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?

I still have my copies of Carbonel and The Kingdom of Carbonel, price 25p each.

And can I add Middlemarch to the list of great last paragraphs.

Ah @Kinsters I am 50% through a reread of Wuthering Heights @splothersdog it gets a lot of hate on MN and the reasons are usually sound - the toxicity, teenage angst, abuse etc. However, I also cannot be dispassionate about it, my mind is blown every single time I read it and I chose to believe everyone else doesn’t get it 🤣 no matter how much I respect their bookish opinions.

If Fitzgerald didn’t rate Di Maurier then that makes me love her even more. I don’t rate Fitzgerald, but I am interested in all sorts of ‘sets’ galivanting and behaving outrageously so will look out for the book.

Also, second My Cousin Rachel. I have lots of Du Maurier waiting on my Kindle and I have to ration it because I don’t want to run out.

Love those @Boiledeggandtoast! I think the third one was called Carbonel and Calidor @Mothership4two?

I never knew there was a third Carbonel (and I speak as a former avid reader of Puffin Post!).

I have never heard of Carbonel at all! Obviously passed me by completely as a child.

@HenryTilneyBestBoy I loved all 3 Carbonel books when I was young. Also have her autobiography, The Smell of Privet which I would recommend.

#4 complete The Rumour by Lesley Kara. This was a 24 hour read and kept me engrossed to finish it quickly. It flowed well, and is great for those situations when you want an easy but well-constructed read about the secrets in people's lives. Next up Trespasses by Louise Kennedy.

I never knew there was an autobiography either, thanks TabbyM!

Yes, Carbonel & Calidor is no 3. I also enjoyed reading them to dd when she was small :)

Love your Carbonels @Boiledeggandtoast. My reread was inspired by a recent charity shop acquisition of these new charming editions, an improvement on my 90s covers. No Carbonel&Calidor, but I never read/knew of that one as a child either.
TY for the Sleigh autobiography recommendation @TabbyM the title alone sounds right up my drive street. I so enjoy the mundane aspect of these books e.g. having to take a break from foiling a feline coup because you need to get tea on before mum gets in from her dressmaking job vs. cadging a sumptuous hamper off Cook for endless adventures on your private island... not that I didn't love that type too, but they've probably aged less well. Or it's my post-Messalina class warrior talking 😅

That's my school one on the left. Beautiful.

3. Coming Home - Rosamunde Pilcher, Audio book Historical Romance isn't my usual genre but I picked it for my commute to work as it was so long and I only had 1 audible credit. It was a gentle slow moving book and I found it strangely comforting, a good one if life is a bit overwhelming and you need a relaxed book that doesn't need all of your attention.

Book 4. Hanging Hill Mo Hayder.

My first, but undoubtedly not my last, stinker of 24. It is going into my "I read it so you don't have to" folder (see Brighton Mermaids)

Contains spoilers (you'll thank me for saving you the 99p)

I wanted a break from Harry Potter, so thought a nice gritty police procedural would fit the bill and this was a 99p Kindle offering. Haven't read any Mo Hayder for years- I stopped reading them frankly when the gratuitous sexual violence and perversions usually against women were leaving me feeling dirty and like MH had some kind of fetish.

Anyway- I digress. I didn't look up any of this before I started, and soon realised how totally shit it was- so I generously wondered if it had been one of MH's last books before she died, maybe her mind and heart wasn't in it, etc etc. But no, it's from 2011.

Aside from the plotholes you could land a jumbo jet in (sisters who haven't spoken to each other for years, despite living in Bath which is hardly Mexico City in terms of population) one sister is a Detective Inspector in the police despite having worked the lapdance clubs in her youth. The sisters were sent to different boarding schools because of Something Very Terrible that the lapdancing DI did to the other one, which turns out to be hurting her hand by pushing her off the bed when they were little, and the daughter of the non-DI sister "forcing some hyacinths" in MAY (which made me irrationally angry at the sheer laziness of the writer)) there were so many inconsequential storylines (mainly involving nice sister's divorce and lapdancing sister's boyfriend shagging the police profiler) and ridiculous ta-da moments involving chainsaws and body parts (obviously) and nice sister's nice boyfriend turns out to be a hitman (obvs) keeping watch on guess who? The bloke from the Rebus/gangland/Taggart episodes who lives in a nice house but is no better than he ought to be, wears chunky gold jewellery and traffics Eastern European girls in from Kosovo for the clubs.

None of the above is remotely relevant to the main story which is the murder of a 16 year old girl. And none of the above did her in. Because we are led to believe the fucking gamekeeper did. Because he'd gone a bit weird after having a metal plate put in his head (also in the Balkan War but not relevant to the trafficking) and the local kids used to take the piss out of him.

Was OK though because when the nice sister's daughter's nice friends were running through the woods, pursued by the mad gamekeeper, he got tangled on a branch, over a ravine, and his legs got decapitated. Seriously.

Wasn't him anyway because when nice sister's hyacinth forcing daughter drives off the Glastonbury with nice local lad, who has been very peripheral throughout, he says something which makes everyone realise d'oh! It hadn't been the mad gamekeeper at all.

And no, obviously, we never found out why. Or why the victim had lipsticked messages written on her body. (clever DI thinks it's a serial killer, not so clever MH forgets to tell us what it was for.

Pfffft.

Hi bookers!

Update from me

1. 'Swimming for Beginners'- Nicola Gill- this is a beautiful story about a woman who gets entangled in the life of a six year old girl after a tragic accident involving the girl's mother. I read it for an online book club I'm part of and I couldn't put it down. I loved the transformation of the main character as the book progressed. She is overworked and puts everything before her chance of promotion in the advertising firm she works in, but by the end she really starte to

We're only a few weeks into the year and I'm already well behind on my reviews.

2 Bpmber, Len Deighton
Described as "an unforgettable portrayal of individuals caught up in the wreckage of war", this covers a 24 hour period in June 1943 as the RAF prepare and execute a bombing raid over Germany and the immediate aftermath. It's told from the viewpoint of RAF pilots and crew, Luftwaffe pilots and civilians on the ground in both England and Germany. There's a lot of technical and tactical information in the build up to the raid which makes the descriptions of the effects of the bombs on the civilians and the injuries to the crew even more hard-hitting. Deighton manages to provides a very balanced view of war - it doesn't matter what side you're on, war's equally horrific. The only thing that stopped it being a bold for me was there was a little too much technical detail.

3 Stay With Me, Ayobami Adebayo
Set in Nigeria, university educated Yejide and Akin have a modern marriage, eschewing traditional Nigerian customs such as polygamy and faith healers. However, after years of trying, Yejide is still not pregnant and Akin's family decide he must take a second wife to ensure he has children. This sets off a chain of events which will tear their family apart as Yejide knows the only way to save her marriage is to have a longed for baby of her own. It's a story of emotional pain, desperation, betrayal, jealousy and the lengths we'll go to to keep our family together. All the characters are deeply floored but my god, I hated Akin!

Sorry pressed 'send accidentally.

She really starts to find herself, I meant!

I'd give it a 5/5.

I've just started 'In Little Stars' by Linda Green. ❤️

I liked Hanging Hill but I quite possibly like your review of it more than the actual book @BlindurErBóklausMaður

@toastedcrumpetsrock I love Rosamund Pilcher for all the reasons you have said a true comfort read like a log fire hot and hot chocolate wrapped in a cosy blanket!

I also agree with your name and will add those to my comfy cosy night with coming home and the fire!

@BlindurErBóklausMaður thanks for the avoidance heads up. To my mind the year has only officially begun after a blinding Blindur review.

@Boiledeggandtoast can I add A Tale of Two Cities to the outstanding last paragraph list?

Loved the review @BlindurErBóklausMaður but I'm also feeling very stupid, as I should know you, as in who you were, but don't. Please don't feel the need to out yourself though.

I'v only ever read one Mo H - I can't remember the title or plot, but think birds were involved somewhere??? Anyway, it was far too misogynistic for me to accept it having been written by a woman, so I didn't read anymore.

Sol. 😊

Lordy, yes, Birdman. Yack.

I'm even more shocked to learn that Mo Hayder was really called Candy and was Young Mr. Grace's secretary in Are You Being Served. 😳 At least that's what Goodreads says. If it was wiki I'd think we were being trolled.

@AgualusasLover rationally I get all the hate. There is some awful stuff there. How I perceive it has changed over time. When I first read it at 14 I was caught up in all the thwarted true love bollocks but now I see it exactly for what it is.
I still love it though.
I find it amazing that a clergyman's daughter who had lived very remotely for most of her life and found social exchanges difficult could write such a wild novel.

4 A Thread of Grace, by Mary Doria Russell
This was one of the books I started last year then moved on to something else and never got round to finishing it.

It's September 1943 and Italy has severed it's relationship with Germany. Italy is in turmoil as Italian troops make their way back to Italy and Jews in southern France flee the round-ups in France by crossing the Alps, hoping they'll be safer in Italy. Claudette Blum and her father are Jews making their escape, aided by an Italian soldier that Claudette becomes close to. However, their hopes for safety are quickly dashed as Germany invades Italy and war is all around them. There is a huge cast of characters with Jewish refugees, Italian Jews, the catholic church, partisans, a German doctor disillusioned by what he's seen in Dachau, soldiers and ordinary villagers and despite being impeccably researched, I struggled to keep track of who's who. An interesting read but I wish she'd halved the number of characters and dropped a few of the plotlines.