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’ve spent a fiver on the next one to hopefully keep going whilst the reading iron is hot!

@InTheCludgie i read the first part of Shadows of the Workhouse and never went back to it, but I might pick it up again as it’s a period I do find fascinating

The Stranger in Her House - John Marrs. Connie has moved back from abroad to take care of her elderly mother Gwen, who suffers from dementia. When handyman Paul turns up, Connie senses something isn’t quite right, and her suspicions seem to be confirmed when Paul starts cosying up to Gwen, taking over her care. Is Paul legitimate and just how far will Connie go to uncover the truth? Although some story elements were rushed and absurd, I found myself gripped from start to finish. Dark, escapist and twisty, this was just what I needed.

Now reading Friendaholic by the slightly annoying Elizabeth Day.

35. It's Behind You by Kathryn Foxfield Lex enters a reality TV show, spending 24 hours in haunted caves with four other teenagers, but there's more to it than she realises. I'm quite claustrophobic and there were parts of this where I had to keep stopping reading and wait for my breathing and heartbeat to get back to normal (really I have only myself to blame - I should have known that a book set in caves would have those sorts of scenes) so I definitely wouldn't recommend it to anyone with claustrophobia. Even just thinking about it as I type this review I'm feeling quite panicky. Apart from that it's quite a fun, creepy thriller, although without much depth or character development and it gets a bit silly towards the end.

36 The Periodic Table by Primo Levi trans Raymond Rosenthal
A collection mostly of autobiographical stories and a couple of fictional stories, all connected in some way to an element of the periodic table.
The book starts in the early 1940s with Italy under fascist rule, and Levi a young Jewish man studying chemistry, and ends many years later. Levi doesn't write about his time in Auschwitz here. He explains it's because he has already written about it elsewhere (in If This is a Man), but it does seem to leave a hole in this book so it feels more like a companion piece to If This is a Man than something that can stand entirely alone.

37. Requiem by Graham Joyce
    Widower Tom leaves his job as a teacher and goes to stay with his old college friend Sharon in Jerusalem. Strange things start to happen, could he be haunted by a djinn, his wife's ghost or his own guilt?
    Quite a strange, dreamy book. Uncomfortable in places, especially Tom's attitude about a teenage girl he taught. Quite evocative in its depiction of Jerusalem.

38. Treacle Walker by Alan Garner
    This book seems to have been pretty much universally panned by fifty bookers and I should have listened to them. The writing is nice but I have absolutely no idea what is meant to be happening in the book.

39. Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell
    The book begins and ends with the case of Sandra Bland, a young black American woman who killed herself in prison after being arrested by a white policeman who stopped her car. In between it looks at different cases of strangers interacting, policing methods and suicide (using Sylvia Plath as the main example), in an attempt to illustrate how things went so badly wrong between Sandra Bland and the police officer, Brian Encinia.
    Most of the individual chapters are interesting, looking at how double agents fooled the CIA, how Madoff's Ponzi scheme lasted so long, why so many people were convinced that Amanda Knox was guilty of murdering Meredith Kercher despite the lack of evidence. I liked the premise that humans are usually hardwired to trust, but that we also expect people to behave in certain ways and be easy to read.
    I think perhaps where the book falls down is tying everything to Sandra Bland's arrest and suicide. I hadn't heard of her before I read this book but it feels like a bit of a disservice to her to reduce her story to bookends. Even though Gladwell is obviously saddened by what happened to her I think his attempt to explain why and how it happened fails.

Airhead - Emily Maitliss
Collection of interviews with the great and good and not so good - Bill Clinton, Trump, Emma Thompson, the Dalai Lama, Alan Partridge, Antonio Scaramucci etc along with thoughts on reporting from events like the Bataclan terrorist attack. It is interspersed with biographical snippets and an account of when she herself was on the other end of the microphone being interviewed about the stalking that has dogged her life for 30 years and her thoughts on the Me Too movement which was very much in the news at the time of writing.
Her writing is clear and concise as you would expect and sometimes funny and self deprecating. She conveys the adrenaline of live broadcasting brilliantly.
Definitely a 4, almost a 5.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie was it the Six of Crows duology you skipped? I think they're miles away the best of the Grishaverse books, personally, but they're a bit harder to follow if not in a plotty mood (tricksy, heisty, multiple POVs).

@SixImpossibleThings Treacle Walker broke my heart when I read it (pre-50 Booker days). I've adored Alan Garner since childhood. WHY WAS THIS SO BAD. Glad to hear I'm in good company at least.

However, might shortly part ways with some of you as I'm thinking of NOT bolding Enter Ghost... finished yesterday but want to mull over the ending a bit, and some other things. I do think it would be a worthy WP winner, though.

Also finished:
45 How to Say Babylon - Safiya Sinclair
Now shortlisted for the WPNF. Memoir of a Jamaican poet, born in 1984 and raised in a strict Rastafarian household dominated by her volatile, authoritarian father's desire to repel 'Babylon' (increasingly, the entire outside world). I really valued the insight this gave into the cultural and historical context of modern Jamaica and Rasta specifically, having had no idea of the discrimination this tiny minority continues to face there or the internal divisions within the movement. Sinclair's writing could be musical and powerfully evocative, with unexpected, illuminating word choices (and neologisms), but occasionally I found it too purple and muddled. The content alone made for a gruelling read, and there was a fair amount of repetition which made the book feel even longer - almost a DNF.
And then, the final section! Blowing through ten+ years with some perfunctory anecdotes before washing up somewhere that left me feeling totally disoriented and, as a reader, even a bit used (not to get dramatic or anything....) I see from reviews that this is quite a common response, even in readers who still rated this highly; for me, it left a sufficiently bad taste that I wish I'd held firm to my 'no misery memoirs' rule and swerved this.

Now taking a break from the prize lists with The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper and Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra, both very enjoyable.

I haven't posted for a while, I was on holiday but had that awful cold so read mostly easy books
21 Come Sundownby Nora Roberts enjoyable easy read
22 Heresy by A J Parris it's not any where near as good as the Shardlake series, what is, but I enjoyed this
23Nightwork Nora Roberts enjoyable easy read
24 A Town called Solace Mary Lawson loved this
25 The wisteria Society of Lady Scroundels this was another one that I loved flying houses, lady pirate's, assassin's,blissful
26Heresy S J Parris I have to say for a spy and investigator Bruno spends a great deal of time totally clueless
27 A Season for Scandal
28 Agency for Scandal bought as a whim when 99p on Kindle thoroughly enjoyed these two

I have more to add later

@inaptonym one of the bookstagrammers I follow has put Enter Ghost at 13/16 of his woman's prize list, and Nightbloom which is the other one I was looking forward to, at 12.

I was planning on saving it for my book club choice but may just have to read it now and make up my own mind!

I've got serious Readers Block and no shortage of choice either. So annoying

Not sure Enter Ghost is my favourite but it is a brilliant book and way better than several others I have read. Just shows you how subjective this reading gig is!

Thanks @inaptonym Maybe I should go back to them later. I think plotty is probably what I needed right now though, so might have made the right choice in the moment.

Don't get me started on Treacle Walker. Stupid, stupid book.

I’m feeling the same at the minute. I’ve started so many books over the last couple of months but very few have interested me enough to keep reading.

I am vexed @TattiePants

Thanks @Southeastdweller for the thread!

27 Echoes - Will Sergeant

Second volume of the Bunnyman’s memoirs, covering the period of making their classic first two albums. I just loved this, very readable and also poignant in knowing that the early carefree years wouldn’t last forever. Definitely recommended for the 80s guitar music fans.

I always get reader's block at this time of year and that's when I read light fluff

Quietly waves flag in defence of Treacle Walker which I absolutely loved!

Empire of Pain - Patrick Radden Keefe

This is a bold. It won the 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize and is written by a New York Times journalist. The first 10% dragged a bit, but the rest was excellent.

It is the story of the Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma, which produced and sold OxyContin and kickstarted the opioid addiction epidemic in America. Before oxy, the father was key in the promotion of Valium and essentially developing pharmaceutical marketing.

I watched Dopesick on Netflix last year, which helped me picture some of the characters. I also read Beth Macy’s book, Dopesick, which contained some focus on the Sacklers but more on the addicts and victims. This was a better “corporate crime” book and more gripping, for me.

Big sympathy to those in a reading slump. I hate that. Can we help/advise?
I have the opposite problem. Too many books on the go and not sure how to choose which to read because they are all good.
Am about to finish The Trading Game. Would highly recommend for jaw dropping non fiction account of what it means to make millions in the City and walk away. Even better on Audible as it's read by the author. Will have a full review when I finish but...wow. Non fiction read of the year so far, for sure.

@SheilaFentiman - Empire of Pain is quite something, isn't it? One of my standout reads of the last few years.

15. House Rules by Jodi Picoult

The central theme in this one is autism. On this occasion I saw the twist and predicted the ending a mile off (rare for me!).

Read as it's year and work is busy so I wanted something not too taxing and that I wasn't obsessed with as I needed to be able to put it down and do some work. Fitted the bill.

Bit late posting my list as usual!

1. The Trial – Rob Rinder
2. The Generation Divide: Why we can’t agree and why we should – Bobby Duffy
3. The Fell – Sarah Moss
4. Impossible Creatures – Katherine Rundell
5. Over Sea Under Stone – Susan Cooper
6. Greenwitch – Susan Cooper
7. The Grey King – Susan Cooper
8. Silver on the Tree – Susan Cooper
9. Orlando – Virginia Woolf

10. Liza’s England – Pat Barker 11. Winter – Ali Smith 12. Farewell Fountain Street – Selcuk Altun 13. Hungry – Grace Dent 14. The Shadow Murders – Jussi Adler-Olsen 15. The Wayward Bus – John Steinbeck 16. My Dark Vanessa – Kate Elizabeth Russell 17. Giving Up the Ghost – Hilary Mantel 18. Spook Street – Mick Herron 19. The Waves – Virginia Woolf 20. At Freddie’s – Penelope Fitzgerald

And adding my latest reads:

21. Before the Queen Falls Asleep – Huzama Habayeb

This month's Shelterbox book club pick, I enjoyed this a lot more than the last couple. The narrator is a Palestinian refugee whose daughter is about to leave for university. The book is a series of vignettes of her life, told to her daughter at various ages. It was an interesting, different take on the refugee experience - not years in a camp, but nevertheless, an insecure existence, living in Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan (following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait) and ultimately Dubai. The book is told through a feminine lens, and I was particularly interested by the ways generations of women secreted and built their own savings pots, as insurance against the vicissitudes of life. There is plenty of hardship, but the book has an uplifting conclusion and I enjoyed reading it.

22. The Progress of a Crime – Julian Symons

Winner of the 1961 Edgar award, this crime novel was probably quite unusual at the time. It takes a socially realist approach to a fairly humdrum murder, committed in a village near a provincial city. The story is told from the perspective of Hugh, a young reporter on a local newspaper. Sent out to the village to report on a story, he is on the scene when a gang of motorcycling youths turn up at the Guy Fawkes night bonfire, and a local landowner is stabbed. Hugh becomes a witness in a murder trial as well as a reporter - but can he trust his own memory of what he has seen? Things get still more complicated when a national newspaper comes nosing around, and offers to pay for the defence of one of the youths - who has a very attractive sister, for whom Hugh has fallen. This is not a dramatic novel, but it really gets under the skin of the characters and does an excellent job of showing how murky and flawed our understanding of events we have witnessed can be - as well as how good intentions can be thwarted. Some of the language, particularly about women, was very dated, but I nevertheless thought this was really good.

23. Death of a Lesser God – Vaseem Khan

The latest in the Malabar House series, starring India's first female police inspector, Persis Wadia. A lot of thrills and spills in this one, as James Whitby, the son of an English business mogul, is due to hang for the murder of an Indian lawyer - who was prosecuting his father. Persis is tasked with finding out whether Whitby is the true killer. Her potential suitors, cousin Darius and pathologist Archie Blackfinch, make welcome appearances, as does her mentee Seema. Inevitably, the investigation opens plenty of colonial and post-colonial wounds, and equally inevitably, there is a lot of peril for Persis. I hope Khan gets on with the next instalment soon.

Good timing on the Trading Game recommendation @PepeLePew - I'm in need of a new audiobook, & it sounds right up my street. It's also included in Spotify premium, which is a bonus

I’ve missed the list boat so will save it for next time.

The Waiter Ajay Chowdhury
A disgraced police officer from the Kolkata police force ends up in London working in Brick Lane when he ends up catering at a party where there is a murder. This isn’t my genre at all, but it was a decent enjoyable read. I enjoyed the alternating chapters between Kolkata and London, the food talk in the London chapters had me googling recipes.

I will read the others in the series (in no rush, but before 2026 when there will be a character with my name 😂 outing for anyone who knows me because I’ve told everyone).

I've DNFed All That She Carried & going to take it back to the library. It's a shame, because the idea is so good, but I just can't cope with the writing style. I'm really surprised that this made the shortlist, and Shadows at Noon missed out.

@Welshwabbit The Progress of a Crime sounds right up my street! Bought.