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?

From Feb 2021:

History with Hardy as follows :

Hated his poetry at A Level, appreciated it more later, its still extremely self indulgent though

Tess - great
Madding - great
Casterbridge - worth a read but not as good as the other two

This. Ok the ending of this was spoiled for me years ago by a tv series on novels, I think the Faulks one. The paperback is a chunk and I thought it would be a trudge but I made quicker work of it than I anticipated.

Yes, the end is properly horrific; but were there ever such simpering foolish bores alive as Sue and Jude? Not to mention Philloston?

If I could have slapped them all I would have. Christ Alive, Never Again! This was panned at publication and deservedly so.

Whingy fools become the architects of their own misery, and wallow in it

Jude The Tedious

Thanks @Tarahumara - I’ll join in with the readalong 😊

I LOVED Jude the Obscure when I read it as a teenager.

Totally agree with @EineReiseDurchDieZeit 's summary of "Whingy fools become the architects of their own misery, and wallow in it" but whinginess, misery and wallowing were my thing in my teens.

I wouldn't reread it now because I think I would quickly lose patience with Jude and Sue and don't want to lose the happy teenage memories of the misery.

40. Sisters of Shadow by Katherine Livesey

41. Sisters of Moonlight by Katherine Livesey

42. Sisters of Midnight by Katherine Livesey
    Alice, a witchy teenage girl who lives alone outside a small village has gone missing and her only friend, Lily sets out on a dangerous mission to find her.
    The first couple of chapters of this trilogy are pretty good, setting the scene and introducing the characters, but then lazy writing takes over, a voice is described as "robotic" in a world where robots don't exist and there's lots of dialogue of the "I'm making a long speech telling you everything in one big infodump even though there's no reason for me to want to tell you this" variety.
    The first book is okay, at least the characters have a goal, the second book is mostly filler and by the third book I think the writer had got bored of the story and just wanted to get it over with.

43. Underland: A Deep Journey into Time by Robert MacFarlane
    MacFarlane travels the world, finding out about what is beneath us, caves in rural England, man made tunnels under Paris, a Slovenian forest still scarred by war, icy Greenland and other places.
    I think this little excerpt sums up the book best:
    "'They're beautiful,' I say. 'Desert diamonds from the bottom of the world.'
    'I can tell you're not a scientist,' he says."
    The book is full of lovely, evocative description that makes you feel like you're there, but if it's the science of these places you're interested in then this isn't the book for you.

44. Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami trans. Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen
    An artist, recently separated from his wife stays in the home of his friend's father, a famous artist. He discovers an unknown painting in the attic and takes on an unusual portrait commission and strange things start to happen.
    This book is long but doesn't feel like it, the writing skilfully carries you through it. I liked how some parts were eery and others bizarre. It does have a major flaw though in a thirteen year old character who keeps talking to the artist about her breasts (and to make it worse he tells her he used to worry about the size of his penis), so I'm left feeling a bit conflicted about this book.

45. The Taste of Ginger by Mansi Shah
    Since moving to the US from India as a child Preeti has tried hard to assimilate, despite the strain it puts on her relationship with her parents. When a family emergency takes her back to India she starts to reevaluate her life, identity and family relationships.
    It's undemanding chick lit. Quite a bit of over explanation and Preeti seems quite young for
    a thirty year old.

I maintain that one needs to be a poetry writing 17 year old goth to fully appreciate Jude.

I’m off underground for a while to flagellate myself over the fact I never did finish Underland. Robert M imo is a self-indulgent wanker who also needs a bloody good slap. A pity, as the contents are very much my thing.

😂😂😂
I love self-indulgent wanker rants (though I like RM)
Did you read Wintering @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie ? I can't remember. But I'd love you to just to hear your expletives about the self-indulgent wankress (?) involved in that.

@SixImpossibleThings I find Murakami a creepy slimeball. Gives me the ick just imagining him thinking about breasts. I've only read Norwegian Wood and every time I walk past it on the shelf, I shudder. Creep. (I can't even remember the plot but I do remember thinking he was someone I wouldn't want near my daughter)

I had to read The Mayor Of Casterbridge pre-GCSE at school, which put me off Hardy for life.

Yesterday I finished The Marlow Murder Club chosen because I wanted something easy, comforting and yes that dreaded word ‘cosy’.

Dear god it was awful, just awful. I mean I liked the premise, but unfortunately not the characters nor the plot and certainly not the resolution. The resolution ‘obvious murderer literally in process of holding gun at little old lady’s head is so dumbstruck by said little old lady calling him a murderer that he holds off on murdering her just long enough for old lady to be rescued. In this case ‘just long enough’ is enough time for an awful lot of titting about in belfries with swords, bell ringing, non-swimmers valiantly plunging into stormy, fast-flowing rivers, lots of Doberman intervention and a romantic reconnection between the vicar and his wife whilst the murderer stood there doing sod all.

Just awful. I know why comparisons with The Thursday Murder Club are made but I definitely enjoyed that far more than this.

@ASighMadeOfStone I avoided Wintering to save you all from having to indulge me in a self-indulgent wanker review.

@AliasGrape Titting around in belfries with swords is phrase of the week.

Another Meryl Streep reads Tom Lake lover here. I listened to it in February and it felt so nice to be transported among the cherry trees.

Never read Jude but doesn't sound like I'm missing much.

I have Storyland on my shelf, @ASighMadeOfStone. I think I may have to do the same; just to get it off my shelf and onto someone else's via Oxfam

Oh my word the typos and lack of sentence structure here! Apologies - and I already edited it once! My fault for trying to quickly post really quickly whilst my 3 year old was briefly occupied elsewhere!

I'm so behind on posting my books here. do micro writeups and if you want to know more about a book please ask and ill go and read my reviews and try and remember more!

91. Then There Were Giants. Nicky Heymans
    Loosely based on the book of Joshua (6th book of the old testament IIRC) its the story of what might have happened in the 30 years they wandered in the desert. I didn't know that they believed Canaan was inhabited by Giants!

92. Wolf's Keep. K.E Turner
    A fun timeslip story about an archaeologist who is transported back to the dark ages and meets werewolves.

93. Hindsight. Mary Turner Thomson
    Dual timeline, present day and 9th Century. Catherine and Merwynn’s stories are intertwined.

94. Awaken the Dawn. Ellis K. Popa
    This was a bold for me. Kat's father has died, possibly murdered. She receives a package from him sending her to Romania on a treasure hunt of sorts to find out what really happened.

95. Knights, Witches and The Vanished City. R.M Schultz
    Book 4 of Calec of the Woods. This time Calec is trying to solve the mystery of The Emerald City, which is never in the same place twice. These books are s really fun easy read.

96. Sweetness In The Skin. Ishi Robinson
    This was set in Jamaica, and was about class and race differences.

97. Blackwolf. Phil Gilvin
    Another bold. Book 2 in the Truth Sister series. (I've also upgraded book 1 to a bold) They remind me of The Handmaid's Tale, but with women in charge not men.

98. The Journalist. John Reid Young
    Genuinely can't remember a lot about this. Crime story. Drug smuggling i think. On boats.

99. Death Under a Little Sky. Stig Abell
    Jake inherits his Uncles big old farmhouse. Then a bag of bones turns up and a decade old cold case is reopened.

100. The Pictish Princess. Dolan Cummings
     Set in Scotland before it was Scotland. Its the land of Celts and Picts and loads of Kings. There were a lot of people and I lost track a bit. But I imagine if you're into Scottish history/Folklore you'd like it. I did like it BTW!

101. My Mystical Path. Donna Shin-Ward
     A self-help book. Not sure I can say much else.

102. Three Brave Hearts. Liz Middleton
     Yet another bold. A non fiction book of Liz's relatives in WW1. They aren't all technically her uncles. Absolutely fascinating. One of them knew Robert Louis Stevenson. One was, potentially, the illegitimate child of Princess Louise (daughter of Queen Victoria). Quite a bit about how shell shock was treated too.

103. Jericho Caine, Vampire Slayer, Love, Lust and Blood. Dee Rose
     Don't bother with this. I nearly gave up so many times, but when the story was good it was good. But so many mistakes. Like the girl who was 6 in 1994, but only 16 12 years later.
     
     Or the chapter set in 1826 that starts "after the battle of the Somme in 1918"

Also in amongst all of that was my first DNF in about 15 years. The Battle of Evermore. Just don't.

Wholeheartedly concur - that's phrase of the week 😂

@BlueFairyBugsBooks
The Storyland woman has lots of giants wandering round the world.

My daughter's middle school art teacher taught them that giants built the pyramids and Stonehenge. When we were in the queue at parents' evening we were all chuckling at how the children had missed the teacher's joke. Then realised she hadn't made one. 😳 She kept saying "well, look how tall we are now! Compared to 100 years ago! It's because we're becoming giants again!" And we all backed slowly away.

Think I can safely take Jude off the list of classics I haven’t read and should get round to…

<whispers> I liked Underland AND Wintering, despite some mild eye rolling at both. Perhaps I'm not as anti-wanker as I think I am?

21. The House on Half Moon Street by Alex Reeve Ever late to the party, this was a recommendation from these threads perhaps two or three years ago. Two murders take place in the underbelly of Victorian London. Solving it means unveiling the secrets of the victim, suspects, and of our amateur sleuth Leo Stanhope. A casts of bawds and back-street abortionists, pathologists and piemakers made for a darkly atmospheric adventure. It wasn't great literature but very gripping, and I'll definitely read the follow-ups.

very behind everyone else but, finished 8) tribal gangsters by Robert Kiltgaard which I really enjoyed. Broke down a complex topic so it was digestible without being patronising, and given it’s 35 odd years old has “aged” well (which a lot of non fiction about the African sub continent has not!)
will make a start on
9) The animal factory - Edward bunker
tomorrow

Otherlands, A World in the Making by Thomas Halliday

Written by a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist, this is described as an epic, exhilarating journey into deep time, showing us the Earth as it used to exist, back at the dawn of complex life.

As someone who is always fascinated by fossils, this book really made me imagine how the world would have looked, felt, sounded and even smelled when they were alive. It’s a fascinatingly imaginative and immersive book. Sciency enough to engage my brain and beautifully lyrical too. A bold for me.

I’m almost at the end of The Strange Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie which I’m reading with DD.

Mysterious rather!

Please can the subtitle for thread 5 be “titting around in belfries” 😀

@StrangewaysHereWeCome I've just read The House on Half Moon Street too, and you're right - not great literature but entertaining all the same.

When I've finished my Persephone reads in preparation for the festival in Bath this weekend, I'll be getting back to number two in the series.

I also recommend the Ambrose Parry (pen-name of Chris Brookmyre and his wife Marisa Haetzman) books set in Victorian Edinburgh, for more atmospheric period crime.

Takes a bow for tutting about in belfries

Although has to admit it was used because I’m not 100% clear what actually went on in the belfry, the book was making me so furious by this point I had to kind of skim read.

😂 @EineReiseDurchDieZeit I was referring to the book as Jude the Ding from about 3 chapters in. Ding being a north-east insult.

19 Piglet by Lottie Hazell. This has been reviewed by several of you recently, I think mainly positively, but it didn't quite work for me. I liked Piglet as a character, but the endless food descriptions started to get a bit boring, and as a couple of others have mentioned I found it annoying that we didn't get the full details of her fiance's big reveal.

20 Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell. I read this for the readalong - enjoyed it.

21 We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families by* *Philip Gourevitch. This is a powerful non fiction book about the 1994 Rwandan genocide. It is very informative and well-researched and, as you can imagine, incredibly distressing at times (yes, I cried). I think the author strikes a good balance between personal stories of the survivors (and in some cases the perpetrators), information about the historical background and political context in Rwanda, and thoughts about the wider implications for all of us, that something like this could happen. As well as the build-up and the actual events, there is a thought-provoking section about the aftermath. Given that the majority of the killings were carried out by "ordinary people" rather than leaders, how do you dispense justice and rebuild society? It's also shocking and depressing to read about the response from the international community (especially France). I think this is the best book I've read so far this year.