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?

109. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

Finally bit the bullet, much reviewed so I will just say I absolutely ate it and it's very well done. Allusions to the original Dickens are subtle and not intrusive. I got excited at spotting certain characters. I much preferred the first half, but this is one of the best novels I've read this year and in my time on the thread - a definite bold.

Recommended : Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance for anyone who would like a similar tale as a memoir.

I dug up my review of The Bone Clocks from 2014:

49. The Bone Clocks - David Mitchell

I liked it and was definitely gripped by it, but I am not in awe of this book like I was of Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. Yet, there are many similarities between these two books, to the point that this one feels like an imitation of Cloud Atlas:

• 6 stories
• ... all of which are first-person accounts
• ... spanning decades
• ... starting in the past (1984) and extending far in the future (2043)
• ... and each story ending abruptly rather than winding down to a conclusion, as if they were cut prematurely.

The themes are similar, too:

• Man's selfishness & cruelty, especially towards each other
• The yearning for safeguarding our knowledge/self/experiences for posterity
• Growing old
• Dystopian future

Cloud Atlas was original, gripping, and well... perfect. First halves of the stories marched towards an inevitable conclusion, with the dystopian and post-apocalyptic two feeling incredibly real. Then came the second halves, and the reader is locked into the epic ensemble, with no escape from the author's logic as shown over and over in a variety of ways across continents and centuries. People are cruel and exploitive, we kill and enslave when we can; we have not changed, will never change, and this will be our downfall. Our technology will disappear in a single generation, just like our experiences and memories do as we grow old and die. It is a powerful blow to the gut, made all the more painful because of the hopeful note it ends with (1st story, so 1850s... but the reader already knows how the human story will end sad because the last story was laid out in full in the middle of the book).

A similar theme plays out in The Bone Clocks in a similar format, but in a less effective way imho and for it I blame its fantastical/supernatural subplot of warring immortals. I'm not quite sure why the author has felt the need for this subplot, especially since it takes up almost 25% of the book and imho doesn't add much to it, while the other 5 narratives take up between 14%-17%.

Pepe - re "I leave the thread for a couple of days and come back and another fight has broken out over Cloud Atlas. It would be that or Never Let Me Go."

Or Station 11

I think I need to reread Cloud Atlas - I liked it but didn't love it, and have felt the same with most of his others. Except Utopia Avenue which was a bit of name-dropping rubbish and drew heavily on the JKR school of accents. And had a silly immortals bit in the middle.
I think I got a bit bored by the Jacob De Zoet one too, but don't remember that too well either.

Just finished The Lying Game by Ruth Ware. It was ok but made me realize why I've generally given up reading these sorts of books. They always depend on people not having an actual conversation and talking to each other, as that would just clear the story up in minutes. Also unconvinced by the repercussions the main character thought would happen due to her actions.

Found Cote online

At the risk of interrupting the bun fight, in which I have no skin as I don’t ever plan of reading David Mitchell at all, my mid year list.

Hound above is lovely, and I am also a non pet person. The Hound of the Baskerville is in my opinion the best Holmes story.

Top 5 so far
Bloody Boring Butler Ishiguro
My Cousin Rachel du Maurier
Bonjour Tristesse Francoise Sagan
Serenade for Nadia Livaneli
Bella Figura Mohammadi (it is gosh really, but I’ve been daydreaming about how I can go and live in Italy since reading it)

@StColumbofNavron I see Kamin Mohammadi has also written a family memoir about Iran, which has gone on my Kindle wishlist. More interested in that than the Italian one, just in terms of subject matter.

At some point we need a full debate on the Bun Fight Books and then a vote 😁

I don’t think I’ve read any of the bunfight books, with the exception of the bloody boring butler.

It’s so restful!

Very nice to see the Bloody Boring Butler again. If I have mellowed a bit by the time I hit 60, I'm going to re-read it. I will probably love it and have to come back and eat my hat.

I’ve only read Station Eleven of the BB. I enjoyed it.

Barack has graced us with his reading list. I might well read the Lehane

I also meant to say re Hemingway, I think For Whom The Bell Tolls is far better than A Farewell to Arms. I also read a book about his third wife Martha Gelhorn that was quite good but I can't remember what it was called.

Of Barack's list I've got The Wager on my wishlist, maybe also Birnam Wood, but will wait for them to be on a deal. Will have to look into the others.

I’m generally a David Mitchell fan with Bone Clocks the standout for me; Jacob de Zoet was a bit odd but makes more sense in the light of Bone Clocks. Haven’t been troubled by the B.B.Butler or Never Let Me Go, but Station Eleven was bilge.

38 The Portable Door - Tom Holt
When no-hoper Paul starts a new job with J.W.Wells, he soon learns that despite the tedious paperwork, it’s no ordinary office: one of the bosses looks oddly like a goblin, something comes out at night which trashes the place and leaves claw marks on the doors… and the sword in the stone has turned up in his bedsit flat. Very entertaining comic fantasy that kept me sane on a long haul flight, but the depiction of office life and sexual politics were jarringly outdated (published 2004, but I started work a year after that, and it’s not a world I recognised). Let’s just say that goblins might have come unstuck in the #MeToo era.

39 Mortals Monarchs - Suzie Edge
Exploration of the causes of death for each monarch from William the Conqueror to George VI, written by medical doctor Suzie Edge. Informative but maybe a little too gleeful at times; also more dysentery than I was expecting in the early stages.

@MaudOfTheMarches I totally agree re: subject matter. I’m in a rather frivolous reading space right now and it fit.

Scrabbling about for my next fix post DC terrible book hangover, no to everything!

@StColumbofNavron I totally get that, both have a place. I've spent months completely unable to deal with anything upsetting or even vaguely real-world, so I'm just getting back to more serious stuff.

I actually have a completed book to post about, albeit an audiobook and pretty lightweight!

Very long drive for work on Wednesday evening meant I finished Ask a Historian - Greg Jenner - I enjoyed this on the whole, though dead definitely more interested in some questions than others and it may have been better as a physical book to dip in and out of. Also because as much as I enjoy Greg’s podcasts usually I started to find his narrating style quite grating by the end.

Then on the even longer drive home in traffic I got about half way through the audiobook of Moon Tiger which I am loving, I’ve had it for ages and not fancied starting it for some reason but that was silly, it’s great.

About half way through Bodies of Light - Sarah Moss on Kindle but had to take a break I was finding it quite upsetting.

49 These Darkening Days by Benjamin Myers
I know I said I would leave this second crime book set in deepest, darkest Yorkshire for a while but it was 99p and I was in the mood for a bit of noir.
This is a more ‘enjoyable’ read than the first one, which isn’t a particularly high bar to set. It plays with the conventions of crime fiction again. Last time, you knew Whodunnit straight away. This time, you begin to realise that maybe Nobodydunnit quite early on and certainly not the character set up as the town scapegoat. With Tony ‘Trembles’ Garner, Myers demonstrates again his talent for giving unsympathetic people an explanatory backstory. Certainly where I grew up there were outsiders to the community only a misstep or misunderstanding away from outright hatred from other local men.
I love the reluctant duo of DI Brindle, himself an outsider in his own rigid, pedantic way, and Mace, the not-very-recovering journalist exiled to a small local paper.
As always, folk horror, an almost sentient landscape and the brutality of men if their behaviour is left unchecked loom large throughout the book. The latter leads to a schadenfreude moment later in the book involving an unpleasant character - it’s not nice, it’s not proportionate but meh, they deserve it.
I don’t think Myers has any plans to extend the series, but it would be great if he did.

After a crazy last week of term I've caught up on the thread.

My top books so far

1. The Cat who Saved Books - Sosuke Natsukawa
2. The Lord of the Rings trilogy -JRR Tolkein

Not as fast paced as i was last year so have read 15 books hoping for a least 5-6 more in the holidays.

Never read a David Mitchell book but thinking I should. Have got confused as to which book boring butler is from? Never read Station Eleven but absolutely love how we can have such different opinions about books and share them without judgement (ok some judgement😉)

@AliasGrape I'm currently reading Ask a Historian have been using it as my commuting book and it works well for dipping in and out of. I enjoyed Dead Famous but found referring to the same celebrities for each topic a bit haphazard as couldn't form a true idea of what they were like.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit know what you mean. Post DC I'm switching between the Oppenheimer biog and Jill Enjoys Her Ponies. Neither really doing it for me tbh.

@eitak22 Butler book is Remains of the Day which I've never read but I'm not in any hurry to tbh following the debates here! Like you, I feel I should be reading David Mitchell. What is a good one to start with, Mitchell aficionados?

Bloody Boring Butler is Remains of the Day. Love it and NLMG. Did not love The Unconsoled but can annoyingly remember it much more clearly than the others. Probably because I found it so discombobulating.

I have managed to miss the Cloud Atlas debates previously but I am glad to know that I'm not the only one who dislikes it.

I am going to Norway soon and want to read a book themed to my holiday. I have read The Mercies and that other recent witch one set in Norway (so good I forgot its name!). Anyone got any other suggestions? Jo Nesbo springs to mind, obviously ,but I've never read one of his.