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

Happy birthday @PepeLePew !

Happy Birthday Pepe.

I am run off my feet with work, colleges and uni stuff for the kids so I’m basically getting by on a chapter of Jude the Obscure each evening recognising that it could be worse.

These threads are moving quicker than ever this year!
@cassandre thank you once again for sharing your story.
@PepeLePew - hope you enjoy that great birthday book stack!

44. Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Loved this! I am a tennis fan and read this while the US Open was going on a couple of weeks ago so I could just imagine the fictional characters there in real life. Although this is quite a light read, aspects of the main character Carrie's personality struck a chord with me so there was some personal resonance. I also loved read about the relationship between Carrie and her Dad.
I'm aware of the controversy surrounding this book - an interesting choice for a white author to centre her novel on a character that was the daughter of an Argentinian immigrant into the US. It seems to be part of a bigger debate about who has the right to tell what stories, and how we can have more 'own voices' authors rather than seeing the world through the lens of white authors and the stories they tell.

45. Foster by Claire Keegan
Lovely writing, worthy of all the praise that it has had on these threads.

46. Life In Five Senses by Gretchen Rubin
I am a big Gretchen Rubin fan, from reading The Happiness Project over ten years ago to listening to her weekly podcast. In this book she investigates the five senses through research and experiments in her own life in an effort to notice more of her surroundings and the experiences that make life special. I wondered if I would have heard the content of this book already on her podcast, and to an extent that was the case. I enjoyed this overall but wasn't blown away - an easy read to dip into over a couple of busy weeks at work.

Happy birthday pepe!

Anna Karenina Read with the read-along, really enjoyed the experience though I’m not sure I’d ever have got through the book on my own. Glad to have it under my belt, sure I’ll revisit it.

Yellowface by RF Kuang not sure whether I can count this as I listened to the abridged version on BBC Sounds. A frustrated writer desperate to break through steals her brilliant dead friend’s manuscript and passes it off as her own. Tension, and satire on the publishing industry, ensue. I enjoyed listening to this but think the abridged version was plenty.

The Ghost Theatre by Matt Osman
I gave up on Richard, but finished his brother’s. This was a bit of an odd one. It kept my interest, but all the way through I wasn’t sure quite what it wanted to be or who it wanted to be for, and I’m still not sure now.

It felt like YA, but wasn’t as neatly concluded as YA generally is. Mixed feelings overall and not one I’ll be strongly recommending or rereading. I’d probably try more by him though. He can write, for sure, but this didn’t quite all hang together for me.

Popping on to say Kala is 99p Kindle daily deals today. One of my books of the year

Thank you splothersdog! Got it.

Thought I was going to make it through September without buying any more books...but you lot have been saying such good things about Kala.

I DNF'ed Ghost Theatre, Remus. If abandoning after chapter 5 counts as not finishing rather than not even really starting. It felt very YA to me and I couldn't quite fathom what was going on or why I cared about it. Disappointing as I'd heard good things but in keeping with my new "only have 4000 weeks" ruthlessness I decided life really is too short.

50 Sorrow and Bliss - Meg Mason
Compelling and darkly funny story of Martha’s undiagnosed mental health condition and breakdown of her troubled marriage to Patrick. I loved this until the final third, and the decision not to name her illness really irked me in the end - it smacked of being too lazy to depict an actual known illness and its realistic treatment. Serious disorders are apparently easy to sort - once you know what you’ve got, you just have to take the right pill, and woohoo, you’re pretty much better with no side effects worth mentioning. Not quite how it works, love.

51 Words on the Move - John Mcwhorter
Explanation of why language is always changing and new usages aren’t ‘wrong’, just part of the process. Like, literally. Pretty familiar ground because I’ve been through most of McWhorter’s back catalogue on Audible now, but it’s my nerdy comfort zone.

@Stokey @EineReiseDurchDieZeit
Ah, it's not just me then with The Game of Kings. Good to know. I was encouraged to try it by the enthusiastic thread about DD .. which was a bit daft really. Just because lots of people like Shopaholic books doesn't mean I do and I should have applied the same logic here. I like a bit of historical fiction however GoK was more Outlander less Alison Weir unfortunately.

I've abandoned it - 300+ pages to go and I just couldn't face it. Have just bought Kala (thanks @splothersdog ) which I'm sure will be much more page-turnery!

DNF for Consumed by Greg Buchanan
Gave it 40% of a try, but it’s just too meandering and faux ‘deep’. Woman gets eaten by own pigs. Woman was a famous photographer who as child caught a potential ransom victim on camera through a pipe leading underground. Troubled forensic vet tries to solve the mystery aided by a series of increasingly laughable coincidences.
Liked the forensic vet bits, hated the waffly rest.

49. Cat Brushing by Jane Campbell

Read by others on here, it's a collection of short stories from the point of view of older people (I think all octogenarian?) and it was published on the authors 80th birthday according to good reads info, which is quite satisfying.

Some of the stories are excellent and thought provoking about what aging means and how we as a society treat the elderly, and a couple were just a bit weird with some unusual sexual allegories. I'd give it 3.5 stars. (Why doesn't good reads allow this? My app for rating craft beer lets me do quarters of points and I use all the points on the scale!)

I sort of wish I hadn’t bothered. It never really went anywhere and the ending was so vague as to be meaningless. I invested in the characters, but didn’t really get payback for the investment.

Agree that it was very YA, but it also had an awful lot of fucking and hints of, if not child abuse, then non-consensual sexual activity and possibly hints of S&M. A very strange book, although I liked the period and central characters.

So this is me looking at my copy of Ghost Theatre 👀😩

😆😆😅

71. Tin Man by Sarah Winman
    Widowed Ellis is thinking back over his life, his childhood friend Michael who became his lover for a while, and the close friendship he and his wife had with Michael until Michael disappeared from their lives for years.
    I know there was some discussion about Sarah Winman earlier and I think I'm in the minority here in that I usually like her books, but this one didn't really do anything for me. I didn't really get the characters or see what it was they all loved about each other. I think there was meant to be some kind of message about love in this book but it wasn't very clear.

72. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry trans. Katherine Woods
    A pilot crashes in the Sahara where he meets the little prince who tells him the story of how he came to Earth from his own planet.
    It's sweet and whimsical and a little poignant. The illustrations are lovely.

73. The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
    Chatwin travels in Australia finding out about aboriginal culture, particularly the songlines, sort of invisible pathways crossing the land. It was quite good up to the point where he presents us with pages and pages of excerpts from his notebooks from travels all over the world which seemed lazy and self-indulgent. I think he was trying to say something about the nomadic life but it just felt bitty and nothingy.

74. Stamboul Train by Graham Greene
    A thriller following passengers on the orient express, a journalist and her companion, a businessman, a chorus girl, a doctor. Published in 1932 it's somewhat of its time. It dragged a bit but came to a satisfying denouement.

75. The Dark Behind the Curtain by Gillian Cross
    Troublemaker Jackus is forced to take part in the school production of Sweeney Todd, but spooky things start to happen. Are the children being possessed by their characters? Are they being haunted by hungry ghosts?
    I vaguely remember reading this as a child. It's a good ghost story, though perhaps a little dated now. There's also a nice subplot about toxic friendship.

76. Friend by Paek Nam-Nyong trans. Immanuel Kim
    In North Korea Judge Jeong Jin Wu is visited by singer Sun Hee who is seeking a divorce from lathe operator Seok Chun. Over time Jeong Jin Wu hears the story of their relationship and also reflects on his own marriage and that of his neighbours. He decides to help the couple and try to bring them back together.
    I admit that when I found this book in a charity shop I was more intrigued by the fact that it's a state sanctioned novel from North Korea than the premise of the story, over all though it's not bad. There's some lovely description, especially of the natural world, and the characters slowly grew on me, though by the end I still didn't care either way if Sun Hee and Seok Chun divorced or not. It's clear, however that the reader is meant to want them to stay together because "the family's fate as a unit of society is intimately connected with the greater family of said society." There are quite a few passages that read like thinly disguised propaganda, such as, "This was the noble spirit of the people and the sentiment of the party. It was this kind of person who maintained the moral principles of society and washed corrupt individuals out to sea."
    I don't know how accurate a picture of North Korea in the eighties (when it was written) this book paints, but I think it does offer some insight into the country.

I should have said that the 'fucking' is his word, not mine.

I gave up on Songlines and was really disappointed to do so, because I'd love to read/know more, but I found it increasingly dull and self-centred.

I think I recommended Cat Brushing @RazorstormUnicorn It is a bit uneven and I definitely thought the less experimental stories worked better. But interesting to read something showing that 80 something's can still embrace their sexuality.

I've got the Matt Osman too. Also found Songlines impossible to finish despite trying to read it in the Australian bush.

83. Notes on An Execution - Danya Kukafka. I found the first part of this from the mother's pov unrelentingly miserable and actually stopped reading it and read another book in between. But I think it picked up in the second half when it started focusing more on the other people in Ansel's life. I think I prefer a straight forward whodunnit.

43 Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor

Book two in the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy. The story of Karou the Chimera and Akiva the angel continues. Karou now remembers her past, her relationship with Akiva and her death. Akiva tells her how he acted out of vengeance for her death and so brought death and near destruction to her kind and her family. Karou seeks vengeance of her own against the angels and joins forces with the callous and untrustworthy Thiago. Karou’s friends seek her out putting themselves in grave danger. Akiva is tricked into an assassination whilst attempting to deescalate the war. Both sides are locked in a terrible tit for tat war where many (on both sides) want to win at all costs and to decimate the enemy, but a few others want to end it and this destructive way of life. The world of Eretz/Elsewhere leaks into the human world.

I did not enjoy this as much as book one and found it dragged in the middle. There is a lot about Karou in the camp and her activities. Maybe I felt that because Karou and Akiva are not together for the bulk of this story. It is a 'miseryfest' - genocide and torture are difficult subject matters anyway let alone in a YA fantasy romance. Will, at some point, finish the trilogy.

Try Storygraph instead of Goodreads. They allow quarter stars! I also find their recommendations uncanny whereas I feel Goodreads wil recommend anything vaguely related. I also like the graphs and data you get out of it. I still use a hybrid of both, but Storygraph is the better of the two once you get used to it.

You can export your Goodreads data (I think you need to do it via a web browser) then you can import it to Storygraph. If you have a massive list it can take a few days, but you get a notification when it's ready. If you can't find out how in your account then put "export Goodreads data" into a search engine for instructions.

The Booker shortlist is announced today. I've read 5 from a not particularly inspiring list - How to Build A Boat, A Spell Of Good Things, In Ascension, The House of Doors, All the Little Bird-Hearts (audible) - and started Old God's Time yesterday.

I'm expecting The House of Doors to make the shortlist, and possibly In Ascension and A Spell of Good Things. My favourite and the one I'd like to see is All The Little Bird-Hearts.

Of the ones I haven't read, The Bee Sting and Prophet Song are the ones that seem to be getting the most praise and are likely contenders. And possibly Sebastian Barry, I'm not far enough through to have a view on that.

A lot of the others seem quite divisive on bookstagram, book tube etc. (I don't understand Tik Tok so stay clear and can't cope with post-X Twitter).

Anyone else have any thoughts on it?

Stokey I've still got 2 to go from the long list. The three books I have especially liked so far are Pearl, The Bee Sting and All the Little Bird Hearts.

I've found the list a bit disappointing this year, nothing that has really gripped or wowed me.

The shortlist feels a bit meh.

I agree @Stokey the shortlist is a bit meh. I disliked House of Doors and Old God's Time so boring, but I did like A Spell of Good Things a lot, it was really well written and kept my interest but I don't quite see it as a Booker prize winner.

Cashelmara - Susan Howatch I read this many years ago along with her other big family saga books ( The Wheel of Fortune, Penmarric and The Rich are Different and the sequel Sins of the Father)when I was very ill and have really fond memories of them. This year I've tried to only read new releases but felt I needed something older and lighter and got this on the Kindle as it was the cheapest of the sagas listed there and my physical books have long since left me in a downsized house move.

I enjoyed this all over again! The plot is loosely based on the lives of the Three Edward's - Plantagenet kings in the late 13th and early 14th century. However, the action is transplanted to 19th century Ireland (1849-1900), London, Warwick and New York and follows the fluctuating fortunes of 3 generations of an aristocratic family that marry American women. Murder, retribution, abuse, dark secrets and all sorts of drama occur in a smoothly told story that unfolds in a cinematic manner and told in a point of view style that was less ubiquitous when the book was released than it is now. Such an easy, well written read. Only Penmarric was made into a drama series in 1979 but Cashelmara and the other sagas have the scripts and location practically already written.