50 Book Challenge 2021 Part One

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the first thread of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2020, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

Who's in for this year?

@Runforwine I loved the Shardlake series, finished the last one Tombland late last year, loved all of them.

I’m in. I read at least 50 last year and I have not read a book at all since Mid December. I’m on here hoping to discover some hidden gems. I have just downloaded The Midnight Library based on a thread on here so I shall return with a review.

Usually I love crime and psychological thrillers - I adore finding a new crime series as I can devour one after the other and not have to try out loads of books before hitting on a compelling one. My last series was the Cormoron Strike one by JKR. Really loved it. I usually prefer female leads but I liked Cormoron.

Hello, may I join in too? I lurked quite a bit last year, so hoping to contribute this year.

I've just started The Mirror and the Light, only a few pages in.

In these early pages there are many fragments of memories from Thomas's earlier life, setting the scene and jogging the reader's memory also.

I'm looking forward to reading this as I enjoyed the first two books in the series a great deal.

indigo, Middlemarch is on my list for this year. I read it at the end of my first year at university on a holiday in the Amazon. It was hot and damp and I had a weird jungle fever and was incredibly miserable. Nothing else to read at all so I ploughed my way through it, but remember almost nothing. I’m excited to come back to it now.

1 There Are Places In The World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness by Carlo Rovelli

First book of the year was started before Christmas but as it’s a series of essays it wasn’t one I felt compelled to power through. And actually it rewards a more gentle pace of reading. Rovelli is a physicist and has written some excellent books on physics and time in particular. This is more wide ranging covering physics but also literature and politics and anthropology. He’s a fascinating writer with a very precise and elegant style (hard to know how much of that is translation, of course) and a real warmth and enthusiasm for knowledge of all forms. This really deserves a wide audience and I’d recommend it. It was on the “Christmas gift books” table in lots of bookshops (when bookshops were open) so I expect it ended up under lots of trees. A good way to kick off the year.

I would like to join! I'm not sure I will do 50, but at least 24 is my goal. Just finished "Blood of Elves" in the Witcher series and ready to start 2021...not sure what to read first but will decide later today!

I'm in - I fell off the thread last year but think I probably got to fifty.
Thanks for the thread.
I'm currently reading Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

I'm in. Read 56 books last year.

Currently in the middle of three books:
Who Am I, Again? by Lenny Henry on Audible.

In the Ditch
GB84

Hello and rejoining again, lost the will to read last year but it started coming back and hoping to make it all the way through this year. I like Remus's idea of not counting and not putting pressure on but not being able to get out and look in bookshops means that I am not getting reading ideas beyond what is on the supermarket shelf.

I am half way through True Blood by Robert Galbraith, longwinded at times but engaging

Oh that’s why there was a sale on Orwell books on Amazon a few weeks ago - last profit before they became free. I succumbed to that offer!

Troubled Blood even, great start

Can I join please? Aiming for slightly more than 50 as did 50 in 2018 and loved it.

Five - looking forward to your Troubled Blood review. I had very mixed feelings.

Hello, everyone, old and new and thanks southeast.

Name change twirl. I'm an oldie (MuseumOfHam) with a nod towards a thread favourite in my new name.

Currently reading Crooked Heart and loving it. Lots of you seem to have picked great reads to kick your year off.

I've already bought a random 99p book today, so that part's not going as well as it could.

@AConvivialHost

Mog - that's my current listen on Audible. Love Joe Abercrombie.

I adore Joe Abercrombie, his world building and character development are fantastic. I met him once at a book signing and he was so down to earth.

Can't remember who, but one of the 50-bookers on a thread a few years ago read one from his Shattered Sea trilogy and flamed it. I felt sad that that was their first impression of his writing, as they are his weakest books in my opinion. Nothing beats his First Law trilogy!

Middlemarch is on my TBR list this year as well. We'll have to create a support group, it's a bit of an undertaking.

@ForthFitzRoyFinisterre

Hello, everyone, old and new and thanks southeast.

Name change twirl. I'm an oldie (MuseumOfHam) with a nod towards a thread favourite in my new name.

Currently reading Crooked Heart and loving it. Lots of you seem to have picked great reads to kick your year off.

I've already bought a random 99p book today, so that part's not going as well as it could.

#TeamFitzroy obvs.

Ignoramus Question :

Fitzroy, who he?

Count me in, too! I managed to read 50 books last year for the first time ever. Hoping to match that again in 2021. One of my resolutions is to write some thoughts on each book I read as I forget them so easily!

Right now I'm in the middle of Hamnet and The Improbability of Love. I will also be starting How to Walk Away by Katherine Center on audiobook later today.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit

Ignoramus Question :

Fitzroy, who he?

Eine - You must leave this thread immediately. Do not pass Go. Do not collect £200.

No Remus I must be educated!

Is it Georgette Heyer?

I've NEVER read one.

Could I join please. Reading more is one of my goals for this year.

If only I could remember where I put the book I was going to start I'd tell you what it is

Sorry, Eine. This is a journey you must embark on alone. Clue - not Heyer.

Happy new year everyone. I'd like to come back again.
Wow! so many people joining up and a fascinating variety of books being read,
I don't have any goals but I'm going to try and remember not to be seduced by any more psychological thrillers with miserable female protagonists who are done wrong by all and sundry.
I'm starting the year with Ducks, Newburyport but I'm not convinced I'll get to the end.

I'd like to join this year please!

I've been working my way through books I already own with the aim of weeding out stuff I don't want to read again.

Currently halfway through Wolf Hall, I've started it several times in the past but never got more than a couple of chapters in. Definitely going to finish it this time...

Just popping on to advertise that the OMF thread for today is active!