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?

R*ipe by Sarah Rose Etter
*
A year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley start-up, Cassie finds herself trapped in a corporate nightmare. Between the long hours, toxic bosses, and unethical projects, she also struggles to reconcile the glittering promise of a city where obscene wealth lives alongside abject poverty and suffering.

I enjoyed this, but I know many others won't. I work in start-ups and found it depressingly relatable! But definitely not one for everyone!

Just finished Getting Better, Michael Rosen's book about survival, recovery and feeling good. It's simple and life affirming. A good book for a new year read, I guess.

The chapter on his son's death is very moving.

Finished my first book of the year - started several months ago, and was meant to be following the read-along timetable but didn’t have the patience to eke it out!

1 Nicholas Nickleby - Charles Dickens I really enjoyed this, having read and liked a few other Dickenses previously. Very long and meandering (you can tell it was written in instalments, and that sometimes he was padding out the wordcount) but lots of fun, and - without being too spoilery - a satisfactory ending for pretty much all of the huge cast of characters. I’ll keep posting on the read-along thread each month as long as I can remember what I thought about each section!

I've also just finished my first book. I wanted something easy to start the year in my hungover state on NYD so went for The Twist Of A Knife by Anthony Horowitz. This is one of his Hawthorne murder books and follows a similar pattern to the others. Horowitz is himself as the first person narrator, this time a play he wrote is premiering in the West End. The Sunday Times critic writes a bad review and is then murdered the next day. All the clues point to Horowitz, so he gets Hawthorne, his secretive detective friend, involved to clear his name. This was fine if a bit obvious, 3/5.

Book no 2 finished. Tomorrow x 3. Not sure what I am missing. Maybe its because I'm not interested in gaming, but I just dont see what everyone is raving about.

I think I will move on to Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, by Cho Nam-Joo, trans by Jamie Chang next. Christmas present from my daughter. She knows that I am looking to expand my range of authors and read more internationally and authors not known to me. Its a short book, only 163 pages. Has anyone else read it?

One of my resolutions this year is not to waste time reading books I’m not enjoying. I’ve already had my first DNF - Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov. The blurb sounded really intriguing (a clinic to help dementia patients with rooms/areas set up to look as they would at various points in the past, but non-dementia patients start using it which causes problems) and it won the International Booker so I had high hopes, but I read about 20% and was bored and struggling to follow what was going on so have given up. The plot hadn’t got going and it was just lots of philosophical musings. Not for me although I might give it another go in the future sometime.

1 The Trial by Rob Rinder

The author is a friend so no unbiased reviews here - this was fun, undemanding and kept me entertained during a bout of insomnia last night! Pupil barrister Adam Green finds himself embroiled in a web of corruption when he acts as junior in a huge murder trial. I had the added bonus of trying to work out which bits were nabbed from real life!

You’re friends with Rob Rinder?! Lucky you. He seems lovely. I saw him in panto last year and he was very good!

@Piggywaspushed Getting Better by Michael Rosen was a recommendation in a book group I'm in. It's on my want to read list for this year. I enjoy Michael Rosen's writing - his Boris Letters are funny.

It only took me two days to read!

@Tarahumara I remember your tumbletumble name and the book we both loved that led to your current name

Woah there @Welshwabbit, you dropped that in! Rob Rinder seems like a lovely person - love him on the hotels programme and was very moved by his Who Do You Think You Are. I have The Trial on my kindle and it might be a good time to break it out.

Haha, @MaudOfTheMarches reading back it does look like a name drop! We trained as barristers together and we're still in touch. Our lives have taken quite different turns since then! He is lovely, and just as he seems on TV.

No worries @Welshwabbit - I'm in law too (solicitor rather than barrister) and I know what a small world it is!

Has this been going for 12 years @Tarahumara! that’s amazing for a group of strangers!

1 The Lord God Made Them All - James Herriot
The last in the series, feelgood nostalgia from an olden-days vet

2 Watership Down: the Graphic Novel - Richard Adams with James Sturm, Joe Sutphin
Received for my birthday (just before Christmas). I never read graphic novels, but Watership Down is one of those books engrained in my psyche, re-read so many times that the prose is etched in my brain. I loved this version, the rabbits are cartoons of course, but they are at least anatomically recognisable as rabbits, and the countryside is depicted beautifully. I particularly liked that the text uses lapine words without any explanation of what they mean, so you have to pick up the language or remember it from the original book (which also doesn't explain much in the way of translation).

We aren't strangers - we are online book friends 😊 I think I've been on the thread since 2019 or 2020. As others have said it's the a lovely corner of the internet so welcome to all new joiners!

Argh. I’m taking inspiration from you and giving up on my first book if the year. I rarely give up on books but you’re right. Life’s too short. It’s Luckenbooth by Jenni Fagan. Has anyone read it and enjoyed it?
Set over the course of a century, it tells the stories of the residents of a tenement building in Edinburgh, including Jessie, the devil’s daughter. It’s more like short stories really.
I didn’t like it at the start and, 150 pages in, it’s getting worse. The characters don’t feel real to me. They’re very extreme, but somehow strangely cliched. It’s written almost entirely in short sentences with random observations of things that don’t mean anything. It’s got an historical setting but is full of anachronisms. The characters are taking drugs and sleeping around with each other like there’s no tomorrow, but it’s boring. It’s ranty and preachy. It’s pretentious.
I feel bad saying all of that. I guess it’s just not for me. It’s kind of like a steampunk novel I think? It’s supposed to be magical realism but this is not a patch on Angela Carter.

I now need to read something that’s guaranteed to be good so I have Chinua Achebe’s ‘Arrow of God’.

Sorry, that was to @ChessieFL who has her first DNF of the year.

@Decklededge I loved LuckenBooth but I can see why it would be a marmite book

@Tarragon123 @FortunaMajor enjoyed it last year.

Luckenbooth was total shit imvho.

I hated Luckenbooth and on the face of it it’s exactly the sort of book I should like. I agree with every word of your review @Decklededge, especially the “pretentious” verdict.

@Decklededge I read and loved Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart last year and didn't realise it was part of a trilogy. More books to add to the TBR pile.....

I really enjoyed Jenni F’s The Sunlight Pilgrims though.