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

Thanks for the new thread, southeast, and hello to the new people!

I’m not going to post my list as it’s too long since the new thread started. Just going to update with the latest books I’ve read.

57. The Atlas Paradox by Olivie Blake

This follows on from The Atlas Six, in which six of the world’s best magicians are offered the opportunity to join the secretive Alexandrian Society.
It’s difficult to say much about the sequel without spoilers for the first book, but this is basically dealing with the consequences of what happened at the end of the first book.

I wanted to like it because I enjoyed the first book, and I was interested in finding out what happened, but I did unfortunately find it all a bit of a slog.

58. Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch

One of the Rivers of London books. This was a good quick read on the whole, despite the nature of the crime that’s being investigated.

59. How to Steal a Dragon’s Sword by Cressida Cowell

This was one I read to DS1. He’s read them all himself by now, but he’s still keen for me to continue reading them to him.
They’re definitely more fun to read than the Minecraft handbooks that DS3’s started demanding for his bedtime stories 🙄

@AliasGrape
I remember Moon Tiger. Loved Claudia and how uncompromising she was.
Weirdly, the bits I remember best are the scenes at the re- enactment of the Plymouth Pilgrims centre in the US and her relationship with her daughter who hides her true nature from her Mother and is not as meek and mild as Claudia thinks.

The bit that has really stayed with me from Moon Tiger is her relationship with her brother Gordon. Ooh it might be due a re-read!

Thanks for the daily deals heads up, Grannie! I've just bought Swing Time

23 House Swap - Olivia Beirne - ridiculous story but it was pacy and I finished it quickly
24 Anyone for Seconds - Laurie Graham - I really enjoyed this - it was an easy read with engaging characters

25 The Way Life Should Be - William Dameron - this explored an extended family after divorce due to both Dads coming out as gay. It was interesting and covered the problems experienced by the children (teenagers) and also coping with elderly relatives

26 Thinking of You - Jill Mansell - see 23 above

Still in the midst of house renovation so can't settle to read anything demanding although I optimistcally took out Ducks Newburyport from the library yesterday - I have only managed three pages and I am daunted by its size Am also reading Zadie Smiths book of essays (Feel Free) which I am enjoying

Has anyone seen this Bookdrop on Amazon? I've just spotted it and there's loads of books for 99p. Not sure if they are also included when you clock on All Kindle Book Deal but posting here just in case.

At last I have finished the complete and uncut version of The Stand. It was not a dissimilar experience to running a marathon for the first time. The best I can say about it is that I greatly admired most of the writing and reading it over the past two weeks it has helped me firmly establish my goal of making an hour or two free for reading each day. On to ‘something in a cerulean sea’ now.

51 Where I End by Sophie White

This was horrid, but fabulous. Aoileann lives on an island with her Móraí (Grandmother). Her Dada visits from the mainland regularly for 24 hours, visiting Aoileann’s mother, who the women refer to as ‘it’ and ‘bed-thing’. Bits of ‘bed-thing’ have worn away, floorboards and walls need to be sanded down to remove the grooves and blood she leaves. Occasionally, ‘bed-thing’ wanders through the house and even makes it outside if they don’t lock the doors. The islanders shun the house and spit on Aoileann if accidental contact is made. Móraí is tolerated slightly better, being of island stock herself, but no one is allowed in the highest house on the island and no one must know of the third person who lives there.
When regeneration of the old mill/factory begins a mother with a young baby, Rachel, arrives to undertake an art installation. Aoileann becomes fascinated with her, then obsessed and jealous of the bond she has with her baby son, a spark lit within her to find out why her own mother is a horrific, speechless shell.
There’s a lot of repetition to drive home the grind of caring for ‘bed-thing’, some beautifully bleak landscape description and a constant unease as you read only what the author wants to let slip about the physical state of ‘bed-thing’. You are often grateful that she stops describing before the point you would need to turn away. Body horror and folk horror intertwine throughout.

It’s not cheerful, it’s not pleasant, but bloody hell, it’s good.
A quick Google tells me the author usually writes Marian Keyes-y stuff, although I think I did read Corpsing a while ago, will have to check.

Thank you for the new thread @Southeastdweller

Thanks for the heads up @MamaNewtNewt - finding Kindle book deals is endlessly confusing to me!

36. The Storm Sister by Lucinda Riley
Second in The Seven Sisters series. This time we follow professional sailor Ally as she falls in love, grieves and traces her family history back to rural Norway in the time of Ibsen, Grieg and the premier of Peer Gynt. Could be shorter and at times a bit predictable but, as with book 1, took me to other countries and time periods that I had not read about before. I'll continue with the series, but with a bit of a break before I pick up book 3.

37. The House With The Stained-Glass Window by Zanna Sloniowska
Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Translated from Polish, this novel centres on four generations of women and their family life in Lviv. I picked this up after it featured on a couple of lists of great reads set in Ukraine, and I think it may have been recommended on here previously as well. It has an incredibly strong sense of place - Lviv and it's landmarks are central to the novel and much of the family history is tied to the history of the city as part of Poland, the Soviet Union and the struggle for Ukrainian independence. (The translator added a timeline of Lviv's history in the front of my edition which was very helpful.) There's some great writing - the author plays with imagery in a way that I initially loved. Overall though, I struggled with reading this and didn't really follow it. The narrator jumps around through family memories and stories, but is also a bit dreamy and I found it hard to follow (and hard to know what exactly was real). There's also a central relationship that I found a bit icky.

38. Sunburn by Laura Lippman
And this was just what I needed as a contrast from the previous novel - easy reading, just-one-more-chapter page turning with a straight forward timeline and lots of suspense. Set over six months in the mid-90s, Polly and Adam meet in a bar/diner in small town Delaware. Both are staying in the local motel and they embark on a relationship, despite both recognising that they are each keeping secrets about what brought them there and what they want or need from each other. Gulped this down in 36 hours and loved it - it does what it does very well.

Next up is A Thousand Moons by Sebastian Barry.

46 Sahara - Michael Palin

Listening to a Michael Palin audiobook is like wearing a comfy pair of slippers, this was a good and interesting listen though sad in places, particularly where you can see the beginnings of the current tragic migrant crisis.

Lethal White by Robert Galbraith

Enjoyed this although I think it’s the most convoluted so far. I’ve now moved on to Troubled Blood.

Dying to Tell by Robert Goddard

Continuing my reread of all Goddard’s books. This is another of my favourites. Lance is whiling away his time in Glastonbury when he’s asked to try and track down an old friend. This quest takes him to London, Berlin, Japan and San Francisco and leads him into danger. There’s links to two historical events which is very cleverly done.

37. How to be a productivity Ninja by Graham Allcot

A boss recommended this to me (the whole team - not me specifically, I don't think she was implying I needed to up my game!) a couple of years ago and I finally read it as I started a new job.

The concept was really useful to read, it can be summed up as 'time management is dead, long live information management'. And in my job this is true. I have information flows from all over the place and capturing what I need to do and when and on what time scale is hard.

He has some excellent ideas and I've been using his inbox zero suggestion in the new job and it's working.

I felt a bit old fashioned as I read this (I'm 41! so not old) and I feel like the last 5 to 10 years of my working life could have been less stressful if I had read this before. Although a lot of my colleagues would have needed to read it too.

My overall recommendation is that if you are struggling in a workplace with too many meetings and emails and not enough time to do your actual job, this book could be really helpful. I think it's a bit overly long though, it could be 5 blog posts... There is a lot of detail and explanation I didn't really need. The concepts are easy to grasp. So if you could find a shorter summary, I think that would work just as well. But for me, it's a game changer.

@BoldFearlessGirl Just went and bought Where I End on the strength of your review. Luckily it was only 99p on kindle 😅

@LadybirdDaphne just don’t read while eating! Shades of Merricat and Lucie McKnight Hardie’s Dead Relatives. Hope you enjoy it!

Agree that this plus all management books could benefit from being just a few blog posts. But also agree that this is a very good book for anyone in a knowledge role. I shall go back and re-read it.

Just finished Anthony Horowitz's most recent Hawthorne book The Twist of a Knife. I enjoy these -they are rattlingly paced whodunnits, just on the right side of silly. Horowitz puts himself in the books for those of you who don't know the conceit and mentions real and fictional people.

He thanks his editor profusely at the end for spotting all his many errors. Selina, you missed one, to the extent I thought it was a clue. Harrogate Grammar is not somewhere you 'get in'. It's a non selective comprehensive. Has been for a long long time.*

Two consecutive books - two sloppy errors. I shoulda been an editor!

*Note : this may or may not constitute an important detail in the book.

@cassandre Thank you for the Deborah Levy recommendations, have added to my wish list

45 Yellowface Rebecca F. Kuang Lots of insider shenanigans in the publishing world, paranoia, envy, revenge, cultural appropriation and the perils of social media. Quite fun moves along in a self-referential loop, the author maybe kills herself off (is Athena her) at the start and thus sets the whole stolen novel plot rolling. A bit lacking in character development for me, but a clever book.

46 The Divided Self R.D. Laing This was first published in 1959 when he was a psychiatrist at the Tavistock Clinic, the edition I read was the Pelican Edition with a preface by him in 1965. The sub-title is An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness and it's a relatively readable study with case studies of disintegration/alienation/psychosis in relation to schizophrenia in particular. He was a controversial figure and a bit of a guru for the underground/counter culture in the sixties and seventies. His personal/family life was quite tragic and complex.

Wow! There are some amazing deals in the Bookdrop selection - thank you @MamaNewtNewt for flagging. My absolute favourite ever (tieing with The Secret History) is in there - The Crow Road.

The Crow Road is one of my absolute favourites too!

It's such a comfort read for me, which is weird considering some of the events in it! I also loved Stonemouth which I think is pretty similar in theme - don't think it's very highly rated by most people but it's another of his that I love.

@noodlezoodle I've not read that one but just put it on my wish list!

I'm still struggling to choose a next book. It's not want of supply I assure you. I'm also making slow work of the Oppenheimer bio mentioned upthread

I’m a lurker on her :) j enjoy reading all the reviews and they tend to inspire me for future reads! I’m up to book 34 the moment and will add a list at some point over the year. My favourite book so far this year is called The Rabbits by Sophie Overett. It’s become one of my favourite books in general. Just wanted to say it’s 99p in the kindle deals today if anyone wanted to have a look :)
it’s set in Australia during a heat wave and is initially about a teenage boy who goes missing but there’s so much more to it than that. The writing is lovely and the author is brilliant at writing lush descriptions of the weather and wildlife. It’s got a bit of magical realism too.

Thanks @SweeeetPea I seem to recall there are quite a few people on the thread who love a 'heatwave' book!

I feel as though it’s taken me a very long time, but I’ve finally hit 50…

50. The Enchanted April - Elizabeth von Arnim

Read for the Rather Dated Book Club. An absolute delight. First published in 1922 and I've been aware of it forever but always vaguely thought it would be old-fashioned and dull. In fact this tale of 4 very different women - strangers to each other - who end up renting a beautiful Italian villa for a month is completely wonderful. To be discussed more over on the other thread.

51. The Secret Rooms - Catherine Bailey

Well, this was a book that grabbed me and then just wouldn’t let go - a brilliant piece of non-fiction. Bailey set out to write about the men who went from the Duke of Rutland's estates in Leicestershire and Derbyshire to fight - and die - in WW1. On arriving to research the archives at the family seat, Belvoir Castle, she stumbled across something strange about the Duke's son, John, eventual 9th Duke, who died in 1940, and before long she was researching a very different story.

I won’t say what because the reveal might spoil the impact of this gripping book, which Bailey structures cleverly so you’re completely hooked by the first few chapters - I can see that she plays a bit dumb in places (you soon realise that she must have been aware of some crucial facts which a brief look at a family tree would have shown immediately), but she tells it so well that you don't mind.

If you’re interested in history, especially the history of WW1, and like a good ‘digging into the archives' narrative, this one's for you.