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

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I have and enjoyed it but did think it was overlong. I preferred the Marian storyline to the modern day one and there was a bit of an unsatisfying ending if I remember. If you’re not feeling it then DNF.

Thanks @EineReiseDurchDieZeit i must get that one too!
@MorriganManor sounds like you were infinitely more grounded than I was 😊

I'm somehow stuck at 18%

18. Comfort Eating by Grace Dent

I aabsolutely loved this. My favourite read so far this year. If you loved Hungry then you'll* *enjoy this one too.

I love her podcast of the same name, and I might also love Grace too. Were of a similar age, although from opposite ends of the country. So many things we agree on, right down to Marks & Spencer's cheese and celery sandwiches. They were my favourite sandwich.

9.The Woman In Me by Britney Spears. Eek, mad life and horrible, creepy family. Very sad.

10.A Court of Thorn and Roses by Sarah J Mass. I got absolutely rinsed by sister when I added this to my goodreads, wanted to see what all the fuss is about. Faerie smut. Badly written but mildly enjoyable.

11.Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister. I refer you to a very smart 50 booker (sorry I can’t find who) who had the perfect review ‘timey winey crimey’.

12.The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewel. 4 children grown up with their hoarder mother and each are impacted in very different ways. More subdued than the authors other works.

Can You Keep a Secret? by Sophie Kinsella. This is about a woman who starts blurting out her secrets to a stranger when there’s severe turbulence on a plane. It’s a quick and easy read and funny. If you like the Shopaholic books (same author) you’ll like this.

When the Wind Blows must be the most terrifying comic ever written. Between that and the melting Snowman Raymond Briggs must be responsble for 90% of Gen X childhood trauma.

@Palegreenstars

I've been wondering about ACOTAR for a while thanks for clarifying don't think it's my scene!

@Palegreenstars I came up with timey wimey crimey - I was quietly proud of it 😄 It’s all thanks to Doctor Who!

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I found Great Circle pretty average…I think if you’re not into it at 18%, that’s unlikely to change much.

Right, I'll let myself off the hook then - Cheers !

Calling @Southeastdweller before we hit the end of the thread!

I really liked Great Circle. It is long though. I'd say it's worth persevering but you probably have to be in the right mood for a saga. It is weird slow moving in places and I agree that the modern story felt a bit stapled on. I read another book by her that was completely different - posh new England manners comedy type thing.

They were discussing Romantasy - Sarah Maas etc - on the Rest Is Entertainment this week. Richard Osman was quite funny on the sex with dragons aspect. Worth a listen.

@DuPainDuVinDuFromage it was perfect.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit in my defence I thought it was going to be more like Robin Hobb.

Just nipping in before the end of the thread with…

14. Giving Up the Ghost - Hilary Mantel

A superb, sad, beautifully-written memoir. Mantel grew up in a strange and fractured family, with parents who drifted apart when her mother began a relationship with another man, and whose father left one day, never to be seen by her again. Terrible spells of ill-health besieged her, turning her into a frail, wispy child, but with a knowingness beyond her years.

The heartbreak at the centre of this book is the endometriosis that stole years of her life, was waved away by smug (male) doctors as a mental disorder, and left her drugged to the eyeballs yet still poleaxed by pain. As an endometriosis sufferer myself I felt a keen affinity with her over this, and share her anger at the inexcusable way women with this terrible condition are treated (or, more often, not). In her case she finally ended up with a total hysterectomy and further drug treatments that cured the pain (sort of) but sent her metabolism haywire and piled immovable weight onto what had always been a slender frame - not to mention extinguished her hopes of becoming a mother.

No denying this is a poignant book to read in light of her death, but it just made me admire her all the more. Definitely recommended.

Also filling up the thread with the just finished:

25. The Restless Republic by Anna Keay

This was part of my Mf B subscription. Centring on the Interregnum and Cromwell, I found this hard work and nearly DNFd

6 - Amy & Isabelle - Elizabeth Strout
I'm a Strout devotee. Loved it.

Is it as good as Lucy Barton / Olive Kitteridge?

I haven't got started on Lucy Barton yet but I have them all lined up ready to go. I adored both Olive books.
This is different to Olive as it's less vignetty but Strout's characterisation and the strength of emotion are as present as ever. This was her first book so I was willing to accept a 'lesser' work but not so.
I now own all of her novels and am forcing myself NOT to read them back to back!! I see she has another Amgash book due out in August.

Hi all, my apologies - I haven't had the headspace and energy so far this year to post reviews due to crap at home and applying to study another degree. Thoughts on recent reads:

The Therapist - B.A Paris. Random choice when I saw this in the library. A load of old shite. Set in contemporary London, this is about a couple who purchase a home in a tight knit gated community known as The Circle. Soon after they move in, the wife senses something isn’t right. She begins to question her neighbours intentions and doesn’t know who she can genuinely trust, including her husband. This was totally forgettable, basically a load of old shite.

The It Girl - Ruth Ware. Loved by many other 50 Bookers, but I thought this was thriller was mediocre, but I liked the characterisation of the main character and she evokes Oxford really well. The identity of the killer was laughably obvious from the beginning, and the book was much too long at pages: she couldn't sustain the tension properly.

Strangers - Taichi Yamada. The novella that the film All of Us Strangers was based on, this is a slender ghost story set in Japan. The film was better, but not by much as I felt as emotionally distanced as I did whilst reading the book.

Heatwave - Victor Jestin. Originally written in French, this is about a 17-year old who while on vacation with his family witnesses another teenager hanging by his neck from the playground swingset and does nothing to intervene. Too short for me to get into properly but I enjoyed the general creepiness.

You Had Me at Hello - Mhari McFarlane. The story follows Rachel and Ben, who were friends at uni but haven't spoken in years. When they 'bump' into each other, the spark is there but Ben is married and we see them getting to know each other again. The book is split between the current day and flashbacks to the past, which I enjoyed. But the main 'will they or won't they?' story got more and more tiring, and the female character was a dull pain in the arse, so I got bored two thirds of the way in. By the end, I was like, I couldn't give a shit about any of them.

Heartbreaker volume 5 - Alice Oseman. Super cute as always, I'm quite sad the next book in the Charlie and Nick story is the final one.

Currently reading Strong Female Character. It seems very self-serving so far, but it's highly readable.

Hope all is well southeast.

My last review for tis thread is Natalie Haynes' Pandora's Jar. This is a non fiction offering from Haynes which looks at different representations of some of the well known women of mythology. It's interesting enough. I can never actually keep very many of these stories in my head so each time I read it, the story is new (ish) anyway!

@Southeastdweller I read The Therapist a couple of years ago. Completely agree that it was entirely forgettable and utter shite, so much so that I will never read another novel by B A Paris.

I believe the third series of Heartstopper was being filmed not far from us last year, according to a local beach café.

@Terpsichore , that was a gorgeous review of Mantel's Giving Up the Ghost. I read it last year and loved it. You've summed it up beautifully.

@Tarragon123 A very late reply... you asked 'cassandre– is it yourself that reads quite a few books in French? Are you bilingual, fluent or looking to improve?'

Yes, I do try to read in French when I can! I love French but am not bilingual; I learned it as a second language at uni. I now teach French but am not as fluent as I wish I were... I specialise in pre-modern French for my job, so weirdly enough am more comfortable with medieval French texts than with modern ones. There are also several others on this thread who read in French, which is fab! Eg @DuPainDuVinDuFromage .

I also enjoyed the Mantel review, thank you. I’m currently reading “A Memoir of my Former Self” which is a collection (possibly posthumous?)of various articles, book reviews etc. Mantel is so great.

5.Paper Cup by Karen Campbell
Reviewed on here already and thanks for the recommendation. An absolute 5/5 bold for me. I found it difficult to get into at first but I soon got into it and could not put it down. Raced through it this week and another book that shed a tear. Was totally absorbed with Kelly’s journey. Such a good story.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/5015046-50-books-challenge-part-three