50 Books Challenge 2024 Part Six

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the sixth 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, the fourth one here and the fifth one here.

What are you reading?

And I have just added a book to my pile. I tell myself that it's fine. I am reading all the easy books for a quick win 86 this year so maybe I will only need to live to 120

Ha, Morrigan, I'm quite tolerant when it comes to the "nice country walks" genre, but I was glad to finish that one.

minsmum, living to 120 to get through the tbr seems a noble goal. Everyone just has to stop writing books.

Loving the description of RIII as 'him from under the car park'

The book about tracing the genetics through umpteen generations to prove it was him was fascinating. John Ashdown-Hill is a bit more objective than Philippa Langley.

I'm not admitting how many unread Kindle books I have - because it's a lot and I don't have any real idea how many. But also there are some I read years ago, and that I'd like to reread at some point, and I quite often buy Kindle books I originally borrowed from the library or have read in paperback or hardback. DP and I have a few generations of Kindle devices around the house but I have two Paperwhites I actually use regularly, and the full collection wouldn't fit even on the larger one. I don't automatically download new acquisitions now, I just make sure I've downloaded books when I want to read them (or when I'm considering them as a next choice), and I do also download books sometimes to see whether they have page numbers/index links for non fiction or something.

Earlier this year I finally decided to start reading Red Comet, a very long, detailed biography of Sylvia Plath - I'd bought the hardback with birthday money some time ago. It then came up as a Kindle deal which was great, because the hardback was just too big and heavy to read comfortably, but it does have photographic plates etc.

You can usually remove books from a Kindle ereader device without deleting them entirely from your library - unfortunately I can't work out how to do this from my Kindle Fire which would be useful to make use of it as a tablet/portable gadget/small screen.

Been busy with work but just finished 22) Journey to the turquoise mountains- which was a book about someone travelling round Iran, I loved the travel stories but found the insterpersed history clunky and somehow not engaging despite being so interesting

I’ve got about 120 unread books on my kindle. Whenever I buy a new book it goes into a ‘not yet read’ category and then once I’ve read it, it gets moved to a category based on genre. I do have some other books on kindle that say they’re unread but they’re ones I bought after enjoying them from the library or similar so I have read the book just not necessarily the kindle version, so I don’t count those as unread.

I do go through my ‘not yet read’ category quite regularly though and have a bit of a clear out so it doesn’t build up too much. I’m also off on holiday next week when I’m hoping to clear quite a few more (by reading them!).

If anyone hasn’t read them yet, the entire Maeve Kerrigan detective series by Jane Casey is 99p today (11 books). I really enjoyed these when I binge read them earlier this year - I picked up the recommendation from one of the Strike threads, so if you like the ‘will they, won’t they’ of the Strike series then I recommend giving the Kerrigan series a try. The first couple of books are good but the series grows in strength as it goes on.

@Stowickthevast that's a fair review of G+V. I thought the author was funny and thoughtful and has it in her to write a deeper book than that.

@bibliomania I struggled with Assembly I have to say. I'm sure I was being unfair, but part of me kept thinking, ok but you don't actually have to be an investment banker?!

@ChessieFL I was tempted by the Jane Casey books. But there are a lot! Do you need to read them all or do you think you can get away with dipping into later ones, if they're stronger?

I confess that I never even thought about categorising anything on my kindle app, or sorting them in any way, until I discovered on here that could be a thing. Maybe that’s why I’ve ended up with such a monstrous total 🤷‍♀️

Anyway. 60. Ruskin Park - Rory Cellan-Jones

Some people might recognise Rory C-J from his very popular Twitter posts about his rescue dog, ‘Sophie from Romania', but he’s also the BBC's ex-technology correspondent. I mention the BBC as it’s played a pivotal role not just in his life but that of his mother and father too, as this touching memoir reveals.

He grew up as the child of single parent Sylvia, in a one-bedroom flat in Ruskin Park flats in South London, with a much older brother. Sylvia worked in BBC TV's drama department but Rory didn’t know much about her life until long after she died, when he finally investigated the thousands of documents and letters he’d found while clearing out the flat after her death. She'd left them marked 'For Rory', and he discovered that the woman he’d come to view affectionately but slightly exasperatedly for her eccentricity had spent her life struggling to make ends meet to build a worthwhile career for herself and to provide well for her two sons at a time when single motherhood was frowned upon.

The story's very sad at times - she made huge efforts to progress workwise, loved the BBC but never got the chances a man would have got. In her 40s she fell for Rory's father, her much younger colleague James Cellan-Jones, unexpectedly got pregnant and was assured by him that he’d marry her - only for his parents to take over, put a stop to it all and leave her abandoned and literally holding the baby, with years of struggle ahead. Meanwhile the father became a star of the drama department, a famous TV director who went on to marry someone else and have three children. Rory later met and had good relations with all of them but in a final cruel twist, his father was diagnosed with Parkinson's at the end of his life, and recently - but only in his 60s - Rory had the same diagnosis.

He tells his mother's story engagingly and with sympathy for a woman who must have had a very hard, often worry-filled life.

70 Genesis - Karin Slaughter

Third in the Will Trent series and the first to bring together that and the Grant County series. Once again, awful sexual and violent crimes are happening to women and complicated cops and medics are solving them. It’s a good one - if you like the genre, you will like it.

@Terpsichore I have collections on my kindle. It hasn’t stopped me 😀

@GrannieMainland one of the key points of the Maeve Kerrigan series is the relationships with her and her colleagues (one in particular!) so you do need to read them in order to understand how those relationships have developed. You can still read each one individually and enjoy the crime story but you won’t fully understand all the back story.

Like a few others I've been in a reading slump. It often happens to me in the summer months, and this year we went on a more activity based holiday so that precluded the usual 4 or 5 books read by a pool.
But yesterday after a two month drought, where many books have been started and abandoned, I finished the excellent
20) Hitler, Stalin, Mum & Dad by Daniel Finklestein.
Picked up at 99p following many recommendations on this thread.
It's the story of his Jewish families struggles to survive the Second World War.
Told in alternate chapters covering first his mothers than his fathers family, it is brilliantly written and as always with stories of the holocaust often shocking in its raw depiction of man's inhumanity to man.
Balancing this though there are acts of selfless bravery, kindness and sacrifice and some astonishing stories of triumph against the odds.

Possibly the first bold of the year for me.

Desdemona- glad to hear that’s good. I got it in the same 99p sale.
My prediction was correct- I DNFed Sing Wild Bird Sing- my free Amazon firsts historical fiction- too focused on romance and I didn’t like some of the way she represented the history of the Irish famine.
I did finish 140 Ruin Beach- Kate Rhodes the second Ben Kitto book. In this one a diver is found murdered on an island which only has a population of 200. I still like the community stuff but the mystery didn’t grab me as much in this one. Will still read the next (as I already have it on audio).
I’m still reading (and enjoying) House of Mirth and the spinning wheel has added The Rotter’s Club on audio, which I’ve started and love so far and The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida on ebook.

Oh also meant to say I too recommend the Jane Casey books for fans of the Strike books. I would start at the beginning.

I've just bought the first 5 of the Jane Casey books to add to my 5 or 6 Slow Horses books that I've bought at 99p but haven't yet read!
I am a huge fan of the Strike series though so hopefully I'll get round to them in time!

I'm also a Jane Casey fan. I have her last one to read yet and am looking forward to it!

35 The Body in the Blitz - Robin Stevens Second in the new series, about Hazel Wong’s little sister May and friends Nuala and Eric. The three of them are in London during the Blitz, being trained in code breaking and spy craft because so many existing agents are missing in the field (yes I know it’s unrealistic that 11-year-olds would be doing this - just go with it), when they stumble across another murder. Lots of fun and a good story - obviously for kids but I nonetheless enjoyed it at least as much as any Agatha Christie. My only criticism is that Stevens went slightly overboard on the inclusivity this time - I have always thought she does a great job of representing gay characters and those with elements of neurodivergence, but this book was frankly unrealistic in terms of the proportion of people who differed in one way or another from the traditional “norm” (and the trans character absolutely did not work). Regardless of that, I still love this series and can’t wait for the next one!

Thanks everyone for the Jane Casey advice, I've bought the first 3.

I'm going to give Jane Casey a try as well, thanks!

Doing a bit of a review dump here (am still not caught up with reviewing my holiday reading, but I'll do that shortly).

47. Vipère au poing [Viper in the Fist], Hervé Bazin 3/5
    A charity shop find. This autobiographical novel from 1948 (a French classic, apparently) is a coming-of-age story about a young boy in rural France who has a horribly abusive mother. Her sons nickname her Folcoche, which is a slang term for a sow who gives birth and devours her own piglets. The mother is also the metaphorical viper of the title. The story is vivid, packed with literary references, and has moments of irony and dark humour. However, the mother is so unmitigatedly evil that I found the book difficult to read. I have a lot of sympathy for the protagonist, but the author is very sexist views gender through a lens that is very much of his time.

48. The Hunter, Tana French 5/5
    This is a sequel to The Searcher but can be read as a stand-alone book. I found it totally engrossing. French writes the kind of detective fiction I like, which is all about characters and psychology. The retired Chicago police cop Cal Hooper, who has moved to western Ireland, is maybe a bit of a sentimental creation, but he’s a believable and endearing one. The Irish-American cultural exchanges are very well done, and the women characters are both sympathetic and complicated.

49. Who’s Afraid of Gender?, Judith Butler 4/5
    I’m a longtime fan of Butler (not a popular stance in the MN feminist chat threads, I know!). This is the first trade book they’ve published, and I found it thought-provoking and accessible but a little uneven; the chapters on how right-wing political leaders and religious institutions want to enforce patriarchy and heteronormativity seemed a bit obvious to me, as someone who grew up in evangelical America. The later chapters, however, are more analytical and contain a lot of rich material: for example, the idea that sex and gender are constructed in relation to each other, and the call for feminists to work together even when they don’t necessarily agree with one another (coalitions, says Butler, are meant to be uncomfortable). I heard Butler speak in person about this book, in a big hall packed mostly with students, and it was a moving experience. Butler, who was being interviewed by the brilliant Amia Srinivasan, came across as both passionate and compassionate.

50. La Tempête des échos, La Passe-Miroir Livre 4 [The Storm of Echoes, The Mirror Visitor Book 4], Christelle Dabos 4/5
    The last book in this fantasy series. I didn’t love it quite as much as the preceding volumes, as intricacies of plot seemed to overshadow the exploration of character. The plot became madly complicated at times, with echoes and doubles and mirrors and impersonations all over the place. However, Dabos’ creativity is impressive and entertaining. A quirky, well-written series that gave me a lot of pleasure.

51. The Book of Margery Kempe, trans Anthony Bale 4/5
    Kempe is a remarkable woman and this autobiographical account (dictated by Kempe, who was illiterate) is fascinating in many ways: the talk about sex is very frank, and she keeps getting into trouble for her loud crying (which is actually a gift from God, duh!). She also travels a great deal, and has a lot of encounters with unfriendly male church leaders, one of whom reminds her that women aren’t allowed to preach according to the Bible. She retorts that she is just conversing and speaking good words. I found the account of her postpartum depression particularly moving.

52. For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain, Victoria MacKenzie 5/5
    I decided that before I read this novel, I should read Julian and Margery’s own writings first, so that I would have my own impression of them before I encountered them in a modern retelling. (Who, me? Obsessive?) But actually I could just as well have started with MacKenzie, as she is so faithful to the spirit of their works. This is a beautiful book, that manages to encapsulate a great deal of both women’s texts very succinctly. The historical encounter between the two women is thoughtfully, convincingly imagined. Highly recommended.

I keep a whole ass app to organise my ebooks (Calibre) and regularly prune the unread ones but consider my job done when those get down to 3 figures 🤷🏻‍♀️ No shame, as I've spent most of my adult life living in non English-speaking countries (and currently rent in London) so see my elibrary as my actual library, and physical bookshelves as a lovely, provisional bonus. Have had some bolds by fishing something from the bottom of the pile, long after I'd forgotten why I bought it, and going in blind.

Thanks for the Jane Casey rec @ChessieFL et al! I've also succumbed as it doesn't looks like we'll get a new Strike this year. Any fans of Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie books here? I like/love KA usually but wasn't blown away by the first of these (3 novellas in a trenchcoat do not a novel make...) but is the series worth catching up on, given the latest is due next week?

I liked The Hunter @cassandre and I like your thoughts on it. I must look up Tana French. I loved the Dublin Murder Squad series.

@inaptonym

RE : Jackson Brodie it's a mixed bag, I'll be reading the new one but the last one Big Sky was not great Case Histories is one of the better ones, so if that wasn't for you I wouldn't proceed

@inaptonym It’s ages since I read the Jackson Brodies. I quite liked the first couple, but after that it was a law of diminishing returns. I vaguely remember they got increasingly far fetched. Like @EineReiseDurchDieZeit I think if you didn’t really enjoy Case Histories it isn’t going to improve.