raidergirl3's 2023 reading

I tried keeping a thread going last year, and made it til April. So, less expectations to keep all my reading updated here. I'll just post about something I've read when I've got something to share. No big list of books read; it was too much to keep updated when I have a blog where I keep all the real record.
I still read other threads even when I stopped updating, and I love other people's lists and records. I'm trying to come up with a list for the Best of Lists thread.

To recap, I'm Elizabeth, from PEI, high school teacher of math and physics for just a couple more years, sports mom to 3 kids young adults (19-25), married, trying to get fit in middle age with hiking and pilates. I mostly listen to audiobooks now, which I think is due to my lack of attention span as I've aged. I can listen and walk, or listen and play phone games, so I feel like I'm doing something instead of just sitting. I joined CR last year and after being on LT since 2007, really enjoyed the book conversations and finding other readers I felt a kinship to. I participate in TIOLI over at 75 books, but never joined that group.
Welcome!

I think I've read all of:
Mary Lawson, Carol Shields and Maeve Binchy (all the novels and short story collections, not all her writing, she's crazy prolific)

Want to read all (MRE):
Ann Patchett (Run, The Patron Saint of Liars,Taft)
Emma Donoghue (Akin, Landing, Slammerkin, Life Mask,
Tracy Chevalier (only missing The Last Runaway)
Sarah Waters (Tipping the Velvet)
Lori Lansens (This Little Light)
Liane Moriarty (Three Wishes, The Hypnotist's Love Story)
Kate Atkinson (Human Croquet)
Lisa Lutz (The Swallows)
Maggie O'Farrell (Instructions for a Heat Wave, The Hand that First Held Mine)

Steven Johnson NF (Enemy of All Mankind, Where Good Ideas Come From, Future Perfect)

I'm glad you decided to start a thread here, Elizabeth, even if it's shorthand.

>2 raidergirl3: I'm thinking about this type of list myself. I tend to be scattershot in my reading, yet there are some authors I love, and I should/want to read more of their work, but I forget.

Edited to add, I checked your profile page and didn't see a link to your blog. Is that something you would feel comfortable sharing?

Happy to see your thread. I’ve only read something from two of those authors - Patchett and Atkinson.

>3 labfs39: thanks, Lisa. I don't mind sharing my blog at all. I've had the blog forever, and it gets hit or miss in posting, but I do always keep a list of books read. I added the link to my profile - thanks for the suggestion!
https://raidergirl3-anadventureinreading.blogspot.com/

>4 dchaikin: Hi Dan. I don't think we have a lot of overlap on our reading, but I enjoy reading your thoughts on books that don't usually come into my range of vision. And how we each react to the same book, like Braiding Sweetgrass.

Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson

This was a short book but you feel there is something weird going on. Back in 2008, I won one of my first ER book, The Interloper which was a creepy, psychological thriller, so I had that in my mind as I listened.
Two old friends/acquaintances meet up at an airport lounge and one tells the story of what has happened in his life. It starts with how Jeff saved a guy from drowning, and then Jeff wants to learn more about the man he saved. Lives become entwined in the art world.
I'm not sure what the point of the second friend who relates the story. It keeps you wondering more about why he is relating this story, and why Jeff told the story to him. But I like books that make me wonder these types of things after the fact, the ones that keep me thinking.
I think I liked The Interloper more, even though I wrote one of the few good reviews for it back in 2008.

Mouth to Mouth is a Tournament of Book 2023 contender, which often exposes me to books I wouldn't usually read. Mouth to Mouth was also longlisted for the Giller Prize.

>5 raidergirl3: Thank you, I browsed around your blog, and, wow, there's a lot on your site. I wish I had had the foresight to start writing about my reading sooner. Such a great personal resource.

>7 labfs39: From '07-'12, the book blogging community was really big. I was on LT then, but blogs were where all the discussion happened for me. It was a lot of fun, with so many challenges that stretched my reading. It's probably why I like the TIOLI challenge. It gives me a focus to find my next read when there are so many books I want to read.

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell

I'm a little surprised to see how much I have liked O'Farrell's books. I'm a fan but I was surprised to see I've actually rated all her books 4.5 stars, which is as high as I go on first reading. (Later, some books get upgraded as I think about them more and more.) The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, I Am I Am I Am (my favourite favourite) and then Hamnet. I debated adding the half star on The Marriage Portrait and then did. It was a great read.

I read so much English lit and historical fiction, that getting exposed to Italian historical fiction is just so different that it feels more interesting. It may be why the Neopolitan books by Elena Ferente were so popular. Here we have a poor child married off by her father, a Medici, to a count of Ferera. Poor girl had no chance. The legend is that she is the Last Duchess in the poem everyone likes, My Last Duchess by Browning and a portrait of her is a major plot point. It's also major foreshadowing to have a quote at the start of the book.

O'Farrell uses a back and forth, past and present, to tell the story. It gives a picture of Lucrezia as a child, and the woman she becomes. Only Lucrezia gets fleshed out very much; the men are all a-* holes, filled with power and no consequences, and they remain stock characters. That was fine, I didn't want to know more about them. I did appreciate that characters didn't seem to have modern sensibilities dealing with their historical situations. So there were women trying to help Lucrezia, but only in small ways that women could have back then.

Good read, good read.

I've yet to read MOF. Partially because I'm so finicky with HF, even if the setting is interesting, and even if it involves someone like Shakespeare, or cool Italian trivia. Terrific review. I'm interested.

>9 raidergirl3: I need to read more by MoF, I've only read Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, which I stayed up to the wee hours of the morning to finish I was so absorbed.

>8 raidergirl3: Hi Elizabeth. You and I go way back to those blogging days. Those are the precise years during which I had a book blog. I'm impressed you're still at it!

I've enjoyed your visits to my 75 Books thread and am glad to see you here since we have such similar tastes in books.

>10 dchaikin: Hey Dan, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox) is only partly historical fiction, starts in present day and goes back. And her nonfiction memoir is totally different. I started with those two books.

>11 labfs39: Lisa, oh yeah, Esme Lennox was my first book by O'Farrell and it was one of those great back and forth in time, family secrets books. It made me want to read more.

>12 lauralkeet: Laura, I don't do a ton on my blog anymore, but there are still a few people from the old days that I keep track of. I mostly make the big list of books read. We do read a number of same books! I always like seeing your 4 star reads (or higher) cause I know those are earned.

>10 dchaikin: I've read a few of Maggie O'Farrell's books that are not HF, and they were very good (After You'd Gone, Instructions for a Heatwave). And I concur >13 raidergirl3: re The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox and her memoir I Am I Am I Am. In fact the only one of hers I've read that I didn't particularly care for was HF--Hamnet. Haven't read The Marriage Portrait.

>14 arubabookwoman: My library has those 2 O'Farrell's so now I have to find when to read them, but I'm excited for them. I found Hamnet, actually Hamnet and Judith in Canada, btw, started slow, but by the end I was enjoying it more.

I loved I Am I Am I Am but I am exactly MoF's demographic so I easily identified with her life as we have all the same time markers.

>14 arubabookwoman: I don’t think I realized i am i am i am is a memoir, despite its insistent title. Maybe I forgot. Anyway, you both have me convinced that it’s the right book to start with (i’m a sucker for memoirs). Checking audible… ETA it’s too short for an audible credit. 🙂

yadda yadda yadda, and then I posted again.

Tomorrow the Women's Prize for Fiction winner is announced. I'd be happy with any of these three, but Trespasses might be my fav, but it also might be because I just finished it. Of the Shortlist, I've read:

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver - so impressed with the great story, and the retelling of David Copperfield which I have not read. The drug epidemic in Appalachia in the 1990s, tragic.

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell - love MO'F and I really enjoyed this Italian story of sucky lives for women/girls in Italy in 1500s.

Trespasses by Louise Kennedy which I finished with hours to go, both before the announcement, and before my library automatically removed it from my phone, lol. Loved this story set during The Troubles in Ireland. Broke my heart

Didn't read:
The Pod by Laline Paull - I read her book The Bees and the title doesn't lie. I wasn't ready to live underwater for a whole book
Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris - wasn't in my library
Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks - wasn't in my library

My read/not read list is exactly the same as yours, and like you I enjoyed all three of the books I read. I'd be happy with any of those winning because all three were great in their own way.

>17 raidergirl3: Despite actually owning all the books, I’ve only read Demon Copperhead, Marriage Portrait and half of Pod. I thought I was ahead of the game when the shortlist was announced but now I’m cramming before the final tomorrow - doh!

Demon Copperfield wins, and I have no problems with that. It was a great story, sad look at poverty and from what I’ve read, paid close parallels to the original. Almost makes me want to read David Copperfield. Almost, lol.

>18 lauralkeet: I agree. As I finished each book, each was my favourite. All very good reads.

>19 Yells: ha, I’ve been in that boat before, so pleased with how ahead I am, I fall behind.

>20 raidergirl3: I was pleased with the results too! I haven't read the original either. I'm sure reading the David Copperfield would add another layer to the experience but Demon Copperhead is excellent on its own. Some Wikipedia research helped me appreciate the parallels and the way Kingsolver riffed on certain elements (character names, for example), and that was good enough for me.

>21 lauralkeet: that was exactly my experience - I checked a plot summary and was impressed with the character names and how she modernized the situations. And that was good enough for me too. I've often preferred the modern re-tellings to older classics. The story is good originally, but the updated language or idea makes it even better.
Some good ones:

Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld (Pride and Prejudice) and always Bridget Jones Diary
The Lady Sherlock series by Sherry Thomas
When She Woke by Hilary Jordan (The Scarlet Letter)
New Boy by Tracy Chevalier (Othello)

and the absolutely bonkers retellings of The Janies by Cynthia Hand - Jane Eyre, Jane Seymour and Calamity Jane

Wordle 728 2/6

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜
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CRANE, RANCH

Obviously, I wanted to share today, lol.

>23 raidergirl3: boo yah! Nicely done, Elizabeth.