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?

A question for those of you who use a Kindle. I currently use the Kindle app on my phone but thinking about getting an actual Kindle for my (big) birthday. Is the Paperwhite version significantly better than the 2022 model?

I use the Kindle App on my iPad

If your household has an iPad you can just do that for free.

Personally, I prefer the paper white but when I first started buying them the other kindles didn’t have a light at all so they could well be as good now!
Any e-reader is an improvement on the app on phone or iPad imo as it’s much less harsh on your eyes and more comfortable to hold.

I recently bought a paperwhite & I do like it, but in retrospect I wish I'd bought a different ereader that would also work with borrowbox.

I'm pretty certain you can still read Amazon books just fine on the other readers but aren't limited to them.

We don't have an iPad and although I like the app on my iPhone for convenience, it's not helping my eyesight!

Thanks for the welcome @FuzzyCaoraDhubh @SheilaFentiman and @TattiePants ! I’m hoping I can make some better progress this month. I’m currently reading 33. Shena MacKay The Orchard on Fire which is wonderful!

I love my Paperwhite. Couldn’t read a book on my iPad or phone. There’s a Nook (?) somewhere in the house I bought for DS but I didn’t get on with it and an outstanding library fine means I can’t use Borrowbox anyway . I don’t think I could be doing with books vanishing off it if I didn’t have time to read them either!

I dread to think who they will cast as Charlie Parker . Adaptation will have to be very good to match my expectations. Jonathan Nolan or someone similar as showrunner, please.

I’m still avoiding The Familiar, with Roman history, Dom Joly and Ben Myers short stories.

That sounds good. It was worth going to it so! Yes, I'm enjoying the series but it took a while before I got into it and I don't think I liked the first book much (gruesome!) but I'm glad I stuck with them. The last one I read was very good ('The Burning Soul'). We will have to wait and see what they come up with for the TV adaptation 🤞

@ÚlldemoShúl

@Thewolvesarerunningagain Welcome to the thread. I assume your username is from The Box of Delights? I adored that book (and the TV series) as a child.

Much prefer my paperwhite to phone or iPad. I find it much easier on my eyes. It’s not perfect though - the font size changes every time I close it.

I have a fire which I mostly use but also have one of the original kindles which feels so light in comparison. It’s a nightmare in the sun though and I very rarely use it.

I also love my Paperwhite! Light to carry around, backlight to read in bed, and can read it in the sun with no issues, which you can’t do with a tablet. The only downside as pp have said is that you can’t use it for library ebooks but I’ve always got so many things on there waiting to be read anyway that doesn’t really bother me and my library’s ebook selection doesn’t look great anyway.

Wish List bargains this morning - How To Build A Boat, The Great British Bloke and Comfort Eating ( The last one £3.79 not 99p but Grace Dent worth it!).

I love my paperwhite (at least I think it's a paperwhite, it's definitely back-lit). I can't read on my phone, the light is too harsh and other apps too distracting.

31. The Burning Girls - CJ Tudor this is a crime/thriller/horror set in an insular village in Sussex with the protagonists being the newly arrived vicar and teenage daughter. It centres around the disappearance of two girls from the village 30 years previously along with present day creepy goings on and unsavoury characters connected to the village and the newly arrived vicar.

I really liked the look of The Gathering by the same author that another poster mentioned upthread. But it's only just come out and I try and limit myself to books under £5 so I went for a different book by the same author. I really enjoyed this although it was quite violent and disturbing (CW for child abuse) and I had to stop reading when I was alone at night. I especially loved the first chapter and how, retrospectively, that set up the whole theme for the book. For me this book was the perfect balance of guessable twists and red herrings and it kept surprising me right till the end even when I thought I had it figured out. My only criticism would be that there's a few too many side plots, it's very action packed and my personal preference would have been for a little less thrill! I still enjoyed it a lot though and I'll definitely be reading more from this author so thank you to @MorriganManor for sharing.

Now on to the second book of LoTR. My temptation is to go through CJ Tudor's back catalogue but I know that if I do that it really throws off my reading mojo as I end up adrift when I run out of books. So I shall refrain.

Glad you liked it @Kinsters! Under no circumstances attempt to watch the tv adaptation of The Burning Girls as it is utter pants without the tiniest smidge of tension or mystery of the book.
You could try her short story collection? I wouldn’t count that as breaking your rule of diving into her back catalogue……but then I have incredibly loose book morals (A Sliver Of Darkness)

@MorriganManor I will avoid! Ahh I will also put that on my list. I have to be disciplined otherwise I won't read anything for a month when I finish haha (that's what happened last time and I didn't even enjoy that series as much as I enjoyed this!)

@JaninaDuszejko thank you for the welcome! Yes absolutely from the BoD. I have the DVD and force the children to watch it every Xmas! That book and Susan Cooper defined my childhood:-).

22 Sacred Nature: restoring our ancient bond with the natural world - Karen Armstrong
Exploration of how different religions and philosophies have approached the place of humanity and divine in the natural world. Interesting concepts, especially from Chinese philosophy, but really felt like Armstrong was just using a nature/climate/sustainability hook to spin a different angle on her usual comparative religion approach. Would have liked a lot more on Indigenous and non-Eurasian worldviews, which truly would have offered a different approach.

23 The New Life - Tom Crewe
This really was quite pants - I should have listened to you lot. John Addington and Henry Ellis (fictionalised versions of John Symonds and Havelock Ellis) collaborate on their book Sexual Inversion, against a backdrop of the Oscar Wilde trial and widespread prejudice. I didn’t mind all the male members and their ‘spillings’, but it was just poor writing, the sort of book where you never lose the sense that you’re reading a constructed novel and suspend disbelief enough to invest in the lives of the the characters as real people. They didn’t seem to do anything much other than talk to each other about sex, or have sex, and existed in a sort of political and social vacuum - the historical context-building was minimal. And every chapter started with a convoluted description of what was outside the window, replete with overwritten, agonised imagery. Really don’t bother.

I really liked C J Tudor’s early books but haven’t enjoyed the last couple as much and don’t fancy the latest one.

Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers is in the deals, if there’s anyone left who hasn’t read it yet.

@TattiePants I use a Kobo rather than a kindle but have had early models and now have their paperwhite equivalent and it is easier on the eyes than the earlier models so I would say get the paperwhite. I chose Kobo as I wanted to borrow library books, and do, frequently, though the availability of e-books in my library is poor compared to paper copies. So I still buy Kobo books in their offers. I think they are a little more expensive than amazon on the whole, but I borrow more and buy less. You cannot ready kindle books on a kobo unless you just through a lot of techy hoops to remove the DRM and convert to EPUB format. I cant be bothered when buying on the kobo store is easier.

Suzie Edge’s Mortal Monarchs is also 99p today, if anyone’s been looking out for that.

@LadybirdDaphne Excellent Crewe review. I was one of the DNFers but susceptible to FOMO... now you've firmly nailed that coffin lid in place.

👋 @Thewolvesarerunningagain your list has some of my favourites on it, though I can only marvel at your cleverness and discipline in making and sticking to one! (Also loved Box of Delights as a kid...reread it a few year ago and found it very confusing - clearly have regressed mentally 😅)

@TattiePants I've had a Kindle since they were invented, but switched to Kobos 7 years ago for the library linkage (most of my ebooks come from one of my four excellent libraries!) and better handling of PDFs. The Kobo store mirrors Amazon down to daily deals, but v. rarely won't have an ebook Amazon does. I don't find conversion difficult - just do it via Calibre app which I use to organise ebooks anyway, but YMMV there.
Works perfectly under bright sunlight as well as pitch dark. The Kobo PW is called Clara though I have a Libra, for the pageturn buttons and slightly bigger screen.

Thanks for all the feedback re Kindle. I think I’ll go ahead and get a Paperwhite. I read a lot in the bath and always worry I’ll drop my phone so the Paperwhite being splash resistant is a big plus. I mainly use Borrowbox for audio books when I’m out walking so I’ll just use my phone for them.

The monthly deals have been good for me so far:

Slade House - David Mitchell
Notes of a Native Son - James Baldwin
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha - Roddy Doyle
The Downfall of Berlin - Antony Beevor
The Japanese Lover - Isabel Allende
Dark Matter - Blake Crouch
Act of Oblivion - Robert Harris
Raymond Blanc cookbook

The Tuscan Year by Elizabeth Romer Thanks to Terpsichore for the recommendation. I really enjoyed this - it was so much more than the lazy I've Moved to a Bucolic New Life in Arcadia memoir (I'm looking at you John Lewis Stempel et al). It was written in the early 1980s and describes the lives of a neighbouring farming family, complete with recipes for the food grown and prepared in their remote Tuscan valley. I especially loved the historic details, such as the fact that tomotoes were relatively unknown in Tuscany until the middle of the 19th century when Garibaldi and his men brought them back with them from Sicily and introduced them to the new Italy. And who knew that although thrushes and blackbirds (sadly hunted in the autumn woods) are prized for their "dark perfumed flesh", robins (thankfully) don't make it into the cooking pot as they have a "disagreeable flavour".

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett Nostalgic bedtime reading inspired by multiple mentions upthread.