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?

I went to the theatre yesterday and I am a sucker for the National Theatre’s bookshop. I don’t know what it is about their set up but it’s like a force field I cannot resist. Suspect the 100 Classics will be mediocre at best but I do like a book about a book. The other …

Until August, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
This is about a 40 something women who goes to a nearby island once a year on 16 August to visit her mother’s grave. Despite a seemingly happy marriage, each year for one night she takes a lover. This was a short novella and the final version has been edited from various versions, there is an interesting editor’s note explaining how they came to this version. It was largely finish by GGM before he succumbed to memory loss. This is less all encompassing than his bigger novels like One Hundred Years of Solitude and my personal favourite Love in the Time of Cholera, but I found it convincing, interesting and enjoyable. Probably a bold, though not my five star list.

Oh totally forgot.

Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi
Multi-generational story of the descendants of two sisters set in Ghana. One is enslaved and the other marries one of the white slavers. I’m sure most have read this. It alternates chapters between each branch of the family and focusses on inherited trauma and the legacy of colonialism. I’m reading Daivid Olusoga’s Black and British at the same time and am at the point of him discussing the setting up of castle along the Gold Coast and trading in people with the local people. I went down a million rabbit holes about the Asante, Fanteland, Twi and am about to embark on a free OU 4h course about Ghanaian textiles with lots about kente, which featured in the book a lot.

I am very glad I read this, it wasn’t pleasant and you aren’t really given time to really warm to or get to know the characters since they get a chapter and we move on. I am really interested in the idea of inherited trauma and what it means, or doesn’t mean. For me this is a 3.5 and one that I’d like to reassess at the end of the year to see if it becomes a 4 and therefore a bold.

@TimeforaGandT @Boiledeggandtoast I remember reading The Chateau years ago on holiday (on a Greek island iirc) and absolutely loving it - I’ve become a bit of a William Maxwell fan since, but although it’s definitely due a re-read I’m slightly afraid to revisit The Chateau in case I hate it now….oh, the dilemma!

Thank you for the new thread @Southeastdweller

37 The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

This was just incredible! I don’t know why I swerved it for so long, perhaps I was a bit pissed off by Prophet Song or had read a run of family sagas set in Ireland and wanted a break.
An enormous, vibrant, elegantly witty, swirling language powerhouse of a book. I need to track someone down in rl who has read it so I can talk about it!
The foreshadowing is there and although I saw through the ‘bee sting’ bit quite early on, I didn’t realise until that gloriously horrible ending what exactly I knew and how I shouldn’t have ignored it (bit like the characters in fact).

I cried a lot. So much that DH thought I’d awful news on my phone or something when I came downstairs. Bless him, he understood when I sniffled “No, everyone’s fine, it’s just that BOOK I’ve been reading……”

Is there a colour above bold? There needs to be.

Terpsichore - The Chateau was the book that I was originally going to bring to the 50 Bookers meet up …..

I think my expectations were high so I was probably doomed to be slightly disappointed. It is a good book but it took me a while to get into it and to finish it and I can absolutely see that some people would not enjoy it.

Just place marking on the new thread!

Thank you @cassandre and * *@Boiledeggandtoast

Annie Ernaux also wrote a similar tribute to her father called 'A Man's Place' which could be very interesting to read. I liked your review of 'La Honte' cassandre. I hadn't heard of it.* *I have only read 'Les Années' so far, so I have lots more of her books to read yet. 'Passion Simple' is another one I'm interested in.

I never acknowledged the translator of 'A Woman's Story', Tanya Leslie, when I was typing out the title. She really nailed Ernaux's 'voice' to the extent that I forgot I was reading it in translation.

@MorriganManor , I like your review of 'The Bee Sting'. I also thought it was a powerhouse of a book. It was a very absorbing read and there was a lot in it. I remember that cassandre read it after me and she read the whole book over a weekend :) I was impressed!

@FuzzyCaoraDhubh I've read A Man's Place and would very much recommend it. This is my review from 2022:

A Man's Place by Annie Ernaux, translated by Tanya Leslie A portrait of AE's father reflecting on his working-class background and her own upbringing, and the gulf that opens up between them as her education takes her into a more middle-class milieu. I found this almost unbearably sad; her writing is largely dispassionate but every so often she will drop in a paragraph of such pathos that it caught me off guard. It's a short book - 76 pages - but she creates a vivid and moving evocation of provincial French life in the twentieth century (and because she's French, it comes complete with philosophical meditations).

The Before We Were Trans book sounds really interesting.

I am still enjoying Sisterland but not sure if I will have it finished before we go home from holiday tomorrow. DH keeps wanting to sightsee, or go for food, or such trivia 😀

Thank you @Boiledeggandtoast
I will definitely read it. I agree with you about what you said about Ernaux's writing. Those moments when she pauses to reflect are profound and beautiful and give her writing a timeless quality.

For the Annie Ernaux fans and those who can get to London https://almeida.co.uk/whats-on/the-years/

Ooh that would be good to see @AgualusasLover

Life Lessons from Literature: Wisdom from 100 Classic Works Joseph Piercy

As predicted this was ok. I did discover some new books, have been inspired to push some further up my list and was amused that #BloodyBoringButler was (deservedly IMO) on the list. I wasn’t sure what to make of his assertion of 1984 as Sci-Fi. One of those books you don’t mind passing an idle afternoon with, but probably regret (and knew you would regret) paying hardback money for.

That was quick!

Thanks for the new thread SouthEast, here is my list, with a couple of outstanding reviews:

1 The Road by Cormac McCarthy
2 The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend
3 Here’s Looking At You by Mhairi McFarlane
4 Christmas Pie by Jodi Taylor
5 The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly
6 Last Dance at the Discotheque for Deviants by Paul David Gould
7 The Maid by Nita Prose
8 One Day With You by Shari Low
9 Fool Me Once by Ashley Winstead
10 Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
11 Sabrina by Nick Drnaso
12 Les Enfants Terribles Jean Cocteau
13 The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
14 Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin
15 Call the Canaries Home by Laura Barrow
16 The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
17 Magpie Lane by Lucy Atkins
18 The Spare Room by Laura Starkey
19 Hags by Victoria Smith
20 Rachel Ryan's Resolutions by Laura Starkey
21 Amy Perry’s Assumptions by Laura Starkey
22 Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
23 Why Don’t You Love Me? by Paul Rainey
24 Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee
25 Reaching Down the Rabbit Hole: Extraordinary Journeys into the Human Brain by Allan H Ropper and BD Burrell
26 The Princes in the Tower by Alison Weir
27 A Pocketful of Happiness by Richard E Grant
28 The Duke and I by Julia Quinn
29 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
30 One Day All This Will Be Yours by Adrian Tchaikovsky
31 The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
32 The Perfect Husband by Lisa Gardner
33 The Third Victim by Lisa Gardner
34 The Next Accident by Lisa Gardner
35 The Killing Hour by Lisa Gardner
36 Gone by Lisa Gardner
37 Say Goodbye by Lisa Gardner
38 Right Behind You by Lisa Gardner
39 How To Clean Everything by Ann Russell
40 Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
41 Eye For An Eye MJ Arlidge
42 Little Ghosts by Gregg Dunnett

39 How To Clean Everything by Ann Russell

I got this for some info on how to clean my washing machine but ended up reading through and found lots of helpful tips, including information on what products you don’t really need for cleaning. Free on Kindle Unlimited.

40 Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

I wasn’t that keen on this at first and found Flora to be ‘a right little madam’ as my Mam would say. However as Flora’s impact on the lives of her Starkadder relations grew and took shape I found myself warming to her, and by the end I had a bit of a warm glow. Not a bold but I did enjoy it overall.

41 Eye For An Eye MJ Arlidge

This book looked at what might happen if the real identities of those with protection orders, which provide them with new identities when they are paroled for their crimes, were leaked. It was fairly obvious from early on who the leaker was, and from a crime novel perspective it was fairly bog standard. However it did raise interesting points about whether some people are born evil, the role of abuse and neglect in forming killers, retribution, rehabilitation, and the question of whether people are ever just evil.

42 Little Ghosts by Gregg Dunnett

Gale knows who killed his 10 year old sister Layla two years ago, and he knows because the ghost of his sister told him. This had one good twist and the subject matter was obviously difficult, but it didn’t hit me emotionally much as the characters were so flat. Free on Kindle Unlimited.

Only just realised we've got a new thread! I'll sort out my list & reviews when I'm at the computer.
@cassandre I'm glad you thought When We Were Trans was good. I was really impressed by it when I read it earlier in the year.

I'm currently avoiding Braiding Sweetgrass which everyone I know IRL seems to have read & raves about, but I suspect I may hate. I've got it from the library so really must actually read it. (And who knows, I may be pleasantly surprised.)

@JaninaDuszejko I read No Surrender last year and really enjoyed it too. I was surprised that I didn't feel like it was a bit anti-climactic, with it ending before women actually obtain the vote (spoiler alert 😉).

Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe Thanks to everyone who recommended this non-fiction about the Sacklers, legal drug barons who made their fortune first in Valium and then OxyContin, which fuelled the American opioid crisis. Always interesting and enraging, it becomes compelling when it reaches the launch of OxyContin. The limited accountability the family were eventually forced into made particularly pointed reading this week with the Post Office inquiry in progress - ‘the family would perform compassion, even sorrow - but not acknowledge wrongdoing’. I must admit, as a general reader, that part of me would have preferred a 300 rather than a 450 page account as the firm’s tactics did become repetitive but it was always readable and engaging.

I see the author has a podcast series Wind of Change and wondered if anyone has listened to it?

Gosh, these threads move so fast at the beginning, I’m feeling a bit dizzy, ha.

@strangeways, I hope you start to feel better soon💐

@TimeforaGandT, thanks for the review of The Chateau; I’ve added that to my TBR list. I’ve read two William Maxwell novels, They Came Like Swallows (beautiful!) and So Long, See You Tomorrow. I read them many years ago and so don’t remember them well, but I loved them at the time. Maybe I need to embark on a William Maxwell rediscovery.

@Welshwabbit , I agree with your assessment of Yellowface. A good read but ultimately, curiously underwhelming in terms of insight.

@inaptonym, I selfishly wish that you WOULD count the books you read in other languages; they would be interesting to hear about. What you say about the Kairos translator is intriguing. I’m trying to read a novel in French every month or so this year, partly because I have very little opportunity to practice speaking French in real life. Am also trying to read a nonfiction book every month or so, because I have a lot of nonfiction books piled up and I always seem to pass over them in favour of fiction.

@MorriganManor , I did love The Bee Sting. And I did read it in one weekend as Fuzzy says (I had forgotten that, gosh your memory is good, Fuzzy!), but as I recall I was exhausted that weekend and did absolutely nothing apart from lying in bed reading it! So it’s not quite the feat that it seems. It’s a real page-turner and very immersive. It’s not often I get completely absorbed in a book like that and it feels great when it does happen, like a throwback to childhood.

@FuzzyCaoraDhubh , I’ve read A Man’s Place and I completely agree with @Boiledeggandtoast 's eloquent review. I’m glad to hear Tanya Leslie is such a good translator. I think Leslie translated Ernaux’s earlier books, and Alison Strayer her more recent ones. I’ve read a couple of Strayer’s translations but none of Leslie’s. Strayer is also extremely good as a translator IMO. I would also recommend Exteriors [Journal du dehors], which I read last year. It’s another typically short Ernaux work, and it’s made up of little vignettes about people she observes on the metro during her daily commute from the suburbs of Paris to the centre. It’s lovely and jewel-like almost.

@AgualusasLover , that theatrical production looks amazing! I’m very tempted to go. Speaking of translation, I saw that Daniel Hahn's translation of Agualusa's The Living and the Rest has been shortlisted for a Uni of Oxford translation prize. I confess that based on your rave review, I've had A General Theory of Oblivion checked out of the library for months now. I got distracted by the Women's Prize longlist and still haven't got round to reading it, but I will!

Edited to add PARAGRAPHS which all disappeared!

36. Hitler, Stalin, Mum & Dad - Daniel Finkelstein

Billed on the cover as 'a family memoir of miraculous survival', and for once that language isn’t hyperbole. Finkelstein grew up in Hendon, child of a happy, busy family: his parents, Ludwik and Mirjam, had married in 1957 and Ludwik's mother, grandma Lusia, was a beloved presence living nearby. The opening chapters outline the contentment and ordinariness of this modern Jewish family. Then, alternating chapters titled 'Mum' and 'Dad' go back into the background of each of his parents and the truly extraordinary, deeply shocking events that shaped their lives.

His father, from a cultivated and prosperous Polish family in Lwów, was wrenched out of his safe childhood when the Russians descended in 1939, and mother and son were banished to a Siberian working farm of almost unimaginable grimness, somehow surviving despite virtually no food, shelter or heat, and a regime of backbreaking work.

His German Jewish mother, having moved with her 2 sisters and parents to supposedly-safe Amsterdam (where she knew Anne and Margot Frank) ended up in Westerbork transit camp and then in the horror that was Belsen. Despite the seemingly-insuperable odds against them, all three girls survived (although their indomitable mother didn’t).

Parts of this book are unutterably terrible and the stories of Nazi and Stalinist brutality hard to read at times. Yet it’s a narrative of survival and of quiet triumph over what often seem like hopeless odds.

Thanks for the new thread Southeast, here’s my list:

1. Be a Free Range Human - Marianne Cantwell
2. Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? - Caitlin Doherty
3. The Second Sleep - Robert Harris
4. Poirot’s Silent Night - Sophie Hannah
5. Unruly - David Mitchell
6. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
7. Rising to the Surface - Lenny Henry
8. The First Fossil Hunters - Adrienne Mayor
9. Vital Organs - Suzie Edge
10. Venomous Lumpsucker - Ned Beauman
11. Why Losing Your Job Could Be the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You - Eleanor Tweddell
12. Attack Warning Red - Julie McDowall
13. Shakespeare - Bill Bryson
14. Culture: a new world history - Martin Puchner
15. Vet in Harness - James Herriot
16. Weird Medieval Guys - Olivia Swarthout
17. Why is This a Question? - Paul Anthony Jones
18. Nursery Earth - Danna Staaf
19. Writing for Busy Readers - Todd Rogers & Jessica Lasky-Fink
20. Your Child is Not Broken - Heidi Mavis
21. The Ferryman - Justin Cronin
22. Sacred Nature - Karen Armstrong
23. The New Life - Tom Crewe
24. Medieval Horizons: why the Middle Ages matter - Ian Mortimer
25. Nightbitch - Rachel Yoder
26. The Quick and the Dead - Cynric Temple-Camp
27. The Leader Assistant - Jeremy Burrows

And in the last week I read these two, but was a bit addled by covid so not sure I completely absorbed them:
28 You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty - Akwaeke Emezi
Daft tropical romance in which not-at-all-artist-like artist Feyi is taken on holiday to a Caribbean island by a man who’d like to be her boyfriend (but isn’t) and falls for his super rich celebrity chef dad instead. Probably would have DNF’d if my brain had been working.

29 The Cause of Death - Cynric Temple-Camp
More cases from the New Zealand-based pathologist.

@BadSpellaSpellaSpella i missed that you read and liked Moon of the Crusted Snow, it was one of my favourite books of last year and I’ve just got hold of the sequel!

Ohh thanks for that @cassandre - The Living and the Rest is one of the ones I bought directly after I finished A General Theory of Oblivion. I’ve not picked up the other books, in case Agualusa and Hahn aren’t actually geniuses.

I really wanted to go the Ernaux production, the Almeida is such an intimate space too, but I’ll be on holiday.

59. The Escape Artist by Jonathan Freedland (Audible)

This is a biography of Walter Rosenberg, a Czech Jew and how he became 1 of only a few people to escape Auschwitz

There are separate issues here, the book itself, in Kindle form was a nightmare, blue coloured hyperlink footnotes throughout which were jarring and really detracted from the read overall.

I then switched to Audible, this was also a mistake, because I use Audible as a "Book At Bedtime" and well....this very well read Audible was not ideal for it.

The book itself :

This is a brilliant book but the content, the events that took place in Auschwitz was absolutely harrowing and enough to give you nightmares. Once started however, stopping and exchanging for something lighter felt wrong like I was turning away from their plight.

It is not as gripping in the years after the war but his chequered legacy was quite thought provoking

I am very glad I read it, it's an important book and a definite bold, but it's not for the faint hearted