50 Books Challenge 2024 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 2024, 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.

If possible, please can you embolden your titles and maybe authors as well of books you've read or going to read? It makes it much easier to keep track, especially when the threads move quickly at this time of the year.

Who's in for this year?

First book of the year finished:

1 The Chrysalids, John Wyndham
Off to a good start for 2024. This is my first Wyndham and I've got a few others lined up on my kindle so fortunately I enjoyed his writing! First published in 1955, the themes such as religion, the role of women, falling birth rates and violence to anyone not toeing the line are evident in latter dystopian novels like The Handmaid's Tale.

Set in a post-apocalyptic future where large parts of the world are now unliveable 'badlands' following a nuclear holocaust, David and some of the other children have to hide their telepathic abilities. Any slight deviation from God's image means death or forced sterilisation and being cast away from society to live in 'The Fringes'. In this new ultra-religious society, such is the fear of the devil that any slight deviations in people, animals or crops must be destroyed or banished. As they grow older, people become suspicious of the now adult telepathics and they are forced to flee to The Fringes.

1. Ikigai by Hector Garcia and Francesc Morales.

Interesting little book, but perhaps lacking in real substance. I was curious to read it after having watched Live to 100 - Secrets of the Blue Zones on Netflix. Tbh, I don't think I gleaned anything more from this than I had already seen in the documentary. Likeable, but not really memorable, and there was quite a bit of padding to turn it from enough to make an interesting magazine article into a short book.

Book one finished.

1. The Cutting Season Attica Locke * *

This is part mystery/thriller and part social commentary on the legacy of slavery in modern day America. Caren manages a former plantation that is now restored and used for historical tours, weddings and events. The body of a migrant worker is discovered in a shallow grave on the edge of the plantation. The police quickly arrest a suspect, but Caren is convinced they've got it wrong. Alongside this modern day murder, she uncovers a crime dating back over a hundred years with parallels between the two becoming apparent. I had mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand the modern day mystery was only okay. After a shocking series of events at the start this aspect drifts and the dramatic resolution almost comes out of nowhere and seems a bit unlikely. However, the evocation of the plantation and the reflections on how we deal with history were really interesting. Caren makes flawed decisions, but is trapped in a world where she can't trust the police. For a long time I thought there were too many strands and too much going on, but the ending does pull them together. Not a bold, but an interesting start to the year.

I really liked it. It's short but very intense. It's written in a very detached style, but really hits home just how badly society treats women. We can't have it all and no matter what we do, we're doing it wrong. It would make a cracking book club read as there's loads to discuss in it.

Thanks so much for the responses about Luckenbooth.
I’m glad not everyone hated it!

@TattiePants
I’ve read one chapter and it’s already brilliant but a bit confusing with many different characters already.
About the African Trilogy (as it is known) by Chinua Achebe:
Things Fall Apart is definitely the first one. It’s his most famous book.
The Penguin copy of Arrow of God says it’s the second one.
BUT
on Goodreads and Wikipedia it says No Longer at Ease is the second book and Arrow of God is the third.
I’m confused.

@TattiePants

I loved The Chrysalids it was a great audiobook as well, me and @MamaNewtNewt have been working through John Wyndham - I've got The Midwich Cuckoos coming up shortly

I did not know this either!

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit love Midwich Cuckoo's it's one of my favourite John Wyndham ones

1. The End We Start From by Megan Hunter

I downloaded this because it's going to be a film with Jodie Comer. When I opened it I discovered it's 130 pages so I read it in the last hour.

It's a dystopia where a woman gives birth just as a climate change catastrophe happens and has to adjust to both at the same time.

I don't know how this got published, it's like a collection of half arsed notes for a novel that hasn't even been written. Pretentious and money for old rope. Glad it was 99p Film looks promising though.

@Decklededge that is confusing. I wonder if it matters which order they’re read in? If there are no overlapping characters and it’s more about the Nigerian setting and the Igbo tribe in general.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I got The Midwich Cuckoos last month for 99p so I’ve got that lined up.

Just started Bomber by Len Deighton that was recommended on one of last year’s threads and loving it so far. So much for not starting another new book until I’d finished the 6 I’ve already got on the go.

2 The Five-minute Garden - Laetitia Maklouf Inspired by my parents’ Christmas present to me of Up The Garden Path (Thelwell), and in anticipation of our imminent move to a house with a worryingly large garden, I bought this in the hope it would help me to (a) have the first clue about gardening, and (b) find a way to enjoy it. I would say I hate gardening but that would imply that I actually think about the topic…I quite simply know nothing about it at all (I had to google “what is mulching” this morning…). The idea of the book is that you find 5 minutes a day to garden, no matter what, and that this will make it easier than tackling an insurmountable task once every so often.

It’s clearly written by someone who loves gardening but just needs to find time to fit it into a busy lifestyle; I have the busy lifestyle but am hampered by the absence of any inclination to do it. There was a lot of stuff which I will ignore (so much faffing about, like moving seedlings from pot to pot!) but I think it will help me to deal with the bare minimum (today was day 1 and I did some weeding in the new garden, yay!). The book is very slight but I’ll treat it as a reference book now that I’ve read through it once. Frankly, with 3 weeks until we move in and still no heating, toilets or bedroom flooring (to name a few of the outstanding jobs) I think I’ll be spending more time in the garden simply to avoid thinking about the building site we are supposedly going to be living in 😟

2 Beyond SW19: World Class Tennis in England Since The 1880s by Kevin Jefferys

Rather niche and probably only of interest to tennis fans, this covers the history of various English tennis tournaments, some still running but many which have fallen by the wayside. Includes notes of interesting matches and events. I enjoyed this but it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea!

I love John Wyndham and my favourite of his is The Chrysalids, in fact it's one of my favourite books overall. I love most of his books but I think both @EineReiseDurchDieZeit and I disliked Trouble With Lichen.

My NY resolution not for the first time is to do better at posting more reviews! I benefit so much from reading everyone else's; it's only fair.

@TattiePants I'm not sure if it was me who recommended Bomber; it may have been as I bought it for DH who is really into the history of WW2, then read it myself and was absolutely gripped
Looking at everyone's end of the year list, as it happens, yours was the one that overlapped with mine the most (I only posted my bolds but keep a note of everything I've read). I have a real soft spot for Espedair Street (I think of the characters as belonging to Deacon Blue in my head) and A Fine Balance is one of my all-time favourite books.

Yep @MamaNewtNewt Rather Dated and not in a good way, so much wasted potential

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I quite liked The End We Start From but I do have a tendency to get very immersed in short books. I can overlook quite obvious shortcomings if something grips me for a couple of hours. I agree it felt half-arsed, though, as though she wrote it and went, "that'll do". Love Jodie Comer so the film will be interesting.

@DuPainDuVinDuFromage

Honestly, you will come to love your garden, Youy will be able to be in charge of your garden far more than the toilets, heating flooring etc. The book sounds really great to push you on.

Bon courage!

@highlandcoo it was you that got me reading more Iain Banks. I’d only read The Crow Road and your recommendation bumped Espedair Street up my TBR which lead to reading Complicity. I’ve still got The Wasp Factory on my shelf which I’m building up to! Off to see what your bolds were for more recommendations.

@magimedi thank you, that is what I need to hear! I’ll try to keep at it, a bit every day, and hopefully I’ll end up reasonably competent 😄

First book of the new year done.

1. A Heart Full of Headstones - Ian Rankin

I'm a long-time fan of Rebus and although I realise he’s got to be phased out, I can’t help feeling regretful now that he’s a knackered civilian with COPD and a dog. Still, he manages to loom pretty large in this latest outing, though Siobhan Clarke and Malcolm Fox are both also much to the fore. I’m not sure which way Ian Rankin will be taking things from here but hopefully he'll regain a bit of form, as this definitely wasn’t one of his best.

Then She Was Gone - Lisa Jewell
Not really my kind of thing and I guessed the implausible plot twist about 20% in. Ok for a quick read.

Read all of John Wyndham's books in my teens as loved them. Will have to see if I can dig them out for a reread

Finished speak, which was predictably a bit nafff as a young adults fiction.
Started 2) American marriage, which has been on my TBR list for about 3 years today

2 Winter Children by Angela Slatter
Exquisite little horror/folk horror stories. Most have been in other anthologies but read a long time ago.

3 Night Side Of The River by Jeanette Winterson
Also a collection of ghost and horror stories. Rather more clinical and detached than the above, plus I didn’t feel the It Happened To Me sections were particularly interesting. The stories themselves were occasionally creepy, adequate pastiches. Some interesting metaverse interpretations. A couple of the stories are paired to show different interpretations by main characters and this irritated me in the way a Reverse Thread on MN does.
It was ok, but none of them will keep me awake at night. Nothing in it that Michael Marshall Smith, Simon Kurt Unsworth or Angela Slatter haven’t done 100x better.