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?

@elspethmcgillicudddy your post reminded me of a Netflix documentary that I watched called Blue Zones which is about places in the world where people live especially long. Basically all the things you said needed funding are the keys to longevity.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie there was a book written in Polari last year. I didn't read it but remember seeing it reviewed a lot on the 'gram Man-eating Typewriter.

Just finished the first book of the year; Verity by Colleen Hoover brilliant book and extremely disturbing!

Onto second book The Whole Truth by Cara Hunter
I've downloaded the book onto my Kindle this evening, ready for any free time I have tomorrow for reading. I've already read the first 4 novels in the series by Cara Hunter, I have 2 more left, and I'm determined to finish both in January.

@elspethmcgillicudddy fantastic! Good luck. Yes, I'm doing A111 at the end of this month. Let me know how you get on ❤️

@BlindurErBóklausMaður I remember you! Don't worry about it, I've had enough altercations on MN to last me a lifetime! 😂😂

10 The Messalina of the Suburbs by E M Delafield

Also read for the Rather Dated thread and my feelings about it are much the same as Fuzzy’s.

@SapatSea @DesdamonasHandkerchief

I'm vaguely remembering this TV adaptation now. It was John Duttine and Francesca Annis's names that have reminded me of it.

And Bouquet of Barbed Wire was one of the first things I got to stay up for that involved basically, sex. 😂 I remember being far more repulsed that Gavin shagged his mother in law than the fact that Frank Finley clearly wanted to shag his own daughter. Maybe that bit went over my head at the time. I was going to call my firstborn Eve for a while too. (I didn't) 😂

Crikey page 28 already!

I’m about half way through Frankenstein and loving it. It’s funny reading books you learned at school, I keep registering sentences that we must have studied in detail. I also found myself nodding at the start ‘ah epistolary novel’ which I only remember from studying this. Frankenstein remains a bit of a prat.

No new books completed for me but after catching up on the thread since Friday I have added 8 books to my reading list! I really hope things slow down a little as the year goes on or my list will be insurmountable!

5 A Net for Small Fishes - Lucy Jago
17th Century drama based on real people surrounding a poisoning in the court of James I. Anne Turner, a doctor's widow, is befriended by Frances Howard, courtier and noblewoman. The two women, disappointed in the conduct of the men in their lives, consult a necromancer to help them with potions and the intercession of Angels in order to achieve their desires. In the meantime, a courtier is poisoned in his prison cell, the suspicion of his murder being eventually laid on Anne.

This was quite fun, I enjoyed reading it and I knew nothing of the history behind it, so I've learned something too. I think I've been spoiled for historical fiction by Hilary Mantel though, and this one is not even nearly in the same league.

5 The Quite Nice And Fairly Accurate Good Omens Script Book - Neil Gaiman

GO has been one of my comfort reads since I first read it as a teenager, and I binge re-watched the Amazon Prime series while ill in bed over Christmas, so thought I’d grab this from the library. It’s the script from season one, slightly out of order in some places from the finished show, and including some ‘deleted scenes’ and amusing script directions. A comforting read for this time of year and recommended for GO fans.

hiya, a quick update for me cos I'm a bit behind.
2. Rebecca- Daphne Du Maurier. Wonderous classic about the newly wed Mrs De Winter (she's so anonymous her first name is not made apparent) and the brooding Max De Winter , whose first wife, Rebecca died in an apparent drowning accident. Massive new love for the super scary Danny or Mrs Danvers, the house keeper of Manderly, who does everything in her power to make the new Mrs De Winter feel like a poor replacement for the marvellous Rebecca. Well loads of you will have already read this but I was overwhelmed by how amazing the writing was in this book. She has such an amazing style and builds the reader up to the conclusion of the story in such a skilled way! 5/5
3. Affinity- Sarah Waters. A lower upper class woman( with secrets) in late Victorian London begins volunteering as a visitor at Women's Prison. She is shocked by the plight of the inmates and their treatment. She is drawn to a woman who claims to have the ability to hear spirits. I absolutely adored this book even though it was quite bleak. Waters really knows how to capture the sense of time and place and can pull you into the story! 4/5
4. Snow- John Banville. Never read any by him before. A Catholic priest is found horrifically stabbed and multilated to death in the mansion of the local Anglo Irish gentry. Set in 1957 in a small Wexford village at Christmas time, a young Detective from Dublin is sent to "deal" with the investigation. Really enjoyed this and John Banville has an enjoyable style of prose. Good sense of pace and development of characters. I will look forward to reading more Banville again, I think . 4/5.
Next book I think will be some non fiction !

Careless People : Murder, Mayhem and The Invention of the Great Gatsby by Sarah Churchwell.

If you are a fan of Fitzgerald or even just know the text well, this is absolutely the book for you. That said, I came to it having not read Gatsby for maybe 35 years - and, also, I know very little about the Fitzgeralds and always viewed Gatsby as a vapid text (in common with a lot of contemporaneous reviewers, it seems).

But I do very much like Churchwell's writing, having read other books by the historian, and am interested in the 1920s and the USA.

She juxtaposes the life and writing of the Fitzgeralds and their (completely insane! Zelda was constantly taking her clothes off! The alcohol! The drink driving!) Long Island set with a tabloid sensationalised murder of the same year : this is very intriguing.

The ending is very poignant though - she kind of interlaces the elegiac end of Gatsby with the demise of Scott and Zelda (I didn't actually know about Zelda and it's really very sad) and reflects on the reviews of Gatsby at the time and how its reputation and reception has waxed and waned and waxed again so it is now seen as the Greatest American Novel.

Highly informative and engaging and beautifully written. I am going to have to reread Gatsby now, aren't I?

I learnt a fact. FSF was huge Keats fan. He alludes to a nightingale in Gatsby. There are no nightingales in the USA. He may not even have known this himself!

That sounds intriguing @Piggywaspushed - Gatsby is one of my favourite books so I’ve added the Churchwell book to my wish list.

@HowIWroteElasticWoman I agree that Rebecca is a wonderful book. Try My Cousin Rachel next - also brilliant.

Funnily enough Rebecca is mentioned towards the end of Careless People. Fitzgerald wasn't a fan.

@ChessieFL oh cheers for that, will do! Daphne is in a league of her own isn't she ? I was so blown away !

She really is!

@Piggywaspushed I haven't read the GG either ! Always avoided it because a horrible ex said that I would love it and that put me off! Maybe this year is the time!

Spoiler alert - he continues to remain a bit of a prat in the second half too.

I have a love/hate relationship with Gatsby and Careless People has been on my wish list since it came out, but I knew it would also involve a Gastby re-read and I've been putting it off. You've inspired me, @Piggywaspushed especially as Careless People is cheap on Kindle now.

Oh gosh! The pressure!!

Review dump

1. Mick Herron, The Secret Hours

Slow Horses sidestory and prequel, taking place in the post-Covid present as First Desk deals with a new privatisation initiative and parliamentary inquiry into the intelligence service, and we finally learn What Went Down in Berlin. New losers, old bastards, and the trademark mordant wit and explosive thrills. A cracking return to form, and I may have got a little archival dust in my eye at the end.

5. Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit
Dickens can be hit-or-miss for me but this was a definite hit. I see there was a MN readalong fairly recently, so will try not to rehash. Obviously triggers for racism, antisemitism, sexism, general mid-Victorian-ism. The very early instalments felt too unfocused, and the final ones laboured in jumping every last neatly lined up shark to complete the thematic twinning/mirroring thing Dickens had clearly set his heart on but for the most part, addictively paced, highly enjoyable characters and biting social and political satire that would apply seamlessly to the world of Mick Herron above, or of:

1. Nick Wallis, The Great Post Office Scandal highly recommended as a supplement to the ITV drama though not ideal for blood pressure/faith in humanity.

1. and 8. Barbara Sleigh, Carbonel and The Kingdom of Carbonel

Comfort rereads. I love the doggerel (catterel?) required to work magic in these, and the combination of high adventure and slice-of-midcentury-London-life with the snotty aristocratic cats and sensible working class heroine.

1. E. M. Delafield, Messalina of the Suburbs. I proposed this for the Rather Dated bookclub but rather regret it. Going to chase up the F. Tennyson Jesse now.

Hi @HenryTilneyBestBoy I don't regret reading Messalina so I hope you don't feel bad about suggesting it as a recommendation. I came down hard on it but I zipped through it and still found it entertaining.

Catching up with the thread, I learned about Polari due to a video game character speaking in it. (Those who bounced off Tomorrowx3: hi, it's me, I'm the demographic 😅 ) Adding Fabulosa to the TBR, thank you @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

Gatsby is one of my 'favourite' books too, but in an admiring-the-intricate-artistry way as with Lolita or As I Lay Dying. Not one I love to reread, like Middlemarch or various Austens or even Mrs Dalloway.

@ChessieFL ah no, if anything I think you were too easy on it! The best I can muster at the moment is that it did pass very quickly 😐 but now I'm in a sulky author-I-usually-like-wrote-a-stinker mood that's like to infect whatever I pick up next.

@HenryTilneyBestBoy that's a blast from the past - I loved Carbonel as a child.