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?

Ah @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I’m doing the Christmas Chronicles read-along for the first time this year and really enjoying it… am just embracing the ridiculous middle-class aspirational-ness of it!

Also on the go… Diamond Street (with thanks to whoever recommended it on the last thread) and the very splendid audiobook of Werner Herzog’s Every Man For Himself And God Against All. I’ll definitely finish both of these by the 31st. Plus Simon Sebag Montefiore’s epic The World which I’ll probably still be reading in December 2024 😁

Sorry - I seem to ask this every year.

I have read some fantastic books this year. I'll do a list closer to the end of the year. However, some of them have been very long with the result I'm 6 books short of my 50 and only three weeks left. Any recommendations for shorter books that are a great read?

I’ve given it a swerve this year, I just didn’t feel up to it for exactly that reason!

I’ve been reading something called Merry Midwinter though by Gillian Monks and I rather fear it’s worse.

@Cazziebo how about A Christmas Carol and A Child’s Christmas In Wales?

Impressed that Fuzzy 's book incantation worked.

Janina, I admire the breadth of your reading, especially all the books in translation.

@MegBusset glad you're enjoying Diamond Street! Is Werner Herzog narrating his own book? His voice is very amusing and just asking to be imitated. I don’t know whether you’re a listener to the Adam Buxton podcast but he and Louis Theroux do extremely hilarious impersonations of Herzog in full flight 😂

@Cazziebo not at all Christmassy but how about The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald, On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan, or Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan?

Ah @Terpsichore thank you re: Diamond Street! Yes, Herzog narrates the audiobook in his own inimitable style. I could listen to him talk about pretty much anything, more or less indefinitely! There’s a film documentary about him coming out in January which I’m so looking forward to.

I say inimitable but clearly the exact opposite is true 🤣

Thank you! I've read the first, will add the second to my list

I've read all of these! Thank you for taking the time to suggest them. Enjoyed and would recommend every one of them.

@Cazziebo - I’ve read the following short books this year both of which I would recommend:

Rizzio - Denise Mina
Small Things Like These - Claire Keegan

Thank you! I've read Small Things - loved it. I'll add Denise Mina's Rizzio.

61. Small Things Like These - Claire Keegan

Delighted this turned up for 99p at this time of year as it's set at Christmas.

The little window into Furlongs life paints a clear picture in a short time and I was left wanting more.

I love how Keegan writes, and I want to read the rest of hers, but I just can't bring myself to pay £5 for a book that's read in an hour.

Those looking for short reads, I've enjoyed several of the Seren press reworkings - New Stories from the Mabinogion. The Prince's Pen by Horatio Clare & Fountainville by Tishani Doshi were my favourites (no need to know the original stories at all to enjoy them, & I got them through Borrowbox)
I also like Pedant in the Kitchen by Julian Barnes (non fiction)

95. Mr Penumbra's 24 hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan Meh - I finished this but not sure it was worth it. I should have learnt from Sourdough but I had it on my phone from my dad's kindle library (though he DNFed it) & was out & about.

Separately, looking for recommendations for a book for DP at Christmas. He likes historical epics (so for example the Bernard Cornwall Saxon books), so maybe something like that. If I could find something historically accurate & set in east Africa or S. america that would really hit the spot I reckon, any era OK. Definitely no magical realism & no fantasy. And definitely no slow moving beautiful-but literary books (he's in the bloody boring butler camp for sure).

Thanks @Southeastdweller
G@Cazziebo Great short books - Address Unknown by Katherine Kressmann Taylor and Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds - very different to each other, both very quick reads that I finished and then immediately reread because they were so good!
Agree with recommendations for Claire Keegan and A Christmas Carol too :)

@Sadik Has your DH read the Patrick O'Brien books. There's loads of them - Master and Commander was based on one of them

Yes, I'm pretty sure he's read all of them. I should have said, it probably needs to be something reasonably recent, otherwise he's likely read it!

Something like The Last King of Scotland but not that would be perfect (but other places / eras also fine!)

Checking in, will do my list on the other thread/EOY.

I think I am basically in finishing up mode now. I’ll definitely finish:

soon

• The Vanishing Half, Britt Bennett
• Madame Bovary, Flaubert
• The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Joh Fowles

possibly

• The Lemon Tree Hotel (or some similar nonsense)
• book 3 of The d’Artagnan Romances
• some Chekhov short stories

probably not

• The World, Simon Sebag Montefiore (interesting characters but feels like a slightly more sophisticated Wikipedia - won’t rush to finish)
• something about 100 Romans we should know about - meh

will prob start

• Louis de Berniere’s new book, suspect the kids are buying me this
• Mrs Caliban, because I found it lying about at work and it’s small so seems like fate

I think this means I’ll almost definitely hit 40, but my goal was 26 and I’ve very much read what took my fancy rather than focussing on numbers so I am
happy with this.

146 Amongst Women- John McGahern
The story of the family of Michael Moran, veteran of the Irish War of Independence and farmer in a small Irish town. The focus is on relationships in his family and his control of his three daughters, two sons (one estranged) and his second wife Rose (the children’s step-mother)
The story is both menacing and heart-breaking. One I’ve meant to read for years and glad I finally got around to it. A definite bold and one of my top reads of the year.

147 A Christmas Carol- Charles Dickens
Read by Hugh Grant and free on audible. Everyone knows the story- nice for a little nod to the festive season and Grant reads it well.

148 The Secret Dead (and other stories) SJ Parris
Three novellas set in Paris’s Giordano Bruno series (Bruno is a spy for Walsingham in Elizabethan England). The three stories are set in Bruno’s past as a Dominican novice in Naples. They’re fairly enjoyable but unsurprisingly don’t have the depth of the mystery series (which I highly recommend for fans of Shardlake or other historical crime).

I will pass the 150 by the end of the year as I will definitely finish

• A Poem for the Day 2 and Year of Wonder (by Clemency Burton-Hill) which I’ve been reading daily.
• The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright (current read)
• Small Things like These by Claire Keegan and Standing by the Wall by Mick Herron- I plan to read these two short reads on Christmas Day while DH is doing his late shift.

I hope to also finish two books I’ve been reading for a while

• Plato’s Republic which is a slog and
• Bleak House by Charles Dickens which I’m loving. (My commute read at the moment)

Finished One of Them by Musa Okwonga. This is a very fragmented memoir, really, of a black boy's experiences at Eton, and beyond. Interesting in parts , I found it frustratingly unreflective, actually, about Eton itself, which he seems uncritical of as an institution , until the end , and then that's mild. He genuinely does believe he received a first class education. Ironically, despite realising he is an outsider, he led a cosseted life at Eton and was still an affluent young man on the whole and never really articulates that. I think this came across to me when he, for example, states baldly that all of his year, virtually, got the places they applied for at Oxbridge, himself included. The book feels very thin next to the excoriating Chums. I am never really sure what he is saying.

@sadik my DH also likes Bernard Cornwell, and he also likes Angus Donald so maybe have a look at them if your DH hasn’t already read them?

The Vanishing Half Britt Bennett

I don’t know why, but I didn’t expect much from this book. However, I was pleasantly surprised and enjoyed it. It’s not really standout and I read it directly after Passing which was just astonishingly powerful.

I think most are familiar with the plot - two light skinned black sisters leave their small town and one leaves their life and begins passing as white. It’s a family saga, touches on race, gender, domestic violence, trans, death and probably some things I’m forgetting. You have to suspend belief for some of the storylines to come together, but overall a decent 3 star read that I would recommend.