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.

The Women's Prize Non-fiction shortlist was announced a few days ago.

Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life and Sudden Death by Laura Cumming
Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein
A Flat Place by Noreen Masud, published by Hamish Hamilton
All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake by Tiya Miles
Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI by Madhumita Murgia
How to Say Babylon: A Jamaican Memoir by Safiya Sinclair

I've read 4 of these and really rate all of them, I'll prioritise the other 2 now, but there are a few others I still fancy.

From the fiction prize I've decided to abandon A Trace of Sun. I'm 70% in and not feeling the love. I might get round to finishing it, but it's a chore and the incredibly short chapters make it very easy to put down. Each chapter jumps forward a few months so it feels a bit disjointed. I might have enjoyed it as an audiobook more, but in print it's tiresome.

I'm abandoning books at an alarming rate at the moment.
Every Rising Sun - Jamila Ahmed a retelling of Arabian Nights. I got to the point of thinking surely this can't go on that much longer and when I checked I was only on 46%. Chop her head off and put us all out of our misery.

Hellish Nell - Malcolm Gaskill explores the back story and times of a popular medium who was convicted under the Witchcraft Act in 1944 and sentenced to prison. She predicted a naval disaster just before the Normandy landings and came to the attention of the secret service. It sounds right up my street, but at 22% it's a bit dry.

A near DNF that I ploughed on with
The Other Side of Mrs Wood - Lucy Barker
Late 1800s London, two rival mediums go head to head in trying to get each other discredited.
This struck me as a wannabe Sarah Waters, but it didn't deliver. Far too much build up for a lacklustre ending.

@FortunaMajor Ive loved the two of the shortlist I’ve read so far and intend to read the rest. Currently reading Young Queens. I was disappointed that Intervals didn’t make it to the shortlist- I found it very moving. Overall I’m enjoying the non-fiction more than the fiction which is unusual for me.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit North Woods was one of my top reads from last year- it seems to be love or hate from the reviews I’ve seen. Hope you enjoy it.

My book club read The Master and Margarita and we all hated it. We did think that probably much of the symbolism and significance would be lost on non Russian readers.

Look at you all discussing Russian literature and literary prizes and here’s me with my latest collection of much less highbrow reads!

70 The Dream House by T M Logan

This had a really interesting premise but sadly didn’t deliver. Adam and Jess have just moved into a Victorian house and Adam discovers a hidden blocked up room in the attic, with a few items left behind like a watch, a wallet and a scarf. His investigations to find out more about the room put him in danger. I loved this idea but the story is slow moving, many of the characters are underdeveloped and there’s a whole storyline that just goes nowhere.

71 The Frequency Of Us by Keith Stuart

This was a reread and I enjoyed it just as much the second time. In the war Will’s garden is bombed and when he comes round there’s no evidence his wife ever existed. Sixty years later Laura starts work as a career for Will and starts investigating his story. Something strange happened when the bomb hit - but what and can anything be done to resolve it? A lovely story with some engaging characters.

72 What Remains? by Tim Weaver

Continuing my reread of Weaver’s series about missing person investigator David Raker. This one is one of the best, featuring a mystery based around an old pier and penny arcade museum. This one is slightly unusual though, because he’s not looking for a missing person, he’s helping his ex-policeman friend try to solve a murder that destroyed his police career.

73 Broken Heart by Tim Weaver

Next in the series and it’s another good one. A woman goes missing, and it appears to be tied to films made by her film director husband who died more than 20 years ago.

Morning,

it’s my birthday this week and been waking up to a book a day from the Women’s Prize which has been lovely.

I started with And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliot a First Nations Canadian author . The story follows a new mother who’s just moved off the reservation to be with her white professor husband. She’s grieving her own mother and dealing with micro racist aggressions and some very surreal Pocahontas themed hallucinations. I’m loving it. It feels really accessible in the writing style and just the right balance of magical realism.

Not sure which to read next but visiting family round England for 2 weeks so probably the lighter ones.

Happy Birthday @Palegreenstars 🎈
Happy reading! What a lovely pile of books!

Happy Birthday Palegreenstars! What a great selection of books, were they all presents?!

Thanks both @Boiledeggandtoast yes from my husband. Apparently the people in his office said ‘surely she’d prefer a trip to a spa’. 🤣 I was really touched. Probably the whole summer sorted tbh.

Your husband must surely be every 50 Bookers' dream man!

Hope you have a good trip to England.

happy birthday @Palegreenstars What a fab present. I’ve just told my husband about it meaningfully 😜

The Door by Magda Szabó. Translated by Len Rix

A fictionalised account (how fictionalised, accounts vary) of the relationship between the Lady Writer and her Housekeeper. I thought they were both awful at various times during the reading of this and yet this is ultimately an emotionally honest book about a deep and complex friendship. Highly recommended, I suspect this is going to be one of my books of the year. Now I'm going to watch the film of this starring, improbably, Helen Mirren which is on Amazon Prime.

Good thing your husband has more sense than his workmates @Palegreenstars , that pile of books contain far more hours of pleasure than a Spa day.

Happy Birthday Palegreen.

What a lovely gesture and so much better than a spa. Happy reading.

Úlldemo the non-fic prize has been a revelation and a really welcome addition.

Whilst I am always in favour of stacks of books for a birthday (lovely haul @Palegreenstars), I am a late convert to the spa day and now count them among my favourite things. With the right company, obviously!

Happy Birthday @Palegreenstars !

Happy birthday @Palegreenstars, enjoy reading your new books.

Happy birthweek @Palegreenstars What a fantastic present and method of delivery! All the cookies for your DH.

I need to catch up on reviews but apart from one resounding bold (Thunderclap by Laura Cumming) none of my recent reads have particularly stood out - actually, inspired by that book, I've spent many hours this week in the National Gallery ✨communing✨ with various Dutch paintings instead of reading😅

Also had quite a few DNFs and am currently debating whether to abandon WP-longlisted 8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster because I'm often finding the writing more painful even than the (very grim) subject matter. (Yes, I'm a horrible person.)
Some examples:
"I felt the sun shattering in my skull, filling my vision with neon paisleys, undulating, throbbing in time with my slowed heart-beat. At a snail's gallop, I felt the whole world waltz clockwise, my right eart sink into the earth, its rusty tang on my tongue. A brassy, muffled shriek buzzed in my left ear, like a hungry hornet. And the pain came - sharp like an icepick. The pain - so famished it swallowed all my senses - came back to me only in fits and starts."

"The air was rife with the piquant smouldering of gunpowder. With the fetid smell of burning flesh. The ironic scent, cupreous and musky, of all the blood splattered, spilled, and spoiling.

"That my frail body had outlived this impossibility was sharply gratifying on a deep animal level. Yet hulking sorrow began to unwind in my gut at the same time."

To read on, or not to read on - when Enter Ghost is next on the pile?

@HenryTilneyBestBoy ooh that’s next on my WP tbr and it sounds rubbish! May even skip it based on that. I loved Enter Ghost. My current fiction is Brotherless Night. I’ve only just started it but I’m liking the vibe so far.

9 - Demon Copperhead - Barbara Kingsolver
I loved this on so many levels. However the subject matter is so heart-breaking to read about that I did have to put it down on occasion and step away from the life Demon was living.
My love for Barbara continues. Strangely I haven't read The Lacuna which seems to have both good and bad reviews on here. It appears to be ready and waiting on my kindle but I rarely read two books by the same author back to back.

So, on to Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin for now.

Happy birthday Palegreenstars, happy reading!

Happy Birthday @Palegreenstars

Henry I'd ditch it and move on. It continues in more of the same. I'd be surprised if it makes the shortlist. Enter Ghost is wonderful.

28 Dead Man Deep -Lynn McEwan

Second book about DI Shona Oliver, who volunteers for the RNLI and investigates murders linked to the sea. I enjoyed this also.

@Palegreenstars , your DH is a prince among men!

@JaninaDuszejko , I also thought The Door was a remarkable book, even if not always an easy read.

16. Enter Ghost, Isabella Hammad 5/5
    I loved this story of a British Palestinian woman going to Israel to see her sister, and getting involved in a theatre production of Hamlet in the West Bank. More than anything else I’ve read, this book gives a sense of what it’s like to live as a Palestinian in Israel (or in ’48 as the novel calls it) and the West Bank. (NB that this book was written before the current genocide in Gaza.) However, the story is as much about family relationships as it is about politics. Chunks from Hamlet are cited throughout the novel, but they’re translated from classical Arabic into English (rather than being given in the original Shakespearean English). This creates an interesting distancing effect. The young woman director Mariam is a particularly wonderful character.

17. Ordinary Human Failings, Megan Nolan 5/5
    A dark topic: a child is accused of killing another child, and a tabloid journalist tries to exploit the story. The novel focuses on the dysfunctional family of the surviving child (an Irish family living in London). Yet the emphasis is not just on trauma, but on people’s capacity to change, sometimes for the better. Very sensitively done.

18. The Great Fortune, Olivia Manning 4/5
    The first volume in Manning’s semi-autobiographical Balkan Trilogy, this recounts how a pair of young British newlyweds move to Bucharest at the start of WW2. There is some disturbing anti-Romanian racism, but the English characters don’t come off particularly well either. On the whole, however, Manning immerses you in a whole world, utterly engrossing: expats and refugees, socialists and fascists, cafes and dinner parties, the stark gap between rich and poor, mountains of delicious food (for those with the money to buy it), and the Nazi swastika moving steadily across the map. In the last part of the novel, the characters stage an English production of Troilus and Cressida. (Incidentally, it’s a bit weird that I’ve read two novels in a row where Shakespeare is staged in a non-English-speaking country, the other novel being Enter Ghost. In both novels, the plays performed are very resonant with contemporary politics, even though theatre and art also constitute a kind of refuge or escape from the real-life backdrop of political menace.)

Happy birthday @Palegreenstars , enjoy your haul!

24 Sandman: The Wake - Neil Gaiman

Again impossible to review in detail without major spoilers, but I loved this volume, much more so than the preceding one - just really beautiful and sad and consoling all at once.