50 Books Challenge 2023 Part Six

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the sixth 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, the fourth one here and the fifth one: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/4793238-50-books-challenge-2023-part-five?page=20&reply=126860721

What are you reading?

That's fair enough, Sadik - in all honesty, I don't think it's worth paying large sums of money for.

31 We Are Satellites by Sarah Pinsker. Science fiction set in the near future. A new gadget is quickly gaining popularity - the Pilot, which can improve your performance at school or work by allowing you to multi-task more effectively. But will this create a two-tier society between those who have one and those who don't? And has anyone actually researched the long term effects on your brain? This was okay, but I found it rather cliched - the big bad corporation producing Pilots, the young earnest group of underdogs fighting against them.

32 Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. Oh wow, I absolutely LOVED this! I'm not much of a gamer, and definitely not the type of game featured in this book (the worldbuilding kind), but I was spellbound by the characters Sadie, Sam and Marx, their evolving relationships over the course of the book, and the way in which the games they designed and produced impacted on those relationships. A definite bold for me.

Weyward by Emilia Hart. A book about three women with alternating chapters. Another witchcraft book. It was pretty much exactly as I expected. Not dreadful. Dragged a lot. Heavy handed in its feminist points. Occasionally silly. But readable enough. Author seems a nice young woman. She had a stroke in 201 and she must have been very young.

72. The Alienist by Caleb Carr

A murderer is preying on male child prostitutes in 1890s New York and an alienist (those who treat people with mental illnesses), a journalist, a female police secretary, and two Jewish detectives come together to investigate. This was less of a ‘whodunnit’ and more of an exploration of the infancy of offender profiling, which I found really interesting. I also enjoyed the depiction of New York and the weaving of historical figures, such as Theodore Roosevelt and JP Morgan, into the story. The murders were grim, especially considering that the victims are children, but I found the book really interesting, if a bit long.

73. The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper

The Wolf Den is the story of a group of women, who are slaves in Pompeii and are forced by their owner to work in a brothel. I couldn’t put this book down, despite it being a difficult read in places due to the suffering of the women (I didn’t think this was graphic or gratuitous, just sad and angering and I would have loved to be a character in this book - armed with a big, rusty knife). I particularly liked that the characters were well rounded and hardly anyone was purely bad or good. I really enjoyed this but I assumed, with no real evidence other than the similar timing and Pompeii location, that the eruption of Vesuvius would be a plot point. When you are expecting a bloody great volcanic eruption to wipe everyone out everything else feels a bit anti-climactic.

74. A Familiar Sight by Brianna Labuskes

Gretchen White is a psychologist who consults with the police on murders. The twist is that Gretchen herself is a non-violent (although this seems to take some effort on her part) sociopath. After the death of her lawyer friend Gretchen investigates the crime committed by the person her friend was currently defending - a 13 year old psychopath. This was a kindle unlimited crime book so I wasn’t expecting too much from it but I thought it was one of the best crime books I have read in a good while. I didn’t see the ending coming, at all, which is a pretty rare occurrence these days.

75. The Poet by Michael Connelly

Continuing my read of Michael Connelly’s books I paused on the Harry Bosch series to pick up this earlier novel as they are all in the same universe, and I HATE to read books out of order. A killer is murdering detectives and leaves a quote at each scene that leads to the crimes being linked. For the second book in a row I didn’t see the ending coming (maybe I’m losing my touch) but this didn’t lift the book above ‘just ok’. Still I tore through it and it kept my interest.

I'm half way to 50 🤓

25 The Other Mother - Jen Brister
Living outside the UK, I'm probably very late to the party in my discovery of Jen Brister but I find her hilarious! This was a very honest, very human portrayal of parenting in general, parenting twins in particular, and with an added 'detail' of being in a lesbian relationship and not being the birth mother of your children. This seems to have been slated on Goodreads as it wasn't solely focussed on the 'not the birth mother' aspect. I find that pretty harsh as it frequently focussed on Brister's emotions as the 'other mother'.

Read by Jen Brister herself, the delivery was just perfect!

@Sadik I'm a teacher, did a week long project for the children based on the book with lots of outdoor learning.

95. Hags by Victoria Smith

To all those who recently discussed crap menopause books, I recommend this, subtitled the demonisation of Middle Aged Women. It's so real and so righteously angry, that it's uplifting and anger inducing all at once.

Yes there's too much Mumsnet and too much of it casting a negative shadow (even though the author is CLEARLY on FWR) and yes a PP who reviewed it said she fangirls too much about Caitlin Moran this is true, but I basically think everyone on the thread needs to read this. It's a real shot in the arm. Essential.

76. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

The story of Esther Greenwood, a straight A scholarship student, prize winner etc. and her gradual descent into mental illness. This book was beautifully written, and the examination of the choices available to women, and the constraints that society and biology placed on them, really spoke to me. As someone who has suffered from anxiety and depression, though not anywhere near as severely as Esther, I feel that this book really captured those feeling of heaviness, and disconnection. I'm a bit stunned by this book I think and I know this will sit with me for some time. The fact that this novel is semi-autobiographical just adds to the pathos, as you know Plath didn’t make it through her depression, but I like to think that Esther, at least, did.

@MamaNewtNewt two Blasts From The Past in your reviews there!
I need to reread The Bell Jar as although it was popular with teenage girls when I read it (as a teenage girl) I think it would have a bigger impact on me now. It neatly ties in with Victoria Smith’s musings on how you dismiss the warnings from older women when you are young. Esther herself is not much older than I was then, but I had some idea about the author’s mental state informing the writing of the book.
The Alienist I loved! Very few authors were writing that sort of book at the time and I was fascinated by the criminal profiling element. I also remember being quite taken by the author’s book jacket photo

Eine I know, the ending is so annoying. My 13 year old is already halfway through and don't know whether to warn her. She's absolutely loving it though.

Still waiting for the promised sequel

She's too busy with the Fangirl series I couldn't get into.

I love the Fangirl series & couldn't get into Eleanor & Park. But I have No Class & like trashy books

@BoldFearlessGirl It's interesting you making the link to Victoria Smith, I have Hags on my TBR mountain so I think I'll read that next, esp after Eine's review on it last night.

Have you read the second Alienist book? Hoping that is just as good.

Yes the second book Angel Of Darkness was also good and I was annoyed that I couldn't find a third

Yes, it didn't have the novelty of the first one, but it was still enjoyable. I don't think I found his other books quite as good.

I thought the Angel of Darkness wasn’t anywhere near as good tbh.

I’m with Remus on Angel of Darkness- I DNFed it and loved The Alienist.

@BoldFearlessGirl If you’re someone who likes audio, I recently listened to Annette Benning’s reading of The Bell Jar and it was excellent- it could work really well for your reread.

Just checked my review and I did still enjoy it - a bit clunky and overlong though.

Thank you @BaruFisher but I don’t get on with audio. I can’t stand being read to. Or podcasts. Or radio unless it’s a specific thing like John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme. An aspect of misophonia, I think?
It’s a shame, because I could do a lot more listening than reading!

Thanks biblio for the Linford review. I will read it as want to know what happens to the characters it may wait to see if it crops up in a Kindle offer.

And thanks Eine for the Hags review - on my list to read over the summer.

Finally finished:

40. Troubled Blood - Robert Galbraith

Strike and Robin take on the cold case of a murder of a female doctor in the 1970s. Was she killed by the serial killer operating in the area at the time (the Essex Butcher), the local mafia or was it more personal?

Whilst this was the main storyline, I am really there for the Strike/To in relationship and the day to day business at the agency and the other peripheral cases they are running.

It was very long (900 pages) but I did enjoy it.

My 1001 Nights - Alice Morrison

Thanks to whoever recommended this - travel writer Alice Morrison moves to Morocco to train for the Marathon des Sables, falls in love with the country and stays. Really nice travel writing.

77. See It End by Brianna Labuskes

Second in the series featuring Gretchen White, a police consultant who is a non-violent sociopath. Or is she? Gretchen investigates the murder of her aunt when she was eight years old, an event which she does not remember. And the crime for which she has always been the prime suspect. Maybe one too many coincidences in the wrap-up but I thought this was a really good whodunnit.

Actually the title is What Can't Be Seen. See It End is the third in the series which I have just downloaded.

43. Re-Educated - Lucy Kellaway

Shortish non-fiction from ex-FT journalist Kellaway, who opted to chuck in her successful writing career in her late 50s and retrain as a teacher. For good measure she also ended her marriage (which was already pretty semi-detached - her husband lived in the basement of their large family home in Highbury) and bought an ultra-modern design statement, The Framehouse, which she spotted on hip website The Modern House.

It's clear, I think, that Kellaway is a driven livewire who’d probably make a success of anything she did; she also doesn’t just retrain as a teacher - she sets up a company to cater for people like her who want to go into teaching as a second career at a later stage in their lives. I’m not remotely clued up about education, so I can't opine about her account of her experiences working in secondary schools, except that things have certainly changed since my time as a pupil - that was a million years ago, though, so hardly a surprise! All in all, a zippy and interesting read about someone opting to take a huge leap into the unknown in their late 50s, when most people would run a mile from a risk so enormous.

44. One Fine Day - Mollie Panter-Downes

Read for the Rather Dated Book Club and I'll comment more fully on that thread, but I love this book - it was a re-read for me. Just after the war, Laura Marshall spends a hot summer day running errands around her family home in a typical rural English village. Nothing really happens, there’s not even a plot to speak of, but the writing is beautiful, the imagery so perfectly evoked, and the author (who wrote a column of 'London War Notes' for the New Yorker) pins down exactly the moment of social change when people like the Marshalls - well-bred, well-educated, fairly well-off - begin to realise (and, in Laura's case, accept) that there won’t always be other people to cook and clean and skivvy for them; that the war has brought about an irrevocable break with the past.

40 How To Live On 24 Hours A Day - Arnold Bennett

Published over a century ago, this slim volume is the forerunner of many of today’s self help books, tackling the universal human anxiety of wasting one’s time. Some of the specific tips may be outdated, but the themes- of living to work and being distracted by media- still ring true, and even if not worded in modern terms the proposed solutions of mindfulness, self reflection and curiosity are still widely recommended today.