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?

When you want to read and you don't want Potter and you don't know what you do want!!!

If you think 1979 was bad (I didn’t mind it) don’t try 1989. A real stinker.

This for days (or years). Val McD's a funny one. There are some really good Karen Pirie entries but I found her Kate Brannigan/Lindsay Graham books astonishingly bad.

Enjoying people's Potter rereads. Having grown up on them (DH came out the year I finished secondary school) I'm incapable of applying any kind of critical eye. But HBP is my second favourite after PoA and I really rate the more flashbacky cold case-y Strike books too (Troubled Blood and The Running Grave).

I liked Val M’s forensics book, but the only fiction of hers I’ve tried was embarrassingly awful garbage imvho. Laughably dreadful.

I don’t remember the exact line that made me refuse to read anymore, but it was something along the lines of, ‘She picked out her pair of indigo and caramel leggings whilst cursing her ex internally and looking at the clock’ - that’s not it, but there was definitely an odd coloured pair of leggings involved.

1. Slow Horses by Mick Herron Don't think this needs much introduction. I really enjoyed it, and will be moving on to book 2 in the series soon.

For now though I'm reading the play Cyrano De Bergerac having watched, and loved, the musical Cyrano staring Peter Dinklage recently. (His singing is somewhat sub par compared to the rest of the cast but his acting breaks my heart.)
It occurred to me that although I've seen many adaptations of C de B I've never read the source material and as it's available online as part of Project Gutenberg I'm rectifying that now.

4 Conquest Of The Useless - Werner Herzog

Bonkers and compelling account of the filming of Herzog’s film Fitzcarraldo in the Peruvian Amazon, based on his journals from the time (1979-81), and which involved dragging an actual ship over a mountain between two rivers in the rainforest. As usual from Herzog’s books, what shines through is the utter commitment to bring a (frankly ludicrous) vision to fruition despite all obstacles that come into the way.

I'm still cross about this. I'm a Val McD fan and I loved 1979, but when I read 1989 last year, my review was:

"Despite this packing in a lot of action, I found it strangely tedious at times and had to reread paragraphs several times because I'd stopped paying attention. More strangely, the media tycoon is very clearly based on Robert Maxwell and his daughter Genevieve on Ghislaine Maxwell, which is certainly… a choice. She doesn't explain why in the acknowledgements so I'm not really sure of the purpose and I found it distracting and frankly off-putting."

Eine I'm reading Katherine Rundell's Impossible Creatures and so far it's absolutely cracking - might be a good Potter-adjacent read?

Bloody insomnia has got me browsing the kindle deals at 3 in the morning. The Day of the Triffids is 99p today.

I'kl join. Happy New Year everybody!😻

I ' ll us wear I meant.

Sorry! You know what I meant!

Good call. It’s rather lovely and much less bloated than Potter.

Bloody insomnia has me doing the same at 1am and I almost posted this! It’s a long time since I read it, but I enjoyed it.

@MamaNewtNewt I know exactly what you mean about liking books written by poets but not necessarily wanting to read actual poems. I have owned just one book of poems in my life and I'm not sure it survived the cull when I had a big house move in a small van!

1. Still Life by Louise Penny

This is not something I would have picked myself but it was a book club read. It is the first ‘cozy’ mystery I’ve read. It’s about the mysterious death of a 76 year old painter called Jane Neal in the small Canadian town of Three Pines and investigated by Chief Inspector Armand Gamache (this is book one in a series about him) and his colleagues including the abrasive newby Yvette Nicholls. The investigation starts during Thanksgiving weekend and initially they are unsure whether it is an apparently motiveless murder or a hunting accident where the hunter cleared away the evidence. It is not a conventional whodunnit (the murderer isn’t a huge surprise) and the plot is pretty basic but the author concentrates more on the dynamics of a small town and of a longstanding group of friends as well as the relationship between the investigation team. It was an OK read but I wouldn’t be interested in reading any more of the series or anything more by the author.

Welcome @SammyScrounge!

Cuddy is also in the deals, for latecomers like me.

I was doing really well (for me!) with 3 books read already but last night decided to finally start The Ink Black Heart - urgh I’m gonna be here weeks aren’t I? Kindle estimates I have 20 hours left.

And I was already annoyed in the first few pages - how many times do we need to be told that the other customers/ bar staff looked over at Robin and Strike because they were laughing so loudly? Why were they laughing so much? Nothing they were saying was particularly funny.

Oh well, Im committed now, probably see you all some time in Feb!

The only book of Val Md’s I have read is The Distant Echo Karen Piri series and I thought that was good. I had purchased 1979 and it has been sitting on my kindle app for ages so think I won’t bother.

@Mothership4two I read Still Life a few years ago, and didn't continue with the series. I enjoy a good "cosy crime" series but sadly this just didn't do it for me.

I read day of the triffids last year. It was brilliant. One of the few books I can remember most of the details. If it's not to late, then do it!

Interested to see the recent posts about Still Life and Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache series. I really enjoy the Currently Reading Podcast and they are big fans of this series. Last year they started a series looking at each Gamache novel in order with detailed discussions and I decided to join in with reading along. As others have said, Still Life didn't strike me as anything hugely special. There is an element, for example with Agent Nichol, of setting up threads for later in the series and I can understand how readers can grow fond of the setting and characters over several books. Even big fans seem to feel that the series improves from about book 4 onwards. I've read the first three books now and have the next two TBR, but I'm not entirely convinced about this series yet.

1. The Long Shadow by Celia Fremlin
Previously reviewed by others. I thought this was great. Agree with @bibliomania who said this was "good fun, with lots of acerbic side-swipes". Brilliant.
2. The Shadow Sister by Lucinda Riley
Third book in the Seven Sisters series. These follow a format with one of the sisters, in this case Star/Asterope, in the modern day seeking answers following her father's death (and becoming involved in a romance), while we also go back in time to a period in this sister's family history. In this book, this historical storyline brings in Beatrix Potter in the Lake District and Alice Keppell in London, bringing in the King, Alice's daughter Violet and her good friend Vita. As with the previous books I found myself Googling all the historical figures and happily going down a rabbit hole. Completely agree with @PurpleWhirple - each book is quite light reading but LONG, some parts are annoying, some are boring but I am more than interested enough to keep reading to see how it all comes together. And my reservation of the next book is ready on BorrowBox.
Also currently reading The Extra Mile by Kevin Sinfield.
Trying to read my TBR but also got a lot of ideas from the 2023 round up thread :)

Second book - 'The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo'. Much better than the first book of the year, now onto Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros - I know there's so much controversy surrounding her, but I'm here for the story not the politics so please don't come for me!

I quite like Louise Penny for a cosy crime book although the agent Nichol subplot is annoying throughout. They also get increasingly poor in the most recent ones (after about 12 IIRC). I don't think the ones where they leave Three Pines work as well.

I quite like some of Val McDermid earlier stuff too. A Place Of Execution and The Wire In The Blood series were quite good.

I also read the first seven sisters book and found it quite boring. Luckily I gave up then.

1. Verdigris - Michele Mari, translated by Brian Robert Moore. I got a book subscription to a publisher And Other Stories (not to be confused with the clothes shop) for my birthday in the summer. They use the money from the subs to publish more books and thank the subscribers in the back which is a nice touch. So I got my first book in November which was this.

It's told by a 13 year old boy called Michelino in 1969, who's living on his grandfather's country estate. He befriends the groundskeeper, Felice, an unfortunate man with a wine-coloured birthmark across his face, covered in warts with a wrecked nose and eyes that are glued together with resin. Felice is losing his memory and Michelino becomes fascinated by trying to piece together his history and help him remember. The story has a bit of everything from French red slugs to Nazis, Russians and partisans. In the original book, Felice speaks in dialect, and this is brought across in the translation. I would never have picked this up by myself which is exactly what I was from a book subscription. I'd recommend if you want something different, a boy's adventure story with some fascinating language thrown in.

@BarbaraBuncle @Mothership4two Still Life was my first book of the year too, reviewed up the thread and I felt the same. Although I would give another one a go so not a complete write off from me!