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?

The kids (and I) used to really enjoy the self-serve date stamp at our old library - it was like getting to be a librarian! No stamps here in France sadly, it must all be electronic.

36 Stupeur et Tremblements - Amélie Nothomb (in French) DH generally shows no interest in what I read (and only reads graphic novels himself, and even then rarely) so I was quite touched when he picked this out for me unprompted from his old books that he accumulated before I knew him. It turns out he does actually have decent taste in books 😄 as this was lots of fun.

It’s a short-ish memoir (although presumably much embellished and very satirical) of the Belgian author’s year working for a Japanese company in Japan in her 20s, after having spent her early childhood in Japan before moving to China. It was very funny, interspersed with serious moments - there is an astonishing passage at one point where she laments the prospects of her female immediate boss (who is like a Japanese corporate version of Emily Blunt’s character in The Devil Wears Prada). But there are some uncomfortable bits too - jokes about mental illness, sexual assault and the Japanese people generally which I found more unpleasant than funny. I wouldn’t let that put you off though, the good far outweighs the bad!

The English translation is called Fear and Trembling, if anyone is interested (I don’t know what the translation is like), and it seems there is also a very well-rated film adaptation so I’m going to seek that out too.

Happy birthday and happy reading @TattiePants !

Updating on what I read on holiday:

41. Death of a Bookseller by Alice Slater. True crime obsessive, bookseller and generally unpleasant person Roach becomes obsessed with her colleague Laura when she finds out that has a connection to a local serial killer. Laura detests true crime, seeing it as exploitative of the victims, and spirals into her own crisis as she tries to avoid Roach. I thought this was really good as a debut novel. It lifted the lid on bookselling - I know the author worked in bookshops for a long time - and it was genuinely creepy and unsettling. The final showdown between the two women was a bit unrealistic, and I'm not sure what it was ultimately trying to say about true crime, but still a very compelling read. I listen to Alice Slater's books podcast and would be keen to read whatever she writes next.

42. Outlaw by Anna North. An alternative history of the American West in a 19th century where a flu has wiped out 90% of the population, the civil war didn't happen, the federal government collapsed and women who can't have children are hanged as witches.

All very well except I only know this from reading a Washington Post review, presumably based on information from the publisher, as none of this is explained in the book!

The story follows a band of outlaw women who steal cattle, rob banks, cross dress as cowboys and deliver babies. All good fun but I was totally baffled as to whether it was an alternative history, a dystopia, or if I just knew very little about 19th century America and it was actually all accurate.

43. I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai. A lot to summarise here! Bodhi is a successful academic and podcaster. As a teenager, she attended a privileged, liberal boarding school where one of her classmates was murdered. A sports assistant - a black man - was convicted but she has doubts as to his guilt. Years later, she's asked back to teach a class on podcasting and encourages her students to investigate the case. They find new evidence, turn it into a massively successful Serial style podcast, and force a new trial.

There is a lot going on. It's a bit like Prep - Bodhi has a pretty similar voice to Curtis Sittenfeld actually, and it's very strong on looking back at your school days and re-evaluating the misogyny girls were exposed to and the behaviour of the boys. It's a bit about the ethics of true crime podcasts, a bit about the American penal system, and a tirade about violence against women in the Trump era. There's also a side plot about her husband, a successful artist, being accused of harassing a younger woman. And obviously, it's partly a murder mystery.

Very long and knotty and trying to cover too many bases, but I honestly loved it. I raced through and can't stop thinking about it. I haven't found many reviews at all but would love to hear what anyone else makes if they read it.

@GrannieMainland I've just finished her book The Great Believers and loved it and I bought this when it was 99p. May have to add it to my summer reading list.

@BaruFisher I saw you had just read that! I liked The Great Believers too, though found it almost too sad.

@Gingerwarthog @MegBusset

I had to decline my teaser again because I have the book. It was Metronome by Tom Watson which Tattie gave a lukewarm review to recently

52 Agnes and the Hitman by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer. Agnes and her fiance are putting on a wedding for her god daughter whose family are mobsters. All sorts of mayhem occurs. Someone is trying to stop the wedding, someone has taken out a hit on someone. The hit man actually works for the government and is trying to take out the other hit man. Great fun and beautifully resolved

I used to be a librarian and I can confirm the date stamp was a joyous thing. Also sorting and shelving a trolley of books was my number one favourite thing. If it didn't pay a pittance I'd never have left.

One of my pupils has just given me one of these and I had the BEST time at the weekend thwunk thwunking. from-the-library-of-ex-libris-mountain

I am so buying myself one of those. Beautiful!

@GrannieMainland I've just bought I Have Some Questions for You on the strong recommendation (well, absolute rave) of a friend so I’ll be reviewing it soon.

@ClaraTheImpossibleGirl A Traveller in Time is my all-time favourite children's book. I still have the copy I bought with my hard-earned pocket-money. I was completely obsessed with history and all things Tudor so it could have been written just for me.

@GrannieMainland The Anna North book is our next book club read, so looking forward to see if I agree.

Ah ha!
I did ask for more non- fiction and said I was interested in history so can hazard a guess!

@Terpsichore I do hope you enjoy it!

@StColumbofNavron hopefully it will make more sense with a bit of context. It's an interesting book just very confusing.

@ClaraTheImpossibleGirl thanks for the recommendation! I haven't read One Summer but I've enjoyed nearly every other Bill Bryson book that I've read (the exception being The Road to Little Dribbling, where he just came across as a grumpy old man). And the year fits in perfectly with my recent reading, too!

@GrannieMainland I have some questions for you sounds really interesting, and has gone on the TBR list, thank you.

29 I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai

Picked this up on a Kindle deal - it was publicised as a "literary whodunnit". And despite the fact that novels in this category generally disappoint (viz all the "new Secret Histories" mentioned in threads passim), I enjoyed this and would read more by the author. Bodie Kane, our narrator, returns to teach a film studies class at her old private school, where her junior year room-mate was murdered. So far so dead-girl-posh-school-flashback-narration commonplace, but the "me too" narrative woven in amongst the plot, courtesy of Bodie's hapless/?predatory soon-to-be ex-husband elevates the novel above the usual run. I liked Makkai's deft ability to make the reader question their instinctive sympathies. There's some really good stuff about memory and the bonds of adolescence in there. The plot was rather by the by, but there was enough to keep me interested alongside the other themes. I see Makkai has written books on widely varying topics and I'd be interested to read them.

Ha! I totally didn't see @Terpsichore 's post just above mine before writing the above review! I also recommend the book, in case it wasn't obvious!

And @GrannieMainland too! That'll teach me to post before reading back through...

I've also stuck I Have Some Questions For You on the to be read list @GrannieMainland @Welshwabbit @Terpsichore It's getting lots of recommendations.

30. The Seven Sisters by Lucinda Riley
600+ page chonker of a book recommended to me by a friend, written by an author that I hadn't read before but whose novels currently seem to be everywhere. Maia D'Apliese and her five sisters gather together at their childhood home on the shores of Lake Geneva having been told that their beloved adoptive father, Pa Salt, has died. Maia then sets off on a journey to find out more about her heritage by travelling to Rio de Janiero. As Maia uncovers her family history, we travel back to 1920s Rio and Paris, meeting characters that are significant in Maia's fictional tale and in the true story of the construction of the famous Christ the Redeemer statue. This is the first in a series, linked to the mythology of The Seven Sisters of The Pleiades.
I like a bit of historical fiction with a real life setting so there was lots to like about this novel with it's storylines in modern day Rio and in 1920s Rio and Paris. It's also too long with some dodgy writing. The author likes to make wee references to mythology through anagrams which are fine in places but I nearly threw the book against the wall when Kreeg Eszu emerged a character...too forced for my liking. I've enjoyed the Strike chat on here and, although they are very different books, I think my feelings about this are the same as my feelings about the Stirke series. I'd like to walk away, the writing is flawed and they are so long that I could enjoy a couple of really great reads in the time it takes to get through the next in this series...but I think it's somehow reeled me in and I want to see where it's going even though I wish I didn't want to.

31. The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
June 1954 - eighteen year old Emmett Watson is released from juvenile detention and returned home to the farm the family have lost and younger brother Billy who is waiting for him. Emmett and brother Billy have plans to drive west and start a new life, but these plans quickly unravel after two of Emmett's work farm acquaintances arrive, taking Emmett and Billy off in a very different direction.

Towles is a very clever man and I love his writing at a sentence/paragraph level. He creates fascinating characters. You can't trust him to give you a straightforward plot though, and from a really great opening couple of chapters, there's a feeling of uncertainty that maybe he can't be trusted to give everyone a happy ending. I read this as part of a group and there's certainly plenty to discuss, I feel like I'll be thinking about it for a long time as I reflect on the themes (the main one for me being freedom - what it means to different people and what the characters do to try to achieve it) and try to understand more of Towles clever references. You know when you read a novel and think if you started all over again you'd pick up on even more on a second reading? That. I thought it was excellent...but it wasn't what I expected.

32. The Forever Witness: How DNA and Genealogy Solved A Cold Case Double Murder by Edward Humes
There's two threads to this narrative non-fiction title. First we meet young couple Tanya Van Cuylenborg and Jay Cook, residents of Vancouver Island who travelled to Seattle in November 1987, went missing and were sadly later found dead. Then we are introduced to the developments in the use of DNA that became possible decades later, as firms started to use DNA samples to produce images of suspect's appearance and many millions of people across America started to take their own DNA samples and submit them to companies for testing to find out more about their personal family history. Could, and should, DNA records submitted by members of the public be searched as part of police cold case enquiries? And how might genetic genealogy, building and researching family trees using DNA, be used by investigators desperate to solve the mystery of Tanya and Jay's deaths?
I didn't always absorb every detail of this (busy brain and audiobook listening don't always combine well) but it was an interesting introduction to the true crime genre and I feel slightly more informed about the modern possibilities in the use of DNA. In an epilogue, the author touches on the many ways that DNA can be used without an individual's knowledge, and suggests that solving cold case crimes may be one of the last of our worries as technology advances in an area that perhaps isn't regulated as closely as it could be.

On a very different note, Happy Place by Emily Henry is up next.

28. Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith
    Vietnamese-American Winnie disappears in Saigon and then the book moves around in time, showing events from Winnie's time in Saigon and other seemingly unconnected things, some from further back in the past.
    It's a horror story that draws on Vietnam's folklore and colonial past. I enjoyed reading it, and I like Winnie, who has never fit in anywhere or succeeded in anything and is doing a very poor job of teaching English, but by the end of the book I didn't feel like I fully understood everything that happened. I don't know if I missed something somewhere. Still a very good read though.

29. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and the Story of a Return by Marjane Satrapi trans. Anjali Singh, Mattias Ripa and Blake Ferris
    A memoir in graphic novel form, it tells of Satrapi's childhood in Iran, living through the cultural revolution and war, her teenage years in Austria where she was seen as a "third worlder" and her return to Iran at 18 and attempt to make a life there.
    It's an easy to read format but the subject matter is often difficult with a lot of suffering and loss. It's not without humour though, and it really brings Iran's recent history to life. I very much recommend it.

30. The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse
    An English couple who are so boring I've forgotten their names already and can't be bothered to look them up arrive at a hotel in the Swiss Alps to celebrate the woman's brother's engagement. They're trapped in by an avalanche and dead bodies turn up, so the woman who is a police detective on a career break after various traumas has to investigate. I didn't guess whodunnit but the reveal was so ridiculously convoluted and out of nowhere that it was just as boring as the rest of the book.

31. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
    Roy and Celestial are a happily married couple until Roy is convicted of a crime he didn't commit. Roy's imprisonment, legal battle and the stress of being apart put a strain on their marriage
    We see three different viewpoints, Roy, Celestial and Celestial's childhood friend, Andre, and they they all come across brilliantly as distinct personalities who you sympathise with. It's the story of a marriage, but also a very subtle story of lives devastated by racism in the US justice system. A brilliantly written and completely absorbing book.

32. One of Us is Lying by Karen M McManus
    The school gossip king dies in detention and the four remaining attendees are the main suspects in the subsequent murder investigation. Does one of them have a secret they would kill to protect?
    Enjoyable YA crime thriller. Maybe a little implausible but a fun, easy read.

@ABookWyrm

Me and @Stokey discussed Build earlier this year, it's very weird but there are lots of little strands that really have to be paid attention to for the whole thing to pull together it's a real challenge that way

49. When Will There Be Good News by Kate Atkinson Very late to the party on the Jackson Brodie series. I liked this (the 3rd in the series) the best so far, largely because Brodie didn't feature as much, & I really enjoyed Reggie & Joanna's stories.

I’ve spent the whole day feeling sick as I was convinced I’d binned nearly £200 by mistake. I then go to put The Grapes of Wrath away that I couldn’t get into and out falls a pile of twenties. I’m blaming Steinbeck instead of my sleep deprived meno brain. FFS!

@TattiePants I read that in horror and hilarity. What a book to have all that money in!

Oh no @TattiePants that's just the sort of thing I do.

Yes I really liked Build @ABookWyrm @EineReiseDurchDieZeit it's not perfect but it's so original with a great atmosphere. I read it in Vietnam too which added to the bonkersness.
Also love Persepolis, am trying to persuade 13 yr old to read it.

Do you think I have some questions for you would be good for a teen or a bit old?

I had an unexpected day off today and read The Storied Life of A.J.Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin, having enjoyed Tomorrowx3 earlier this year. It's about a bookseller who's down on his luck and meets a toddler who basically helps him recover his mojo. There's a short story and description at the start of each chapter which has definitely motivated me to read more short stories - I'd only read two of the ones mentioned. It's a book about books for book lovers. The story is a bit cheesy but I really enjoyed submersing myself in it for a day. This and The Sentence have really made me want to own a bookshop. Maybe I need to read Death of a Bookseller as an antidote.