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 don't rate Naomi Alderman either. I enjoyed the premise of The Power but thought it was a good plot idea that a better author could have done a lot more with. I DNF her first book.

I'm aiming to read the top 25, but the one I'm least interested in is Zadie Smith. I love her essays, but struggle with her fiction.

I think there's a definite element of turn taking for the prize list. I'm surprised Natalie Haynes isn't on this list, but I won't be surprised if she's on the official longlist.

So much love for A Heart That Works on this and last years threads that, despite previously thinking it would be too upsetting to read, I've reserved it at the library.

Some lovely reviews this week - I’ve added The Secret Countess to my wish list @bibliomania it sounds great

Hope you enjoy it, @Palegreenstars !

@PepeLePew the part where he belittles the "if you need anything just call me" is so on point. Get round there, do something, do anything, but BE there.

@DesdamonasHandkerchief honestly, it IS too upsetting to read. I do not want to imagine how traumatic it was to write. But write it he did. And it's a stunning piece of work in my humble opinion.

4 Agent Sonya - Ben Macintyre Another non-fiction account of a spy’s life, and another bold - I really do like the way Macintyre writes, and this was possibly the most fascinating of the three books of his that I have read so far. It’s about a German-Jewish woman who grows up between the world wars and becomes a Soviet spy for decades, moving from Germany to China, Moscow to Switzerland, and eventually to England. There was a lot of wider history I didn’t know (especially 1920s China) and the specifics of Agent Sonya’s life were so interesting as well. A great book.

DuPain if you like his books, try Sonia Purnell, her book A Woman of No Importance is outstanding.

4. The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka
This is a big fat bold. It won the Booker Prize two years ago. At first, maybe for the first moon, I struggled and found it too much a deliberate stylistic fireworks show. But as it went on I got more and more involved and now I think it's wonderful. I am very reminded of Salmaan Rushdie, but it's less delicate and tricksy, more bloodthirsty and raw. It's not a pretty read but it has a deep core of tenderness.

Maali Almeida has left his previous life, and a legacy that could kill or inflame a war. He has to find a way to make that legacy public before the men of corruption destroy it.

Seconded

You did it all by yourself! I loved it.

11. Penance by Eliza Clark (Audible)

This, as someone else said, was almost a DNF.

About 3 girls who murder a school mate, it was a bit too grim for my taste. Especially as. a late night audio.

Set out as a true crime writer doing research into the story and taking in all perspectives we follow the sorry tale. An interesting postscript about how we believe stories, does not save it from its many flaw

Though the school stuff is very believable and well done it reminded me of my own school years and not pleasantly

Finally, as an audiobook it suffers from many of the problems that beleaguered Ink Black Heart the POV changes but the speaker doesn't always change leading to confusion over who is speaking at any one time.

Overall I found this seedy and sordid and I didn't like how I felt while reading it.

Thanks - added to the wishlist!

Overall I found this seedy and sordid and I didn't like how I felt while reading it. that’s really interesting @EineReiseDurchDieZeit ! That is exactly how I feel if I try to read True Crime, but Penance being at one fictional remove was ok for me. But then again, I started to ask myself why it was ok for me, so identical in style and content to so much TC? It made me question myself, which I kind of liked.

8 Dark Satanic Mills Ed Steve Shaw. Number 2 in the Black Shuck Books anthology series of Best British Horror.
Not as good as the first one, or subsequent ones I’ve read. It’s good ‘amateur’ fiction but not really any unknowns I rushed away to see what else they’d written. Honourable mentions for the stories by Angela Slatter and Carolyn Johnstone.

1. Days At The Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa

This is a short book, at around 150 pages. Takako, the narrator, is a young single woman who has gone to live in the flat above her uncle's second hand Bookshop whilst she recovers from a broken relationship. Whilst there she rediscovers her love of reading, and slowly recovers. The second half of the book is centered on her uncle's wife, Mamoko, who walked out on him 5 years earlier.

Over all, I thought perhaps a lot of its charm has been lost in translation and the Americanisms in the translation jarred a bit with me. Quite a sweet little story, but only a like not a love from me.

1. The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths

I was looking for a new crime thriller series, and started this one. It's the first in the Dr Ruth Galloway series.

Ruth is an archaeologist and lives remotely in a cottage out on the salt marshes. She's a lecturer at the University, but is drawn into helping the police when a body is discovered buried on the marshes. The police believe it is the body of a missing girl. It isn't, but Ruth is drawn into the search for her and the mystery of the disappearance 10 years earlier of another girl. I enjoyed it very much and will continue on to the next one in the series.

4. Persuader by Lee Child I just can't even be bothered to review these anymore. Reacher goes undercover on behalf of the FBI to try and catch a drug dealer and find a missing FBI agent. Once again Reacher achieves frankly superhuman feats with barely a scratch and single handedly takes down multiple heavily armed, highly experienced mercenaries who all miraculously miss him with every shot they fire

Oh dear. I have just finished my first book of the year. I’m so behind already. Luckily it was a good one.

1. Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe
This is the second book in a trilogy after the very well-known Things Fall Apart.
It tells the story of Ezeulu, the chief priest of the God Ulu, and the leader of his surrounding villages. He has to contend with issues in his family, the growing power of the white settlers and the influence of the new religion, Christianity.
Achebe is unlike any other author I have read. He is a truly great writer.
Everything feels so authentic and tribal life is not glossed over or romanticised like I’ve seen in so many novels. The insidious creep of colonialism and hypocrisy of the white governors is well portrayed as is the daily life and politics of Umuaro and the surround villages.
I found the huge amount of characters difficult to get to grips with but I did enjoy it.

I enjoyed The Crossing Places and read a couple of other ones. I quite like that she has added the historic info as well.

13 In Lieu Of You by Keith A Pearson

This was ok. I am a sucker for a time travel book, but here the time travel is actually only a small part of the story - most of it is the main character dealing with the implications of his actions while time travelling. Gary is getting divorced and he is given the option to go back in time and change events so he never meets his wife. He dies but inevitably the results aren’t what he hoped. It’s not the best written book I’ve ever read, and you of course have to suspend disbelief about the way he comes to time travel, but I did enjoy it.

8 Skeletons - Jane Fallon

Jen adores her husband’s warm and close family, is best friends with his sisters but it all begins to fall apart when she sees her father in law with another woman. It was fine, kept me reading in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep.

My TBR has just pretty much doubled in size. There are so many books on here that look good. I might have to give up sleeping so I have time to read them all

4 Golden Hill, Francis Spufford

This has been sat on my book shelf since 2016 and finally got around to reading it. Mysterious Mr Smith arrives in New York in 1760 with a credit note for £1000. Is he what he seems? Thought it evoked New York before the civil war really well. It took a while for me to get into the rhythm of the prose and some sections of the book dragged but when I got into it the story zipped along.

1. The Maid - Nita Prose
2. The Lost Bookshop - Evie Woods
3. Unruly - David Mitchell
4. Lucy by the Sea - Elizabeth Strout

5) The Sober Girl Society Handbook - Millie Gooch

I enjoyed this last one. As the title suggests, it is 'quit lit' aimed at women. It begins with some good arguments for giving up the drink altogether and then it has some practical advice for living sober. I enjoyed the first part more than the second. A lot of the advice doesn't apply to me for a few reasons -

I still drink alcohol but am 'sober curious' (is that a wanky phrase? It's mentioned in the book a few times so that's where I got it)!

I don't like dancing or anything - there's a part where the author says "if you can dance alone in your kitchen you can dance sober on a dance floor too as long as the music is good" (or words to that effect). I wouldn't dance round my kitchen ever. I am just not inclined to dance these days and would only do so pissed and / or under duress 😂. I know it wasn't meant to apply only to dancing but could apply to loads of other stuff you think you can only do sober, but it did hit me weird and then I thought...am I weird to not enjoy dancing?

Other advice like how to get to sleep on a long haul flight without booze made me laugh as well. I can't afford long haul flights and if I could I'd have a small child waking me up every 2 mins 😂

None of this is a complaint btw - I don't expect authors to tailor their advice to me specifically, and the author is a young, single (?) woman, so it makes sense that her life experience won't be that similar to mine

There's a lot of dating while sober advice. It is all great advice and well presented in a kind, non-judgemental way, but a lot of it just didn't apply to me all that much.

She mentions her dad having a stroke at the end and how this may have been as a result of his liking a drink (he had hypertension which can be caused by booze). I lost my mum to a heart attack really young and she was very fond of a drink, so that was something that really stood out to me. There are also some really well made arguments about consent and alcoholism, a feminist slant on sobriety etc which I really appreciated and enjoyed.

Sorry, I realise this "review" is really just a summary of how the content of the book did or didn't apply to me, so may not be that helpful! But since there are a lot of mums on this site, maybe it will be useful info for someone

@MillicentTheMagnificent I like Millie Gooch a lot - I heard her episode of They Think It’s All Sober and it really resonated. Have swapped ALL the booze for pints of lucky saint in recent years (for the most part) and am the better for it.

Jeez so many errors in my review - I'm not well today and think it's giving me serious brain fog!

Things you could only do DRUNK not sober.

Consent and being under the influence not alcoholism 🙄😂

Well done to you @Palegreenstars! I am giving serious thought to knocking it on the head 😬

@MorriganManor

Doing it as an Audible at night probably affected how I responded to it too