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?

1 Antarctica - Claire Keegan
2 The Winter Guest - W C Ryan
3 My name is monster - Katie Hale
4 Exercises in control - Annabel Banks
5 Triflers need not apply - Camilla Bruce
6 Adele - Leila Slimani
7 The Seawomen - Chloe Timms
8 I know what you have done - Dorothy Koomson
9 Stone blind - Natalie Haynes
10 The house of fortune - Jessie Burton**
11 Twelve moons - Caro Giles
12 Written in bone - Sue Black
13 Our missing hearts - Celeste Ng
14 Betty
15 The whispering muse - Laura Purcell
16 If I let you go - Charlotte Levin
17 One day I shall astonish the world - Nina Stivers
18 Demon Copperhead - Barbara Kingsolver
19 Tall tales and wee stories - Billy Connolly
20 Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
21 The woman on the island
22 Snowflake- Louise Nealon - Ann Cleeves
23 The madness of grief - Rev Richard Coles
24 We are all witches - Mairi Kidd
25 For thy great pain have mercy on my little pain - Victoria Mackenzie
26 Weyward - Emilia Hart
27 The Cloisters
28 The ink black heart
29 I’m sorry you feel that way- Rebecca Wait
30 Wandering souls - Cecile Pin
31 Glory - NoViolet Bulawayo
32 Black butterflies
33 Other women- Emma Flint
34 The dog of the north
35 I’m a fan
36 Love Marriage - Monica Ali
37 Unsheltered
38 These envoys of beauty
39 Fire rush
40 The dance tree
41 Pod
42 Children of Paradise
43 HappyHead
44 Homesick
45 The bandit queens
46 Cursed bread
47 The second sight of Zachary Cloudesley
48 I am not your Eve
49 Violets
50 The chosen^^
51 A burning
52 Shy
53 Our hideous progeny
54 Fray
55 The heart and the crown
56 Hello beautiful
57 At the table
58 Prize women
59 Drive your plough over the bones of the dead
60 Looking glass sound
61 The distance between us
62 Now we shall be entirely free
63 Violetta
64 Stronger
65 You can run
66 Free love
67 Little deaths
68 The revels
69 Illuminated
70 Actress
71 Death of a bookseller
72 Yours cheerfully
73 Mrs Porter calling
74 Grown ups
75 Crossing the lines
76 River sing me home
77 The witches of vardo
78 Ghost lover
79 Landlines
80 Waterland
81 A place of greater safety
82 In memoriam
83 Kala
84 Mudlarking
85 The path to peace
86 Yellow face
87 Journeys end
88 Pineapple street
89 Capote’s women
90 The naming of moths
91 Blood and sugar
92 My lovers lover
93 Walk the Blue fields

94 Notes on an execution
95 Without warning and only sometimes
96 The yellow wallpaper
97 The toll house
98 So late in the day
99 Kindred
100 Unwell women
101 Into the water
102 The figurine
103 Djinn Patrol on the purple line by Deepa Anappara
104 The Running Grave
105 The rewilding of Molly McFlynn
106 The shadowing
107 And so this is Christmas
108 Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
109 Madly deeply - Alan Rickman Diaries
110 The winter spirits
111 North woods
112 The rambling man
113 Normal rules don’t apply
114 Go as a river
115 Shakespeare- the man who pays the rent
116 Excellent women
117 Her fearful symmetry

List copied and pasted from my phone - so bolds likely not to work properly. Also I seem to have given up on adding authors but will make a better job of adding my bolds to the 'Bolds thread' before the end of the year.

Thanks for the new thread @Southeastdweller

Here's my list since the last one
92. The Sea Of Tranquility - Emily St John Mandel
93. She's a Killer - Kirsten Mcdougall
94. Romantic Comedy - Curtis Sittenfeld
95. Woman, Eating - Claire Kohda
96. Study For Obedience - Sarah Bernstein
97. In Her Nature - Rachel Hewitt
98. Dead Ground - M W Craven
99. Boy Parts - Eliza Clark
100. The Life To Come - Michelle De Kretser
101. If I Survive You - Jonathan Escoffery
102. The Rachel Incident - Caroline O'Donoghue
103. Trust - Hernan Diaz
104. Kindred - Octavia E Butler
105. The Other Side of Mrs Wood - Lucy Barker
106. Venemous Lumpsucker - Ned Beauman
107. The Half Moon - Mary Beth Keane
108. The Botanist - M W Craven
109. The Secret Of High Eldersham - Miles Burton
110. Lanny - Max Porter
111. Penance - Eliza Clark

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit what do you do if you don't read? I can't imagine stopping!

And latest review

112. Lucy By The Sea - Elizabeth Strout. I chose this as an antidote to Penance. A nice gentle novel. I don't think this is one of her best. I think someone else said, I prefer Olive Ketteridge to Lucy Barton. I find Lucy a bit wimpy and passive. This is set in the pandemic and is about Lucy and William leaving New York and going to live in Maine to escape the disease. I am also a bit over pandemic books. I didn't mind lockdown but it's quite boring to read about. Maybe it's too soon.

Thanks for the new thread Southeast. I'm saving my list for the roundup, although I doubt I'll make 50 this year - currently hovering around the 40 mark.

So far the Wild River kindle book is still stuck at 13.99 so our Amazon manouvres are yet to take effect

Haven’t caught up with posts for the past few days, but thanks for the new thread @Southeastdweller

Thanks for the new thread! I'll post my list at the end of the year too.

@Stokey I think it's me who has the strong preference for Olive Kitteridge over Lucy Barton - I'll read everything Elizabeth Strout writes, but Olive is just such a standout character and I find both the tragedy and humour in those books a lot more subtle.

@Stokey

Use that time for other hobbies or a good tv binge

So far this week The Curator (did buy it for 99p after all), Lowbridge and Here Comes The Fun have failed to grab me. So, that’s annoying.

Christmas Days - Jeanette Winterson.
Have had this for a couple of years. Collection of seasonal short stories and recipes.
Some stories great, some not. Overall enjoyable

Thanks for the new thread Southeast.

Recently finished Rizzio, thanks to whoever recommended it. It definitely left me wanting more though, as it's an area of history I'm lacking in knowledge of.

I've slowed right down on reading, part way through several things but nothing is really grabbing me. I treated myself to English Food on paper, but finding it quite disappointing tbh, though it has encouraged me to dig out my old copy of Dorothy Hartley's Food in England for a browse.
Hopefully my haul from the library today should improve matters & give me some good Christmas reading (I realise I'm several years behind everyone else on many of these!).

Mistletoe Malice by Kathleen Farrell

I had high hopes for this due to the blurb saying it was for fans of Barbara Pym, Nancy Mitford etc but unfortunately they weren’t met. It wasn’t terrible, just not as good as I hoped. A group of family members gathers for Christmas, all overseen by widowed Rachel who watches all the arguments and fallouts. Fine, but not very Christmassy and not very funny.

Oh Miriam! Stories From an Extraordinary Life by Miriam Margolyes

I’m not particularly a fan of hers but this was on the daily deal a couple of weeks ago and I recall people on here enjoying her first book, so thought I would give it a go. I enjoyed it, she writes well and it’s funny and interesting. She doesn’t hold back on the la finger or fart stories though so not one for the easily offended!

DNF a couple of others. Uncrowned by Ashley Mantle, about people who would have been monarch if they hadn’t died early/been female/been overthrown etc. Actually not a bad book at all but just wrong timing for me as I want to get into my Christmas reading. Might come back to this another time. The other was Watching the English by Kate Fox - started well but then started to feel a bit repetitive and I still had loads left to go and just decided I couldn’t be bothered.

Nice haul @Sadik

@FortunaMajor It might have been me. I read Rizzio recently and just loved it. I can't believe how much she managed to achieve in such a short book.

60. A Gentleman In Moscow by Amor Towles

I finished this yesterday and returned to the library today on its due date. Phew!

This took some getting into. I think my error was reading in 5 min chunks to begin with and not really following/remembering what was going on. Once I settled down for an hour or so, I was in.

Lots of us have read it so I won't go too deeply into the plot. Basically The Count lives in the hotel and manages to still lead a pretty full life. Remus described it as twee and she's not wrong, but I enjoyed the twee and I wanted good things to happen to the characters.

Anyone who got stuck a little way I recommend persevering.

Now in the middle of a book of short stories and a Claire Keegan.

And I seem to have 37 unread books on my kindle which is just ridiculous. I don't have much planned for he rest of December. Probably a lot of sitting down inbetween winter walks so maybe I can make some headway. I just don't seem to be able to stop buying for long enough to clear the backlog!

I’ve just been reading Nigel Slater’s Christmas Chronicles but his finickity, self absorbed failure to understand his own privilege is annoying me even more than usual. Instead of making me want to burn a posh candle and eat a mince pie from a bone china plate, it’s making me want to storm his house and whack him around the face with a flat cap and a box of Woodbines.

Thank you. I thought it was brilliantly done. I gave it to my neighbour and she loved it too.

1 Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante. Translated by Ann Goldstein
2 The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante. Translated by Ann Goldstein
3 The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan
4 Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden
5 The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre. Translated by Stephanie Smee
6 Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
7 Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree. Translated by Daisy Rockwell
8 Kristin Lavrandatter II: The Wife by Sigrid Undset. Translated by Tiina Nunnally
9 Children of Paradise by Camilla Grudova
10 Heaven by Mieko Kawakami. Translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd.
11 South Riding by Winifred Holtby
12 Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
13 The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
14 Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
15 Jamilia by Chingiz Aïtmatov. Translated by James Riordan
16 Alberta and Jacob by Cora Sandel. Translated by Elizabeth Rokkan
17 Scattered All Over the Earth by Yoko Tawada. Translated by Margaret Mitsutani.
18 Island by Siri Ranva Hjelm Jacobsen. Translated by Caroline Waight
19-21 Childhood, Youth, Dependency by Tove Ditlevsen. Translated by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman
22 Music and Silence by Rose Tremain
23 Watch Us Dance by Leïla Slimani. Translated by Sam Taylor
24 Persuasion by Jane Austen
25 A Bookshop in Algiers by Kaouther Adimi. Translated by Chris Andrews
26 The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
27 Places by Setouchi Jakuchō. Translated by Liza Dalby

28 The Last Children of Tokyo by Yoko Tawada. Translated by Margaret Mitsutani.

Just finished this. I enjoyed the start of this then 30 pages before the end it started going strange and introducing new characters and jumping forward in time and then it just ended. So didappointing, I preferred Scattered All Over the Earth which I read earlier this year and covered similar territory (ecological disaster affects Japan in near future world) but had moreinteresting and distinct characters.

Going to read Doomsday Book by Connie Willis next. Since it's 600 pages and I'm hosting Christmas and New Year it will probably be my last read of the year. Maybe I'll need to squeeze in something short to get to 30.

Dammit! Feeling annoyed that I can't get my little mitts on Rizio. I still can't see it in the Kindle store.

Here is a verse of lamentation to give vent to my feelings ;)

'Oh Rizzio, oh Rizzio,
How good you are, I'll never know.
Our time together has been denied
On Kindle by Amazon Prime.
Tis a foul dark tragedy,
That will be forever lost to me!'

Is it in paperback? Must go look...

I've got it on Kindle @FuzzyCaoraDhubh

Thanks for the new thread @Southeastdweller . I'm saving my list for the year end round up. Hoped to be well into some Xmas books but I've fallen behind with it due to RL stuff (house move looking to be delayed until after NY, a lot of uni work going on).

I've started A Christmas Party by Georgette Heyer which seems good but not gripping and I'm listening to Hilary Mantel's The Mirror and The Light on audio which might be a mistake. There's a lot of conversations going on which I'm struggling to keep up with. I'd be better with the actual book but it's size puts me off.

I think it's just me!
But lo and behold it's on Borrowbox! Yay!!

@FuzzyCaoraDhubh Yay! I was getting ridiculously invested in you getting hold of a copy.

@MaudOfTheMarches 😅
God forbid I might have been driven to write more 'pomes'!

😆oh no please do!