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

The Secret Rooms and Black Diamonds are two of my all time favourite books. I find Bailey's writing style really compelling

@TattiePants thanks for the great review of A History of Burning - I have it in my TBR pile and may move it up.
@SammyScrounge have put Men without Women on my wishlist. I do like reading a Murakami now and again.

Thought this article in the Guardian with a list of some books by Female "thinkers" (as if we don't all think) might be of interest for non fiction choices. I've bookmarked it for yet more additions to the wishlist
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jul/26/top-10-books-by-neglected-female-thinkers

I'm currently reading The Seventh Son by Sebastian Faulks but its not that gripping and I seem to be inching forward at a glcial pace.

25. The memory of animals by Claire Fuller A woman who loves an octopus agrees to be isolated for a vaccine trial and she wakes up to the world being destroyed by the virus.

I enjoyed this. I really like her writing style. It was a bit bleak. This is obviously her lockdown novel. It's interesting to see how writers incorporate their response into their work.

Secret Roomsadded to my wishlist.
I’m still reading my way through the DCI Warlow books set in Carmarthenshire. TBH I enjoyed the first couple and the stories are ok but there’s a lot of irritating attempts at humour and if he mentions the biscuit tin one more time I’ll scream. The main attraction for me is that they are set on my doorstep and I’m enjoying nodding along when he complains about the traffic at Pont Abraham etc.

Interspersing this with Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank which I haven’t read since a teenager and am finding hard to read.

Black Diamonds is on my wishlist now….

My first DNF since joining these threads - L’Evangile du Nouveau Monde - Maryse Condé. I got it out of the library for a second time after failing to start it last time, and made it to page 50, but haven’t read any for a couple of weeks. I could keep going until the end of the summer when I’ll have to give it back, but it’s just really dull and the main character is completely uninteresting. It’s just page after page of “he did this. Then he did that…’ and I can’t be bothered to force myself to keep going. If it had been in English I would have been able to get through it more quickly and would probably have got to the end (it’s very rare that I don’t finish a book) but in French I have to focus properly and wouldn’t be able to scan through the boring sections. So I’ve called it a day and am going to have a YA (or even younger?) palate cleanser with the third Percy Jackson book 😄 Meanwhile, my current BorrowBox book is an excellent non-fiction which I’m taking my time over because I’m enjoying it so much.

I meant to add, re. the Condé - plenty of clever biblical references (the idea is that the main character is - or might be - the Messiah but born in the Caribbean), but that’s not enough to carry the story for me.

@BadSpellaSpellaSpella yes the women were engaged with life while the men organised theirs and forgot to allow for engagement. Fascinating read.

39. The Thoughtful Dresser - Linda Grant

A collection of essays by novelist Linda Grant on clothes, shopping and fashion. As always it's difficult to rate essay collections because they're a mix of the ephemeral and the profound. The best pieces are the series of interviews with Catherine Hill, a survivor of Auschwitz and later Canada's equivalent to Joan Burstein - highly individual, and as defiant in the face of old age as she was of the SS. These parts of the book are incredibly moving.

Elsewhere there are thoughts on it-bags, high heels and the secret clothes collection of Emily Tinne, a Liverpool doctor's wife who left a trove of mostly unworn clothes in her attic, only to be discovered after her death in the 1960s.

The book is written from the perspective of someone who loves clothes and sees them as more than worthwhile, but a manifestation of the human spirit. It was interesting to read Grant's take on people who are not interested in clothes or fashion, which is that the majority are scared to express themselves, depressed or simply doing it to make a statement. (Her point being that everyone is interested in what they wear, but sometimes this natural human instinct can become skewed.)

Although there is much talk about shopping in the book, it's not about consumerism - to paraphrase Grant, trying on is nothing to do with buying, and if you're not intending to buy then you might as well try on the £800 dress as the £80 one - you will learn more and it will bring you more pleasure.

Ultimately the book is about finding the joy in the present moment. Recommended if fashion is your thing, but if nothing else I would read it for the Catherine Hill sections.

I loved the Cromwell books but for me 'A Place Of Greater Safety' was Mantel's greatest work. The characters in the book haunt me still. Mantel's one fault was not to have written about Jean Paul Marat, as ahe said she would, in a second book about the Revolution. Still, I can hardly complain when we got Cromwell instead.

Two books that to me have lots in common, so was fascinating reading them one after the other. Age thirtyish groups of friends and their relationships, told through dialogue and letters, well emails in Sally Rooney's book. And no mobile phones/internet in Monkey Grip so notes are left on tables and people turn up in each others houses and ride bikes to look for each other.

47 Beautiful World Where Are You Sally Rooney
I expect this has been read and reviewed much- Alice is a novelist who escapes to the West Coast of Ireland from Dublin to recover from burn-out upsetting her best friend Eileen in the process. Lots of angst. It grew on me but the characters made me feel quite frustrated but in that respect not a patch on those in

48 Monkey Grip Helen Garner
Set fifty years earlier in alternative bohemian Melbourne Nora is divorced, a mother besotted with junkie Javo. The novel freewheels through the lives of loose group of friends who swap/steal lovers, clothes, drugs, kids, cars, cash.

Depressing and beautiful, and does not hold back in describing the nasty side of their lives. Helen Garner is Australian and I haven't read anything else by her. She is a very meticulous writer and I plan to try and read some of her non-fiction. This House of Grief is one of her true crime books which I have seen described as a literary masterpiece although the subject is harrowing.

A Place of Greater Safety is an impressive book but, even with a working knowledge of the French Revolution, I found the ever-changing political factions and bodies difficult to follow. I preferred the Cromwell trilogy.

Finished:

48. Labyrinth - Kate Mosse

Set in two timelines in the same locations - medieval France during the Crusade by the north against the South and a current day archaeological dig. Ultimately a positive read for me, as I enjoy historical fiction and different time periods/timelines and have visited Carcassonne. However, there were some aspects I found confusing possibly as it took me a while to read so maybe I lost focus/forgot key facts or maybe the author could have been clearer!

I have a week on a sun lounger ahead of me so will reach 50 shortly.

@snowspider I would rate Helen Garner's non-fiction very highly. I’ve read two of her books, Joe Cinque's Consolation and the one you mention, This House of Grief. They definitely are harrowing - the first is about a young man who died after his girlfriend gave him a lethal dose of heroin; the second about a man who crashed his car into a dam and killed his young sons; he survived - but they are deeply gripping and well-written. Garner is very much part of her books as she attends the trials, gets to know the families (and the accused), and forms deep bonds with some of the people involved. You come away feeling a process of genuine enquiry and deep understanding has happened.

I want to DNF Outlawed. I just don’t like it and it was a book club book but something quite tragic has happened to a bookclubber and now I’m associating the book with it all, rather irrationally.

@TattiePants can I also recommend Coolie Woman by Gaiutra Bahadur. It’s not fiction and we studied it at length in a class about micro history - it is truly a great piece of work.

40 The Spy and the Traitor - Ben Macintyre Someone recently posted a review of another of Macintyre’s books (about a female spy) on here and I thought it sounded great, but BorrowBox didn’t have it so I got this one instead. Well - it was excellent so thank you to whoever posted that review!

It is the non-fiction story of Oleg Gordievsky, KGB officer who became a spy for the UK. I love anything about the Cold War and knew hardly anything about Gordievsky, so this was right up my street, and it was so readable - almost like fiction in terms of the way the story unfolded, but with lots of source references and not remotely sensational. Highly recommended, and I’ll seek out Macintyre’s other books.

Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith

Book 5 in the Strike series, and here Cormoran and Robin are investigating the disappearance of a woman 40 years ago. I thought this was fab. It is far too long, yes, but it still managed to grip me all the way through and I didn’t think there were any points where the story sagged.

@DuPainDuVinDuFromage if you haven’t read it already then I’d highly recommend Agent Zigzag. It also reads like fiction but is about Eddie Chapman, a conman who became one of Britain’s most successful double agent.

@DuPainDuVinDuFromage I did look at the Conde book as it was shortlisted for the international Booker but the reviews were very mixed so I decided against it. On the whole, I think the International Booker was a very mixed bag from the ones I've read, although still haven't done the winner. Then again I think @cassandre and I had very different views about The Birthday Party.

64. The Puppet Show - M W Craven. This crime series was recommended by a booktuber. It's a bit clichéd on the surface - Maverick cop who's been suspended ✅, brainy analyst with no social skills ✅, higher up cops only interested in promotion and cover-ups ✅ - but it was really well done. I liked the setting of the Cumbria fells and stone circles - I had no idea that Cumbria has the most stone circles in England - and the pace was decent. I bought the next in the series straight away.

Welcome to the new people! Looking forward to hearing about what you've been enjoying reading. I haven't been posting much in a challenging year but it's always interesting to follow the thread and I'm hoping to join in more from now on.

So, some of the best books I've read recently:

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver.
Much discussed already so I'll just add that I thought it was excellent.

Bomber by Len Deighton.
A gripping description of 24 hours in the lives of a bomber crew and also the ordinary lives of individual characters in the town of Altgarten in Germany in the day leading up to the attack .. and during it. We become equally invested in the fates of the people on both sides of the conflict. Recommended.

Six Tudor Queens by Alison Weir.
I've read the first three so far. Volume two on Anne Boleyn was particularly interesting. Obviously this is a high fictionalised account however I assume scaffolded by accurate historical facts. This period of history has been exhaustively covered however I still find it fascinating to reflect that if Katherine of Aragon's baby son had survived to adulthood the whole course of British history could have been completely different.

Snap, Exit and Rubberneckers by Belinda Bauer. Snappy, page-turning crime books with original themes. I particularly enjoyed the black humour of Exit where assisted suicide by well-meaning volunteers goes badly wrong.

Scotland Street and sequels by Alexander McCall Smith. A comfort read. I love Edinburgh so could picture the setting clearly even down to the cafe described, and this was entertaining and unchallenging. A great series to turn to for anyone going through tough times.

The Soldier's Return and A Son of War by Melvyn Bragg. These were a surprise; I'd read a novel by MB many years ago and found it heavy going but these are great. Sam returns to Wigton in Cumbria, suffering trauma from his experiences in WW2, and we witness the family's attempts to settle back into normal life as his young son struggles to adjust to a father who seems like a stranger and the problem this causes between Sam and his wife. Reminiscent of Arnold Bennett (whom I really rate) in his description of small-town life in the north of England.

Acts and Omissions by Catherine Fox. Recommended by a PP. This was strange and original and I enjoyed reading about churchy people who swear and get jealous and petty and feel attracted to people that they shouldn't. Human beings in fact. The tone is rather too arch at times but entertaining on the whole.

I'll be back with a few more later..

@highlandcoo if you haven’t already ready it, I’d urge you to read Melvyn Bragg's memoir Back in the Day. It’s a love-letter to Wigton, to his parents, and to his own deeply-rooted beginnings there, and very affecting in places

52 There’s Been A Little Incident by Alice Ryan

I quite enjoyed this, for the most part, but by the end I was making a mental list of the characters I disliked. The saintly dead mother Annabelle was at the top, followed by B, then Molly a close third place. There were some wry observations on family dynamics, but it veered into cloying a bit too often for my liking. Clare Chambers does this sort of thing better, imo.

I'm very sorry to hear about your book club friend @StColumbofNavron. I don't think you'll miss a lot by not finishing Outlaw.

Books can definitely carry associations. Much less serious than your example, but I had to give away all the books I read in the first trimester of pregnancy because just seeing their spines on the shelf afterwards made me feel sick.

@Stokey, yes, I liked The Birthday Party more than you did, but I can see why it might not be everyone's cup of tea! I also think the style, with all the long comma-punctuated sentences, probably worked better in French than in English.

@DuPainDuVinDuFromage , I did finish L'Evangile du nouveau monde (The Gospel According to the New World), but I also found it disappointing. There was very little narrative impulse to make me want to carry on reading, as you said. I'm not sure why it made the International Booker shortlist. I wonder if it wasn't a kind of gesture honouring Maryse Condé's whole career as a significant Francophone woman writer, rather than a celebration of this particular novel, which was far from her best. Leila Slimani, herself currently one of the most famous French women writers, was on the panel of judges, so it crossed my mind that it may have been a tribute from Slimani to Condé more than anything else. That's pure speculation on my part though. Anyway it was an underwhelming book, and I say that as a fan of Condé.

Actually, Slimani was chair of the panel