50 Books Challenge 2023 Part Eight

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the seventh 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 and the seventh one here

Loved the frightened Waterstones lady Remus.

I like kale but it needs to be cooked with garlic and a bit of chili. Tbh I think anything tastes good if cooked with garlic and chili, so maybe I'm not really a kale fan. DH vehemently hates it.

78. Time Shelter by George Gospodinov, translated by Angela Rodel. This won the International Booker this year, but yet again I feel bemused by the Booker judges selection, as this was very nearly a DNF for me. I did persevere but it was a bit of a slog.

The first half is much stronger than the second part. It's about a guy called Gaustine, who we're told pretty early on is a figment of the narrator's imagination, who sets up a time clinic in Zurich. This is to cater for Alzheimer's patients for who the past is more real than the present. Each floor in the clinic takes a decade and reproduces it faithfully to re-create the atmosphere of that decade. This part was interesting and quite poignant. Then the idea gets taken up on a national scale and all the countries in the EU have a referendum to decide what decade they want to return to. There's also a long section on Bulgaria, where the author is from, which reads a bit more like a separate story. It then gets rather cliched and fragmented as the results of the referenda are discussed.

There isn't really a character other than the narrator. It's very researched with countless references to other authors and history but just not enough of a plot or story to appeal to me.

Read it. Excellent. I think I’ve probably read all the ‘big’ ones.

😂This has made my day! Every bookshop should have such a table.

@BestIsWest oh no! Your slug saga is the stuff of nightmares and would certainly warrant a place on the Remus table. Hope you’re okay.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie Have you read Games Climbers Play. It's an anthology of climbing writers both UK and American. It led me to find writers that I liked (& ones that I definitely didn't!). Most of the big Himalayan books have elements of what you're looking for. Doug Scott crawled off a mountain with broken legs

Thanks, Grannie. I’m being bloody awkward (as usual) but I don’t want anthologies.

Moving aww from the adventure table, this sounds great.

I step away for a week and the thread has moved on pages and pages so not only am I behind with my own reviews but also behind on everyone else’s.

Never read any John Banville and not sure I will now…

Agree that kale needs chilli and/or garlic.

Adding my latest reads:

62. The Crow Road - Iain Banks

I feel like I am the last one on the thread to read this and started it knowing nothing about it other than it’s well known and rated. In case there’s anyone else who hasn’t read it: it’s the story of Prentice, a student, and his extended family and friends. I thought it was excellent but now feel I need to read it again as the non-linear style meant I would benefit from a re-read now I know how everyone and events fit together.

63. Hags - Victoria Smith

I had high hopes for this being ‘a demonised middle-aged woman’ but was disappointed. There’s a good book in there but it’s well-hidden under the ranting and repetition. I had hoped for something along the lines of Invisible Women but it was not to be.

64. Slough House - Mick Herron

Book 7 of the Slow Horses series. Diane Taverner has made a mistake and the Slow Horses have become targets. Can they save themselves? I think these are great - action, humour and unpredictability. My mistake is that I leave too long between reading them so I forget characters and plot lines.

65. Appointment with Death - Agatha Christie

This month’s Agatha Christie challenge book set in Jordan with Poirot investigating. A thoroughly unpleasant matriarch dies whilst on holiday with her children/step-children and they all had a reason to kill her. I didn’t guess who did it and it kept me turning the pages.

I’m fine @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie thanks. Some spectacular bruises and I had to forgo my g&t but ok! Can’t speak for the slug though.

I think I've read one John Banville book, that won the Booker 15 years ago or so? I found it very boring anyway. I do like kale though if it's cooked well.

My holiday reading was Yellowface by Rebecca F Kuang. As already read by many people, but to summarise briefly, June is hideously jealous of her 'friend' and literary golden girl (of Chinese heritage) Athena Lu. When Athena dies, June steals her latest manuscript and passes it off as her own. I thought this was an original idea and she gets across the satire of how the publishing industry treats Asian writers very effectively and entertainingly early on. Unfortunately I felt it didn't go much further than that and the plot quickly got repetitive. I kept expecting a further twist or reveal as the tension was ramped up, but it never really came. Still a quick and enjoyable read though.

Sounds like you need need gin - purely medicinal, of course. And slugs like beer.

@TimeforaGandT I've not yet read The Crow Road but I should maybe make an effort to do so as everyone seems to rate it.
Another one highly rated is the Jodi Taylor series (Time Police?) and I'll probably be starting on the first book before the end of the month, looking forward to it.

Sorry for your slug-related injury, Best.

Hags was a DNF for me, Time. I wanted to know what metric she was using to conclude that being a middle-aged white woman was worse than being, say, a young black man.

Am trying desperately to catch up with the thread; it's been moving so fast!

Thanks to everyone for the kind words about my DS going off to uni, and sorry not to name-check all the well-wishers. He is indeed my first DC to leave the nest! Sending warm thoughts to @nowanearlyNicemum and everyone else who has a DC leaving home!

I decided Rebecca Makkai's I Have Some Questions for You was a DNF for me. I just couldn't get invested enough in any of the characters to want to keep reading.

@StColumbofNavron , that's interesting about your name. I also read The Good Immigrant (the UK collection; there's a US collection too apparently) and enjoyed Chimene Suleyman's essay on her name. My real life name is also weird and distinctive (it's not an Anglophone name), but feels a bit fraudulent to me as my parents were 100% white American and got the name from a movie! So I sound more exotic and European than I actually am.😂On the other hand, ever since my teenage years I have been trying to leave my American good girl persona behind, and become someone more exciting, so my name is something to live up to, ha.

The Banville kale convo is very amusing! I've only ever read Snow by him. I liked it well enough. But I'm a terrible one for internet gossip and I was put off by Banville a few years ago when he publicly complained that due to wokeness, it's become impossible for white male authors to win the Booker. This did not endear him to me.

And @EineReiseDurchDieZeit , your review of the Elizabeth Gilbert book was hilarious. I refused to read Eat, Pray, Love based on the reviews. Back to internet gossip again: Gilbert decided not to publish her most recent book The Snow Forest, because it was set in Russia, and Ukrainian reviewers on Goodreads staged a protest about it (before it had even come out) because they argued that in the context of the Russia/Ukraine war, any book set in Russia was problematic. Gilbert agreed with them and withdrew the book. [[https://twitter.com/GilbertLiz/status/1668226071949443073 Personally I thought the whole thing was madness. I'm very much pro-Ukraine, but if we are going to ban all books set in countries whose governments are doing unethical things, we are going to be banning a helluva lot of books. 🙄

That's crazy @cassandre you would publish - I mean are we cancelling Tolstoy? How pathetic

I'll stick up for Hags. I liked how angry it was and I don't read enough FWR

I'm still on a go slow really struggling to persevere though my Audible is going great guns.

Yeah Eine, my sense is that Gilbert's heart is in the right place, but in ethical terms I don't agree with her choice!

Should we not read Tolstoy -- exactly. I had a student who just graduated who loved Russian ballet and said that there was a similar debate on those forums; if you shared clips of Russian dancers, it was perceived as an injury to Ukraine.

Things are just more complicated. Citizens of a particular country can be diametrically opposed to the politics of that country. I felt that very acutely as an American when Trump was in power.

It's often through literature that political resistance can be embodied most powerfully (though I suspect that Gilbert wrote her book on Russia without modern politics in mind).

Another one trying to catch up with the thread.
Empathy for you @cassandre. I did the uni run yesterday - 3rd year and have one to go next week - 1st year.

I have just finished the most incredible book Unwell Women; A journey through medicine and myth in a man- made world by Elinor Cleghorn.
There is so much I want to say about this I don't know where to start. In basic terms it is a look at the medical treatment of women right back to the Greeks. All the ways the focus on male psyche, physiology and prejudice has damaged, delayed and destroyed the healthcare of women. There are two many examples to count when the this book filled me with feminist ire and downright rage. I was reading our examples to anyone who would listen.
The book was published before the Roe v Wade ruling was overturned but it warns that this is likely.
It is one of those books that you think everyone should read. It makes me want to stand in the street and shout - Now can you see why we are so angry!!!!
Readable and impeccably researched. One of those that has languished on the TBR for far far too long

Holly by Stephen King

A not bad King, rather than a great one. Lighter weight that the rest of the Mr Mercedes series, I thought, and there were a few character decisions that I found hard to believe would have happened. You know the 'bad guys' very early on, so the novel is about whether or not they'll be caught in time to save a particular character.

I'm not convinced that setting it deliberately in Covid times and making references to masks, hand san etc offered much.

I also guessed two big plot points very early on.

And it had rather more of Barbara than I particularly cared about - I find her very one dimensional.

Having said that, it was a quick and enjoyable enough read.

I had a similar reaction when I asked for books about women who were alcoholics and hit rock bottom. (If was a phase I was going through....)

I've just caught up with all your reviews on this thread and relieved to see that my reviews of both Nigel and Thingy in Rabbit thingy coming across wankers fits entirely with the thread arc. 😅 @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie and @EineReiseDurchDieZeit I agree that I'd love to read a collection of your reviews 😂

Welcome back @splothersdog

I'm dipping in and out of lots of books at the mo'. Katherine of Aragon by Alison Weir, Snowquake by Juliet Nicholson, A Cook's Book by Wanking Nige and Invisible Women.

And watching lots of Scandi Noir.

Agree chilli and garlic is excellent with kale. Kale also loves cheese.

49 A Change of Climate - Hilary Mantel Excellent book, such a good writer. I had only previously read Wolf Hall by Mantel and this is completely different, set in 1970s Norfolk with flashbacks to 1950s Southern Africa. Everything felt completely realistic and at the same time historical and like a different world from the present day. The characters were complex and human. I think this book will stay on my mind for a while.

InTheCludgie - I would recommend it - it was longer than I expected (no idea why I thought it was short but reading on a Kindle catches you out sometimes!). My top tip would be to pay attention to characters when they are introduced so you know how they fit into the family/friend group. I have read the Time Police series and enjoyed them but I know that Jodi Taylor polarises views. I started with the St Mary’s books and they tick my boxes for when I need some light relief.

bibliomania - you make me feel slightly better for my view on Hags. I desperately wanted to like it but couldn’t and found it a real slog to get through.

I’m a little behind with this thread, had a busy 10 days and a slow reading week.

just finished Emotionally Weird by Kate Atkinson Effie and her mother Nora take refuge in the large mouldering house of their ancestors and tell each other stories. Nora, at first, recounts nothing that Effie really wants to hear, like who her father was, whilst Effie tells of her life at college in Dundee. But odd things start to happen.Is Effie being followed? And what is the significance of the big yellow dog?
An odd read, I can’t say I enjoyed it but I was compelled to keep reading. The characters were brilliant and there was some humorous incidents too. Sort of guessed the ending just before.

I’m now reading two in tandem:
Atomic Habits by James Clear which promises that by making tiny changes you will get remarkable results over time
And
Old Filth by Jane Gardam which has been much reviewed on these threads. It’s been on my bookshelf a while, and whilst it should be a book, I enjoy. I have started it and put it aside before.

Glad you enjoyed A Change Of Climate @DuPainDuVinDuFromage It was one of my stand out reads last year. I've read another one of Mantel's set relatively recently in the middle East (can't remember the name), but I haven't read any of the historical ones. I always think they look a bit long and intimidating.
This year I wanted to read something from the 19th century and have made a start on TheTennant of Wildfell Hall. It was mentioned on these threads a while back and I thought it was something I might be able to give a go. So far I'm quite enjoying it, but it does require more concentration than modern books. I dont know if I'll make it to the end. We'll see.