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

118. The Hours by Michael Cunningham

The novel shows a portrait of Virginia Woolf and then of two women with a connection to her book Mrs Dalloway

I would say it's basically compulsory to have read the aforementioned novel in order for this somewhat modern retelling to work.

Some of the writing is gorgeous but this won't make bold because the Mrs Brown sections are weak and feel unfinished the rest of her story hurriedly summarised at the end.

I believe there's a sequel forthcoming which I will read. I really did enjoy this but can't help feeling it lacked something - probably more depth

42. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King

This is a re-read for me and I settled down deliberately on a Sunday afternoon to enjoy and read it in a oner.

It was a good decision.

The story is about 9 year old Trisha who gets lost in the woods. She uses her wits to stay alive as well as imaginary conversations with her baseball hero Tom Gordon.

That's it. That's all that happens and it's gripping. Despite King's issue with writing female characters much discussed on here, he somehow does a great job of getting inside a 9 year old girls head. And I'd maybe say the ending is the most convincing he has ever written.

5 stars from me and this afternoon felt like a real treat.

That's interesting that you think it's necessary to have read Mrs Dalloway first. I haven't read it and really didn't get on with The Hours when I read it years ago.

@TattiePants

I'm of the view that Mrs Dalloway should be compulsory anyway, loved it at the time but yes it's presence is felt throughout The Hours

66 The Man Who Wasn't There by Pat Barker
This was one of the few PB's books that I hadn't read and it's probably her shortest at less than 160 pages. Most of her early books are about the harsh lives of working class women in the north so this is quite a departure. Twelve year old Colin lives with his mum in post WWII Britain but she's either working as a 'waitress' in a nightclub or seeing her boyfriend. All she'll tell Colin about his dad is that he died in the war so this leaves plenty of scope for Colin's imagination. He spends his time constructing stories involving Nazis, French resistance and pilots and his stories start to cross over into his real life. It was a quick and easy read and the character of Colin is well developed but I don't think it'll be particularly memorable.

67 For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on my Little Pain by Victoria Mackenzie
Another short book much reviewed on here about Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe and imagines their meeting. Not quite a bold for me but enjoyed it and may seek out Julian's writing.

107. The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

When George Orr dreams his dreams can reshape the world, and everyone in it. For everyone else the new world is the only one which they remember, but George remembers both the before and after. After self medicating in an attempt to stop himself from having these ‘effective’ dreams George has to undergo therapy, or face legal consequences. When psychiatrist Dr Haber starts to work with George its not long before the consequences for everyone are felt. I liked this relatively short story, which reminded me of The Monkey’s Paw. It explores the dangers of playing God and the rights of individuals vs the greatest happiness of the greatest number posing ethical questions that don’t always have an easy answer. I found the character of George to be quite bland, and this was intentional by the author, but it did mean I didn’t really feel much for him, regardless of his current fate.

Thanks @Sadik !

55. The Secret World of Polly Flint by Helen Cresswell
    A book I remember reading as a child. Polly has to stay with her strict aunt after her father's mining accident. She can tell there is something magical about the village and then she meets the time gypsies, the inhabitants of a village that slipped through the net of time.
    A lovely story, beautifully written. It made me happy rereading after many years.

56. Fireworks by Angela Carter
    A collection of short stories. The writing is absolutely beautiful. The stories are all disturbing, uncomfortable and unsettling.
    I think I read once that Carter was the Salvador Dali of literature and I can't think of a better description of these stories than that.

57. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Won't Stop Talking by Susan Cain
    I thought this would be an interesting topic, but for some reason this book bored me so much that I can't even be bothered to review it. It might be just because it's fairly old now that Cain's ideas and arguments don't feel as fresh and new as they might have done when it was first published.

58. Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand
    A day in the life of Bakha, an "untouchable" boy in 1930s India who works as a latrine cleaner and sweeper.
    In some ways this was quite eye opening to me. I didn't realise how literally the word untouchable was meant. Bakha and his peers can't touch caste Hindus, enter a temple or even draw water from a well. There's no real plot to this short novel but it shows how Bakha is affected by the indignities and abuse he suffers and offers some hope for him.

59. Tag You're Dead by Kathryn Foxfield
    Millionaire teen reality star Anton has organised a big game of tag on the streets of London. The book follows three participants, influencer Erin, obsessed fan-fic writer Charlotte, and Grayson, who's ex girlfriend died in Anton's house. As the game progresses they realise there's more to it and it's more dangerous than even Anton knew.
    Even though the premise isn't very plausible and the voices of the three main characters are fairly indistinguishable this starts off well as a fast paced page-turning thriller but the story starts to fall apart towards the end and gets a bit ridiculous.

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley was a book club read a few months ago and @satelliteheart pretty much summed up our discussion. Got a 100% 'meh'.

Mrs England Stacey Halls

This has been reviewed by many and as usual I am way behind on anything remotely within the last 5-10 years.

We were picking our new book for book club and one of the members said she would love to discuss this with someone since we had read My Cousin Rachel earlier in the year and she said there were some similarities.

Nurse May is posted to remote household in Yorkshire, but all is not as it seems.

I really enjoyed this and stayed up to finish it last night, which is unusual for me. I can see what my fellow bookclubber meant in terms of the way the plot unfolds and there is an element of constant manipulation of the main character and the reader that I like. It wasn't executed as well as du Maurier, but it was well done and I was kept interested and wanted to find out what was going on. Some of the ancillary characters were a little two dimensional, I couldn't quite work out what we were supposed to make of some of the relationship e.g. Ruby and Mr Booth, or the point of Blaise.

Overall, a good read and I will read her others I think. From the blurb they look fairly similar in format, so reliable for a quiet weekend.

45 All Dogs Great and Small - Graeme Hall
3 days to DDog arrival!

46 The Old Curiosity Shop - Charles Dickens
Will save most of my thoughts for the readalong, but this was a book of two halves: I was very entertained by the antics of the London-based cast, but could take or leave Nell and her grandfather’s endless tramp through the midlands towards the inevitable.

47 The Book of Margery Kempe
This is one of the most amazing things I have ever read - so glad this thread led me towards it. Margery herself must have been pretty tiresome (a late medieval Englishwoman who, having failed at establishing brewing and milling businesses, set herself up as a sobbing, wailing wannabe saint), but we’re so lucky to have this direct insight into her life in her own words. She seems to have been quite mentally troubled (her visions began as some sort of postpartum psychosis - and she had 14 children), but also very brave and determined: she goes on pilgrimage as far afield as Jerusalem and Poland, is outspoken against perceived sinners, and comes very close to being burned as a Lollard heretic.

Her reported conversations with Jesus are repetitive and self-congratulatory (The scorn you face on earth will be rewarded with merit in heaven… Whenever you so much as think of a good deed you’ll be rewarded as much as if you’d actually done it… Loads of sinners will be saved because of your tears… blah blah blah…), but her complete lack of self-awareness generates unintended hilarity that kept me hooked e.g. when all her fellow travellers get off the boat she’s planning to sail on and board another - and ‘What the cause was, she never knew’…

It also gave insight into just how cruel Medieval Christianity was, in its utter rejection of all bodily pleasure and insistence that suffering on earth is the way to build up heavenly reward. What unnecessary misery this must have caused to so many. It certainly creates a weird misdirection of sensuality in Margery (and presumably her contemporaries), generating a visceral, sadomasochistic fixation on Jesus’ bodily incarnation, suffering and wounds.

I’m on a roll now anyway - I’ve also got Julian of Norwich’s Revelations out of the library and several novels centred on this period, as well as (optimistically) a translation of the Canterbury Tales.

Fantastic review of the Kempe, Ladybird! Like many others here, I bought For Thy Great Pain when it was 99p, and you've definitely made me bump it up my list (and want to do some reading around it too). Totally agree with your thoughts about medieval Christianity and look forward to your reviews of the other books.

(I hope you're going to treat us to a dog pic on Thursday )

Thanks mackerella! Will definitely share dog pic, if I get a chance between cleaning up puddles and stopping DD6 from smothering the poor creature…

Have enjoyed catching up with the thread - am quite intrigued by Margery Kempe now, I enjoyed the In Our Time episode about her so adding the book to my list.

Also on the back of the Woolf discussion I’ve just bought Mrs Dalloway - I did not get on at all with Woolf when I tried reading her work in my late teens/ 20s and have steered clear, but I’m interested to see what I’ll make of it now at the grand old age of 43.

Just inhaled a Georgette Heyer that I’d not previously read over the course of two evenings. The Unknown Ajax - we’ve discussed ‘eye dialect’ on this thread before and goodness it was painful here, I skipped whole pages paragraphs have to admit. Still enjoyed it though.

14 Unsettled Ground - Claire Fuller
When their mother dies unexpectedly, 51-year-old twins Jeanie & Julius are forced to cope without her, having spent their entire lives living in the cottage where they were born. Jeanie is functionally illiterate, has never had a job and has no real knowledge of the world outside the home and garden. Julius works cash-in-hand casual labour jobs and is held back by his inability to travel more than a few minutes in a vehicle due to childhood trauma related to their father's death 40 years earlier. Facing destitution and eviction, the twins struggle with survival and the gradual revelations of their mother's secrets.

I enjoyed this. It's quite bleak at times, especially when they are forced to move into a dilapidated caravan and Jeanie's dog goes missing (the dog is named Maude which is the name of one of my dogs also, so I was maybe a little more invested than I would otherwise have been!)

17.. The Baklava Club (Yashim the Ottoman detective #5) by Jason Goodwin

This was light historical fiction about a kidnapped Polish prince in Ottoman Istanbul and Yashim's attempts to solve the mystery while navigating the multicultural ecosystem of Istanbul in the 19th Century as well as the power struggles of the Padishah's palace and the Harem.

I enjoyed this trip through Istanbul in Ottoman times, with enjoyable descriptions of its people, traditions, and cuisine. There were some errors like people having surnames which didn't happen until after Ottoman Empire had ended and the Republic of Turkey established, and being referred to by their surnames which still doesn't happen in Turkey.

58 Penance by Eliza Clark

Do you know what happened already? Did you know her? Did you see it on the internet? Did you listen to a podcast? Did the hosts make jokes? Did you see the pictures of the body? Did you look for them?

This was incredible. I’m not a fan of the True Crime genre. I’ve read In Cold Blood , Cries Unheard and The Five but that’s about it. I’m not snobby about anyone else choosing to read TC books, they just aren’t for me - how can anyone really know what happened apart from the people directly involved, is my take on it.
This is fiction masquerading as True Crime and doing it very, very well indeed. Three teenage girls murder another teenage girl in a most horrific way. It’s set in a run down Yorkshire coastal town and the environment is exquisitely described, so much so that I feel I’ve been there. There’s a wonderful undercurrent of Folk Horror amongst the swimming pool and abandoned theme park ghosts.
Alec Z Carelli is a writer whose past involves phone hacking scandals and a daughter lost to suicide. He painstakingly draws together witness statements, interviews, podcasts and purported interviews with the perpetrators themselves. I got the feeling that while looking at the abyss that can be social media, that abyss was looking back at me.
It’s extremely graphic and as bleakly realistic as if it had all actually happened. It has all actually happened and there are details that uncomfortably remind us how the internet, social contagion, abuse, neglect and managed decline of some areas can poison young minds.
I could have done without the ‘Cherry Creek’ section, because it’s overlong and an in-depth description of a school shooting in America feels out of place, even though it’s the main psychological driver for the actions of Girl C/Dolly Hart. Minor quibble, though.
There’s a lot of first person teen-speak, as you might expect. However, take away the modern day trappings and it threw me right back to the mid 80s, where friendships could change overnight. Where no one’s in the ‘wrong’ exactly, but people can still be hurt by words, bullying and changing loyalties.
It gets True Crime just pitch perfect, then the last section turns it all on its head and it’s marvellous. Every narrator an unreliable one and the only thing you know is the thing you saw on the news - a girl has died horrifically and needlessly.

@BoldFearlessGirl that sounds right up my street - straight on my wish list!

@MamaNewtNewt it has a real Harriet Said / Jenn Ashworth vibe.

@BoldFearlessGirl I’ve had my eye in that one- glad to hear it’s so good. Moving it up my tbr

95 Close to Home - Michael Magee
Sean has returned to Belfast after university in Liverpool and falls back in with the binge drinking and drug-taking of his old school friends. This is the story of a young man trying to find his way in the world and what sort of man he’s going to be. He has to deal with conflicts between his old way of life and the person he wants to become. This is another of the Waterston’s Debut Fiction shortlist. I did enjoy it but I don’t know how much of that is to do with the familiarity of the places and how much Sean is like some people I’ve known in my own life. The story meanders a bit and is more of a character study than anything else.

96 She Lies in Wait- Gytha Lodge
A solid police procedural recommended by someone on here. The body of a teenage girl uncovered in the woods turns out to be that of Aurora who went missing 30 years before. DCI Jonah Sheens (who has some connection to the original missing persons case) and his team investigate. Plenty of twists and turns and suspicions all around.

Back to work tomorrow after a long sabbatical so my reading will slow down dramatically from here (though I’m hoping to be able to read on the commute)

I have had the first Yashim on my TBR list forever @CoteDAzur

StColumbo - Yashim books are OK beach reads and I've enjoyed them as such. The author knows some interesting stuff about Ottomans which I was happy to learn.

I still can't get over the name "Yashim" (= Jade, invariably a girls' name) for the protagonist, though. I get it that he is a eunuch but he wasn't when he was named.

Hashim - Yes.

Yasin - Yes.

Yashim - Never in a million years.

Looking forward to the dog pics ladybird!

46. Incontinent on the Continent - Jane Christmas

DM passed this on to me a few years ago and in an effort to tame the TBR I finally got round to reading it. In the meantime DM has got older with all the mobility and health problems that ageing brings.

Jane, a Canadian writer, has always had a fractious relationship with her mother, and in an effort to heal this she invites her on a month-long road trip round Italy. Jane is of the classic sandwich generation, her mother is elderly, stubborn, opinionated, arthritic and incontinent. What could possibly go wrong on their Grand Tour?

As well as the road trip itself with travel tales and a smattering of Italian history, the book looks at mother-daughter roles, the ageing process, and family tensions. While I have a better relationship with my mother, so much of the book rang true and it affected me deeply in a way it would not have had I read it when I was first given it pre-Covid. It's not a classic of Canadian literature, but for me it's a keeper. A definite bold.

@BaruFisher She Lies in Wait was my recommendation, glad you enjoyed it. The latest in the series has just come out so need to add that to my tbr, although I think for me the first one is the strongest

@BoldFearlessGirl Penance sounds great. And it wasn't available as an ebook at the library I usually use by the office but is at the one nearer to me which motivated me to set up my Libby account for that one too; so thank you for that!