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?

Tenant = the best Bronte novel imo. Vastly superior to Wuthering Heights which personally I think is stupid.

I read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall for the first time recently and loved it.

33 And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliott. Alice is Mohawk, has just had a baby, is trying to write a book based on her Native culture and is living in Toronto, having moved out of the Six Nations reserve to live with her white husband Steve. I thought this started well, then descended into a "wtf is going on?" section (magical realism? mental illness?) which did eventually have me hooked and wanting to find out what happened next. I liked the ending too.

34 It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover. I read this because my 16yo DD loved it. I agree with Eine that the abuser is a bit too attractive, but it's a page turner and it provoked a good and important discussion with my DD, so on the whole I feel positive about this. I remember reading the excellent The Woman Who Walked Into Doors when I was a few years older than my DD and it really stuck with me.

I started reading Tenant earlier this year and read something in another book which gave away the whole plot. Given that I can't even remember which book ruined it I'm hoping my memory is shoddy enough that I forget the ruined storyline in a few years and can start Tenant again.

Yes that is right Pepe & Bibliomania.

The bit I had remembered was the team being shown videos of Olga Korbut and they couldn't* *understand why she was popular when she was so old (17!).

I also loved Tenant of Windfell Hall. Must read it again.

Oh, this is fantastic news. Now to try to track down a copy and see if it as I remember. Thank you, CutFlowers!

76 Grown Ups - Marian Keyes
Three brothers and their wives are in a tight knit group, all with their own stories, troubles and secrets. They come to a head at a dinner party and are explored by a series of flashbacks.
This was really long (637 pages!) but it didn’t feel a slog. The characters were well developed, the storylines not too unrealistic and not everyone had a nicely wrapped up happy ending. I liked it, was an easy read but I expect I will forget about it in a few days

I didn’t like Skippy Dies either, but thought the Bee Sting was amazing.

Thanks Odile, that sounds encouraging!

Glad to see the shared love for The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I'm thinking of reserving Agnes Grey on audio as well - any thoughts on that one?

35.The Bullet that Missed by Richard Osman. The third in the series of geriatric sleuth novels that everyone apart from me has already read. As usual, the plot is daft but deft, and the humour is tempered with sadness most often related to ageing and infirmity. Although lots of the supporting characters are a bit cardboardy Joyce and Elizabeth give me enough interest to keep going wuth the series.

56. I Seek A Kind Person - Julian Borger

Spotted this in the monthly deals after missing it first time round. Borger’s father, Robert, committed suicide when his 4 children were in their early teens. Julian’s mother, Wyn, and the whole family had lived with the reverberations of Robert’s early life as a refugee from Nazi-occupied Vienna (his behaviour had consistently been difficult and made for many challenges to family life) but only as an adult did Julian discover that his grandparents had advertised in the Manchester Guardian asking for a ‘kind person’ to take in their young teenage son - this had been his route to safety.
He set out to trace Robert’s - and his own family’s - past, as well as the stories of some of the other children in the surrounding adverts.
This is a sad, often very touching tale, treading similar territory to eg Hadley Freeman’s superb House of Glass - I feel somewhat bad in saying it doesn’t reach the same heights, but an affecting read nevertheless.

57. Persuasion - Jane Austen

A re-read after many years. Boy loses girl, to the regret of both. They meet again long afterwards, time has passed, feelings have not changed, but the proper acknowledgement of this takes some while to be fully understood by both. Happiness ensues.
Astonishing, really, that such simple yet piercing emotional truths could be so perfectly and wisely expressed by a woman writer of Austen’s time. There’s nothing in it that doesn’t chime with human experience today (including Anne’s nincompoop relatives).

Always #teamAnne Agnes Grey isn't nearly as amazing as Tenant, but still solid and worth reading, especially in direct comparison with Villette/Jane Eyre.

During the Olympics I've been sticking to lighter reads but as the Booker longlist proved to have a surprising degree of overlap with my TBR I might attempt the whole shebang come autumn - anyone else? Have already read Enlightenment which was very good but not a bold.

@Sonnet I really rated The Bee Sting too, keep thinking about it months later (not the ending, which I didn't even find ambiguous #hellodarkness but the whole thing). From last thread re: Josephine Tey I loved her books from a young age but there are some very dated aspects - the misogyny and classism in The Franchise Affair* *is off the charts! My favourite of hers is the standalone Miss Pym Disposes which is as much girls' school story as mystery.

I still enjoy Nicola Upson's Tey series, although less so the one I've just finished:
Dear Little Corpses (book 10),* *in which WWII has broken out and the first group of evacuees arrive in the village where Josephine now lives. This was the grimmest of the series so far, as the tagline 'It takes a village to bury a child' would've signalled, if only I'd seen it beforehand! The dark mystery is bizarrely combined with a jaunty village fête social comedy storyline, guest starring (another real) Golden Age mystery author Margery Allingham.
So depressing it's put me off catching up with the next in the series, which sounds right up my street otherwise (Marta heads to Hollywood and the Hitchcocks).

Ritual of Fire - D.V. Bishop
Book 3 of Renaissance Florence-set mysteries, starring gay law officer Cesare Aldo. Aldo's based in the Tuscan countryside for this one, while estranged former protégé constable Strocchi remains in the city, but the pair must work together to solve a series of showy Savonarola-inspired murders which are stirring civil unrest 40 years after the monk's death. Plotwise, weaker than the previous books (and there were some sections from the murderer's POV, inexplicably in 2nd person present tense, which added nothing but annoyance) but I enjoyed the setting and development of recurring characters.

Death in Delft and Untrue 'Til Death - Graham Brack
Opening another historical mystery series set in 17th C. Netherlands, with sleuth Master Mercurius, Protestant professor of Theology at the University of Leiden, secretly also an ordained Catholic priest. Framed as the memoirs of a much older Mercurius, and narrated in amusingly snarky first-person - which I found cosy/enjoyable enough to keep reading, even though the first book involved missing girls, again. It's not at all graphic/sensationalist, but If you'd really rather not, I think the second book stands alone fine without it, combining politics/spycraft involving William of Orange with academic satire. (Although the first book does incorporate both Vermeer and van Leeuwenhoek as proto-forensic investigators of very different stripes and much bickering.)

Relight My Fire - C.K. McDonnell
Book 4 in a comic urban fantasy series about The Stranger Times, Manchester's premier indie newspaper covering 'weirdy bollocks'. A return to form and fun after an uneven, heavier third instalment. Just shy of a bold: much taphophilia (yay), but hardly any Ox and Reggie (boo); Stella tries clubbing (relatable!), but Manny tries trousers (unfortunate); zombie Margaret Thatcher, but zombie Margaret Thatcher 🤔

Keanu Reeves is Not in Love with You - Becky Holmes
Nonfic fluff. Holmes became Twitter-famous during the pandemic for stringing along would-be romance scammers with funny/surreal replies and putting their chats on blast. This book is part 'best of' compilation, part deep dive into romance scams targeting women, based on interviews with experts, victims and even some scammers (former and current). Apart from the victims' stories (a good variety, all moving, never condescending) the deep dive part was much less successful, because a) it wasn't that deep, and b) the cheesy-jokey tone she maintained really didn't lend itself to addressing the complexities of the legacy of colonialism and racism intersecting with toxic masculinity and global organised crime networks in Kenya and Nigeria... However, some of the original Twitter exchanges genuinely made me LOL, though admittedly I was coming to it blind, having deleted the app years ago. I also appreciated her awareness and openness about how her own experiences shaped her (uncompromising) point of view, even while disagreeing. Not bad as a quick read, though you could get the gist from her Times interview.

Next up, latest Harbinder Kaur (Elly Griffiths) and giving today's 99p Rob Rinder a go.

I can't remember if I've read Agnes Grey or not. I must've done, because I don't see how I would have missed it, but, if I did, I can't remember a single thing about it, even after looking up the plot.

I have read Agnes Grey and just recall disappointment

I like Agnes Grey but I'd agree it's not as good as Tenant

I remember Agnes Grey being a quiet kind of a book.

SPOILER ALERT for anyone thinking of reading it...

I looked up my review on here and it was; 'A poor girl called Agnes has to go earn her crust and teach some rich, bratty kids. Meets nice dull man and marries him. The end.

I enjoyed Tenant more. After reading Terpsichore's review on Persuasion, I would like to read or reread that at some stage.

Lol 😆

Excellent review.

Persuasion is a masterpiece.

Persuasion is my top JA. I must read again.

belatedly bringing my list over

1. Claire Keegan - Small Things like These
2. Charlotte Gilman- The Yellow Wallpaper
3. Emerald Fennel - Monsters
4. Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game
5. P.D.James - Shroud for a Nightingale
6. Nina Bawden - The Peppermint Pig
7. Stephen King- The Tommyknockers (audio book)
8. Margaret Atwood- Madadam
9. Penelope Fitzgerald - Offshore
10. Diana Wynne Jones - Howl's Moving Castle
11. Thornton Wilder- The Bridge of San Luis Rey
12. Adams, Sturm and Sutphin - Watership Down : Graphic Novel version
13. E M Foster A Passage to India
14. F Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby
15. Denise Mina Rizzio
16. Winifred Watson - Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
17. Sheila Mackay The Orchard on Fire
18. Maggie O'Farrell Hamnet
19. Per Petterson - Out Stealing Horses
20. Ben Halls- The Quarry
21. Danya Kukafka Notes on an execution* *
22. Simon Armitage Hansel and Gretel : A Nightmare in Eight Scenes.
23. Rob Rinder The Trial (Audio book)
24. Jenni Fagan Hex
25. Hallie Rubenhold The five: The untold lives of the women killed by Jack The Ripper
26. Jenni Fagan The Panopticon
27. David Grieg Columba’s Bones
28. Pearl S. Buck The Good Earth
29. Leonard Cohen Book of Longing
30. Penelope Fitzgerald The Bookshop
31. Val McDermid Queen MacBeth
32. George Eliot Middlemarch
33. Beryl Bainbridge A Quiet Life
34. Alan Warner Nothing Left to Fear from Hell

Haven't got any new reviews to post as the school holidays are giving me a kicking this year.

Tenant is absolutely one of my favourites and I've never understood why Anne has so little recognition in comparison to her sisters. The writing in Tenant is so much pacier, less stylistic, and her characters so much more self aware than those of say Emily. Anne's work seems more to anticipate late 19th Century novels.

52 Rare Singles by Benjamin Myers
This was just ok. I didn’t hate it, but it didn’t linger on in my thoughts like most of his other books. It seems a bit rushed somehow.
The story concerns Bucky Bronco, an ageing singer whose “one and a half hits” are Northern Soul classics, so he’s invited to a Scarborough Weekender by Dinah. In an uncharacteristic move from an opioid addict he leaves his entire stash on the plane so he is suffering severe withdrawal symptoms throughout. Dinah has a horrible son and an even more horrible husband, but not usual Myers Standard Horrible, so phew.
There are Myers books I admire (Cuddy, Beastings, The Offing) and the odd ones I’m not keen on (The Gallows Pole). This is neither, an odd inbetweeny bit off fluff, with some clunky exposition and uncharacteristically clanging dialogue. Sometimes the repetition of Bucky’s song titles comes across as an attempt to bump up the word count of what is little more than a novella. Occasionally a bit of beautiful description breaks through, but it’s far from his best.

Another dud im afraid. I think this is what happens when you stick to undemanding stuff that is immediately available on Borrowbox.

20. The Hiding Place Amanda Mason Chick lit meets woo in a fictionalised Whitby. It opens like a mumsnet thread. Nell travels to her home town with her husband Chris and Maud her 12-year-old stepdaughter, with whom she has an increasingly strained relationship. They are only there a short while before Chris returns home to deal with business problems. At this point 'woo' stuff starts happening in ernest. All the usual - lights go off, ghostly footsteps are heard, disgusting smells - you get the picture. An old child's shoe is retrieved from a wall cavity. Things escalate. It must be returned to stop things (no i dont undestand why). At no point does Nell ring Chris and say, 'i am coming home. I am scared, the weird neighnour has infiltrated themselves into the holiday, the house stinks, i keep hearing strange noises and the lights dont work half the time. Plus im fed up with providng childcare for bratty Nell.' Wouldn't be much of a story if she did (maybe no bad thing,). Perhaps im being harsh. Im not the market for this type of thing. Ghost/horror stuff has to be really, really good for me to give it the time of day. I didnt twig it involved ghostly goings on before i started.

@Owlbookend that does sound hilariously bad, can't wait for the sequel.

Genuine question: how many books to take on a fortnight's holiday (physical books, no kindle) ? DH says 2, DD is packing 3, I've stripped it back to to 8 but DD is threatening to hide two of these 😳. It's in the UK and the weather is looking changeable at best so I'm erring on the side of caution...

69. The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

So earlier in the year I read and really enjoyed I Have Some Questions For You. It proved divisive on the thread, but I liked it, so reading her other one was a no brainer.

In the Mid 80s in Chicago, a group of gay men begins to die of AIDS.

In 2015, the sister of one of the men goes to Paris to reconnect with her estranged daughter.

The 2015 section doesn't work at all and nearly ruins the book. It seems to exist for the final scene which is a good ending but other than that is hard to invest in and feels contrived.

There's also far too much about an art collection in the 80s section, when she should have stuck with the human interest

A well intentioned misfire.

The Fifth Season and The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin

Fantasy/science fiction dystophia set (probably) on Earth, very far into the future, after the catastrophe of 'the Rifting' a human-made massive geological catastrophe from the POV of a female 'orogene' (a person with the ability to manipulate energy). The author is excellent at world building and creating a relatable story. The Fifth Season has three strands of the story that eventually connect and make sense of what has gone on before and The Obelisk Gate* *continues on from The Fifth Season with the orogene plus her daughter. Very human story of loneliness, wanting to fit in, keep family safe and being at the receiving end of fear and racism along with themes of power, politics and xenophobia. Doesn't pull any punches, these are grown up stories and can and does treat the characters in a brutal but believable way. I immensely enjoyed them from start to finish.