Category: 20 Books of Summer

20 Books Of Summer 2023 Reading Challenge #20booksofsummer23

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20-books-of-summerI cannot believe it’s already time for this annual challenge run by my namesake Cathy at 746 Books.  This year it takes place between Thursday 1st June and Friday 1st September 2023.  I’ve participated for the past few years but only managed to complete it once, in 2021.

As (the other) Cathy explains, the rules are simple.  Take the Books of Summer image, pick your own 10, 15 or 20 books you’d like to read and add your link to Cathy’s master post so she knows you’re taking part.

The rules are accommodating as well.  Want to swap a book? Go for it.  Fancy changing your list half way through? No problem.  Deciding to drop your goal from 20 to 15? She’s fine with that too.

I’m aiming for the full 20 once again and, as last year, I’m targeting the paperback books that have been in my TBR pile the longest according to Goodreads. Most are books I bought myself; a few (whisper) are review copies. All have been there an embarrassingly long time. Why just paperbacks? Well, because they’re double-stacked at the moment and it looks untidy on my bookshelf! If I enjoy them and think I might want to read them again, they’ll go back on the bookshelf.  If not, they’ll go on the pile for the charity bookshop. I’ve also included a couple of unread hardback books from prior years’ challenges.

You can find my list below.  Links from the titles will take you to the book description on Goodreads. I’ll update them with links to my reviews when – note, not if – I’ve read them.

  1. Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz (waiting since October 2017)
  2. Treason by James Jackson (waiting since November 2017)
  3. Transcription by Kate Atkinson (waiting since January 2018)
  4. The Draughtsman by Robert Lautner (waiting since March 2018)
  5. The Legacy of Elizabeth Pringle by Kirsty Wark (waiting since March 2018)
  6. The Painter of Souls by Philip Kazan (waiting since April 2018)
  7. Appetite by Philip Kazan (waiting since April 2018)
  8. Anna of Kleve by Alison Weir (waiting since June 2018)
  9. Wrecker by Noel O’Reilly (waiting since August 2018)
  10. China Blue by Madalyn Morgan (waiting since October 2018)
  11. Chasing Ghosts by Madalyn Morgan (waiting since October 2018)
  12. Blood Orange by Harriet Tyce (waiting since March 2019)
  13. Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts (waiting since March 2019)
  14. In Two Minds by Alis Hawkins (waiting since March 2019)
  15. The Cross and the Curse by Matthew Harffy (waiting since May 2019)
  16. Invitation to a Bonfire by Adrienne Celt (waiting since August 2019)
  17. A Stranger in my Grave by Margaret Millar (waiting since September 2019)
  18. The Night Raids by Jim Kelly (waiting since January 2020)
  19. The Forgotten Letters of Esther Durrant by Kayte Nunn (waiting since February 2020)
  20. To Calais, In Ordinary Time by James Meek (waiting since February 2020)

Wish me luck! If you’re taking part too, enjoy your summer of reading.

#BookReview Ponti by Sharlene Teo

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PontiAbout the Book

It is 2003, and in the sweltering heat of Singapore sixteen-year-olds Szu and Circe develop an intense friendship. For Szu it offers an escape from Amisa, her beautiful, cruel mother – once an actress and now the silent occupant of a rusty house. But for Circe, their friendship does the opposite, bringing her one step closer to the fascinating, unknowable Amisa.

Seventeen years later, Circe finds herself adrift and alone. And then a project comes up at work, a remake of the cult seventies horror film series ‘Ponti’, the same series that defined Amisa’s short-lived film career. Suddenly Circe is knocked off balance: by memories of the two women she once knew, by guilt, and by a lost friendship that threatens her conscience . . .

Format: Paperback (304 pages)    Publisher: Picador
Publication date: 23rd April 2019 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Find Ponti on Goodreads

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My Review

The book moves between three different timelines: Szu’s account of her teenage friendship with Circe in 2003, Circe’s reflections in the present day, and Amisa’s story beginning in 1968. I have to say I found Amisa’s story the most absorbing, describing as it does how, as a result of a series of disappointments, she becomes the cold, distant mother we encounter through Szu’s eyes.  The sadness of Amisa’s story is that the shattering of her dreams is something she never really gets over.

Szu’s and Circe’s teenage friendship emerges from a shared feeling of being outsiders,  ‘citizens of nowhere’ in Circe’s words. It’s this sense that they don’t belong that initially draws them together.  But, despite being intense, it’s not an untroubled relationship because of their different backgrounds and life experiences. Looking back, Circe marvels at how brief what she terms the ‘Age of Szu’ actually was. She describes the gradual fracturing of their relationship, how being friends with Szu became ‘like carrying around a heavy, sloshing bucket of water’.

I could completely empathise with what Szu goes through but also understand what a vast amount of patience on the part of a friend would be required to see her through the worst times.  Circe, who in the modern day story seems to rid herself of partners in the same merciless way she does her tapeworm, I found less easy to like.

All three women are, in different ways and with varying degrees of success, trying to find their way through life.  It’s a well-crafted novel and an impressive debut. There was a lot I liked about it without completely falling in love with it.

In three words: Insightful, intimate, assured

Try something similar: Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie

Sharlene TeoAbout the Author

Sharlene Teo was born in Singapore in 1987. She has an LLB in Law from the University of Warwick and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, where she received the Booker Prize Foundation Scholarship and the David TK Wong Creative Writing award.  She was shortlisted for the Berlin Writing Prize and holds fellowships from the Elizabeth Kostova Flundation and the University of Iowa International Writing Program.

In 2016, she won the inaugural Deborah Rogers Writers’ Award for Ponti, her first novel.  (Photo: Goodreads author page)

Connect with Sharlene
Goodreads