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

@MamaNewtNewt Booth should have been right up my street too but I found it so, so dull. My adult DD watches and really enjoys the Lincoln Lawyer TV show.

I appear to be the only person who liked Booth

@YolandiFuckinVisser I loved Drive Your Plow. I saw the Complicité play of it (with my book club) at the Barbican earlier this year and highly recommend it if it ever comes back.

84. Old God's Time - Sebastian Barry. Another Booker longlist. This is about an old ex-cop in Ireland who has retired to part of an old castle on the coast where he sits watching the sea until 2 cops turn up and ask him about a past case. It's a stream of consciousness narrative made more tricksy by the unreliable narrator so there are often scenes described that you later realize didn't happen. The descriptions of the Irish scenery are gorgeous, the story is rather depressing with child abuse, evil priests and suicide. I thought this was good if dark but I preferred Days Without End by the same author.

I've moved on to The Bee Sting as wanted an easier read. I've still got Prophet Song on audible but have also got covid and don't feel able to deal with more relentless depression.

Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith Engaging discussion about evolution focussing on cephalopods, particularly octopuses. What made this especially interesting was that it was written by a philosopher and was full of fascinating ideas as well as facts.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro I'm rather late to this and I suspect many of you will have read it already. I will just say that it started off well and then began to remind me of Never Let Me Go....... I'll leave that hanging.

Conversations with Stalin by Milovan Djilas Djilas was a committed socialist revolutionary who had been arrested, tortured and imprisoned for three years in 1933. He was also a close associate of Tito and led three missions to Moscow (the first in 1944) prior to Yugoslavia's break with Stalin in 1948. This is an enthralling account describing his three visits in three corresponding chapters: Raptures; Doubts; and Disappointments, and chronicles his gradual disillusionment with the effects of socialism in practice and Russia's imperialism. It features his discussions with leading figures such as Molotov, Krushchev and Beria as well as many that I had not heard of but who are helpfully sketched in biographical notes at the end. He was to be imprisoned again for his criticism in the 1950s and as a result of writing this book, which was published in 1961. Recommended for anyone interested in Yugoslavia, Russia, or twentieth century history (but do not buy it from Amazon, see my earlier warning!).

it started off well and then began to remind me of Never Let Me Go....... I'll leave that hanging.

😂

Holding by Graham Norton

I picked this up in the library in a panic as the kids were kicking off, so no preconceptions. It's set in rural Ireland and tells the story of when a human skeleton is found by a construction team. This sets in progress a chain of events and unearths various long-kept secrets etc.

I liked this much more than I thought I would - it is funny and sharp, but there's a sympathy there for the characters with all their foibles. The plot is not the most original and there are lots of POV (!) but it's very satisfying and heartwarming without being unnecessarily "cozy". I'll read more by him!

Music and Silence by Rose Tremain

This was a perfectly engaging and competent novel but it did not compare to the last book I read (The Copenhagen Trilogy). Quite annoyed at myself because it's the kind of novel I'd normally love.

So we're at the court of Christian IV, the longest reigning King of Denmark, during the time of the breakdown of his marriage to his second wife, Kirsten Munk. We follow the real marriage breakdown which is balanced against the fictional (and to me rather too slight) romance between the King's English lutenist Peter Claire and the Queen's Woman Emilia Tilsen, the second marriage of Emilia's father, the engagement of the Peter's sister Charlotte back in Norfolk, flashbacks to Peter's relationship with his previous employer's wife. We also follow the King's unsuccessful investment in silver mines in Norway (at that time part of the Danish Empire). So there's lots going on, there's a good sense of place, and it's all handled very well and the characters have distinct voices and the period and themes are interesting but it's all rather too neatly finished off for all our fictional couples.

City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert

Another random library grab. If I had twigged that it was by the same author as Eat Pray Love I would have dodged it as I loathed that book. And I wish I had dodged it because I strongly disliked this. It tells the story of Vivian, a WASPy teenager who goes to live with her unconventional aunt in New York. Drama ensues as Vivian falls in with a rickety theatre crowd, then the second world war intervenes.

I thought this was dreadful. Like someone wrote a whole load of lazy stereotypes (badly dressed middle aged lesbian, camp dancer, alcoholic writer, charming wide boy) and just shook them up together. There is only one interesting character in the book and he is only in about the last 3rd. It also REALLY reminds me of The Unfortunates by Laurie Graham but is much worse.

I had to read it as I was desperate but I cannot recommend it! And it had AMAZING one liner reviews on the back which I why I got it in the first place!

I've just ordered Black Teacher from the library- sounds amazing! And Drove you Plow over the Bones of the Dead. And the new Robert Galbraith book although will be years before I get it!

At least my next library dash will be a bit more focused with these to collect hopefully!

Welcome Persis, happy birthday duPain.

A Place Apart by Dervla Murphy This is brilliant. Murphy, whose first book Full Tilt about her bike ride from Ireland to Afghanistan I read last year, was an intrepid and inspirational woman who could go anywhere and relate to everybody she met. In 1976, during the Troubles, she crossed the border into Northern Ireland for only the second time in her 44 years and spent months speaking to people of all backgrounds and persuasions - Catholics and Protestants, moderates and extremists, rich and poor. I learned an enormous amount from this book about NI in particular but also about people and life in general, and take inspiration from Dervla’s ability to speak and find common ground with everyone she meets. She finds and describes nuance everywhere which is always fascinating. There is empathy even for ‘the Brits’. Given recent UK history and anti civil-service ‘blob’ propaganda I was particularly interested in her observation that ‘the Brits may look stupid in Westminster but they’ve an awful lot of grey cells tucked away in Whitehall’. Both educational and enriching, a bold from me.

Kate Atkinson Normal Rules do not Apply - and they don’t: you’ll be reading a realistic story and suddenly there’s a talking horse, or a fairy tale will suddenly break the fourth wall, bringing fifth and sixth walls into play before your eyes. I always enjoy the way Atkinson writes on so many levels and jumps between them from one phrase to the next and I wouldn’t have missed this but I’m not a fan of the short story form and hope her next is a novel again.

Happy birthday @DuPainDuVinDuFromage hope you had a lovely day.

@PersisFord welcome! Have you seen Holding on TV? I really enjoyed it. Conleth Hill and Siobhan McSweeney were particularly good.
If Graham Norton is writing his books unaided (my book-group friends reckon there's a ghost-writer but I'm inclined to give him the credit) he's shaping up pretty well.

Welcome to the thread, @PersisFord - I hated City of Girls too! I hope you enjoy Black Teacher.

Happy birthday DuPain

I’ve had Holding on my kindle for years now but never got round to it, you’ve inspired me to bump it up the list @PersisFord

Late to the party as ever (I feel like I have typed that disclaimer a lot) I’ve just finished Ultra Processed People - Chris van Tulleken - I’m not sure what I was expecting but this wasn’t quite it! I think I’ve read enough articles/ reviews/ discussion to have absorbed the main arguments of the book before I’d read it, and was already making a real effort to reduce UPF - but actually the book was far less ‘worthy’, more engaging and more interesting than I’d expected. (Maybe I was just imagining an extended mumsnet type thread with lots of tutting about chicken nuggets and recoiling in horror at people feeding their kids cereal).

I listened on audible - I’m not sure that the random snippets of the podcast being dropped in here and there worked particularly well or added all that much, but overall I think it was the right way for me to ‘read’ this one, I don’t know if I’d have enjoyed it in text form as much.

Normal Rules Don’t Apply by Kate Atkinson

I’m not usually a fan of short stories but I really enjoyed this collection. I loved that my expectations were challenged and also enjoyed looking out for the little connections between the stories, some more obvious than others.

65 The Perfect Golden Circle by Benjamin Myers

This was wonderful. I’m never sure what to expect from this author in terms of Grittiness, ranging from The Gallows Pole which remains unreadable to me to the sublime Cuddy. This novel tends towards the elegiac. We see the countryside through the eyes of two men, Redbone (itinerant, mystical festival veteran) and Calvert (ex SAS with internal as well as external scars).
It’s 1989 and they have a mission - to spend the summer designing and creating ever more elaborate crop circles. Each chapter deals with a different circle and along the way they meet (or avoid) lampers, fly tippers, bare knuckle fighters, drunk aristocratic landowners…….the encounter with a very old woman still looking for her childhood dog hit me right in the Feelz, as the youngsters don’t say.
It’s interspersed with newspaper reports about crop circles in the style of the time, wryly commenting on the obsession with UFOs (and the probability of gatherings around the subject involving Brian Eno).
Some beautiful descriptions of nature and the book wears the benefit of hindsight about climate change lightly. In 1989 there were people like Calvert and Redbone who could see what what was coming and Myers gives them some brilliant non-preachy speeches about it here and there.
The ending is quite the metaphor, but again, not a laboured one.
I’ve seen comparisons to Detectorists wrt to the friendship between the two men and I can see that, although there is no peripheral friendship group.

There are proper speech marks throughout, as I know the lack of them irritates some people and Myers often doesn’t use them.

@Boiledeggandtoast I'm currently reading Metazoa by Peter Godfrey Smith as my bedtime book & it's fascinating. I didn't get on with Other Minds when I tried it, but I'm definitely going to go back to it after this one

Welcome @PersisFord Happy Birthday @DuPainDuVinDuFromage

I'm on the train to Gatwick having left DD at uni.

Might treat myself to a proper paper book as I just finished Alison Weir's Katherine of Aragon which was just splendid and a bold. Think it's n 36.

Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy

Well, I am sure this needs little introduction. This is the story or Jude and Sue cousins who fall in love, but have a rather unconventional outlook. They hard working poor people who seek to elevate themselves in society. They are both autodidacts and very book smart and all Jude dreams of is joining one of the Colleges in a fictionalised Wessex Oxford. At every moment their hopes are dashed. There is of course the famous ‘too menny’ scene. I was aware of the words and the victims but not how it would come about. This is bleak and didn’t really grab me in the way Tess of the d’Urbervilles or The Return of the Native did. I think because in their ‘obscurity’ Jude and Sue aren’t that interesting. Arabella was funny at times, but she was no Eustacia Vye. I think the characters in the other books are much more rounded out and clear and whilst you don’t want the things that happen to Jude and Sue to happen, you are also a little not bothered. Overall, this was a good read, but not my favourite.

I’ve only read A Keeper by Graham Notton and it was quite creepy IIRC. Though the plot of Holding sounds familiar.
Bit chaotic here with DM having taken a tumble and trying to catch up on work for a course so not getting much reading done. Hoping to get cracking on the new Galbraith soon.

I haven't read Holding but thought the TV dramatisation was utter rubbish. What a waste of a great cast - Conleth Hill doing a bit of "the 'ole Oirish Dancing was the limit! So many cliched Irish tropes - a village full of idiots, gossips and alcoholics.
However, I'm glad for those of you who enjoyed watching it. 😄

@StColumbofNavron I agree with your great review of Jude the Obscure. I first read it when I was in 6th form and just loved it, for some reason it really resonated with me but I read it again about 10 years ago and felt it was actually quite badly written and disjointed with no clue given to why Sue behaves as she does and I agree with you that Jude and Sue seem rather uninteresting. It's interesting how books can "speak to you" at a certain time in your life and then leave you cold or confused about why you rated them later in life.

@CornishLizard Lovely review of A Place Apart by Dervla Murphy. It's interesting that despite being based on a 1976 trip and published in 1978 that you found it so interesting and still pertinent. It shocks me to think it is over 40 years since I must I have read it but I still recall being so impressed by it but can't remember the content in any detail. One thing I do recall is that she thought that progress would be made at a glacial or iceberg slow speed or words to that effect which made me feel sad at the time (as a "child of The Troubles") and so it has proven to be. I've put it on my Xmas list as I'd like to revisit it.

The Running Grave 34 hours - I'm going in!

Thoughts and Prayers @EineReiseDurchDieZeit

There was quite a scathing review in The Times bemoaning her lack of an editor.

Djinn Patrol on the purple line by Deepa Anappara Have had this on the shelf for a while. Set in the slums of India and children are going missing. A young boy decides to play detective.
It took me ages to get into it but enjoyed it once it got going.
I too am about to embark on the almost 1000 pages of The Running Grave

<squeals and bites knuckles>

I looked at it in the airport bookshop and countered. Then bought the Christmas Country Living and Good Housekeeping mags. (in my defence that's the last time I'll be passing through somewhere interested in Christmas for ages, Italians are shit at doing Christmas and I've told dp that after staying here for the last 6 I might need to sell a kidney and go away this year)

I was quite surprised to see Russell Brand's self-help book with its handwritten recommendation from "one of our members of staff" still prominently displayed. Hmmm.