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

24. Stubborn Archivist by Yara Rodrigues Fowler

A young Londoner who is half Brazilian reflects on life and family in both short prose and poem form.

I mean it's very readable because most of it is very short so pages fly by but there's little plot and I struggled to see what the point was even as the pages flowed.

I missed this last week - The Women's Prize are now running a non-fiction prize. Looks like some good titles on the list.

womensprize.com/prizes/womens-prize-for-non-fiction/

I'm not dashing to read these as the fiction prize list is imminent and I've got a lot on, but I'll definitely be looking out for some of them when I've got a minute.

@FuzzyCaoraDhubh Burn it. Burn it now.

I'm now 7 reviews behind so I need to plough through some brief reviews before I fall off this thread completely!

10 My Fourth Time, We Drowned, Sally Hayden
This is an award winning book by an award winning journalist about the refugee crisis in North Africa / the Mediterranean. I thought I knew a reasonable amount about the plight of refugees climbing aboard small boats, hoping for a better life in Europe but I had no idea about the Libyan detention centres. Refugees can be held in these centres for months or even years where they are tortured, raped, starved and forced by people traffickers to beg their families for even more money to save their lives. Meanwhile, NGOs, governments, the EU and the UN at best turn a blind eye to the horrors and at worst, are complicit. A deeply moving book that will stay with me but as you'd expect, a very difficult read.

11 A Passage North, Anuk Arudpragasam
Having read The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida last year I was keen to read more books set in Sri Lanka. Krishnan receives a phone call telling him that his Grandmother's carer has died in suspicious circumstances, found at the bottom of a well with her neck broken. This coincides with him receiving an email from the woman he had a brief but passionate relationship with some years earlier. He embarks on the long journey from Colombo to the the war-torn north for the funeral and reflects on the trauma his country has endured whilst also remembering his love for his former girlfriend. This was shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize but didn't work for me. It's basically a stream of consciousness with sentences lasting for paragraphs and paragraphs running on and on for pages. If that wasn't frustrating enough, several times he stops the narrative dead and inserts a (long) poem, a movie, a fable etc when I just wanted him to get on with the bloody story. Having reread the synopsis on Goodreads, I'm at a loss as to why I bought it in the first place!

12 So Late in the Day, Claire Keegan
Another short story by the wonderful Claire Keegan. It's a beautiful summer's evening and Cathal is travelling home from work and begins to think about his failed relationship with Sabine. Through the course of the evening their relationship is told through flashbacks and slowly Cathal's character is revealed. I listened to this as an audiobook read by the author which added to the slow build up to the final reveal.

😂I really should!

I’m so happy to see Laura Cumming's wonderful Thunderclap on that list. My top book of 2023.

Thanks for the rec Terpsichore. I'll bump that up.

I reserved Eve yesterday, by sheer coincidence.

@TattiePants I felt exactly the same about The Passage North, it managed to make an interesting subject so dull. I loved the seven moons though. I haven't read it but a friend recommended Brotherless Night which is a recent Sri Lanka novel.

Good luck ICrunchCrisps!

His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet late to the party on this one. Set in the feudal structure of the 1860s Scottish Highlands, where young crofter Roddy Macrae has murdered 3 of his neighbours. This fact isn’t in dispute but is he sane enough to be responsible for his actions? The novel is presented as a series of documents which make it read like non-fiction, especially as the locations are real. The first half of the book is an account by Macrae, then there are medical reports, an extract from an invented book by a real-life early criminologist, and an account of the trial. I enjoyed this. It really brings alive the hardship and oppression suffered by the crofters. It’s interesting to read Macrae’s account, throughout which you’re rooting for him, and then to see him from others’ points of view.

Good luck @ICrunchCrispsNotNumbers , will keep fingers crossed for you!

Thank you @InTheCludgie and @CornishLizard! 🙂❤️

Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll look that one up. I’ve also got Anil’s Ghost on my shelf but I haven’t had much luck with Michael Ondaatje so been putting it off.

Having just reviewed So Late in the Day, it’s on today’s (Friday) kindle deals for 99p.

21 Three Hours - Rosamund Lupton
A recommendation from here (thank you @BarbaraBuncle ) it’s has already been reviewed so I won’t say much but I really enjoyed this. Possibly the wrong word given the topic but I thought it was well written, the characters were believable and I didn’t manage to guess any of the twists. My only gripe was the children and the trees at the end, I didn’t think that was realistic but other than that a very good read.

So glad you enjoyed it @MrsALambert. I didn't think the children and the trees bit, rather a forced Birnam Wood reference, was that well done but I suppose she wanted a better outcome than the alternative. It had some flaws but I was forgiving because it was such a gripping read.

9 Once Upon a Crime - Robin Stevens The last book in the Murder Most Unladylike series, this is a collection of short stories covering several years of Daisy and Hazel’s storyline, ending with a story starring Hazel’s little sister May, taking us neatly up to the start of Stevens’ next series which focuses on May and friends (really looking forward to starting on the first book in the new series, but have to wait for DD2 to finish it first!). Nice fun stories, and I thought 50 bookers would appreciate that there is a passing reference to Julian of Norwich 😄 The full novels are always my preference but I really enjoyed this too.

14 The Shadow Murders - Jussi Adler-Olsen

Danish police procedural which is the latest in a series of 9 (apparently to be 10 eventually) novels about Department Q, headed up by Detective Inspector Carl Morck. Bought for me by a friend who also usually reads crime series from the beginning, I think this would have worked a little better had I read the others first, as there was an obvious backstory for each of the police officers. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the plot, which centres around an unusual type of serial killer. The identity of the killer is fairly easy to work out and in any case is revealed long before the end, but there's an exciting race to catch them, alongside the aforementioned backstory building to a climax. The writing in translation felt quite stilted, but I've found that with many Scandinavian crime novels (including the Sandhamn murder series). There are a few exceptions - Jo Nesbo, Asa Larsson in particular. Not my favourite, but passed the time well!

19 Broken Ghost by Niall Griffiths

Griffiths had fallen off my radar for a while but a search a few weeks ago threw up a newish book I hadn’t read.
A rave up a Welsh mountain and three very different people go for a wander, encountering the hazy shape of a woman - a Brocken Spectre for sure, but it takes on a different mystical meaning for them and the hoards who subsequently congregate on the mountain (thanks to social media).
A single mother, Emma, a currently recovering drug/alcohol addict, Adam/Adlad and a terrifyingly huge and violent Welsh version of Trainspotting’s Begbie, Cowley - all changed by their experience in ways that they find unexplainable.
It’s glorious, scatalogical, alternately insanely violent and utterly beautiful.
There are meandering descriptions of nature then you are catapulted into a loveless orgy or a bare knuckle fight. Eloquent rants about the effects of Austerity and Brexit segue into unflinching depictions of yet again hitting rock bottom as an addict (to sex, alcohol or violence). I rarely have to look away from words on a page in the same way as images on a screen but bloody hell, the man can write!
The ending was like a physical punch to the gut.

I’ve probably not sold it with the above description but if you liked his previous novels, Shuggie Bain, Paper Cup, Scabby Queen or the grittier side of Ben Myers then you might like this. Not a single speech mark to be found and you do have to get a sense of a Welsh accent (and a Scouse one and a Brummie one….) to get it to flow, but imo it’s well worth the effort.

11 Why Losing Your Job Could Be the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You - Eleanor Tweddell
Hopefully you don’t need to read this (I’m running out of job in June!) but in a nutshell: use losing your job as a chance to stop and have a think, don’t go pinging into a rebound job.

12 Attack Warning Red! - Julie McDowall
Exploration of how Britain prepared for nuclear war from the 1940s-80s, including such genius ideas as letting psychopaths out of prisons when an attack was imminent, because they were likely to keep a cool head in a crisis. I’m too young to remember this period (geriatric millennial here!) but it made me more aware of the world my parents grew up in and the fears they must have held, all unknown to 1980s toddler me. Thanks to everyone on here who recommended it!

Attack Warning Red sounds alarming but fascinating @LadybirdDaphne! I was a tween/teenager in the 80s and I was terrified of nuclear war. My parents suggested I support CND, which helped a little, but the seemingly constant onslaught of When The Wind Blows/Threads/Dancing With Tears In My Eyes etc certainly didn’t help. It was a pervasive low-key dread for me, along with Spontaneous Human Combustion and Poltergeists…..I was a fanciful child who probably got away with reading many things I shouldn’t have (learned to read very fast before my parents got the time to check the books I borrowed from the library).

Surely @MorriganManor you also feared quicksand and the Bermuda Triangle with that list?! And the appearance of an evil doppelgänger to replace you?! Or maybe those were just me!

Recent reads
28 Capote’s Women by Lawrence Learner
Inspired by my read of In Cold Blood at the start of the month. This was a salacious and gossipy read- much like Capote himself. It focused on his friendships with some alpha females like Jackie Kennedy’s sister Lee Radziwell and his eventual fall out with them. Light and diverting. I believe there’s a series out in the US based on this.

29 Cockroaches by Scholastique Mukasonga
This short memoir tells the story of Scholastique and her family. She grew up as a Tutsi in Rwanda and faced discrimination from early childhood. Luckily she left before the genocide in the 90s but most of her family weren’t so lucky. I listened to this on audible plus and it was harrowing but important. It showed me how little about the situation I took in at the time even though I was twenty.

30 Pet by Catherine Chidgey
Narrated by 12 year old Justine (and some shorter sections with adult Justine) who is starry eyed over her new teacher Mrs Price along with most of the rest of her class in 1980s New Zealand. The innocence of the 80s is evoked well and the book becomes more and more sinister as it goes on. Very atmospheric and tense- I read it in a couple of days. I really enjoyed this one.

Has anyone read Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead? I'm close to a DNF should I persevere?

@highlandcoo thank you for the recommendation for Music in the Dark. I'll have a look for it.

Oddly I've never read Charlotte Sometimes, despite my name being Charlotte.

I've don't think I've ever read Michael Morpurgo myself, but he's one of the only authors DS1 has ever voluntarily read.

48. Shooters Julia Boggio This is the first in a trilogy about wedding photography. Standard romance tbh. Woman meets man. Will they. Won't they. It was funny, well written and worth a read just to find out about the wedding she photographs!

49. Return to Polkerran Point Cass Grafton. The Sequel in the "little cornish cove" series. I (not so) secretly love these kind of books. Nothing worse than a minor accident so they are safe and comforting. I always find them a bit predictable, but that's kind of why I like them.

@ÚlldemoShúl

Have a look at Swan Song by Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott

I think Willard Price had covered quicksand situations ÚlldemoShúl, so I was fine with that. And the Bermuda Triangle sounded quite exciting, plus highly unlikely to manifest itself in my bedroom just because I had ‘teen’ in my age.