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 @Southeastdweller! Here's mine...

1. Queenie- Candice Carty-Williams
2. Small Things Like These- Claire Keegan
3. Burial Rites- Hannah Kent
4. The Marriage Portrait- Maggie O'Farrell
5. Mrs England- Stacey Halls
6. The Night Ship- Jess Kidd
7. Circling the Sun- Paula McLain
8. Mary Jane- Jessica Anya Blau
9. This Time Tomorrow- Emma Straub

10. Mothering Sunday- Graham Swift

Two new to add:

11. Diary of a Provincial Lady- EM Delafield

Really enjoyed this, proper period piece but very funny and engaging with it. I used the audiobook (free via Borrowbox at library), would recommend.

12. The Radium Girls- Kate Moore

I think this has probably been reviewed on here before- it's non-fiction about a group of women in 1920s America who suffered radium poisoning after working as dial-painters, and their fight for compensation afterwards. The way they were treated was unbelievable- there's a lot of social history here in how women were treated as a disposable workforce and then gaslighted into believing their work had nothing to do with their illness. I wasn't always keen on the writing style- there were a few odd novelised descriptions and cheesy asides that were irritating- but overall I'd recommend it because this is a story more people should know about. Quick warning though that some of the health problems the women suffered makes for hard reading.

I thought Frannie Langton

Was a preposterous pile of shite

Love the dramatic pause @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie 😁

I wish I could claim it was deliberate!

I too hated Frannie Langton. Started watching the ITVX version , and hated that too. Plus it made it all confusing and I don't think the book was confusing. Bewildering, yes.

After reading reviews of A Terrible Kindness on here, I picked up a copy for myself. I'm afraid it didn't do it for me. The opening was excellent, really affecting- then it becomes a tale of a whining schoolboy and the rest of the book was plodding, predictable and didn't hang together. One trauma should have been enough really. The fall out with his mother, so central to hints in the plot, is really really rushed and a bit daft. And the bit about the homeless choir in Cambridge feels like an idea for a plot of a whole separate novel in the uplifting middle aged chick lit style about a bookshop or a lido or what have you.

Has anyone seen the film of Harold Fry? I did like that book - it does this kind of thing well and wondered about going to see the film.

Well that too Remus I did think you may have read it.

Highly derivative

@Piggywaspushed

Oh. Well I won't bother with it then

I do seem to be a lone voice, mind eine!

I wasn’t keen on the way the Aberfan section was attached to an ordinary Coming Of Age story in A Terrible Kindness either. It seemed a bit disrespectful, somehow.

38 Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

I think I may be the lone voice for this one as it's been really well reviewed on these threads but I really didn't like this. The only redeeming feature, that stopped it being a DNF, was it was short. I loved the premise, there's a seat in an old coffee shop in Tokyo and if you sit in it (and follow the rules) you can be briefly transported back to the past. The book follows four characters with different reasons for travelling back. The characters felt one-dimensional (the 3 characters that work in the coffee shop were so void of personality that they were interchangeable), the dialogue felt clunky and awkward and there was sooooo much repetition that everything felt over explained.

I was also pretty unimpressed by it, Tattie, but I read it last year when I wasn't posting in these threads. So you're not alone!

I very much enjoyed the first one but the phrase diminishing returns could have been invented for this series. The last one was utterly shite.

I wasn’t that keen on Before The Coffee Gets Cold either.

Phew, glad it’s not just me!

I thought it was okay - the stories were a bit superficial but it did have a certain charm.

Yeah, I wasn't fussed about Before the Coffee gets Cold, I though the women were completely unrealistic, particularly the one who made a big decision that no woman in real life would make.

@BoldFearlessGirl I loved A Terrible Kindness and think that the Aberfan sections were well done and handled respectfully. Do you find the inclusion disrespectful because it feels tacked on to the main story for the sake of it?

Heaven by Mieko Kawakami. Translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd.

This is a short but brilliant novel about two middle school children who are being bullied by their classmates. It captures their pain and isolation so well it's heart-rending although it does at least end on a positive note. This is different from the other books I've read by this novelist although all her books portray a more gritty Japan than most novels translated into English. Can't wait to read the next one!

I thought Before The Coffee Gets Cold was just really mawkish.

Book 30: The Garnett Girls by Georgina Moore. Growing up on the Isle of Wight, the now adult Garnett sisters have had their lives overshadowed by their parents' great love affair and subsequent break up. News of their estranged father triggers all of them to examine their own relationships, and their feelings towards their mother.

This was highly acclaimed with blurbs from lots of famous writers but it is not a very good book. The pacing is off, the plot points are signalled miles off, and lots of important characters and strands just disappear.

Most annoyingly, the author has put all the description in dialogue rather than narrative. So it is full of people saying things like 'oh hello Margo. How is your daughter Rachel, who is a lawyer and has two children? You must miss her since she moved to London. Still, it's not as bad as the worst thing that ever happened to you, when your husband left'.

It's not unenjoyable though, if you like beach houses, posh dysfunctional families, torrid love affairs and dramatic Christmas parties.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold was a 4 star for me. It was just so clear in my head and I could see all the characters really clearly. But book club regularly demonstrates to me to me that I often have opposing taste/views to others.

Finished yesterday

The Reading List, Sara Nisha Adams
Picked this up in 99p deals and I really enjoyed it. Mukesh is recently widowed, fussed over but not seen by his children and he discovers the local library and reading. He becomes unlikely friends with 17 year old Aleisha who has a difficult home life and works at the library. Together they discover what books can do for you and how stories can enhance our own lives. I wasn’t at all suprised by the ending, but it wasn’t a mystery so it was fine. I am a totally sentimental reader and at least two of the situations in this novel are very familiar in my own life, but I can literally cry at a line that just says ‘he died’ and nothing else. It was easy reading but for me had some depth.

@StColumbofNavron hopefully we’ll agree on The Reading List as I have that lined up on my kindle.

67. The One by John Marrs

Where to start with this one Jesus!

A company offering soulmate DNA testing has become the norm. People find "The One" through handing over a sample and waiting for an email. The book charts the fortunes of several characters who take the test.

What's right with it?

Stuck with it for the concept. Still rate the concept.

What's wrong with it?

1. The writing is fucking dreadful. Diabolical in fact. We have a character who has done a financial background test on someone wonder how he can afford something and then remind herself she looked at his bank statements, that sort of shit.

It also does this :

Bottle Of Fosters
Packet Of Marlboro Lights
High End Nike Trainers
Lidl
Tesco

Which I hate anyway.

1. Everyone in it is a psychopath apart from like 4 people. The panto villain ending of a cheap thriller? Check

Other unrealistic criminal and hysteric behaviour needing police involvement that just wasn't real world. Check. Convenient Character Death. Also, Check.

1. But this is the bit that wound me up and if this was a paperback I'd launch it into the fucking sea or something

What if you matched with your soulmate?

AND THEY WERE BRAIN DAMAGED

What if you matched with your soulmate?

AND THEY WERE IN A WHEELCHAIR

and, presented hypothetically, What if you matched your soulmate?

AND THEY HAD DOWNS. EURRGGG ARE YOU EVEN MORAL ALLOWING THAT AS A POSSIBILITY FOR NORMALS

Couple this with the fact that both the people who match disabled people are given "outs" - because what could be more gross and unfair than getting stuck with one of them? We have to give the reader a better ending, right?

The ableism in this book is fucking disgusting and if I ever met the author I'd say it to his face. He's a shite writer anyway. Never again.

Yes, that’s exactly it. I can’t fault the way those sections were written, but William felt ‘inserted’ into them iyswim. I would have preferred to read his story on its own. I don’t generally mind fictional characters appearing in factual events (my fiction reading would be limited if I did!) but this jarred. Perhaps I feel more sensitive about Aberfan than other tragic events, or the number of funeral staff was identifiable so the invention of William was unnecessary?

28 Homes And Experiences by Liam Williams
I mostly enjoyed this, but felt it dragged on a bit at the end. As the end was the main character’s Redemption Arc I felt a bit churlish reading it quickly.
Mark works for Urb, an Air BnB type company and accepts a freelance assignment where he travels across Europe writing reviews of the places he stays and various experiences set up for him (tapas, fireworks, bike hire with set computer itinerary etc). I found this part of the book the most entertaining, especially the email exchanges with his manager, Bethan. The best review he writes for Urb is one where he’s a bit drunk and more than a bit sarcastic, for instance.
The narrative is set out as a series of (long) emails to his cousin, Paris. Paris was supposed to be travelling around Europe with him but an argument is mentioned and there’s never any reply to Mark’s emails. I guessed why fairly early on and I think most readers would. There’s also the promise of a visit from Mark’s would-be girlfriend Neevie, but she doesn’t seem very keen. I felt exasperated by these sections. Mark, MARK! She’s just not that into you, leave her alone!
Two thirds of the way through things unravel for Mark and this is where my attention waned. I did finish though and it would be a solid 3 stars.