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.

@DuPainDuVinDuFromage I've never managed to finish anything by Poe.

Rattled through Women's Prize longlisted Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin. Good concept but very simple and some annoying anachronisms plus an obsession with words ending in ness that don't need them (eg dampness).

It's about the trauma of Vietnamese Boat People but its simplicity perhaps underplays the trauma. And it feels rushed. If I didn't know it wasn't, I'd assume it was written for a YA market.

26. The House At Sea's End by Elly Griffiths
Continuing the Dr Ruth Galloway series, Book 3. This story was about the discovery of some bodies buried on a remote beach. They are discovered to have been a small group of young German soldiers who were picked up off the north Norfolk coast by the local Home Guard on one of their night patrols, brought to the remote cove, shot and the bodies buried.

The surviving, and now very elderly, former members of the Home Guard are now being picked off by a killer who is desperate to keep the truth about what happened from coming out.

I enjoyed this. I like Ruth Galloway, who now has a young baby and a rather complex personal life to add to the mix.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I’m relieved to hear that! If there had been any recommendations of any of the stories in the book I would have felt duty-bound to read them 😂

16 Sandman: Season of Mists - Neil Gaiman

Got bored of waiting for my reservation of the Sandman Book 2 collection to come through, so lugged the individual volumes home from the library; which wasn’t great for my back, but means I can get through them one by one which will help with my 2024 numbers 😆 This picks up where the TV series / Book 1 collection leave off, tying up some storylines while setting up some others. Very much a ‘mid season’ episode in terms of the overall storyline , but no less enjoyable for that.

23 The Others Of Edenwell by Verity M Holloway
I would never have picked this up if it wasn’t for a review in a FB group. Swirly cover, title that sounded derivative, vague recollection of not liking something else by the author…… but it was fantastic, a definite bold!
Freddie lives with his father in the grounds of Edenwell, rebranded as The Hydrostatic by the charismatic American, Dr Chalice, who offers “water cures” to rich people. It’s the middle of WW1 and to Freddie’s great shame a heart condition prevents him from fighting for his country. He tends the land around the hotel, talks to the corvids and draws/collages art in secret, as he’s also ashamed of that.
Eustace is a troubled teenager sent to Edenwell by his weak father and overbearing mother, his chirpy sister Phoebe accompanying him. The boys find they have a lot in common and there is a beautiful, gentle love story wound in to the narrative.
In the woods, a scarecrow-like figure lurks. Small animals are found with their bones crushed. Scoles, a cruel ex soldier who reckons he lost his leg during an episode of great heroism, alternately smarms around Eustace and bullies Freddie.
The WW1 setting is brilliantly described and the supernatural events prove to be an integral part of that (avoiding spoilers, whatever lurks by the well is used to adopting the fears of humans). Day to day life is recorded in all its quietly desperate mundanity and there are some wonderful background characters - faded music hall female star, gentry with charms to ward off evil festooning her wheelchair, cynical staff, crisply-clad nurses - plus a heartbreakingly accurate group of soldiers injured on the Front.
A superior quiet horror tale and an accomplished novel about the era too.

26. Chocolat by Joanne Harris
    Witchy nomadic Vianne moves to the small village of Lansquenet sous Tannes where she opens a chocolaterie, annoys the priest and shakes up the locals.
    A feel good novel with a touch of magic and a hint of darkness. I enjoyed reading it, I liked Vianne and her daughter and thought the magic of the story was subtly woven in.

27. The Lollipop Shoes by Joanne Harris
    Four years on from Chocolat Vianne and her daughters are living in Paris, trying to fit in and seem normal, but they come into the orbit of the glamorous but predatory Zozie.
    This has more of an edge than Chocolat and the magic is bigger but isn't as charming. I quite liked the end but it drags a bit in the middle and there's a few inconsistencies with Chocolat as well.

28. Peaches for Monsieur Le Curé by Joanne Harris
    Another four years later Vianne returns to Lansquenet on a slightly ridiculous premise and discovers that North African immigrants have moved in and there are tensions between the new arrivals and the pre-existing residents. Of course it's up to Vianne to sort it all out.
    I didn't really like this, overly dramatic in places and stretches believability. It just feels like Harris wanted to give her readers more Vianne and more Lansquenet but didn't really know what to do with the character or setting.

29. The Strawberry Thief by Joanne Harris
    Some years later (I don't know how many, the age gap between Vianne's children is wrong) Vianne is still in Lansquenet. An old man dies leaving Vianne's daughter an inheritance that his family dispute and a written confession for the priest. A magical tattoo artist moves in and scares Vianne.
    In some ways this is similar to Chocolat but with Vianne on the other side. It's okay and ties up most of the loose ends of the series, maybe a little too easily.

@SheilaFentiman – I hope you enjoy. I prefer DI Clare Mackay, but just by a whisker 😊

I have started the first one and I am enjoying it, thank you!

Henry interesting to read your comments on the accuracy of River East, River West. I agree Alva's story was the more compelling, but I appreciate the other timeline was needed for the contrast. I liked that it pushed the immigrant trope in a new direction. I'm very bored of the "next gen immigrant feels marginalised, until they learn what their parents/grandparents went through" genre. Even an immigrant writer was taking the mickey out of it a few years ago when there was a massive glut of them. It was almost paint by numbers at one point.

I can't help but wonder if the Women's Prize panel has a quota of certain styles/genres to meet, how much is influenced by publishers/who is in favour in the industry etc. There is an element of certain books that could easily be interchanged with others in that genre as they are fairly typical and nothing standout. Some make you wonder what they were thinking. It's good to be introduced to new authors and it not being the same old names over and over again, but the large number of debut authors does give me pause as to the process.

I find Anne Enright very inconsistent . I think I'm the only one who really rated The Actress and I loved The Gathering, but I hated The Green Road and wasn't keen on The Wren, the Wren.

As if I haven't got enough to read. I've also been having another look at the Walter Scott Prize - shortlist due in May.

www.walterscottprize.co.uk/the-2023-prize/the-2024-longlist/

There's some crossover with other prizes and books that have already been popular on the thread. Cuddy/For Thy Great Pain. I fancy the Sally Magnusson and Rose Tremain. I'm not bashing my way through the whole list though, but would be interested to know if anyone else has any other recommendations from it.

In case anyone thinks I'm a complete prize junkie, I get all the notifications from them as I keep on top of what's going on for work.

24 I Have Some Questions for You by Rachel Makkai
(I think others have already reviewed this.

Focussed largely on a US boarding school, the female narrator, Bodie, addresses her “voice” at the man she believes killed her fellow student, 20 odd years ago. This is not the man who was jailed for the crime.

It was well written and interesting, but didn’t grip me thoroughly, so I haven’t bolded it. I might read something else by her, though.

Oh bugger, I asked for Eve as a Christmas present and have it waiting on my bedside TBR (as opposed to the top-of-the-chest-of-drawers TBR, and the things on the shelves downstairs I haven’t read yet TBR…) Hopefully DH will understand if I end up throwing it out the window in gender-critical high dudgeon.

I am listening to it and I've not been too dismayed by anything she's said so far. I do feel like with an audiobook you listen to it once and, if you are inclined to a certain pov, you will naturally hear things from that pov. Whereas if you're reading you may reread a passage a number of times to try and get what the author is actually trying to say. So for example when she's talked about transwomen and men lactating in the same section I've kind of assumed that she is putting them in the same category however as I've not properly read the text I could well have misunderstood her intent. If that makes sense!

I have read Thy Great Pain and to be honest it left me a bit cold.
Have the Joseph O Connor, House of Doors and Cuddy on my Kindle - they must have been daily deals at some point! Will bump them up.
I rate Sally Magusson so will keep an eye out for that. Tend to struggle with Rose Tremain.

I tried really hard to finish My Father’s House but failed. So, so boring.

19. Nightbloom by Peace Adzo Medie. I can't expand much on @FortunaMajor's review and summary upthread, I enjoyed this a lot. There were a couple of plot twists that felt too convenient, but I thought it was a nuanced and detailed portrait of two different women, and although it is not a short book, I would have happily spent longer in Akorfa and Selasi's worlds.

I have The Maiden waiting for me at the library but that isn't sounding very promising!

Couldn't get any of the bolding to work properly there!

Having had another 45 minutes to listen today and I'm sadly revising my opinion. Many nonsensical statements in the uterus chapter!

@HenryTilneyBestBoy , that's an excellent review of River East, River West. I also noted the mentions of Duras' The Lover and was a bit disappointed, because I love that Duras novel, yet the references to it seemed rather pointless, as you say. They didn't seem to enrich the story in any meaningful way.

I did read an article by Rey Lescure on Shanghai rooftoppers, and found it quite moving:
https://themillions.com/2024/02/pressure-and-release-writing-shanghais-rooftoppers.html

And you made the right decision, DNFing The Maiden. (Sorry @GrannieMainland !) I was probably overly generous in giving it three stars; it was more a two-star read. But it was a fast read at at least! I read Denise Mina's Rizzio fairly recently, and that narrative just worked so much better as historical
fiction based on a true story.

Just finished you before me JoJo Myles. Not keen.

Big subject, added very little to it. Didn't like the characters, didn't evolve my thoughts with the story and it didn't make me cry.

On to Ink blood sister scribe on ebook and the priory of the orange tree on audiobook. Hoping for better. The first chapter of ink blood got my attention. I've had to listen to the first orange tree chapter twice because I don't have the foggiest idea what's going on.

@FortunaMajor thanks for the heads-up on the Walter Scott prize. I hadn't heard of it.

I thought Sally Magnusson's Music in the Dark was excellent and wrote a long review on it a while back. Much better than The Sealwoman's Gift which I also enjoyed despite one or two rather cliched passages. I'd also like to read her second novel The Ninth Child.

@splothersdog I'm finding Rose Tremain a bit uneven lately although I loved her earlier stuff. Music and Silence was great.

Found my review (sorry can't do a shorter link)

Music in the Dark Sally Magnusson

I haven't read The Ninth Child but bought this on the strength of having enjoyed The Sealwoman's Gift despite finding it a bit uneven in tone occasionally.
SM has really come into her own as a writer with this book. Once again she takes an episode from history and weaves a personal story around it. In this instance, the brutality and heartlessness of the Highland Clearances are well explored; a time when rich landowners drove crofters off the land to make way for sheep farming. Families who had farmed the same small patch of land for generations were forced to move south or, in many cases, emigrate, and with little or no support to begin a new life.
Jamesina Ross grew up in a highland glen; she loved the freedom of the wild countryside around her and wrote poems about it. The local minister encouraged her studies and life seemed exciting and full of promise, until the brutal evictions began. We meet Jamesina in later life, still bearing the mental and physical scars of what happened, as well as later sadnesses, and when a new lodger with links to her past moves into her flat, the experiences she cannot bear to think about resurface and have to be faced.
It's a sensitive exploration of love later in life, and of a mind struggling to cope with trauma. SM's own experience of her mother's dementia may have informed this theme in the novel I suspect. The two main characters and their prickly relationship, on Jamesina's side at least, are so well portrayed. There's humour in the dialogue too.
And the evocation of the beauty of the Highlands is heartfelt.
For me, an excellent book.

I'd say her middle novel is the weakest actually but has some interesting historical stuff in it.

I really admire Sally M for making her protagonist a woman of menopausal age.

17 Sandman: A Game of You - Neil Gaiman

More graphic novel goodness with a really strong standalone story centring one of the side characters from the earlier volumes.

Ways of Life, Jim Ede and the Kettle's Yard Artists by Laura Freeman

Jim Ede was an extraordinary man with an eye for beautiful things and a truly generous spirit. The book charts his life from childhood, his experience of fighting in the First World War, to happier times with his wife Helen (although he was probably gay, at a time when it was illegal) and friendships with a huge range of artists including the Nicholsons, Christopher Wood, Barbara Hepworth and David Jones. He and Helen lived in London, Tangier and France, travelled in America and in the late 1950s arrived in Cambridge where he opened up his home - Kettle's Yard -to show his eclectic range of art and other objects he found beautiful such as pebbles, feathers and seedheads. This is a lovely book, printed on good quality paper with a photograph of something from his collection at the beginning of each short chapter. I absolutely loved it and can't recommend it highly enough to anyone interested in art or beauty, wherever it is found.