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

41. The Dinner Guest by B. P. Walter Domestic thriller. The story opens with Matthew Allerton-Jones sat at his dining table with a knife through his heart. He's surrounded by his husband Charlie, their son Titus and their new friend, Rachel. Rachel has called the police and confessed to the crime (these aren't spoilers, they're on the back of the book)

The story then flips back and forth covering the year leading up to the murder and the days afterwards. Basically, everyone has secrets, nothing is as it seems

This was well-written, kept me engaged and I finished it in two days (probably helped by sitting up for many hours at night cuddling a very poorly baby who could only sleep upright in someone's arms).

Few niggles: the age gap between Charlie and Matthew changes within two chapters from "barely a year" to "nearly three years". Also the tense changes sometimes within a paragraph which really frustrates me. And it does end on a bit of a cliff hanger which I don't really like but seems quite common in these sort of books

Glad to know you got sorted Remus! Quel horreur 😱

39. The Shadow of the Wind: Carlos Ruiz Zafón (translated by Lucia Graves).

Two Spanish friends of mine gave me this book as a gift before the summer holidays. They said it's very well known and thought I'd like it. I always worry when people say that in case it's awful!

Daniel Sempere is a ten year old boy living in Barcelona during the 1940s. His mother has died and he's missing her, so his father brings him to a labyrinthine bookshop ('The Cemetery of Forgotten books') which houses rare or banned Books, as a distraction and asks him to choose a book. He picks out a book that is the last remaining copy of 'The Shadow of the Wind' by Julian Carax. Soon afterwards he is pursued by a mysterious stranger who wants to get his hands on it and erase all traces of this man's writing and his identity.

This is a story within a story. Daniel becomes a teenager and his life begins to mirror Julian's in many respects. As he unravels Julian's story of forbidden love and ruined lives, he draws the attention of the vengeful Inspector Fumero on himself and on his friend, Fermín, who was persecuted by Fumero during the civil war.

I thought this was a good yarn. I liked the shifting perspectives and changes of narrator, although I had to pause sometimes and remember which character belonged to which timeline. The parallels between the two lines are a bit too neat and it's far-fetched in some respects recalling its description of gothic fiction. It's part thriller, part mystery, part political drama. I'm not sure if it's more than the sum of its parts. From reading the reviews, I wonder if it is over-hyped. However, I can go back to my friends and say I enjoyed it.

40. Je Voudrais Tant Revenir: Yves Simon.

I hadn't read anything in French for a while, so I found this on my bookshelf. I have a dim recollection of buying it while on holiday in France a few years ago. I really can't say what prompted me to buy it, perhaps it was the glossy front cover. It's a very odd book.

The narrator, whose name escapes me (if he has a name) lives by himself in a shoebox of a room in a residence in Paris overlooking a canal. He is a shy young man who writes biographies on commission and who lives in awe of his beautiful neighbour. He collects his nail clippings, parcels them up and deposits them in the canal. (I did say it is odd).

The father of his friend comes to spend the night with him. This friend died in a car accident years ago with the narrator as passenger in the car and the two have kept in touch. The old man, Karl, is a well-known author, who has one more book to write and wants the young man to complete it as he himself is dying and can't complete the task. What follows is an evening where Karl talks all about Karl; his life, his loves, his thoughts about writing and any thought that comes into his head. The young man has a prodigious memory and serves as a receptacle for the essence of Karl. There is a lot of hero-worship going on, although he does take Karl to task for how he treated his son. Karl's feelings are hurt and he is temporarily silent. But not for long.

I think this book is supposed to be beautifully written and be a philosophical treatise on life and love. It's written in a very lofty, eloquent, poetic style (Karl speaks in the past historic tense, for example. I don't think that even Macron does this!) As a non-native speaker of French, I found it readable but rather hard going. The night was long, but at least the chapters are short and it's not a long book (215) pages, but Karl is waffler. This book is like a big pile of candy floss. A lot of stuff at first glance, but when it's gone, all that is left are a few sugary grains.

@FuzzyCaoraDhubh Carlos Ruiz Zafón was a YA writer before The Shadow of the Wind. Did you know it's the first of a 4 book series? The next book is a prequel but I've not read it

@Sadik

It's years since I read The Shipping News but I remember enjoying it at the time.

Me too although I cannot remember much about the plot now. I haven't read Accordion Crimes but I will put it on my very long to read list

Loved The Shadow of the Wind @FuzzyCaoraDhubh

My friends mentioned that there is a short series @JaninaDuszejko I might go back to them at some stage. No, I didn't know that Zafón was a YA writer. The poor man died young.

I thought the book was atmospheric @Mothership4two and it described the war years and the years afterwards very well. Good story-telling and memorable characters.

@Sadik @highlandcoo I think Sisterland is the only Curtis Sittenfeld I haven't read so good to know you enjoyed it so much! I have mixed feelings about Romantic Comedy, I didn't love it at the time but I still think about it a lot. I felt like she was trying to write a mature, grown up romance which is very laudable, but I've probably read too much Emily Henry and the like recently so wanted that kind of instant sugar hit.

Of the others, Rodham was indeed weird, especially the bits imagining Bill and Hillary's sex life. I really enjoyed Eligible but I have no strong feelings about P+P which helps. American Wife is probably her masterpiece but Prep is the one I have the strongest emotional connection to.

I haven't read Prep - annoyingly it's not in our library system (e or paper), so if I want to read it I'll have to actually buy a copy!

31 Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Classic story of a group of wartime English public schoolboys stranded on an uninhabited island whose behaviour gradually deteriorates and they descend into savagery. I read this in my teens and didn't enjoy it because of the subject matter but now, having reread it with my book club, I thought it was well written (at times beautifully), had interesting themes (power, Britishness, rules, herd mentality, childhood, etc) and really enjoyed it, although parts made me uncomfortable.

I love Carlos Ruiz Zafon - I think Shadow of the Wind is beautifully written/translated.

Still with my easy reads:

59. A Wedding in the Country - Katie Fforde

Unusual for Katie Fforde in that this book is set in early 1960s rather than current times so against a more rigid class backdrop with more limited options for/expectations of women and whilst homosexuality was still illegal. Lizzie has been sent on a posh girls’ cookery course where they also learn other useful skills (flower arranging, dressmaking etc). She makes some good friends and also meets Hugo, the brother of one of her fellow attendees. Sadly, Hugo has a long-term girlfriend who both families expect him to marry, the snobbish Elektra. I think you can guess how this runs. Undemanding, comforting chick lit.

I’ve just realised that I’ve been mixing up The Shadow of The Wind up with The Name of The Wind which drove someone (Satsuki?) to write a memorable rage induced review about lutes.

There’s a copy of Shadow upstairs so I may give that a go.

Trustee From The Toolroom - Neville Shute - lovely indeed.

Prep I didn't rate highly. Loved American Wife, Rodham solid. I did DNF one, I think Man Of My Dreams

I miss Satsuki

Yes, he was the Greatest Lute Player in All The Land

The only Sittenfeld's I've read are Prep which I liked (but I'm not averse to a bit of teen angst) and American Wife. Like Small Pleasures I initially thought the synopsis of American Wife sounded a bit silly (I think I bought it in an airport without realising what it was going to be about), but once I started reading it I really enjoyed it.

Yes, me too Eine. Her one liner after I mistook Rodham for a proper biography - ‘puts the rod in Rodham’ still makes me smile.

48. The Light Between the Leaves by Glendy Vanderah
    After Ellis loses her baby daughter in a car park she tries to escape from her past, including her husband and young sons, living a nomadic life of wild camping. Meanwhile Raven is being raised by a mother with odd spiritual beliefs in near seclusion.
    I enjoyed the rural settings and the story starts off well enough, though it stretches credibility at times. However it descends into melodrama and sickly sweetness by the end.

49. House of Glass: The Story and Secrets of a Twentieth Century Jewish Family by Hadley Freeman
    A biography of Freeman's grandmother and her three brothers who began life as the Polish Glahs family and became the French Glass family. It follows the different paths the siblings' lives take. Very well researched and written so they, and twentieth century Europe, really come to life.

50. My Name is Leon by Kit de Waal
    Set in the early eighties. After a period of neglect nine year old Leon and his baby brother Jake are taken into care. Jake, being a baby and white, is soon placed with adoptive parents, but Leon, older and mixed race, remains with the foster carer.
    It's a sad but believable story that shows the inadequacy of the care system to really care. Social workers who don't really understand, and a child who has no control over his life. Leon's personality and his love for his brother make the book both heartbreaking and hopeful.

51. The Traveling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa trans. Philip Gabriel
    Satoru needs to find a new home for his cat, Nana, so he visits in turn old friends who might be able house him, each time reminiscing about different times in his life.
    It's sweet and poignant, but probably appeals mostly to cat lovers.

52. The Watcher in the Shadows by Carlos Ruiz Zafon trans. Lucia Graves
    14 year old Irene moves to a small village on the Normandy coast when her mother gets a job working for a reclusive toy maker.
    It's the atmosphere of the book that sticks in my mind more than the storyline, creepy, magical and mysterious.

53. The Beauty of Your Face by Sahar Mustafah
    The book begins with a shooting in a Muslim girl's school in the US in the present day and then takes us back to school principal, Afaf's childhood. The daughter of Palestinian immigrants, we see her in the seventies when her older sister goes missing, her miserable teen years in the eighties and then her life changing in adulthood in the nineties and 2000s. Between each decade a bit more of the story of the shooting is told.
    Although the shooting is the hook of the story it's also almost unnecessary. The real story is of Afaf growing up in a broken family with a fragile sense of identity and how she finds herself as an adult. I enjoyed reading it.

54. We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach
    As an asteroid looks set to collide with Earth four teenagers, the popular jock, the over-achiever, the social pariah and the slacker realise it's their last chance to be the people they really want to be.
    A bit slow moving and I got fed up with the teen angst and just wanted the asteroid to hurry up and hit them.

44 Percy Jackson and the Battle of the Labyrinth - Rick Riordan Fourth in the series, and more of the same, as Percy and friends battle monsters on a quest. As with the other books, this was quite fun and a very easy read, but nothing special - it’s certainly not a patch on Harry Potter.

54. Appointment with Yesterday - Celia Fremlin

Reading the recent reviews of Fremlin's books by @Owlbookend reminded me that a couple of years ago I had a late-night buying spree after stumbling on a cut-price cache of her novels when Faber Finds republished pretty much all of them, since when I haven’t actually gone back to read any. This one is an odd little tale - part-creepy, part-comic.

A woman flees from a scene of unspecified horror, virtually penniless, knowing only that she must get away. She finds herself in a small seaside town and gradually starts a new life, adopting a new name - Milly Barnes - and finding work as a daily help…Fremlin has some fun here with 'Milly's' various eccentric employers. But is her dark past about to catch up with her?

It's short and keeps you hooked and has a bit of a twist at the end. Not her greatest, but quite entertaining, and with some nicely beady observations about womens' work.

40 The Mental Load: a feminist comic - Emma
Compilation of the French comic strip that explains why it’s me, not DP, who has to remember it’s Wacky Hat Day on Wednesday and Come to School to Play Board Games at 2pm on Friday (because obviously mothers don’t have work commitments during the day…)

41 Wintersmith - Terry Pratchett
Third of the Tiffany Aching series - the trainee witch attracts the attention of the spirit of winter and has to overcome a Frozen-esque scenario (pretty sure this predates Elsa though). I’m really stretching out the last few Discworld novels I’ve yet to read, and the witches are my absolute favourites (Sam Vimes comes very close, obv).

42 Puppy Taming - Caroline Davis
Puppy ETA = less than two weeks!

43 Where I End - Sophie White
Very dark, disturbing but utterly compelling folk horror set on a remote western isle off the coast of Ireland, centred very graphically around motherhood and its effects on the female body and mind. Although not closely related in plot/themes, this gave me very similar sensations to the film Midsomer (this is horrible but I can’t look away…)

44 Femina - Janina Ramirez
Exploration of medieval women, from Anglo-Saxon royalty to crowd favourite Margaret Kempe (whose Book I am also currently reading - love the bit where she’s on a pilgrimage to York but won’t leave, and an exasperated cleric says, ‘Woman, you said you were only staying fourteen days!’).

Ramirrz tells fascinating stories to show that women could hold important positions in the political, military, trade and religious spheres - although as a result this was very much a ‘great woman’ version of history. I would have liked a little more focus on the everyday lives of working women, but to be fair it’s not trying to be a social history.

13 The Anomaly - Herve le Tellier
An Air France flight from Paris to New York hits extreme turbulence but manages it's scheduled landing with no casualties (the plane is a bit damaged, as is the mental health of one of the passengers but nobody dies - hurrah!). 3 months later the exact same plane appears in US airspace and is redirected to a military airbase, where it is discovered to contain the exact same passengers and crew. Those on board the duplicate flight are held at the air base while the world's most eminent scientists try to work out WTF just happened. There follows some uncomfortable meetings between the duplicated persons and themselves and quite some detail about practical considerations around home ownership, pensions, relationships and child custody.

I quite enjoyed this, it's an unusual concept and an interesting read. It got a bit heavy on the Quantum Physics for my personal education level, but is after all a novel and not a text book so I got through it OK

Mr Mercedes by Stephen KingHoliday emergency re-read. I mostly enjoyed this. Some unnecessary and uncomfortable sex stuff and I don’t much care for Jerome’s silly voice, but I like the combination of Bill, Jerome and Holly and I liked the tension of the ‘Will they catch him in time’ section. It’s a bit slow in the build up and then a bit fast, but I didn’t really mind that.

Half way through The Exorcist.

101. The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

I’ve had this book on my shelf since it came out, but have put off reading it until now. The Handmaid’s Tale has been one of my all-time favourite books since I studied it at A-level and I was reluctant to read this sequel as I was worried it would ruin the original book for me. Generally I’m not someone who likes ambiguity in a book, but that’s one of my favourite things about The Handmaid’s Tale, we only know what Offred knows (apart from the brief Symposium section), a lot is left unresolved and I didn’t really want those gaps filling in.

I enjoyed the Aunt Lydia sections and felt they retained some of the tone of the original book, but the sections from the two girls just felt like fan-fiction, and the ending was tied up with a nice bow, which was definitely not in keeping with the original book. Taking this as a standalone book it was good and I raced through it, but overall I just don’t think there was any need for it - the Handmaid’s Tale was perfect, in part because we didn’t know some of the information laid out for us here.

Glad you got sorted out, Remus. I think I'd be at a loss losing access to my Kindle library on my morning commute, let alone on holiday.

41. First Position - Melanie Hamrick
Romantic melodrama set in the world of ballet, written by a former ballerina who happens to be Mick Jagger's current partner. The details of company life feel authentic (although I can't vouch for the threesomes, drug use and close encounters in dark corners of the auditorium during rehearsals). There’s a great scene where a young ballerina, having gone home with the artistic director, is unduly impressed by the hot towel rail in his bathroom, which makes me wonder about Mick’s chat-up lines. This happens to be a Mills & Boon but it's surprisingly readable. Possible fun read if you like ballet and don’t care too much about authenticity.

42. Packing For Mars – Mary Roach
Fascinating pop science book about the practicalities of space travel. If you haven’t read any Mary Roach before, be warned, she is the queen of bodily functions, and this is definitely not one to read over breakfast. Among other things she covers wanking monkeys, flying poo, space farts and extreme motion sickness. Hilariously, the experience of early astronauts was marred by the fact that they were just too macho to admit they found conditions intolerable. This was a really fun and interesting read, though I don’t think I will be reading her other books, and especially not Stiff or Gut. With the caveat about the wanking monkeys and other musings on zero gravity sex, this would probably be a good read for science-minded teens.

43. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow – Gabrielle Zevin
I can’t add much to the many reviews on here already, except to say that I loved this. I especially loved Marx, tamer of horses, who is exactly the kind of sweet, useful man we should all have in our lives. I didn’t mind the Pioneers section, though I did feel the placing of it so late in the book was just wrong – after the previous section in particular, it totally broke the mood. It might have been okay if that section was shorter – much shorter – but as it was, no.

@YolandiFuckinVisser The Anomaly sounds great - I’ll try to read it in French as it’s available at my local library.

@MaudOfTheMarches I really enjoyed Stiff by Mary Roach - it was very respectful and not too gruesome (obviously the subject matter meant there was a reasonable amount of that sort of thing, but it was handled in a sensitive way, I think). I haven’t read Packing for Mars though, so can’t say how it compares.

Stiff is a good read.

I saw a walking monkey once.