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

So sorry to hear that @Kinsters

Hope you’re doing OK @Kinsters 🌹

@Kinsters Bon courage and hope you are OK

@DuPainDuVinDuFromage

"My main takeaway is that gardening is (a) bloody hard work, (b) time-consuming, and (c) expensive

(d) but filled with more joy than anything else I have ever done.

And it lasts! Plant a tree and it will outlive you.

I would give up books before I gave up gardening!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Truly!

Lots of Love @Kinsters Look after yourself.
Still not getting much reading done here, but enjoy reading all your reviews.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie 😂.I haven't got the highest opinion of him myself, but I thought reading his books would make me change my mind about him. So far I've found:

His first book- okay, with some good characters and writing, but deviates a lot from the actual subject.

His second book- not very good at all.

I had to read 'The Midnight Library' for my new book club, and thought it went on far too long. I didn't like the references to sucicide either.

Am now reading 'How to Stop Time' which I'm really quite enjoying, so it may be a bold. We shall see....

There's a thread about 'Mumsnetters you'd like to meet' and I said I wanted to meet all of you ❤️

A 50 bookers meet up would be great!

Thanks for all the kind words everyone. The bleeding is still spotting so I'm torn between having hope and just wanting it to be over with. In my experience bleeding so early has never been a good sign.

I'll confess to liking Matt Haig! I've not read anything of his for quite some time but I enjoyed the Midnight Library and How to Stop Time. I'm enjoying Expecting Better, not much I haven't heard before but enough to keep me interested.

Wishing you well @Kinsters ❤️

I'd like a meet up in Mr. B's.

I’d also love a meet up though I am recent joiner and well behind on book reviews. Wine and books and chat! 🥰

If it gets too too cosy am sure someone could lob in a ‘50 bookers grenade’ to spark a more animated debate …

I was part of the best book group many years ago. No prescriptive reading and questions just met up every month to drink coffee, eat cake and talk about the books we’d read. Heaven.

🤞🏼💐@Kinsters Thinking of you.

No opinion on Matt Haig as none of his books have ever appealed. Am going to give Elizabeth Strout a go at some point after this chat.

I am part way through a few books:

The Reindeer Chronicles by Judith Schwartz which is so heartening and the perfect antidote to the future as shown by Venomous Lumpsucker.

The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley - very good so far. 'A twisty time-travelling tale'. Set in 1900, England is part of the French Empire. Joe Turner is a British slave who had a mysterious amnesia event, as did quite a few others apparently, which leaves him with no memory but some tantalising impressions. He receives a postcard written and sent from Scotland nearly 100 years earlier ... and is now on his way to a Scottish lighthouse to try and make sense of it all.

Relight My Fire by C K McDonnell Fourth in Stranger Times series. Not too far in but as great to be back with this bunch of fabulous characters. Vincent Banecroft, to me, has a bit of the Jackson Lamb's about him, if Jackson worked as editor of a paper that reported on ghosts and ghouls and other weirdy bollocks.

@whinsome there is an Elizabeth Stroud On daily deals today. Think is Olive again. Which is annoyingly the second in the Oliver series

A 50-B meet-up! I'm rather far away but I'll make an effort to attend if given advance notice and the promise of no-holds-barred bunfights on Never Let Me Go, 1000 Splendid Suns and Station 11

I’m up for a meet up if it can involve pistols at dawn about Never Let me Go/Station Eleven/The Bloody Boring Butler plus a walk around London’s best literary graves. And cake.

@BlindurErBóklausMaður I'd also love a Mr B's meet up ❤️

8 Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy. I know some of you on the thread have loved this. I enjoyed it, and I thought she did a good job of evoking the feeling of exhaustion when you have young DC who aren't sleeping well, and the impact on your relationship with your partner. Personally I preferred Night Waking by Sarah Moss and A Life's Work by Rachel Cusk, but perhaps that is because I read them when my own DC were younger - they're all teens now, so thankfully those days are a thing of the past for me!

9 Leonard and Hungry Paul by Ronan Hession. This was okay. It's in the Eleanor Oliphant vein of quirky people fitting into the world in their own way. I thought the author did a bit too much "telling not showing" when describing the characters' relationships with each other.

Quietly hoping for you, Kinsters.

Count me in for a Mr B's meet up!!

Just looked up Mr B.'s. Looks incredible. Under 2 hours from me - a grand day out.

👋🏻!

18. 'How To Stop Time'-Matt Haig and it's a bold! An excellent story about a man who had a condition that means he has lived through several centuries without aging. A curse of his illness is that he has been warned not to fall in love, but when he is recarnated as a modern day history teacher, he learns that love might be the only thing that will save him.

I loved this and read it in two sittings, brilliantly written, sensitive and moving, with brilliant pace and accuracy. I loved the historical elements as well. 🙂

Now having a bit of a break from Matt, and starting 'Radio Silence' by Alice Oseman ❤️

@DesdamonasHandkerchief I went to Bath for a few days for my thirtieth birthday last year and visited Mr. B's. It is excellent ❤️

1. Late in the Day byTessa Hadley. Two middle class, middle aged couples who've been friends since university have their relationships changed when one of them dies.

I read good reviews of this, but thought it was awful. Unsympathetic characters, predictable plot.

Hope you are doing as ok as possible, @Kinsters

17 Cursed Bread by Sophie Mackintosh
Well, I didn’t listen to 50 Bookers. I doubly didn’t listen, because I bought the pbk when I already had the Kindle Ed. 🤦‍♀️
I like a tasty bit of sourdough as much as the next woman but this……..page upon page of cringe-inducing crush, interspersed with tedious sex. Or thinking about sex. Or remembering sex. Ffs Elodie, just have a good wank and get over yourself.

I’m sorting a bookshelf today. Some books might even be rehomed, but it’s more likely they will be put in plastic boxes in the garage. I do have a ridiculous amount of books though and I’m feeling pretty ruthless. I might try and sell things like my signed copy of Will Self’s Great Apes. As I got older I realized he’s not a very nice person and even when I liked him I had to admit his books weren’t actually that good.

I'd love to meet up and go Mr B's, however I don't drive and it's logistically difficult from where I am. It would take a lot of planning.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I don't drive either. My mum has a mobility car on my behalf so she takes me everywhere.

I'm up for a meet-up! Bath would be lovely, but would London be more central for people? How much notice do people need - should we aim for August, say?