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?

3 Transit Maps Of The World - Mark Ovenden

Subtitled ‘Every Urban Train Map On Earth*, this coffee-table-sized book is a map-lover’s dream, with maps of every urban mass transit system from Adelaide to Zurich, and filled with interesting history of both the development of the systems themselves, and the cartography used to help passengers navigate.

Not just me with Zachary Cloudesley then @EineReiseDurchDieZeit.
I'm having more luck with my second choice. I'm one of many on the thread reading Mick Herron's Slough House series, (Book 1 in my case) I'm about half way through and loving it, particularly as I've forgotten many of the plot details.
I've just finished watching the third season of the excellent Apple TV adaption and wanted to spend more time with this bunch of misfits and losers.

Glad to have been of service @AliasGrape!

Pleased to see all the love for the Slow Horses books - I have read the books but not seen the TV series as don’t have Apple TV and can’t really justify a subscription but would be interested to watch.

I need to pick up The Morland Dynasty again as I read the first 26 in 2017/2018 and then stopped (and hadn’t made it to WW1!)

I’m close to buying Slow Horses on Kindle (for £4.99) despite aiming to read only library/borrowbox books and gifts, as I managed last year…everyone seems to love it so much that it seems like it’ll be worth it! My local library only has the fifth in the series (unless I read them in French, which I don’t want to do!)

@bibliomania Thomas Kempe is such a lovely book! It makes me nostalgic for the 70s despite having been born in the 80s 😄

@Tarragon123 that’s my kind of gardening too 😄

TimeforaG&Tyou get 7 days free with AppleTV. (Possibly longer if you've never streamed it before) But if bingeing all of Slow Horses in a week is a tall order it's £8.99 a month after that, and there's no minimum subscription time, 3 seasons of Slow Horses is worth £9 of anybody's money in my book.

Please can I join? I used to read voraciously but have been derailed the last few years by DD.

Book one: the disappearance of Emily marr by Louise candlish

2.5/5
I saw this was on 99p reads on kindle then realised it had been sat in my beside BTR pile so picked it up. It started off ok, I know some people have raved about it and the "twists" but I got to the end and thought nothing happened?!

I'm going to reread A mysterious affair at styles next to make myself feel better 😂

My DH would love that transit maps book @MegBusset. Onto the wishlist it goes!

@Tarragon123 amazing - I think I’m in for the long haul but 32 books!

@TimeforaGandT if anyone in your family has a playstation it's free for 3 months too! We were overjoyed to discover this.

@StrangewaysHereWeCome no reason why you would be interested but I loathed Vernon Godlittle with a passion

Thank you HollyGolightly4 - we may well have a PlayStation - I will check with DC!

That’s interesting DesdemonasHandkerchief as I hadn’t realised I could get away with a short subscription.

Just finished my second book The Maid by Nita Prose , I would rate it as ok , the second half is definitely better than the first but I’m not sure if I will read the next one which comes out later this month .

@minsmum I felt the same about Vernon God Little. To be fair I think I only read the first 20 pages then gave the book away.

I've just realised that Slow Horse and Slough House is the same series of books!

@bibliomania that's lovely about the old books.
@Tarragon123 Thanks for the noir recommendations! I love cold, wintery noir so Scotland suits me fine if I can't get Scandi 😂

I am currently reading 4 books at the same time, HP6 (I've now decided it's the weakest of all of them, HP4 having redeemed itself in book form after watching the bloody tedious Quidditch world cup and Triwizard tournament 759 times during dd's childhood. 6 is just a mishmash of film scenes. And it's just struck me, thinking about Strike and our observations about cardboard cut out women in JKR world (either half French, beautiful bohemian heiresses called Coco or chain-smoking hairdressers from Bolton called Brenda) that HP is even worse. There are clever, but unattractive female students, pretty drippy ones, clever unmarried witches, or beaten down flustered married ones. And the saintly dead Lily obvs juxtaposed with her housewife sister. It's all so stereotypical when it comes to the female of the species.) A History of Christmas (I'm in denial as ever that it's over) Nigel Slater Christmas Chronicles, as ever carried over from December and my annual reread and English Pastoral which I'm not enjoying as much as I thought I would. Maybe I've read too many down on the farm books over the last few years but I was expecting some beautiful thought provoking memoir and it's just a memoir and not a terribly well written one either IMO. Nothing that's not been done before. Though it does seem anachronistic at times. The writer wasn't following his grandad round 70 years ago after all, yet that's how it sometimes reads.

I'm currently slogging my way through Fool Me Once on Netflix - only watching as the place we got married at features a lot. It's not inspiring me to read any Harlen Coben books!

I liked Vernon God Little but can’t remember a single thing about it now.

I’ve started When the Dust Settles - very good so far.

And the books are a million times better than the Netflix adaptations!
I watched Stay Close in utter disbelief (and not in a good way) just before Christmas. Robotic ballroom dancers and a plot so full of holes it was just 6 hours of hole.

@minsmum @TattiePants I never ever don’t finish a book, and I gave away Vernon God Little after 48 pages.

I’ve just finished book number 2 The Confession by Jessie Burton and I loved it!

Just realised I skipped a book in my reviews

1. Proust & the Squid by Maryann Wolf

Exploration of how the brain deals with reading, how reading changes the brain - which differs between alphabet vs logographic reading systems, how reading has been taught since the earliest years of literacy, and the science behind dyslexia. Somewhat ironically, I listened to this on audio (it's free on audible plus). That in itself was interesting, as it made me think about the different experiences of listening, vs reading in print, vs reading an e-book. Overall it was good, though it did feel a bit like three different books jammed together. I found the historical parts the best, the neuroscience somewhat hard to follow (would probably have been easier in print), and was a bit disappointed by the section on dyslexia. I did think the exploration of the differences between neurotypical & dyslexic ways of processing print and the evolutionary benefits of the diversity in ways of thinking was really interesting, but it got a bit lost towards the end of the book.

I also DNFed Vernon God Little

I wish I had DNFed Vernon Godlittle…

Just finished #2 The Stranding by Kate Sawyer. It grew on me, and the constant flipping between London Ruth and New Zealand Ruth became less jarring.

Next up - and also from last year's thread - is The End Of Innocence by Simon Garfield. I'm a big nonfiction reader so I hope that alternating will keep me reading more fiction this year.

I hated Vernon God Little too and remember being utterly gobsmacked when it won the Booker.

@Sadik it's interesting how different books suit different situations. Actually I think audibles stay with me more than things I read on Kindle.

I'm reading multiple books at the moment. Verdigris by Michele Mari in paperback, Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hossein on Audible and The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese on Kindle. The first two are moving quite slowly, while I'm totally engrossed in the third so likely to finish that first despite having started the others before. I'm going to not allow myself to take my Kindle to work this week to try and get further in the audible, and am trying to make myself read at least a couple of chapters of the paperback before picking up my Kindle.

I really liked The Stranding @CrepuscularCritter and just finished her newest book which I also enjoyed.

Adding to my list...