it’s set a few decades before that. One thing I love about Sarah Moss is how versatile she is as a writer. None of her books feel like her other books although they pick up themes and threads from each other in clever ways.

Ally is the daughter of Alfred, a painter – I think we are meant to assume he’s part of the pre-Raphaelite movement – and Elizabeth, an austere and highly moral campaigner for women’s rights. We see how Elizabeth’s upbringing shaped her, but quickly pivot to Ally’s point of view – she’s eager to please and hard working. Most importantly, she’s smart and one of the first women to benefit from the ability to train as a doctor. I found the way in which the novel flirts with other perspectives but then abandons them frustrating – I wanted to know more about how Elizabeth felt about her upbringing, and why she chose to behave the way she did, for example. We aren’t meant to like her, but we are intended to understand her. I’d have welcomed more opportunities to do that. But I felt as if I was living every step with Ally – the enforced poverty (because the women Elizabeth helped didn’t have warmth, and good food, she didn’t think her children should either), the rules, the expectations and small comforts from those around her.

It’s been a long time since I read Night Waking, but reading the reviews of Bodies of Light I see there is an intentional connection between the two. And I will seek out Signs for Lost Children which continues Ally’s story.

59 Patient by Ben Watt
Ben Watt fell ill in the early 1990s just as Everything But The Girl were about to start an American tour. What began as discomfort quickly escalated into a mysterious and life threatening illness that resulted in a lengthy hospital stay and a series of operations to try to fix a problem the doctors didn’t really understand.

I picked this up thinking it would be a book about interrupted tours and the challenges of trying to work as a musician while ill. But it really wasn’t – he really doesn’t spend much time at all reflecting on the fact that his career as well as his life was in jeopardy. The illness takes over and consumes him, and becomes essentially a full time job. It’s so good at depicting what I imagine is the boredom and terror of serious illness, and the inability to do anything other than get through the next hour, or the next treatment.

55 The Count of Monte Cristo
No doubt the story is well known to all - Edmond Dantes is wrongly imprisoned and after an ingenious escape, he comes back to take his revenge. Most of the 1247 pages flew past in this rollicking adventure which also makes you think about themes of revenge and mercy, corruption and balance. I enjoyed it but had to switch off my modern sensibilities for most of the romance sections which had emotional blackmail and unequal power balances aplenty.

56 The Way it is Now - Garry Disher
Disher seems less well known outside Australia than his compatriots Jane Harper and Chris Hammer, but his crime stories are just as good, though maybe a bit slower paced. This one has Charlie, a suspended policeman deciding to look back into the disappearance of his mother from twenty years earlier, a mystery that police suspected his father had a role in. This was a decent story though not his best. For anyone considering trying out Disher I would recommend Bitterwash Road and it’s follow ups as a good introduction.

22 Clothes, clothes, clothes, boys, boys, boys, music, music, music - Viv Albertine

I had never heard of Viv Albertine or The Slits before her book was mentioned on here. Really enjoyed this although had to suspend my belief on occasion that Albertine could remember so much detail about so many of the events of her youth. Wonderfully narrated on audible by Jasmine Blackborow.

@BaruFisher

I don't actually know the plot of The Count of Monte Cristo, or I didn't. But I'm reading a biography of the real man behind the novel, The Black Count by Tom Reiss. It's interesting but slow reading because there are a lot of end notes, and some contain more information than just page references. Alex Dumas, as the novelist's father called himself, had a mixture of white French and African slave ancestry and was born in St Domingue (the island which has become Haiti and the Dominican Republic). He was a supporter of the French Revolution but at the end of his life he was a Napoleonic army general but had very different views on things from Napoleon who was trying to establish himself as a dictator at the head of an expanding French empire. I've previously read The Black Jacobins by CLR James about the same Caribbean island. Also interesting but challenging reading - it was a book group read (I have a real life book group based in my local branch library which has been going for years with a number of quite long term members).

36. Black Butterflies - Priscilla Morris. My second last of the Woman's Prize shortlist. I really liked this book about the start of the Bosnian war told from the viewpoint of an artist - a Bosnian Serb - who decides to stay while her husband and mother go to her daughter's house in England.

It reminded me a bit of A Woman in Berlin as a kind of documentary of the war. I was a teenager when it started but it's quite shocking to read descriptions of what happened so recently and in light of Ukraine. The war creeps up on her gradually as different amenities are cut off and the shelling gets worse.

I've got one more shortlist to go with The Marriage Portrait. I'm not sure whether l'll bother with the remaining longlist ones - Stone Blind, Cursed Bread, Dog of the North and Homesick. If anyone has read them though, do let me know if you recommend them.

32. The Bookshop - Penelope Fitzgerald

Set in East Anglia in 1959, the book tells of a middle aged widow's attempt to open a bookshop in a small village, despite opposition from locals and even the building itself. The story didn't grab me, but many have liked it so I guess it's just me.

81. Excellent Women by Barbara Pym

I got this when Barbara Pym was discussed on the thread about 3 years ago and she has recently been discussed again on this years thread. So I thought I'd get on with it. I didn't particularly get on with Quartet In Autumn previously though I haven't looked up my review.

Whilst I do love a bit of English Jolly Ho Spiffing Boarding School Wot Wot and am therefore not averse to Britishness in Literature; I think in Excellent Women I've found a book that I can point to and say that is the EXACT type of book I hate

Spinster Of The Parish, More Tea Vicar, Jumble Sale, Are They Catholic Do You Think? Lyon's Cream Tea, Repressed Sexuality, Stilted Conversation Resulting In Embarrassing Misunderstandings AND ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HAPPENS

I actually think that in summary I've made it sound better than the utter borefest it actually is

Oh thank God Eine I’m not the only one.

24 From Here to Eternity - Caitlin Doherty

Mortician Caitlin Doherty travels the world, exploring differences in funerary practice and alternatives to the commercialised American ‘death industry.’ Fascinating if you’re already a fan of Caitlin’s work (potentially grim otherwise).

25 Fire Rush - Jacqueline Crooks

Set in the late 70s and early 80s, budding DJ Yamaye lives for dub music and underground raves, but faces tragedy as a result of police brutality and becomes embroiled with a violent gang. I found this utterly immersive - the Jamaican patois and the unique way Yamaye perceives the world (an apparent synaesthesia, where all her sensory experience is expressed in musical terms) mean this is a book you have to sit down and concentrate on in chunks, in a good way. The final section in Jamaica worked less well for me, as it seemed to veer a little too much into the fantastical.

Overall brilliantly done though - my favourite of the women’s prize list so far. Just started on The Marriage Portrait and it has not annoyed me yet (I was not a Hamnet fan, to put it mildly).

Note to self: stay well away from Barbara.

Five Red Herrings by Dorothy L whatsit
I don’t know why I bought this, as I know I can’t stand her writing. I think I was lured in by the fact there’s no smug, self obsessed Harriet Bloody Do-dar in it, so maybe Lord Peter would witter less.

It’s true there was less wittering, but he still spouts nonsense from‘Macbeth’ every third sentence which makes me want to whack Dorothy L Bleeding Whatshername around the head with a bust of the bard.

Instead of the usual wittering, we had endless pages of embarrassingly awful ‘Scottish’ accents which felt both racist and snobbish to me on the part of Bloody Dorothy L.

We then had many pages of train timetables and thoughts about bicycles and beards and breakfasts.

I finished it. I should’ve binned the fucker unread.

Note to self: Dorothy L really is as shit as you knew. Stay well away from Dorothy L.

Another one here who found Excellent Women dull. I did try another Pym (can’t remember which one) and gave up because I was bored. It’s odd because on paper her books sound right up my street and she’s often recommended alongside other authors I like but no, she’s not for me.

I’ve dithered over buying Excellent Women in the past and suspect I might think the same as Eine so it’s getting banished from the TBR.

Remus I’ve had the first 3 Lord Peter Wimseys on my shelf for years, occasionally pick one up then put it straight back again.

Excellent Women was the first Pym I ever read and I love it. I love all Pym’s books. Late convert after years of avoidance, thinking she was just about curates and cakes. In fact I think I may re-read a few now to cheer myself up.

Might have to prioritise some Pym because I love a book where nothing much happens and Eine's ragey list reads like a recommendation to me

Dorothy L is Barbara Pym with added murder.

(NB that opinion is based on my extensive reading of Sayers which consisted of 3 failed attempts at Gaudy Night which I know people rave about but bored me to tears.)

Spinster Of The Parish, More Tea Vicar, Jumble Sale, Are They Catholic Do You Think? Lyon's Cream Tea, Repressed Sexuality, Stilted Conversation Resulting In Embarrassing Misunderstandings AND ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HAPPENS

Ahh Eine you've made me laugh, that's a brilliant summary of Barbara Pym. I find her books very comforting, in fact I was just thinking yesterday that my poor brain is so woozy and tired from the stresses of term time that I should treat myself to a Pym. 😁Sometimes I just need to read a book where everyone is dealing with a set of very minor worries, and nothing happens! I can see why she's a marmite author. But her exposition of human foibles on the small scale is so gentle and comical. And underneath it all is quite a sharp satirical eye. If anything frustrates me about her books though, it's how much the men get away with, and how much the women cater to their foibles even though they see straight through them!

I tried to read Five Red Herrings years ago and gave up, it was so dense and there wasn't enough story. I'm a fan of Gaudy Night though. The portrait of those straight-backed, intimidating female dons is so convincing. It reminds me of a few Oxbridge women tutors I have known, retired or on the point of retirement, a generation who forged their own way into academia by being as tough or tougher than their male counterparts, and whose like we won't see again.

@Stokey, I pretty much actively disliked Stone Blind and Cursed Bread, I enjoyed Dog of the North but didn't find it hugely remarkable, and I loved Homesick. Those are my highly subjective reviews!

Yes to all this!

Thanks for the info on The Black Count @elkiedee I’m going to add that to my tbr.

@Stokey you haven’t read the same books as me from the longlist- though I didn’t read Glory either. I am currently 75% of the way through Black Butterflies on kindle and have 90 mins of Fire Rush left on audible and I suspect my reviews will be very similar to yours- I’m enjoying both a lot.

"Might have to prioritise some Pym because I love a book where nothing much happens and Eine's ragey list reads like a recommendation to me"

@noodlezoodle I've already read and enjoyed most of Pym's books but I sometimes see negative reviews and think that sounds like something I'd enjoy. I'm not bothered by the lack of things happening. And when I read stories I'd expect to be eventful, plotted etc, I usually care more about the characters than the plots. Sometimes the plots and the silly things characters do are really frustrating, particularly in crime fiction (repeatedly rushing off to get into danger) and if I wasn't engaged by something else that would put me off totally!

I must try a Pym sometime. If it's like the 'rather dated' bookclub selections, there's a chance I'd like it.