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?

Red Hollow by Natalie Marlow
This is the second of a crime series set in Birmingham, by a graduate from the Creative Writing MA at East Anglia. I say that because I think you can tell. I should’ve stopped at the first, but I do quite like the central character and the Brum setting, but I’m afraid that this was much worse than the first. Really very silly and rather badly written. Not at all sure why I continued with it.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I re-read Shogun earlier this year and bought Taipan,Gaijin, Noble House and Whirlwind when they were on the kindle daily deals. Just about to start Taipan. They are such page turners you don't notice how long they are. The same for The Count of Monte Christo

77 The Tenth Circle - Jodi Picoult

This started strong and I thought it would be a bold, but it really tailed off.

A fourteen year old girl accuses her ex boyfriend of raping her at a party; at the same time, her Dante-teaching mother is breaking off an affair and her illustrator father is coming to terms with how much his life has changed since he fled Alaska as a teen.

The text is interspersed with a comic strip drawn by him of a Marvel type character seeking his DD in Hell. This is hard to read on cheap novel paper.

The author tries to be on everyone’s side in this book, and I think it’s weaker for it. It’s
inexplicable that nothing is really made of the age difference (the ex is 17) by her parents, before or after the party. Not one of her best!

80. Dazzling by Chịkọdịlị Emelụmadụ
    Ozoemena is starting boarding school, struggling to fit in, and girls are going missing. Treasure is living in poverty since the death of her father but she makes a pact with a spirit to bring him back.
    I liked this book, original and intriguing. Treasure's chapters are written in Nigerian English which I did find difficult at times, but it made me concentrate. I liked how the stories came together at the end.

81. Watching the English by Kate Fox
    Pop anthropology about what makes the English English.
    Quite amusing in places but goes on a bit and I don't think everything in it is either universally or uniquely English. Pretty much confirms stereotypes about the English. Could probably be summed up as the English are socially awkward and like queues.

82. Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman
    Sisters Sally and Gillian Owens are raised by their witchy aunts who are social pariahs in their small town. As they grow up life takes them in different directions until tragedy brings them back together and they have to face up to their magical heritage.
    This was one of my favourite books when I read it many years ago but this time around I found the writing a bit sickly and people were falling instantly, hopelessly and irrevocably in love all over the place. Still enjoyed this story of sisters, love and magic though.

83. The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman
    Prequel to Practical Magic. This is the aunts' story, finding out about their magical heritage and the loves and losses they experience.
    It's a good story, with lots of turns, expanding on the Owens family history. The timeline is a bit off though, as the aunts are teenagers in the sixties, then old ladies when Sally and Gillian come to them, yet in Practical Magic Sally and Gillian are in their thirties in the nineties.

84. Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman
    Another prequel, this goes further back in time to tell the story of the Owens' ancestor Maria whose story is touched on in the previous books and who is the key figure in their family history.

85. The Book of Magic by Alice Hoffman
    Set a few years after Practical Magic. Most of the Owenses travel to England to try to finish what Maria started.
    I think this book is only necessary because of the prequels and the loose ends they added to the story that needed to be tied up. It does feel a bit contrived and tacked on, and the characters feel different but it's still not bad.

86. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami trans. Philip Gabriel
    15 year old runaway Kafka is searching for his mother and sister, a strange man talks to cats and weird time stuff happens.
    I like Murakami's writing style but he is terrible at writing women and found myself cringing every time a female character appeared.

87. The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
    Student Zachary finds a mysterious book and ends up in an underground library where strange things happen and it's all very confusing and I'm not sure what was going on most of the time. I did like the beginning before he ended up in the library.

88. This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
    Red and Blue, fighting on opposite sides of time travelling war, fall in love through the letters they write to each other.
    The writing style is very flowery which made it hard to follow. It seemed like the type of pretentious stuff that I usually like, but I think I just wasn't in the mood. I only read it because the title made me think it was going to be a light-hearted amusing story. It definitely isn't that. At least it was short.

89. Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks
    In the late 70s/early 80s Yamaye, the daughter of Jamaican immigrants in London spends her free time dancing with her friends and seeing her boyfriend but police violence and tragedy puts an end to her happiness. As her life spirals out of her control she needs to find a way to take it back.
    I loved this book. The slang (or is patois the right word?) sprinkled throughout it gives it a real feel for the time and place and characters, and the language has a rhythm that echoes the music Yamaye loves. I missed her when I finished the book.

Astragal by Albertine Sarrazin trans. Patsy Southgate
Anne breaks her ankle escaping from prison and is taken in by fellow criminal on the run Julien. She moves to various safe houses encountering different people and dangers.
This is the book that apparently changed Patti Smith's life (the edition I read has an introduction by her) but it won't have that effect on me. I think it's probably one of those books you have to read when you're young to really get into.

Hold Back the Tide by Melinda Salisbury
Alva lives in fear of her father who murdered her mother years ago. She plans to run away but she discovers her father may be neglecting his duties as keeper of the loch.
YA book that starts off like a crime thriller but turns into a horror story. I was a bit confused about the setting, whether it was meant to be a historically accurate version of Scotland or a purely fantasy version, as Alva seems quite modern. I quite liked the writing style but the horror is only mildly
horrifying (but then it is aimed at teens).

65. The Wife - Meg Wolitzer

I've read a few of Meg Wolitzer's books and enjoyed them - particularly The Position - but when this was picked for our book club I remembered that I’d started it before and lost interest quite early on. Tbh I didn’t find it any more gripping this time, though I did finish it.

The narrator is Joan Castleman, wife of 70-something Great American Novelist Joseph - they’re on their way to Finland where he’s about to receive a prestigious literary award, the crowning achievement of his career. Joan silently observes the hoo-ha as she looks back over their life together, starting with their first meeting as college professor and hero-worshipping student, through marriage, parenthood and Joe's repeated infidelities. A big reveal (which I guessed quite early on) is in store.

I feel a bit curmudgeonly in saying this was only OK. I didn’t feel especially convinced by either of the main characters, and Joe was such a drip that I couldn’t understand why a smart girl like Joan ever let herself get saddled with him, even in the uber-submissive 1950s (which somehow doesn’t ring true as the 1950s in the flashback sections, anyway). Wolitzer has written better books, imho.

83 The 45% Hangover – Stuart McBride. This was absolutely dreadful. It was a novella, only 100 odd pages and that’s the only reason I finished it. Set on the 18th and 19th of September 2014, the day of the Scottish Referendum and the day after in Aberdeen. His central character is DS Logan McRae and from what I can gather, it’s a popular series. I read the first book, Cold Granite, in 2014, but don’t remember much about it. Going back to The 45% Hangover, the title comes from the result of the referendum, where the Yes vote got 45%. The characters are awful, I just cannot imagine a DCI parading about a police station, shouting/singing Flower of Scotland, haranguing her staff to vote yes and then only remembering at 9.45pm that she hadn’t voted. The No supporters are just as bad. They are all smartly dressed Tories. What a stinker!

Can anyone recommend a Kindle to me? Mine is 12 years old and no longer holding a charge well. I've said that when I start my new job I'll buy a new one, that happy day is nearly here so it's time to start Kindle shopping.

Mine is a Kindle Paperwhite 11th gen and I am very happy with the backlight etc.

I replaced my old kindle last year with a new paperwhite and like the pp above I'm very happy with it.

Don't forget to trade your old kindle in for a voucher and a 20% discount on a new one.

I thought I would only get a £5 voucher for mine because it wasn't holding a charge at all but when they received it they upgraded me to a £20 voucher.

You can send your old kindle to them for free, you just need to fill in the paperwork online and print a label.

wait, what? my house is a graveyard of Kindles...

I was given a Paperwhite signature for Christmas and it's very good

I believe you don’t need the paperwhite version anymore for it to be backlit (for reading in the dark). So personally I’d just go with the cheaper version, I think it’s around £95. If you can hang on till Black Friday you might be able to get it cheaper then. I was looking recently as my Kindle is also quite old.

@SixImpossibleThings

The Starless Sea was such a letdown for me after The Night Circus

90. What Could Possibly Go Wrong? by Jodi Taylor

St Mary's #6

Max and the gang have further adventures.

I'm a little disenchanted with this now because of reasons I can't give due to huge spoilers for the series.

For those that know what I'm talking about :

The earlier Reset causes more questions than it gives any answers. It carries on like nothing's changed but it has and it creates gaps and should be plot holes.

Im not even halfway through the series and I am frustrated but still have all the books and they are easy reading so.....

Managed to get a few Booker longlist from the library so they'll all be next.

49 Night Waking by Sarah Moss

Anna Bennett is a historian - but she is also a mother of two young children, stuck on a remote Scottish island owned by her old Etonian husband - who is researching puffins. Anna is meant to be writing a book, but with no childcare and children who wake throughout the night (to which her husband is oblivious), she's not getting much done. After her son discovers the bones of a baby in the garden, Anna is still more distracted from her writing and is drawn into the history of the island, just as the arrival of a family to stay in the holiday home she and her husband have been renovating throws new light on her domestic troubles. This was an extremely well-drawn account of the seemingly insurmountable difficulties of combining work and family; although Anna is a challenging character, she is also wry and funny and I really liked her. In fact I really liked all of this up to the ending, which came too suddenly, too pat and in a format I didn't like. A shame because disappointing endings are my pet hate. But I'd still recommend this and I will continue to look out for Moss's books on the 99p deals!

109. Nick and Cecilia in York Minster, Helen Harrison
Picked up on a whim in a charity shop, this is a children's book from 1949, and it's aimed at getting children to appreciate ecclesiastical architecture. Two children are shown around the Minster by their uncle and demonstrate obedient interest. Mildly diverting as a period piece.

The following books are all on Kindle Unlimited. I got a one-month trial and have been trying to get through as many as possible (eight, as it happens - might manage the ninth I've downloaded). I've had to stop the trial a couple of days early as I was getting too obsessed with maximising value for (no) money and now want to read books for reasons other than their being free.

110. The Invisible Library, Genevieve Cogman
Mentioned on here a couple of times recently. It's urban fantasy - mysterious library, outside time, where the librarians can move into alternate worlds. All the usual elements are thrown in - fae, vampire, a baddy with alarming powers - and there's a hint of steampunk and a great detective along the lines of Sherlock Holmes. I thought it was reasonably fun and will look out for the sequels.

111. Dishonour and Obey, Graham Brack
The third in the Master Mercurius crime fiction novels, based in seventeenth century Netherlands, although here the action moves to London and the court of Charles II, with a cameo from Pepys. I've already forgotten the details, but again it was quite fun.

112. Not Cool: Europe by Train in a Heatwave, Jules Brown
Travelogue by a writer in his fifties reliving his Interrailing youth on a nine-day trip. By coincidence it covered some of the ground as my own holiday last month, so I enjoyed seeing the same places through someone else's eyes.

113. Welcome to the United States of Anxiety, Jen Lancaster
Rueful musing by American author on how we're all ridden with anxiety, worried whether our kitchen renovation will match up to the neighbours' and isn't it time we got a new couch to match our new decor? Nope, I do not identify.

25. The Vanishing Half Brit Bennett This was recommended to me by someone on the thread, when i read and enjoyed Passing by Nella Larsen. I cant remember who it was but thanks i enjoyed it. Not as much as Passing, but definetely a notch above most of the dross ive been reading recently. Stella & Desiree grow up in poverty in the small southern town of Mallard. Mallard has an almost exclusively light-skinned populstion & colourism is rife. As teenagers they run off together. Stella abandons Desiree to pass as white and marry a white man. Desiree marries a dark skinned black man whom is abusive so is forced to return to Mallard.. It follows their lives and their daughters lives over a number of decades. Good on loss and motherhood. It was quite a compassionste book. The inclusion of a trans character was interesting. I was intrigued by what parallels the author was/was not intending the reader to draw.

249 Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson

I loved this! Loved being back with Jackson and Reggie, loved the murder mystery weekend storyline, loved Atkinson’s writing. Definitely a bold for me.

250 The Garden of the Gods by Gerald Durrell

The final part of the Corfu trilogy - didn’t quite manage to finish this while on holiday there!

Oh, I'm glad you enjoyed it! I was feeling anxious about my opinion being too kind.

91. The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden

Longlisted for the Booker

Short and sweet could have read in one sitting but I ran out of time

Staid, solitary Isabel's life is shaken when her brother's girlfriend comes to stay in the family home.

I wasn't really feeling this until the last third, which I found affecting and well done.

It's not going to be a bold because I feel destined to have forgotten it in a short space of time. It was diverting enough.

78 Mythos - Stephen Fry

This was OK. A solid retelling of many of the important myths. But no real flair or interpretation (TBF, Fry says at the end he is not doing this)

I have this on audiobook too and it’s better with Fry reading it.

Bringing Columbia Home: The Untold Story of a Lost Space Shuttle and Her Crew - Michael Leinbach and Jonathan Ward

Thank to those who recommended this, the story of the operation to recover the Space shuttle Columbia after its devastating disintegration on re-entry in 2003 with the loss of all 7 crew members.
This was a definite bold for me and made me cry. We visited Kennedy Space centre years ago and it was unexpectedly emotional and one of the most memorable days, although to my disappointment we were there the day before the space shuttle Atlantis went on display to the public so we never got to see one.

I wish I'd read that instead of my latest Orbital @BestIsWest. I can't say I wasn't warned but I am amazed this made the Booker longlist.

I felt like I was reading a Geography exam as again and again she just lists the countries and the continents they're going over and tells you for the umpteenth time that night changes to day every two hours. This is interspersed with "wow man, humanity is just a blip on the history of the world, we're so tiny" type musings, of the sort that reminded me of stoned late night chats when I was a student. Nothing happens and we don't really get much insight into the individual astronauts and their feelings as a lot of the book is written in third person plural so they're a collective consciousness. Disappointing.

I really liked The Safe Keep Eine. I quite enjoyed her gradual awakening in the second part.

I well and truly fell off the thread there and no idea what I have and haven't reviewed or their numbers. Never mind!

And Then She Fell
I got a bit stuck on this. I absolutely loved it but felt it needed proper time to read not 5 mins here and there and I never had proper time and then when I did, I had forgotten what happened. I loved Alice as an unreliable narrator but was completely bamboozled by the final quarter of the book. I loved the idea of the 10 days of grieving and then a ritual to help you move on and be there for those left behind. I hope it's a real indigenous idea and not fiction. I might research.

My Favourite Mistake
Marian Keyes writing about an Anna Walsh update was pretty much everything I hoped for although Narky Joey's personal growth journey was nearly too huge to be believed. I set aside reality and enjoyed the humour and the amazing phrases. I am currently thinking in Irish.

251 A Bachelor Establishment by Jodi Taylor

A Regency romance by the St Mary’s author. Good fun!