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 am sorry to hear that @Owlbookend , wishing you all the best on the journey you are facing and hope that whatever you read can take you, however briefly, to a more carefree place.

1. Heaven My Home Attica Locke

Continues the story of Darren (a black Texas ranger) directly from where Bluebird Bluebird finished. I found it a fast paced page turner even more so than the previous one in the series. The sense of place in rural Texas & Darren's struggles with morally comprimising decisions are great. Some of the minor characters do seem one-dimensional and I found the ending and resolution less convincing than in Bluebird, but these are minor quibbles. It had me hooked & I'll be buying the next in the series.

1. Black Water Rising Attica Locke

This Houston based mystery thriller is set in the 80s. As a kid who watched Dallas with my Dad, the bars and clubs had a vague but darker familarity to them - a comparison that im sure Locke wouldnt appreciate 😳. Bizzarely as a small child my whole idea of what the US was like was based on Dallas - I thought it was filled with cowboys & sky scrapers (apologies to Americans on the thread - i was young). Many years later I changed planes at Dallas Fortworth & was mildly excited to see people wearing stesons in an unironic fashion. Anyway I digress, this novel has a great opening. Jay (our lawyer protagonist) is on an evening pleasure cruise with his pregnant wife when he hears shots and a woman screaming. She falls into the water and he saves her from drowning. Jay is unable to put this incident behind him and his urge to investigate sets off a complex chain of events. There are a lot of intertwinned storylines here. I did enjoy the links back to Jay's more radical past in the civil rights movement. However, I was losing focus at times trying to hold all the characters and linked aspects together. It is good & I'd have enjoyed it more I'm sure if my concentration wasn't a bit impaired at the time of reading.

Thinking of you Owl, and yes, a drift to comfort reads is an excellent plan.

My very best wishes Owlbookend

Wishing you all the best @Owlbookend

Sorry to hear you’re having to cope with treatment @Owlbookend - sending you all good wishes.

Owlbookend - sorry to hear about your health issues and hope the comfort reads help.

1. Femina, Janina Ramirez
2. Lady Sapiens, Thomas Cirotteau
3. Sankofa, Chibunda Omuzu
4. A Thing of Beauty, Peter Fiennes
5. The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, Penelope Lively
6. The Sittaford Mystery, Agatha Christie
7. The Running Grave, Robert Galbraith
8. The Britannias, Alice Albinia
9. The Secret Countess, Eva Ibbotson
10. The Theory of Everything Else, Dan Schreiber
11. Third Girl, Agatha Christie
12. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin
13. The Bone Chests, Cat Jarman
14. A Company of Swans, Eva Ibbotson
15. Rizzio, Denise Mina
16. The Patriarchs, Angela Saini
17. Oh My America, Sara Wheeler
18. The Secret Hours, Mick Herron
19. Jobs for the Girls, Ysenda Maxtone Graham
20. Murder is Easy, Agatha Christie
21. Notes from the Henhouse, Elspeth Barker
22. How Literature Saved my Life, David Shields
23. Old Bones Lie, Marion Todd
24. The Raging Storm, Ann Cleeves,
25. An Inspector Calls, J B Priestley
26. Onions in the Stew, Betty MacDonald
27. The Great Plague: A People's History, Evelyn Lord
28. Murder at the Seaview Hotel, Glenda Young
29. Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Fairy, Hannah Fawcett
30. Mad about Shakespeare, Jonathan Bate
31. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Charles Rivers eds
32. Weird Medieval Guys, Olivia Swarthout
33. Mona of the Manor, Armistead Maupin
34. With Bold Knife and Fork, M K Fisher
35. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way, Nancy Spain
36. To Venice with Love, Philip Gwynn Jones
37. The Rector's Daughter, F M Mayor
38. The Great North Road, Steven Silk
39. Piglet, Lottie Hazell
40. Why I'm Not a Millionaire, Nancy Spain
41. The Neanderthals, Charles Rivers eds
42. Q's Legacy, Helene Hanff
43. A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, Samuel Johnson
44. The Golden Mole, Katherine Rundell
45. Smile Please, Jean Rhys
46. The Left-Handed Booksellers of London, Garth Nix
47. Mortal Monarchs, Suzy Edge
48. Good Morning Midnight Jean Rhys
49. The Sinister Booksellers of Bath, Garth Nix
50. The Traitor's Niche, Ismail Kadare
51. Delicacy, Katy Wix
52. Moominsummer Madness, Tove Jansson
53. Little Englanders, Alwyn Turner
54. Magic Flutes, Eva Ibbotson
55. A Man Lay Dead, Ngaio Marsh
56. The Nursing Home Murders, Ngaio Marsh
57. Viking Britain Thomas Williams
58. The Swimmer, Patrick Barkham
59. What Remains, Tim Weaver
60. Wifedom, Anna Funder
61. Cloistered, Catherine Coldstream
62. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson

And the most recent:

The Mystery of the Crooked Man, Tom Spencer
Grafts the socially awkward woman trope (Eleanor Oliphant et al) onto the cosy mystery genre. Works rather well. Our heroine works in an archive, and discovers what seems to be a lost work by a Golden Age crime writer who bears a striking resemblance to Agatha Christie. Thought this was good fun.

Dickensland, Lee Jackson
Looks at late Victorian tourism (and beyond) to sites fictionalised by Dickens. I was quite interested in the last Victorians looking back sentimentally to the early nineteenth century, but I found the writing a bit clunky.

Sending you every good wish @Owlbookend

10. The Ready Made Family Antonia Forest
    Forest wrote a series of YA school & family dramas following the Marlow sisters over a number of years. I'd never read them as a child & only heard about them on mumsnet. There are so many reasons why I should hate them - me and Forest have literally nothing in common & the characters are often grating - but i don't, they're great comfort reads . Autumn Term, which is the most commonly available, I think is one of the weaker ones and The Ready Made Family my favourite. Here oldest sister Kay returns to tell the rest of the family she is leaving university to marry a much older man with children. The scene when she announces this is brilliant, the family reactions are really well drawn. Things descend into some rather unForestlike melodrama which I find quite enjoyable, but the main focus is on the evolving family relationships.
    I dont have the full series, but much as I'd like to I can't justify the extortionate prices needed to fill in the gaps with second hand copies.

11. Eating for England Nigel Slater Twee ruminations on British food. Passes the time when you can't be bothered thinking about anything if you like this sort of thing.

12. The Homes J. B. Mylett Period murder mystery told through the eyes of a girl living in a children's 'village' for children who cannot be cared for by their parents. Part social commentary, part thriller. Another easy to read page turner with a reasonably satisfying ending. Written for an adult audience, but quite a YA feel that I don't mind. The central character jumping to conclusions becomes somewhat repetitive and the police listening to & acting on her 'information' seems somewhat unlikely (particularly given the time period), but it kept me interested to the end.

Best wishes @Owlbookend

Thank you all for your good wishes - you're very kind 😊

Thinking of you @Owlbookend x

25 The Lost Bookshop - Evie Woods From previous reviews I didn’t have the highest hopes for this one, and I turned out to be right. Lots of whimsical romance and magical realism, with heavy subjects like domestic violence and war casually chucked in for the fun of it, all rolled up in a patchy plot with cardboard characters who don’t act like any real person would. It’s told from three different viewpoints (present-day male and female, and a young woman in the 1920s), yet they all had the same voice. It wears its research heavily and veers towards preachy with its repeated message about surviving the shitty things some men do and coming out stronger (although nothing like as bad as Babel!). Overall, it felt a bit like fan-fiction / a not-very-good first novel. I’ve read far worse though - it was fine to pass a bit of time!

Brining my list over (and thanks for the new thread)

1. Blood Sugar - Sacha Rothschild
2. A Bit of a Stretch - Chris Atkins
3. Confessions of a Barrister- Russell Winnock
4. Beyond the wand - Tom Felton
5. The Housemaid - Frieda Mc Fadden
6. Born a Crime - Trevor Noah
7. The Fell - Sarah Moss
8. Politics on the Edge - Rory Stewart
9. Just One Thing - Dr Michael Mosely
10. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
11. Just feel good - andrew Nap
12. The Casual Vacancy - JK Rowling
13. The Therapist - B.A Parris
14. The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman
15. The Trial- Rob Rinder
16. The Man Who Died Twice- Richard Osman
17. The Bullet That Missed- Richard Osman
18. We Play Games Sarah A Denzil
19. Escape from Evil - Cathy Wilson
20. Undoctored- Adam Kay
21. Blacklands - Belinda Bauer
22. Darkside - Belinda Bauer
23. Finders Keepers - Belinda Bauer
24. Oversharing- Jane Fallon
25. both of You - Adele Parks
26. The Art of Belonging - Eleanor Ray
27. My Favourite Mistake- Marian Keyes
28. Caledonian Road - Andrew O Hagan
29. The House of Mirrors- Erin Kelly
30. The Poison Tree - Erin Kelly
31. The Lifeline - Tom Ellen
32. Daisy Darker- Alice Feeny
33. Broadmoor revealed -Mark Steven’s
34. Girlfriends - Alez Dahl

Two more. Not sure why I forgot them. Well actually ...

13 & 14 Girl Missing/Sister Missing Sophie McKenzie
Mine & DD's reading taste do not usually align - she enjoys fantasy and I do not. Consequently, she was excited to share the above 'thrillers' with me that she thought I would enjoy. I'm not adverse to YA stuff including thrillers, but these were drivel. Completely contrived, unbelievable and predictable plot (i correctly identified the perp on about page 3 of the second book), paper thin characters and ludicrous situations where anybody with half a brain would just call the police. Reminiscent of the famous five with (very mild) teenage vibes. Anyway, not completely a waste of time as she was very pleased I read them on her recommendation. I toned down my comments when we discussed them - I'm not that mean.

Best wishes @Owlbookend, sorry to hear that. 💐

sending the best of wishes @Owlbookend

Sorry to hear your news @Owlbookend

Unmumsnetty hugs to you @Owlbookend , that is a lot to be going through 💐

I read Attica Locke's Black Water Rising years ago and thought it was excellent. I liked the focus on civil rights and left-wing politics. But I also found the plot a bit dense and hard to follow, which probably put me off rushing to read more of her novels.

My dad was from Colorado and he was very attached to his Stetsons 😂

Sending best wishes @Owlbookend

Thinking of you Owl xx

37. The L-Shaped Room - Lynne Reid Banks

The latest read of the Rather Dated Book Club. As the 60s dawn, 27-year-old Jane Graham takes possession of the titular oddly-partitioned room, 5 flights up in a bug-ridden boarding-house in déclassé Fulham. Jane's shame is that she's middle-class, pregnant and unmarried, and is punishing herself by seeking out these unlovely surroundings after being disowned by her scandalised father. Despite herself, she gradually gets to know her fellow-tenants: black jazz guitarist John, genteel retiree Mavis, kindly 'prossie' Jane and, crucially, aspiring writer Toby, with whom she falls, problematically, in love.

It’s very hard now to convey just how shocking this book was in its time, before the Swinging 60s exploded, and quite how scandalous Jane’s crime was to nicely-brought-up society. I first read it decades ago and have re-read it since. But this time the casual racism and derogatory language really leapt out, even though it was completely of the period, and I’m afraid Jane's more self-indulgent reflections (and there are a lot of them) tempted me to mutter some ungracious things at her.
More thoughts over on the Rather Dated thread when we discuss!

Sending you lots of love @Owlbookend

I'm half way through The L-Shaped Room @Terpsichore and agree with your thoughts on it so far! Very nice review :)

Sending you all my best wishes @Owlbookend

I bought Dark Water Rising in the May deals; it had been on my wishlist for a while. It sounds great but I will wait to read it until I can properly focus on it - or perhaps I'll make notes!