50 Books Challenge Part Three

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the third 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 first thread is here and the second one here.

I found myself skimming over the bobbing members and be-jizzed beards. There are so many of them that they became like jump scares in a horror movie. You know one is bound to be round the corner so you have a cushion ready.

Shall we mention the wee fetish @MorriganManor ?

That cover rocks. I've never read anything by Christopher Fowler but think it'll be a while before I'm ready for any more willies after The New Life, maybe lesbian necromancers are what I need.

12. North Woods - Daniel Mason. I think a couple of people on here read this and loved it at the end of last year. It is set in a house in a forest, the North Woods of the title, in Massachusetts. The story follows different people that live in the house from around the 16th century to modern day and how they interact and are influenced by the surrounding forest. It's almost like a lot of loosely linked short stories but there's a large dose of woo, so we do get some ghostly characters reappearing. Like all books like this, some parts are more successful than others, and it suffers on a Kindle for not being able to see the illustrations in between each section properly, but I thought this very good with great descriptions of nature particularly, but also some brilliant characters. It did make me want to go into the forest, even though my nearest one Epping won't quite match the splendour of the North Woods.

Shall we mention the wee fetish @MorriganManor ?
Let’s not. One must preserve some of the mystique within those sticky pages. Joking aside, I can see the cleverness of the novel and many passages are archly written, particularly those which on the surface protest a delightful innocence on behalf of the wives and servants. You just know the latter are below stairs rolling their eyes and saying “He’s got his fancy man round again, bless him”. I was just jaded by cock-worship by the end.

I have The North Woods yet to read, shame about the illustrations, as I also have it on Kindle.

Too late to bring my list over I feel so I'll just add latest reviews:

1. One Day by David Nicholls. A reread after watching the Netflix adaptation. I loved this when it first came out despite the chicklit premise.

Maybe this time I was too familiar with the story because it didn't quite hit the spot. Apart from anything else it was difficult to believe Emma & Dexter managed to sustain a 20 year friendship/romance when they were two such different, and at times unlikeable, people.

1. Madly, Deeply the Alan Rickman diaries picked up on Borrowbook so thought I'd give it a spin. As others have commented it's a bit overlong and a bit dull. Needed some serious editing. Not sure he'd have approved of it going out in this format. Some interest in finding out what he really thought of many of his co-stars but I didn't think it was a particularly flattering self portrait he came across as a bit of a whinger - but maybe that's the danger of publishing diaries.

10. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, excellent novella that left me wanting more. I'll definitely be reading Foster when I can pick it up free/cheaply.

Currently reading Wonderful Tonight the Patti Boyd biography.

As an aside to @FortunaMajor - completely agree with your assessment of Year Of Wonders, it feels like two very different books wielded together - a 5 star read till 90% in when it literally loses the plot. On the plus side it has inspired me to visit Eyam for a few days next month and I look forward to visiting the boundary stone and other historical sights.

I don't know what she was thinking Des, or how she got it past an agent or an editor. Someone surely must have thought it was a poor fit?

Hope you have a lovely time on your travels, it's a gorgeous area. If you make it over Chatsworth way, the Tea Rooms at Edensor are quite nice.

I love Chatsworth

Chatsworth was one of my childhood haunts - basically a dozen half feral kids taking a picnic and going paddling. Very happy memories.

If anyone is up for any more ‘cock worship’ maybe try the bloody awful Breakfast of Champions for muchos cock. And of course the awesome member of Lincoln in the Bardo. I’m sure we all remember said member, as it were.

On sci-fi, or not - I've just finished Orbital by Samantha Harvey. This one is definitely not for Cote. 6 astronauts on one of the final space station missions before it is dismantled, muse on their journey. It takes place over the course of a single day in which they orbit the earth 16 times. We get snippets of details about their day to day activities, relationships and politics of being from different space agencies. The main focus is their thoughts on earth as they pass over different places and time zones as the day passes into night. The blurb describes it as Profound, contemplative and gorgeous, Orbital is an eloquent meditation on space and a moving elegy to our humanity, environment, and planet

Burn me as a heathen, but I found it plotless, pointless and a clear case of style over substance. The writing is competent, but it was wasted on me. Mercifully it was short. Reviews are either raving or scathing.

I’m all willied out right now, but I’ll bear those in mind. I’m thinking something with Afternoon Tea….Vicars….perhaps a little Light Murder but everyone keeping their clothes on next.

Okay 50 Bookers inspired by the SF talk what SF book would you recommend for a first time novice? Never read a SF book in my life so thought I would give one a go. Although the one film I like is Interstellar, like Star Trek and Aliens is classic

Frankenstein, it's brilliant and so much cleverer than the film and TV adaptations suggest. A masterclass in unreliable narration.

I can't believe the smut talk on this thread, at this rate I'm going to have to read another Jacobean revenge play to detox 😂

26. Dinner At The Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler

If you know what Anne Tyler is about then you know it's character driven family sagas light on plot.

In this instance it's the Tull family, Pearl and Beck are married with 3 children when Beck abandons the family. Cody, Ezra and Jenny grow up with his absence and their mother's volatile temper carrying resentments into adulthood

This was hard to get going with and I got a bit bored towards the end but the middle was quite good

Jenny is shortchanged as a character and becomes a bit thinly drawn. Cody is awful and a looked for comeuppance never comes.

This was recommended on BookTube for people who liked Hello Beautiful and I see the comparison but I don't think it's as good.

A bit run of the mill.

Time I reread Lincoln In the Bardo.

Yeah I read Lincoln In The Bardo and I don't remember a thing about cock

This thread has the makings of a good novel in itself. We just need an affair and a twist in the tale.

Anyway, been reading some dark stuff over here as you do.
24 No, Pete Townshend: The kids aren’t alright 10 - Les Macdonald
Very short book with lots of short chapters. Each chapter is a true crime case in America where a child murdered someone.
This really appealed to me (if the police ever saw my Netflix or goodreads they would have some questions) as I love a good true crime. But there was too many and they were too short. To the point that it felt too repetitive (not helped that each chapter was the same format) which is awful when you are talking about some of the most shocking crimes. I would have preferred there to be less cases that were analysed in a bit more detail.

25 A Heart That Works - Rob Delaney

• *Nothing really to add to what others have said on this but what a beautiful story. Not many books have the ability to make me laugh and cry in one afternoon but this one did. Absolutely heartbreaking.

The cock is pretty much all I remember. I was badly scarred by it.

This year, I'm being kind to myself and only reading non-challenging books, so nothing outside my comfort-zone, nothing that needs too much brain capacity.

I do feel I'm a bit of a lightweight compared to the rest of you reading way more intelligent books than I am. Far too much stress going on in the Buncle family home this year with DS's health that I'm just grateful for any reading time I can get.

Two more book reviews:-

19. The Christmas Appeal by Janice Hallett

Janice Hallett's mixed media novels are a bit up and down for me. I enjoyed The Appeal but didn't much like The Twyford Code or The Alperton Angels but this one was back in the original world of The Appeal, with a lot of the same characters.

This time it revolves around a fund raising production of Jack and The Beanstalk. A mummified body is discovered, dressed as Santa Claus, and more than one member of the cast know who it is and how it got there.

The story is told through emails, WhatsApp messages and texts between the characters, which are contained within a bundle of documents being examined by two barristers assessing the evidence.

It was a lot of fun, and I liked Janice Hallett's humorous turn of phrase.

20. A Lady's Guide To Scandal by Sophie Irwin

A rollicking good read. If you like Bridgerton then you'll love this too. Lady Somerset, a young widow, arrives in Bath for the season, determined to start afresh. She has just come out of a stifling 10 year loveless marriage to a much older man, having given up the love of her life from family pressure.

She encounters the rakish Lord Melville and his elegant sister Lady Caroline and life for her, and her cousin/companion Margaret, becomes rather daring, exciting and scandalous. Many adventures ensue. Who should she choose to love - her returned lost love and heir to her late husband, or the glamorous Lord Melville? What fun. Lightweight, silly and just what I needed. I enjoyed it very much.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I stand with you in re-member-ance. There was definitely a comical ('comical') ghost penis in Lincoln (guy who got brained before getting to consummate his marriage)

I love that book and can confirm it opens with a ghost with an eternity long boner

@Sadik To be fair I am still lapping the spider tosh UP, but feel slightly missold on the semi-hard bepenised SF front 😉I loved Anne McCaffrey's Pern romances and Harper Hall books as a tween (T. Swift with dragonlings and family angst -- if she's not still read by that demographic, she should be!) but had never heard of this bonkers unicorn stuff you mentioned and will be seeking them out IMMEDIATELY.

Also ordered immediately, @MegBusset 's amazing Christopher Fowler book 😀

I've been meaning to redo it as Audible so maybe I will sometime

It’s funny how the conversation is totally putting me off The New Life but making me more curious about Lincoln in the Bardo! I wonder which I’ll get to first! Neither soon I suspect as apart from March book club reads, I’m hoping to read some of the longlists of the Women’s Prizes for Fiction and Non-fiction.

@Stowickthevast I’m delighted to see someone else love North Woods. It was top 3 for me last year. Loved the bit about the beetle!

Recent reads:
32 Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - John Berendt
Billed as true crime, this is really the story of a city (Savannah) and the quirky characters who live there. Berendt writes about the people he meets with wit and warmth and you get a real feel for Savannah in the eighties- the crime bit was kinda unnecessary. This is my last foray into true crime- I wanted to read the two big hitters (this and In Cold Blood) and that’s enough for me. I may go back to Penance by Eliza Clarke in the next few months to try to finish it after this. (I DNFed about 1/3 of the way through last year)

33 Cover the Bones- Chris Hammer
Hammer writes well plotted and propulsive crime fiction. The writing is ordinary, the characters aren’t terribly deep, but they rattle along nicely and are diverting and quick reads. In this one detectives Ivan Lucic and Nell Buchanan investigate the murder of an accountant in an outback town. There are two other timelines- one story (directly related to the current case) from the 90s and another set of letters from the early 1900s. They all dovetail together nicely.

Sorry, meant to tag @MorriganManor for the Fowler!

@ÚlldemoShúl I recently read the first in that series and really enjoyed how the multiple plot strands tied together.