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

Snap @AliasGrape and @FuzzyCaoraDhubh but would enjoy the cake and chat even if just listening 😁

8 Snow Falling on Cedars - David Guterson
In an insular island community off the coast of the north-west USA in 1954 a man is on trial for murder following the death of a fellow fisherman. The accused man is of Japanese descent and is thus regarded with suspicion and contempt by some of his white neighbours. Covering the trial for the local newspaper is Ishmael Chambers, a disabled war veteran who holds an abiding secret love for the accused man's wife and is forced into making a moral decision that must affect the outcome of the trial. The trial is only 3 days in length, but we are given insights into the the characters and motives of the major players with long sections dealing with their childhoods, their young adult lives and the effects thereof.

I quite enjoyed this, some lovely descriptions of the plants and landscape of the fictional island located in the Puget Sound. The theme of unfair treatment of human beings based on racist misconceptions runs through the whole work like a bitter seam, in the most part delicately expressed but unmistakable nonetheless.

@bibliomania i read Onions In The Stew as a teenager and it left me with a lifelong desire to visit Seattle and the islands in th Sound. Sadly I can't persuade anyone to come with me I still have my copy

Betty Macdonald also had a sister who was an author - Mary Bard. Similar style of writing

I was thinking that I'd love to visit the island she describes, @grannycake

Good to know that Mary Bard is worth reading - I vaguely assumed (on the basis of no evidence whatsoever) that it would be like Gerald Durrell and Lawrence Durrell - one being jokey and the other not.

This is me exactly. I'm massively behind in my reviews but I'm avoiding catching up as I've forgotten most of what I liked / disliked in the books I read last month! To be fair, it's not just books that I forgot; my mind is like as sieve most of the time!

I do a short review in a notebook immediately after finishing a book, because I know I'll forget very quickly. It's the only way I can still write reviews here after a week or so has elapsed.

I review on here instantly if I can or there's no hope

Manchester is a good call, but only if @StrangewaysHereWeCome will promise to take me to get an obligatory Smiths photograph outside the prison.

(@bibliomania and @grannycake im up for a supplementary meetup covering Seattle and Vashon Island...)

22. Rizzio by Denise Mina

Read by the majority of the thread at this point. If anything, I felt it was too short, I would have read a much longer version.

Much to catch up on but I've already spotted lots of witty disses to help whittle down the TBR 🙌

And some additions too, esp.
@Terpsichore Coffee with Hitler sounds right up my street. Would be interesting to put some facts to the fictions (and fictions and fictions) of Remains of the Day on the AGF group.

@bibliomania I love Betty McDonald's Egg and Plague, must track down her Onions. 😁

@Tarragon123 Good to hear praise for MacLean. Always a bit wary of dual-initialled authors of historical mysteries... i.e. will they be more like or Perry or Parris than Sansom 🤔

Also
@InTheCludgie Howl's Moving Castle is pure delight, I hope you love it!

@SixImpossibleThings In my experience Naomi Novik can be relied upon to start with a bang, raise the stakes in a superb second act, then mysteriously flub the ending. Still salty over the last Scholomance book.

@Stowickthevast No longer a July fangirl but will usually give her new stuff a whirl, in paperback, from the library 💅😉
Don't think anything could tempt me into resuming Crewe, though, so no pressure from this quarter to finish (!)

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit Don't know what the thread consensus was, but ITA Rizzio needed to be longer. And I would still have gulped it down in a single sitting.

This thread also spurred my currently read A Tomb with a View and isn't it so restful when you know within two chapters that a book's going to be a bold?

Oh I would be so up for that! Given current finances, we may have to row over though (the long way round for the west coast).

@Terpsichore I'm loving Howl's Moving Castle so far, wasn't sure what to expect with this, but I'm glad the random number generator threw this one up for sure.

Ok that was for @HenryTilneyBestBoy , post didn't format correctly!
@Terpsichore I love a family drama too, so I'll probably go back to Wish You Were Here at some point soon.

You're on

I can do Manchester easier than London, but still busy about half the weekends of the year!
Someone is going to need to set up a huge doodle poll!

10. Breathless by Amy McCulloch

A journalist who has no place being in the death zone gets involved in a series of increasingly unlikely events. It's not a bad premise, the 'what if' some of the accidents on the mountain aren't accidents it's just that I think I could write it better and I'm not a good writer.

I also was unable to get over the fact that a much mentioned Three Peaks trip ended with them climbing Snowdon via Crib Goch which is insane. It's a knife edge route for actual climbers/hikers who love heights. You don't choose that route for a laugh after you've been awake for 20 hours and already hiked up Ben Nevis and Scafell!!!!

I'm not mad I read it, book 10 of the year and the first dud. Everything else is practically a bold so far. That's because I am cheating and reading a lot of really well liked books from over the past two years on here!

I am charging through my kindle tbr though, and there is some more well recommend stuff as well as some more quirkier reads!

Manchester would work for me.
Desperately behind on reviews but haven't got the oomph to add them tonight

I used to live in Manchester and try to get back there as much as possible so that would work for me too.

Got about four on the go at the moment and finding them a bit of a slog so I plumped for some lighthearted reading this afternoon.

18 My Sister the Serial Killer - Oyinkan Braithwaite
The story of two sisters. One beautiful, spoilt, selfish and the other sensible, plain and mature. Men have a nasty habit of dying in the company of the beautiful sister and the sensible sister keeps helping to cover it up.
This was an odd one. It’s supposed to be funny in a way but it wasn’t. I just wanted her to hand her sister over. There were interesting moments that gave hints as to how the sisters became who they are, mainly due to their father, but I didn’t feel it was particularly well explored.

19 Confessions of a Shopaholic - Sophie Kinsella
Rebecca is a shopaholic who is up to her eyes in debts that she is actively avoiding.
This was a fun, easy read. Though I did start to become concerned that I too may be a shopaholic who spends more when trying to save.

I'm behind on reading and reviews because book 4 was such a beast.

3. Unreasonable Hospitality, by Will Guidara. Former owner of Eleven Madison Park (EMP) and other v v v high end restaurants. He was always destined to work in food, as his father did, but while that gave him a big leg up, he did every job in the restaurant business and clearly did them well. I read some recent reviews of EMP, and although Will hasn't been there for a while, many of the reviews described the fantastic hospitality and the innovations he introduced. I was in this for the behind-the-scenes restaurant gossip, which I really enjoyed, but didn't expect the generous helping of 'lessons'. However, while none of those are earth shattering, they would probably be very helpful for someone new to managing or leadership roles. Now I want to know all the gory details about why he left EMP, which are glossed over here, and he doesn't thank his Chef partner Daniel in the acknowledgements. Not a bold, but a fun and fast read.

4. Madonna, by Mary Gabriel. Exhaustive and somewhat exhausting biography of Madonna. Coming in at 813 densely written pages I'm not sure who this is for - if you're a Madonna obsessive then you already know this stuff, and if you're a casual fan you're unlikely to make it through this tome. Having said that, I am a casual fan and finished it, so what do I know?

I'm assuming the goal was to be a definitive account of Madonna's life so far, and it certainly covers a lot of ground, and in some ways just skims the surface - I couldn't have coped with this being any longer, but in many places I wanted more detail or commentary, and not just the plain prose. I suppose that's what you get for trying to cover a 60-year-long life and a 40-year career (so far).

It's a fairly neutral account, with the exception of the author clearly disliking Guy Ritchie. My favourite bits were the period covering her rise to fame in the 80, probably because that's the phase I remember best. Her time in NYC was also fascinating - I had no idea that she was friends with Warhol and Haring and girlfriend to Basquiat. She's clearly a force of nature and has done a lot of good in the world, and I'm glad I read this - but I'm even more glad that I'm finished.

Hi all,

I've been suffering with Migraines, so haven't updated for a few days. Hope everyone's keeping well 🙂

18. 'Radio Silence'- Alice Oseman. This is AO' second novel and it follows Frances, a shy overachiever with ambitions to study English at Oxford. In her spare time, she creates art for her favourite podcast, 'Universe City'.

When she is asked to help its anonymous creator with the programme, she happily accepts and discovers that the creator is Aled, who attends the same school as her. The book follows their developing friendship, and also combines a bit of a mystery element regarding the disappearance of Aled's sister Carys, who Frances was friends with.

This is a wonderful, well written read. It mainly deals with mental health, parental alienation, identity and having the courage to be yourself and not to do something because everyone else is doing it. As usual with the author, all the subjects are touched on really sensitively within the novel, and the characters are really well fleshed out. I've already ordered the rest of the new editions of the books of hers I've not read yet because I've grown to
love her work so much. ❤️

In fact, whenever I write 'Alice' on my iPhone now, her surname always is the first word to come up because I've talked about it so much on here 😂😂

Currently reading 'Stand Up Guy' by Nina Kaye, for one of the book clubs I'm part of, then I'll likely go back to Matt Haig. 🙂

[Screeches into thread at the last possible minute]

I've had the lurgy so haven't been reading much these past few weeks, but I'm still following the thread. Will post some reviews eventually.

Loving the meetup chat but not sure if I could make an in-person. August seems a long way off.

@InTheCludgie I read Howl's Moving Castle last year, or the year before and I loved it (it was a RNG selection for me too!) the Studio Ghibli film is great too.

Totally agree with the comments that Rizzio could have been longer but I was really impressed with how much she managed to convey in such a short time.

Re the meet-up, Manchester would also work better for me personally, being up north, but can do London, or Bath at a push. I don't mind collating responses (unless someone else wants to do it) and then we can go with what works for the majority. Or maybe have a couple of regional meet-ups if there is demand.

Why don't we all state our preferences in order (out of Bath, London and Manchester) and the dates we can do, say in July, August and September.

Also to those too shy to meet up, I totally get it, I'm feeling a bit nervous about it myself and hope that you maybe feel more able as we get things arranged. Here's to coffee, cake and book talk with our online book friends! ☕️🍰📚

Just finished 10. Magpie by Elizabeth Day and I didn't like it. I didn't like any of the characters all were troubled, but I am not sure that excused their actions. The story is about surrogacy and the lengths people will go to get the child they want and how damaging it can be to go into the process unprepared and without thorough checks. Which, to many, will just re-emphasize the fact that surrogacy may well just not be a good idea. I wont be looking for anything else by Elizabeth Day.

Luckily I am still loving the Count of Monte Cristo on audible and will look for something better for my next read.

@Hoolahoophop thank god someone else doesn't like ED's writing. I tried to read 'The Party' once and I found it so badly written and banal. Literally nothing happened at all.

So, are we definitely thinking Manchester for the meet up? I haven't been there before! I haven't talked to my mum yet but I will (I live with her and she's my carer so she'll have to come if I come) but I'll have to give her plenty of notice so she can get time of work. I don't get out very much because of my heath problems but I'd love to meet you all if possible, but not promising anything yet 🤞🏻❤️🙂