50 Books Challenge 2023 Part Ten

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the tenth and final thread of the 50 Books Challenge for this year.

The challenge was to read fifty books (or more!) in 2023, though reading fifty wasn'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, eighth one here and the ninth one here

How have you got on this year?

61 All Our Hidden Gifts - Caroline O’Donoghue I think this must have been recommended on here, as I would never have chosen it off my own bat. It’s a YA novel set in Ireland, involving tarot, magic and quite a lot of stuff about gender identity and sexuality…all adding up to an enjoyable story. Lots of totally unbelievable stuff about spells and so on, but fun (although I didn’t like the suicide references and it probably needs a trigger warning for that). The ending was fine but it’s clearly set up for a sequel - which I would probably read.

Fully agree with comments about The Bean Trees. I think I have the sequel somewhere in my TBR pile - you've reminded me to bump it up the list!

I finished the last few stories in my Valancourt Book of Christmas Ghost Stories, many of which were not specifically Christmassy but were suitably ghostly.

They were mainly very well written and entertaining chillers. I wasn't sure about the wisdom of including two overtly racist stories (one even warns in advance of its racial slur) - of its time, sure, but there are plenty of other stories out there and neither of these two were fine enough to merit their inclusion really.

A good read overall, though- and , unusually for these story collections, I hadn't read any before.

The Temple of Fortuna - Elodie Harper
Third in the Wolf Den trilogy (Pretty Woman in Pompeii).
Amara is now a powerful courtesan in Rome in the orbit of Emperors, but finds herself back in Pompeii during the eruption of Vesuvius and has difficult choices to make.

Enjoyable fluff. The first is the best, but this rounds the trilogy off nicely.

Catching up on a few reviews before I hopefully finish my 150th book!

I mentioned that I had read a lot of rom-coms when I was ill. I can’t remember much about them but not sure if that is a reflection on the books or the fact I felt like crap.

145. The Mistletoe Pact by Jo Lovett

Not good. Man cannot commit and blames it all on his Daddy. Oh, and there’s an accidental drunken marriage.

146. Unexpectedly Mine by Erin Hawkins

Looked like a rom-com. Sounded like a rom-com. Was, in fact, smut. I’m so embarrassed that I actually finished it. 😳

147. Accidentally Ours by Erin Hawkins

I have no excuse at all for why I read this one. The first chapter was included in the previous book and I wanted to know what happened. Spoiler: Smut. And icky smut at that.

148. The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster

I needed a bit of a palate cleanser after the previous books, so picked up this Jacobean revenge play that I haven’t read since A Levels. For some reason I took it into my mind to speak all the parts out loud, like some kind of thwarted thespian. It’s amazing how much I remembered and I really enjoyed this. I might have to perform more plays to myself!

149. Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston

This is the story of the very last slave brought to America - Cudjo Lewis. It was very slight but I found this really interesting, especially as the focus was most on his life in Africa and his life after slavery.

@MamaNewtNewt I am laughing to myself at your description of reading two smutty books and needing to cleanse by reading a Jacobean revenge play 🤣🤣 do you live with family? What did they think of reading to yourself out loud? 😁

Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford

This is set in an American city in the 1920s, but in an alternate reality where the Aztecs still hold a lot of power. One winter night, two policemen find a body - clearly murder but who did it and why?

I had mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, the descriptions of the city Cahokia are brilliant - I had a really good picture in my head of the city and its speakeasies.

However the story itself I found a bit confusing - the author uses three similar terms to refer to different groups of people and I could never remember which was which. I’m still not completely sure of the reasons why the man was murdered.

It is well written though and I can see others will love this.

Murder At Holly House by Denzil Meyrick

Another winter murder, this time set in 1952 and told from the investigating policeman’s point of view. Despite the title and the Christmassy looking cover, this isn’t at all Christmassy - it’s set in December but that’s it. This started well but the last quarter got rather silly and unbelievable.

Aunt Sass - Christmas Stories by P L Travers

Another book pretending to be Christmassy when it isn’t! These were stories that P L Travers wrote as Christmas presents for others, but the stories themselves don’t feature Christmas except the last one right at the very end. Interesting to see where some of the inspiration for Mary Poppins came from but I didn’t really like the other two stories at all - very much of their time and not in a good way.

@MamaNewtNewt hilarious!

@MamaNewtNewt wins the prize for eclectic reading there. Who will be inspired by the smut and who by the Jacobean tragedy?

I'm glad my smut reading has caused some merriment 😊 Yeah I live with family. DH fortunately didn't hear me performing The Duchess of Malfi but DD did and wanted to know what I was "jibbering on about". Wait until she hears me have a go at Shakespeare!

The Children of Green Knowe by Lucy M Boston

I loved this book as a child (and the BBC series) and it was lovely to revisit and enjoy all the Christmassy scenes. It's low fantasy (just a little bit of timeslip) and a gentler read than those other classic children's Christmas novels but all the better for it. Delightful.

If I have time (which is looking less and less likely) I might try to read The Box of Delights again. I tried to read it last December but just couldn't get into it and gave up after about 30 pages.

The Christmas Appeal by Janice Hallett A return to the setting of Hallett’s first book, The Appeal, with the same format of a dossier of evidence. I’d forgotten the details of the earlier plot but that didn’t much matter. This is shorter and funnier than her other books with some genuine laugh out loud moments. I didn’t like the way the food bank was referred to, and found it dragged a little in the middle, but overall an enjoyable and satisfying read to curl up with.

I snorted my tea at that @MamaNewtNewt but I like your style and may give it a try myself.

The Secret History of Christmas - Bill Bryson A short read on Audible. It was ok, I’m a bigger lover of his writing than I am of his voice and there wasn’t much new in it.

A Child’s Christmas in Wales - Dylan Thomas Another festive short which I love but again, I listened to him read it and I couldn’t get past his posh accent. What I wouldn’t give for a reading by Michael Sheen. It’s lovely and familiar to me though as I live locally so I can picture the places mentioned.

Footnotes and Tangents A Year of Tiny Reads

Someone was asking a while ago about recommendations for short reads for the end of the year, thought this list was interesting.

@JaninaDuszejko I was just thinking about The Children of Green Knowe this afternoon. I was trying to think of books to get DD for Christmas. She's not a big reader but we've been reading Charkotte Sometimes together and she's really enjoying it so though that might be a good one. I think I'm going to see I can send DH to town tomorrow to pick it up.

I love The Children of Green Knowe - one of my favourite Christmas books and I will be rereading it myself over the next couple of days!

Have hit 40!

The French Lieutenant’s Woman John Fowles
I really had no idea what to expect from this novel, but it wasn’t what I got. Set in 1867 but told by an omnipresent narrator from more modern times it’s a slightly mad, postmodern critique of Victorian mores. It touches on all the various issues of the time - hysteria, the Angel in the house, the fallen woman, the New Woman, new money and trade and much more. The narrator/writer intervenes in the text and it reminded me in style a little of Trollope with Vanity Fair. There are 3 endings and all are a little disappointing. Much like Vanity Fair, I didn’t love reading this, but I do think it will stay with me.

I’ve just been reminded that there is a production of The Duchess of Malfi somewhere on my radar. I also haven’t read any smut for a while.

I was wondering if you could combine Jacobean and smut? John Donne almost gets you there or Andrew Marvell but they're a tad later!

115. The Stranding - Kate Sawyer. This has been hanging around on my Kindle for couple of years and finally got round to it. It starts with an apocalyptic disaster (undefined but seems nuclear). Ruth is a Brit in New Zealand and knows that Europe has been destroyed. She's on a beach going to see a stranded whale where she meets Nik who is there to photograph the whale. Just after she meets Nik, the apocalypse arrives and they hide in the mouth of the whale which somehow saves them. This all happens in the first chapter. The rest of the book alternates between Ruth's final months in the UK leading to her trip to NZ including a troubled relationship and her friends and family, and the "after" of her and Nik's survival post apocalypse. I really liked this.

116. Really Good, Actually - Monica Heisey. My three words review would be "millennial naval-gazing". That's a bit harsh but I did find the self-pitying wallowing of this book which doesn't really have a plot a bit much. I don't think it helped that I read it while struggling with real physical pain! It's about Maggie who has just separated from her husband, who she's been in a relationship with her whole adult life, married to for just under 2 years. This is told in the first person and we see Maggie's life gradually fall apart as well as a lot of self destruction. It's billed as a comedy and there are funny parts, particularly the between chapters sections called things like Birthday Messages I Did Not Particularly Wish To Receive. For me, I felt like I've read similar a few times recently - Sorrow and Bliss ( which I much preferred), I'm a Fan ( cyber aspects with no plot), At The Table (millennial un self-aware breakdown). I think my 20 something self would have preferred this.

Well, there's plenty of smut in Shakespeare.

The Disappearance Boy by Neil Bartlett - recommended by the wonderful Gay's the Word in Bloomsbury, but I got this cheap on Kindle. It's a low burner and low on plot, but I mostly liked it, especially because it's set in the world of variety theatres, with the focus being on a magician's act. Quite a nice, slow, gentle read.

I DNFed Really Good Actually, Stokey - also felt I'd have enjoyed it a lot more as a 20something.
My most recent two are both almost but not quite bolds.

96. The Buyer by Liam Thomas
    Autobiography by an ex undercover cop, read on audible by the author. As I say, this was almost a bold - Thomas has had a fascinating life, ending up as an actor after leaving the police for medical reasons, & he writes well. I felt that the latter part could have done with some serious editing. It was probably necessary to him to write it, but the length of this part detracted from the power of the books as a whole.

97. The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
    I think this was a recommendation I picked up on here. Multigenerational family saga set in southern India. I absolutely loved the first part of this, set in the early 1900s & thought it might end up one of my top reads of the year.
    
    It was let down later on for me by some rather painful eye dialect (the most improbable Geordie accent imaginable), but mainly because I felt that slightly too many of the events happened in service of the author's message - over-egging the pudding just a bit too much.
    
    Despite that I zipped through the whole 700 pages, and I'd definitely recommend it as an enjoyable read.

I'm hanging on doing my top reads over on the other thread now because I'm part way through The Lost Rainforests of Britain by Guy Shrubsole, & I have a feeling it might be one of my favourites of the year. (I picked it up for 99p, but it's only £2.55 full price on Kindle if anyone wants a lovely nature read.)

The Disappearance Boy sounds good Remus

Definitely worth checking out if it’s still on offer.

It is and I've just bought it! Thanks :)