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?

Some quick, unexceptional recent reads...

71. Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano. Family saga type book about four American-Italian sisters starting in the 80s. Eldest Julia marries basketball player William and starts planning their lives together, but in a crisis he turns to the younger sister Sylvie for support, causing shockwaves in the family that run through the generations. This is a decent read if you like books about sisters and complicated families, which I do, but it's not an outstanding example of the genre. It is very loving and forgiving, but almost too much I thought - some of the characters' actions were bafflingly cruel yet overlooked in the end.

72. The Raging Storm by Ann Cleeves. Third in her series about detective Matthew Venn, set in Devon. This time the mystery centres on a celebrity who turns up in an isolated coastal village, then is found murdered, floating in an abandoned boat. It's a solid detective story, as you'd expect, but I didn't like it as much as the first two. I particularly enjoyed the Devon she portrayed, full of arts centres and beach cafes and glass blowing workshops, and that culture was all a bit absent here.

Oh I didn't know there was a third Devon book @GrannieMainland . I'll look out for it. I've seen the Hello Beautiful book advertised a lot, but your review isn't making me want to try it.

@PersisFord interested to see what you make of Woman, Eating. I think lots of folk like it, it just wasn't for me.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit In Memoriam is based on Marlborough and I think one of the characters is loosely based on Siegfried Sassoon who went there. I thought it was very good, although a bit of an upper class look at the first world war.

@BaruFisher I always found The Brothers Kramonov a bit impenetrable. The Idiot and Crime and Punishment are far more readable IMO.

Happy birthday @splothersdog . Enjoy reading!

I've just started reading Study of Obedience by Sarah Bernstein after saying I was done with Booker books. It is very odd and stylised. I'm not sure if I'll finish it.

@GrannieMainland I know exactly what you mean - one of my favourite things about Ann Cleeves books is the atmosphere and that one definitely fell short. I think it's why I like the Shetland ones the best even though I dont really get the Jimmy Perez love!!

@PersisFord I'd like to try the Shetland ones, they're on my kindle wish list waiting for a price drop.

I'm very keen to read In Memorium though it may be a bit too sad for me to handle right now.

Thank you for the birthday wishes x

Happy birthday @splothersdog 🎈
Happy reading!

Happy birthday @splothersdog.
I'm off to meet a friend who suggested we start in a bookshop. I don't need more books, I can't read more books than I own in the next five years and yet...have concluded buying books is a different hobby to reading books and both are good. Plus reading books is free so that makes the buying books cheaper, as each is only 50% of the total cost averaged out.

Pepe

Thank you @PepeLePew

Have just started and abandoned the Alan Rickmansworth Diaries which I feel a bit disloyal about as I loved Rickman. But these were clearly never meant for publication. Not much more than a list of people he met for lunch.

@PersisFord which book can you recommend for somebody that is in pain?

37 Book lovers - Emily Henry
Not sure I'll read any more by this author but it was a decent, gentle romance!

Probably a bit late but happy birthday to @splothersdog. I have a chunk of money I’ve amassed on a cashback site (always buy my essential train tickets etc on it, reasoning that every little helps etc), so I’m going to draw it all out today and spend it on a book token gift card, which itself pays cashback.

(The convo has moved on re Bournville but I have it too and am planning to get round to it. I went there once to do some work and was charmed by it. It was Christmas and the carillon was being played. It all seemed slightly bonkers, but, like all such English garden cities, in a benevolently good way)

The Bournville Christmas Eve carols are one of my favourite (bonkers) Christmas traditions.

I really liked Bournville (the book).

Someone at book club said exactly the same Splotherdog. Because of this my copy is still sitting in the bookshelf unread - I feel a bit guilty as someone bought me the hardback for Christmas when it first came out. I loved him too! Not sure he would have been happy that his diaries have been published 'as is'?

46 The Travels of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson: Captured by Pirates in 1627 by Ólafur Egilsson

I read this after reading The Sealwoman's Gift by Sally Magnusson which was based mainly on it. It is the journal of an Icelandic religious leader during the time he and his family were kidnapped into slavery along with about 400 others and taken to present day Algeria and the few years after when he was allowed to leave to ask for a ransom for the captives and travelled up Europe for an audience with the King of Denmark-Norway and then made his way home. It also includes several letters from the time. Although it is written by a 17th Century reverend in his sixties (elderly for the time) it is surprisingly readable. Many of his comments viewing the world outside his homeland are insightful. He was a rational man trying to put the momentous events that occurred to him, his family and his fellow islanders into a religious and meaningful context and his belief in his God. Human beings are shown at their worst, but there is kindness too.

70: So Shall You Reap - Donna Leon

Commissario Brunetti lives on in the 32nd (!) of this long-running series, but whether he should is a question that readers have been asking for several books now.

Leon has reached the point where all the familiar characters are boiled down to their absolute essences - Brunetti reads Greek classics and wears cashmere sweaters, spends aeons of time in deep pondering of the eternal verities of human existence while drinking caffè in his local bar, and does some light detective work. His wife Paola cooks delicious food in the intervals between the burden of teaching three classes a week at the local university. Signorina Elettra is able to crack any locked computer and hack into any security system from the Pentagon down while wearing chic Italian silks and ordering vast quantities of fresh flowers 'for the office' on expenses. At some point in this book, another of the long-standing characters is revealed to be gay, but the subject peters out and is never mentioned again. Meanwhile, a murder happens, but in a very low-key way, and the outcome is predictably inconclusive.

I keep reading these, but should I? That’s the question…..I fear that book number 33 is almost certainly imminent.

86 Lightning Strike by William Kent Krueger
Having read and loved This Tender Land by the same author earlier this year I snapped this up when it was 99p last month. It’s actually book 18 in the series but as it’s a prequel I thought I’d give it a try and I’m glad I did.

Twelve year old Cork O’Connor lives with his family in a small town in Minnesota which in 1963 is simmering with racial tension between the majority white population and the Ojibwe that live on the nearby reservation. When Cork finds the body of his friend and mentor in an apparent suicide his father, the police sheriff, investigates what appears to be an open and shut case. However it’s not long before old prejudices surface and trust between the two communities reach an all time low.

It’s a coming of age story as Cork loses his innocence during this hot summer and also about the relationship between father and son. It also gives a shocking insight into how the US treat those living on reservations, forcing their children into boarding schools, scattering the population around the country to break up communities and forcing them to live in poverty. I’ll definitely be looking out for other books in the series.

@Terpsichore
Love live Brunetti.
I also adore Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano series. Yes, every novel starts in the same way and there is a huge amount of description of Montalbano's meals and swimming habits but I like that.

@Gingerwarthog I've faithfully read all 32 of the Brunetti books but I must admit I’m flagging a bit now. There comes a point where the law of diminishing returns applies, I think. Though it’s interesting to see how a writer's approach to a familiar character changes over time. Leon just isn’t that interested in the crime-solving aspect of detective fiction any more, and she devotes a lot of time to describing things like Brunetti's choice of jacket for the day, or how he moves his arm when he picks up his cup of caffè, in minute detail. I’m a big fan of slow fiction but there are limits!

@Terpsichore
It must be me, getting older. I like the minutiae of the lives of favourite characters.

I have the house to myself this weekend and nothing on so have been enjoying some binge reading.

124 Martyr by Anthony Ryan
The continuation to The Pariah which I read earlier this year. Alwyn Scribe tells the story of his life as a follower of the Risen Martyr. Gritty and full of battle, betrayal and an unreliable narrator. I’m really enjoying this fantasy world. Ryan wrote an amazing debut years ago Blood Song but fumbled the follow up novels so I wasn’t sure how this one would go but I enjoyed it immensely. A great wind down after the Brothers K! I’m looking forward to book 3 but will wait for it to come out in paperback/ kindle deal.

125 Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda
The first of my Halloween reads. This has been much reviewed on here. The coming of age story of a young artist and half vampire who is struggling with what direction to take in life. I enjoyed this short read but wasn’t bowled over by it. It does delve into a number of interesting themes including race, eating disorders and mother-daughter relationships. The descriptions of food she couldn’t eat made me uncomfortable at times as sometimes they veered into a pro-ana vibe and I felt it left some aspects dangling at the end. That said it was diverting and thought provoking.

Educated by Tara Westhover

I usually avoid non-fiction, autobiographies and anything with child abuse LIKE THE PLAGUE so not quite sure how someone in my family thought this was an ideal birthday gift. However....I did enjoy it. I like her analytic writing style, and the love that she has for her parents and that they have for her comes across clearly. I was pleased to get to the end of it though!

Have given the Rickman another chance...

Finished Madly, Deeply - Alan Rickman's diaries
Holding my hands up to say I skim read them. Some patches of humour but mostly deeply unsatisfying. As said before not clearly meant for publication, lots and lots of eating out, lists of famous acquaintances with very very little context. Also a lot of funerals, deaths and memorial services.
There is however as sense of a deeply caring and genuine man who was fiercely loyal and dedicated to his art.