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?

Can't believe I paid full price for it

Thanks for instructions and links. Link doesn't work for me. I also can't find a 'See all deals' link anywhere.

I've been tempted by:
Fifty words for snow by Nancy Campbell as I enjoyed Thunderstone
The hero of this book by Elizabeth McCracken
Mrs S.
Roast figs, sugar snow: food to warm the soul by Diana Henry

@Terpsichore thank you but when I do that it takes me to a really strange looking page that looks nothing like that, with no option for all deals. I swear Amazon hates me. The Daily deals are not even on the top of the Kindle books page any more for me

It’s very strange that we don’t all see the same thing on the Kindle Books page. Just one more go - does anyone else see this?

Nope. Mine doesn’t look anything like that.

Why they did away with the monthly deals link I don't know. I navigate to it now:
All > Kindle E-Readers and Books > Kindle Books, then at the top of the Kindle Books page, I click the Kindle Book Deals link, which for me is the third link.

There are various different categories, then '12 of over 1000 results' showing the covers of the first 12 books, then I continue scrolling to the bottom of that section where I get a 'see all results' link. I then have 85 pages of deals, same as @Terpsichore. This is all on my laptop - I don't even attempt it on my phone.

I didn't think it was a bad selection - there are tons of things I've already got, but I bought:

• Dead in the water: Murder and Fraud in the World's Most Secretive Industry - this one is about the shipping industry and looks FASCINATING
• Rooftoppers
• Hons and Rebels
• The Hero of This Book, by Elizabeth McCracken - I read and loved this earlier this year
• The Christmas Chronicles, by Nigel Slater - am doing the readalong on here, it's delightful, but I'm travelling over Christmas so not lugging the huge physical book along will be v helpful
• London Curiosities
• The Burning (YA)

Just finished book 41.

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. Very recent Booker Prize winner, this is the story of Eilish Stack, a Dublin microbiologist who finds her world turned upside down when her teacher husband is arrested at a union march by the government forces.

as usual I listened to almost all of this and read the last hour or so. I listened with my breath held most of the time. Brilliantly narrated, the gradual slide then sudden tip into chaos is brilliantly and completely believably described.

i am a notoriously fast reader and, as such, miss huge amounts of what is written if I am not careful. Having had the book mostly read to me so beautifully I read the last chapter slowly and savoured every beautiful word.

I absolutely loved this. Devastating and absolutely beautiful.

I cant believe it because I didnt

I wasted a credit

Try this for deals :

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?i=stripbooks&bbn=3017941031&rh=n%3A341677031%2Cn%3A425595031%2Cn%3A425597031%2Cn%3A3017941031%2Cn%3A341689031%2Cn%3A590934&pfrddi=3017941031&pfrddm=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pfrddp=eb02e145-7646-4f3e-8c80-384ba53ea59e&pfrddr=4XGFCQ2M1H5B5BBPR2A3&pfrdds=merchandised-search-13&pfrddt=101&qid=1701473016&ref=srpgg_1

Oh can I please join? I'm on book 74 of 2023.
Currently reading Karin Slaughter - Cop Town.

My preferred genre is thriller/police mystery - love Tess Gerritsen, Harlan Coben, Karin Slaughter, Lee Child, PJ Tracy, but dip in and out of bestseller recommended lists and business books.

On my TBR pile is:
Karen Slaughter - Unseen
Gabrielle Zevin - Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow
Harriet Evan's - The Stargazers
Elderly Lloyd - The Club
Simon Kernick - Deadline

Have got 3 Robert Galbraiths delivering shortly as well.

Everyone's Welcome Here.

The Gabrielle Zevin is really good @Strokethefurrywall lots of us have praised it. Bump it up.

All tastes valid, though we do poke fun at Cosy Cottage type things!

What are cosy cottage type reads? Throw some authors at me (so I know to avoid them!) I'm not in the UK (although British) so most of my books are airport buys or when I'm back in Uk and can raid Waterstones!

The only writer I've read one of and then immediately ditched was Colleen Hoover.

Will definitely move up Gabrielle Zevin, will start that when I finish Cop Town 👍🏼

Cosy cottage reads are things called The Little Cosy Cupcake Cafe By The Sea.

Posted too soon! I don’t mind decent chicklit (like Marian Keyes) but I do steer clear of books with that kind of title as I know they’re going to be too twee and will irritate me.

The only Colleen Hoover book I have read is Verity @Strokethefurrywall and I couldn't get on with it (although it's got 5 stars on Amazon and Goodreads) and now avoid her books. I struggled with the premise (the Verity 'situation' was unbelievable and a bit silly) and found the ending lame. I also couldn't understand how the main character after finding a secret juicy autobiography (of someone she is actually living with!) would pootle through it chapter by chapter - human nature would have her whipping through it and skipping ahead looking for the juicy bits!

Nothing working for me on Kindle Monthly Deal - giving it up as a bad job! Not like I don't have a billion unread books.
I did buy Uncanny yesterday. Currently addicted to that podcast

I got Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The World for 99p in the monthly deals. It’s 1200+ pages so definitely one for Kindle, and a nice reading project for Christmas!

I found the kindle deals eventually by clicking on one of the other list of deals and changing the filter to ‘all discounts’. I only bought *The Midwych Cuckoos’ as I saw Jen Campbell review it recently and it sounded great.

31..The Princeling by Cynthia Harrod Eagles. Book 3 in the Morland Dynasty and I’m still having such a nice time. We are now in the Elizabethan era and whilst religion threatens to divide the family their love of horses keeps them together. Every time I worry that I can’t keep up with the family tree our generous author brings forth a pox to wipe out enough pesky secondaries to keep things simple.

Colleen Hoover is probably the worst author I remember reading. I worry for the booktok generation that consider this ‘sexy’ literature.

I do buy some "cosy cottage" type books, as defined above, though usually they're by writers some of whose books I've enjoyed before, for example Jenny Colgan, Milly Johnson and Jane Lovering have written some books with titles along those lines. There are also quite a few bookshop ones. There are also some books which have been retitled. I think often it's a mistake - there are some series which were originally published with more distinct titles and have been republished with coordinated and very formulaic titles - more difficult to know what you've read/bought and there are just too many books with absurdly similar titles.

I bought lots of silly sounding books that I may never read, and there are lots of better ones I already have. I was glad to find two books I've read from the library earlier in the year, but wanted my own copy. Jo Baker's The Midnight News is not particularly similar to her earlier books that I've read, including Longbourn and the one with Samuel Beckett as the main character; it's about a young woman trying to find a life independent from her posh family during the London Blitz. The Hero of This Book by Elizabeth McCracken is about a mother daughter relationship and love and loss, and is also mostly set in London rather than the US.

53 A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. According to Amazon I bought this is March 2014, so it has been sitting on my tbr pile for nearly 10 years! I think I found it daunting to get started because it is described as "epic", but in fact it is not a difficult read - although it is long and, at times, heart breaking. It is set in India, with the main part of the story taking place in 1975 (although the background bits about the characters' families go back to Independence in 1947). The main characters are Dina, a widow, her student paying guest Maneck, and two tailors working for her, Ishvar and his nephew Om. All four have suffered past tragedy, to varying degrees, but they come together as an unlikely foursome. Its a beautiful, amazing book about loss, and hope, and life. One of my top books of the year.

66 Reputation by Sarah Vaughan

Emma Webster, a new Labour MP, juggling single motherhood and piloting her revenge porn Bill through the Commons, spirals into disaster when she becomes entangled with a tabloid journalist and her daughter is driven to drastic action by bullying at school. I much preferred the second half of this book to the first, which was just a bit too grim. It was a competent thriller, but it was trying to be more and I'm not quite sure it got there. Of her three thrillers, I think Little Disasters is by far the best, and this isn't as good as An Anatomy of a Scandal.

This and as @elkiedee said absurd titles

Anyone can and should read whatever they want

It's basically a marketing trend that I hate "twee fiction for ladies" it's so patronising

I'm always on the hunt for the next awful title
there was one about a Boat Shed that wasn't even grammatically correct

Nothing at all to do with books, but I thought that if anybody was going to appreciate my new Christmas tree fairy it would be you lovely lot! Isn’t she a beauty?!