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?

😁😁😁

Thanks Remus, must have taken you hours to pull that list together!

Not meaning to diss Remus's excellent summary...

But how about a separate thread to post our final 2023 lists, or just our bolds for those who don't do lists, or to completely ignore for those who hate lists?

Here it is for anyone who's interested...
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/4957623-50-books-challenge-2023-round-up

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie , that's hilarious. All hail to your wit 😂

@Tarahumara , thanks for setting up the round up thread, that's a great idea. I love reading people's end-of-year lists, and it would be brilliant to see them all in one place.

Brilliant @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

I'd thoroughly recommend All The Little Bird Hearts from the deals today. The narrator has a really strong voice, and for me exposes how cliched a lot of the ND narrators in other books are.

I spent an hour with A Gentleman On Moscow this morning and it's drawing me in. Interesting that it's not as universally loved as I remember. With irritating timing, a got a text from the library reminding me it's due back Saturday and that I can't renew as someone else wants it. So I will be nose deep in the book for the next three days!

Small Things Like These is 99p today and I am v much looking forward to reading this after my Saturday deadline!

81: Went to London, Took the Dog - Nina Stibbe

I know southeast wasn’t very impressed with this but having now finished it, I have to go with an overall thumbs up rather than a thumbs down. It’s a diary of Stibbe's year in London, lodging in writer Deborah ('Debby') Moggach's house, while she (NS) grapples with the imminent dissolution of her long marriage. Yes, it’s far too long; yes, it’s full of often-trivial detail; yes, I could have done with considerably less about incontinence….but it did make me laugh, a lot (which also made it much more relatable, for me, than the Alan Rickman diaries) . It did help that I’m very curious about the everyday lives of the writers she knows, all of whom I've also heard of (again, in contrast to the Rickman diaries) and pleased to discover that they’re mostly just as banal as my own. I also like NS's writing generally so I think if you're the same, you'll probably get on with this book. If not - best to avoid.

82: Snap - Belinda Bauer

Re-read for book club. Jack, Joy and toddler Merry are left in the broken-down family car on the motorway while their heavily-pregnant mum goes to summon help from the emergency phone…but she doesn’t come back. From this starting-point Bauer spins a tale that's undeniably clever and a page-turner, but I thought strained credulity at several points, and often seemed like at least two books clamped together - one comic and the other a standard crime narrative. Also, astonishingly to me, it was long-listed for the Booker in the year that Milkman won (and Normal People was also in the running). Baffling for an averagely OK genre novel.

Just seen that Kate Atkinson has a new Jackson Brodie out next year. I’ve not liked her recent stuff but I do like the JB books (despite the mega coincidences).

Love them but a bit nervous here, Big Sky wasn't great

Glad to have been of service. I can't tell you how proud I am to have been called, 'A card' - what a wonderful word that is (looks up its etymology immediately).

@Terpsichore when I read Snap I checked numerous times that it really had been Booker long listed. I couldn't believe that such an average book could be nominated.

I've fallen a bit behind on this thread.
I've had a bad cold for weeks that just won't go, so I want to caveat that all my poor reviews might be more due to my head being too foggy to appreciate the books properly than any fault with them.

96. The Hiding Place by Amanda Mason
    Nell returns to her hometown with her husband and troubled step daughter for a family party, but their holiday rental is strangely uninviting, the rather intense neighbour claims to be an old school friend of Nell's and mysterious things start to happen.
    A not particularly scary ghost story that's a bit messy with viewpoints changing all over the place.

97. Ghostbird by Carol Lovekin
    Fourteen year old Cadi is being raised by her emotionally distant mother and witchy aunt. Her father and sister both died before she was born and nobody talks about them.
    I loved this, it's magical and beautifully written, and draws on Welsh mythology. A haunting coming of age story.

98. Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan
    Xingyin leaves her home on the moon determined to find a way to free her mother who is imprisoned there.
    YA fantasy romance based on Chinese mythology. The pacing feels very rushed, despite the book being over 500 pages long, which makes the story feel very lacking in depth and tension. It should have been magical and exciting but was just very dull.

99. The Bomber Mafia by Malcolm Gladwell
    The development of precision bombing, and bombing in WW2, particularly the bombing of Japan.
    Nothing wrong with the book really, I just didn't find the subject very interesting and didn't really get into it.

100. Old Magic by Marianne Curley
     When new boy Jarrod arrives in the classroom Kate can tell there's something different about him. When she realises that he's magically both cursed and gifted she needs to convince him to travel in time with her to undo what went wrong in his ancestors' past.
     Starts off well, I liked the small town atmosphere, but I started to lose interest at the time travel that takes us to a different place.

101. Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura trans Philip Gabriel
     School refuser Kokoro enters a magic castle through her bedroom mirror where she meets six other teenagers and a girl in a wolf mask sets them the task of finding a key that will grant one of them a wish.
     A fantasy exploring mental health issues and friendship. It's quite slow moving but I liked how it came together at the end.

102. The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
     Ada is the daughter of a Turkish Cypriot woman and a Greek Cypriot man. Raised in London she has little knowledge of her parents' past and is mourning the death of her mother. When her aunt comes to stay she begins to learn about the history of Cyprus and her family.
     The story is partly narrated by a fig tree, which I liked, but I think Shafak's writing style means that a glossy sheen is put on Cyprus's history.

103. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
     I never read this as a child because I didn't like the TV series, but so many people seem to love it I thought I should see what I was missing.
     There's lots of nice description and it's a good whimsical read, quite cosy in a buttered toast by the fireside kind of eat.

104. Now You See Her by Heidi Perks
     Charlotte loses her best friend, Harriet's four year old daughter at a school fete. As days go by and there's no sign of her Charlotte's friends fall away from her, and how well does she really know Harriet and her husband?
     Run of the mill psychological thriller. It was an easy, quick read but unsatisfactory.

70% through Winchelsea and I still hate it. And now the narrator has changed, I feel that I might hate it even more. Will slog through.

Sorry Remus if I led you into buying this - I think we have quite different tastes ....

I think I perhaps liked it at the time in part because I'd read another book previously which I felt sanitised / romanticised smuggling too much, & preferred the darker tone of Winchelsea.

Same.

It's in my worst of the year alongside only 2 others.

@ABookWyrm that sounds really rubbish. Hope you’re on the mend.

No need to apologise!

My problem is that I'm right there for the darker tone, but I think the writing is just really dull. All sorts of supposedly exciting, dangerous and sexy things are supposed to be happening, but the writing is just leaving me cold.

I’m so far behind with the thread, a few reviews and then will catch up.

Festergrimm Thomas Taylor
Read to DS3 who is almost 13, hates reading but will let me read him this series of Eerie-on-Sea adventures.

Hello Beautiful Ann Neopolitano
Book club read. Whilst reading I was very into this and quite liked it, but now I’m struggling to remember very much except the rather exquisite cover. It’s about 4 sisters, well 2 really, the others are bit parts and mental health and forgiveness and love. I still liked it as a 3 star read, but just not that memorable.

Passing Nella Larson
Really loved this. It felt unique and different. It’s about Irene who bumps into an old friend Clare who is living as a white woman. The whole book is about race, but it feels very light and nuanced. Irene hates Clare being around as she messes with the equilibrium, but also there is the worry that Clare’s extremely racist husband will discover she is black. I’ve just thought more and more about this book since I finished. I thought it was a ‘I enjoyed it 3’ but I think it’s a 4 star. 🌟

I have got an extraordinary amount of books on the go. If I manage to finish the ones that I am prioritising before the new year I think I will hit 40.

Winchelsea by Alex Preston
I thought this was really terrible, I’m afraid. I finished it, but skimmed much of the final quarter.

94. Influence Empire by Lulu Yilun Chen Interesting book about the Chinese internet giant Tencent, which started out with a text message linked service, became a highly successful games company, produced the ubiquitous in China messaging-plus app WeChat & has since invested / diversified into a whole range of other internet related businesses. There's also some discussion of the wider environment, privacy / security (ie - there is no privacy, but WeChat is so convenient, people will use it regardless), and the impact of the recent Chinese government moves to limit the power of the big internet companies as well as US / China relations.

@StColumbofNavron there's a beautiful film adaptation of Passing, filmed in B&W and available on Netflix.

A couple of weeks ago noodlezoodle recommended

High: A Journey Across the Himalayas Through Pakistan, India, Bhutan, Nepal and China by Erika Fatland.

It was 12.99 then and yesterday dropped to 2.99.

Does Amazon read this thread?

83 The Last Dance by Mark Billingham

This was odd. So odd I’m going to have to revisit earlier Tom Thorne books by this author as surely he was never this bad?

Detective Declan Miller investigates the double murder of a gangster’s son and a seemingly ordinary bloke in a seedy Blackpool hotel. He is allowed to do this despite it only being 6 weeks since his Detective wife was shot and the investigations into the latter are moving glacially slowly. He has a new partner who he nicknames ‘Posh Gravy’ because her surname is Xiu. He has a support group of friends who he ballroom dances with every week - pleasantly quirky except they seem to be cardboard cut-outs and are even more lightly drawn than the rest of the characters.
Miller cracks jokes relentlessly and that gets tedious pretty fast. He also talks at length to his dead wife a la Charlie Parker. He also keeps rats and has a strange relationship with a homeless young woman who you find out looks a bit like his dead wife, so that’s either the Creepy Klaxon or a badly signposted Revelation that she had a daughter from a previous relationship (I found it difficult to care tbh).
The end is laughable and the lead in to the second of the series might as well have flashing lights and a loudhailer to announce it. I’m not sure I’ll bother and certainly not for more than 99p.

He’s thrown every cliche at this book and it’s a bit shit as a result. Maybe they’ll make a TV series out of it, in which case they’ll find it difficult to find those ‘cliffs’ Miller mentions walking along with his wife in Blackpool to film on, because I’m not sure he’s ever been to Blackpool for any length of time and there aren’t any cliffs.

Oh dear, @BoldFearlessGirl - I told DH there was a new Mark Billingham series after reading about it on here and his eyes lit up; he enjoys the Thorne novels although tbh I thought they’d fallen off a cliff (maybe one of those surprising ones near Blackpool?) quite badly in recent years. That sounds pretty dire.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie love that.

37 Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
It's such a pleasure, a relief, after a year of finding reading to be a slog, to step into a book and be swept away. I have some problems with this book - I wonder if it was originally a screenplay, or even a game proposal or something, because the dialogue is infinitely better than the non-dialogue writing. But it would be nitpicking to say that (she says, picking nits). It's a lovely and emotionally rich story about work and friendship, that makes a world that I don't know and didn't care about more real and understandable. I still don't care about that world now, at all. But I care in a way about these people.