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

If that was her take away from Steeple Chasing @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie then I’d question how much of it she’d actually read or absorbed from it The staff recommendations hanging out of the books often suggest that’s a general flaw in Waterstones reviews.

I HATE them recommending books to me, especially when it's the ones they pile on the counter and try to flog alongside a coffee.

15. Lucy By The Sea by Elizabeth Strout

This is the fourth in the Amgash series. This time, it picks up the story from Oh William! a year or so later and begins right at the start of the pandemic.

William, Lucy's first husband and father of her two adult daughters, is a scientist and immediately spots the danger that covid poses to the family, and persuades Lucy to leave New York and move with him to a remote fishing village in Maine. There, Lucy befriends Bob Burgess (tying in characters from The Burgess Boys, and there are also brief links to characters from Olive Kitteridge, Abide With Me and Amy & Isabelle), and his wife Margaret.

I loved this one and think it is possibly my favourite of the series. Although, as you'd expect with a novel set during the pandemic, there are some very sad bits, with deaths of several people close to Lucy. On the whole, though, extremely good, and I'm looking forward to reading more Elizabeth Strout novels this year.

I loved Lucy By the Sea so much @BarbaraBuncle. I'm also looking forward to reading more of hers this year

@BarbaraBuncle I’m halfway through The Burgess Boys and I’m still not sure what to make of it. It’s not the instant love that I had with Olive or Lucy. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve read them out of sequence so I already know what I assume is going to be a spoiler later in the book regarding Bob - he seems like a completely different character from what I remember in Lucy by the Sea.

@ÚlldemoShúl, I have read Fagles' translations of Homer and Virgil too (though not recently) and I admire them a lot.

@Stowickthevast , I'm very envious that you saw the Zadie Smith play! I'm glad to hear the show was excellent though. Fingers crossed it will run again sometime.

@TattiePants That's interesting. I've had a copy of The Burgess Boys sat on my kindle for a while now, unread, because I was more invested in the Amgash novels and Olive Kitteridge. I'm intrigued to see where it goes because, like you say, there are some big plot spoilers for the Burgess story in Lucy By The Sea. I did rather like Bob Burgess and his kind friendship towards Lucy and William.

I've been watching this challenge for a few years and always seem to 'miss' the beginning.. so give up.

This year, I'm late to the start... but I'm going to start anyway...

To get me started I've asked my dc (14 and 10 and both decent readers so I should be OK!) To pick me one of their books...

Dc14 handed me her GCSE texts Animal Farm and Jeckell and Hyde, and dc10 The Diary of an Awesome Friendly kid... it could have been a whole lot worse...

So my starting list

1. Karma - Boy George

1. Animal Farm - George Orwell
2. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
3. Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid - Jeff Kinney
4. Lessons in Chemisty - Bonnie Garmus

Welcome all newbies

👋🏻!

Finished:

17. Solitaire- Alice Oseman. I really enjoyed this. It follows Charlie Spring's sister Tori trying to solve the mystery behind activities at her school carried out by a mysterious group called 'Solitare' while trying to cope with her brother's illness and her own mental health. This was AO's debut novel, written when she was eighteen and published when she was nineteen and it involved characters from Heartstopper, but was written before she wrote the Heartstopper series.

I think it takes place after HS Volume four, since it features Charlie's struggles with anorexia. Anyway, I really loved it and identified well with Tori, Having had those feelings of 'I'm not good enough to hang around with anyone.' AO writes about mental health so sensitively and with such a light touch that you really empathise with her characters. I also really loved Michael, the other principal character, he was so sweet and kind and I loved the way he looked out for Tori.

I ordered her second novel, Radio Silence, from WHSmith straight after I've finished.

Have started reading 'The Last Family In England.' By Matt Haig. I've set myself a challenge to read all of his books (apart from the Midnight Library, since I've read that for book club and wasn't too fond of it), and see how they are. ❤️

*I finished. Mustn't type so quickly next time 😂

And a big welcome to everyone who's recently joined ❤️🙂

15 After The Fire by Karen Campbell
Second in her crime series featuring Anna Cameron, Jamie Worth and Cath Worth. In two minds about this. She writes so well and takes her time to delve into the human side of crime. However, this doesn’t hang together as a whole.
Jamie is taken on as an armed police officer and promptly shoots someone dead. He is prosecuted and goes to prison. He’s still a self pitying dickhead so I found it hard to care very much. Everything seems to happen a little too fast with some unbelievable coincidences, such as Anna being ideally placed to launch her own unofficial investigation. Cath mainly cries a lot and is pathetically grateful for any bit of affection Jamie throws her way.
There’s a secondary plot about trafficking which is difficult to read at times as it deals very realistically with child abuse. Some heart-of-gold Travellers too. The police are mainly bumbling, corrupt idiots but it’s ok because Anna swishes her hair, makes bitchy comments about other female officers and moons over Jamie, her feminine whiles glossing over the need for a believable plot. I can usually picture people in books but Jamie remained an inexplicably desirable hottie - a cross between Mr Jelly and Henry Cavill.
Despite the fortuitous coincidences I found it very readable, but it does suffer from trying to be everything all at once.
Another early novel where it’s interesting to track her development as a writer and see how she jettisoned any extra bumf to turn out something as good as Paper Cup.

Oh no, I'm sorry to hear that about Sharron Davies, how disappointing. And thank you for the BJK recommendation; from the little I know about her she has faced a lot of difficulties because of her sexuality (in addition to being a woman in sport).

Yes, she did. It's interesting to read about ehr (non romantic!) relationships with other tennis players , both men and women - and with sports authorities.

11 Down Under - Bill Bryson

Bryson ‘s Australian book is undeniably white-centric (Bryson acknowledges the brutal treatment of the Aborigines since settlers arrived, and the complexity of their culture, but manages not to speak to a single one in his travels across the length and breadth of the country); but still absolutely entertaining, funny and packed with fascinating facts.

4.. The Colour of Money by Walter Tevis

I loved this slow burn of a sequel to The Hustler, following the life of this pool player as his marriage ends and he closes the pool hall he has been running. The temptation to get back into pool hustling is great but can he manage to get back the edge that he has lost over many sedentary years?

Walter Tevis has surprised me with his brilliant books on such different subjects and genres such as The Man Who Fell To Earth, The Queen’s Gambit, Mockingbird, and the Hustler. In each, he writes understated stories of obsession, quiet desperation and personal triumph. It comes as no surprise to his readers that the author himself has battled addiction and has played pool and chess for most of his life.

Recommended.

@BestIsWest and @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I'm an avid reader of books about the early Antarctic exploration. Shackleton is my hero, and has been since I was about 8 years old and I read about him in a Reader's Digest Children's Treasury (I wish I'd still got that book). I cried when I saw the James Caird in an exhibition.

10. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
A charismatic teacher takes a select few of the girls in her class under wing, and they fall under her spell, much to the consternation of the senior staff at the school. The girls are enthralled by Miss Brodie’s glamour and eventful love life. As the girls mature, it becomes evident how vulnerable, manipulative and troubled Miss Brodie is.

This was fine I guess, but I expected more. I wonder if its brevity is the problem? Miss Brodie is a fabulously flawed creation, but to the extent that she overshadowed everyone else. I never felt I really knew the any of Brodie set, and without their taglines (Rose=sex, Monica=clever etc) I wouldn’t even have remember who was who, so I didn’t really connect emotionally with it.

@StrangewaysHereWeCome I felt the same when I read it too. I think I was expecting more, having seen the film but now think the film was probably better than the novel and that is a rare thing.

@MissMarplesNiece its funny how these things connect with you isn’t it?

I'm out of step with the Lucy By The Sea love. I found it a bit dull but have decided I really don't like pandemic lit. It was boring to live through and it's boring to read about!

11. The First Bad Man - Miranda July. I hadn't heard of Miranda July before but she's quite a well known film maker and artist. This was her first novel which a friend recommended. It's completely bonkers. It's written in the first person by a middle-aged woman called Cheryl who lives by herself and is very stuck to her routines. She has quite a weird internal perception of life - there are babies she calls Kulbeko Bondy that she feels an intense longing for, and an older man that she knows through work who she's obsessed by. Her bosses - who run a self defence training and have odd Japanese traditions - ask her to have their 20 year old daughter to stay. The daughter Clee is a total slob and Cheryl struggles at first but then they end up hitting each other and re-enacting three self defence videos. There's also another sub plot going on with a therapist and the older man who is himself in love with a 16 year old. The second half of the book has a change in pace and in the end it's quite redemptive. I've used the word "odd" or "weird" several times in this review and it really is quite strange but also quite funny. It reminded me slightly of Big Swiss which I read recently with the mixture of odd sex & therapy but this is much stranger. Still I did enjoy it and will probably try and watch her movies. Interested to know if anyone else has read this.

14 Blood and Sugar by Laura Robinson Shepard. I found this hard to get into them something clicked and I whizzed through it. As usual the killer was a complete surprise to me, I obviously go through life completely oblivious to what's happening around me

@Stowickthevast

I haven't read the First Bad Man but it is on TBR and I have read Big Swiss

@Stowickthevast It’s possibly worth seeing Miranda July’s film You and Me and Everyone We Know, should you get the chance. She’s also in it. It has a strange, rather Mike Leigh quality of awkwardness and the characters are similarly off-kilter, if that makes sense, but I quite liked it. I did laugh quite often in between the cringing.