50 Books Challenge 2023 Part Seven

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the seventh 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, the fifth one here, and the sixth one here

😂

16.. Upgrade by Blake Crouch

Whoa - this was fantastic!

Blake Crouch's new book is a gripping near-future tale about the possibilities and pitfalls of gene editing. It's gripping, fast-paced, and full of intriguing ideas about our future as a species. My kind of beach read !

Recommended. Don't miss it at 99p on Kindle Deals right now.

@TattiePants I also loved Pied Piper and have On the Beach on my TBR pile.

@CoteDAzur I bought that in the 99p deals this morning. I've really liked some of his other books but absolutely hated Snowbound so glad to hear this one was good.

49.The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

I loved the psychology of this, both in Eleanor's interior life and in the way that it evoked fear and made the house come alive.

Now I've read this article the real horror behind The Haunting of Hill HouseThe Guardianwww.theguardian.com › books › oct › pure-fea...

I think I'll need to read it again.

Influenced by enthusiasm here I had a bit of a binge on WOB including The Dark Half and The House of Grief and The Birthday Party and a few others so I won't be short of holiday reading.

Currently reading Pineapple Street

I have a read a couple of the Booker Long List, Old God's Time which I liked but didn't make it bold for me but I adored The Bee Sting which is easily my book of the year and I don't regret one bit buying it in hardback because I will definitely read it again. It had everything for me.

Booker

Read : A Spell Of Good Things

Own : House Of Doors Old Gods Time

Heard Of : This Other Eden

Kind of liking the amount of randoms but haven't read the full long list in years.

Thank you for linking the list Stokey. I hadn't seen it and I'm a sucker for a prize list. I've managed to get 4 immediately from the library and have an advance hold on 5 others. Looks like I've managed to get in early for them.

I enjoyed A Spell of Good Things and Old God's Time so I hope the rest of the list is of similar quality. Interested to see some of the comments above though.

I've been through the deals in detail now and they're disappointing. The only book on my wish list is First Lady: The Life and Wars of Clementine Churchill which I've bought. At least it's a cheap month for me!

41. The Case of the Wandering Scholar - Kate Saunders

Second of the three Laetitia Rodd mysteries, about a Victorian clergyman's widow who investigates crimes with the aid of her ebullient barrister brother and Inspector Blackbeard of Scotland Yard. I have loved these books and I'm really sad there will be no more. (Kate Saunders died earlier this year.) In this instalment Laetitia tries to find a student who ran away from his Oxford college to live in the woods, only to find herself investigating a double murder. A lovely, gentle read, despite the body count and the visits to Newgate Prison.

Sigh - my numbering is all over the shop - that was no. 40.

Great book. Yet to rinse the deals they will probably display as Audible as default- I hate this and can't turn it off I've even complained to no avail

Interesting article on what its like to judge the booker

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/14/books/how-to-judge-booker-prize-val-mcdermid.html

@TattiePants Requiem for a Wren was my first Shute and I was impressed at how well he wrote about the female lead character. I want to read On the Beach too. I'm not scared! (Well, only a little).

Harking back a few pages, I remembered I had The Secret Rooms on my Kindle due to previous discussions on here, so I'll bump it up the tbr.

I got Snap Belinda Bauer and the Gabrielle Zevin that isn't Tomorrow

The Storied Life

Maybe one of these will help the slump

Thanks. I've just got Storied Life too. I haven't read Tomorrow yet, but it's on my list.

I'm reading Tomorrow and enjoying it so far. Also quite liked Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin - she is very easy reading.

I’ve DNFed The Favour by Nicci French. Why oh why oh why is the main character so ridiculously gullible. And wetter than a wet thing that’s been for a swim then stood in a downpour. Utter bilge.

If DNF also means “guessed whodunnit in the first 30 pages so skipped to end to be proved correct” then I DNFed The Chemistry Of Death by Simon Beckett. Doctor with a Sad Past takes on a temp GP job in a small village. Bodies rot in the woods, which is handy, as he has a Surprise Background as a forensic anthropologist who studied at the Body Farm in Tennessee. There’s maggots, there’s a lurve interest……zzzzzz…..sorry, dropped off for a moment there. Hope the TV series is better. It surely couldn’t be worse and at least I can annoy DH by saying I know who did the murders but refuse to tell him.

I am disconsolately riffling through my TBR pile now.

Fallen a bit behind with this thread, going to post a load of reviews and then try to catch up and see what everyone's been reading.

38. The Half Life of Valery K by Natasha Pulley
    In the 1960s Valery is pulled out of a Siberian gulag to work on a large scale radiation experiment but he soon realises there's more to it than he's been told.
    It's sort of a thriller but written in a whimsical tone that makes light of a dark subject. It's easy to read, and it's not bad, but feels a bit twee.

39. Red Dust Road by Jackie Kay
    Kay, who is half Scottish, half Nigerian was adopted by a white Scottish couple as a baby and this is a memoir of connecting with her biological relatives as an adult.
    The book starts with Kay meeting her biological father in Nigeria, which probably doesn't go as she expected, and then moves around in time showing her meetings with her birth mother, other scenes from Kay's life and some background on her adoptive parents. It's very poignant, and very sad in places, but there are some moments of absolute joy. Wonderfully written so you live every moment with her.

40. Jigs and Reels by Joanne Harris
    A collection of short stories on a variety of themes. A coven of witches meet up for a school reunion, a statistics obsessed man wins the lottery, a woman who frequents a supermarket cafe befriends a waitress.
    All pleasant to read but nothing memorable.

41. The Stranding by Kate Sawyer
    As apocalypse looms two strangers, Ruth and Nik shelter in the body of a beached whale in New Zealand. The book then alternates between Before and After. We see Ruth's unsatisfactory life in London with her controlling boyfriend, and Ruth and Nik having to start a new life of survival together.
    I enjoyed reading this, although Ruth is a little irritating and the After timeline moves very quickly. It flows well and isn't as bleak as you'd expect from a post-apocalyptic future.

42. A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende
    Roser and Victor flee Spain at the end of the civil war and end up in Chile. Their lives cross devastatingly with the wealthy Solar family, and real historical figures Pablo Neruda and Salvador Allende make appearances.
    I liked the first section, set in Spain and France best, I felt much more involved in the story than in the part set in Chile where things mostly move very quickly so it feels like it's just skimming the surface of the story.

43. Nation by Terry Pratchett
    In a world a bit like our own thirteen year old Mau returns to his island home to discover that everyone has been killed by a tsunami. When a shipwrecked girl and other survivors from nearby islands begin to arrive a new community is slowly formed but threats to this new nation also arrive.
    A story of friendship, belonging, colonialism, science, religion and more told with humour. A good YA novel.

44. On the Natural History of Destruction by WG Sebald trans. Anthea Bell
    Essays and lectures on Germany's lack of examination of its destruction during and after World War 2. I think more knowledge of German history and literature than I have is probably needed to appreciate this book fully, but still interesting and thought-provoking.

45. The Whispers by Heidi Perks
    Grace moves back to her hometown hoping to reconnect with her childhood best friend, Anna, but Anna is now part of a close clique of school mums. When Anna goes missing only Grace seems to be concerned.
    A story of toxic friendship and secrets, but a fairly standard psychological thriller. I wasn't keen on the collective conscious of the school gate mums sections, they felt like gimmicky filler. Okay over all.

46. The Keepers of Metsan Valo by Wendy Webb
    After the death of Anni's grandmother she and her small extended family gather at her island home. Spooky stuff ensues for no particular reason. A bit of a pointless story.

47. Tomorrow by Chris Beckett
    The narrator has moved to a remote cabin to write a novel in an unnamed country that seems sort of South American but also not quite of the real world and is kidnapped by guerilla fighters and held captive.
    The novel jumps around in time, which I found confusing at first, but once I got into it gives the story a dream like quality. I really enjoyed this, though I know that at times it treads a fine line between self-indulgent, psuedo-philosophical rambling and actual meaning and plot.

Storied is glorious so far.

Oooo

Excellent, I’ve bought it too.

I’ve just read the first of the six stories in Goodbye to Berlin and loving it so far.

47 The Full English - Stuart Maconie

I don’t think I’ll ever not enjoy a book by Maconie, who’s erudite and entertaining whatever the subject matter. But I don’t think this is one of his best - a fairly surface-level jaunt around some English towns and cities in the footsteps of JB Priestley (and Beryl Bainbridge, somewhat unfairly dismissed by SM here). Unlike some of his other books I wasn’t really sure what the point of it was.

Palace Rogue by William Coles

God, this was awful. It’s very loosely based on the true story of a tabloid reporter who got a job as a Buckingham Palace footman. Apparently most of the incidents revealed in the novel are true, just reworked into different time periods. A second story featuring a housemaid adds some contrast. However the writing is awful and even though we’re told lots of the incidents are true, most of it just sounds like completely made up bilge, particularly all the conversations with The Queen and the entire storyline featuring the maid. Definitely one to avoid.

41 The Ghost Woods - C J Cooke Ooh this was creepy! Gothic novel meets nature horror meets feminist commentary on the treatment of single mothers in the 60s (possibly a unique combination!). As I’ve come to expect from Cooke, there were plenty of flaws but not enough to stop me from reading the whole thing in one go (I’m going to be knackered all day…). Recommended to anyone willing to suspend disbelief.

Taking a break from (the wonderful) Demon Copperhead - as it deserves a thorough read - and a third of the way through The Southern Book Club's guide to slaying vampires by Grady Hendrix.
This was my DD's recommendation for Summer reading, she likes her fantasy/ sci- fi, and it's rather good.
Great descriptions of the American South near Charleston with live oaks, old plantation houses, crab cook outs and swimming off the dock etc etc but into this paradise comes absolute horror (albeit written in quite a comic way).
Reminds me of the book - The Witches of Eastwick - John Updike.

I read it in June and really enjoyed it Remus. Slightly cheesy but did make me want to open a bookshop!

Thanks for linking the Booker article @BadSpellaSpellaSpella it's really interesting.

I just read another crime M W Craven book Black Summer. I didn't like this as much as his first one - it has a very long geeky part at the start investigating how a blood test could be faked that I found quite dull, but it picked up about a third of the way in.

Have downloaded a few of the £5-6 Booker books to make a start but having read a bit more about each book, there are not many that are appealing to me. Also picked up Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie which is £1.99 - I loved Home Fire.