50 Books Challenge 2024 Part Two

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the second 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.

The previous thread is here

I've had to avert my eyes from some of the recent conversation. When the zombie apocalypse hits, only true Barbara Pym fans will be allowed to shelter in my hayshed. For the rest of you, I won't necessarily feel good as you're being consumed by the ravening hordes, but I think we can all agree that standards still have to be maintained.

@bibliomania 😀😀

Don't worry biblio we will have our own shelter!

@MrsALambert absolutely ❤️ I do love a good fantasy novel 🙂

Much reviewed on here, in fact that’s why snapped it up in a 99p kindle deal, a bout of insomnia last night meant I ended up finishing Kala by Colin Walsh.

Found it a book of two halves really with the first bit being rather meandering and boring and the second half picking up and then moving swiftly to resolve the mystery. I’m not sure I really liked any of the three main characters! Ok for a 99p deal.

Moving on to American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld next.

I think I am probably the last to read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. I put it off because I am not a gamer; I hate gaming.

For the most part I fairly passively trotted through the well written book but didn't like the two main protagonists enough. But this book had the ability to suddenly catch me off guard and make me sob. To say why and when would constitute spoilers but, suffice to say, the more minor characters meant more to me.

I should call them the NPCs , of course.

Piggy - agree absolutely re the minor/major characters.

27 This Thing Of Darkness by Nicola Edwards

Not the book beloved by many on this thread but another with the same name. This is a Wuthering Heights spinoff, following Heathcliff during the years he was away. This was told in a similar way to WH, from different people’s points of view and some in letters/diary entries. I really liked this structure, seeing how different people perceived Heathcliff, and really enjoyed many of the sections. However, there’s a couple of sections in the middle with lots of focus on slaves and slavery, and these sections had repeated use of the N word. I know the author was probably just trying to reflect what people at that time really would have said and thought, but in a book written nowadays (it was published last year) I found it hard to accept and that affected my overall impression of the book.

28 Pride and Premeditation by Tirzah Price

A YA retelling of Pride and Prejudice, featuring Lizzie as a wannabe solicitor looking into a murder. You obviously need to suspend a lot of disbelief here as much of what Lizzie does during this book simply wouldn’t have happened in Austen’s time. There’s also several inconsistencies in the dialogue - Lizzie is referred to as ‘thick’ (meaning stupid) at one point which I don’t think would have been in use then, and I’m equally sure that nice young ladies like Lizzie wouldn’t have said/thought ‘bollocks’ when things went wrong! I think the author could have done a bit better on that front but given it’s YA maybe she was just trying to appeal to her audience. I might read more in the series.

I feel like I'm under pressure to finish library books fast as they always seem to be due back to the library.

16. The Patriarchs, Angela Saini
How did men end up in charge? It's such a huge subject that she can't give a complete answer, but she looks at some interesting angles, including societies where women have traditionally held more power. I liked her descriptions of how we look at the past, whether we're simplifying and stereotyping or getting caught up in wistful fantasies. Sensible and engaging.

17. Oh My America, Sara Wheeler
The author was turning 50 when she wrote this account of English women of a similar age travelling to the New World in the nineteenth century. I turn 50 soon so this struck a chord. The potted biographies were interesting, the account of her own travels was disappointingly minimal, she's quite negative about getting older - better than the alternative! - and being single. Overall worth the read but with some reservations.

18. The Secret Hours, Mick Herron
Latest Slough House book. Really enjoyed this one, from the opening extended chase to the world's most pointless committee - which suddenly isn't. Not the place to start if you're new to the series, but great fun if you're a fan.

19. Jobs for the Girls, Ysenda Maxtone Graham
Social history about life for young women in the workplace from the 1950s to the 1980s (approx - I don't have it handy to check). Enjoyable. Slightly disconcerted to realize I knew one of her interviewees.

20. Murder is Easy, Agatha Christie
I watched the TV adaptation at Christmas and wanted to see how much it had been changed. The TV version made it more racially diverse which did add something but didn't quite ring true in terms of 1930s English attitudes. As I knew the murderer, I could observe the misdirection for once.

21. Notes from the Henhouse, Elspeth Barker. A collection of personal essays from the author of O Caldonia. One for existing fans. I am one and liked hearing her distinctive voice again.

17 The people on platform 5 - Clare Pooley

Picked this up for 99p as I quite liked the sound of it. A group strangers who take the same train each day are brought together by a single event. From here their lives become entwined.
This didn’t do it for me. The characters weren’t believable, their development happened too fast and their endings were too neat and sweet. Some of the characters changed personality overnight just based on a conversation and others threw their whole lives away based on someone else’s opinion. It could have really gone somewhere especially as it touched on some important issues. But it didn’t. It skirted over them and actually made them seem trivial in how easily the characters overcame them.

Bibliomania Glad to hear you enjoyed Notes from the Henhouse. I got it for Christmas and it's on my TBR pile. (I'm also a fan.)

Well come the zombie apocalypse I'm sheltering in @bibliomania Hayshed.

I've not read any of Francis Spufford's fiction but adore his non-fiction, Backroom Boys in particular. Although as a 'backroom women' married to a 'backroom boy' I'm very much the target audience and recommended it to everyone I know.

12. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman

I have finally finished reading the His Dark Materials trilogy. I bought the books before my DC were born, and DD turns 18 this year. I read The Northern Lights many years ago, but reread it last year, along with The Subtle Knife.

I'm probably the last person to read them so I won't go into details. The last one was rather more complex and I did wonder how many children would actually follow the story.

I read the first of The Book of Dust, La Belle Sauvage some time ago, and will reread that and continue on with The Secret Commonweath later in the year.* *

I really rated Backroom Boys too.

My latest:

11. Goats - Mark Poirier

After loving this author’s hilarious Modern Ranch Living I succumbed to this, his first novel. In many ways it’s rather similar, sharing a setting - Tucson, Arizona - and a teenage central character - Ellis Whitman, child of divorce - but in many ways it’s darker, weirder and possibly less of a satisfying read. All the same, I really enjoyed it.

14-year-old Ellis lives with his mother, spoiled and moneyed divorcée Wendy, in a comfortable desert home, with a boon companion in the shape of Goat Man, who takes care of the landscaping, lives in the pool house, and grows and consumes a prodigious crop of top-notch marijuana, generously shared with Ellis. Goat Man has earned his nickname thanks to his small herd of….you guessed it, goats: Freida, Lance, Mr T and Gigi, whom he takes on regular treks in the desert. We come to know a lot about the personalities and quirks of these animals. Meanwhile, Ellis departs regretfully for a new life in a stuffy (and expensive) boy's school financed by his father, Fucker Frank, leaving Goat Man to cope with the horrors of Wendy's latest boyfriend, the preening and untrustworthy Bennett.

A lot more happens, but essentially, despite its surface appearance as a sweary, funny stoner comedy, this turns out to be a rite-of-passage tale at heart, with Goat Man as the caring figure who’s always been there for Ellis, in a way neither of his real parents ever was, and who must now learn to negotiate a new relationship with him.

19. Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

Shortlisted for the Booker in 2018. The eponymous hero is selected, almost randomly, by a young man whose family own the slave plantation he lives on, to be his assistant in scientific endeavours. From there Washington will embark on a global journey in search of personal truths.

What this definitely is, (as said on BookTube by Eric Karl Anderson) is an absolute pageturner, I have blitzed this. That said, it ends rather nowhere and is somewhat unsatisfying in that regard, after the investment.

Remus I've been chortling about this final line for the last couple of days, but I have just started a new book (To the Lions) and it has so many short sentences. I'm trying to ignore it and hope I can press on but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to actually finish it.

I saw the lions. I was (insert scared/impressed/in awe/petrified/bored/quite alarmed as desired). I (screamed/ran/yawned/stood stock still/shot one). I am a very boring writer. I do/don't like lions a lot.

Thanks for answering my cheeky question Remus and Eine instead of v. justifiably throwing me to any handy lions. @EineReiseDurchDieZeit I'm wary of stunted-millenial cringefests anyway but your steer led me to sample Really Good, Actually and place it firmly on my DNR list 😉

@JaninaDuszejko I first became friends with DP after spotting Backroom Boys in his bag, at a meetup for another hobby entirely (fencing) -- it definitely seems to be an oddly specific kind of bait 😁

@bibliomania More thanks for reviewing both the Barker and Maxtone-Graham books. I loved O Calendonia and enjoyed YMG's previous midcentury histories but had missed these.

Arguably it's worse than that!

@noodlezoodle That's dreadful. Burn it.

In a firepit. Bonfire. Oven. Hell.

You're killing me here

Lol at noodle and Remus * *😂😂

@HenryTilneyBestBoy whilst this is a thread for robust critique, we do pride ourselves on our camaraderie and lack of bitchiness..friendliest thread on Mumsnet.