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?

I’ve enjoyed quite a few things this year, but top 5 might be:

Pod - Laline Paul
Trespasses - Louise Kennedy
Woman, Eating - Claire Kohda
The Dangerous Kingdom of Love - Neil Blackmore
Riddley Walker - Russell Hoban

Making Notes! Sat here while IBH bores me to death before I can sleep!

47: London War Notes - Mollie Panter-Downes

After reading Mollie P-D's One Fine Day for the Rather Dated Book Club, I wanted to dig out her collection of non-fiction columns written for the New Yorker all the way through the 2nd world war - I bought a secondhand copy of them a while ago but I see Persephone now reprint them too.

Anyway, they were - a bit to my disappointment - slightly hard going: after the first few weeks of the war when the whole thing's treated as something of a surreal lark, it all gets serious quickly and becomes so dense with detail that you ideally need a proper history of the war to hand to check all the facts she’s including. I mistakenly thought it would be much more of a 'home front' piece of writing, and while there’s an element of that, it was very much written for an American audience to keep them up to speed on the progress of the war in Europe (and to help gently persuade them to join it, I suspect). If I hadn’t been bogged down with work and so so forth I’d probably have been more interested in this and not taken so very long to get through it.

Then, by contrast…

48: The Queen of Spades - Alexander Pushkin trans. Rosemary Edwards

Super-short even for a short story, but I’m including it anyway. Never read any Pushkin before and this is one of his most famous tales, about an army officer who never plays cards when his fellow-officers gamble…until he hears about an old countess who knows the secret of predicting the winning cards. His greed gets the better of him, and he sets about wooing the countess's young companion so he can get close to the old lady and find out the secret. I won’t reveal the outcome in case anyone else wants to try it, but this was a good, gripping, dramatic read, and easy to see why it's inspired several operas and films.

I'm having a really good reading year as well. There have been some weird and wonderful contenders, but my top 5 so far are:

The Hero of this Story, by Elizabeth McCracken.
Trespasses, by Louise Kennedy.
Signal Fires, by Dani Shapiro.
Romantic Comedy, by Curtis Sittenfeld.
Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give, by Ada Calhoun.

My recent crop:
23. Quietly Hostile, by Samantha Irby. Her latest book of essays. I didn't love every chapter of this, but the ones I did, I really did. Particular highlights were her essay about how to respond when people are saying awful things about what you like or have done, and "The Last Normal Day" which I found hilarious, despite lockdown being a very sore spot for me. Several others made me laugh out loud. Probably not a bold, but definitely worth the time.

24. Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give, by Ada Calhoun. In my top 5! Short, fabulous, and endlessly quotable book of essays about marriage. Highly recommended for anyone who is married, was married, or is getting married.

25. The Summer Tree, Guy Gavriel Kay. First of a high fantasy trilogy that I loved as a teenager. They haven't aged particularly well, but are still a classic of the genre. I can forgive the mannered style and some dubious plotlines just because they're so familiar to me, but I doubt I'd feel the same way if I was reading this for the first time as an adult.

26. Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom. Ursula Nordstrom was Director of the Department of Books for Boys and Girls at Harper from 1940 to 1973, during which time she published E.B. White, Maurice Sendak, Shel Silverstein and other leading lights of children's literature. As well as being a published author herself, she wrote fabulous letters to her authors, and this collection is a joy. If you're interested in publishing, classic children's literature, or just fabulous New York broads, this is worth a read.

I’ve had a slow reading year but had 4 5 star reads:

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig. Rice

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

Children of Paradise by Camilla Grudova

which feels like a good % as I’m only at 20.

My mid-year top 5 is:
Do Not Say We Have Nothing Madeleine Thien
Run Towards the Danger Sarah Polley
Lincoln in the Bardo George Saunders
Trespasses Louise Kennedy
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow Gabrielle Zevin

As usual I'm not reading books anywhere near when they're published, so my top 5 is:

Valley of the Dolls - Jacqueline Susann
The Plant Hunter - TL Mogford
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - Anne Brontë
War Doctor - David Nott
The Darkness Knows - Arnaldur Indridason

Apart from a dry spell in April/May I'm having quite a good reading year.

I think my top 5 so far is:

Just Kids by Patti Smith although this is a reread.
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Trespasses by Louise Kennedy
Good Pop, Bad Pop by Jarvis Cocker

45. The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho

Charles Ignatius Sancho was a real person but these are fictional diaries. He was black and born on a slave ship, orphaned and gifted to three white sisters for whom he was a curiosity. He wasn’t a servant or slave but neither was he part of the family. He was not educated by them but paraded at social occasions. Charles got lucky when the Duke of Montagu took an interest in him and started educating him. As an adult, Charles escaped from the three sisters but with no means to earn a living and initially had a tough time living rough and dodging “slave catchers”. Life improves, Charles falls in love and realises that whilst his early years were far from ideal, they were considerably better than those of many black people and he becomes a campaigner.

I wanted to love this but didn’t - I found some parts much better than others maybe because I found Charles quite annoying at times in his insular views. My favourite part was the epistolary section.

46. Damage - Felix Francis

Jeff works as an investigator for the British Horseracing Authority and is tasked with discovering who is wreaking havoc in British racing and holding the BHA to ransom. At the same time he has issues in his personal life and is tasked with a personal investigation. As ever, fast paced but not the best ending in terms of the identity of the character responsible for the havoc.

47. The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side - Agatha Christie

Miss Marple investigates a death. The local hall has been acquired by film star, Marina, who allows it to be used for a charity fundraising event. One of the charity members, Heather, dies of poison whilst talking to Marina. Was the poison really intended for Marina? I saw this at the theatre earlier in the year so was interested to read it to see how it had been changed for the stage adaptation. Whilst there were changes, fortunately the murderer remains the same. Not my favourite but not bad.

I hit a reading rut after No.46 and picked up and started loads of things but failed to get very far with any of them so turned to Agatha Christie to get me out of it. Living dangerously next as I know it’s a marmite book but have just started Labyrinth as it sounds like my sort of book - time will tell!

I think my top 5 so far in no particular order are:

Three Hours - Rosamund Lupton
Trespasses - Louise Kennedy
To Live - Yu Hua
Tokyo Express - Seicho Matsumoto
Rizzio - Denise Mina

83. The Ship Beneath the Ice, Mensun Bound
A day-by-day account of two expeditions to Antartica in 2019 and 2021, looking for Shackleton's Endeavour. I think a few people on here read it and found it quite dull, but for some reason it really drew me in. I have a certain wistful longing to be an expert on a scientific expedition (I am not in fact a scientist) so I rather enjoyed all the fretting over the equipment going wrong. Read it stretched out on the couch on a rainy Saturday afternoon, and it was just what I wanted.

84. Passing On, Penelope Lively
After their domineering mother dies, the two main characters find themselves yearning for the romantic possibilities they missed in their younger lives. While it wasn't a bleak read, it's rather bleak in retrospect- a study in how repression can steal life from you.

Good idea, Eine! A mid-year review :)
I'm reading at a slow but steady pace, having got up to book no. 36. Out of 36, I've marked 12 as very good reads. Here are my top 5 in the order I read them;

1. House of Glass: Hadley Freeman
2. Foster: * *Claire Keegan
3. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day: Winifred Watson
4. Trespasses: Louise Kennedy
5. One Fine Day: Mollie Panter-Downes * *

I don’t feel as though I'm having a vintage reading year (it’s very slow progress for me, apart from anything else), and like Maud I don’t really read current books much, so my top 5 has a very Backlisted feel (and three non-fictions)

Célestine: Voices from a French Village - Gillian Tindall
The Pocket: A Hidden History of Women's Lives, 1660-1900 - Barbara Burman & Ariane Fennetaux
Contested Will - James Shapiro
Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont - Elizabeth Taylor
One Fine Day - Mollie Panter-Downes

My top 5 so far this year are:

The Garden of Evening Mists, Tan Twan Eng
Queenie, Candice Carty-Williams
Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin
A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Stout but I could have easily included The Mitford Letters or Foster or Trespasses or Take my Hand too. A pretty good reading year for me so far.

Am loving the top 5 lists! Clearly I need to read One Fine Day as multiple lists include it. Here is mine:

1. The Beginning of Spring, Penelope Fitzgerald
2. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
3. Homesick, Jennifer Croft
4. Trespasses, Louise Kennedy
5. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin

I've had plenty of decent reads, but can only really pick out a top three that I'd recommend to others (several of my bolds are either last in a series or a bit niche): Demon Copperhead , The Last Days of New Paris , & Being Mortal

I don’t think I would have considered Woman, Eating based on the blurb alone but I’ve added it since it’s in two top 5 lists.

I expected nothing I just picked it up in the deals - it was just something very different

Hope you enjoy Qualityland and Sourdough, @RazorstormUnicorn and @Sadik! (I can't remember what it was about the former that my book group didn't like, except that one person - who is a fan of "proper" scifi - though that it wasn't "hard" enough, and another person didn't think the satire was very funny.)

I'm really enjoying all the top five lists (and have bumped Trespasses further up my TBR list since so many of you have included it)! If I'd done this last year, I think mine would have been almost entirely non-fiction, but I have really struggled to find such good non-fiction this year (and even much of the fiction hasn't been great). Hoping for a better second half of the year! Anyway, my top five so far is probably:

Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth by Wole Soyinka
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
The Eternal Audience of One by Remy Ngamije
Golden Hill by Francis Spufford
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Actually, looking back on GR, I see that the year so far has been better than I remembered, it's just the last couple of months that have been a bit crap. So I just need to be a bit more ambitious when picking books (and not just comfort-read endless middlebrow detective fiction books - see my next few forthcoming reviews )

@mackerella I have the exact same issue - I get so much more out of books that require some effort, but I have to remind myself to pick them over easier stuff.

(I also loved Sourdough when I read it a couple of years ago.)

Interesting to read everyone's stand out reads so far, here are mine:

Troubled Blood - Robert Galbraith
The Vanishing Half - Brit Bennett
Small Pleasures - Clare Chambers
The Island of Missing Trees - Elif Shafak
Taste - Stanley Tucci

I just finished reading The Vanishing Half yesterday. It sat on my bookshelf for nearly a year before I picked it up, but it's probably been the best thing I've read so far this year.

I'm very slow this year and reading chunky books so am only on book 13 at the moment (The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton).

Best book of the year so far was South Riding by Winifred Holtby.

After that there's quite a few good ones, I loved the last two books in the Neopolitan Quartet but also should highlight The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre and Heaven by Mieko Kawakami.

Hi Meg 👋😊 It's a weird year for me and I unfortunately have not had much time to read, but it's nice to pop back and read all your book reviews when I can.

I hope I haven't missed any Never Let Me Go or Station 11 bun fights

I found The Luminaries enjoyable and deeply satisfying although all its astrology stuff went way over my head. It's one of the few books written by women that I have loved in the last 10 years or so.