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'm trying to encourage my thirteen year old DD to read more. More books and less screen time is the plan.

You're welcome!

Eleanor and Park
Looking For Alaska
The Knife Of Never Letting Go

Thank you @EineReiseDurchDieZeit 💖

Definitely Eleanor and Park - it's lovely.

I will look these up. One book she loved was Wonder about* *the boy with the disfigurement. And some Harry Potter.

I consider it a public service to intermittently scream ELEANOR AND PARK at the thread I've done it a few times

Still no sign of that sequel

I'll read it myself 😄

I wish my DC (teens) spent more time reading 😞

My 13 year old DD is quite enjoying the Bandit Queens from the women's prize Longlist at the moment. I also think she may like Pod but unsure about the dolphin rape

She liked Looking for Alaska and The Knife of Never Letting Go too Eine so will recommend Eleanor and Park to her. Sadly she's got a couple of Colleen Hoover's lined up which I'm trying to veer her c away from.

Time has moved on a lot from my teens years I'm racking my brain

Back Home by Michelle Magorian and The Giver by Lois Lowry

Will not have dated

Sadik would some Terry Pratchett fit the bill? The witches books and the guards ones are my favourite. Can't remember if you like him or not so apologies if this is a rubbish recommendation!

Think I might have worked out why people are getting different kindle deals emails. I think the first part of 'top deals fo you' is based on your buying/reading patterns, and then the 'today's deals for you' part is the same for everyone.

I then also have a 'featured deals for you' section and I've no bloody idea where that's drawn from. Calm down kindle!

Anyway, could be wrong but I think that's what's happening.

that sounds about right. The ‘featured deals’ seems to hardly change for me and is always authors like Colleen Hoover and Jeffery Archer.

I have made my way to the new thread at last! Sorry to have missed the orc/coffee shop chat. I'm kind of fascinated.

I think I was reading a lot of wildly inappropriate chick lit at 13, so nothing I'd recommend to anyone's daughter today. I think I appreciate YA more as an adult than I ever did as a teenager, probably because it feels nostalgic and wistful now.

41. Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson. Covers very similar ground to his first novel, which @BaruFisher I think you reviewed right at the end of the last thread. Both are about young British-Ghanaians in South London, generally falling in love and playing music. This book is a bit wider in scope, looking at the main character's parents as well, his relationship with his family, and part of it takes place in Ghana rather than Peckham.

There isn't much in the way of plot but like his previous book, this just carried me along. His writing is so rich and lyrical, and I think he really captures being young in London in the summer. I found this a joy to read.

Oh @FuzzyCaoraDhubh I feel a reread coming on. I don’t really re-read anything other than Jane Austen, Wuthering Heights and accidentally some Tolstoy because of readalongs, but it’s just such a feel-good romp and I love Dona and her Frenchman. It’s a real comfort read.

I think I was inhaling the Flowers in the Attic series at 13.

They're a bit crap, but might she like the Twilight series or The Hunger Games.

I recently quite enjoyed Leigh Bardugo's Shadow and Bone* series.

A series I really rate is the one beginning Across the Nightingale Floor by Liana Hearn.

Yes Flowers In The Attic was definitely THE teen book. I'm not sure my Mum was that happy though

It is, StColomb. Dona and her Frenchman were made for each other. Two peas in a pod, two halves of a clam...etc. Yes, a comfort read. I'll finish it off but skip through it again before I put it away.

My word I'm in a racist as all get out in the Steinbeck. Horrendous what was acceptable

Missing the word section

@noodlezoodle I used to enjoy both Pratchett & Douglas Adams, but for some reason I can't read either now, something about the style.

I've persevered with the second Jackson Brodie book though & have got into it & enjoying it, which is good. Any other suggestions welcomed though 🙂

My dd used to be a big John Green fan in her early teens, she's still got friends she made through online fan groups back then. Just thinking of other recs for that age group, The Hate You Give is excellent though obviously very popular so she has maybe read it.

Thanks for the new thread SouthEast.

The Promise by Damon Galgut I mean, it’s not bad, it won the Booker Prize, but if I hadn’t had a hand in it being chosen for book group I’d have DNFd. The titular promise is made in the 1980s by a white South African mother on her deathbed to the black maid who has nursed her: that she will have ownership of the house she lives in. The mother’s funeral is the first we attend; thereafter we pop back every 10 years to attend another. In each of the 4 sections we pass from one person’s perspective to another, but this isn’t always handled smoothly so I kept having to double-take to work out who I was with, and the inner lives never took off in a way that made me really understand the characters. There’s rather too much bodily function involved, the fact that people fart in their sleep doesn’t to me to be capable of bearing too much metaphorical weight. Yes, the book conjures its setting and context skilfully, but it’s no Milkman. Found myself wishing it had been written in Afrikaans so it wouldn’t have been eligible for the prize as I’d rather have read something else.

I also was reading the Flowers in the Attic series as a young teen, as well as Lace and other bonkbusters. As I remind myself when the DDs want to read Colleen Hoover. I think trashy novels are a good way into adult books for teens.

For a 13yo I'd recommend the Heartstopper books (actually all the Alice Oseman books) with both my DDs (now 14&15) adored. Other hits include Madeline Miller, Percy Jackson Maze Runner, When we were Villians, They Both Die in the End. They've not read any Rainbow Rowell yet but say they have friends who like them (I've told them I love Eleanor and Park). DD1 loved The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Yellow Wallpaper but refuses to read anything I recommend unless her friends also recommend it, she wants to read The Secret History this year.

That’s a possible explanation @noodlezoodle thanks. I just go to the 'Kindle Daily Deal' page and assumed that’s what everyone's looking at. Your differing kindle recs for that day must have been tailored to you, then, @TattiePants? EG today, as well as the main deals, I’ve got all the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey-Maturin novels on offer for 99p…. (you can see I'm still quite disturbed by all this!)