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?

@JaninaDuszejko I've got Kairos waiting on the pile by my bed so glad to hear it's good. Have you read anything else by her? I read Go, Went, Gone last year which I also thought was very good about a retired professor in former East Germany getting to know lots of African immigrants living there.

I've never tried Proust but The Prisoner sounds like something from the relationships page - pretty sure she should LTB!

81. Creation Lake - Rachel Kushner. One of the last 2 Booker Longlist books to be released (along with Richard Powers latest which isn't out until the end of the month). I quite liked this while I was reading it but I wasn't sure where it was going and now that I've finished it, I'm not really much the wiser. It's narrated by Sadie, an American freelance spy, who's been hired to infiltrate a French environmental protest group deep in the French countryside and it's leader Pascal. The group sends a lot of emails to an older revolutionary, Bruno, and a lot of the book is spent on Bruno's musing about neanderthals, the Cargot people, astrology and living in caves. It's quite funny, Sadie is mean and cold but a convincing narrator and some of the philosophising is interesting but I just don't think it really works as a whole. It's definitely not a spy novel. From the 5 Longlist books I've read, it would be mid table, below My Friends and The Safe Keep but above Enlightenment and Orbital. Very odd selection this year.

That's an excellent description of it! She is excellent at depicting the heady feeling of freedom post-lockdown.

I tend to get a couple of graphic novels for Christmas and birthdays so this one is definitely going on my list!

The Glynis MacNicol is only available in hardback that I can see? Not enough space for any more physical books!

I also did a search for the Glynis MacNicol - not on kindle, apparently.

Glynnis MacNicol does have a previous memoir available on Kindle for 99p, No One Tells You This.

About to go and borrow/return various library books, hopefully at more than one library branch. A copy of Creation Lake has come through. My prediction that, no matter the length of the queue and the expected wait, more newish books, with lots of other reservations, will come through at once that I can possibly deal with, is definitely coming true just now. Apologies for the length/construction of that sentence.

@PepeLePew I'm shouting about Under Your Spell to anyone who'll listen, I thought it was an absolute delight, maybe the best romance book I've read. I'm pretty sure the author moved from academia to writing children's books, so I assumed that was there as biographical detail.

I finally read a Booker novel, My Friends. It was excellent as everyone has said, and although I knew about Yvonne Fletcher I had NO IDEA about the circumstances of that murder or that so many others were shot as well. I found it a bit slow to begin with but it really picked up as it raced through the years.

I'm reading September by Rosamunde Pilcher now and enjoying wallowing in shooting parties, Kensington mews houses and malt whiskey nightcaps.

Thanks elkie, I'm willing to give that a go for 99p.

I quite fancy the Pilcher too, even if it doesn't sound very like my September.

Or mine - wish my September was like that!

Oh yeah not much like my September either - I've spent most of today watching Bluey with my toddler, both of us with colds!

Ah, I borrowed mine from the library so I didn't realise. Weirdly not available on kindle in the US either, so I wonder if they just haven't got round to releasing an ebook version yet?

@noodlezoodle

I will check my library!

I’m also intrigued by *I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself *but I note it hasn’t been published in the UK so it won’t be in my library and I can’t justify spending north of £20 on it.

Oh right! It won't be in mine then either!

Huh. I assumed it had been published in the UK but realise I was just basing this on it being available on UK Amazon, but I see it's published by Penguin US.

It's onto its second printing in the US so hopefully it will pop up in a UK edition soon. Sorry for being misleading!

I've also just bought September. I'm absolutely drowning in a non fiction at the moment so some lovely seasonal escapism is exactly what I need to look forward to. I have a work event today that will involve at least an hour of waiting around with nothing to do so going to take my Kindle and hopefully get a decent chunk of my current read out of the way

Thanks to everyone who replied re types of kindle they recommend. I charged up my ancient one yesterday for the first time in a while and it's refused to switch on 😭looks like I'm not waiting until Black Friday deals! Do you think i can I still trade it in for money off a new Kindle?

I've noticed a lot of praise here for My Friends and agree, it's a fantastic book. Currently reading James and so far I'm hooked. As for Enlightenment, I ended up taking it back to the library today due to it being reserved but tbh, I doubt I'll get it back out as I have a feeling it might be a DNF anyway.

I have just finished The Rest Is History taken from Sandbrook and Holland's popular podcasts. I found it very bitty , probably for that reason, and only twice thought I had learned something new and interesting ( to me). Part of the problem is racing through each bit meant I didn't retain things.

I did enjoy the parody Dan Brown chapter!

In exactly the same situation with Enlightenment @InTheCludgie

Thanks for the heads up Piggy, I love a bit of history so will check it out.

Elkie - I'm in exactly the same situation. Lugged a bag of books home from the library at the weekend. One of the great questions of life: why do they all turn up at once even though they've been reserved over the last two months?

@Southeastdweller new thread!

95. Reach For The Stars by Michael Cragg

A behind the scenes look at the world of pop 1996-2006. Recommended by Richard Osman on his podcast

I was very much a Britpop teen, but with a sideline in liking to dance to cheese.

This encompasses the era running from the formation of the Spice Girls to The X Factor and the orchestration of manufactured popstars.

Covering the likes of 5ive, Steps and S Club it lifts the lid on what went down, perhaps not enough? He was reliant on select individuals having their say and not everyone involved is covered, but I was intrigued and diverted by it.

One for the specifically interested in the music industry as it was.

65 Occupational Hazards - Rory Stewart

Another excellent book by Stewart, detailing his role as part of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq following the toppling of Saddam Hussein. In his typical style he expertly captures the frustration, challenges, terror and occasional successes of the occupation.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/5165710-50-books-challenge-2024-part-seven