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

😂It’s true!

In more ways than one!

Can I join? I’m currently reading the complete and uncut The Stand which has been quite an ordeal, I’m at 87% on day 8 with 3hrs and 5 minutes to go. I don’t love the story but am in total awe of how he tells it, the way he brings some of the characters’ internal world to such vivid life.

Welcome @underthings Any high or low lights of the year so far?

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie the Berlin book I am reading is Berlin The story of a city by Barney White-Spunner

Welcome @underthings I loved The Stand as a teenager, but think I read the long version a few years ago and found it a bit of a slog.

On the theme of books that I suspect Remus and Cote both hate, I've just finished The Bloody Boring Butler aka Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro.
There were a couple of bits at the start where Stevens is going on about what makes a great butler and talking about famous butlers of old that made me tempted to give up, but I'm glad I persevered. I quite enjoyed it in the end, it's very sad and poignant how Stevens relationship is gradually revealed. I think it is probably my favourite Ishiguro - obviously a small category!

18 The Pillars of the Earth Ken Follett. Follett is my guilty pleasure and I loved the century trilogy. This epic tale of the building of a great cathedral in the 1100s was surprisingly pacey. I loved the intrigue and the development of the main characters who want to build the cathedral. Overcoming challenges and developing designs over decades from European inspiration, the first stained glass and also learning how the cathedral was paid for. The sub plot of King Stephen and the civil war had Game of Thrones vibes which was a plus for me. Obviously Follett can’t write female characters and far to focused on heaving chests and firm nipples. But I skipped past those bits to get to more arch chat.

Welcome to the thread @underthings and welcome to TeamIshiguro @Stokey Remains of the Day is one of my absolute favourite books, so always happy to see a lack of Bloody Boring Butler sacrilege 😊

28 Moon Tiger - Penelope Lively

Goodness I loved this, a definite bold. I’m pretty sure many of you will have read it already.

Basically the life story of Claudia Hampton’s life. Claudia is dying, and for much of the story we’re in her head as she does so - she’s a brilliant, unconventional and complex character who is often unlikeable but I did find her quite compelling all the same. Whilst dying she decides in grandiose fashion to write a history of the world, and of herself. I love the way the story spirals, moving in and out of different tenses and voices but constantly circling around what was a defining moment for her - her time in Egypt during WW2 and her great love. I really enjoyed the exploration of how memory works, how narrative works, how history works - it was clever but didn’t feel too overdone or alienate the reader (listener in my case). It went to some dark places but didn’t feel like a particularly difficult read either.

If I had any criticism at all it’s that I felt like it was tailing off a bit by the time we got to Laslo, and, terrible person that I am, I wasn’t overly interested in Tom’s diary although I may go back over the last section to see if I can get more out of it. The very end is perfect - beautifully written.

I listened on Audible and the narration by Nicolette McKenzie was pitch perfect and really enhanced the story for me.

I haven’t read any other by Lively - will definitely do so now though.

Boring Bloody Butler is in my favourite read spot so far this year (and I hated Never Let Me Go though I haven’t read it since it first came out) so I wasn’t expecting that!

Welcome @underthings
@Palegreenstars I loved Pillars of the Earth too- he’ll never win feminist of the year but it’s a great yarn.

I’ve finished a few more
85 Say Nothing- Patrick Radden Keefe- a study of the troubles in Northern Ireland through the case of Jean McConville- a widowed mother of 10 who was abducted then killed by the IRA in the 1970s. Radden Keefe does a good job of looking at the case, and the history from a variety of angles. As always his writing is excellent and keeps the pages turning.

86 Wilderness Station- Collected Stories 1968-1994 Alice Munro
This is the book I blame for my reading slump earlier this month. I was reading one of these a day (I also do a poem a day and the first Year of Wonder) from the start of July and I wasn’t leaving myself any time to read much else. Munro is a beautiful writer and some of these stories were truly wonderful, but it was too many for me at once as they are all quite depressing with focuses on women’s lack of agency, men who abandoned women, poverty and other cheery themes. I think I’m going to leave short story collections for the next couple of months.

Rivers of London- Ben Aaronovitch
Detective Peter Grant finds himself sidelined into the magical section of the London Metropolitan Police, investigating ghostly goings on and a row between the god and goddess of the Thames. This was ludicrous and fun. The audio narration really made it. I’ll definitely listen to more- the perfect antidote for doom and gloom!

Always happy to admit that I loved the Boring Butler (plus Never Let Me Go AND Station Eleven)

I'm absolutely racing through Kala, having to force myself to put it down at night so I get enough sleep.

Just jumping on to say there are lots of 99p deals today: Amy and Lan by Sadie Jones (which was one of my favourite books from last year), Zadie Smith's Swing Time and Elizabeth Strout's Lucy Barton.

Welcome @underthings.

I am also a fan of the Pillars of the Earth series (and manage to ignore the gratuitous breast descriptions). It’s a great story - I read the prequel last year. There’s also a TV adaptation starring a very young Eddie Redmayne.

Thanks Chessie for asking the question about reading IBH on a Kindle as I was wondering about that too.

21. All the Beauty in the World: A Museum Guard’s Adventures in Life, Loss and Art
    Patrick Bringley
    I loved this book about someone working at the Met in New York after the death of his brother. A real insight into a secret world. Note the illustrations work better in the paper copy I checked in the lovely Daunt books than on Kindle.

22. Abominations: Selected Essays from a Career of Courting Self-Destruction
    Lionel Shriver
    I don't agree with her politics but she writes a good argument. I really enjoyed this.

23. Enchantment
    Katherine May
    A relaxing read about the author dealing with life post lockdown and ways to reconnect.

24. Lessons in Chemistry
    Bonnie Garmus
    I can see why this is a popular summer read about a chemist becoming a TV chef but it lost me when the dog started narrating. This was for book club else I would have given up. Pleased I managed to finish it with an hour to spare before Libby returned it.

Thanks for all the welcomes! I will try to read the full thread and see how it actually works. I’m newly returned to reading after too long and it feels good to be in the company of other readers.

A low point of the year was an aborted reread of Peter Høeg’s Quiet Girl, he used to be one of my favourite authors but my concentration was shot and I couldn’t finish.

A high point was A Heart So White, another reread, by Javier Marías and, somewhat shamefully, a series of cosy mystery books with titles such as Dark Witch and Creamy 🫣 I will be reading as many of these types of books as I can.

I’m so happy to get my reading habits back and to explore the satisfaction of wish-fulfilment worlds that I have started work on my own such series, for personal therapeutic purposes.

Still 2h28m to go before I finish the long version of The Stand.

21 The Cliff House- Chris Brookmyre

Daft but enjoyable. Liked the modern take on the closed circle mystery. I've not long read Lucy Worsley's biography of Agatha Christie and it did make me think about how much Chris Brookmyre owes to her in this book.

Welcome to the thread @underthings. I've had The Stand sitting on the shelf for years but I'm put off by the size of it! This thread has the tendency to become very expensive. I've only started buying Kindle books since joining in with this thread and I must have bought 60+ so far this year. All those 99p add up!

Hello to all new people

@snowspider , great review of The Man Who Saw Everything. I'm a big fan of Deborah Levy, and I like all her novels, but that one is my favourite! I loved watching the puzzle pieces of the narrative coming together. You might also like her most recent one, August Blue, about a woman who is a famous concert pianist and her mysterious doppelganger.

There's also her three-volume 'living autobiography', which in some ways I like even more than her fiction.

Hi Tattie! Is Kindle Unlimited worth it or does it exclude the titles you want? I’ve signed up for it but unsure if it will be cost effective.

I haven't got Kindle Unlimited though I'm sure a couple of people on the thread do. I'm signed up for the daily deals email which are usually 99p and I always check to see what's in the sale on the first of each month.

Have you tried bookbub.com too? I snap up anything free that’s remotely appealing but it is causing congestion in the To Read queue. Then there’s the pile of unstarted physical books too.

Welcome @snowspider and @underthings!

37. Viral – The Search for the Origins of Covid 19 – Alina Chan and Matt Ridley
I’ve been meaning to read a book about Covid for some time but have never got round to it, not because it upsets me in any way but just because I wanted to read it once we were on the other side of the pandemic rather than in the middle of it.

Alina Chan is a Canadian molecular biologist who looked into and eventually promoted the theory that the pandemic was the result of a laboratory leak.
I have to caveat this review here by saying that I am not a scientist, and while I enjoy the occasional popular science book, you have to explain things to me V-E-R-Y S-I-M-P-L-Y. I have read one of Matt Ridley’s previous books – Genome, I think – and I found that digestible enough. This one, however, was hard going. There are plenty of interesting factoids that I have duly highlighted for future reference, but overall I found it a chore. Each chapter is a linear narrative and lacks a summarising end paragraph, so I couldn’t use my usual technique of reading each chapter backwards. This means that my overall impression of the book can be summed up as “Bats! Blah blah … bats in the labs! …. Blah blah … obfuscation ….. So was it the lab? Yup, probably.” I kind of feel bad for the bats, who I now know to be a major zoonotic disease risk due to the fact that they live in huge colonies and rarely come into contact with humans. Except for Chinese researchers, who apparently have quite a lot of contact with them, though they kept this fairly quiet until well after the start of the pandemic. I also feel for the researchers, who had very little influence over how this played out.

As the authors point out, the end result of the Chinese authorities obscuring the extent of research into coronaviruses in Wuhan was to play into the hands of conspiracy theorists who want to promote distrust of science and scientists, and that is one of the real tragedies of the pandemic.

@AliasGrape I really loved Moon Tiger (although I agree with you that the Laszlo bit isn't the best part). My other favourite by Lively is The Photograph.

@underthings welcome to the thread! Glad to hear you enjoyed the Javier Marías. DH and I recently read All Souls and loved it. So much so in his case that he immediately sent off for all Marías’s other books and he’s now immersed in Dark Back of Time, effectively the sequel to All Souls, which he says is even better.