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?

There are more Deals today but I haven't seen anything I want or haven't already got

Hi @Sonnet I read 'In God's Old Time' last February and wrote a review on it (no idea how to do a link).

I thought it was good and I liked it a lot. I had to go back and reread a large chunk of it because like you, I wasn't sure what was real and what was imaginary due to the unreliable narrator and his deteriorating mental state. It was harrowing in parts and very poignant from what I remember :)

I’m almost finished agree totally with your view. Also glad it’s not just me that has had to go back and do a re read 😀

@inaptonym I've just picked up Twilight Cities in the sale so thanks for bringing that to my attention

‘Roland Polanski’ 😂😂

'please accept my apologies, Roland, keep up the good work' 😂😂

@FuzzyCaoraDhubh @Sonnet I found all the bits about his daughter particularly confusing. A book to admire rather than love.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I picked up Mongrel in today's deals which looked interesting. Not sure if someone mentioned it already.

54. Martyr! - Kaveh Akbar. This is one of the potential Booker longlist books that I've seen mentioned. It's about an Iranian American man, Cyrus, in his late 20s who is obsessed with death and how to bring meaning to your death after both his parents have died in seemingly meaningless ways. The book has chapters from Cyrus' viewpoint in the states where he has lived since he was 2, flashbacks from his mother's life in Iran, as well as random dream conversations between historical figures and media characters like Lisa Simpson and Karem Abdul Jabbar. It's trying to do a lot but I found it a bit too fractured, but with some good parts.

55. Thunderclap - Laura Cumming. From the woman's prize non-fiction shortlist, this was about Dutch painters and the author's painter father. I enjoyed this and it definitely made me want to go and look at some Dutch art.

I just picked that up Stowick Thanks!

Also caught up on the NYT books of the century. I thought it was quite an odd selection, especially having several books by the same author where one was great and the others are not very well known, like George Sanders. I'm not a Ferrante fan so don't agree with her inclusion but know lots of people love her.

I was pleased to see Persepolis and The Fifth Season by N.K Jemisin, it's definitely a less white male list than a similar one we would have seen 50, or maybe even 25, years ago.

I've read 34 of them so quite a few but still thought there were some glaring omissions - Milkman, not much from Asia, no Sally Rooney or A Little Life.

Oh and I really liked A Visit to The Goon Squad! <Gets coat>

I also liked Goon Squad

And I HATED Wild Swans

a book to admire rather than love
I agree with you @Stowickthevast

@Romanmum that made me laugh out loud in the shower

Eine, I'm kind of reeling from that news! I'll search for your review of Hillbilly Elegy. That book made me angry at various points, so much so that I dumped it at the charity shop after reading it (a friend had given it to me as a gift, thinking it would interest me because I'm American, ha). Vance is pretty patronising about the people he's describing. As I recall, he blames individuals for not having the wherewithal to pull themselves out of poverty, rather than blaming wider social structures. He wasn't as right-wing as he is now, but you could definitely see signs of the asshole he has become 😡

(Who, me, politically partisan?)

@inaptonym I can't believe you've read 47 of the NYT 100 books, wow. I'm very eager to read Young Queens. It does sound like Chang has deliberately dumbed things down far too much.

About me being a kind reader, well, J.D. Vance is apparently where my benevolence stops 😂

I'll always be grateful to you and the others who recommended Cynthia Harnett! Reading her books has been a big highlight of my year so far. I'll definitely check out Barbara Willard, thank you.

27. Just For The Summer by Abbey Jimenez

Girl meets boy. They are both compassionate, funny and of course in tricky situations that would make a relationship difficult.

A real page turner and I loved the characters and wanted to go for a drink with them. It might be a rom com at heart (I could so imagine a film of this) but it's nicely done and covers some big topics about the way our childhoods affect our adult lives. 4.25 stars for me.

@cassandre

I didn't consider it a particularly political book but I would say he's probably of the mindset that if he went to Yale with his background nobody has any excuse....

I bought Hillbilly Elegy on Kindle a few years ago, and then read more about the author which put me off reading it a bit. I don't think I'll ever read it now.

Really Good Actually and The Rachel Incident are in the Kindle sale, both read and enjoyed by many of us here.

I agree Eine, it's not an explicitly political book, but I still felt there was an underlying ethos of 'people should stop being lazy and pull themselves up by their bootstraps and they will be fine'.

He did have an awful childhood and it's great that he managed to forge a better life for himself via the Marines and Yale, but to argue that anyone can do that if they just improve their attitude... well, I'm not convinced. (I know that's his argument btw, not yours! you sum up his argument well.) It reminds me of the Horatio Alger 'rags to riches' myth. It's still very popular, as a belief many Americans cherish about America, and I'm sure it's part of Vance's political success.

Incidentally the book was not popular with a lot of Appalachians; they thought it reinforced stereotypes and generalised too much (eg not all Appalachians are feckless; some are hardworking and thrifty).

I regret getting rid of the book now as I'd like to look at it again! Anyway I shouldn't talk about US politics at the moment; the high likelihood of a Trump victory, and the spectacle of Biden's cognitive decline, have been upsetting me so much that the temptation to rant is terrible 😢😂

Am currently reading Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson. It is an easy read, a real page turner set in the Caribbean and California. "A family drama meets murder mystery". I would recommend it if you are looking for easy summer reading.

Job in books :-)

https://x.com/tilda__key/status/1813523294513156414

; the high likelihood of a Trump victory, and the spectacle of Biden's cognitive decline

It's not a great time for US politics at all

Gone: A Girl, a Violin, a Life Unstrung - Min Kym.
Non-fiction with a few different elements - a Korean girl leaving Korea and coming to live in the West; life as a child prodigy as a violinist and the career of a young professional musician; the theft of her Stradivarius violin and the story of its recovery by police; the lasting psychological trauma on the author of the loss. I liked the insights on Korean culture, but her writing wasn't up to much, and the main thing I was left with was "WTF were you thinking taking a million pound item on public transport?". Underwhelming.

42. Doreen: Barbara Noble

This was a recommendation by Terpsichore on the Rather Dated thread.
It's an absolutely* *excellent little gem of a book. I loved it.

Published in 1946, Barbara Noble tells the story of Doreen (nine), whose mother makes the difficult decision to send her out of London as a child evacuee into the countryside to keep her safe and out of harm's way during the Blitz. She arranges a temporary adoption with a well-off childless couple who do their best for Doreen and treat her as if she were the child they never had.

Therein lies the problem. What follows is a tug of war between this well-intentioned but short-sighted pair and the mother who feels increasingly jealous and dispossessed. In the middle is the child who is conficted between the growing affection she feels towards her adoptive parents and the enduring love she has for her mother. This is compounded by the obvious class differences between the adults who care for Doreen. When the child begins to thrive in this safe, wholesome environment, the question arises of what is best for Doreen. There are overtones of Clare Keegan's 'Foster' here, but where 'Foster' ended with a germ of hope for the future, the final note sounded bleakly here.

There is only one obvious way this story ends and it involves rupture and heartbreak. Barbara Noble deals with this subject with great psychological insight and sensitivity and the reader is able to understand the dilemma from everyone's perspective. She is a masterful storyteller.

The book I borrowed from the library was a first edition, published in 1946 with the original ticket and date stamps going back to the 1940s so it really felt like I had a historical artifact my hands.
Recommended if you can find an old copy. Thanks again @Terpsichore !

52 The Happiness Trap - Russ Harris

Cheerful and practical introduction to ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) which I’ve been interested in finding out more about for a while. Veers into slightly woolly mindfulness stuff every now and then but has some tips which I’ll be trying out.

Doreen is also published by Persephone* *books by the way.