50 Books Challenge 2024 Part Five

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the fifth 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.

Some of us bring over to the new thread lists of the books we've read so far, but again - this is your choice.

The first thread is here, the second one here , the third one here and the fourth one here

What are you reading?

Very jealous of your hiking in Albania, Razor - have been to Tirana but long to go further.

Sympathy to those on cold rainy UK holidays or not feeling well.

34 Strong Female Character - Fern Brady
Unflinching memoir of the comedian’s experience growing up as an undiagnosed autistic female. The feeling of sitting outside the sphere of neurotypical female friendship, with its intricate and often cruel unspoken social rules, was very familiar.

35 Rizzio - Denise Mina
Brilliantly clear and unsentimental retelling of this murderous episode in the life of Mary Queen of Scots.

36 The Final Diagnosis - Cynric Temple-Camp
The New Zealand-based pathologist has run out of material on his own cases a bit in this third memoir and spends a fair amount of time on famous (for NZ) murders that he wasn’t directly involved in. Still very engaging if you like this sort of thing though.

40. In Memoriam - Alice Winn

Some trepidation when starting this as I know Morrigan was disappointed by it. Fortunately my expectations were so low that I enjoyed it.

Sidney Ellwood and Henry Gaunt are pupils at Preshute, a fictional public school, in the run up to WW1 and we follow them and their school friends to the trenches. The school scenes are slightly tiresome as the boys are immature and pretentious (so probably quite realistic!) but I found the war sections of the book much more engrossing and the mens interactions, relationships and deteriorating mental health were moving. I don’t know enough about the war to comment on how accurate/inaccurate the portrayal was but it was shockingly awful and certainly not a sugar-coated happy ending for all.

The Bog People by PV Glob tr. from Danish by Rupert Bruce-Mitford. Thanks to biblio and RomanMum for recent review and discussion of this 1960s survey of Iron Age people discovered preserved in bogs. I found it interesting, but rather too macabre for enjoyment - the deaths often involved circumstances over and above being buried in the bog. Interesting but nightmarish.

The Purgatory Poisoning by Rebecca Rogers - listened to this on borrow box after a friend recommended it. Dave has woken in purgatory after being murdered, but owing to some technical issues God and the angels don’t know whodunnit. Can Dave solve his own murder? The author won a comedy award and it’s all daft fun. The first part was really hilarious - a childhood family youth-hostel holiday complete with travel sickness and sandcastle rivalry. After that it veered away from reality and I didn’t enjoy it as much but was still fun.

27.Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell
Gordon Comstock has jacked in his job at an advertising agency in order to write, turning his back on the practical and social demands to make money. However, the life of an impoverished artist is not what he expected. He can't get his round in, no one will shag him, and he's indebted to friends and family.
He faces the tough choice of sticking to his artistic principles, or giving in and returning to middle class drudgery for an easy life.

This was decent. I probably over-identified with Gordon's self-sabotage and subsequent self-loathing. There's not much in the way of a plot, but dynamics of lower middle class life are well conveyed. Although it's pretty bleak in mood, I listened to the audiobook where Richard E Grant definitely made the most of the comic set pieces

Strangeways - I believe REG was in the film of Keep the Aspidistra Flying.

Cornish - you're right, The Bog People goes into some detail, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

I wonder how The Purgatory Poisoning stands up against other books with a similar premise: Over my Dead Body, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida etc. There seem to be a few out recently?

Purgatory Poisoning isn’t one I’d be pressing on anyone but it was entertaining and worked well on audio for this concentration-span challenged listener. As you say it’s not the only take on the idea but it’s not taking itself seriously. Feels like the murder mystery is bent to fit pretty much everything at the moment!

The Twilight Garden, Sara Nisha Adams

This is the second book by the writer of The Reading List. As easy reading goes, I enjoy her style, even if it’s a little over sentimentalised on occasion. This book is about warring neighbours who share a garden and how that garden brings together a community. It’s a bit twee, but overall I enjoyed it. As with her previous book there is a lot about grief, fitting in and finding your people.

36. Victoria Wood: Unseen on TV - Ed. Jasper Rees

A collection of Victoria Wood's unseen work, from an early piece of comic prose for her school magazine, to sketches written for her television series which were never shown due to time constraints or similarities to already written material. Some were several pages, others just a couple of lines, and while I laughed at some, others were weaker. As with this type of book, they would have been much funnier to see them on the screen, but sadly there were few opportunities to see these particular sketches, speeches or monologues.

The editing was excellent though, by Victoria Wood's biographer: each chapter starting with a summary and relevant, interesting footnotes where needed. The editor of the Alan Rickman diaries could learn a lot from reading this.

I am so behind with reviews!

48 Sisterland - Curtis Sittenfield
49 Broken - Karin Slaughter
50 Meet Me at the Museum - Anne Youngson
51 The Last Widow - Karin Slaughter

I will just do the bolds - the other two are standard Karin Slaughters

Sisterland was very good. About two American women who are twins. Both have predictive abilities to some extent but one has suppressed them for years. When the other predicts an earthquake, it causes friction.

The book goes back through their lives and it’s a believable in depth study of sibling love and frustration. I enjoyed it a lot.

Meet Me At The Museum is well reviewed on here - the plot of a woman following up on a childhood dream to go and visit a bog body in a museum - and I deliberately saved it for book 50 🎉

I loved the gentle style of the characters, developing and discovering and changing each other. A really great read.

57 The Devine Doughnut Shop - Carolyn Brown
The family members own a doughnut shop. Pretty much sums it up. This was terribly written with saccharine characters and gave me a headache I rolled my eyes that much. Not sure why I finished it. Back to the dark and depressing reads as you can’t go wrong with those.

23. Tiger Chair by Max Brooks

This is a short story but I am counting it as I read a lot of big slogs the rest of the time.

DH downloaded it as it was free, it's the author who wrote World War.Z. This is a letter from the front lines of a different war in a world that has gone to a different place. Pretty creepy. I wish I had read in one sitting (it would have been an hour) but I kept picking it up at silly points (just before plane landed, just before I fell asleep etc)

Yes the weather is awful atm, I'm struggling to dry washing as I can't hang it outdoors and I'm resorting to the dehumidifier and clothes horse! I'm refusing to put the heating on in June, that's an absolute no-no.

I have the house to myself until 6pm and it's too rainy for a walk so I'm going to read - got Nicholas Nickleby to catch up on (I have 20 chapters to go and I'm determined to finish by the end of the month!) Plus I plan to start on one of the several library books that are sitting on my bookcase just now.

54 Don’t Stop Believing – Freya Kennedy. The third in the Ivy Lane series. By book 3 it was starting to feel a bit ‘samey’ however, I will plod on as I enjoy FK’s writing

55 Empty Nets and Promises – Denzil Meyrick. One of the novellas that Meyrick has written exploring ‘Kinloch’ ie Campbelltown’s past. I didn’t enjoy this one as much as the ones that featured a younger DCI Jim Daley. This one featured Hamish, who in the current day is a retired fisherman. This one takes us back to Hamish in the 1960s alongside his old skipper Sandy Hoynes who is mentioned frequently in the current day. Some of the writing is difficult to understand, a bit like Irvine Welsh, when he writes. Too much about Maggie’s fat arse as well.

56 The Janus Stone – Elly Griffiths. Book 2 in the Dr Ruth Galloway series. Enjoyed. Looking forward to the next one.

63. Under The Banner Of Heaven by Jon Krakauer (Audible)

True crime in the American heartland. Under the Banner of Heaven is a riveting account of Mormon fundamentalism and renegade prophets, from the bestselling author of Into the Wild and Into Thin Air.

This was a bit dry and rather disjointed. The TV series focused a lot more on the story of Brenda Lafferty who was murdered along with her daughter by her brothers in law who believed they'd received a calling to do so from God. The narrative slips in and out of this story whilst also looking at Mormonism in general : Joseph Smith, Brigham Young and Warren and Rulon Jeffs of the polygamous FLDS sect and others.

It was read by Scott Brick who is a good audio reader so I didn't get too bored but I imagine this is only for those intellectually curious about Mormons to be honest.

52 Skin Privilege - Karin Slaughter

Another Sara Linton book. I really should have read them in order and not by kindle sale 😀

Anyway, this was a confusing one, dotting between characters and before and after a key incident. All tied up in white supremacy and meth addiction. Probably my least favourite so far.

137. Catch Me Twice. Catherine Yaffe
     A crime drama with the same perp and police officer but a few years apart. The perp has been jailed and released but clearly didn't learn her lesson. Drugs, Murder.

138. Conditions Are Different After Dark. Owen W. Knight. Supposedly a horror, but not particularly scary. A young couple move to a village which is a bit "local village for local people". They buy a corn dolly. Some mildly creepy stuff happens, but the corn dolly hardly features.

139. Broken Shadows. Sorrel Pitts. Tom found his brothers body in the 90s, murdered and left in a barn. His mother died by suicide not long after and he always suspected his dad. He moved to Aus as soon as he could but 30 years later comes home as his father is dying. Complicated family relationships and a child case murder. I really enjoyed this.

140. Make the Dark Night Shine. Alan Lessik. Another bold for me. This is written as a love letter to the daughter he never met. Set in the early 20tn century, Kenzo is a Japanese Consul (?) He and his male partner travel to Constantinople and mainland Europe. It's totally accepted in their culture that men can be together, they have to navigate attitudes to homosexuality in the wider world. Kenzo eventually becomes a Buddhist monk. It's just a beautiful book.

141. Accidental Dragons. Astor Y Teller Part 2 of the Old Bones Hexology. A ragtag band of undead go off on a expedition to find some other undead. Totally bonkers, but good fun.

142. Catalog of Desire and Disappearance. Ana Cruz. In the modern day, Ana finds a diary from 1980s East Berlin written by a sex therapist who "disappeared" as so many people did at that time. Ana decides to try and find out what really happened to the writer and her husband.

143. Husbands. Mo Fanning
     A drunken night in Vegas leads to wannabe actor Kyle marrying Hollywood's biggest director Aaron. Kyle flies home believing the marriage will be annulled. 6 years later he gets a call saying his husband is in a coma, but as his legal husband he needs to fly to Vegas. Aaron is then accused of running a paedophile ring at his Hollywood parties. Jack needs to get to the bottom of the accusations, but who can he trust? Really liked this. Almost a bold.

144. Knife River. Justine Champine
     A crime book. But I can't remember anything else.

145. 8ish. Luing Andrews and Jack East. IRA, crime. That's all I remember.

146. Truestory. Catherine Simpson. Yet another bold. This is a beautiful and sad story about life with a child with ASD. And an unhappy marriage. Poignant.

147. The Flower Queen. Kay Freeman. This was a really quick read. I didn't really like any of the characters. A Woman ends up growing and supplying vast amounts of pot in 1970s America. Not really believable. And the timeline was out. An undisturbed crime scene from 25 years previously (so the early 1950s) had a copy of "Are You There God, It's Me Margaret" which wasn't published until 1970. Also had some mega cringe sex scenes.

148. Secrets Dark and Wicked. Jessica Julien & Juliet Stevens. Vampire romance. But good. So many modern Vampire books are shit. This wasn't.

53 Rizzio- Denise Mina

Reviewed already by many. A sharp, quick, enjoyable read. God, Darnley was a twat!

36. The Scarlet Pimpernel: Emmuska Orczy.

'It is the height of the Terror in Paris and few can escape la guillotine. Yet, somehow, an elusive Englishman is rescuing imprisoned noblemen and spiriting them across the channel to safety- a dazzling swordsman and escape artist, known only by the red flower on his calling card, the Scarlet Pimpernel...'

Many thanks to @elkiedee for the gift of this book. I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Fuzzy I love The Scarlet Pimpernel. The 1980s film starring Anthony Andrews, Jane Seymour and Ian McKellen is one of my guilty pleasures.

28 The Future of Geography - Tim Marshall This is a non-fiction book about the geopolitics of space exploration (or astropolitics, as Marshall calls it), and follows on from his other books about earth-based geopolitics (which I haven’t read). As someone who doesn’t know much about space but would like to, I found this very interesting and it opened my eyes to the current and near-future issues associated with the world’s exploration and use of the space around earth. It does read like an extended article (partly because it’s short, but especially because it is very of-the-moment - it will be outdated within a couple of years at most), but it is no worse for that. I had to work to keep myself focused but it’s not too dry and its short length is a bonus in that respect. Definitely worth picking up if you have any interest in this sort of thing.

Ooh...@TimeforaGandT I really should look that up!

'Marguerite indulged in the luxury, dear to every tender woman's heart, of looking at the man she loved. She looked through the tattered curtain, across at the handsome face of her husband, in whose inane smile, she could now so plainly see the strength, energy and resourcefulness which had caused the Scarlet Pimpernel to be reverenced and trusted by his followers' pg 214 (happy sigh...)

I liked the Richard E Grant Pimpernel of the late 90s!

It’s just such a great story (notwithstanding the terrible events of the French Revolution).

I'm another one who loves The Scarlet Pimpernel, I had a children's version when I was young, and have read the proper version a few times too. It's so good it has me rooting for the aristos!