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?

Hi Remus! I hope you will ease your way back soon to a nice gentle read 🌻

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

I once went two years due to a mental health bad patch

In fact I started on this thread in the first place because I needed to get back into it. I set goals and targets like 30 mins/(50 pages that sort of thing until it wasn't needed anymore.

💐from me too Remus, I hope you get your reading mojo back.

I think I remember from other threads that you're an English teacher? This could be completely off the mark, but I teach literature and sometimes I find that I'm too burned out from my day job to enjoy pleasure reading. Don't get me wrong, I love my job, but sometimes it's just words, words, words. To quote Hamlet, ha. My brain is tired and I've been teaching some of the same texts for almost 20 years now. Everything I say to my students starts to sound a bit glib and hollow to my own ears. The essay marking feels relentless. And the desire to come home and pick up yet another book wanes. Maybe this is just me though!

I'm so looking forward to the summer holidays and a mental break.

Just a 👋 Remus. When I couldn't read anything else, I could read poetry. Hope you feel better (whether reading or not) soon.

Thanks everyone. Yes, it could well just be English teacher fatigue! Poetry is actually a really good idea and I’m reading lots of long news articles, so I’m not entirely a lost cause!

All the best for your new job @LadybirdDaphne
Hang on in there @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie - hope you get your reading mojo back soon - for our sakes as well as yours!!

I think we can all imagine the pain of not reading, Remus. I'm sorry. Is there something else going on or is it "just" ennui? For me, life-related suckiness either means a complete reading drought or voracious consumption of low quality literature. I don't feel good either way compounding the general discomfort.
But sometimes it's just that nothing really grabs me.

Nothing is going on, other than nothing whatsoever is making me want to read it. Maybe I've just read too many books and have seen it all before. Sigh.

I think, having read over 400 books since I started on thread, that this is a major problem for me as well. And affecting my bolds.

It's actually 603!!

Sorry, can I ask, are the bolds for those we've finished, or those we recommend?

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie , I would second the recommendation for poetry and recommend Charlotte Moore The Magic Hour. Brilliant anthology

@Thewolvesarerunningagain

Bolds for stand out, must reads, italics for hated! Not everyone does italics though

@Thewolvesarerunningagain

Sorry that is to say, people always bold a title name for a review, for clarity, it's bold in the lists makes it special. Check out the first page!

I hate Reading Ennui @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie , my sympathies. My worst run of it was during Covid lockdowns - my head said “Yay! All this time to read!” but my heart said “Pffft, no chance” and I couldn’t get into anything. Think I DNFed many, many books that I would have otherwise liked.

@Thewolvesarerunningagain , bolds on the thread as we go along are books we have read. The lists we do at the start of threads have bolds as favourites, italics for ones we didn’t like.

Have just finished E.M.Foster A Passage to India. Wasn't sure I was going to make it through as it's defeated me in the past but pushed on through. The plot is both simple enough and not the point. Foster was hacked off with the limitations of the novel form and wanted to write a piece that was more philosophical and compositional. At one point one of the characters observes that there is no beauty without form and that seems to cut to the heart of what he attempted. The characters are barely there ciphers and the main characters, Aziz, Miss Quested, Fielding, Mrs Moore are representatives of the themes more than fully realised characters. The landscapes of India are far more active participants in a way. The disturbing hollow alien-ness of the fictional Marabar caves and the intractable barriers to activity (for the English) posed by the heat seem to have so much more life than the people. The final scenes, in which the landscape itself refuses the resolution (friendship, perhaps a homo-erotic love) that would bring a form of narrative closure is another example of this. Got to be honest, glad I read it, didn't love it. Onwards!

Thank you @EineReiseDurchDieZeit and @MorriganManor. That makes sense.

I loved A Passage to India when I first read it as a clever but socially awkward teen. Detested it when I read it as an adult a few years ago.

@MorriganManor I feel your Covid pain. Even re-reads are holding no appeal for me. On the plus side, I’m learning a lot about sewing now my head isn’t permanently stuck in a book!

Hope you get your reading mojo back soon @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

Hope the need to read grabs you again soon Remus. As a fellow teacher, though not English, I find there’s so much whizzing around my head at this time of year that my attention span isn’t the best. Hence my very easy reads at the moment. Hope the sewing gets you through.
Good luck with the job LadyDaphne
Ive just finished 83 The Husbands by Holly Gramazio
Lauren arrives home from a night out to find a husband coming down the stairs of her attic into her flat. But she doesn’t have a husband. Each time the husband goes to the attic, a different one comes down. This is clearly nonsense but it’s very entertaining and has a few decent twists and turns and plenty of humour. An enjoyable light silly read though it did go on for a bit too long.

I had the same with Tess of the d’Urbervilles! As a teen I loved it, as an adult, no way. Though finding out about Hardy’s relationship with his first wife may have soured my view!

Oh no Remus, fingers crossed your reading mojo comes back soon.

I have a DNF, I’m afraid: Les Liaisons Dangereuses (which I had started reading with the read-along). The time came to renew it at the library and I took it back instead - I just couldn’t be arsed with reading in French, partly because work is demanding enough that I just want to relax when reading. I’ve read it in English anyway (albeit about 20 years ago) so I suppose it’s not a total DNF, but it would have been good to read it in the original language! Maybe another time (but probably not)…

Someone put this link on a thread about film bloopers. It gives a lot of rich detail of the world of Pride and Prejudice and, I found, it added a whole new dimension to the book. Thought the book-lovers over here would be interested too.

Apologies if it's been posted here before.

That looks interesting @Mothership4two , thanks! Also good timing to coincide with the new series of Bridgerton 😄

22 Seeing a Large Cat - Elizabeth Peters 9th in the Amelia Peabody series, and the only one I actually own (I’ve read lots of the others as my old library had them). It’s been years since I read this and I felt like a re-read - it was just as fun as I remembered, and I had forgotten much of the story so it was worth picking up again. It is 1903 and Amelia is back in Egypt with her celebrated archaeologist husband, their teenage son, and their two teenage wards. An American tourist asks for protection for his daughter, who appears to be the target of death threats, and then a body is discovered…Not great literature but very enjoyable.