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?

I didn't know there was a new Stacey Halls book out, I'll put that on my wishlist. I've still to read The Familiars but I really liked her other two books.

Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel This was suggested for our book group and I was intrigued to revisit it, having read it fairly soon after it was published in 2005 and felt I’d not ‘got’ it. It’s about Alison, a medium haunted by the spirits of the men who abused her in childhood, and her partnership with the efficient but emotionally destructive Collette. I wondered whether, having since read the Wolf Hall series and her memoir Giving up the Ghost, and heard Hilary speak at an event, I might ‘get it’ this time. Certainly I approached it with less scepticism than I did first time round when I probably thought it would be about the fraudulence of the medium trade. I’d feel ridiculous calling it a companion piece to her memoir, but there are strong resonances: as a child Hilary had a life-changing experience of feeling the presence of something evil from another realm, and in this book the dead are presences in Alison’s life. Alison is out of control of her weight, like Hilary whose endometriosis, undiagnosed for so long, led to infertility and weight gain. I could often almost hear Alison speak in Mantel’s voice. There’s a lot of biting wit and sharp observation. However, ultimately I didn’t love the book this time either. I couldn’t understand how Alison managed to become the perceptive and emotionally giving medium that she was with the childhood that she had. It’s relentlessly sordid, state of a grubby nation stuff and I found 450 pages of it just too much.

@RomanMum I enjoyed Death Under a Little Sky. The sequel, Death In a Lonely Place, came out last month. I haven't read it yet though.

@CornishLizard Thanks for the interesting review of Beyond Black! Like you, I read it long ago and disliked it, then read the Wolf Hall trilogy and Giving Up the Ghost and loved them. So I was thinking that maybe I should give Beyond Black a reread! Now I'm thinking maybe not, as your description coincides with what I remember.

The common themes you mention in Beyond Black and the memoir are very striking though.

24. The Spoilt City, Olivia Manning 5/5
    Vol. 2 in The Balkan Trilogy. I found this even more riveting than the first volume, as Bucharest falls under Nazi control, Harriet and Guy Pringle shelter a young Jewish man in their flat, and Harriet becomes increasingly disillusioned with her marriage.

25. Friends and Heroes, Olivia Manning 4/5
    The concluding volume in the Balkan trilogy. Guy and Harriet and a cluster of their British ex-pat colleagues have moved from Nazi-occupied Bucharest to Athens. This volume is even less focused on local culture than the Bucharest volumes were; this is partly because the British officials and lecturers who find themselves in Athens are so exceedingly self-centred, and come across as more ungenerous and petty than ever. Yet the characters are vivid and their specific historical situation very convincingly depicted: the account of a woman who herself lived through the uncertainty and turmoil of those early WW2 years. I would rank the The Balkan Trilogy as a whole as a bold; taken in its entirety, the work is greater than its individual parts.

26. Ruth, Elizabeth Gaskell 4/5
    Read as an MN read-along. A powerful novel that seeks to transform society’s image of the unwed mother. On the other hand, the strong religious theme and the insistence on female self-sacrifice made this book hard going at times.

27. The Great House, Cynthia Harnett 3/5
    I’m enjoying reading these out-of-print historical children’s books. This one is set in the 17th century and contains the wealth of detail and tiny, precise illustrations that are characteristic of Harnett. The plot of this novel was not as gripping though as it was in other Harnett books I’ve read.

28. Ring Out Bow Bells!, Cynthia Harnett 4/5
    A fantastically detailed depiction of early 15th c. London. The protagonists are the three children of a well-to-do family who are close friends of Dick Whittington. One of them becomes an apprentice mercer (fabric merchant), and you learn a lot about apprentices and guilds. Another brother becomes entangled in the plots of the Lollards, who are through-going baddies here; there’s no sense that their rebellion against the Church might have any legitimacy whatsoever! A fun read, and it’s nice to be reading about ‘Whittington, thrice Lord Mayor of London’ at a time when Sadiq Khan has just been re-elected as thrice mayor of London!

29. Trois femmes puissantes [Three Strong Women], Marie NDiaye 4/5
    I heard NDiaye speak live last term, and I was impressed by her quiet intelligence (she seemed quite reticent, shy even, but warmed up as the event progressed, and was very generous in responding to questions from students). So I thought I should read one of her novels. This novel won the Prix Goncourt in 2009. It’s beautifully written, but not for the faint of heart. It’s a collection of three very loosely linked novellas. I liked the first semi-autobiographical novella a lot, about a daughter who grew up in France returning to Senegal to see her absent father. (This novella also has links to Papa doit manger, an NDiaye play that I admire.) The second novella was also gripping but narrated by a quite unsympathetic white male protagonist (who is alienated from the Senegalese wife he has brought back to France). The third novella, about a woman refugee, was so harrowing I could hardly finish it.

Thanks cassandre - I wouldn’t rush back to it if you didn’t enjoy it first time. I enjoyed your Harnett reviews, I tried Wool Pack with the DC recently but sadly they weren’t keen.

Thanks @CornishLizard , even if I don't reread Beyond Black, I feel like I understand it better now given the autobiographical links to the memoir that you pointed out.

About Harnett, ha, there's no way I could get my DC to read her unfortunately! I just have to fully embrace the fact that I'm reading children's books for my own sake. Frankly I'm kind of gutted that my success rate in introducing my DC to my childhood faves is so low. Narnia? The Hobbit? Earthsea? Little House on the Prairie? Marguerite de Angeli? It's an emphatic no to everything 😂

Judy Blume's Fudge books were a rare exception; my boys liked those.

All that said, I was brought up in a very rigid, old-fashioned way, with my parents deeply invested in my reading The Classics (narrowly defined), so part of me is happy that my kids are watching Youtube and playing Fortnite. Even though I do wish they read more.

Older DS (at uni) has given a thumbs-up to a few books I've recommended to him (a very few). Piranesi, The Secret History, Yellowface, for example.

52. The Night Burns Bright by Ross Barkan
    Six year old Lucien attends a small private school that focuses on environment and nature and has some unusual practices. As the years pass his life becomes more and more restricted and the school becomes a cult.
    This was okay. There were things that weren't really explained and some that didn't make sense (but maybe cults don't make sense). The big reveal about the cult seemed to be more about making a dramatic climax for the story than showing a believable purpose (however twisted) for the cult. Overall though, it's an undemanding, slightly intriguing book.

53. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg
    The story of Idgie and Ruth, two women living together and running a cafe in small town Alabama from the 1930s to the 1960s and Evelyn a dissatisfied middle aged housewife who befriends elderly Ninnie in the 1980s.
    I thought the way the issues of race and racism were handled in this book were clumsy at best.
    If it wasn't for that this would be a fairly cosy nostalgic book about small town life, love and friendship. There were some parts I liked, the story of Ruth and Idgie falling in love was good.

54. Two Can Keep a Secret by Karen McManus
    Twins Ellery and Ezra move in with their estranged grandmother in a small town that has a history of teenage girls disappearing, including their aunt over twenty years ago. Now it looks like Ellery is a potential victim.
    Mediocre YA thriller. I didn't care about any of the characters.

55. The New Family by Victoria Jenkins
    In 2019 Brooke rents out her house to single dad Oliver and his son and they bond over shared past tragedies. In 2018 Christina has just broken off her affair and is trying to focus on her family but her affair partner doesn't seem willing to let her go.
    An okay psychological thriller. There were some parts that were really good, but, like so many psychological thrillers, it stopped being believable by the end.

56. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
    In the late 19th century housewife and mother Edna begins to realise how unsatisfied with her life she is after a holiday flirtation with another man and she starts making steps to forge her own identity.
    I think my reading of this was probably affected by the poor formatting of the free kindle version. I can see why it would have been shocking when first published in 1899, but I found the story just washed over me without leaving much impression.

Ordinary Human Failings is on kindle daily deals today - I read and enjoyed this last month, and would definitely say is worth a quid.

23.Bewilderment by Richard Powers Theo is an astrobiologist trying to support his neurodiverse 3rd grade son Robin with his grief at the loss of his mother, and the existential dread of climate change in a near-future world where science teaching and research is restricted by the government.

I still can't decide if I liked this or not. Powers has a sharp turn of phrase and the nature writing was vivid and rich. The climate change catastrophes felt realistic enough, but then the plot veered off down a sci-fi-lite avenue which I didn't feel really added much. I preferred the more mundane passages about negotiating the workplace as a parent and dealing with inflexible schools, doctors and institutions, which I think Power captured really well. The thing I struggled most with though was that Robin's voice was annoying - in a po-faced way, not in the way that all nine year olds tend to be at times, and the father/son interactions bordered on the schmaltzy.

More reviews...

37 Trustee From The Toolroom by Neville Shute
Some of you have been telling me to read this for years. Keith is a quiet, modest man living an uneventful life in post war London, until his sister and brother in law get shipwrecked in the Pacific and he has to go to retrieve their possessions. This was just the right side of an adventure novel, but fundamentally Keith’s decency and humility is what (so we are told) gets him through the various trials he faces. I loved this, even though it felt like a slightly odd plot, which meandered around in various surprising ways towards the end. But the writing was sweet and thoughtful and this was a really gentle and restorative read.

36 Doppelganger by Naomi Klein
First off, while I still have to check whether I am dealing with “good” Naomi or “bad” Naomi, I at least now don’t get them confused, which is why “good” Naomi decided in part to write this book. “Bad” Naomi’s descent into conspiracy theories and right wing delusion makes me sad as she was something of a hero of mine when The Beauty Myth came out. This book attempts to untangle why and how people get caught up in narratives that have no basis in fact, and the role of the internet in that while also telling a very personal story about mistaken identity and its consequences. There was a lot of good and thoughtful writing in here, but the mixing of journalistic copy, serious research and memoir didn’t quite land for me, though that could have been because I was listening, rather than reading.

35 Still Unwritten by Caroline Khoury
Fun, light hearted and warm spirited rom com. Not entirely convinced that New Malden feels like the obvious setting for a love story between an Italian actress and a K Pop star but I rolled with it because I grew up nearby, my siblings still live there and I wanted something easy going. This was – not that I read a lot of romantic fiction – not terrible by any means and kept me entertained.

34 The Ferryman by Justin Cronin
I wanted to like this so much. It reminded me a lot of The Truman Show (great premise, well executed) and the first quarter or so was terrific. The world building was great, truths were revealed carefully without it feeling heavy handed, and I was really invested. Then I just got a touch bored, and by the final quarter was somewhat bewildered to find myself…well, no spoilers, but not where we ended up!

33 The Places In Between by Rory Stewart
Rory walks from one side of Afghanistan to another just after the fall of the Taliban. He finds a dog, gets cold, ill and shot at. People variously treat him well and treat him badly. I respect Stewart and he’s clearly a smart and decent person, but I am not entirely convinced travel writing is his thing. It was a little too much Rory and not enough Afghanistan for me.

And...(sorry for spamming the thread, I hit post before I'd finished)

39 Good Pop, Bad Pop by Jarvis Cocker
Read half of this, lost it, found it again in a cupboard. Fitting, as Jarvis pulls memorabilia from his attic and reminisces about the early days of Pulp. I’m not enough of a Pulp mega fan for this to have been anything other than somewhat entertaining.

38 A Village In The Third Reich by Julia Boyd
Much reviewed on here, this account of the experiences of the people living in a Bavarian village during the Third Reich was fascinating and appalling in equal measure. The rise of the Nazi party and the hold they exercised over the German population, was horrifying, as was the fear of those who didn’t agree with the regime. The experiences of Germans during the war are not something I’ve given much thought to previously, and while I’d have been interested in what happened after the war, I appreciate that was not the scope of the book. I will definitely seek out the companion volume in due course.

37 Trustee From The Toolroom by Neville Shute
Some of you have been telling me to read this for years. Keith is a quiet, modest man living an uneventful life in post war London, until his sister and brother in law get shipwrecked in the Pacific and he has to go to retrieve their possessions. This was just the right side of an adventure novel, but fundamentally Keith’s decency and humility is what (so we are told) gets him through the various trials he faces. I loved this, even though it felt like a slightly odd plot, which meandered around in various surprising ways towards the end. But the writing was sweet and thoughtful and this was a really gentle and restorative read.

I couldn’t understand how Alison managed to become the perceptive and emotionally giving medium that she was with the childhood that she had.

Skeptic that I am my reading of it was that she genuinely believed she was a medium but since that's not real I assumed her childhood trauma was what was causing her to hear the voices of those people. When she moved house it was a fresh start for a while but she couldn't escape her past and it came back to (metaphorically) haunt her. To me it was a really sad portrait of the lifelong impact of abuse. I like that there could be different readings though, like The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters.

I very much agree it’s about the lifelong impact of abuse Janina. But in the world of the book I read it that Alison was genuinely (I don’t know how to put it as I can’t remember if it’s phrased in the book) having psychic/sixth sense experiences.

My comment about how I didn’t understand how she became so perceptive and emotionally giving was about how she relates to the living, her often vulnerable customers. Leaving aside whether or not we believe she’s in touch with the spirit world, so much of her medium work is about handling her customers compassionately and with emotional intelligence. There’s a section where she’s teaching Colette to read Tarot, and it’s plain that even if Colette were to learn all the cards and combinations she’d never be able to give anyone a rewarding reading experience in the way Alison could. I suppose I just couldn’t see from the book how she’d got to that degree of emotional intelligence from the childhood she’d had.

It’s funny you mention Little Stranger as that’s another book I happened to read a second time for a book group despite not having loved. Whereas BB I found myself even more open to a supernatural reading second time, LS I found I was significantly less so!

Percival Everett was on Private Passions (Radio 3) this lunchtime discussing (among very many other things) his respect for different interpretations of his books. It worries me that English literature can (often? occasionally?) be taught to the test as if there is only one, right answer.

On holiday and massively behind on the thread.

Loved In a Good Light by Clare Chambers.

Been reading the Shardlake chat here and on the telly board and will be approaching the TV adaptation with trepidation as the casting pictures don’t match my idea of what Shardlake and Jack look like at all. I agree that the book series shouldn’t be judged on the first book and that also goes for the Slough House series as that definitely picked up after the first book.

Adding my recent reads:

27. Queens of the Age of Chivalry - Alison Weir

Wives of Edwards I, II and III and Richard II. I did learn something from reading it but inevitably history is sketchy so some of it is a bit “the Queen accompanied the King” and listing their belongings and gifts rather than telling the reader about them as an individual and their actions.

28. Guilty Not Guilty - Felix Francis

Still going on the Francis read. Bill is a race steward suspected of murdering his wife and whilst not a bad plot not enough horses/racing in this one.

29. The ABC Murders - Agatha Christie

This month’s challenge book. Poirot and Hastings investigate who is leaving railway timetables with murder victims and murdering by the alphabet. Clever but not my type of murder mystery.

30. Tackle - Jilly Cooper

I have read all of the Rupert Campbell-Black books as they were published. In this one Rupert becomes the co-owner of a football team. Not as good as Riders/Polo but still an easy, entertaining read - although I could have done with a few more familiar characters.

@TimeforaGandT did you see the adaptation of The ABC Murders with John Malkovich as (a very tortured) Poirot a few years ago? It was very good. Not much to
do with the book, but excellent!

13 For thy Great Pain Have Mercy on my Little Pain - Victoria Mackenzie
Margery Kempe meets Dame Julian of Norwich.

I loved this, I haven't read Margery or Julian but I'm aware who they were. I particularly enjoyed Margery's sections, while Julian eloquently describes the horror of being bricked up in a cell. Magnificent stuff * *

Not read much the last few weeks as I’ve been so busy with work and when I have had time I’ve been too tired. Managed some easy ones

43 - The Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole 1999-2001 - Sue Townsend
This was an easy read and fairly interesting. I didn’t hate it and don’t remember a lot that happened but you know where you are with Adrian Mole.

44 - The School For Good Mothers - Jessamine Chan
Frida is a co-parent who has a very bad day (as she calls it) which results in her leaving her 18 month old alone at home for two hours. The police are called and custody removed. To get back her parental rights, Frida must attend a year long program where she learns to be a good parent and then the courts will decide if she can be trusted again by the end.
This was very 1984 meets the Handmaiden’s Tale. Dark and worrying that although you had to take some leaps of faith to imagine it happening, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility. I enjoyed reading it but found it disturbing. Not so much because of the program, which was very dark, but because of what a total arse Frida’s ex was and she cannot see it. None of the characters were likeable but it was a good read despite some frustrations at Frida’s flaws.

*Handmaids

Thread favourite Enter Ghost is 99p in today’s deals.

33 Lucifer Book 2 - Mike Carey

Second volume of the Sandman spinoff series, with stunning artwork, fantastic world-building and a brilliant anti-hero in the fallen angel.

30. Leftovers - Eleanor Barnett

Interesting but fact-heavy history of how society (predominantly in the UK) has dealt with excess food and waste over the course of the past few centuries. It took me ages to feel I’d properly got into this - probably just my own ongoing attention-span problem rather than the book - but it did feel slightly scatter-gun at times. I liked the inclusion of personal testimonies from archive sources but more of this would have been better. Towards the latter part of the book there's an interesting post-Covid 'epilogue' and a pointed explanation of how Brexit is having a negative impact on our attempts to cope with an ever-increasing tide of food waste.

Thank you!

Loved
11) the diary of nature Spenser despite the ending being a little twee
12) the man I never met. I didn’t realise there were two books of the same title so meant to buy a book about 9/11 instead bought some trash romance! It’s ok but very naff 😅

Just admitted defeat on The Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I’ve tried to read it before and failed. I’m sure I am missing something fundamental and perhaps if I actually got to the end of it that might be revealed but it just feels very style over substance and self referential. So many people have said it is wonderful though so I’m prepared to accept the failure may be mine. Saddened but moving on to the next on my list.