50 books challenge - 2023 round up

[Tarahumara]

Hello 50 bookers! Here's a separate thread to gather together our top recommendations from the year. Please post your final lists, or just your bolds if you prefer. I'll come back later with mine...

While it's interesting to see where our choices overlap, I also like seeing people's idiosyncratic tastes in books, including the books that might only be mentioned by a single person during the year, picked up through passion or happenstance.

My bolds for the year so far:

General/genre fiction:
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin
One By One - Ruth Ware
The Sentence is Death - Anthony Horowitz
The Plant Hunter - TL Mogford
It's Not Me, It's You - Mhairi McFarlane
The Darkness Knows - Arnaldur Indridason
You Had Me At Hello - Mhairi McFarlane

Classics (all new to me except P&P):
Valley of the Dolls - Jacqueline Susann
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Excellent Women - Barbara Pym
The Hound of the Baskervilles - Arthur Conan Doyle
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - Anne Brontë

Two nonfiction books which I've bolded for entirely different reasons:
The Palace Papers - Tina Brown
War Doctor - David Nott

My three absolute favourites were Tomorrow* *x3 (everyone's read it), War Doctor (everyone should read it) and The Plant Hunter (I wish everyone would read it - they probably won't but I will continue to bang on about it because it's so much fun).

I only have two highlights of my reading year, sadly:

Really Good, Actually - Monica Heisey
A Heart That Works - Rob Delaney

Placemarking, back later. Great round ups!

Placemarking for the end of the year

I've enjoyed everything I read this year except for one book (see below) and it's challenging to come up with the best ones, but here they are...

*House of Glass: Hadley Freeman.
*Foster: Claire Keegan.
*Someone at a Distance: Dorothy Whipple.
*Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day: Winifred Watson.
*Trespasses: Louise Kennedy.
*One Fine Day: Mollie Panter-Downes.
*Anna Karenina: Leo Tolstoy.
*Demon Copperhead: Barbara Kingsolver.
*Chess Story: Stefan Zweig.
*The Last September: Elizabeth Bowen.
*Madame Bovary: Gustave Flaubert.
*The Bee Sting: Paul Murray.

And not recommended;

The Singularities : John Banville.

My bolds are:
A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe
All the beauty in the world by Patrick Bringley
Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Yagisawa, Satoshi
Remainders of the Day: More Diaries from The Bookshop, Wigtown by Shaun Bythell
The sense of an ending by Julian Barnes

I've read 37 books so far. Still hoping to get to at least 40

I've done appallingly bad this year - only 22 books and will likely end on 24. Life has got in the way! Still, had a number of 5 star reads, in particular non fiction this year (left notes for the less well known ones)

Fiction
His Bloody Project - Graeme Macrae Burnett (Atmospheric historical novel set on the Scottish Highlands involving a triple murder)
Lord of the Flies - William Golding (haven't read this since school at loved it!)

Non Fiction
Your Child is Not Broken - Heidi Mavir (About supporting her autistic child)
A Heart That Works - Rob Delaney
Our Daily Bread - Father Alex Frost (Lovely guy who went from being a Argos store manager to C of E priest in Burnley - a very deprived community in Lancashire)
Empire of Pain - Patrick Radden Keefe
House of Glass - Hadley Freeman

I would stick my neck out at say favourite fiction and non fiction of the year are:

His Bloody Project - Graeme Macrae Burnett
House of Glass - Hadley Freeman

I also need some time to look through and process my bolds, but love this thread already.

I can tell you that my worst book of the year, indeed possibly my life was:

My Year of Rest and Relaxtion,
Otessa Moshfegh

I have a physical reaction to this book, which maybe means it was ‘good’ but I hated it and continue to hate it.

I DNFd that @StColumbofNavron

Self pitying nonsense

Instead of cleaning/catching up on my personal finances/sorting Christmas/all the other stuff on my to do list, I don't mind trying to produce some stats on bolds/stinkers for the New Year... unless anyone else has a burning desire to?

That's very good (and brave) of you to offer, RomanMum!

That would be interesting to see @RomanMum

Go For It @RomanMum

That would be great

@RomanMum thank you, I definitely have no inclination but would enjoy reading them.

Many thanks for the thread Tarahumara

My top reads this year have been non-fiction:

Gulag, a History by Anne Applebaum
Conversations with Stalin by Milovan Djilas
House of Glass by Hadley Freeman
Trans by Helen Joyce
The Long Pursuit by Richard Holmes

My top fiction (although only Claire Keegan scored as highly as my non-fiction choices):

So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Tresspasses by Louise Kennedy

Also, many thanks in advance RomanMum for offering to run the stats.

My best reads this year have all been fiction:

Warlight by Michael Ondaatje

Any Human Heart by William Boyd

A Boy and his Dog at the End of the World by C. A. Fletcher

The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Upgrade by Blake Crouch

Artemis by Andy Weir

Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Murder in the Fast Lane by Natasha Orme

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Some of these are listed on the worst reads of the year!

The two stand outs for me were:

The Sealwoman's Gift by Sally Magnusson

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

@Mothership4two funnily enough The Reading List was a DNF for me and I found Lessons in Chemistry a bit meh. But life would be dull if we all liked the same things.

I've seen them both on the worse reads of the year @RomanMum as well as the best! Both were book club reads. We had book club last week about The Binding which a few of us thought was meh (also felt uncomfortable about some of the male/female dynamics) and two other members absolutely loved it. I think it makes book club more interesting when we disagree!

I'm just going through mine. Still have a few books to read this year but in the interests of stats, my favourite books this year have been in reading order:

The Sentence - Louise Erdrich
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin
Children of Paradise - Camilla Grudova
Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies - Maddie Mortimer
Demon Copperhead - Barbara Kingsolver
Fire Rush - Jacqueline Crooks
Foster - Claire Keegan
In Memoriam - Alice Winn
All The Little Bird Hearts - Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow
Amy & Lan - Sadie Jones
Venomous Lumpsucker - Ned Beauman

That's 10% of my books read so seems like a good number!

Worst read was Whale by Cheon Myong-Kwan, which I'm still flabbergasted was short-listed for the International Booker.

Favourite Books

Hell Bent - Leigh Bardugo. More dark shenanigans in American academia.
A Sliver Of Darkness - CJ Tudor (short stories)
The Drift - CJ Tudor. Chopped up timeline, skillfully woven.
The Marriage Portrait - Maggie O’Farrell. Captivating reimagining of history.
The Full English- Stuart Maconie. Following the travels of JB Priestley.
Strong Female Character - Fern Brady. Bitingly honest autobiography.
Steeplechasing - Peter Ross. Churches and what they mean to those with faith and those without.
Cuddy - Benjamin Myers My boldest of all the bolds this year. How St Cuthbert did not stop travelling through hearts and minds even when laid to rest in Durham.
The Path Of Thorns - A.G Slatter. Fabulous folk tale, top of all the Swirly Covers for 23.
Kala - Colin Maguire. An old disappearance drags old friends back into its orbit.
Penance - Eliza Clark. Fiction with a True Crime costume on.
The Perfect Golden Circle - Ben Myers. A tribute to the countryside and folklore.
Ironopolis- Glen James Brown. Peg Powler stalks Middlesbrough.
Word Monkey - Christopher Fowler. His last book, detailing his cancer diagnosis but much, much more. Sadly missed.

Bilge List (not including DNFs)

A Chipshop In Poznan - Ben Aitken. Navel gazing, intermittently creepy.
The Whispering Muse - Laura Purcell. She’s phoning it in now.
The Social Distance Between Us - Darren McGarvey. Mostly a rehash of the tv programme he made, full of interesting avenues that don’t go anywhere.
Depraved New World - John Crace. Repetitive anger and scorn that failed to connect for me.

My top 10 for the year (in the order I read them, not order of preference):
Do Not Say We Have Nothing - Madeleine Thien
Run Towards the Danger - Sarah Polley
Lincoln in the Bardo - George Saunders
Trespasses - Louise Kennedy
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin
Cloud Cuckoo Land - Anthony Doerr
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
The Institute - Stephen King
Demon Copperhead - Barbara Kingsolver
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

Only one non-fiction this year (the Sarah Polley) - unusual for me.

It's been a good reading year for me overall - several other enjoyable books that didn't quite make the list above, and I can't think of any absolute stinkers. Currently reading The Golden Notebook, but it's quite long and I don't seem to have much reading time at the moment, so I'm making slow progress.

I really liked The Reading List. I thought it dealt with a lot with a sensitive, light touch. Was it a little twee in parts, yes, but overall I liked the characters, they were very believable and I liked the friendships and the frustrations.

45 for me this year. So close, but didn't make the 50. Thought i might squeeze another one in, but dont think i will now Did read a novel written in the 19th century though, which was a first for me outside of school (don't think il'll be repeating it any time soon though :-) ).

Best bolds

1. Passing Nella Larsen

Published in 1929 a short & thought provoking novel about a woman who meets an old friend who is now passing as white.

16. The Cut Out Girl Bart Van Es Non-fiction about the author's family fostering a jewish girl and hiding her in plain sight in occupied Holland. I dont read a lot of nonfiction, but would really recommend this.

23 Lives Like Mine Eva Verde
Family drama set in post brexit Britain. Didnt think it would be for me, but it grew on me.

33. Small Pleasures Clare Chambers Journalist on a local paper investigates a women's claim that she had a virgin birth. Sounds ridiculous, but one of the most affecting novels I've read recently. People living thwarted lives trying to grab small chances of happiness.

& the stinkers

One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow, Olivia Hawker
Woo nonsense set on the American frontier. I thought it would be like The Homesman. It wasn't.

7.The Four Winds, Kristin Hannah
Lengthy & uninteresting historical fiction set in the depression. Cant remember quite why I hated it - only that I did.

22. The Schoolhouse Sophie Ward Incredibly boring unthrilling thriller.