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?

Happy new year all and welcome!

I went to sleep at 1 last night then my toddler woke me up at 6:30, so I'm delighted to be in bed already with clean pyjamas, clean sheets and book 1 of 2024 - The Future by Naomi Alderman.

Joining! I usually fall off the thread, but will try not to this year.

Have just started a shiny new book, but won't add it till I've finished.

Thank you for the thread

First book finished. It didn't take long, as it was a graphic novel. I had a lovely cosy afternoon/evening reading it.

1. Heartstopper Vol 5 by Alice Oseman

I love this series, despite not being its target audience. Nick and Charlie's romance is just so sweet and lovely. Vol 6, when it comes out, completes the story.

I also meant to add that I'm attempting to have a No Book Buying Year and aim to shop from my existing vast unread library. Will see how long that lasts.

Late to the new thread! Thanks southeast.

1.The Extraordinary Hope of Dawn Brightside by Jessica Ryn

5/5 My first bold of the year. Just shed a tear or two over the ending. It is a very touching book dealing with homelessness and mental health. However throughout the book there were some laugh out loud moments as well.
This is about Dawn Elisabeth Brightside and her placement at St.Judes Homeless hostel. It also tells the story of Grace the hostel’s manager and I liked how the chapters were each headed either Dawn or Grace as it told their own interlacing stories. The hostel has been told there is no more funding but can the residents help save St.Judes from closing down? Yes an absolute recommend.

Thanks @Southeastdweller and hi to all newbies! Don't be alarmed if some posters get to 5 books before you've even finished one, it's not a competition and no one is judging 😊

I am mid way through 20,000 leagues under the sea which is really interesting when the author isnt listing and classifying fish for full pages at a time.

I also have a couple of non fiction that I put down a few months ago and need to come back to. I hate leaving books part way through and usually just get on with it but these two fell off my radar.

1. Femina, by Janina Ramirez
Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe have been following me around for the last 18 months and I'm starting to feel unnerved. Short accounts of medieval women. This was okay but all a bit telly historian - lightweight factoids announced in portentous tones, with modern resonance heavily underlined.

Happy New Year @Southeastdweller and all. Hoping to make 50 this year, with more fiction. Happy to see that Station 11 has already popped up on 1st January And on that note, my first book and first bold of the year;

1. The Zone of Interest by Martin Amis
I was reading reviews of the new film adapted from this, and thinking I wasn't sure I'd be able to bear watching it, so I read this instead and... it's worse. Incredibly impressive, gripping and dark, it is also extremely Amis.

Angelus Thomsen, a golden boy of the Nazi hierarchy and an officer, is posted to Auschwitz, and falls in love at first sight with the wife of the camp Commandant. The story is told from his point of view, from the viewpoint of his beloved's husband Paul Doll, and from the point of view of Szmul, a Sonderkommando. The character that made me think the most was Frethuric Burckl, an IG Farben business executive who thinks the Final Solution is 'ridiculous' and who Amis presents as a kind of reasonable , sharp-witted centrist... but just as you smile at Amis's expert comic lines, you realise Burckl's a Nazi centrist who thinks that it would make much more business sense to starve the slave labourers a bit less quickly and slaughter them on a slower timetable. I couldn't read more than a few pages at a time, but kept picking it up again. I saw shades of myself, of people I know, and perhaps of Amis himself in it. I think he was sensible to write only from male points of view, as he is always criticised for his female characters, but I thought the women in this were fascinating, and the glimpses of their imprisonment and the agency they manage somehow to drag from their circumstances were brilliantly done. I'm actually not sure how an author survives writing something like this. Bravo.

Hello, signing up for this year. I've been posting under the name ABookWyrm for the last two years but got fed up with it so changed to a new name.

I'm starting the year with Six Crimson Cranes by Elizabeth Lim, a fantasy based on the fairy tale The Six Swans. Wasn't sure about it at first, but now halfway through and really into it.

Happy New Year to everyone!

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie, not a book, but I thought you might enjoy this long read article: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/09/world/americas/aconcagua-mountain-expedition-photos.html

I'm in! I got off to a good start last year then unexpectedly moved house and lost my reading mojo. Have just finished the Strike novel Silkworm, by Robert Galbraith/ JKR, so will bring that over as it's massively overlong.
Am aiming for 30, 50 would be fantastic.

Just finished my first book, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, which my sister got me for Christmas. I'd heard of it before but hadn't read it yet, I really enjoyed it.

(Not to be confused with The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, which I also really enjoyed but is a very very different book!)

Thank you, @noodlezoodle . I'll use that as something sensational to read on the train this morning.

Finished Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors last night. A very poetic, literary read but just found myself a bit bored with it, if I'm honest.

Stumbled upon Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter which I started last night and enjoying it so far. Unfortunately back at work today which I think will slow me down. How inconvenient

C & F was a DNF for me.

Placemarking. I think 50 might be ambitious but we can try! Made a start with Speak, which is actually a young adult novel today .

I thought C&F was pretty predictable with rather cliched characters, particularly Cleo. The copy writer chapters were far stronger than the rest of the book IMO.

I've started the year with The Satsuma Complex by Bob Mortimer.

I'm not impressed so far but it was a Christmas present so I feel I should persevere!

Checking in I'm reading The Main by Trevanian, the author of the famous Shibumi.

I'm currently reading The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake. I was an avid reader my whole life until I had my son and just couldn't find the motivation to pick up a book. But now he's not a baby anymore and starts school Sept '24, I have started reading again. I managed 5 books between the middle of Nov and middle of Dec (stopped leading up to Xmas as was so busy) and am aiming for at least one book per week alongside part time work and part time uni and full time mama :)

Happy New Year and thank you to @Southeastdweller for the new thread as always

i have already purchased my first book based on a recommendation thanks to @highlandcoo. paper cup sounds really good and as I hale from the area myself, but rarely ever return, I should enjoy the return by proxy.

I am starting the year with a Rivers of London Novella then I might move to a physical book I got for my birthday Lessons in Chemistry. From experience I need to get this read before the holiday ends and my only reading time is via Audible in the car

1 The Common Years by Jilly Cooper

This was a great start to the year! I’m a fan of Dame Jilly’s but this had passed me by before. It’s her diaries from when she lived in Putney between roughly 1972-1982 and walked her dogs daily on the common. It includes her observations on the nature around her and how that changed through the year, as well as her dogs and the various dog walking friends she made. She writes beautifully about nature and this was a joy to read.

Sorry - I should have said hello to all both the returners and the newbs. I genuinely love this small, safe corner of the internet.

I'll be joining for the first time ever. I struggle to get into reading as my life is chaotic but once I've got a good book I struggle to put it down. Thanks OP

@biostudent

I read The Atlas Six last year and it piqued my interest enough to read The Atlas Paradox but I thought it was laughably bad sadly. The third one is out in a few days, I can't see myself reading it unless it gets to 99p and perhaps not even then.

DuPain read it as well, I'm assuming she's name changed