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?

88. The Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
    In a future America where society is collapsing teenager Lauren is secretly piecing together a new religion. This has a YA dystopia feel at the beginning (though written before that was a thing) but things get much darker. Very good and believable.

89. The Nesting by C.J. Cooke
    After a break down Lexi cons her way into a nannying job for a recently bereaved family who are building their dream home in Norway, but there is something spooky in the house and something strange about the family and the housekeeper.
    The book can't decide if it wants to be a ghost story, a psychological thriller or a commentary on green issues and ends up failing at all three. Just seemed like a lot of pointless stuff going on.

90. The Whistling by Rebecca Netley
    Elspeth travels to the Scottish island of Skelthsea to be a nanny to an orphaned girl who hasn't spoken since the death of her twin brother. As she hears rumours of the previous nanny's involvement in witchcraft and and becomes aware of mysterious goings on she starts to fear for the safety of herself and her charge.
    Pretty good atmospheric ghost story. It hasn't really stuck in my memory, but I liked reading it.

91. The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean
    Devon is a book eater, a human-like being whose knowledge and sustenance comes from eating books. She's also a single mother struggling to feed her mind eater son while on the run from her controlling family.
    It's an urban fantasy thriller. Not bad and easy to read as long as you don't try to think too deeply about it.

92. Dreamside by Graham Joyce
    When Lee starts repeatedly dreaming he's waking up he realises it must be connected to the experiment in lucid dreaming he, his then girlfriend and two other students took part in at university thirteen years ago, and if they don't come together to stop what's happening things will get worse.
    It's quite good, though all the characters are a bit twattish. I thought the section showing them as students was better than the present day parts of the book.

93. The Shadowing by Rhiannon Ward
    Hester has always seen ghostly presences she calls shadowings. One day she sees her runaway sister and news soon arrives of her death in a workhouse. Hester is sent to find out what happened to her but it becomes clear there is something not right going on.
    Pretty good, though the end was perhaps a bit weak and the ghostly elements seemed like a bit of an unnecessary add-on to the story.

94. House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland
    Seventeen year old Iris is the youngest of the three Hollow sisters who all possess a mysterious beauty and power of manipulation. When oldest sister, famous model and designer, Grey goes missing it seems to be linked the three girls' month long disappearance as children that none of them remember. Iris and middle sister Vivi try to uncover what happened.
    YA urban fantasy that's quite intriguing and entertaining. Good as an undemanding read.

95. The Apparition Phase by Will Maclean
    Fourteen year old Tim and his twin sister Abigail create a fake ghost photo and use it to scare a girl at school but things begin to go wrong from that point.
    The beginning of the book is brilliant, the odd, precocious twins and their ghost obsession, but then it seems to change into a different book and becomes about a group of annoying teenagers holding seances in a haunted house. It's not a bad book, and there are some good spooky moments, it just doesn't live up to what the opening promises.

@SapatSea I can totally see why The Wren, the Wren was a DNF for you. I thought of giving up at various points as well. I didn't like the poetry very much; I think Enright should stick with prose!

@Stokey, yes, I've read The Actress and I agree with your assessment; it was readable but not amazing. I preferred it to The Wren, the Wren however! The Actress is a more traditional narrative, whereas The Wren is quite self-conscious, experimental litfic, and for some reason I didn't think it worked. The daughter's perspective felt at moments like Sally Rooney, but not-so-good Sally Rooney (I say that as a Rooney fan).

My big favourites by Anne Enright are The Gathering, The Green Road, and Making Babies, her memoir of motherhood which I found absolutely brilliant and a tonic to cloying/sentimentalised tales of motherhood. I read it when I had just had my first DC and it was a perfect read for that time in my life.

Really enjoyed both The Girl with the Louding Voice and The Parable of the Sower

75 Fyneshade by Kate Griffin

When Martha/Marta is forced to take the job of Governess for the Pritchard family to avoid scandal in her home town her vanity and snobbery lead her to ever increasing acts of subterfuge to seal her place as Mistress of Fyneshade. Aided by Grandmere’s magical paraphernalia and a breathtaking sense of superiority over the ‘lumpen’ existing servants, she is sure she has done everything she can to secure her goal. After all, she is so much prettier and cleverer than them……isn’t she?

It’s not up there with the best of the genre and lacks a bit of variety in the language, but it passed the time for 99p.
A moderately entertaining bit of gothic fluff, with an appalling ending that tries to bolt Fyneshade on to a vastly superior gothic classic - so silly and unnecessary. If you miss out the last short chapter you’re not missing out on much.

People who read children’s books or who have children who read on kindle, Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell is currently £1.99. Reviews are great.

This is a lovely book, big Katherine Rundell fans in our house!

It’s serving me very well on my train journey so far.

Been debating whether or not to spend £23 on Nigel Slater's Christmas Chronicles and just spotted it's available on prime reading on kindle so have downloaded it for free instead. Not sure if I'm going to really dislike him and get frustrated with it or if it'll make me want to be more like him. We'll see. Looking forward to starting it on Wednesday

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Inspired by the Jane Austen thread I decided to reread this (must be 30 years since I last read it). Rereading reminded me of how much 20th century British literature (particularly the kind beloved on the 'slightly dated' threads) was at influenced by JA. Perfection.

Continuing on with my autumnal/ Halloween short reads

131 The End of the Affair- Graham Greene
This is neither autumnal or Halloweeny but I had just picked it up on audio read by Colin Firth so decided to go with it. It tells the story of Maurice Bendricks, who has an affair with the married Sarah Miles. We see the affair mostly from his point of view. I found this quite moving in parts, though it did veer off into a very God heavy section in the second half which lost my interest somewhat. Still a decent read and excellent narration.

132 Autumn by Ali Smith
I enjoyed this quirky novel which surprised me as I hated the only other Ali Smith (The Accidental) I’ve ever read. I tried a sample whenever it was a topic of conversation here and bought the kindle edition when it was 99p. It looks at the relationship between Elisabeth and her one time neighbour Daniel- in the present where he is ailing in a nursing home (he is 101, she is in her 30s) and in the past when he had a huge positive influence in her life. It also looks at the ‘state of the nation’ in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum. I have ordered the next one (Winter) from Awesome Books- an online second hand bookstore I’ve just discovered.

133 The Rise by Ian Rankin
A short story from the Rebus author - this time set in London from the POV of DS Gish who with her DI is investigating the death of a night concierge/ security guard in an exclusive apartment block. Just okay.

134 Macbeth by William Shakespeare
I suspect we all know the synopsis of this one! I wanted to read another Shakespeare as I hadn’t read any since school and DNFed Romeo and Juliet earlier this year. I enjoyed this one more- it is of course a great story with interesting themes but plays on paper just don’t do it for me. From now on, I think I will stick to watching rather than reading plays (apart from the Greeks and Tennessee Williams, both of which I enjoyed immensely)

I also DNFed The Way of Things by Charlotte Wood. This is a dystopia set in the Australian outback. I usually like dystopias and used to live in the Australian outback so I should have loved this but it was painfully slow and by the time I got to 20% and nothing had happened I decided to bow out.

Now reading The Bee Sting (Booker prize shortlist- only one that interested me apart from Prophet Song which I loved) The Witches (non fic about the Salem witch trials in 1692) and listening to Born a Crime by Trevor Noah.

@JaninaDuszejko I've just twigged your user name!! Perhaps it was your wqqrecommendation I got drive your plow on?

I've got a big heap of books and no real desire to read any of them. They are all Proper Books and I am posting on a thread about nostalgic books and wanting to read a period story with lovely clothes in it, like Nancy Mitford. I think it's stress 😩 and I may have to revert to Georgette heyer, my safe haven.

Can anyone recommend a good audiobook I feel stuck?

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit My only two audiobooks ever, both of which I’ve enjoyed -Alistair Campbell - But What can I Do? and Rory Stewart - Politics on The Edge (his impressions of Liz Truss and Priti Patel etc are terrible though),
May not appeal!

Looking for something not political - thanks though Best!

Sarah Winman narrates her own audiobooks and a few friends have said she is very good at it (think she may be/have been an actor?). I haven't listened myself as prefer to read.

Possibly. I read it a couple of years ago but there have been others on here who haveread it since. Depends how long your TBR list is!

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit have you read Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks? I'm listening to it on Audible at the moment and it's one of those books when the superb narration really adds to the reading experience IMO.

73: Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho - Stephen Rebello

This was OK. I’m very keen on Hitchcock's films generally although I think I’ve only ever seen Psycho maybe twice, but it was the behind-the-scenes process I was interested in. Turns out this book was re-released to coincide with a pointless new film about, er, the making of Psycho, with truly terrible casting (Antony Hopkins as Alfred Hitchcock? Scarlett Johansson as Janet Leigh? Just no), so there was a rather embarrassing new introductory chapter in which Rebello fawned over the new movie, but I’m sure this was a contractual obligation because it all settled down to being quite sensible after that, informative and with plenty of detail. It was entirely my own fault that I stumbled across, and then watched, a TV documentary about Hitchcock that covered a lot of the same ground as this book…!

Finished the Katherine Rundell. I thought it was excellent.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I'm currently enjoying Once Upon a Tome by Oliver Darkshire, read by the author. It's a memoir of his career working in an antiquarian bookshop & I'm finding it very amusing

Thanks all

I read Fire Rush a few months ago and I've read 3 by Sarah Winman.

I've started a spy thing

I thought the audiobook of Prophet Song was good, can't go wrong with an Irish accent. I don't know if I'd have persevered in book form as it was relentlessly depressing.
Agree that Fire Rush really brought a different dimension to the book.

Just finished Boy Parts by Eliza Clark. This is narrated by Irina, an art photographer who takes photos of young men in a fetishist way, like you'd normally see with women. Irina is a very unreliable narrator who hates everyone, takes loads of drugs and is quite into violence. There narration is quite funny in places but it gets very dark and quite uncomfortable. In the afterword, Clark says it was originally a short story, and I think you can tell that. It gets a bit confused and repetitive towards the end and doesn't really have much of a plot other than Irina's chaotic mind. There are parts that you think may lead somewhere - her best friend and blogger, Eddie from Tesco's, the strange Mr B, her relationship with her mother - but they don't quite land. I think this was interesting but I felt like I was maybe a bit old to really get it.

A couple of recent reads:

57. Still Unsolved - selected by Richard Glynn Jones

Nearly DNF, wish I had. I suspect this was brought out to tie in with the 1987 film White Mischief, as the central crime of the film was featured here, but essentially it is a collection of true crime murder cases written between the 1920s to 1970s, with language and attitudes to match. The chapter authors included Ngaio Marsh, Erle Stanley Gardner and Nancy Mitford, so reputable crime writers, but the book as a whole struggled to hold my attention.

58. Wrong Place Wrong Time - Gillian McAllister

Reviewed by someone upthread - whoever it was, thank you. I raced through this and thoroughly enjoyed it, with a great concept and just the right level of twistyness to keep me reading.

Jen sees her son commit a crime. That night, she falls asleep but when she awakes it is the day before. How can she find the answers and work out how to stop the crime, when she is the only one who knows it has already happened? A clever, pacey time travel thriller which also has a lot to say about families, the choices we make and the times we live in.

I read Wrong Place Wrong Time last year and enjoyed it - it was a page turner

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit Have you read The Echo Chamber by John Boyne? Audiobook is read by Richard E Grant, absolutely brilliant and it's on Spotify premium too I think.