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?

Same here and I've still only read one other SK book.

My history with King is chequered - I have read about 10 really varied titles of his and only loved one which was The Gunslinger, the first Dark Tower book. I gave up the saga during Wizard And Glass. Of the rest The Stand is solid, Under The Dome has a terrible ending and I hated IT.

I find him overrated as a writer but I keep trying.

The Green Mile, Different Seasons and Dolores Claiborne were also good but not great and I think that's all I've read. I currently have Lisey's Story on TBR

You could definitely skip to the end of Wizard and Glass and then carry on tbh. Most of it is back story. You just need to read the end section where it picks up Roland, Eddie and co in real time again.

Can I join, over 3 months late, and as possibly the most inconsistent pp ever?!

I’m a lurker of many years and enjoy the discussion so much, but I’m just crap at keeping up with reviewing my own. Having just finished A Gentleman in Moscow, I can’t help but come on here and thank the recommendations for this book. Loved every page.

A couple of quick April reads -

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires’ by Grady Hendrix*
A contemporary horror. Set in the 90’s, an established ladies book club sets up a splinter group to read crime fiction and thrillers. Soon local children start to go missing, a charismatic stranger arrives with a secret past and a gruesome affliction starts to grip the local residents. The book club starts to investigate and a group of southern ladies end up with their very own case to crack. This was very much outside my usual reading genre but I really enjoyed it.

Currently three quarters through Otherlands by Thomas Halliday which I’m enjoying on audio. It’s a journey to the beginning of complex life on earth, at a time when only plants and insects populate our planet. Fascinating and somehow incredibly soothing to visualize worlds hundreds of millions of years ago.

Welcome @PowerTulle the more the merrier!

Thank you Sigh This is such a happy place for me, it does feel nice to try and contribute. Even if only a little.

I read Slow Horses last year and though I enjoyed it I can't say I loved it but I have just spent the weekend reading Dead Lions and Real Tigers and just loved them. I don't know why the first one didn't click with me. That's books 37 &38, I think. Not sure whether to go straight into the next one or have a break and then back to the series

The first recommendation I had from this thread (5/6 years ago) was The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon By King. I thought it was incredible. Less keen on others I’ve read.

This is one I often recommend to people new to King, because it’s short and not too ‘horror ish’ - I really rate it.

16 The Mitford Girls - Mary S Lovell Biography of the Mitfords, recommended by several of you on here. This was long and very interesting, as I knew hardly anything about the Mitfords or Oswald Mosley. I feel a lot more informed after reading the book, but it’s clear even with my limited knowledge that there is a strong element of bias (far too much defence of Unity and Diana, not to mention Mosley) so I don’t feel I can take all of it as the full truth.

The last third of the book was a bit depressing as it mostly covered illnesses and deaths - the subject material is so wide-ranging (covering a large family through the whole of the 20th century) that the author understandably focused on the big events, and these inevitably involved a lot of endings from the 50s onwards. There was also far too little about Pamela and Deborah Mitford - they were really minor supporting characters which was disappointing given the book is supposed to be about all six sisters.

I did enjoy it despite all that! Ready for something different now though.

The Talisman is hands down the best thing King has ever written. I love it so so much, it is in my top 3 books of all time ever.

On Writing and the Bachman Books also very good.

@DuPainDuVinDuFromage

Little is known about Pamela because she seldom wrote letters. She turned down John Betjeman, had an abusive marriage, was not maternal liked horses and dogs and eventually settled into a partnership with another woman
I can tell you're Mitforded out now. but Letters Between Six Sisters is so much better.

@MegBusset

Really ? I've never heard of The Talisman will have to seek it out

25. Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter? - Nicci French

Mother of four Charlotte, wife to Alec, fails to appear at his 50th birthday party. Her daughter, 15–year-old Etty, raises the alarm despite a seeming lack of concern from others, including the police, who conduct a half-hearted and lackadaisical investigation. Years later, Etty and her brothers are back in their village when two of their childhood friends embark on a podcast about the disappearance, and a new police effort opens the case afresh.

This was entertaining enough, although it felt a bit unbalanced to me - it's in three sections, with a long build-up and then the last part with the introduction of a completely new character (a very Nicci French-like woman police detective with definite Freida Klein vibes) and the resolution of the mystery all done in a rush in the last few pages. An improvement on NF's last effort, though, which was pretty woeful.

11:22:63 is the only King I've ever read, and while I enjoyed the journey, the ending made me so angry I wanted to hurl it across the room. If it hadn't been on kindle, I would have done. Sadly I can only remember the emotion, not why I was so annoyed

11. Trail of the Lost, by Andrea Lankford. Account of searching for missing hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail, by a former Park Ranger (and author of my first read of the year), this was fascinating and infuriating - I had no idea there were so many different people out there trying to scam or upset the families of missing hikers. Could have used a bit more editing as it hops around quite a bit, but still enjoyable. I'm slightly obsessed with the PCT at the moment as I try and decide whether I am in any way equipped to take it on, so this will not be the last of my PCT and/or Western US books this year.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit thanks - I’ll look out for the Letters in due course when, as you say, I’m less Mitforded out!

That’s my point about Pamela - I don’t think there was any hint in the book of her marriage being abusive, and the author dismissed out of hand the idea that the woman she later lived with could be anything more than a friend, despite one of the other sisters literally referring to her as a lesbian! So two of the key things about her were just ignored. I do appreciate that limited correspondence will restrict what can be written about her, but that doesn’t entirely explain Lovell’s approach.

@DuPainDuVinDuFromage

Lovell's approach was to bow to what Diana and Debo wanted in exchange for access.

Yes that makes sense @EineReiseDurchDieZeit ,and I can see that it was a good tactic in a lot of ways!

I love Stephen King's storytelling and his prose style, but like many often want to hurl the book across the room when it gets to the end (looking at you, Under The Dome). The first one I ever read was Eyes Of The Dragon which is very much not like his other books while also having strong connections to his universe, such as it is. For that reason I've always been drawn to the Randall Flagg books - the whole Dark Tower series but most of all The Stand which is possibly my favourite book ever, even though it goes on a bit and has a stupid ending.

He's very versatile - Misery is such an accomplished book with real menace but no supernatural. I did enjoy 11.22.63 but it wasn't one of his best in my view. There's lots to explore - I reckon if you worked through about five or so, you'd have a sense of if he's for you. I'd recommend (for variety, and based just on my personal preferences):

• The Long Walk
• Misery
• The Stand
• A short story collection
• Duma Key

Pereira Maintains by Antonio Tabucchi. Translated by Patrick Creagh

Recommended on here last year I loved this novella. Pereira is a journalist in 1930s Portugal who writes about culture for a small Lisbon newspaper. The book describes his political awakening thanks to meeting a young graduate.

A lot to consider there Pepe

MN glitch ate a very long post with 6 recent reviews so I'll be back later once over my sulk but currently my WP rankings are:
1 Soldier Sailor
2 Ordinary Human Failings
3 Enter Ghost
...
8 River East River West
...
15 8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster
16 The Maiden
(on your own head be it @Tarragon123 😀)

Next up will be Brotherless Night (universally praised on here I think?) which has also just made the Carol Shields shortlist and might spark my defection to that prize (at a glance, the longlist seems a bit more literary than the WP this year).

Then again, the WPNF list has thrown up another possible DNF: The Britannias by Alice Albinia, which sounded right up my street but is proving terribly leaden so far. Anyone else tried this?

Also, both my current novel reads are also from prize shortlists (What I'd Rather Not Think About, Intl. Booker and The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, Hugo), neither particularly wow, so maybe I should cool it on the prize front and try my first Stephen King, thanks to chat here.

inaptonym, I read The Britannias. I think "leaden" is a fair description. If you don't like the first chapter, I doubt you'll suddenly start liking it more. I finished it, but it wasn't a bold for me, even though it's a genre I usually like.

30 Jump Cut by Helen Grant
Fairly undemanding and pleasingly spooky in places. Theda Garrick is a young woman still mourning the death of her husband, Max. As an author she is keen to write the definitive book about a lost film The Simulacrum, but the only person who can give her the information she needs is the 104 year old Mary Arden. However, Mary seems more interested in delving into Theda’s secrets than divulging her own……
Some repetition of phrases, “wrinkled claw” being one and it’s written in the first person, which grated a little. It ticked a lot of boxes - mysterious mansion in the middle of nowhere, starchy housekeeper, west wing out of bounds, sinister blue light, something walking the corridors at night. There’s even a salt of the earth hunk with a Border Collie and a hand knitted sweater who plies Theda with whisky and tea (always a plus in life, I find . Oh, and an untrustworthy male relative who thinks he’s God’s gift.
The central theme kept me reading, as it was a development on spirit photography at the time of the First World War. The science of this didn’t have to hold up, giving Grant full reign to speculate as to what might walk out of the screen if you could bring a person back from the dead…….

I loved Stephen King as a teen and inhaled the old classics. My Dad had a Reader's Digest collection of Carrie, The Shining and Salem's Lot. I was so disappointed when I saw The Shining film by them leaving out the whole woo bit.

Of his newer ones, I've only read 11.22.63 which I found overlong and a bit annoying. Also got very bored by the whole early 60s nostalgia bit. I've also reread The Stand and It in the last 5 years which were two of my favourites growing up but didn't really do it for me now.

@Terpsichore I just finished Charlotte Salter too. It was exactly what I needed as I'm recovering from dental surgery but it's not going to set the world alight.