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 DNFed Really Good Actually, on the grounds that I Couldn't Care Less Actually.

19. Edible Economics by Ha Joon Chang
    I really like the author's earlier books Bad Samaritans and 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism but I've found his more recent ones a bit of a let down. I bought this because it was 99p, and (as an economist turned food grower) I liked the idea of exploring economics through food. Unfortunately a lot the food stories had little relevance to the economic points, & overall it felt like the same issues covered as 23 Things but in a more disjointed way.

20. A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel by KJ Charles
    Charles is one of my automatic-buy authors, & one of the few romance writers who I feel lives up to Heyer. I didn't think this was one of her best, but still an entertaining read for a day when I was laid up sick & needed cheering up.

21. Red Side Story by Jasper Fforde
    Sequel to Shades of Grey - which thanks to @Kinsters review upthread I didn't bother re-reading, so wasn't bothered by the extensive recapping of the first book.
    If I was being picky there's a few things I'd criticise. One of the choices made by the characters near the end of the book is obviously wrong within the context of what they know, & clearly a contrivance to get them to a particular place, which I always find irritating. More seriously, I found the lighthearted tone somewhat at odds with the very high body count. Plus, the protagonist Eddie is really quite annoying, & I struggled to see what Jane sees in him.
    
    Having said all that, I had this on audio & was definitely making time to do chores in order to listen to more of it, so can't really complain

22. Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky
    I'm baffled that @CoteDAzur hasn't read and reviewed this on the thread already. (Or have I missed it?) This takes Tchaikovsky's favourite theme of alternate paths of evolution & different types of intelligence, & plugs it into a classic old-school SF story with multiverses, intelligence operatives, lots of running, and even an evil CEO with a techno-lair. Not up to the standards of Dogs of War or Cage of Souls but still a good pacey read that kept me up beyond my bedtime. (Also, currently 99p on Kindle.)

@Stowickthevast Looking forward to your review of the ejaculation lit. I admire your staying power.

@Welshwabbit I read Hungry a year or two ago and loved it. I like Grace Dent's podcast, Comfort Eating, and have her latest book Comfort Eating out from the library to read shortly.

I also loved Hungry. I had a very similar upbringing in a northern town in the 70s / 80s. I still remember the excitement of getting our first Prestos supermarket!

Hungry was also a bold for me - I am of same era as Grace which helps as it resonated but also well-written with humour.

It sounds like I bold everything but that’s not true…

I’m so behind and need to catch up on the thread but see Hungry being mentioned which was a bold for me too. I’m a similar age to Grace too, little bit younger but still found so much of it recognisable.

I’ve slowed right down again but just finished my number 6 book Dead Lions by Mick Herron. The second in the Slough House series and I’ve got to say I didn’t love it as much as the first, plot/ adversaries were just a bit too farcical for me and not nearly as cleverly done as the first. Still great fun though and some very funny lines. DH will be happy as this now means we can watch the second series of the TV show!

@Jecstar – I do not want to think about the sex scenes!!! Urgh! lol

@cassandre – is it yourself that reads quite a few books in French? Are you bilingual, fluent or looking to improve?

@minsmum – Blood and Sugar is on my tbr pile. I may need to prioritise it 😊

@Kinsters – hoping that no news from you is good news 💐

15. The Black Friar – SG MacLean – Second in the Damian Seeker series. Nothing better when you find a ‘new to you’ author and have quite a few books to gallop through. Set in London in 1655, Damian Seeker is a spy in Cromwell’s Guard. The rise of coffee shop culture, the increase of religious fanatics and the always present threat of the Stuart monarchy over the sea is the backdrop to a murder inquiry and the disappearance of children. Cant wait to read the next one!

Debating in not finishing an audio book, The Rabbit Girls by Anna Ellory. Goodness, its so slow and I have put up the speed to 1.3. Absolute waste of Simon Callow’s talents! I’ve got 4 and a half hours left, so I might just stick it on x2 speed and hope for the best.

I really enjoyed Hungry.

@SixImpossibleThings I loved the Gormenghast series - also the TV adaptation with the delicious Jonathan Rhys Meyers. I agree the third one is very weird! I might do a re-read of the first two books, it’s been a very long time since I read them!

Sadik - Thanks for the reminder I bought Doors of Eden in 2021 but never got around to reading it.

Just jumping back to the meetup discussion - Manchester is not a bad suggestion. It's pretty central for those coming from Scotland or London, drivable from Wales or the NE and flights come in from most airports in Europe too.

There's the fantastic John Ryland's library, the Whitworth Art gallery, Mrs Gaskell's house, a couple of great theatres and it's just over an hour away to the Parsonage at Haworth if people wanted to make more of a trip.

As a PP said (Remus?) it's not going to be possible to suit everyone however Manchester might be worth considering 🙂

Manchester works for me.

Manchester also good for me as I've got friends there & can combine with a visit to them.

Or we could help out @BestIsWest and all go to Tenby 🏖️🪣
Joking apart, any Welsh 50 bookers interested in a meet up? We could always have a side affair in Aber / Cardiff / somewhere like that.

Manchester is a maybe for me depending on flights.

22. How Literature Saved My Life, David Shields
I expected to love this extended essay, but in fact I couldn't see how it all hung together. Paragraph by paragraph it made sense, but I couldn't see why one followed the other. He went about the importance of raw honesty in writing, but other than the fact that he had a stammer and had sex in college, neither of which is pulsating with painful truthfulness, I don't know why he was telling me those pieces of information. Whatever the point of the whole thing was, it passed me by.

23. Old Bones Lie, Marion Todd
A poster mentioned this a couple of weeks ago - a crime series set in St Andrews. I visited St Andrews for the first time recently, so thought I'd give it a whirl Two prison guards and a prisoner disappear on a trip to a funeral, and our police heroine must unravel what happened. This was fine, but all fairly standard. Neither the setting nor the characters intrigued me greatly, which is what I'm looking for in crime fiction.

24. The Raging Storm, Ann Cleeves
More crime, this time set in Devon. Ann Cleeves is reliable and again, this was competently done, but it's not her best. A man's body is found in a boat and our police hero must unravel what happened. The stormy weather and isolated village is well evoked - I felt slightly seasick at various points - but I wasn't furiously turning the pages

25. An Inspector Calls, J B Priestley
One of DD's set texts for GCSE. Good old Priestley, I'm fond of him but he's not one for subtlety. I can see that it work well as an exam text as his point is hard to miss. As I've been reading quite a lot of Agatha Christie, I do like how he takes the conventions of the crime genre and uses them to point out that society as a whole is guilty.

26. Onions in the Stew, Betty MacDonald
I read The Plague and I last year, which is her comic account of her time in a TB sanatorium. This is set several years later, when she, her 2 teen dds, and her new husband move to an island off Seattle. It was published in 1955, and this remains witty and fresh. It focuses on domestic life, and there's probably more on gardening and pets that I would ideally like. I liked the last couple of chapters, one of which is quite a sharp take-down on the annoying kind of women who has you looking after her and her children and then turns on you for doing it, and the other of which was about the irritations of teenage dds. Quite fun to get a 1950s take on that - anyone of her dds' age would be in their nineties now, so it's touching to think of them as annoying adolescents.

Lol @TattiePants I was trying to remember the name of Presto’s in a conversation with FIL but I kept mixing it up and calling it Freschco’s as couldn’t recall. FIL thought I was mad and talking about coronation street but I remember visiting my auntie at Presto’s on my gran’s weekly shop as my aunt worked on the grocery section for many many years 😁 so thanks can go back and tell him Presto’s

Oh and regards to the meet-up Manchester would work for me, I am more closer and familiar to it. London is just far too daunting for me.

A meet-up sounds lovely - I've not been to an MN meet-up since my great hulking teens were toddlers! Bath would be a bit too faffy for me to get to, though of course I would take no offence whatsoever if this works for most. London is a definite maybe depending on dates and trains. And Manchester is my manor, so a yes to that as well.

11.Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson. Jeff finds what he first thinks is a dead body on a Californian beach. He starts CPR more in hope than expectation, and Francis splutters back to life. Jeff becomes curious about what happened to Francis after this, and seeks him out. Their lives become ever more intertwined, and we're invited to wonder whether this is by chance as Jeff insists, or with more sinister motives.

Billed as a pacey psychological thriller with a classic unreliable narrator, this was in fact a dull trudge through the lives of boring rich men I about whom I couldn't have given a toss. The women were there as ornaments only. The prose wasn't awful though, and at least it was short.

12. Coffee with Hitler - Charles Spicer

Someone mentioned this last year (?), can’t remember who, I’m afraid, but I thought it sounded interesting and to my pleasant surprise my library had a copy.

Spicer investigates the small group who strove to make connections of friendship (often involving convivial meetings over coffee, dinner etc) with prominent Germans from the 1930s onwards, in the hope of warding off the likelihood of European conflict. While this Anglo-German Friendship group inevitably attracted some unsavoury types, it wasn’t a pro-Nazi organisation, and the realisation that Hitler was a dangerous enemy and must be resisted was recognised by the group’s core members. When they actually began to discuss eliminating him - making serious plans for his assassination with allies within Germany - they were frustrated by the unbelievably credulous and naive Neville Chamberlain and others around him who insisted on appeasement. The ‘good chap’ theory of diplomacy obviously fell apart in tatters as soon as Hitler’s tanks rolled into Poland.

There was a lot in here that I didn’t know - including that everyone seemed to agree well before the war that Hitler was actually quite mad, even then - it’s quite astonishing that destruction and death on a terrible scale then ensued for a further 6 years because nobody in the international community would deal decisively with him when there was still a chance. Fascinating stuff and engagingly written with a lot of material uncovered for the first time, though of course fact-heavy.

I would certainly consider Manchester for a northern meet, but I work every other Saturday so dates could be awkward.

Also think a massive zoom/teams call could be good where the shy could keep their cameras off.

I've got some reviews to do, but I'm having a mad clear out and don't want to stop for too long while I'm mid-enthusiasm. When it's gone, it's gone.

Keeping quiet on the meet-up chat as I’m probably going to be one of the non-attendees - sorry!

Manchester fine for me, easy train and good friends in the area.

Ah sorry to hear that @Terpsichore as out taste seems to me to be so similar but a meetup is never going go be for everyone for sure [still nervous]

Love the idea of a meetup, and could definitely do Manchester and possibly London. I am a bit in awe of how eloquently other more-established 50Bookers can discuss books though, I do try on here but often struggle to come up with much more than 'I liked it'! Also if it's been more than a week since I read said book I've usually entirely forgotten anything more than a general sense of whether I liked it or not. So all in all I'm not sure what I'd add to a meetup, but remain intrigued by the idea!

Same @AliasGrape I would probably just be struck dumb, grin at everybody and eat cake :)

I like the idea though.