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?

1. The Last List of Mabel Beaumont, Laura Pearson

Mabel is quiet, reserved and has been married to Arthur for 62 years. When Arthur dies, Mabel thinks he's set her a mission to find her old friend Dot. With the help of a carer and other friends she meets, Mabel tried to find Dot, dealing with her grief and finding herself along the way. It's a lovely, heartwarming story which I did enjoy. 3.5/5

1. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Gabrille Zevin

I thought I'd love this book and it's had such good reviews. Sam and Sadie become friends by playing computer games. The book follows them from childhood to their late thirties. I read the whole thing anticipating something life changing would happen and finished feeling disappointed and cold. There was no depth really, or warmth except in the character Marx and I'm not sure if this is some sort of allegory (considering the friendship is based on gaming). I just didn't get it and expected more. 2.5/5

Book 3 will be Simon the Coldheart by Georgette Heyer.

Finished number 1 (rant alert!)

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Continuing my HP rereads after many years, and continuing my long held beliefs that the films are (beyond the odd scene, or Dumbledore speech) nothing short of a travesty, JK can’t write dialogue (would Harry, a teenager who has just seen the demise of his godfather really be bantering with Bellatrix about “your old mate Voldemort” (and Hagrid, when speaking, remains the HP version of the “Shirley the smoking northern hairdresser married to Barry and living in a council flat” trope in Strike) Harry Potter is a whining brat, Sirius is an arrogant bully and Tonks is a waste of words. Lupin would NEVER have found her anything but irritating.

Neville, Snape, Draco, Prof McGonagall and Luna remain JK’s masterpieces while Harry, Ron, Hermione, Hagrid and Dumbledore are just largely annoying, and occasionally utterly bizarre. Sirius (perhaps by virtue of dying and the godfather thing) is given far more relevance in the HP canon than I think he merits, he appears in Book 3, is a bit of a twat, he pops up every so often to tell Harry how amazing he is, lest we forget, and spends all of Book 5 doing the Poor Me thing. His arrogance is certainly passed on to Harry, who refuses to acknowledge that had it not been for Snape sending the Order, they’d all have been slaughtered in the DoM and continues to blame him for Sirius’s death.

I skipped much of the Department of Mysteries bit after Sirius had gone through the curtain, as, as ever, the editor didn’t dare say we could probably cut a few dozen of these “said Dumbledore quietly” and “X did something with his wand which will look really good on the telly, but when said for the nth time in 3 pages in a book is just tedious”

Burning question on this reread: How in the name of all that is holy did neither Neville "that man, Sirius Black, was he a friend of yours" or Luna "that man was your godfather wasn't he" seem to know who Sirius Black was, despite coming from wizarding families and having spent the whole of their third year under the impression he was a mass murderer coming to get them all, and yet quickly volunteered, nay insisted, on going with Harry-our-hero to the Department of Mysteries to save him? (rhetorical question, I’ve looked on Reddit and consensus seems to be JK by n5 is pretty much doing what she wants, as quickly as she can and there is a lot that is unexplained and illogical going on)

Bloody loved it, as ever, obviously. 😉

Top rant @BlindurErBóklausMaður! I largely agree with you on all points.

1. Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout. I really enjoyed this even though it bought back lots of memories about what it was like during lockdown because of Covid. I related a lot to Lucy's feelings about her childhood and background - there's a lot of Lucy in me.

I'm not sure what to read next - I'll be choosing something later this morning.

2. My Cousin Rachel - Daphne du Maurier
Impossible to review this without spoilers, but I know many of you will have read this anyway. Philip Ambrose travels to Florence on the death of his guardian Ambrose, and becomes entangled with Ambrose's widow, Rachel. You are left wondering throughout who is telling the truth, much more so than with most unreliable narrators, where you can usually work out what's going on pretty early on. I rarely reread but I can see myself going back to this one. Loved it.

and, I've just checked, thinking that TOOTP and TH-BP are so obviously written by someone thinking more about films and screenplays (the first two chapters of the H-BP being total non-sequiturs to anything that's really gone before in terms of what we know- we've definitely moved into tell not show territory now- and lo and behold, the first film was made between GoF and TOOTP.

I'll shuddurp now. For a bit.

Really good birthday book haul from DH and DD!

Had lots of reading time over the last couple of days. Two rereads, which I won't count in my total: The Long Shadow, by Celia Fremlin - Imogen is coping with widowhood, or would be if she could get a break from fussing neighbours and family, but will her dead husband ruin it all by showing up as a ghost? Good fun, with lots of acerbic side-swipes. Also, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, by Winnifred Watson. Downtrodden governess gets a new lease of life when she is swept up in the affairs of a young actress. While it does have sparkle, the uncomfortable elements are hard to overlook - the male characters are undesirable if they have a hint of the Jew or the dago (sic), and all the more desirable if they are thoroughly English with a suggestion of brutality.

Two new reads:

2. Lady Sapiens, by Thomas Cirotteau. Gives recent archaeological into women in the Paleolithic era. Sets up a straw man argument - man the mighty hunter - and debunks it. Relies heavily on ethnology. Didn't feel as cutting edge as it thought it was.

3. Sankofa, Chibundu Omuzu
Woman raised in London by white mother finds out her father is a former African president and goes to visit him. I thought it was a convincing portrait of that era of post-independence leaders. Not bad.

That's a lovely haul of books @MamaNewtNewt! Happy Birthday 🎈

2. Hercule Poirot's Silent Night - Sophie Hannah
I've loved Agatha Christie since an old friend of my parents gave me all her books before going into a care home, and I really enjoyed the new Marple short stories. Absolutely hated this though. Stupid convoluted plot (yes, I know they're supposed to be!) and totally unsympathetic characters, including M. Poirot himself.

Happy birthday @MamaNewtNewt! Those should keep you busy for a while - some interesting choices there.

My first book of the year;

1. The Fancy: Monica Dickens.

I read this on Kindle as part of 'The Rather Dated Book Club' on this board. * *
I really enjoyed it and recommend it for anyone who is interested in reading about the daily lives of people during the second world war.

Edward is a supervisor in a factory in London that constructs aeroplane engines and he is also an enthusiastic breeder of rabbits. I didn't find that aspect of the story particularly interesting. However, I found the individual stories of the lives of the women under his supervision fascinating and Dickens (like her grandfather) is an excellent story-teller. This is an authentic and vivid account of the daily grind that people lived through during that time and what sets this book apart is that the author wrote it in 1945 which gives it an undeniable veracity. It is also very humorous and an engaging read.

Happy Birthday @MamaNewtNewt Lovely haul. Love those red spined modern classics. My Graham Greenes have those covers.

Yes. The red spines are gorgeous.
Some intriguing titles there!

Happy birthday @MamaNewtNewt!

The first book I've finished in 2024 (although I read most of it in Dec 2023) is:

1 The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing. Written in 1962, this is a fascinating window into certain aspects of life 60 years ago - in particular, the experience of being a "free" single woman, characterised by the main character Anna and her friend Molly, and the attitudes at the time towards communism. It's also an evocative exploration of mental breakdown. There is a "story within a story", in the form of sections from Anna's four coloured notebooks, in which she records her experiences and her fiction writing. This is well written and very original, but I did find some parts less interesting (eg the bits about Molly's young adult son Tommy - I realise he's meant to be an unlikeable character, but my god he is tedious).

Happy Birthday MamaNewtNewt! As Fuzzy says, some intriguing titles; I'm particularly intrigued by Heimat - is it in any way related to the fantastic (and very long!) film of the same name?

Something of Myself by Rudyard Kipling I know Kipling has fallen out of favour in more recent times but this autobiography was an interesting if uneven description of his life. The first part is particularly good at relating his early six years of privilege in India before being despatched to England and the cruel and brutal care of a woman who took in the children whose parents were in India. Matters were made worse by problems with his eyes which affected his school work and led to further beatings. This is the most personal section of the book, although still written with a somewhat stiff upper lip. The remainder leans more towards experiences that inspired his literary creations. I hadn't realised quite how well travelled he was and there are some fascinating period details about living in India, America, Canada and South Africa as well as England; although these can reflect the attitudes of the times he is sometimes more enlightened than often supposed. He runs out of steam towards the end but I understand he died before completion and the unfinished text was prepared for publication by his wife.

Happy birthday @MamaNewtNewt
The Collector is creepy as fuck.

I’m on a go slow with my current book, so not a great start to the year. It’s called Berlin: Beyond the Wall but the wall hasn’t even gone up yet and the writing is quite dull.

I read another of Sophie Hannah's Poirot novels, The Monogram Murders, a few years ago. It wasn't awful, but I thought it over long, and I was bored by the end.

The joy of Agatha Christie's novels is that they are not over long, are tightly written, and you could read one in a few hours.

I wish someone better was writing the new Poirots. Imo Sophie Hannah is the wrong author for this project.

Please can I join? I got a poster with 100 books to read for Christmas and today the first two arrived in the post :) I will be starting with American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

I agree I really struggled to get through this one.

Happy birthday @MamaNewtNewt Looks like an interesting book haul.

I have finished my first book.

1. Salt Lane by William Shaw

I’m still in search of a good police procedural. Rebus and Bosch have run their course, Jane Casey, Cara Hunter and Chris Hammer only put out one book a year so I like to have something to fill in the gaps. One I liked late last year was Simon Mason’s series which I will continue and this is another. DS Alex Cupidi is investigating two murders but are they connected? I liked how this book focused on people living outside the margins- aged New Age travellers from the 80s and illegal immigrants- I’m a sucker for a crime book which also explores social issues. I also enjoyed the lead detective’s relationships with her mother and daughter and reading a positive work relationship between two women. I will keep reading this series for now I think (though not straight away). Not a bold but a solid read.

Happy Birthday @MamaNewtNewt

@BlindurErBóklausMaður

I've got a 1-7 Compendium and the last 3 take up over 50% and some of it is so dull, or recapping it's just not necessary. I'm on OOTP now but I keep needing breaks.

Welcome @Hopingforno2in2024!

@ÚlldemoShúl if you're up for something a bit different, I have really enjoyed the Malabar House series by Vaseem Khan. They're set in post-partition India and the lead character is India's first female detective inspector.

I also really like Asa Larsson's Rebecka Martinsson series - the last one came out recently, but I think there are 6 books in total.

Finished it yesterday and agree with you. I’ve read the previous ones written by Hannah, and although not as good as the original ones by Christie, they were entertaining. But this one.. nothing really happened till 3/4 of the book and the solution came out of the blue.
Im not a native English speaker so I’m curious of what you think of how it was written. It is supposed to mimick the early 19th century style, and I did come across some new words for me, but what did you think of it?