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

Not me @Sadik but I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Wow JaninaDuszejko, that sounds like an amazing concept. Personally, (nearly 30 years ago!) I would really have benefitted from that.

Eine, that's a lovely haul. The Portrait of a Lady is a favourite of mine. I've been reading physical books recently. I think there is something soothing about a real book. 'Reading mojito' adds another dimension to it :)

Cassandre, I'm so glad your son has a place now.* *In Ireland, students take seven subjects in the Leaving Cert and count six of them in the points system. Irish, English and maths are obligatory and a language is usually needed for entry to degree courses. From what I know, our lot have more subjects but A-level students study their subjects in greater depth. The points system is quite pressurised depending on the course choice, medicine requiring top marks and arts one of the least. There is a lot of difficulty finding student accommodation too at present. It's a huge help to live within commuting distance to college.

@TattiePants I’ve just reserved East West Street at the library following your review.

Thinking of all those going through exam results stress this week. That will be me next week as we find out if DS1 has got a place at his preferred (highly oversubscribed) sixth form 😬

106. Lost Heirs of the Medieval Crown: The Kings and Queens Who Never Were by J F Andrews

I quite enjoyed this book covering the rulers we might have had, dating from the death of William I through to the Tudors. One criticism is that there could have been more analysis of whether the ‘might-have-beens’ would have made good monarchs, and I didn’t learn an awful lot, having studied medieval history at university, but I did enjoy revisiting some of these events, despite the medieval propensity for lobbing heads off rivals left, right and centre!

💐 to everyone with kids working out there next steps this week. We are a long way off that but I remember it well. I got a last minute place at uni, ended up in the ‘worst’ accommodation sharing a room with a stranger. She became a great mate and I had the time of my life!
22 A Good Girls Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson. A young girl investigates a local cold case murder for her school project. This was an easy holiday read. Mostly good. The most unbelievable thing to me was the UK setting, the writing style was so American and this captured none of the feel of teenagers in an English village. Odd.

Island by Siri Ranva Hjelm Jacobsen. Translated by Caroline Waight

Third book of Women in Translation month

This is about a woman whose grandparents left the Faroes before the war and her relationship with the islands. There was some beautiful writing in this but I felt a bit disconnected from the narrator but maybe that was the intention because it was about each generation's greater disconnect from the islands. I don't know if I'm too close to the themes in this book; I grew up on an island and left and so I am familiar with the issues around belonging but not belonging to a small closely knit community. An interesting read nevertheless.

Morning All, finished by first book last night:

Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson I love a KA and as a story this didn’t disappoint. Enjoyable, interesting and with a cast of engaging characters. Two young and naive girls, Freda and Florence, run off to the bright lights of 1920's London to make a career on the stage. We then meet Nellie Coker on her release from Prison who is larger than life; a woman with a big family and several Soho clubs where girls dance, men drink and there is a world of corrupt behaviour involving the police and local gangs. The lovely Gwendoline then turns up searching for the missing girls. KA skilfully weaves the many strands of the story together whist capturing 1920’s Soho underworld. I did feel that the conclusions were rather rushed and comical in places though. I do prefer her earlier books though, Behind the scenes of the Museum, Human Croquet, Life After Life I adored! An enjoyable story but not a bold for me.

book number 2 is A Year of Marvellous Ways by Sarah Winman purchased earlier this year as I loved Still Life
Happy Reading weekend to you all

Lots of sympathy to everyone living through exam results and all the associated stress. Not an easy time - I remember it well.

Eine hope you are getting back in the swing of your reading and life is picking up.

And welcome new people!

Janina I went through the same education system. Sixth year was brilliant. University entrance all sorted as you say and a year of learning to drive, studying subjects you enjoyed (for me that meant saying goodbye to Maths and focusing on English, French and History) and otherwise generally having a good time while growing up a bit. Some of us, me included, went off to university at seventeen, so that year was really important.

I've had some good reads recently:

Love and Marriage by Monica Ali.
I loved Brick Lane years ago and this is a good too. It wouldn't be fair to call it chick lit but for me it falls somewhere between that and literary fiction. Just a very readable story of Yasmin and Joe, both young doctors from very different family backgrounds, engaged to be married but each struggling with problems and doubts and the various pressures of their well-meaning parents. Interesting and entertaining family dynamics with likeable characters. It's an easy read.

The Cliff House by Chris Brookmyre.

Two books back I read The Decagon House Murders, a Japanese version of And Then There Were None and reading this so soon afterwards was a rather daft decision. Another isolated island, another group of people with tensions and secrets, more unexplained killings .. it's a page-turner that doesn't have to be plausible to be entertaining. A bit less of the dark humour of his Parlabane books which is rather a shame - a wee bit more mainstream if anything.

Now reading Music in the Dark by Sally Magnusson. I enjoyed The Sealwoman's Gift and this is a cut above. Judging by the first hundred pages she's really coming into her own as a writer. SM is excellent at identifying a little-discussed aspect of Scottish history - in this case the Highland Clearances - and using that as the basis for an engaging story. I need to get hold of her second novel too now.

Still bookless, having given up on Hangover Square. I have a solo train journey to do tomorrow and urgently need a book. But what?!

Welcome @Sonnet lovely to hear you're finding your way to a happier place. I have the Ruth Galloway series on my tbr after my mother in law passed on the first two books and recommended I read them. We have fairly similar tastes in crime fiction so hoping I enjoy them once I get round to starting them

Mr Norris Changes Ttains

56. Privileged Children - Frances Vernon

In 1906, in Red Lion Square in London, eight year-old Alice lives with her widowed mother, the beautiful Diana Molloy. Diana lives as 'the most old-fashioned kind of professional woman', but at heart she’s a Bohemian, and Alice grows up in the same spirit, defying the pompous relatives she’s sent to live with after her mother dies, and getting pregnant after regular liaisons with red-haired stable-boy Luke.

Finally back in London, she returns to Bohemia by establishing an unconventional ménage with Anatole Brécu, a Frenchman whose physical ugliness is overcome by his charm. The novel follows the rest of Alice's life as she has another baby by Anatole, reluctantly marries him, realises she’s a lesbian, has a tempestuous affair with a beautiful 14 year-old runaway, Miranda, and ultimately dies at 60 in a motorcycle accident. Anatole's two daughters from his previous marriage and various other characters revolve around the story.

Well, this was….erm, an odd one to say the least. This was Vernon's first novel, written when she was 16 and published in 1982 when she was 21, to rave reviews.

I stumbled across mention of her books and had never heard of her - she wrote six novels, and committed suicide at 27. What grabbed me was a comparison between her and Barbara Pym….which, having read Privileged Children, totally baffles me. But on the back of my paperback copy is a blurb saying 'reminds one of Daisy Ashford grown up', and that is EXACTLY, hilariously right: imagine Mr Salteena and Ethel Monticue earnestly discussing incest, lesbianism, castration complexes and the advent of menarche, and you have this book to a T. Maybe I’m just fatally missing the element of genius that every other review seems to detect here, but - entertaining though it was - I’ve regretfully had to accept that I won’t be discovering a marvellous new author after all.

Read it! I do like a good train story!

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I'm sorry you didn't like Hangover Square. I almost never recommend it to people although it's one of my favourite novels. Partly because it is "bleak as fuck" to quote my sister and also because it makes me sad when people don't love it. I think of you as the queen of lovely book recommendations so can see it could have been a long way off what would work for you. And it is indeed a touch repetitive in terms of misery, with a cruelly happy interlude.

Remus - I think you’d like Rooftoppers. Otherwise I’m half way through Demon Copperhead and loving it, though ‘misery, with a cruelly happy interlude’ at one level covers it. But you’re just rooting for DC from page 1 and he’s such a wonderful voice and would stand up to the distractions of a train I would say.

I quite like grim, tbf, but it was just saying the same things over and over again. I’d expected to really like it, but I stopped caring quite quickly.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie i haven’t had a chance to review it yet but I’ve just read This Tender Land by William Kent Kruger which I rattled through. Loved the writing although it does deal with some heavy themes of child abuse, poverty and racism.

Thanks for the recs. Will get some samples. Must admit that Demon C holds very little appeal for me thigh. I hate Dickens and previous works I’ve attempted by Barbara K left me cold, so I suspect I’m far from the target audience!

thigh?!

Hi everyone, can I join a bit late? I'm on book 17 so doubt I'll make 50 but who knows. Currently reading and enjoying the marriage portrait by Maggie OFarrell.

Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - 8/10
Tender is the Flesh - 7/10
The Birdcage - 7/10
Normal People - 9/10
Medusa - 7/10
Lady MacBethad - 10/10
Weyward - 8/10
Katherine of Aragon - 7/10
The Family Upstairs - 8/10
The Seven Sisters - 8/10
The Hive - 3/10
Wakenhyrst - 10/10
The Herd - 7/10
The House We Grew Up In - 8/10
After I Do - 5/10
The Family Remains - 7/10

Re-posting with recommendations in bold!

Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - 8/10
Tender is the Flesh - 7/10
The Birdcage - 7/10
Normal People - 9/10
Medusa - 7/10
Lady MacBethad- 10/10
Weyward - 8/10
Katherine of Aragon - 7/10
The Family Upstairs - 8/10
The Seven Sisters - 8/10
The Hive - 3/10
Wakenhyrst - 10/10
The Herd - 7/10
The House We Grew Up In - 8/10
After I Do - 5/10
The Family Remains - 7/10

Your thigh might not like it Remus but what about the rest of you? 😅

Just read Darren McGarvey's The Social Distance Between Us which I am sure someone else read a while back.

He is best when he is impassioned and outspoken and this happens in the second part of the book. At times he can be overly loquacious and rambling, I find. But a thought provoking read. He doesn't mice his words on Johnson or Tommy Robinson. I bet he actually wishes he had waited a bit. I'd love to read him on Truss!

One thing - he is published by Penguin. Sort out your editors, Penguin! His book is littered with errors from little typos to 'flare' for 'flair' (aaargh!), an incorrect who's and an incorrect 'there'. Grrrr.

That’s good to hear @Piggywaspushed . I am about a third of the way through it and his little diversions are bugging the crap out of me! There was one bit where he was out on the moors with a rich landowner for grouse shooting and it just sort of……..petered out . Just one example where I wanted him to go into more detail, but it was like “Yeah, I don’t like blood sports or rich landowners but this bloke was ok”, then move onto something unrelated.
I’ll stick with it. Agree about the proof reading, too.