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?

RomanMum Of course (and I must go and find my copy of A Tale of Two Cities now....).

@BlindurErBóklausMaður love the review, especially the decapitated legs 😂

@toastedcrumpetsrock Coming Home is lovely - as you say, a really gentle read. I also loved the tv adaptation as an impressionable teenager 😊

And I’m intrigued by the Carbonel discussion - I’ve never heard of these books! Looking at the publication dates, I think my mum must have been just slightly too old for them - I was raised mostly on Enid Blyton and Narnia…

Thanks @BlindurErBóklausMaður - great to see that this current review lives up to your usual glory.

Thanks for the Carbonel reminder @HenryTilneyBestBoy - like others a proper blast from the past.

@LadybirdDaphne I feel like Mary Shelley is having a laugh at silly men at time’s too

"forcing some hyacinths" in MAY. Dear God!
Spectacular review there @BlindurErBóklausMaður!

Travellers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism Through the Eyes of Everyday People Paperback – Julia Boyd

Much reviewed and raved about on these threads in past years and I can only add to the acclamation.
This is the story of the rise to power of Hitler and the Nazis told through the words of tourists, students, academics, politicians, writers, diplomats and others who visited and stayed in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s right through to the end of the war . I listened to it in tandem with The Rest Is History podcast series on the Rise of Hitler and The Nazis in Power which complemented it well.
It is so well told that you almost begin to understand how it could have happened. Devastating and a huge bold from me.

I’ll be going on to read A Village in the Third Reich though IIRC that wasn’t so well received.

Shelley is definitely mocking men. Walton's nonsense about penetrating the North Sea Passage (oo er) is right up there with the best of women saying, "Yes, of course you will dear, but have you remembered to pack your clean socks?"

I liked it. I actually found it more moving.

@splothersdog - Adding the Brontë one to my list, sounds interesting thank you! I also adore Wuthering Heights to much to allow for any reasoned conversation!

@Piggywaspushed oh brilliant, I’m definitely going to listen.

I enjoyed both Third Reich books but actually preferred Village as it had more depth.

It is making me think that the men Mary Shelley was knocking about with (Shelley, Byron, etc) weren’t terribly useful on a practical level.

Haha exactly Remus and Lady! I have Romantic Outlaws about Shelley and her mother - been put off by the length but might try and get to it this year. I love it when the author is just as interesting as the story

That's a fantastic book.

@BlindurErBóklausMaður

I've finally worked out who you are! Wondered where you'd gone

I'd like to reread Wuthering Heights as a grownup without an impending essay deadline on it but am probably incapable of seeing past the Hark A Vagrant version to do it justice. Kate Barton also nailed it on Shelley and Byron (not like that, Byron) 😁

Also currently reading A Village in Third Reich @BestIsWest I see we crossed on Nick Wallis too. I'm finding it even better than Travellers so far, having just reached the chapter on education reforms. Sounds like A Thread of Grace would complement it well, although I remember reading Mary Doria Russell's Dreamers of the Day and feeling much as you did @TattiePants about the research taking over.

I enjoyed Romantic Outlaws a lot, @Palegreenstars.

@HenryTilneyBestBoy definitely over researched. She obviously had so many ideas for characters and plots and felt she had to use them all. I preferred From Sand and Ash, also set in 1943 Italy and about how the Catholic Church hid Jews during the occupation.

If you haven’t read them already then Hadley Freeman’s House of Glass and Deborah Cadbury’s The School That Escaped the Nazis are excellent.

The Great Gatsby
Thanks to @Piggywaspushed for inspiring this re-read, which I loved more than I hated overall.

Everything I described it as earlier is true, and by gosh, when it’s good it’s really, really swell, old sport. The bit where Daisy and Gatsby see each other again. The awful sense of foreboding when they get into the car. Poor Wilson. Fucking Tom. Silly, shallow, flawed Daisy. That ending!

I gobbled it all up and wallowed in the ashes and the orange pulp. Magnificent on this reading, even the bits I hate.

I haven’t read Gatsby for 30 years and my recollections aren’t good. I feel I should dig it out after a positive @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie review. It’s a rare thing!

I finished book 3. Wuthering Heights it was not what I was expecting but the ending redeemed it somewhat. I felt desperately sorry for all the little children wronged throughout the book and hope that it's not too accurate a reflection of how life was back then. I enjoyed the way the story was told through Ellen's recollections. I'll probably reread it one day.

What a fantastic thread as I’m often running out of interesting authors so I look forward to seeing what everyone’s reading.

I have just started a series by
Rory Clements. the first one which I’m on is Martyr.

I love these historical detective type novels after first reading all of C J Sansoms but have realised he’s unlikely to write anymore due to illness. He finished his series in the Elizabethan period and luckily Rory Clements starts this series in the same period.

Its going well so far, already hooked and hiding in the toilet to read at work😳

Welcome to all the new 50 bookers and @Justpontificating you'll get plenty ideas here - I went from no lists to a want-to-read list about 300 books long after a few years here 😳
Unfortunately my reading is taking a hit atm, between exams and preparing for our house move on Friday its been non-stop in the Cludgie house. However, I should catch up soon after as we have no Internet until 30th Jan. An excuse to read plenty, although the kids won't be happy!

Romantic Outlaws was a DNF for me a few years ago as there was far too much conjecture. I think Richard Holmes is much better writing about the Shelleys in his books.

Remus Great review of The Great Gatsby which sums it up brilliantly.

3 Whatever Next by Lady Anne Glenconner. I really enjoyed learning about her life in Lady in Waiting, but this one was less glamorous and had more about her difficult marriage and awful husband. Still an interesting lady who has lived a very full life. Acknowledging that her way of life for the aristocracy is a thing of the past. She seems to regret some of the loss of discipline and rules, but welcomes many more changes. Is glad to see her children parenting rather than outsourcing and relieved that women are starting to find a voice against domestic abuse.

I've got Weyward and Dreaming of the Hound on the go at the moment on audiobook. Will see what I can find in the library to add to my kobo. I have a biography about Boris and Carrie on my bedside table that someone gave to me, not sure if I can be bothered to read it or not.