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?

Will be interested in your review in due course, cassandre!

Surely one of the joys of a novel set somewhere you're familiar with is looking for errors, then being outraged . Though my impression of the publishing industry is that it's 90% Oxbridge so I'm kind of surprised that particular error wasn't corrected by the editor.

The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett Like Hallett’s previous novels, we read through a dossier of evidence - here emails and texts, interview transcripts and manuscripts - relating to an 18-year old crime involving a cult that came close to ritually sacrificing a baby. Now that baby will be turning 18, so true-crime author Amanda is commissioned to trace them and write a ‘beach read’ about the story.

Just as with her previous books, there were elements I felt hit the wrong note - I no more want to be reminded of real-life gruesome serial killers when reading a mystery novel than I want their names popping up when doing a wordle. The mystery itself is forgettable, and I cared less for the characters in this than in previous books. However, it kept me reading and I will probably read any more she writes despite all this.

@bibliomania Comet in Moominland was the first Moomin book I ever read and utterly terrified me. I remember lying on the school field with my friend Anne with us both anxiously peering at the sky to see if we could see one.

The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Bookman
I didn't think an awful lot of the first in The Book of List series. This second one was imo better, but certainly not without flaws and, as with the first, I do wonder who Pullman thinks his audience is.

Lyra was a baby in the last one - this one takes place about 20 years later. There are a lot of characters and a lot of places and it's all a bit disjointed. The ending was a total cop out, leaving it in mid air - obviously there's another to follow, but it meant this one was very unsatisfying in itself.

I like Lyra; I liked some of the characters she encounters and I'm interested enough in what happens to her to read another, but I think Pullman is a bit of a victim of his own success, and it's all a bit laboured and long and frustrating.

Babel sounds right up my street (including complaints about inaccurate French, Latin and Oxford geography - that’s basically all I know apart from my actual job 😄) so I’ve reserved it. I’ve also reserved Jonathan Strange while I’m at it, as I’ve somehow never read it (it’s not available until September though).

@Tarahumara i thoroughly approve of that flowchart 😂

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I agree The Secret Commonwealth was a bit disappointing (I liked the first in the prequel series more) and am hoping that the third one will be better. I think the DDs are about ready for me to read Northern Lights to them - exciting!

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie the ending of The Secret Commonwealth was shit. I liked the first one but the second book just felt like it was stretching the story out to fill three books. Hopefully the final book is much better.

So!, I agree it's quite a build up to the comet, but then it's all a bit of a damp squib...

Just realised auto correct turned Dust into List. How strange!

I have similar feelings about His Dark Materials in terms of audience. Too complex for children below at least 13 and even then I think it’s likely lots might go over their heads.

Yes to stretching. The whole thing about the old religious chap being appointed and then the aftermath of that just felt like unnecessary padding, for example.

35. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

Well, this was harrowing. And also mesmerising.

The author was sent to join an Everest expedition so he could write about it for a magazine - and then, on the expedition’s summit day, it all went horribly wrong. Bad weather, and poor decisions fuelled by oxygen deprivation contributed to the deaths of eight people on one day on the peak of Everest.

And as an aside, the whole experience of climbing Everest sounded really gruelling, unpleasant and risky even before the storm hit the expedition on the summit day.

I didn't enjoy His Dark Materials at all. I don't think I could be persuaded to read Pullman further.

Thank you for the new thread southeast!

1: EC Bateman - Death at the Auction
2: Sophie Irwin - A Lady's Guide to Fortune-Hunting
3: Deanna Raybourn - Night of a Thousand Stars
4: Lynn Messina - A Brazen Curiosity
5: Lynn Messina - A Scandalous Deception
6: Lynn Messina - An Infamous Betrayal
7: Lynn Messina - A Nefarious Engagement
8: Richard Armitage - Geneva (audiobook)
9: Hazel Holt - Death of a Dean
10: Richard Osman - The Bullet That Missed
11: Anthony Horowitz - Stormbreaker
12: Rosie Talbot - Sixteen Souls
13: Jonathan Stroud - The Notorious Scarlett & Browne
14: Rory Clements - Corpus
15: Rory Clements - Nucleus
16: Sophie Hannah - Closed Casket
17: Karen M McManus - Nothing More to Tell
18: M C Beaton - Devil's Delight
19: Alexandra Benedict - Murder on the Christmas Express
20: M A Bennett - S.T.A.G.S.
21: M A Bennett - D.O.G.S.
22: M A Bennett - F.O.X.E.S.
23: M A Bennett - T.I.G.E.R.S.
24: M A Bennett - H.A.W.K.S.
25: Sophie Hannah - The Monogram Murders
26: Sophie Hannah - The Mystery of Three Quarters
27: Joanna Lowell - Artfully Yours
28: Joanna Lowell - The Runaway Duchess
29: Caroline O'Donoghue - All Our Hidden Gifts
30: Caroline O'Donoghue - The Gifts That Bind Us
31: Emily Brightwell - Mrs Jeffries weeds the plot
32: Rhys Bowen - The Last Mrs Summers
33: Rhys Bowen - God Rest Ye, Royal Gentlemen
34: Rhys Bowen - Four funerals & maybe a wedding
35: Michelle Salter - Murder at Crookham Hall
36: Deanna Raybourn - Killers of a Certain Age
37: Lesley Cookman - Murder on the Run
38: Lesley Cookman - Murder at Mallowan Manor
39: Scott Allan - Do the Hard Things First
40: Helena Dixon - Murder at the Country Club
41: Helena Dixon - Murder on Board
42: Helena Dixon - Murder at the Charity Ball
43: Beverley Watts - Grace
44: Beverley Watts - Temperance
45: Beverley Watts - Faith
46: Rachel McLean - The Blue Pool Murders
47: Lynn Messina - A Treacherous Performance
48: Lynn Messina - A Sinister Establishment
49: Maureen Johnson - The Box in the Woods
50. Robert Muchamore - The Recruit
51. Hazel Holt - Murder on Campus
52. Lesley Cookman - Murder at the Manor
53. Jodi Taylor - About Time
54. Linda Davidsson - The Ikigai Book
55. JM Hall - A Pen Dipped in Poison
56. Hannah Dolby - No Life for a Lady

I really liked The Appeal @CornishLizard but read The Twyford Code with increasing bewilderment!

I've never read any Philip Pullman books - couldn't get into them at all, despite several attempts

I abandoned it after about 50 pages. I often look at it, sitting there on the shelf, telling me I'm wrong about it. DD tells me I'm wrong. Millions and trillions of people tell me I'm wrong.
Nicole Kidman did her best to prove me right though. 🤣 It's another one on the "I should but I don't want to" pile.

Remus strong agree on The Secret Commonwealth. Another one suffering from the J.K.Rowling school of too popular to be edited? The whole church bit was so long and boring, Lyra was very bratty and it was just a frustrating book. Dd1 who is now 13 read the Northern Lights series in year 6 but her interest definitely ebbed and flowed. I think she'd enjoy La Belle Savage - but at the time, the rape scene put me off giving it to her, but she'd be bored by the Secret Commonwealth.

@Welshwabbit we loved the How To Train Your Dragon books. The David Tennant audibles are brilliant too ( although I'm sure your voices more than met the grade!).

Just finished The It Girl reviewed on here. Definitely no Secret History but a decent enough thriller which I read over the weekend. It was quite nice to read something straightforward after all the literary prize stuff.

Am now listening to Fire Rush on audible, it's so good with all the dub music & raps. And am reading Horse on Kindle.

@Stokey I bought Horse when it was 99p but haven't given it a go yet. Looking forward to your review, just hoping it has a better ending than the other book of hers that I've read.

The rape scene made me question Pullman’s proposed audience. The attempted rape in Commonwealth just felt like padding too, unfortunately, adding nothing to characterisation and only serving to underline how vulnerable Lyra had made herself, which was obvious anyway.

I also wonder how many children Pullman has known.

27. Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer I'm finally making headway on the Twilight series, mainly because I'm looking forward to reading something else once I've finished. In this one, the Cullen family have returned to Forks and Bella still isn't happy. This time because Edward has vetoed her friendship with Jacob. Then some weird things start happening and an evil blast from Bella's past is heading their way so the vampires and werewolves might have to work together

If you want to read about an abusive relationship in an idealised and romantic light then this is the novel for you! It upsets me a lot that Edward's extremely controlling behaviour is held up as a paragon of love and devotion. What the fuck are we teaching our children about relationships?! Nothing healthy with this book, that's for sure

@Stokey it was the David Tennant versions that encouraged me to do Camicazi and Bertha with a proper Welsh accent (the only accent I can really do, for reasons which I hope are obvious from my username!).

22 Becoming by Michelle Obama

Probably read by many of you on here already, I am very late to the former First Lady's autobiography. I found the earlier parts of the book most interesting, learning about Michelle Obama's childhood and teens in Chicago's South Side, and her route to Princeton. I appreciated her very clear articulation of the importance (and privilege) of having loving, stable parents who were interested in and valued education, despite having little material wealth. I also enjoyed the section on the beginning of her relationship with Barack Obama. I found the chapters on her White House experience less revealing (presumably because she wasn't allowed to say very much!), but she evokes very well the chaos of having to upend not only your own but, more painfully, your children's lives to do something you didn't particularly want in the first place. An interesting read, if (perhaps inevitably) rather bland in places. Both Obamas (and their kids) come out well from this.

8 Pachinko - Min Jin Lee
The tale of Sunja, a Korean woman who migrates to Japan with her husband and child in the 1930s with the subsequent stories of her children and grandchildren up to the present day.

I didn't enjoy reading this much. I thought at first it was a poor translation, then I found out the author has lived in the US since she was 7, so her English is probably pretty good and it's just poorly written. It's an interesting premise, and I learned some stuff about Korean immigrants to Japan, but it was quite dull and I didn't care about any of them. It took me ages to plough through it all as well!

45. Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica

A woman goes missing. Then another woman (who was a doula for the first woman) and her six year old daughter go missing. Are the cases connected or is this a coincidence? This was pretty terrible, with a completely unrealistic resolution.

46. If I Never Met You by Mhairi McFarlane

This is the 6th book I’ve read by Mhairi McFarlane this year and my least favourite by a country mile. I didn’t believe in the central relationship and the ending was beyond silly. Not one of her best.

47. Memphis by Tara M Stringfellow

This has been reviewed a fair few times so I’ll just add that I enjoyed this story of generations of southern womanhood. That said I found the living arrangements, given what had happened very, very odd and it made me feel on edge, but perhaps this was deliberate. I know the use of the ‘n word’ was by black people about black people, for the most part, but I still found it jarring. I also thought the North women were a bit insulated from the racism, would there really be no consequences for throwing out your best white customer, or standing up to a white policeman? I found that a bit unrealistic, if a bit of a relief.

Love that flowchart @Tarahumara ! Definitely applies to me.

As a scientist Oxford did feel like a campus because all the labs are clustered around the Parks.

I need a book that meets this criteria please

Doesn't require anything of me in terms of intellectual rigour or using my brain

At the same time not so badly written that it's brain dead and I can't respect it.

Really makes me feel warm in some way either through appreciation or content, drawn in

Similar to

A John Green, something like Night Circus or Eleanor and Park

Anything like that?

I don’t know John Green, Night Circus or Eleanor and Park, but for your other requirements Rosamund Pilcher springs to mind - The Shell Seekers or Winter Solstice maybe.