50 Books Challenge 2023 Part Nine

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the ninth 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, the sixth one here, the seventh one here and the eighth one here.

What are you reading?

That sounds fun @highlandcoo

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I’ve read both Atlas books and felt much as you did about the first; the second was also disappointing in the way you expected (but I still quite liked them both despite everything!).

Thanks @DuPainDuVinDuFromage

As I thought then! I'm not going to read it until it's much less than £9!

It's coming as an Amazon series apparently

pop over if you fancy it @EineReiseDurchDieZeit - it's turned into a really interesting thread (we're on part 2 now)

@Palegreenstars I've just picked up The Founding off the back of your review. Sounds like my type of book and it's only 99p on kindle. Although Amazon is telling me there are 35 books in the series!

Oh fab @satelliteheart interested in what others make of it. I think she was previously a romance novelist and book 2 has started a little more lustfully (although as it covers Henry viii I’m not too surprised). Hopefully the others reduce to 99p otherwise it will be an expensive habit!

Me too @Palegreenstars! Wob has several copies. Have bought the first few in the series. Four for a total of just over £10 ..

I'm reading Trollope at the moment - Can You Forgive Her? - and enjoying it but will be ready for something lighter afterwards.

Oo had a look at that Dark Academia thread and off to buy a cape.

@Gingerwarthog are you having a beret to go with it

@highlandcoo
I only wish I would suit one. Emphatically not a hat person.
Quite fancy some knee length Victorian boots though!

This is NOT a book but there is a YouTuber called Bernadette Banner who makes historical clothes and when I need to dip into a fantasy life I think about reproducing her wardrobe (cloaks aplenty) whilst listening to audiobooks. I could then sell the clothes in my fantasy bookshop/cafe. You guys could pop in for a cake and could model my creations.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie there's a great train journey in Down Under by Bill Bryson.

I'm so tired at the moment I am struggling to read and am also struggling to run which is prime audiobook time. Dragged myself to the library today and FINALLY have the first book of the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan - last read by me in about 1996 I think. I have found rereading fantasy from my teens fairly unrewarding with the exception of David Eddings so will be interesting to see how this stands up to a SIGNIFICANTLY more mature me.

@Piggywaspushed The Prime Ministers We Never Had sounds very much up my street, and cunningly also up my H's street, so I may generously buy him this for Christmas and read it first.

16. Night Waking by Sarah Moss Anna is a historian who is supposed to be writing a book on 18th-century ideas of childhood. She is staying on an isolated island in the Hebrides, owned by her husband's family, nominally so that both partners can get on with their academic work. Anna however is ground down by the treadmill of caring for their very young children.

This was ok. The domestic not-bliss of life with toddlers is darkly funny. However there's a sub plot about a body being discovered on the family's land that never really got going properly for me, and didn't feel woven in well.

17. The Year of Living Danishly by Helen Russell Russell's husband was headhunted by Lego, and so the couple agree a trial move to Billund for a year. As incomers to what's usually cited as the happiest country in the world, she sets about trying to find out what the Danes are getting right.

This is light in tone, anecdotal, and pretty superficial, but still good fun for anyone who, like me, has watched to much Scandi Noir and daydreams of upping sticks to somewhere cold, stylish and socially demoncratic.

@PersisFord
Have just googled her and her amazing pirate shirt!
My 18 year old self wore many things like that back in the 80s.

@Gingerwarthog we used to have to wear capes over our uniform at my boarding school about 30 years ago. Think I may have been put off for life but it probably was real-life dark academia. Very old building too with turrets and woods!

Wish I'd gone to your school @Stokey.
We had to wear foul green skirts with foul green blazer.

Check out Bodies of Light - this feeds into the historical element of the story in Night Waking. Both this and it's follow up Signs for lost children are vastly superior

I'm quite behind on reviews again, but am posting a few:

55. Kala, Colin Walsh 5/5
    As good as everyone says! Beautifully written, with three distinctive narrative voices and an increasingly suspenseful plot. The way this novel manages to be murder mystery, thriller and litfic all at once is very satisfying.

56. Palladian, Elizabeth Taylor 4/5
    My least favourite of the Taylor novels I’ve read so far, but still original and engaging. A self-conscious modern riff on tales of 19th c. governesses falling in love, (like Jane Eyre), this proves to be quite dark and disturbing.

57. The Wren, the Wren, Anne Enright 3/5
    Anne Enright is an extraordinary writer, but this novel failed to grip me as much as her other ones have. The story alternates between the perspectives of a mother and her adult daughter, with poetry by the daughter’s famous grandfather interspersed throughout. I’m not sure why I found the book such hard going (was I too lazy to give it as much time as it deserved?), but some of the challenging elements were lack of plot, relatively unsympathetic characters, and unpleasantly realistic scenes of bad sex. There are some amazing passages in it though!

@PersisFord Read it many times. Love it.

38 The girl with the louding voice - Abi Daré

This was a bold for me. As usual I'm pretty late to the party but I didn't have any pre-conceived ideas about it. It's difficult to summarise without spoilers. Set in 2014 in Nigeria it is the story of Adunni, a young girl, who is absolutely determined to continue her education despite the many hardships she has to face.

@highlandcoo yay let us know what you think. WoB’s sounds like a much better deal but I do like to read doorstops on my kindle - otherwise I fall asleep too quickly.

Wintering by Katherine May has been reviewed here before and I think opinion was not overwhelmingly positive. I was confined to the house by terrible weather, had some leave and nothing pressing to do and found a copy of this which I had been given for Christmas.
There are attitudes that she expressed that annoyed me. I don't agree with her on home schooling and I thought that taking months off instead of working through your notice period was unfair on her colleagues and selfish.
However, there were chapters about cold water swimming and going to Iceland that I really enjoyed. Her writing about the importance of Winter, in that it allows you to slow down and take stock, ready for Spring, struck a chord. I have been running about so much lately that it felt I was being given permission by her to slow down. Her writing about nature was also rather beautiful.
I would recommend this. I read it in a day.

Drive you plow over the bones of the dead by Olga Tokarczuk
I think you have all read this so in brief - the story of an elderly lady living in Poland close to the Czech border, and a series of unexplained deaths. The main character is immediately engaging, and although the whodunnit aspect of the book didn't grip me, the descriptions of the places and the characters were superb.

@cassandre I couldn't finish The Wren, The Wren

@cassandre @SapatSea have you read The Actress by her? That's also about an adult mother and daughter relationship. It was ok but I didn't love it.

96. Dead Ground - M W Craven. I like these detective tales for an easy read, they've got a good team in them. I didn't think the story was as strong this time round and it was quite obvious who was involved.

I've been trying to remember the name of a book that I read maybe about 20 years ago. I think it was written in the first person and the narrator was an alcoholic and it was about descendimg further into alcoholism. I think the female author was Scottish or it was set in Scotland, and read fiction. Any ideas?

Romantic Comedy -Curtis Sittenfield

Writer on late night comedy show (I would guess this is based around the American Saturday Night Live show) falls for a pop star when he comes to host the show. The main premise is that it’s easier for a less good looking man to date an attractive successful woman than it is the other way round.

I much preferred the first half of the book which gives an in-depth behind the scenes look at the TV show than the second half which is set during the pandemic - far too much introspection for me and it just lacked something though I don’t know what.