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?

There's I Who Have Never Known Men but that's short and the ending dissatisfying

Not so much apocalypse as dystopia but look up The Wall by John Lanchester, Genus by Jonathan Trigell or The End Specialist by Drew Magary

Thanks, both.

I was really disappointed with I Who Have Never Known Men iirc. I really enjoyed The Wall.

Will get samples of the others, which I haven't come across.

More pre- than post-apocalypse, but I really likedThe Last Policeman, by Ben H Winters.

Tell me I'm an awkward pain in the arse, but two of the 4 samples I've just got are in the present tense. I just can't cope with it.

Hard to please.

Has anyone read Jon McGregor's Lean Fall Stand?
Saw it in Waterstones and was intrigued.

I read and enjoyed this. My review was:

1. Lean, Fall, Stand by Jon McGregor

For decades Robert has spent much of each year providing tech support to a research organisation in Antarctica, seemingly enjoying the splendid isolation. A freak storm hits. Robert is rescued but has had a stroke, the most serious consequence of which is aphasia. The rest of the book follows Robert's painstaking efforts to rehabilitate.

The minutiae of the daily grind for both Robert and his partner Anna are well detailed, and McGregor manages to make this captivating. I would however have liked to have had access to more of Robert's feelings and thoughts about his struggles to adapt. Still a good read though.

Thank you @TheTurn0fTheScrew

I haven't read it myself, Remus, by my PIL were both telling me enthusiastically about Robert Harris's The Second Sleep, which is set 800 years in the future after a return to "the new dark ages".

@cassandre I'd forgotten about Maud Ellmann, but I think we must have been around Cambridge at about the same time! I was there in the second half of the 90s...

47. Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie
Much read and reviewed here. I really liked it, despite having absolutely no prior familiarity with Sophocles' Antigone. Now that I've done my Wikipedia research, I can see the links, but I think it stands up well even if you don't know about the retelling aspect.

48. The Locked Room by Elly Griffiths
In which Ruth and Nelson shack up during lockdown. I'm getting really tired of their relationship now (I really can't see the appeal of Nelson at all!) and I'm only really sticking with this series because the next book is the last. The mysteries and archaeology that made the earlier books so interesting are almost entirely absent from this book - and what mystery there is centres around a situation that manages to be both unengaging and unbelievable at the same time. Covid references have been shoehorned into the text every couple of chapters but Griffith's hasn't managed to evoke the pandemic atmosphere at all in my view. This is definitely one for the fans only, I'd say.

49. The Rising Tide by Ann Cleeves
More downbeat than usual, with an ending that caught me by surprise because I couldn't quite believe it was going to go the way that it did. I can't seem to stop reading these books even though I'm continually irritated by the numerous references to Vera's "bulk", how she's worried about sitting in a chair in case she breaks it, how other people perceive her as a fat bag lady, etc. There's nothing in the text to suggest that she's anything other than just overweight - and certainly not debilitatingly vast - so I think all of the references to aching knees and straining trousers just reflect Cleeves' prejudices towards fat people (says a grumpy overweight person who can still walk 5 miles or go for a run). I'm not blind to the health risks of being overweight, and I'm definitely not what you might call "fat positive", but the comments about Vera's size are just getting ridiculous now. And that's before you even start on the portrayal of poor Sal...

On a more positive note, I was tickled by the fact that Mick Herron's Slow Horses is revealed to be a favourite of Vera and Holly - I hadn't previously imagined either of them reading!

50. The Cliff House by Chris Brookmyre
Thanks to whichever 50 booker it was who pointed out that it was a Kindle deal recently! In other, less skilled hands, this story of a hen party on a remote island that goes wrong would have been hackneyed and silly. Luckily, Brookmyre is a master of the comedy horror genre and he plays so deftly with the cliches that you're just swept along by the story without worrying about its essential preposterousness. I enjoyed this hugely and am really pleased that it is my 50th book of the year!

Incidentally, when did he change from "Christopher" to "Chris"? All my old paperbacks have Christopher Brookmyre on them, and it seems like an odd move for such an established writer when it doesn't seem to make much difference.

@mackerella

I don't know the answer per se but you've put me in mind of both JKR and the actress Thandiwe Newton both of whom were advised to alter their names, perhaps he had always privately preferred Chris?

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit a bit of googling suggests it was around 10 years ago, when he wrote the first Jasmine Sharp book. (I really enjoyed those, I wish he would write more!) Good point about other people suggesting the name change, though that's more usually imposed on women (whose names are "too ethnic" or "too obviously female").

Thanks @mackerella I’ll check it out. I really enjoyed his Fatherland but have been underwhelmed by the others of his that I’ve read. This one sounds pretty good though.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie Patrick Ness’ Chaos Walking trilogy?

Read it! Loved the 1st, 2nd okay, 3rd terrible.

You need Cloud Atlas! It is definitely not silly, moves from historical > dystopian > post-apocalyptic, and you will weep for humankind in the end as our flaws and inevitable doom become clear and locked in place through the interweaving stories across six different timelines.

For Agatha Christie fans there’s several in the kindle daily deal today.

Guilty. I hope it helps long term. Mine is an ongoing battle, but small victories along the way. I'd also recommend her How to Manage You Home Without Losing Your Mind.

Interesting to see the top 5s and wondering how many will remain the same to the end of the year. I'm being cheeky with mine and taking liberties. I've just hit 150 so I'm claiming special dispensation.

Fiction
Shy - Max Porter
Trespasses - Louise Kennedy
Maame - Jessica George
Yellowface - RF Kuang
Fire Rush - Jacqueline Crooks
Black Butterflies - Priscilla Morris

Non-fiction
Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues - Jonathan Kennedy
Generations: The Real Differences between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future
Jean M. Twenge
Diary of an Apprentice Astronaut - Samantha Cristoforetti

I've just gone back to Story graph and I'm enjoying the various charts. I think it's miles better than Goodreads, but force of habit and an easier interface stop me leaving it.

Just downloaded Tears of Amber which I’d never heard of but gets very good reviews. It’s 99p today but then spotted it’s free with Prime. Set during WWII, two families are trying to escape East Prussia as the Soviet army advances.

I hated Cloud Atlas and that stupid bloody birthmark. It completely copied the structure of If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino which is vastly superior and shorter. And had no birthmark.

I've never read another David Mitchell because I was so pissed off at Cloud Atlas despite really enjoying Ghostwritten.

I didn't enjoy Cloud Atlas but I warmed to it after Bone Clocks because I understood it more. I have If On A Winters on TBR and I've false started a few times. I'm aiming to get it read this year.

36. Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid

For goodness sake she made me cry again. There's a lot of loss in her books and it gets to me so easily. General plot is men are shite, and they find new ways to let down the people in their lives. Too many characters for me. Lots of siblings who all come with a significant other and/or best friend and sometimes hangers on. My brain can't take it all in. Couldn't put it down though.

Looking forward to Wolves of Calla now I know it's a few people's favourite of the series!!

And I've got a few California specific books to read next as I going on a month long road trip in September. I can't wait and am considering if it's the right time for Ducks Newburyport or whatever it's called.

Woah, the Cloud Atlas hate made me dig up a thread I posted +10 years ago about all the themes and interesting stuff going on in this book.

You can of course hate any book but do take a look at that thread, if only to see why I loved it.

We had this debate when I posted a rave about Bone Clocks

Sorry that sound's snotty it was meant to have a accompanying it.

The birthmark is such a small part of Cloud Atlas that you could have totally ignored it and it would have changed nothing. It had zero bearing on plot development or its principal themes such as the cruelty of mankind and the inevitability of our species' fate. So it is odd that you had such strong feelings about a birthmark that you hated the whole book for it. It could have been an eye color or as by number of minor genetic pattern that reappears after centuries.

The book's structure wasn't a gimmick but a calculated ploy to make it so the fate of humankind would be revealed in the middle of the book and you would then go backwards to the end of the 1st story, to its hopeful, optimistic tone. Yet you, the reader, know it is all futile, that the efforts and optimism of a few good-hearted, enlightened individuals did not suffice to stop our cruel species' steady march towards annihilation.