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?

Yup @RomanMum - I'm definitely keen to read One Woman Show too.

@inaptonym

Glad you liked Tom Lake

@inaptonym I reckon you're right re. Spare Rib. Something I don't miss from those days is the many ways in which it was possible to Do Feminism Wrong. (In particular sex: being straight = sleeping with the enemy / being bi = even worse given sleeping with the enemy despite being attracted to women / being a lesbian by inclination = a cop-out & not showing political commitment. Only correct choice appeared to be being a political lesbian who wasn't actually attracted to women )
Having said that, I guess the movement isn't all sweetness and harmony right now... :(

@MrsALambert I read that series when I was younger and reread a few years ago and thought it held up well. I also couldn't believe how foolish her parents were and how badly they treated her, especially when compared to her siblings. She did amazingly to achieve so much under those circumstances.

@PepeLePew I thought of From Here when I saw the vulture story in the news the other day. I really enjoyed it (the book, not the news article),

@MamaNewtNewt agreed, it’s so unjust I wish she had left them all to it and started a new life on her own

I am enjoying Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfield - thanks for passing it on, @elkiedee

Inaptonym, that Carol Atherton book sounds right up my street. I rushed to the library website (if moving your fingers fast counts as rushing) and was able to reserve it. Love that sort of thing.

Speaking of doing feminism wrong, I still regularly reread the Letters from a Faint-Hearted Feminist, by Jill Tweedie, which capture that era. Great fun.

Finishing the ones I plan to read from the Women's prize shortlist with Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan. This was a 5 star for me, although I did have to stop reading it on the tube out on Saturday night as it was making me smudge my makeup cry. I do have ties to Sri Lanka so was familiar with the brief outline of the war but reading it in detail from the civilians trying to live through it was incredibly moving.

The story follows Sashi, a medical student, who has 4 brothers and lives in Jaffna. It basically covers 1981-1990 with an epilogue of sorts in 2009 when the war finally ended. Two of her brothers join the Tamil Tigers, and the book is really about how to try and live under occupation and what responsibilities you have. Sad but powerful.

I think I somehow borrowed Twopence to Cross the Mersey from the library at 10 or 11 and remember finding it a riveting read, and that also my mum read and enjoyed it at that time - she also read the library copy before I returned it - she would have been in her mid 30s so much younger than me now. I'm not sure whether it had been shelved in the children's library or the adults - I think possibly the former as when we first moved from one area of Leeds to another, our new local library still had the children's section upstairs - within a couple of years they moved to a more modern building just down the same street, all on the ground floor. It was quite a long time later that I discovered Helen Forrester had written subsequent memoirs and that they were all available in paperback. She also wrote some novels but I'm not really sure whether I ever read any of them.

@ÚlldemoShúl, you're making me want to reread the Ali Smith Seasonal Quartet. I loved them all. Because I read each one as it came out, I think I missed a lot of the connections between them (since each time I would read a new one, my memories of the previous one had already become hazy).

Companion Piece was good too, but IMO not quite up to the standard of the original four.

Finished 13) The Sheltering Sky which I loved until the last quarter? Then it got a bit odd, and it gave me weird dreams…

14. The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris is next.

I loved Twopence to Cross the Mersey and the rest of Helen Forrester's autobiographical books as a teenager. Think I read one or two of the novels, they were set in the same world and were Catherine Cookson like.

I am very overdue an update so this is a long post. Sorry!

18. The Drift, CJ Tudor

A post apocalyptic thriller set in three different locations- a crashed coach in a blizzard on the way to a mysterious retreat, a stopped cable car also on the way to the retreat and then the retreat itself where a murderer is on the loose. A relatively atmospheric thriller but a bit too gory for my tastes.

19. The Valley of the Horses, Jean Auel

I very much enjoyed the second of the Earth’s Children series. I quite like a ‘procedural’ type book where a world is built and it shows how people actually live their lives. I enjoyed the details about how Ayla survived and the way in which she built her camp and hunted food etc. Surprisingly sexually explicit given the tone of the rest of the book but I thought this worked well.

20. Paper Cup, Karen Campbell

A homeless woman goes on a pilgrimage to return an engagement ring. I thought this was well done. I liked the characters and I thought the unrealistic aspects of the story of redemption were tempered by gritty, hard details.

21. The Street, Susi Holliday

Utter crap. Witness protection subjects move to a new community. Everyone has secrets. Nobody, least of all the reader, really cares what those secrets are. Mercifully both free on kindle unlimited and relatively short. I was given the audiobook free with the title which was a mixed blessing- good in that I didn’t have to physically make my eyes move across the page, bad in that I felt compelled to passively finish it.

22. Making It So, Patrick Stewart

Big, long time Star Trek fan. My sister read this and thought it was boring and didn’t get to the Star Trek stuff quickly enough. I disagree. I thought it was gentle and well told. He comes across as thoughtful and gentlemanly. I very much enjoyed this and the bits around the RSC and his earlier career were more personal and reflective. Recommended.

23. Studies, Jenny Colgan

I am not a huge fan of chick lit but there are a few authors I do enjoy. I think Jenny Colgan is the master of love stories where the course of true love doesn’t run quite as smoothly as it might. I think her mastery of this is only second to JKR whose ability to explain two characters motivations and misunderstandings is brilliant. I love this series of ‘Malory Towers for grown ups’ and have been reading it since the first in 2008. Great stuff.

24. Girls That Invest, Simran Kaur

I’m trying to be more of a grown up about finances. This was a great book. Sadly it was aimed at people in their 20s and gave 40 as a sort of ‘it’s never too late to invest, you can even make money if you start as late as your 40s’. Well worth a read though about stocks and shares and investments etc.

25. I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai

This is a definite bold. A podcaster goes back to her old school to teach a journalism class and ends up investigating the death of one of her classmates 20yrs previously. I thought there was a lot going on here with memory, sense of belonging, how perspective and age changes one’s views and outlook. This was the book Penance should have been. Where Penance was crass and voyeuristic, this was more thoughtful and reflective.

26. Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Another bold I think. Sci-fi about a distant future where much of Earth technology has been forgotten. The last of the human race are aboard an ark ship looking for a new planet and come across a terraformed world where spiders have accidentally evolved great intelligence. Great world building, fantastic ending. Good stuff.

27. The Windsor Knot by SJ Bennett

I wouldn’t have come across this if it were not for this thread. Reviewed by others. The Queen solves a mysterious death. I loved the first few chapters of this which were funny and clever. The remainder I’m not so sure about. It felt a bit ‘Thursday Murder Club’ (meh) but with the Queen. Enjoyed it but won’t be reading any more in the series.

Next up I am starting White Teeth by Zadie Smith and Potiki by Patricia Grace (both are set texts in a literature OU module I am starting in September and I want to get ahead with the reading). I am also really enjoying Act of Oblivion so far but having to skim over some of the gory execution scenes.... Robert Harris and Ken Follett just love a gruesome execution. I really don’t. But I can skip those bits!

@elspethmcgillicudddy I've recently discovered CJ Tudor from this thread and I love her stories but do wish they weren't quite so over the top and gory!

@elspethmcgillicudddy

I didn't quite bold I Have Some Questions other people have rubbished it which gave me pause for thought, I did really enjoy it and made similar comparisons to Penance

57. Knots And Crosses by Ian Rankin

Still looking for something to replace Robert Galbraith with, I went for this the first Rebus, due to the series starting on BBC 1 but I believe changes have been made in adaptation.

I was surprised by how slim this was (230 pages) and dare I say a little basic. There wasn't a lot to the investigation at all and the denouement lacked believability

There are a lot of follow up books but like Dissolution I don't think this did enough to warrant the commitment going forward.

Nearly time for a new thread @Southeastdweller

The Ski Trip - Sarah Clarke Twisty murder mystery set in a ski location. It was fine. I’m a bit in the doldrums at the moment reading wise. Too busy scrolling through politics websites.

I borrowed the first 3 Rebus books by Ian Rankin in an omnibus edition from the library, and wasn't that impressed by them but did carry on. I wasn't keen on #4 in the series either but really liked The Black Book (which is #5) in the series and then got hooked - I think by that point 9 or 10 books had been published but it might be more - I can remember when #12 was just about to come out!

For me the series has become about catching up with the characters and their lives and I don't know how well the more recent episodes would read out of sequence, but I think any of the books from #5 to #9 (think he's now up to Rebus novel #24 plus short story collections and some other novels) might be a good introduction to the character. I do normally like to read in order but I also thought Peter Robinson's 1st Alan Banks book was quite dull and was glad I'd been introduced to the series by #10.

Thats interesting @elkiedee because I actually wasn't that into A Cuckoo's Calling but persevered and in the end love the series. Twenty odd of them is very daunting though. My edition of Knots was odd as it had a much later book A Song For The Dark Times tagged on at the end as an excerpt, which you know, spoilers!

The early Rebus books were a quick thriller read when nothing much else was available. He had an irritating habit of putting a song title in italics to set the mood iirc. I thought he did improve as he went along, but the many ways Cafferty is continuing to fuck with Rebus are getting a bit stale now.
Ian Rankin is a lovely man! Very humble about being a best selling author and at times even a bit embarrassed by it.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit Putting an excerpt for book #23 at the end of book #1 is just daft! - though I never look at excerpts for forthcoming books on Kindle books

I only have one outstanding Rebus book but there are several series that I started reading (first 2 or 3 books) but that have now reached 20+ or even 30 books, and it is a bit daunting.

The series seems to be something of a mishmash of later books and as a Book First person I feel a bit fazed by this approach. I do like the lead actor though.

I can’t watch any Rebus adaptation. Not even Ken Stott was my Rebus.
I am also avoiding Shardlake because he reminds me of Miles Jupp in Rev and now all the drama and intrigue has gone out of it for me

I only watched the first Shardlake I did intend to go back but it hasnt grabbed me. I do like that they chose a disabled actor.