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. Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix by JK Rowling

In which Harry and Dumbledore both behave like dicks and as a result Sirius dies.

I'm not an aficionado like some of you (I last read this on publication and was very invested then) I was surprised to find much I didn't remember, basically anything not in the film.

So much waffle and twaddle though, enough to take boredom breaks, one chapter near the end is basically a weird place to hide an extensive recap and I didn't enjoy the battle scenes.

Even from a storytelling angle I always called bullshit on Sirius dying there; there was far more mileage in the character.

Onwards

1. Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin. One of her early books that's been reissued in the wake of the Tomorrow x3 success. It follows several generations of a family as Aviva - or 'Jane' - has an affair with an older, married congressman she's interning for, an event that has ramifications through the years for her, her mother and her daughter. I liked this, it zipped along and was very funny as well as being full of righteous anger about how Aviva is treated.

Adventures on the High Teas - Stuart Maconie

I always love Stuart Maconie’s books and this is no exception.
Here he goes in search of Middle England, spa towns, suburbia, quaint villages always described with humour, often getting angry or indignant and finding beauty in small things and people.
Written in 2009 it almost seems a different world (although as he concludes the book with the floods of 2008 and a discussion of climate change, not THAT different) , almost a time capsule of life at the end of the last Labour Government and pre-Brexit.

I always expected Sirius to reappear @EineReiseDurchDieZeit. I was convinced he’d be back in some form. One big disappointment.

Like, she didn't need to take away his only happiness, if he was going to die it should at least have been at The Battle Of Hogwarts

1. Twisting Time: Forbidden City of Gold D.F Jones

A time travel fantasy novel that seamlessly blends cosmic love, myths and legends, and divine intervention with high-stakes adventure. At its heart lies the Supreme Creator’s deep-seated desire to create unity with his divine family and humanity.

When the heavenly council member Soal, representing the Holy Trifecta, amplifies their network of warriors across the universe, an unsuspecting group of college students finds themselves invited into a secret society. The secret society offers them the allure of powers and the answers to some of life’s enigmatic questions. This leads to four students - Blaine, Josephine, George, and Rose - being thrust into an ancient conflict. Trained and guided by seasoned angel warriors, their mission is to retrieve a sacred amulet and deliver it back to the Almighty.

Their quest, however, isn’t straightforward. They must journey into the mythical Forbidden City of Gold, abandoned and sealed since the infamous Tower of Babel rebellion. Here, they encounter portal doors that can lead to the past, and the ultimate door leads to the Supreme Creator - each choice may determine not only their personal fate but the fate of humanity itself, and an incorrect choice could trap them in another time and place. Failure is not an option.

Parallel to this runs the sinister plot of Persephone, a lesser god. She yearns for the same sacred amulet and its power to rewrite history, free herself from an unwanted marriage to Hades, and allow the lesser gods to continue their rule over Earth.

“Twisting Time: Forbidden City of Gold” spirals towards a climactic clash between the divine hierarchy, humanity, and the lesser gods. The world's fate hangs in the balance in this heart-pounding, emotion-imbued fantasy thriller between good and evil.

4 🌟

4.Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre
15 year old Vernon escapes a school shooting perpetrated by his best friend Jesus at their Texan school, because at the time he is off having a poo in the school grounds. His survival is viewed by the townspeople as suspicious, and he is labelled as guilty by association. Sensing which way the wind is blowing, he does a runner to Mexico, but not before being fingered for pretty much every murder in the state.

A hugely unpopular book on this thread, and I can see why. It’s puerile, vulgar, and the cast of supporting characters is pretty thinly drawn, particularly the women. BUT I loved it nonetheless. Vernon’s voice is so strong and full of life, in no small part due to the amazing audiobook narrator Nick Landrum. The writing was smart and funny, with lots of one-liners that made me laugh. The plot twists were sometimes a bit wild, especially the slightly Hunger Games style bit towards the end, but the satire worked for me.

1. The Paris Spy's Girl. Amanda Lees

Spies in Nazi occupied France. Double crossing agents. Slightly cliched love story but I'm secretly a suckered for those.
4.5 🌟

Glad I’m not the only one who enjoyed Vernon!

Totally agree about Sirius. What a waste of a good character.

6 Me by Elton John

I’m not really an Elton fan, but this was on the free bookshelf at work and I know others on the thread had enjoyed it so I thought I would give it a go. I enjoyed it too. He’s had an interesting life and he clearly doesn’t take himself too seriously - he knows how ridiculous his behaviour is. Good fun to read.

1 The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

I really enjoyed this book. It was absolutely not what I was expecting having read Mexican Gothic. But the writing was just as good. It's descriptive and this one, lush. The characters are very well drawn I thought, people, characters, behaviors and how you fit, or do not fit into societies rules are central to the book. I will definitely read more by Moreno-Garcia in the future.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I thought it was great too. Have you read Richard Shepherd's Unnatural Causes? I thought it had a similar feel. Although I found her more compassionate and wider ranging in her scope. The long term impacts on communities were particularly interesting. Also I will never look at a pigeon in the same way again....

2 1979 by Val McDermid
Allied Burns is an ambitious reporter for a Scottish tabloid daily paper. As a women in the macho world of newspapers she gets the "human interest" stories until she comes across a terrorist plot and her investigations ends up having consequences for her and a fellow reporter at the paper.

Hope that's a reasonable summary of the plot without giving lots away incase anyone else fancies reading it.

This is my first Val McDermid and I can't say I was that impressed. It was a good story, suspenseful in places but there's something about McDermid's writing that I find "clumsy".

3. The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie I thought I'd join the Agatha Christie challenge this year. I actually only read this book this time last year but decided to give it a re read. The first Poirot book she wrote. Hastings is staying with friends in Essex having been invalided back to England from the front during WW1. By total chance his friend Poirot is also staying in the village. One night the matriarch of the family is murdered and suspicion quickly falls on her younger husband. The main thing I take from this book is how incessantly annoying Hastings is. He's frankly a complete idiot but thinks he's some kind of genius. Not sure if he becomes less annoying in later books?

Also getting ahead of myself, that was book 2 not 3

3. Late in the Day - Tessa Hadley

A subtle novel of relationships, friendships and families from this always-interesting writer. Lydia and Christine have been friends since schooldays - Lydia rebellious, glamorous and imperious; Christine quieter, thoughtful and more muted. Lydia is married to wealthy, exuberant art-dealer Zachary, a man beloved by all, a union that has allowed her a life of cushioned ease; Christine has married Alex - at one time the college tutor to both girls - and forged a career as an artist while he mooches around deciding what he wants to be, before finally training as a teacher.

The narrative opens with the sudden, shocking news of Zachary's death and, as the fall-out reverberates, the patterns of life for the remaining three will be profoundly affected.

This is very intense, a bit suffocating at times - intentionally so, I’m sure - and captures horribly well the strange, unreal-feeling period just after someone has died. The writing is beautiful and the characters well-drawn (Lydia is particularly dislikeable). Recommended.

Finished number 3, Shrines of Gaiety - Kate Atkinson

This was a carry over, I'd started it last year on audible and this week, in a bid to finally finish the thing, thought 'sod it' and bought it on kindle. Which was probably a bit daft, since it was more than I usually like to spend on kindle and for only half the book really as it was all I had left, but I'm so relieved to have finally finished it I don't really care!

A tale of London's nightlife between the wars- glamour and bright young things but also the seedy, criminal underside of gangsters, thieves, drugs and prostitution. We meet Nellie ('Ma') Coker fresh out of prison and scheming to keep a grip on the empire she's built up, her various children, police officers from the doggedly upright to utterly corrupt, young girls seeking stardom and finding only exploitation (or worse), and a librarian from York who is equal to them all.

I know this had very mixed reviews, and mine is equally mixed really. There's a lot to enjoy - Gwendolyn was a bit of a cliche no-nonsense northerner, but I did love her, and I enjoyed both Frobisher and Niven too. There's some great period detail in here, and as much as I lost interest at times it did always just about manage to draw me back in.

But lose interest I did, and frequently - it was just a bit too meandering and it was difficult to work out what the main plotline was supposed to be - Nellie's attempts to hold onto her empire? That was probably the most fleshed out strand. The missing girls/ Freda and Florence? Gwendolyn's progress? It all felt a bit disparate and incoherent, with a few ridiculous coincidences thrown in in an attempt to hold the various plotlines together. Then after what felt like too much inaction and extraneous detail, the ending is all a bit rushed and for at least one of the characters, if not several, feels like a cop out.

I'll still probably read anything Kate Atkinson writes, and I wouldn't say this was bad exactly, but I feel it could have been so much more.

In her author's note/ further reading at the end Atkinson mentions some other titles that sounded interesting so I was looking them up. I've ordered Dope Girls: The Birth Of The British Drug Underground by Marek Kohn and I've just seen that the BBC have commissioned a drama based on it - will look out for that. https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/2023/cast-bbc-drama-dope-girls

I didn't enjoy Vernon God Little but can't recall why - I think it was a very unsubtle attempt at satire. For some reason I remember putting DBC Pierre on my mental block list, possibly just because I found the book so infuriating.

3. For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain - Victoria MacKenzie
Fictionalised account of the meeting between Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, and the period leading up to this. Much read and reviewed on here and I'm glad to have caught up. I enjoyed the Julian sections more than the Margery ones, I think just because they were easier to relate to. Margery's experience of the world is so far from anything I have experienced, I may be able to imagine what her life experiences were like, but the mediaeval view of religion that underpins her worldview is so far out of my experience that I found it difficult to grasp. MacKenzie does a great job of bringing her alive as a character, though.

Julian's descriptions of transcendent experiences, by contrast, struck a chord with me from reading about Buddhism, and I wondered if the writer was conscious of that.

The book was very spare and I felt that gave space to use your imagination to fill out the narrative, but I wonder if this would work as well if you came to the story with no knowledge of the characters. I suspect I added a fair amount in my head from previous readings around the subject. Overall I enjoyed it very much and I'm still thinking about it a week on.

4. The Second Stranger - Martin Griffin
Remie is on her last night shift in a remote Scottish hotel when a riot breaks out at the nearby prison. A policeman, PC Gains, turns up to warn her and the remaining two guests that there's a prisoner on the loose, and they set about securing the building. Then, while the policeman is upstairs trying to get a radio signal, a second PC Gains turns up at the front desk. The premise is great but unfortunately it's all a bit over-explained, with Remie and the guest having frequent conversations along the lines of, "If he's the fake PC Gains, we need to make sure he doesn't know about the boathouse", "Yes, but if he's the real PC Gains surely we need to tell him about it." I finished it, so it can't have been that bad, but I hope the author's next effort is a bit more polished.

Still reading Katherine Heiny's short stories, Games and Rituals, and my bedtime book is Lady Catherine's Necklace by Joan Aiken, recommended on here I think.

1. The Armour of Light by Ken Follett

Number 5 in the Kingsbridge series. By goodness he is a good storyteller. He spins a brilliant epic tale. This is pretty much the same book as every other one in the series (and in the Century series) with the same familiar cast of characters of heroes and villains. The backdrop is the late 18th and early 19th Century- spanning Luddites, Methodism and the Napoleonic Wars.

It could easily feel like a tired and predictable format but instead there is a sense of inevitability and linking through the ages. Human character and characters don’t change, just the backdrop is different. This one starts in a very similar vein to Pillars of the Earth with farmhands involved in an accident caused by a nobleman... and thus the story plays out.

Great literature this ain’t but it is a ripping yarn! (with breasts! Lots of breasts!)

Next up I think I will finish a book of Marple short stories. I have Never by Ken Follett which is due back to the library in a week or two but I think I need a palate cleanser first.

@elspethmcgillicudddy I plan to read Ken Follett next if I can get it from the library.

2). The Abortionists Daughter

• by Elisabeth Hyde*

After a silly argument with her mother, a doctor who provides abortions, Megan is regretful of her last words to her mother who is found dead that afternoon.

Although I did read to the end, I had guessed who did it. I think I mostly continued to see if I was right.
The book was ok but no more than that.

@MissMarplesNiece I think early Val McDermid books are much much better. The ones that were adapted for TV with Robson Green and Hermione Norris- the Wire in the Blood series were great, gruesome but great. Likewise A Place of Execution

I abandoned 1979 as I couldn't believe how badly written and cliched it was. I think she fell into the common trap of starting to write for the inevitable TV adaptation given the success of her other stuff.

I'm going to finish HBP tonight, and won't bore you much with my usual rants. 😂 I'm even boring myself now.

@elspethmcgillicudddy God, yes about the pigeons.

I've read Unnatural Causes but I found his biographical stuff really annoying, in a way that I just didn't with Dust. Maybe because she's so humble and so grateful for her family.

4. Christmas Pie by Jodi Taylor

I was just about to spend an audible credit on the recent Christmas St Mary’s short story when I remembered the Spotify audiobooks and listened to it there for free. Despite it being narrated by Markham, who is one of my favourite characters, this is not one of the better Christmas short stories. However I did like the end section and would love for Markham’s background to be explored a bit more.

@RazorstormUnicorn I read I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings at school and have read it every few years since. I'm not really a fan of poetry but I do love books where you can tell that the author is a poet, as you can here. I read the second book in the series years ago, but didn't enjoy it anywhere near as much, but I'm tempted to revisit and see if I feel different now I'm older.

I felt the same about 1979, it's the only Val McDermid I've read and I didn't understand what the fuss was about. Maybe I should try another

Finished my 3rd book of the year today, Atlas by Lucinda Riley and her son, whose name escapes me now. It's the last in an eight book series called the Seven Sisters, all about Atlas and his seven (mostly adopted) daughters. I feel quite mixed about this series. It's very easy reading but has been quite boring in parts and the books have all been so long. I have listened to the whole series rather than read it so maybe it's not so long and I'm just impatient, but the last book was over 15 hours long. Despite feeling bored by them I have listened to the end because I wanted to understand the links between the sisters and how it all came together. It was massively implausible and quite irritating, with an ultimately predictable ending which has been signposted throughout the books.