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

1. Frenchman's Creek by Daphne du Maurier

Bored 17th century wife and mother Lady Dona goes to her husband's country estate in Cornwall. She hears rumours of an elusive pirate and soon becomes involved in intrigue and adventure. A swashbuckling romance with an edge and all the dark atmosphere and evocative description of Cornwall you'd expect from du Maurier. Not quite up there with Rebecca or My Cousin Rachel but still a very good read.

8. White Teeth by Zadie Smith
   The story of two families and their unlikely friendships; Samad and Archie who first met in world war 2, their much younger wives Alsana and Clara, and their troubled, troublesome children. It's hard to say really what the plot is, just the characters trying to live as best they can until all the loose ends come together in an unexpected way, but much better than I've made it sound.
   It's basically a sprawling family saga but told with a witty and knowing voice, casting a spotlight on part of multicultural Britain.

9. Coming Up for Air by George Orwell
   In 1938 George (not Orwell, just a character with the same name), stuck in a dead end job and a miserable marriage, has a Proustian moment taking him back to his childhood in a small village, and so he makes plans to go back there.
   I definitely preferred the part of the book about George as a boy and his passion for fishing to adult George, who is unpleasant and lacking in self awareness. It's a book about change, but it didn't really do much for me.

@HenryTilneyBestBoy that was the version of Stars of Fortune I had as a child! We must be about the same age.

5 A Second Chance - Jodi Taylor Next in the St Mary’s series, and more of the same. These do keep me reading and I’ll see if I can get the next one from the library, but at the same time I find the juxtaposition of flippant jokes and utter horror (the treatment of women and children in the Trojan War, for example) extremely uncomfortable and unpleasant. And the central character’s relationship with her boyfriend/partner is so unhealthy - it’s the kind of thing I would have found romantic when I was younger, but I just feel a bit po-faced about it now. So a bit hit-and-miss really, but it won’t stop me from reading more of the series…

I've never heard of Cynthia Harnett; she sounds fascinating!

I can't believe we're well into the 2nd thread and I haven't posted any reviews yet. I keep wondering why my reading is going so slowly this year, but actually I think I'm reading at more or less my usual speed, it's just that everyone else is reading SO DAMN MUCH! 😂

Anyway, here are my January reads so far. No bolds, but all of them very good in different ways.

1. Rooftoppers, Katherine Rundell 4/5

The first children’s book by Rundell I’ve read. Very charming and witty.

1. The Wife of Bath: A Biography, Marion Turner 4/5

A very readable book that offers wide-ranging historical context for the Wife of Bath’s tale, and then goes to on to explore the character’s literary afterlives. I particularly enjoyed the discussions of the Wife of Bath and Falstaff, and of Zadie Smith’s play The Wife of Willesden (which I definitely want to read now). I did find it a little curious that Turner explores the Wife of Bath almost as if she were a genuine historical character (the book is called a biography and it really does resemble one). As a result Chaucer himself isn’t foregrounded much. But maybe this is partly because Turner has already written a biography of Chaucer.

1. Pond, Claire-Louise Bennett 4/5

A collection of stream-of-consciousness style short stories that focus on the same protagonist, a woman living on her own in a rustic cottage in Ireland. The writing is quirky and poetic, and the voice of the narrator is very original. At times the dark humor reminded me of the narrator of Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. At other times though, the prose was a little too dense and cryptic for me. An intriguing read nonetheless!

1. Angel, Elizabeth Taylor 4/5

One of the most gripping Taylor novels I’ve read so far. Angel is an extraordinary but somehow believable character. She’s a writer with enormous self-confidence and very little sympathy for others, yet her fail to ‘fit in’ and her apparent disregard for social norms make her appear quite vulnerable as well. In a novel written today, I wonder whether she might be interpreted as neurodivergent (not that that would explain all the complexities of her character of course). Hilary Mantel, in a thought-provoking introduction to the edition I read, suggests that there is something of Angel in every writer.

17 Young Men In Spats by P G Wodehouse

How can you not love a Wodehouse with a title like that?! This is a collection of short stories about posh young men generally coming off worse in whatever jolly japes they’re up to. Loved it!

6. Lights Out by Elise Hart Kipness

I'm sure this was an Amazon first reads freebie. Kate Green, former professional soccer player turned disgraced sports tv reporter is struggling with her life as a single mum of two living in an incredibly rich town without the bank balance to match and facing the possible end of her career when her best friend's husband, a successful basketball player, is found dead in his kitchen. Obviously Kate decides to solve the murder because the police are utterly incapable of following very straightforward and obvious leads

I did not enjoy this at all. I don't believe the police would be so incompetent as nothing Kate did was in any way groundbreaking. I also really disliked Kate. Her weird crush/infatuation/flirtation with a colleague is so childish she comes across as more like a pubescent teen than a middle aged divorcee. Also (possibly controversial opinion) I can't really get behind the narrative that women who don't know their children are struggling with major class a drug habits are good mothers. Pay some fucking attention ffs

The writing was also fairly poor. For some reason Kipness really struggles with writing dialogue. So no one ever used any contractions which doesn't flow well. E.g. "How does she handle his affairs, they are so public?" "She does not need anyone's pity". What's wrong with "they're" and "doesn't"?
She also does a weird thing where instead of writing everything a character says in speech she'll write the first and last sentence in speech and in the middle will just put a summary
E.g.
"Wait." He offers to take her. "It'll be quicker in a police car"
This happens so often it just becomes utterly infuriating

4 Antarctica by Claire Keegan. I think this has been reviewed quite a bit on here. I really wanted to love this collection of short stories but not many of them grabbed me. I listed to it instead of reading it and enjoyed the ones narrated by Aidan Quinn but on the whole I didn’t enjoy it. Most of the stories left me cold.

5 Gangsta Granny Strikes Again! by David Walliams. I read this with my son. We’ve read most of them together but they’ve got more tedious as they’ve gone along! I like his earlier books (the first 5) and so thought we’d try the sequel to one we both enjoyed. This was nice. Much better than some of the recent ones. This one felt more like his older books and didn’t annoy me like some of the newer ones!

6 Olive by Emma Gannon. This isn’t the usual genre of book I’m drawn too but I’ve been listening to it on my commute. In a nutshell, it’s about a woman called Olive, in her 30s and her friends who’ve all known each other from school. Olive is pretty sure she doesn’t want children and finds this difficult to navigate and hard to handle with her friends and boyfriend who all presume she’ll ’change her mind’ as she gets older. I felt a lot of the views were quite stereotypical and a lot of it was handled superficially. I liked the story but I LOVED the narration by Sian Clifford. That’s what held my interest. I loved listening to her voice and she brought it to life. I don’t think I would have enjoyed reading it so she saved it for me :)

Small Things Like These - Claire Keegan much reviewed on here already. This was very short but well written. It reminded me a lot of William Trevor's work. Beautifully crafted and sad.

1. The Bird Tribunal. Agnes Rovatin. A TV presenter who has been involved in a scandal takes a new job as a housekeeper-gardener on a remote Norwegian fjord and develops a controlling relationship with her new employer. Very atmospheric psychological thriller but pretty uncomfortable read.

9 Orange is the New Black - Piper Kerman
A memoir from Piper’s time in a female prison.
Ive seen the show so I knew what this would be about but I was hoping to get something from it. I didn’t though. It gives Piper’s experience and insight but it comes from a place of privilege and that isn’t common in prison. Piper left prison for a good job, husband and a home. I was far more interested in the stories of the women who had nothing on the outside and how they were going to rebuild their lives, something I suppose the series does touch on but the book obviously doesn’t. It was just okay.

Thanks for the new thread southeast.

Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak If I had chosen this rather than reading it for book group I'd have been at risk of giving up a few pages in as I found the writing style irritatingly wordy at first. I'm glad I persevered. The book is about the family history of Ada, a teenager growing up in London, and why her parents uprooted from their childhood homes in Cyprus. It's the one with a fig tree as one of the narrators, in whose sections we hear of the ecology of the Island. This has the welcome effect of regularly panning out from the brutal human history and giving us often fascinating insights into the natural world - though this too suffers from the conflict. Between that perspective and the 2 generations in London, the elder having experienced trauma and the younger both knowing and not knowing, I was transported and also learned something about some history I knew very little about.

@CornishLizard I would probably never have picked up Island of Missing Trees myself but my SIL recommended it to me - and she hasn't given me a duff recommendation yet so in I went. I loved it!

I've just finished no. 6 The Seven Sisters - Lucinda Riley. I didn't love her writing style and found some of the characters slightly flat but the story was compelling. I'll probably pick up the next book in the series eventually but it won't be the next thing I read.

18 The Winter of our Discontent by John Steinbeck

I’ve really enjoyed, even loved, all the other Steinbecks I’ve read but I struggled to get into this one. I didn’t dislike it, just didn’t enjoy it as much as others. It’s about a discontented man in a small town in the 1960s. His family used to own lots of stores but lost them all, and he now works as a clerk in someone else’s shop. However when he becomes aware of corruption in the town he has the opportunity to improve his lot - will he take it?

.Tresspasses by Louise KennedySet in Northern Ireland in 1975, Cushla is a 24year old Catholic teacher who embarks on an affair with Michael, an older Protestant barrister. According to @RomanMum's brilliant stats, this was the 50 Bookers’ top fiction book last year, and has been universally well reviewed in the press. I thought it was decent, but no better than that. It’s conventionally structured and the prose is good, it’s a love story but not too drippy, and the historical and political context is well conveyed. I really I should have loved it, but I felt no connection whatsoever with the characters. Cushla seemed really passive, and I don’t really know what Michael was supposed to be. I’m sure it’s me, not the book – so much of reading is about the right chemistry at the right time, and maybe another day I would have connected better with it.

1.Doppleganger, Naomi Klein

1. The Armour of Light, Ken Follett
2. Marple Twelve New Stories, various
3. Sleeping Beauties, Suzanne O’Sullivan

5.The Ink Black Heart- Robert Galbraith
I loved this. My favourite Strike so far. I don’t care that it needs a good edit. I’m fully there for the whole overblown 31hrs of the thing. People had said it was difficult to follow on audiobook but I didn’t find it so. I enjoyed the mystery and felt it had a lot in it. Obviously it’s all about the sexual tension as well. Very well developed. Looking forward to the next one which I will treat myself in a month or two.

6.Never- Ken Follett
Great storytelling. Follett introduces it by describing how earlier wars could be seen as a series of things that happened with unintended consequences. He wondered what series of actions could bring about nuclear war. This weaved together quite a few storylines very skillfully with lots of relatively fleshed out characters. I think the depiction of women in this one was more complex than others of KF’s I have read. I enjoyed this very much as fiction. It’s a bit scary in the current climate though.

7.Wrong Time, Wrong Place- Gillian McAllister
I found this quite disappointing. Backwards time travel mystery. A woman sees her 17 year old stab a man then travels back in time to try to resolve things. It was ok. The premise was good. I just wasn’t that interested in the story and didn’t really give much of a crap about what had happened and why.

Next up- I'm trying to hold off The Running Grave and I’m not due a credit yet... I will try to be good for now! I have Babel by RF Kaung and Snow by John Banville was featured on the library app. I’m also nearly at the front of the queue for Arnie’s ‘Be Useful’. His autobiography was a tip off from these threads a couple of years ago when I was a devoted lurker! I enjoyed it a lot so looking forward to this.

5 My Hamsters got Talent by Dave Lowe if you have a 6 year old, read it, its a lot of fun and enjoyed it far more than the book I chose for myself. Jinks has a genius talking Hamster with attitude. Marvelous.

6 House of Hunger by Alexis Henderson. I think I chose this as it was on a Good Reads list. But found it pretty lame. Rich degenerate lords of the north employ Blood Maidens as a sign of their wealth and in the belief that blood can cure many ailments. These girls sign up for a fixed amount of time and bleed for their masters in exchange for riches beyond anything they have previously known. It was a kind of twist on the vampire novel and I think inspired by the Handmaids tale. But it was rubbish. Poor characters, no suspense, odd writing. For example in a climatic chase scene the 'prey' stops to notice that 'the cat was curled up on the end of the bed looking very much like a fluffy loaf of bread. Bless' Just. No.

My next read is Boudica dreaming of the Hound and I know it will be totally immersive and brilliantly written. So I can recover.

Ooo, @Hoolahoophop I'm excited for you to be reading Boudica. I've mentally bookmarked the Rome series for winter hibernation next year, if I can wait that long!

List so far:

1 Watership Down: the Graphic Novel - Richard Adams
2 The Lord God Made them All - James Herriot
3 A Helping Hand - Celia Dale
4 Where I End - Sophie White
5 A Net for Small Fishes - Lucy Jago

Just finished number 6
Even the Dogs - Jon McGregor
A man's body is discovered in his flat in the period between Christmas & New Year. A Greek Chorus style narration from the point of view of several of his friends and associates explores his identity and the circumstances that led him to die alone and undiscovered.

This is a pretty bleak read. Robert (deceased flat-dweller) was an alcoholic and agoraphobic. While we unpick the details of his demise, themes of heroin addiction, alcoholism, homelessness and mental illness are explored thoroughly and unflinchingly. A good book, but not a light read!

1. Boudica - Dreaming the Eagle by Manda Scott
2. Boudica - Dreaming the Bull by Manda Scott
3. Straight Shot by Jack Lively (Audio)
4. Boudica - Dreaming the Hound by Manda Scott
5. Boudica - Dreaming the Serpent Spear by Manda Scott
6. Breath - The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor (Audio)
7. A Line in the Sand - Kevin Powers
8. Midnight at the Christmas Bookshop - Jenny Colgan
9. Murder Most Malicious - Alyssa Maxwell (Audio)

DNF
The Seventh Son by Sebastian Faulks

Absolutely loved the whole Boudica series. Completely lost myself in it for a couple of weeks. It’s full of battles but I didn’t find them gory, or glorified - was just what needed doing at the time. Loved the relationships between the humans, the horses and hounds, and how they were all so connected to the nature surrounding them. This contrasted with the Roman approach. Inspiring and a definite bold for me. I can see myself rereading them all in summer and, as I’ve mentioned above, I have the Rome series earmarked for Christmas.

Breath - James Nestor
Found this really fascinating. Was drawn to it as I’ve recently noticed a tendency to breath high up in my chest rather than down into my belly, and I remembered I’d heard a podcast by the author a wee while ago. I listened to it on Audible which meant I drifted in and out of it all a bit (have since ordered a paper copy!). We have evolved to breathe through our noses but many of us breath through our mouths much of the time. This can negatively influence our sleep, the shape of our mouth, our ability to repel disease and our blood pressure. There was also something about overloading? organs and so not processing / accessing nutrition effectively - but I’d drifted away here but I want to look this up in the physical book. If you listen on Audible you get some lovely breathing exercises at the back. Touches on Wim Hoff et al as well. This will probably be a bold, but I feel I’ve been very profligate with them in my first few books of the year so applying restraint for now! :)

A Line in the Sands - Kevin Powers. Interesting thriller about an Afghani translator who’d worked for the US military and then, when his wife and daughter were killed, moved to the US. I think this had been recommended in one of the 2023 roundup book lists so I was expecting great things. It fine. Entertaining and a bit thought provoking but I didn’t think it was amazing. Might just be me adjusting to life after Boudica.

Midnight at the Christmas Bookshop - Jenny Colgan Think I’d seen this recommended on this thread. A light but entertaining read. Helped me extend that Christmas feeling as the library took a while to get it in.

Murder Most Malicious - Alyssa Maxwell (Audio) Another light read - well, listen, this time. A gentle mystery with some interesting tit bits on life after WW1. The series is in the Audible ‘Plus’ catalogue so free on my subscription. Will happily listen to more in this series when pottering about.

8 The Foundation Pit - Andrey Platonov

Written in the 1930s (but not published in full until 1994), this bitter, bleakly ironic fable which illuminates the murderous absurdity of Soviet collectivisation isn’t exactly a cheerful read. But it’s surprisingly accessible, even without knowledge of all the allusions (the afterword was pretty helpful to understand these in more depth). And does have compassion and humanity among the bleakness. Recommended for fans of Grossman and Bulgakov, though not perhaps if you’re looking for a feelgood novel…

@StrangewaysHereWeCome

That was how I felt about Trespasses. It just felt really two-dimensional and derivative to me. It all seemed a bit like Kevin and Sadie for grown-ups, and I felt the writer was thinking ahead to the inevitable TV adaptation with the characters and that her lack of characterisation would be made up for by the actors chosen. Dunno, I just found it very bland almost, which seems strange given the subject matter.

Kevin and Sadie are - I would argue - at least as good as Trespasses. I re-read them last year and found them extremely well done as books. The Troubles are there and integral to the plot but both of them have a presence on the page that goes well beyond the Troubles and it's a thoroughly good and accessible series of novels about young people finding their way in the world. I was surprised at how good they were on a re-read. I didn't hate Trespasses but I won't be re-reading it in 30 years.

Yes!
I read K&S as a teenager, then used some extracts for some teaching materials I was asked to write, so read them again. And then when dd was getting into young adult stuff.

Loved K&S as a teenager. Maybe should read again, or get for my teenage DDs. Their great grandparents married across the protestant-catholic divide in NI and weren't allowed to get married in church because of it!