50 Books Challenge 2024 Part Four

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the fourth 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, the second one here and the third one here.

What are you reading?

Thank you southeast for keeping us all on track. Bringing my list across now and will update on latest reads shortly:

1. Trust - Hernan Diaz
2. The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie
3. Ruin Beach - Kate Rhodes

4. Hamnet - Maggie O’Farrell

1. Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
2. Snow - John Banville

7. The Golden Mole - Katherine Rundell

1. The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
2. Hostage - Clare Mackintosh

10. One Enchanted Evening - Katie Fforde 11. The Secret Adversary - Agatha Christie 12. The Bandit Queens - Parini Shroff 13. How it all Began - Penelope Lively 14. Pulse - Felix Francis 15. Where Angels Fear to Tread - E M Forster 16. Politics on the Edge - Rory Stewart 17. The Mystery of the Blue Train - Agatha Christie 18. False Colours - Georgette Heyer 19. Jane and Prudence - Barbara Pym 20. Crisis - Felix Francis 21. The Scapegoat - Daphne du Maurier

I have no idea what is happening with my formatting and numbering as it looks fine until I preview/post. Agh…..

Books 2024

1.	Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone by JK Rowling
2.	Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets by JK Rowling 
3.	Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban by JK Rowling 
4.	Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire by JK Rowling 
5.	The End We Start From by Megan Hunter
6.	<strong>Tom Lake</strong> by Ann Patchett
7.	Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix by JK Rowling
8.	Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin
9.	Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano
10.	Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince by JK Rowling
11.	Penance by Eliza Clark
12.	Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling 
13.	The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton
14.	Educated by Tara Westover
15.	The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham 
16.	Big Swiss by Jen Beagin
17.	1979 by Val McDermid 
18.	They&rsquo;re Going To Love You by Meg Howrey
19.	Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
20.	<strong>Project Hail Mary</strong> by Andy Weir
21.	Sorrow And Bliss by Meg Mason
22.	Rizzio by Denise Mina
23.	Happiness Falls by Angie Kim 
24.	Stubborn Archivist by Yara Rodrigues Fowler
25.	The Restless Republic by Anna Keay
26.	Dinner At The Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
27.	Leave The World Behind by Rumaan Alam 
28.	Erasure by Percival Everett
29.	In The Woods by Tana French
30.	Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky
31.	Killers Of The Flower Moon by David Grann   
32.	I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai
33.	Oracle by Andrew Pyper
34.	City On Fire by Don Winslow
35.	City Of Dreams by Don Winslow
36.	Last Dance At The Discotheque for Deviants by Paul David Gould  
37.	Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano
38.	Unorthodox by Deborah Feldman
39.	Sula by Toni Morrison
40.	Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr 
41.	Days At The Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa
42.	Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

Only two bolds still and one stinker with Oracle
^The

Thanks as always southeast^

Gah. The formatting !

Place marking on the new thread - thanks southeast!

Thanks southeast!

1. Confessions of a forty-something **-up – Alexandra Potter
2. Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race – Reni Eddo-lodge

3. A heart that works – Rob Delaney

1. Really good, actually – Monica Heisey
2. 52 ways to Walk – Annabel Streets

6. Amy & Isabelle – Elisabeth Strout

1. Islands of mercy – Rose Tremain
2. From miniskirt to hijab – Jacqueline Saper

9. Demon Copperhead – Barbara Kingsolver

Would any of you have any recommendations for books based in Madrid? I’m going to be spending a few days there early June and thought I’d try and get a couple of Madrid-based reads in before then. Thanks in advance, dear 50-bookers!

Thanks for the new thread @Southeastdweller

my list so far
1 Jane Eyre- Charlotte Brontë
2 Salt Lane - William Shaw
3 Convenience Store Woman- Sayaka Murata
4 The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store- James McBride
5 Strong Female Character- Fern Britten
6 Vox- Christine Dalcher
7 Hamnet- Maggie O’Farrell
8 The Traitor- Anthony Ryan
9 The Secret “Lives of Church Ladies- Deesha Philyaw
10 Tom Lake- Anne Patchett
11 A Tomb with a View- Peter Ross
12 Mad at the World- William Souder
13 Journal of a Novel- John Steinbeck
14 1984- George Orwell
15 In Cold Blood- Truman Capote
16 The Comedy of Errors- William Shakespeare
17 Midnight at Malabar House- Vaseem Khan
18 The Aeneid - Virgil (trans. Robert Fagles)
19 Olive Again- Elizabeth Strout
20 The Fell- Sarah Moss
21 The Patient Assassin- Anita Anand
22 The Theban Plays- Sophocles
23 Days End- Garry Disher
24 Lysistrata- Aristophanes
25 All the Little Bird-Hearts- Viktoria Lloyd Barlow
26 Children of Time- Adrian Tchaikovsky
27 The Taming of the Shrew- William Shakespeare
28 Capote’s Women- Laurence Learner
29 Cockroaches- Scholastique Mukasonga
30 Pet- Catherine Chidgey
31 Let us Descend- Jessmyn Ward
32 Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil- John Berendt
33 Cover the Bones- Chris Hammer
34 Ordinary Human Failings- Megan Nolan
35 Leaves of Grass- Walt Whitman
36 Faust (Part 1) - Goethe
37 All the Dinners Bleed- S A Cosby
38 Eve- Cat Bohanon
39 Western Lane- Chetna Maroo
40 Enter Ghost- Isabella Hammad
41 Intervals- Marianne Brooker
42 Doppelgänger- Naomi Klein
43 If Beale Street Could Talk- James Baldwin
44 The Maiden- Kate Foster
45 A Flat Place- Noreen Masud
46 In Defence of the Act- Effie Black
47 The Old Maid- Edith Wharton
48 The Master and Margarita- Mikhail Bulgakov
49 Soldier, Sailor- Claire Kilroy
50 Young Queens- Leah Redmond Chang
51 The Prince- Niccolo Machiavelli
52 Rizzio- Denise Mina
53 The Two Gentlemen of Verona- William Shakespeare
54 Thunderclap- Laura Cumming
55 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
56 Brotherless Night- VV Ganeshananthan

My bolds make it look like I’m enjoying the WP fiction longlist more than the non-fiction which is not exactly true. So far, I’ve found the fiction to be much more variable- the good are excellent, the bad are really bad, whereas the non-fiction have been mostly solid 4 stars plus.

Currently reading Where they Lie by Clare Coughlan (enjoyable thriller) and listening to All that she Carried by Tiya Miles (a bit too preachy for me so far) and have just started 8 Lives of a Century Old Trickster

Thanks for the new thread @Southeastdweller.

1 The Chrysalids, John Wyndham
2 Bomber, Len Deighton
3 Stay With Me, Ayobami Adebayo
4 A Thread of Grace, Mary Doria Russell
5 Under Sea, Over Stone, Susan Cooper
6 Frenchman’s Creek, Daphne du Maurier
7 War Doctor, David Nott
8 Zoo Station, David Downing
9 Politics on the Edge, Rory Stewart
10 My Forth Time We Drowned, Sally Hayden
11 A Passage North, Anuk Arudpragasam
12 So Late in the Day, Claire Keegan
13 The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern
14 The Rose Code, Kate Quinn
15 The Burgess Boys, Elizabeth Strout
16 Redhead by the Side of the Road, Anne Tyler
17 The House of Doors, Tan Twan Eng
18 Breathtaking, Rachel Clarke
19 Woman, Eating, Claire Kohda
20 The Alienist, Caleb Carr
21 Memphis, Tara M Stringfellow
22 Little, Edward Carey
23 Natives, Akala
24 Blood & Sugar, Laura Shepherd-Robinson

Despite enjoying lots of the books I've read so far this year, very few have been bold for me.

Thanks @Southeastdweller

List so far -

2024
1 The familiars - Stacey Hall
2 Prophet song- Paul Lynch
3 Wintering - Katherine May
4 Giving up the Ghost - Hilary Mantel
5 Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries - Heather Fawcett
6 Fifteen wild Decembers - Karen Powell
7 Politics on the edge - Rory Stewart
8 The Amber Fury - Natalie Haynes
9 Witchcraft : A history in 13 trials - Marion Gibson
10 Christ on a bike - Orla Owen
11 The Glutton- A.K. Blakemore
12 Confinement- Jessica A Cox
13 On Beauty - Zadie Smith
14 mist over Pendle - Robert Neill
15 A spell of good things- Ayobami Adebayo
16 Write a great synopsis- Nicola Morgan
17 Wahala - Nikki May
18 Dear Agent - Nicola Morgan
19 Tom Lake - Ann Patchett
20 After you’ve gone - Maggie O’Farrell
21 Instructions for a heatwave- Maggie O’Farrell
22 The shepherds life - James Rebanks
23 Lobster - Hollie McNish
24 Dark Pines - Will Dean
25 The Rachel Incident - Caroline O’Don
26 Solider , Sailor - claire Kilroy
27 The Wren The Wren - Anne Enright
28 Restless Dolly Maunder - Kate Grenville
29 Ordinary Human Failings - Megan Nolan
30 The maiden - Kate Foster
31 Gillespie and I - Jane Harris
32 Western Lane - Chetna Maroo
33 And then she fell - Alicia Elliott
34 This much is true - Miriam Margolyes
35 Thunderclap - Laura Cummings
36 8 lives of a Century Old Trickster - Mirinae Lee

Currently listening to Oh Miriam and reading Enter Ghost

Thank you @Southeastdweller !

I’m doing a List. I’m usually too lazy to Do A List.

1 Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin
2 Winter Children (short stories) - Angela Slatter
3 Night Side Of The River - Jeanette Winterson
4 Green And Pleasant Land (short stories) - Ed. Steve Shaw
5 Thorn In My Side - CJ Skuse
6 Berserker - Adrian Edmondson
7 Time After Time - Chris Atkins
8 Dark Satanic Mills (short stories) - Ed Steve Shaw
9 Paper Cup - Karen Campbell
10 The Twilight Time - Karen Campbell
11 The Wrong Girl (short stories) - Angela Slatter
12 Unruly - David Mitchell
13 No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy - Mark Hodkinson
14 Normal Rules Don’t Apply - Kate Atkinson
15 For Thy Great Pain - Victoria MacKenzie
16 After The Fire - Karen Campbell
17 Cursed Bread - can’t remember author, cba to look it up
18 A Pocketful Of Happiness - Richard E Grant
19 Broken Ghost - Niall Griffiths
20 The New Life - Tom Crewe
21 Uncut (short stories) - Christopher Fowler
22 North Woods - Daniel Mason
23 The Others Of Evenwood - Verity M Holloway
24 I Have Some Questions For You - Rebecca Makkai
25 Music In The Dark - Sally Magnusson
26 Demon Copperhead - Barbara Kingsolver

DNFs were Prophet Song and The Comfort Of Monsters.

Thanks Southeast, my list so far:

1.	The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley by Sean Lusk
2.	Slow Horses by Mick Herron
3.	Cyrano De Bergerac by Edmond Rostand 
4.	Politics On The Edge by Rory Stewart 
5.	The Audacity by Katherine Ryan  
6.	A Heart That Works by Roberts Delaney 
7.	 Kala by Colin Walsh 
8.	One Day by David Nicholls 
9.	Madly, Deeply: Alan Rickman’s Diaries 
10.	Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan 
11.	Wonderful Tonight by Patti Boyd 
12.	Swedish Death Cleaning by Linnea Gustafsson 
13.	The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christie Lefteri 
14.	Poor by Katriona O’Sullivan 
15.	A Very Private School by Charles Spencer  

Sadly no real bolds for me so far, although Slow Horses, Small Things Like These, A Heart That Works and A Very Private School all came close. After a strong start my reading mojo seems to have escaped me and I'm not really reading much at the moment

Now adding my recent reads:

22. Burnt Island - Kate Rhodes
23. Pulpit Rock - Kate Rhodes

Books 3 and 4 of the Isles of Scilly murder mystery series featuring Ben Kitto, an islander who has served in the Met but is now part of the island police force.

Burnt Island is set on St Agnes (the remotest of the inhabited islands) and begins on Bonfire Night with the discovery of a burnt body. Someone appears to be targeting incomers to the island but who?

Pulpit Rock is set on St Mary’s (the largest island - it has cars!). Someone who has a bride fetish is targeting young women on the island particularly those who are independent and ambitious. But why?

Whilst these are becoming a little formulaic (particularly noticeable when reading back-to-back) I am still enjoying the setting and the relationships of the recurring characters. And, to be fair, I haven’t guessed whodunnit either!

24. Judgement Day - Penelope Lively

The book revolves around the houses and church on the village green (which makes it sound twee but it’s not). The characters are what made this for me: George (the uninspired and uninspiring vicar); Sydney (the churchwarden whose wife and child died in the war and who has kept up barriers ever since then); Shirley and Keith (Sydney’s neighbours who are slobbish and intrusive); Clare (the middle class agnostic newcomer who says it how it is and wants to save the church). Really enjoyed this - Clare and George’s interactions are fabulous - she’s so forthright and he’s so awkward.

Checking in!

Aren't the Carlos Ruiz Zafon books set in Madrid? It might be Barcelona...

@Piggywaspushed it's Barcelona. Excellent sense of place in them.

Right, yes, of course. Been a while!

Just finished :

43. City In Ruins by Don Winslow

The last in the Providence Mobster trilogy. Danny Ryan has it made in Vegas but will his past catch up to him?

Yes.

I've enjoyed these but they are very much mindless crime and not very well written.
This last one wasted too much time on secondary characters and had a sappy epilogue that wasn't in keeping.

I would read another Don Winslow but I'm in no rush

@nowanearlyNicemum If hist fic is ok, C.J. Sansom's Winter in Madrid is great. Even older, Arturo Perez-Reverte's swashbucklers are fun (The Fencing Master is definitely set in Madrid, I think others too).
For contemporary, Javier Marias' The Infatuations ? It's pretty peak Lit Fic, with a dash of Men Writing Women, though.

@ÚlldemoShúl I really rate Titus Andronicus. If you haven't seen it, the Julie Taymor film is excellent.

Oooh, might give Winter in Madrid a go. Thank you @inaptonym
I've never read the Carlos Ruiz Zafron books but I think I have one languishing in a bookcase somewhere...

27 Demonized by Christopher Fowler
Some of these haven’t aged well, but his trademark arch viciousness and sparkle run through them all. I think The Scorpion Jacket is probably my favourite and I’m keen to see what his Game Of Thrones-esque fantasy novel will be like when published posthumously later this year.

Thanks for the new thread, South.

My list so far:

1. A Heart Full of Headstones - Ian Rankin
2. The Piano Shop on the Left Bank - T. E. Carhart
3. Late in the Day - Tessa Hadley
4. The Wah-Wah Diaries - Richard E. Grant
5. Resurrection Walk - Michael Connelly
6. A Fortunate Man - John Berger
7. The Messalina of the Suburbs - E. M. Delafield
8. The Tuscan Year: Life and Food in an Italian Valley - Elizabeth Romer
9. Dead Man's Riddle - Mary Kelly
10. Charlie Chaplin vs. America - Scott Eyman
11. Goats - Mark Poirier
12. Coffee with Hitler - Charles Spicer
13. The Glass Pearls - Emeric Pressburger
14. Giving Up the Ghost - Hilary Mantel
15. The Rector's Daughter - F. M. Mayor
16. Everywhere I Look - Helen Garner
17. A Sort of Traitors - Nigel Balchin
18. Two Sisters - Blake Morrison
19. Plenty Under the Counter - Kathleen Hewitt
20. Tunnel 29 - Helena Merriman
21. The Girls - Lori Lansens
22. The Secret of Cooking - Bee Wilson
23. The Bookshop - Penelope Fitzgerald

Nicholas Nickleby is ongoing, and I’m about to start my next volume of Proust - I’m over halfway in now, hurrah!

Thanks for new thread - I’ll dig out my list!

Thanks @Southeastdweller

@SheilaFentiman – I’m so glad that you are enjoying wee Shona 😊

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit – I DNF Beloved. Another one of my sister’s ‘but you must read this!’ No, I will not

@henrytilney – I’m going to give Miss Kim Knows a go but I haven’t forgiven Cho Nam-Joo for the ending of Kim Ji-Young, born 1982!

@splothersdog @highlandcoo – I don’t think that Karen Campbell is GC. She’s just retweeted stuff that was critical of JKR’s actions on Monday

I've let this thread slip and cant remember what I reviewed last. So I'll go with my last two books, both by SG Maclean from her Seeker series, Destroying Angel and The House of Lamentations. Loved them both. I've now gone back to re-read The Winter List, which I only just read in January and didnt realise that it was 6th in the series. It wont take me long to breeze through it :)

I very much am, @Tarragon123 ☺️

list to end March:

1. Identity, Nora Roberts
2. Nightwork, Nora Roberts
3. Chances, Freya North
4. Whatever it Takes, Adele Parks (nearly DNF as everyone in it sucked!)
5. Pretty Girls, Karin Slaughter
6. The Great Post Office Scandal, Nick Wallis
7. Politics on the Edge, Rory Stewart
8. Eat Sweat Play, Anna Kessels
9. Stranded, short stories, Val McDermid
10. Past Lying, Val McDermid
11. Ruth's First Christmas Tree (short), Elly Griffiths
12. The Crossing Places, Elly Griffiths
13. Let Me In, Claire McGowan
14. Still Life, Val McDermid
15. The Crossing, Mat Brolly
16. The Crow Trap, Ann Cleeves
17. The Maid, Nita Prose
18. Bringing Columbia Home, Mike Leibenhart
19. The Last List of Mabel Beaumont, Laura Pearson
20. A Memoir of my Former Self, Hilary Mantel
21. The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes
22. The Secret Barrister
23. The Time Traveller’s Wife, Audrey Nifenegger
24. I Have Some Questions for You, Rebecca Makkai
25. See Them Run by Marion Todd
26. The Premonition by Michael Lewis
27. In Dark Water -Lynn McEwan
28. Dead Man Deep -Lynn McEwan
29. The Girls of the Glen -Lynn McEwan

Thanks as ever @Southeastdweller for the new thread. My list so far:

1.Just Like You by Nick Hornby
2.Oxblood by Tom Benn
3.My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
4.Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre
5 The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
6.Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
7.Tresspasses by Louise Kennedy
8.Black Dogs by Ian McEwan
9.Music and Silence by Rose Tremain
10.The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
11.Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson
12.Mantel Pieces by Hilary Mantel
13.Freya by Anthony Quinn
14.Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
15.Our Friends in Berlin by Anthony Quinn
16.Paper Cup by Karen Campbell
17.Matrix by Lauren Groff
18.Picnic at Hanging Rock by Jean Lindsay

Currently listening to Crampton Hodnet by Barbara Pym and (still!) reading Exiles by Jane Harper on Kindle.

Thanks for the new thread Southeast

I've not been keeping on top of my list. Might try tomorrow.

Three Fires - Denise Mina
A reimagining of the Bonfire of the Vanities. Fifteenth century Florence - a Dominican friar starts preaching against corruption and the Medici family. This gains him a following and leads to the burning of luxury items. He then turns his focus on corruption in the Catholic church which doesn't end well for him.

Very short and in a similar style to Rizzio. A small criticism, it felt like a history lesson at times, more a non-fiction offering in places, but it didn't detract from my overall enjoyment.

The Nignt Hawks (Ruth Galloway 13) - Elly Griffiths
Same old, same old. A bit of easy listening while I did some jobs around the house.