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?

Hopefully more deals to come!

@noodlezoodle im the same, spotted lots of good books in the sale but they’re all ones I‘be already read / bought.

Welcome @J97King I’ve added The Postcard to my list. If you haven’t read it already then House of Glass by Hadley Freeman sounds similar and was very well received on this thread.

I got these:

Just Another Missing Person: Gillian McAllister
Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar Tom Holland
The Stranger Diaries: Elly Griffiths
Why Politicians Lie About Trade... and What You Need to Know About It: Dmitry Grozoubinski
The Songlines (Vintage classics) Bruce Chatwin
Why We Eat (Too Much): The New Science of Appetite Andrew Jenkinson
Wish You Were Here: Jodi Picoult
Dark Sacred Night: A Ballard and Bosch Thriller (Renée Ballard Book 2) Michael Connelly

Thank you @satelliteheart.

Reading slowly. I have a pair of fiction and non fiction whoppers on the go, but was in need of a wee break from both. So I went for The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. I'm sure everyone who plans to read this has, so I'll keep things brief. Four retirement village residents enjoy "solving" old cold case files, and are both thrilled and horrified when face with a real life murder in their community. This was a fine easy read. The women characters seemed better realised then the men, all of whom were a bit one dimensional. Some of the comic writing felt a bit cheesy. The plotting was neat though, and kept me guessing. I like it enough that I'll probably read the next one at least.

Just adding as a note to self that that was no. 30 for me this year.

I just got Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue for 99p.

I read and reviewed Hillbilly Elegy on here a few years ago and I don't think I was alone in reading it. The memoir's author JD Vance has just been named as Trump's VP pick!

In case anyone else is tempted by the buzz around Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi's The Centre for 99p, I've just reached this immortal passage:
The ensuite bathroom, though, was next level. I’d spend a scrumptious twenty minutes every day beneath its rainfall shower and never tired of the large porcelain sink into which water streamed in absolute silence from a sleek rectangular outlet or the commodious toilet with its silent flush that felt, somehow, like a hug.
👀

This is why I usually get stick to nonfic from the sales. Quite a few look appealing actually, anyone read any of these?
Mothers of the Mind: The Remarkable Women Who Shaped Virginia Woolf, Agatha Christie and Sylvia Plath
Private Inquiries: The Secret History of Female Sleuths
Twilight Cities: Lost Capitals of the Mediterranean
The House of Dudley: A New History of Tudor England

Nonfic in sale I've read and would rec:
The Siege of Loyalty House - Jessie Childs (Eng Civil War)
The Past is Myself - Christabel Bielenberg (20th C. Germany)
Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities - Bettany Hughes (self-explanatory)

Oh dear @inaptonym I bought that one at the start of the month! Maybe I’ll find it amusing of nothing else.

I wondered about Mothers of the Mind too and bought Istanbul.

@ÚlldemoShúl I'll probably finish it too, but as a commercial gimmicky popcorn thriller rather than the own-voices zeitgeisty literary SF I'd been expecting...

Oh I read The Centre a few months ago. I couldn't quite follow what it was saying about language, but the plot reveal is WILD.

Ah, @inaptonym you have prompted me to do some research.. I didn’t realise Josephine Tey was an author, or that this book was one in a series by Nicola Upson about Josephine Tey.
ill look out for others by her and give it a go. I’m also interested in reading some real Josephine Tay. So thanks for the prompt.😀

@inaptonym Thanks for drawing my attention to some non fiction titles - I've just bought Mothers of the Mind (though I've already read quite a lot about Sylvia Plath's mother Aurelia, I don't know much at all about the other two). I hadn't heard of Private Inquiries or I think I'd have been searching for it in library catalogues already, as I've read several books by Caitlin Davies, mostly novels but also a book about Holloway Prison, Bad Girls, which was excellent. She's the daughter of Margaret Forster and Hunter Davies. And I'm very into crime fiction by and about women and interested in this subject, though I'm very wary of "true crime" as a genre.

Thank you !!! Was on the look out for that

@Sonnet yes, the book would be less good without knowing Tey’s work. Tey’s lead character, Detective Grant, has a parallel in the Upson books.

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey is especially wonderful.

30. Before We Were Trans by Kit Heyam
Thank you to the poster(s) who reviewed this before on the thread and piqued my interest. I'll be honest, I don't want to bring This Issue onto this thread in terms of getting into detail of what I might or might not personally think about themes in this book. I'll say though that this is a bold for me and I found it fascinating with some entertaining and moving research.

The Kindle sale seems to be mostly Elmer the Elephant for me!

32 The Summer of Lies - Louise Douglas Yet another Louise Douglas book (BorrowBox had loads of them available at once and I’ve been ploughing through them - one more to go!). This one is a sequel to The Lost Notebook which I read a few weeks ago, and is also set in Brittany in the summer - the heatwave atmosphere is really well done, I thought, so it’s one for fans of heatwave-lit! 😄

I preferred this book to the first one, despite the main storyline being really obvious from early on - Douglas’s books do tend to be more about the relationships and journey than the mystery itself. The main story is framed by the continuation of Mila’s own story and that of her deceased stepsister (drowned) and missing brother-in-law (missing, presumed drowned in the storm that claimed his wife’s life), and their teenage daughter, Mila’s niece. There is clearly more to come in this series as lots of questions were left hanging - it looks like the next book is out later this year. I think I’ve already worked out both of the remaining mysteries but will have to wait and see…

159. Remedy. Emily Bridget Taylor
     A bold for me. Poetry about heartbreak in different forms. Some with a lovely feminist theme. My favourite poem was called "Strange Disappearance." And foes as follows "God help the next man who breaks my heart."

160. One Month's Notice. Katie Lou.
     Easy read chick-lit type thing. I can't actually remember much about it.

161. The Second Life of Jonathan Sendel. Jeffrey Ashkin.
     Another bold. Sci-Fi story about a futuristic world where dead people can be cloned, you sign up to the process whilst still alive. So murder victims can be used to solve their own murders. If they do so they are allowed to live their previous life as if nothing had happened. But it was full of surprises and the ending was a total shock.

162. Second Glance. AE Bennett
     This is a spin of from a series I started earlier this year, the first book of which was a bold. This one was not as good. There was a lot of gay sex scenes. And of course it's set in a world where that's not allowed.

163. Allison Consents. D. Accord
     Allison separates from her husband, sex had never been exciting. Then her friend gives her a book of short smut stories. This book is those short stories written into the slightly longer story about Allison. I'm not really a smut reader, but this was alright.

164. Be More Octopus. Suzanne Lissaman. Chick-lit palate cleanser type book. Clearly forgettable!

63 Under Her Roof - A A Chaudhuri

This was not good. Close to a DNF for me, but I decided to stick it out.

Adriana is a wealthy widow whose last lodger died in mysterious circumstances. Seb is about to become her new lodger but has a secretive past of his own. Much implausibility and murderous mayhem ensues.

I found the characters wooden and unconvincing and the story highly unlikely.

That is a curve ball I’ve recently started watching the Netflix version - not finished it yet.

Ugh. I'm ploughing through yet another book in need of a basic proof reader. Not as bad as Women Warriors but I find myself getting irritated when I spot the typos and subconsciously on the lookout for more, which spoils the experience of reading.

(Unless Roland Polanski is the little-known cousin of the famous film director, in which case please accept my apologies, Roland, keep up the good work).

@SheilaFentiman I love how differently books land for different people. Under Her Roof was a bold for me!

Thank you 😀