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.

Nothing to add to the Kingsolver chat either, as I most of them on my Kindle TBR pile.

I am teaching Virginia Woolf this week though. Or, should have been, school was closed yesterday due to bomb scares. (there is no suitable emoticon for the stupidity of humans- especially ones who are very probably aged between 14 and 18 and stick signs up in railway stations in the area saying bombs have been placed in local schools because very probably they had a test yesterday)

I agree about her. Some sentences and passages are of such perfect beauty they can stand alone as Literature. But fuck me she was a self-obsessed bore.

This year the teacher who chooses the works has gone for chunks of To The Lighthouse so I'm doing the Shakespeare's Sister/A Room of One's Own bit.

I can't remember who recommended On Bloody Sunday but that's what I'm reading now. Similar in style to The Last Plane in the Sky with mainly eyewitness testimony.

Raw, heartbreaking, and almost unbelievable that I was hearing so much on TV in the 70s about very much only one side of a story. Thank you to whoever recommended ❤️

Finally finished The Children’s Hospital, which was something of an undertaking!
On with 7) Five Star Billionaire which I started this morning and I think will be very up my street.

Hopefully having to do a lot of travelling in April will give me a chance to catch up on the reading

@RomanMum I didn’t realise that there are not going to be any more Leo Stanhope books. A shame - I found them very readable.

20 At Freddie's by Penelope Fitzgerald

Like a crisp, palate-cleansing sorbet after The Waves. Penelope Fitzgerald almost feels like the opposite of Virginia Woolf, in that she is so completely unobtrusive as a writer. Her characters are so real they never feel like characters. Her books are disparate in setting but have in common eccentric, flawed people you feel you know by the book's end. Freddie's is a child stage school run by the eponymous Freddie (short for Frieda) Wentworth. Indomitable and unknowable, she has been in charge of the school for more years than anyone can remember, and has trained countless child Shakespearean actors. The book is set at a time of change, with the advent of the National Theatre and the threat of an incorporated child actor training establishment. At the same time, mischievous Mattie and talented Jonathan are due to appear as Prince Arthur in King John (which brought back my half-remembered knowledge of his eyes being put out by Hubert from H.E. Marshall's Our Island Story), and a tension is developing between the children's teachers, Hannah and Pierce. As is often the case in Fitzgerald's novels, nothing much happens on the surface but the currents of human emotions are tugging underneath. And the writing is perfect; not an extraneous word. Loved it.

I love At Freddie’s too @Welshwabbit, it’s one of my favourite Penelope Fitzgeralds. Her own experiences as a teacher really tell in it, I think - she writes children so well.

13. Babel, R.F. Kaung

Well this was a struggle. Probably worth it in the end but it took my ages to get into it. Magical realism set in early 19th C about a group of four young people who are recruited as translators for the magical silver industry in Oxford. Scholars imbue silver with magical powers by using the power of words from different languages and the differences between the translations- this was neat idea and gave some food for thought. I thought the second half was more effective than the first. I found the first lacked forward motion in the plot somehow. I absolutely hated the effing footnotes. It is fiction. It is either important enough to put into the narrative or it is surplus to requirements so get rid.

14. Penance, Eliza Clark

A teenager is killed by three friends. A journalist travels to their home town to investigate what led to the murder.

True crime podcasts are my guilty pleasure. I didn’t enjoy this though. While the structure was clever and the fact that the voices didn’t quite ring true could be argued to be part of the point... it just didn’t work for me.

15. The Mystery of Four, Sam Blake

Somehow a woman has bought a big estate in Ireland. There might be a serial killer that has been burying women on her land. Meantime people are dying while they are all trying to put on a play. Meh.

16. The No-Show, Beth O’Leary

Reliable chick lit. A man stands up three women on Valentine’s Day. We hear all about it from each perspective. I enjoyed this. The structure was relatively clever. Passably funny in places. Moderately invested in some of the characters. A solid read. Not great literature!

17. Slow Horses, Mick Herron

I might have to mull this one over before deciding how much I enjoyed it. Listened on audible and the scene changes were not signposted so it was difficult to keep track. Very much enjoyed the premise but i don’t yet care about any of the characters. Not sure if I will read the rest one but I will definitely seek out the TV adaptation as I can see it working really well.

It hasn’t been a brilliant year so far for me... My only bolds so far have been the Robert Galbraiths and possibly Never by Ken Follett which has stayed with me.

Up next is the second of Jean Auel’s Earth Children series and it’s good so far. Hopefully another bold...

A Bit of a Stretch by Chris Atkins. Non-fiction, about a man who has a spell in Wandsworth. Very highly recommend this. It’s a fascinating insight into the prison and it’s very well-written.

22 Sandman: World’s End - Neil Gaiman

My favourite of these volumes so far, I think - tales within tales told by a fantastical array of travellers sheltering from a strange storm at an inn at the end of the world. Beautifully illustrated and all adding to the richness of the Sandman universe.

Thunderclap - Laura Cummings

A biographical look at life, sight and death through the medium of seventeenth century Dutch Art. Cummings loves the work of Carel Fabritius, painter of The Goldfinch who was tragically killed in the Delft gunpowder explosion and returns to his work throughout the book, touching on other artists, Rembrandt, Vermeer, de Hooch etc whose path he may have crossed during his short life.

Liked this a lot though I didn’t quite love it enough to make it a bold.

46 In Defence of the Act by Effie Black
Another Women’s Prize for fiction longlisted book. It can be quite confronting as the narrator, who is researching suicide in animals with a view to proving that it’s sometimes a good thing, uses a flippant tone to discuss so serious an issue. This does create an interesting juxtaposition with the more moving events. However, this book didn’t work for me- it tied in too much lecturing along with the story and the ending was a cliched cop out. I’ve read 6 of the longlist so far (and DNFed one) and I’ve only really rated 2- disappointing

47 The Old Maid- Edith Wharton
Im only including this short story/ novella as a read, as otherwise my Storygraph/ mumsnet numbering won’t work and I’ll get confused. Beautifully written as always, skewers social mores as always and a thoughtful exploration of what makes you a mother. I listened free on audible and it was just over 2 hours long and a welcome break.

Back to women’s prize next- reading fiction Soldier Sailor and non-fiction Young Queens

27 In Dark Water -Lynn McEwan

Scottish crime fiction recommended by a PP - I really enjoyed this and I’m going to buy the second in the series about DI Shona Oliver, who also volunteers for the RNLI and who got brought into a murder case when her lifeboat discovered a body. I liked her and the relationships at work and home very much.

13. Walking with Nomads by Alice Morrison

It's not long since I read Slow Road to Tehran where I felt hit over the head with the authors knowledge of Islam and her determination to show it off. This was a much more gentle book in that respect.

Alice, her guides, and importantly a handful of camels, walk back and forth across Morocco. She talks a little about religion, and often claims to be Christian as the people she meets do not understand being an agnostic. She is respectful of Islam and as a result interacts in a beautiful way with her guides and the nomads and also has some funny occasions when the men are trying to wash and at the same time not being naked in front of her. In particular her guide Brahaim helped me understand better about Islamic faith than almost anything I've read before.

It's not exactly an adventure travel book, but there are a lot of mischievous camel exploits. Who knew they could be such a nuisance when in heat!

Recommended if you like this sort of book 🙂

17.Matrix by Lauren Groff A fictionalised account of the life of the 12th century poet Marie de France. Groff's Marie is an illegitimate half-sibling of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Eleanor brings Marie to England where she is to become the prioress of an impoverished convent. Giant, ungainly Marie sets about forming a powerful society of women who work the land, run their finances, and defend themselves from attack without the need for men.

This was good fun. I loved the concept and it felt really atmospheric. Marie was great, headstrong character, with an interesting supporting cast of women. I listened to this on audiobook and the narrator Adjoa Andoh did a cracking job of creating distinct voices despite there being little direct speech.

Never Mind The Quantocks - Stuart Maconie

I’m a great fan of Maconie, he’s second only to Bill Bryson in terms of ‘Round Britain by Public Transport’ writing to me.
However, this is a collection of his columns for Country Walking magazine and as such was full of the joys of getting your boots on, filling your thermos and setting off up a hill with a knapsack on your back.
I couldn’t care less about the reliability of Gore-Tex or the relative merits of Kendal Mint cake vs newer, crumbly energy bars so this was a bit of a duffer for me.

He just released another on the failings of the criminal justice system. I've reserved it at the library, but have a few weeks wait.

I liked this one a lot, but thought it was a very stark contrast between the classes in how they serve their time. I think he had a very different experience to most. It's a few years since I read it, but I remember being very upset at parts of it.

@FortunaMajor Thanks- I’ll add it to my watch list so I can get it if/when it goes down to 99p. I completely agree with your observations. One thing I was shocked at was the poor running of the prison. So many instances of unbelievable incompetence.

33. Natives: Race and Class in the ruins of empire, by Akala
    Really well written & interesting exploration of race and class from the perspective of a mixed race British person born in the early 1980s. I know lots of others have reviewed this, & I'm not sure why it took so long to get it to the top of my list. Lots to go away & think about, definitely a bold. I listened to it on audio (read by the author), & also an excellent performance.

34. Why We Remember, by Charan Ranganath
    On audio again, a neuroscientist writing about the science of memory. I did like this overall, but it fell slightly between two stools - mostly pop-science explaining how memory works for a lay reader (which I found the most interesting sections), but sometimes veering into self-help & how to improve one's own memory.

35. Shadows at Noon: The South Asian twentieth century, by Joya Chatterji
    I've finished this one just in time to find out that it didn't make the shortlist for the non-fiction Women's prize. I'm a bit surprised that it didn't, it's a big, serious book that looks at India, Pakistan & Bangladesh from the end of the Raj, through partition, & up to the present day. It's presented thematically, starting with a long section of political history, then covering topics including caste, food, work & leisure. Although some sections worked better than others, overall it's a definite bold for me. I particularly enjoyed reading it and understanding more of the background to novels set in India that I've read recently (particularly A Suitable Boy, but also The Covenant of Water).

Next up is All That She Carried which I've just got from the library, & which did make the shortlist.

@saturnspinkhoop I found Prison: a survival guide by Carl Cattermole an interesting companion to some of the books written by more white-collar inmates like Chris Atkins.

26. Over my Dead Body - Maz Evans I'm sure this is one that I found on this thread. Thank you to whoever recommended it! A woman has been murdered and she needs to prove it. This book made me laugh and cry, it's funny and feel-good and a nice easy read.

Thank you! I will have a look for that.

@Kinsters I don’t know if anyone else recommended it, but I posted about it recently. I’m really glad you enjoyed it. It was one of the best books I’ve read in ages. Genuinely funny, a bit different and perfect paced with plenty of plot.

30 The daughter of Auschwitz - Tova Friedman
Tova was born the year before war broke out and survived the ghetto before being transported to Auschwitz with her parents. The circumstances of her survival are frankly astonishing and this is as heartbreaking as you would imagine any book about Auschwitz to be (and I feel I’ve read a lot of them!). Not a hold for me as I found the second half, her life after Auschwitz was a bit dull, too descriptive and not as interesting.

31 Iron Flame - Rebecca Yarros
Sequel to Forth Wing and the second of five books from the Empyrean Series, this picks up just where we left in the last book. This is an epic tale of over 600 pages and it goes on quite the rollercoaster. I won’t give too many spoilers just in case but we move on from what Violet learned at the end of the last book and alliances are truly tested as the fate of the whole continent is threatened.
I’m really enjoying this series, though this slightly less than the first as there was a lot of terminology to get my head around. Looking forward to the third instalment. I don’t read a lot of fantasy but this has been a real treat with a hell of a cliffhanger at the end.

23 Sandman: The Kindly Ones - Neil Gaiman

Hard to review in any detail without giving away any spoilers, but I’m still mulling over whether I liked this volume or not- I’m not a huge fan of the art style in this one though.

48 The Master and Margarita- Mikhail Bulgakov
This was my book club book for March and I just about finished it in time. It has two main storylines- the devil and his minions are creating havoc in Stalinist Moscow- this part is allegorical, satiric, chaotic and I’m not sure if I loved or hated it - probably a bit of both. The second storyline is about Pontius Pilate and his role in the crucifixion. I actually loved this part despite (or maybe because of) not being religious. I think I’ll have to reread at some point in the future to try to understand it better.

49 Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy
Id heard loads about this and very positive reviews (including here) mainly by mothers who identified strongly with the protagonist’s struggles in the early years of motherhood. I’m not a mother so expected to find it meh but I really enjoyed it. Stream of consciousness works well for me and the insight into ‘Soldier’s’ world was tragic and comic and full of stress and love. It made me both relieved and sad that I never had children. A definite bold. (I agree with PPs about the husband) This is just behind Enter Ghost for me in my WP favourites.

North Woods which has been well reviewed is 99p, I just picked it up