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.

Killing Thatcher sounds right up my street @HenryTilneyBestBoy. Added to wish list.

I got the joke!

I thought Killing Thatcher was excellent.

😁 Don't worry, I never watched Dawson's Creek and I immediately got the joke about the 20-30 year old TV show.

I didn’t get the joke.

Has everyone seen the news story of the old lady who sprayed, ‘Bollocks’ on the statue of Thatcher? She’s my new hero.

The Ink Black Heart is in the daily deals btw, if anybody wants to waste many hours of their life for very little satisfaction.

I got excited reading your message, then felt deflated. Is it not up to much then?

It’s utter crap, but still we read on.

A couple more from me:

17. The Mystery of the Blue Train - Agatha Christie

After The Secret Adversary last month, I was hoping for better with this month’s challenge book. A wealthy American heiress is killed on her way to the south of France on the blue train. Her gambling, debt-ridden husband who she is seeking to divorce, his aging actress lover and her own lover (who appears to be a con man) are all in the frame. And, as luck would have it, Hercule Poirot was also the train and he teams up with the confidante of the dead woman. Much more my type of Christie than last month’s caper. Not her best but did the job (and took me until nearly the end to work out the murderer).

Sorry to hear about Sparkling Shite, Remus but you did make me laugh.

18. False Colours - Georgette Heyer

Kit returns from his diplomatic job in Europe to discover his identical slightly older twin, Evelyn (Lord Denville), has been AWOL for over a week and is going to miss the dinner being thrown in his honour to meet his potential fiancée, Cressida’s, wider family. Much against his better judgement, Kit agrees to impersonate his brother for the evening to save both Evelyn and Cressida from the embarrassment of his absence even though Cressida seems a most unlikely bride for his brother. Throw in Kit’s socialite widowed mother with large debts, Evelyn’s estate tied up in a trust until a respectable marriage and Cressida’s cantankerous grandmother and what could possibly go wrong for Kit. Great fun.

Onto Barbara Pym next.

That's because you are young @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie . Joshua Jackson played a character called Pacey Witter in the TV show Dawson's Creek. It was phenomenally popular at the time to the extent that people who didn't watch it (me) still knew the names of the characters involved in the main love triangle.

19.Werecockroach by Polenth Blake. Thanks to @sadik for recommending this funny sci fi novella. The aliens have landed but Rin is more concerned about the strange habits of his flatmates. Are the two connected? This was ace, and my husband has immediately started reading it.

Glad you enjoyed it @Palegreenstars I really liked Sunstruck by the same author, sadly I don't think they've written much else.

False Colours is one of my favourite Heyers @TimeforaGandT - Cressy's such a great heroine.

I think some of us might be too old for Dawson's Creek (unless that was another joke that I didn't get....)

I loved Dawson’s Creek and Pacey was definitely the best character - I couldn’t be doing with Dawson’s overblown teenage angst. I’ve just googled and I was 23 when the first episode aired. Waaaay too old to have enjoyed it so much!

@saturnspinkhoop I loved The Ink Black Heart and got immense satisfaction from the hours spent reading it so it’s definitely worth 99p. Having said that it’s not very easy to read on kindle - there’s a lot of concurrent online chats that are much easier to read in physical format.

@JaninaDuszejko 😀to compound my cringe, I never even watched Dawson's Creek either. (My tribe's teen shows were Buffy / Gilmore Girls / Veronica Mars.)

@saturnspinkhoop I enjoyed The Ink Black Heart, and would definitely have watched that cartoon thought it nailed toxic fandom dynamics. Although I did spot the Big Bad a mile off, which I almost never do. It does suffer in comparison to Troubled Blood (best of the series) but still better than the earlier Matthew-era books IMO 🤷🏻‍♀️

I thought The Ink Blackheart was definitely the weakest of the Strike novels, and if you thought Kindle was a poor format try audible - it was tortuous.
But on the other hand Strike & Robin continue their thwarted love affair which is worth 99p of anybodies money in my book - plus you've got to tick off the whole set now you've got this far 🤷‍♀️

So, Ink Black Heart doesn’t appear in my Kindle Daily Deals email - why does this happen???

The email is rubbish, it doesn’t show all the daily deals and includes other books that aren’t in the daily deals. I never actually look at the email, I just check the daily deal directly on the website.

I was a bit obsessed with Dawson's Creek, think I was about 19 or 20 when it first aired so maybe a bit too old but still, I was deeply in love with Pacey - until the OC came along and blew it all out of the water.

'Kid from the wrong side of the tracks' very much one of my favourite tropes in American teen dramas. I also love it when there's a dance battle of some sort. I'd still be happily consuming hours of this nonsense in my mid-40s to be fair, it's just I don't often get much say in what's on the TV these days.

17 Giving up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel

This is actually number 17, unlike my erroneously numbered previous 17 😳

I don't really know what to say about this book as it rather defies description. It is by far one of the most engrossing memoirs I've ever read. Mantel's account of her childhood in particular, but really her whole life, has the same liminal feeling as her (non-Cromwell) novels, as if she's constantly at the boundary of something the rest of us can't see. Her life (up to this point at least) was so shaped by her physical illnesses that her literary success is relegated to a bit part. The account of the continued medical failure to diagnose and properly treat her endometriosis is harrowing, but I think the two things I will remember most are her descriptions of the places she lived and the leaving of them, and of the experience of being a thin woman who becomes fat. She writes about the latter in particular unsparingly, but with great clarity. This book was written some 6 years before Wolf Hall was published. I hope Mantel enjoyed the huge recognition she belatedly achieved for that series, before her recent untimely death.

@AliasGrape I've been doing my umpteenth rewatch of the OC, it's complete comfort viewing for me. I tried Dawsons Creek (at the age of 41!) but something about it left me cold tbh

I think I would have been 16 or 17 when it first aired but in my memory I'm a lot younger
I used to skip church to watch it. I still skip it now!

@InTheCludgie

I bought the first season as a box set when it came out and was most disappointed couldn't get through it. Of its time I think. Pacey has still got it all these years after from when he had his boat and Dawson has a large squad of beautiful children

9. The Other Mothers by Katherine Faulkner
Really enjoyed this book, thought it had good character development and kept me guessing until the end.

10 Anne Frank the diary of a young girl- starting reading this earlier today and I'm already immersed in the diary entries. Tough subject matter but I almost feel like it's important to read it to gain a full understanding of the situation.

I’m old, but have never seen or even heard of Dawson’s Creek.

@TimeforaGandT Stay well away from Sparkling Shite. This is most definitely not a laughing matter.

😂

I watched Dawson's Creek! It launched Michelle Williams' career.

Those were the days.