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 Maud. I'll have a look later then.

@Piggywaspushed I disliked Michael too. As I said, I think a lot of the characterisation generally didn't quite work. It was all too busy. Why did he have to be old enough to be her dad? It didn't add anything to the plot. If he was such a sound bloke with his speeches to her and in his job, how was he friends with that insufferable group of twats? Etc etc.

There are 6 or 7 books appearing on my Wishlist reduced - I'm not looking at main deals, but I'm saving for a holiday so I'm unlikely to take more than 2 that have really jumped out at me.

@Sadik Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is one of my favourite reads!!

@Piggywaspushed There were several typos in the kindle version of Trespasses too (PS I know I should be reading my TOCS chapters rather than chatting on here!!)

I'm used to typos in books these days but it surprised me from Bloomsbury!

Sorry you don't like Footnotes, So1 - that was a recommendation from me. I loved it.

The one book I was delighted to see in the deals was Blurb your Enthusiasm, a book about books. I read a sample and it went firmly onto my wishlist.

Awww, sorry @bibliomania (my heart always runs cold when I open this thread and see a "sorry you didn't like it" - I'm always terrified it's going to be the author. 🤣
On paper (fnar) it should have been totally me. I remember picking it up in Waterstones and pondering it and so leapt on the Kindle 99p. I might try again one day.

I read Footnotes a few weeks ago and thought it was ok, didn’t love it. I did love Blurb Your Enthusiasm though (might have been me that recommended it!)

Not a member of the Fiennes clan. Or is that a bluff......

Thanks for the Blurb rec @bibliomania I'd never heard of it.

21 How to Train Your Dragon 12: How to Fight a Dragon's Fury by Cressida Cowell

I have unashamedly included the last 2 of the How to Train Your Dragon series in my list as they are really quite long and I have read the whole series out loud to my children, with all the voices and everything. This last instalment serves up a suitably exciting ending: with dragons and humans in a fight to extinction, can our puny Viking hero Hiccup secure peace and save the world (and his beloved dragons)? No spoilers, but a satisfying conclusion for me at least, and the kids seemed happy too.

I'd be tempted to read The Lobotomist's Great Aunt Mildred 😁

Janina 😂
To be totally honest I believe the actual title was The Lobotomist's Wife. I mean WTAF?

49. Comet in Moominland, by Tove Jansson.
Light relief after Colditz.. There may be peril in the form of a looming comet, but Moominmama will know what to do. The Moomins passed me by in childhood and it's not the same to read with adult eyes, but it was still charming and soothing. I liked the gentle mockery of the adult figures, caught up in their own preoccupations.

50. Under Pressure: Rescuing our Children from the Cult of Over-Parenting, Carl Honore. A plea to let children enjoy childhood, free of over-scheduling, over-testing, over-protecting etc. I agreed with what he said, but thought it was an over-padded magazine think piece. He jaunts to Taiwan, Italy, Sweden as well as North America (he's Canadian) and the UK (where he lives) but every piece of "research" was presented in the same way: Parent used to do this and they were all unhappy and stressed but then they tried x and here is a quote from Parent and Child to show it's better now. I might have thought more of it if I read it when it came out in 2009, but I had a 2-year old then and now I have a 15-year old and i funny agonise over the same things (dd can get herself to the shops very well, thank you) and I think the world has changed and the problems of affluence are less....front of mind.

*I don't agonise

50. Babel, by R F Kuang
We're in 19th century Oxford where young people with language skills from around the world are taken to be educated into the magic underpinning the British Empire. What will they do with this opportunity?

This was a bit of an oddity - a faint flavour of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (magic treated as a historical fact linked to scholarly endeavour, footnotes), a dash of Les Miserables, then stir in a fascination with etymology and a passionate denunciation of colonialism. Marks for originality, at any rate. I didn't fully love it - it didn't totally come alive for me and it was a bit longer than it needed to be. I read it on the train to and from Oxford for May Day, so it provided food for thought at any rate.

Thanks for the interesting review of Babel, bibliomania! Coincidentally I just started reading it yesterday. It's quite gripping so far.

It reminded me of Jonathan Strange as well.

This is a pedantic quibble on my part but the very first Latin term that pops up in the text is translated wrong. The learned Professor Lovell says that in Chinese, 'He will learn' is three words but in Latin it's only one: 'Disce'. 'He will learn' in Latin isn't 'disce', it's 'discet' (future). Disce is the imperative. As I said, this is a minor quibble, but it makes me wonder how many more minor inaccuracies there will be in the text!

The Percy Jackson books have incorrect Latin in them as well, but Rick Riordan unlike RF Kuang doesn't have an academic background. But honestly when writers are citing foreign languages in their novels, they should get someone who knows the language to proofread for them. It's not that difficult! Rant over 😁

P.S. I hope you enjoyed May morning!

I found Babel amazing until it got a bit silly from China onwards and had a bit of a Marvel showpiece ending.

Interesting Eine.

I'm in chapter 3 now and just found a French translation error. In a passage where the characters are talking about the importance of correct translation. Groan.

Then the protagonist goes to have a picnic in South Park, 'the eastern part of campus'. Oh dear. Oxford Uni doesn't have a campus today, so it certainly didn''t have a campus in the 19th c.

I think I'm just going to have to treat this as a fun read and stop nitpicking. It doesn't feel like it's set in the 19th c. though.

The author gets things wrong and the setting doesn't fully convince, but I do think the author was trying to do something interesting.

Fair enough, I'll sit back and enjoy the ride. I'm not usually so critical but the more familiar you are with a topic the easier it is to nitpick, ha. I teach translation, so a novel about translation that contains incorrect translation examples of the few languages I happen to know is like a red flag to a bull 😜

Kuang does Chinese studies, so I assume her Cantonese and Mandarin etymologies are accurate at any rate! And I'm totally on board with the anti-imperialism theme.

I saw this and thought of you lot!

34. The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake

Every decade, six of the world’s best magicians (or medeians, as they’re called here) are invited to join the exclusive and powerful Alexandrian Society. There’s a two year course of studies involved, but only five of the six will get to be initiated. The other one will die - that’s not a spoiler, it says so on the book cover, although the candidates are kept in the dark about this for quite some time.

I enjoyed this. There’s chapters from each candidate’s perspective, so we get to know all of them to some extent. And various plots and conspiracies going on, especially once the characters start to become aware of the terminal nature of the incoming elimination.

I was however quite disappointed with my edition of this book, because the story finished with 50 pages of the book left. There was a preview of the next book in the series and a short story in those 50 pages, which was a little frustrating.

I've had The Atlas Six kicking around on my kindle for a while. I remember thinking it sounded terrific, so I don't know why I didn't read it when I bought it. I may bump it up the TBR list. And Babel sounds fun, too, and the library has it as an eBook (albeith with a wait) - I'm no linguistic expert and nor do I have any real insight into translation so I expect its errors will pass me by. That said I'm reading an interesting book about biblical translation at the moment so perhaps I'll know more by the time I get to it.

I enjoyed the Atlas Six, (though not enough to buy the sequel at full price, definitely a wait for the library or 99p one).
I've had Babel on my list for a while, but it sounds like it might irritate me - not that I would notice any Latin translation errors, but the 'campus' for sure