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?

Oh good! Which ones do you fancy?

The Bee Sting could work @MegBusset

Or Big Swiss for something a bit lighter.

Oh! I second Big Swiss even though it's a bit hazy for me now

Thanks for all the recs! I have started Case Histories and will look at all the others :)

Pleased to see the love for Our Spoons Came From Woolworths - I just discovered that there is a newish biography of Barbara Comyns from a friend's blog the other day - and have reserved it and collected a copy from the library on Tuesday. Though I suspect in the next few weeks I'm going to be taking a lot of books back and rejoining the queues - I reserve things thinking oh, I'm #25 in the queue so I can catch up with a few other things while I wait, then it turns out that the library service has acquired 20 copies! On the other hand, someone else decides they like the sound of the weirdly niche memoir/biography/travel book/translated crime novel or, hardest of all, short story collection. The only one copy in systems serving half of Greater London book.

My library doesn’t tell you where you are in the queue so I have no idea whether my reservations will turn up tomorrow or six months from now. They will tell you if you go in and ask them, but it’s annoying that it’s not shown on their website/app.

@noodlezoodle I’ve gone for Toxic, Day One and Ghost Wall. Also added Our Spoons Came From Woolworths from this thread. This is why I have no money 🤣

I feel your pain! I'm in denial about the number of books on my kindle, even if many of them are 99p deals...

57 The Secret of Villa Alba - Louise Douglas

reviewed upthread by @DuPainDuVinDuFromage

I enjoyed this. Lots of twists, some of which I saw coming. Good sense of place and made me want to visit Sicily again, especially Palermo. Not a bold but v glad I read it.

Absolutely @noodlezoodle

Glad you enjoyed it @SheilaFentiman ! I think Douglas has a really nice writing style.

51. Our Spoons Came From Woolworths - Barbara Comyns

Another one reading this for the Rather Dated Book Club. Very much enjoyed it; strange-in-a-good-way, a unique narrative voice that’s not quite like anything else I've ever read in an adult novel, although I can see that the comparisons to Daisy Ashford make sense. More thoughts on the other thread when I’ve collected them properly!

Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing - Matthew Perry. Memoir from the late actor in which he details his drug and alcohol addictions, and his many insecurities. This was an enthralling, harrowing and deeply sad read, and there wasn't one page that wasn't compelling. I got the feeling he omitted a lot about his parents, who I felt hugely failed him as parents when he was growing up.

The Warden by Anthony Trollope

The first of the Barsetshire Chronicles. Mr Harding is the Warden of an almshouse. But questions are being raised about how much of the funds go to the Warden and how much goes to the almshouse and its 12 resident bedesmen. A comfort read now but was much more satirical for the Victorians, the story was based on real events and several prominent Victorian writers are caricatured.

I'm trying and struggling with Crime And Punishment on audio. Feel like I need York Notes!

The very one! Thank you @ChessieFL for posting that, you have brought back some lovely memories 🥰

just checking in to post my book 8:
Book 8 Foster by Claire Keeghan* *

A small girl is sent to live with foster parents on a farm in rural Ireland, without knowing when she will return home. In the strangers' house, she finds a warmth and affection she has not known before. Beautifully written ,
Small details of everyday life speak volumes without being put into words the girl starts to blossom in her “temporary “ life . Much is hinted at, left to the imagination and to be read between the lines.
The story stayed with me and at the beginning reminded me of one of my childhood favourites, Anne of Green Gables

currently reading Kala by Colin Walsh which is going down well. Although sometimes the switch between past and present stories within the same chapter is confusing me slightly.

29. Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad by Daniel Finkelstein

Many thanks to @EineReiseDurchDieZeit for posting that this was in the deals a few days ago. It's so good! Danny Finkelstein is a journalist of a centrist/right persuasion, and someone whose writing and panel-show appearances I enjoy. This terrifying history of his parents' separate but equally awful experiences growing up under extreme dictatorships explains much of his politics. It's beautifully put together with lots of nutty detail and suspense.

183 New Patches For Old by Christobel Mattingley

A reread of a favourite from my teenage years. Patricia is 14 and is devastated when her family announces they’re moving to Australia. She struggles to settle in but gradually makes friends and starts enjoying life. This is beautifully written with some lovely writing about Australian nature and scenery, and I can really picture all the places being described and feel Patricia’s emotions. A lovely piece of nostalgia.

Red Hill by Tony Parker My latest by the oral historian, this one about a mining community in the aftermath of the 1984-85 strike. Presented as a series of accounts by people on all sides, this gave a powerful sense of the way of life, the impact of the strike on families, the treatment of ‘scabs’, and the degree to which the government deliberately set out to break the Union and the bonds between workers and communities. Another bold for me and I’ll continue to seek out all Parker’s books.

@CornishLizard After reading your Tony Parker reviews before, I’ve just had Life after Life and May the Lord in his Mercy be kind to Belfast delivered from World of Books. They have quite a few secondhand on there if you are searching for more.

I’m impressed you’re even attempting it. In awe. Distracted by the election my reading has come to a complete halt. The weather is so foul today though I think I might try to get back into something.

I'm about 3 hours in! Shan't be defeated!

Looking forward to your reviews ÚlldemoShúl, especially of the Belfast one. I read Life after Life earlier this year and while fascinating, it was to be honest my least favourite of the ones I’ve read so far due to some of the subject matter and as the cases were more standalone. The others have built up a 360 degree view of the strike/housing estate/lighthouse-keeping industry and how the various people see themselves and each other.

58 Yellowface - Rebecca F Kuang

I think you all read this last year 😀

I enjoyed it. Not a bold but it was an interesting reflection on the publishing industry, racism, the line between plagiarism and inspiration. The imperfect narrator was well done. In a way - tone, perhaps, of an outside looking in? - it reminded me of I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai

@Welshwabbit – I need to make a start on the rest of the Slough House books. I’ve read the first one and loved it. I see that Joanna Scanlon has been cast in the series that is currently filming, series 4 maybe? But they weren’t releasing any info on who she has been cast as.

@highlandcoo – I’ve heard of Ambrose Parry, but hadn’t realised that the books were set in Victorian times. I also loved Alanna Knight’s Detective Inspector Faro and the following up series, Rose McQuinn, both set in Victorian Edinburgh. I also stumbled across Kaite Welsh and her Sarah Gilchrist. I read her first book about 5 years ago and I don’t think I read the second one. Sarah Gilchrist is a trainee doctor at Edinburgh Uni and one of the first women to study medicine. I think the Battle of Surgeons Hall was in that book, but I might be wrong.

@inaptonym – I haven’t started the Brighton Mysteries yet, I thought I’d start that series after Harbinder. I do enjoy Richard Osman, but couldn’t stand Richard Coles. I get cross at all these authors trying to make a living and then some celeb comes along and gets loads of money for tripe.

@Sonnet – yes! Absolutely recommend Harbinder Kaur. Funnily enough, The Stranger Diaries is the first in the series, but she doesn’t really feature as the main character. I loved The Postscript Murders. That is my favourite one.

@Piggywaspushed – that reminds me, I have Chums sitting to be read.

@ChessieFL – Aw! I remember reading Old Patches for New! I might see if the library has it. Feeling very nostalgic.

63 – Trespasses – Louise Kennedy – much loved and reviewed on here and I’m probably the last one to read it. Bold for me

63 – Forever Home – Graham Norton. After slagging off celebrity writers, I give GN a pass on that. I’ve enjoyed everything that he has written. Set in a wee town in Ireland where everyone knows your business, Carol, in her late 40s, is divorced with a son living in England. She lives with her much older partner Declan, but when Declan has to move into a home because of early onset dementia, the house sale is forced through by his children, long buried secrets are uncovered.