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

Just catching up on the thread. I studied Othello for GCSE and we saw an RSC version on video with Sir Ian McKellan as Iago, which was brilliant.

I read Fingersmith earlier this year after owning it for years and really enjoyed it.

I absolutely loathed The Virgin Suicides as I have a particular dislike of books where there’s a person / group of people that everyone finds fascinating/ quirky (especially manic dream pixie girls). I loved Middlesex by the same author though.

30 Scurvy by Stephen Bown
A day out at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, and I picked this up at the gift shop. A good factual retelling of the story of the discovery of the cure for scurvy and its impact on naval history; really, of the importance of the scientific method.

I read and liked this years ago, I think. Love me a niche maritime book!

134. Manifest by Roxie Nafousi (Spotify)

A bit of woo

It's a bit smug and a bit teaching grandma to suck eggs.

Basically think positively and be proactive and assertive in pursuing your goals.

Believe and you will achieve.

There are useable suggestions but it feels a) a bit simplistic and b) aimed at a younger crowd

Spotify so far needs you to reload every chapter it doesn't just run on which is a bit annoying but they are "free" so I can't complain

34. How to be a woman - Caitlin Moran
I seem to have bolded everything I've read by Moran so far (How to build a girl, How to be famous and the above).

I'm obviously very late to this - she wrote it in her mid thirties and has since written More than a woman which I'm very much looking forward to getting my hands on. She doesn't shy away from the difficult stuff and is hilarious, honest and very very human.

Proud to admit I've DNF'd my third book this year! (Usually I'm an obsessive finisher). Paperweight by Stephen Fry - I wanted to love this but I really honestly couldn't have cared less about the content. Sadly I found it far from '... wise, hilarious and utterly captivating' as the Literary Review suggested I should.

That's odd I'm listening to The Silkworm on Spotify (going back to read the Strike books I've only watched on TV thus far) and it's running on exactly as it would on Audible.
Although it did dawn on me yesterday that you only get 15 free hours a month which is going to leave me with a frustrating 2 1/2 hours of the book to go in a couple of days and no way to listen free before next month. Will have to reserve the book from the library.

@DesdamonasHandkerchief

I'll see if it persists on other titles, thanks

@Boiledeggandtoast Wilton's is amazing isn't it! One of my friends was involved in the group who helped to save and restore it - thankfully they didn't overdo the restoration - and then volunteered as a tour guide there.

I saw a great production of The Great Gatsby there. Not my favourite book, but I really enjoyed the stage show. The ushers were dressed in costumes of the era and they kept the theme going during the interval with jazz piano playing in the bar and the opportunity for the audience to go up on stage and (try to!) learn the Charleston.

You can often spot it in period TV dramas like Dancing on the Edge and Sherlock. Brilliant place. Anyone interested in theatre or music hall should visit.

I’m an avid theatre goer and have never come across it, so that is my next thing!

Please pass on my very grateful thanks to your friend, highlandcoo, I think Wilton's is the most wonderful place and it has been so sympathetically restored. They tend to put on rather a lot of cabaret these days, which isn't really my thing, but I've also seen some fantastic performances over the years including a tribute to W G Sebald, and Star-crossed Lovers - an amazing three-man performance referencing Romeo and Juliet and imaging a gay relationship between Tibault and Mercutio (the third, very tall man played all the other characters including a surprisingly moving and believable Juliet). Their Othello was so well done by a very young cast and Wilton's is such an intimate space that it was a very affecting performance.

StColombo Wilton's is well worth a visit if you're in London; they put on a variety of events, often by young theatre groups, and they are usually excellent and not expensive compared to other London venues. There are also a couple of bars, one of which serves food (although I'd hesitate to call it a restaurant).

ps I'm booked to see The Merchant of Venice at Wilton's in November, with Tracy-Ann Oberman, which I'm much looking forward to.

I have had JS&MN on my shelf for years. Maybe I should get to it.

I feel the same about the two Susannah Clarke novels, Janina!

I'm also a Sarah Waters fan. I didn't realise until I read Collins' The Woman in White how much he influenced Waters! The character of Marian Halcombe reminded me of Sarah Waters so much.

I'm another lover of Milkman, but it took me awhile to get used to the style and language. Once I did, I was immersed.

Stokey, I agree entirely with your review of Babel, and Kuang wearing her erudition quite heavily.

For the Wiltons fans, if any of you have primary aged kids, they do a lovely panto. Mine are a bit old for it now, but loved it when they were younger.

88. Amy & Lan - Sadie Jones. I think someone on here recommended this on the daily deals, and I really enjoyed reading a relatively simple story after being immersed in Booker world.

This is about 2 children Amy & Lan (short for Lachlan) who are living with their families on a farm in Herefordshire. It's told from the PoV of the children and starts when they're 7 and finishes when they're about 12. My only quibble is that the voices of the children are quite similar so you can't always tell whether it's Amy or Lan who's narrating although it does tell you at the start of the chapter. They live with Amy's parents and little brother, and Lan's mum, stepdad and younger sisters, as well as another family and various animals. You gradually realize there are lots of background tensions which the children become more aware of as they get older and the story progresses, but in other ways, they have a very idyllic existence.
It's maybe a little slight with not all the adults fully sketched, but I found this quite compulsive and read it in a day.

The Shadowing - Rhiannon Ward. - Historical ghost story come mystery. Shades of Laura Purcell. A Quaker woman is sent to find out how her sister came to die in the workhouse and ends up searching for more than she bargained for.
The characters were pretty flimsy and the ending was weak but it was entertaining enough and kept me reading through a pretty manic week.
Have just dusted off Jonathan Strange ...

Black Teacher by Beryl Gilroy

Another recommendation from this thread - a black teacher in London and her career. It's a fascinating memoir and she sounds like an amazing woman....and her teacher voice rings loud and clear.

Still battling through Black Cake at 1.5x speed to try and get through it. 9.5 hours so far and I feel like all the action happened in about the first 30 mins....still 2.5 hours to go.....

It has been nine years since I read Caitlin Moran's How to be a woman and was so taken with it that I bought a copy each for two of my nieces. I can't remember much about it now, so may have a hunt for it and reread and try some of her other books.

Oh that might have been me @Stokey Amy and Lan was one of my top books last year. I liked that, although she could have satirised the farm set up or played it for laughs, it was clear all the adults were just trying their best and really wanted to build a better life there.

I'm late to a lot of the discussions here but just to say I'm also jealous of people who still get to read Fingersmith and experience That Big Thing Which Happens for the first time.

On the subject of Victoriana... my book 68 was The Fraud by Zadie Smith. It's based on a true 19th century fraud trial, where a man turned up from Australia claiming to be the long lost heir to the Tichborne fortune, garnering huge amounts of public support. It's told from the perspective of Eliza Touchet, cousin, housemaid and sometimes lover of William Ainsworth, another real life figure. He was a novelist who was very successful in his time, friends with Dickens, but is now forgotten. She follows the trial and becomes fascinated by the defendant's servant, a Jamaican man called Andrew Bogle, and recalls the debates and discussions she's been involved in about slavery and abolition over the years.

I've done my best to summarise, it isn't an easy book to categorise! It jumps around in the 19th century a lot and doesn't have much plot - it feels like more a way of exploring themes around class, socialism, abolition, Britain and Jamaica. I guess the central question is whether we can ever really know who anyone else is.

I adore Zadie Smith and I'm sorry to say this just didn't capture me. I found a lot of it dull and hard to read. I feel like I was missing something profound - it has got some rave reviews but I could never quite get a grip on what the book was about and what the point of it was.

My son had a cricket match at the Tichborne Park Estate - it's a beautiful area. Mad it's been owned by one family for nearly 900 years

@GrannieMainland I’m fascinated by the Tichborne case and have been for years. It’s amazing that a butcher from Wapping via Australia (which is what 'the claimant', Arthur Orton, was) was able to convince the mother of the lost Roger Tichborne so thoroughly that she stuck by him until her death, even though other family members denounced him as a fraud. Physically the men were strikingly different (Orton was grossly obese and Tichborne had been slim and elegant) but it was still completely bewildering that Orton knew so many tiny details about Tichborne's past life.

It's amazing to think that nowadays a routine DNA test would resolve this kind of thing beyond doubt, but at that time, how did you prove your identity? A great basis for fiction, though. Inspector Whicher was even involved at one point too.

One side-note that amused me when I first got immersed in this case - the great music-hall comedian Little Tich used his comic childhood nickname as his stage name - he was supposed to have looked like The Claimant - but he was only 4'6" and that’s why small things are now described as 'titchy'.

Have any of you read The Return of Martin Guerre? It is a similar story of fraudulent identity in 15th c France (I think 15th c). The writer, Natalie Zemon Davis is one of my favourite historians, though her period etc is very far removed from my interests. This is a great book for the drama, but also in micro history and whether the level of supposition used helps
or hinders her findings. It’s also a great film with Gerard Depardieu.

I haven’t read it, @StColumbofNavron, but I recently read another story on the same theme, Flaubert's Colonel Chabert (which reminds me that I must add it to my list!). There’s a film of that too - and guess who plays the title role? Yep, Gérard Depardieu 😂

StColumb, I read the Martin Guerre book and saw the film when I was an undergrad, as part of my course. It's 16th c France. Both book and film are great. I also think Natalie Zemon Davis is fantastic. I've met her (years ago) and by all accounts she is a very generous and friendly scholar, despite her fame.

Actually I just googled her and she is now 94!

Just finished The Escape Artist, Jonathan Freedland's bestselling book about the astonishing escape from Auschwitz. Some horrific details, of course. An interesting read and, I guess, ultimately uplifting. It is touched on on the book that the two escapees lost touch and that there was some lasting bitterness. So in the interests of paying homage to both escapees, I would like to mention that two men escaped at the same time - the first Jewish prisoners to successfully escape. A fair amount of the book deals with what happened afterwards but this is also interesting.