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?

I think 8 is a totally reasonable number. In pre-DD days i could easily read that and more. Sharply dipped in the toddler years and beyond 😁 Now DD is a tween & can amuse herself more i think in fortnight is quite reasonable.

@TTarragon123 If you're looking for a detective with a happy family life I'd recommend Donna Leon's Brunetti books. They're great.

@RomanMum I think 8 is very restrained! I usually get through at least a book a day on holiday so I would need to take at least 14. It does depend what books though - my holiday reading tends towards the easier end but if you’re taking chunkier books you can get away with fewer.

Not needing to pack lots of books when travelling was what tipped me over into buying a Kindle, it's so lovely to have lots of choice when you're away. I still often read physical books when I'm at home, but rarely on holiday.

Some easy reads for me recently.

27. Again, Rachel, by Marian Keyes. Reread. Still fabulous! I felt quite bereft when I finished it.
28. The Man Who Died Twice, by Richard Osman. In keeping with the theme of reading things in appropriate locations, I read this while visiting a retirement village, which definitely makes it resonate more. Loved it - I found the last one got a bit too convoluted, but this one didn't. Perfectly cosy but also very funny, excellent comfort reading.

Pre Kindle I remember taking 11 books in my suitcase and reading 9 of them so 8 sounds reasonable to me! Especially in the UK when it might rain.
The following year I got a Kindle and it was a godsend especially as I had a ridiculous wee accident on holiday and ten days in hospital before getting home.

@RomanMum in the good old days when I had a concentration span I once took 20 books on holiday, or alternatively one absolute beast of a volume (took Peter Ackroyds biography of Blake on my honeymoon, fab stuff). These days I go to venues that have books on site plus download two or three on my phone. 8 seems very reasonable.

I would take eight if I had the space for choice and variety. Realistically I might read four in two weeks if they are standard length or just one big chunky one of 800 pages. I usually take my Kindle especially if space is tight.

Agree 8 for a fortnight sounds reasonable. Nothing worse than running out of books, it's my biggest holiday fear. I broke my Kindle one holiday in Egypt when Dd2 was a baby, it was so stressful!

@Mothership4two I loved the Shattered Earth trilogy - it felt really fresh and original.

@Tarahumara I also really liked And Then She Fell and have been thinking about it recently as just read another book by a native author.

61. There There - Tommy Orange. His newest book Wandering Stars has just been shortlisted for the Booker but that is apparently both a prequel and a sequel to the events in this book so I thought I'd read it first. Orange is a native American author and the book follows a series of different characters as they prepare for the big Oakland Pow Wow. Each chapter is told from different POVs but some are first person, some third person and at least one in the second person. There's a lot about what it means to be native, people who are mixed race or who don't feel like they belong anywhere, and a lot about "urban Indians" who live in modern Oakland, taking in themes of poverty and addiction. The end brings all the characters together at the Pow Wow and packs a punch. I'm looking forward to reading the next one and hope to get a bit more about some of the main characters. I think the main problem with these multiple pov books is that you don't get to spend enough time with each character.

62. The Safe Keep - Yael van der Wooden. My first Booker longlist read and one that I would definitely recommend. This is about Isabel who lives in her family house in the countryside in the Netherlands. Her family moved there at the end of the war. Since then her parents have died and her brothers Louis, a womaniser, and gay Hendrik have moved out. Isabel lives a small careful life, looking after the house and its possessions and barely speaking to anyone. When Louis goes away to a conference, his current girlfriend moves in with Isabel and disrupts her life. It's hard to say more without giving away the plot, I'd recommend going into this without reading reviews as it's more impactful. But I read it in 2 days and really enjoyed it.

DS2 broke my kindle just before a flight home from Asia once, too late to scour the shops for anything in English! The only thing I had to read was a Horrible Histories book that DS1 had with him. Thank heavens it was an overnight flight at least

I bought a kindle when I went travelling for a year. Absolute godsend. I go through phases now of reading physical books more then only reading the kindle. It's nice to have the option.

77 Conversations with Friends - Sally Rooney
Frances is 21, clever and very unsure of herself. She is besotted with her best friend who is confident and beautiful. They befriend a couple and Frances develops feelings towards the husband. That's pretty much it in a nutshell.
I read this very quickly but I remember thinking the whole way through, this is boring. But I kept reading it. Maybe I was hoping for it to change or maybe it wasn't as boring as I thought. I think it's one of those books that if I had read 15 years ago I would have liked a lot more.

Love kindle for travelling. I don't think eight is unreasonable, but if you take fewer, you have a good excuse to go trawling through local second-hand bookshops.....

How many books to take on holiday has been a hot topic here too. So many factors - how confident are you that you will enjoy the ones you’re packing? Will book shops or swaps be available? We’re away now, only brought 5 but reading the Sunne in Splendour and I think it will see out the week on its own!

I took two books for a UK fortnight's holiday with me but
a) The first book is nearly 900 page, small text and dense reading about historic characters (so lots of googling required). The second book was a 400 page biography, also very dense with lots of googling required.
2) I was visiting my Mum for the first week so knew there were a lot of good books to read in her house. I came home with one of her books to read.
3) I knew that there were good independent bookshops near Mum and the second week of the holiday was in a University town so there would be good bookshops. I bought three books (for myself, I actually bought 7, the kids take after me in their book buying habits) in bookshops and after a day when my teenagers insisted we go clothes shopping instead of book shopping I panic bought 4 books online that evening.
4) I actually didn't finish my first book so went on holiday with 2 unread books and came back with 5 unread books and had 2 delivered the day I got home, Blackwells are more leisurely about delivery. I may have a problem.

@RomanMum Better to take too many books than too few! But it does depend on length and how challenging they are (Crime and Punishment will take longer than Jilly Cooper) and also whether where you are staying is likely to have any books. I take my Kindle and some physical books (in case anyone else runs out of books and wants to borrow it).

@MorriganManor I loved The Offing so much that I have been scared to read any other Benjamin Myers as I worry I will be disappointed.

And two more from me:

56. The Midnight Feast - Lucy Foley

A story with Midsomer Murders vibes and difficult to take seriously. Having said that I read it in a day….
Two time lines - the first is 15 years ago when spoilt teenage Frankie is lounging round her grandparents Manor House pool on the south coast and patronising the locals and tourists. In the current day timeline, Francesca (as she now prefers to be known) has inherited the Manor House and turned it into a luxury boutique hotel. However, it becomes clear at the hotel’s opening weekend that not everyone supports Francesca and her vision as things start to turn nasty.
Stereotypes aplenty and there isn’t a single redeeming feature to be found amongst Frankie’s family. It also all goes a bit batshit with “The Birds” but, as I said, I did finish it in a day.

57. Dead Man’s Folly - Agatha Christie

I had already read this month’s challenge book so read this instead which was one of the alternative recommendations of a Christie book written in the 1950s. Archetypal Christie in that it’s set in a large country house with various disparate members of the household who all have things to hide or problems. Hercule Poirot is invited to stay by Ariadne Oliver who is already a houseguest and has a bad feeling. Sadly (although not for the reader), Poirot fails to prevent a murder occurring at the fete being hosted in the garden of the big house and is, unusually, quite slow to solve it too. Not her best but by no means her worst and I didn’t guess whodunnit. Attitudes reflect those of the period but do jar. The house and grounds are modelled on Christie’s own house, Greenway, so easy to picture for anyone who has visited.

I'm on day 3 of a 10-day holiday and have brought 9 books (photo attached!). I don't expect to get through them all but I like to have some choice.

Surprisingly, I have already read two and they were great: 'For Thy Great Pain and Hons and Rebels.

Two of the nine are Liaisons dangereuses (part of an MN reading thread which I'm behind on, oops) and an academic 'work' book which I wouldn't normally review for pleasure reading (a 1944 book by Lucien Febvre on Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron).

It's always better to have too many books on holiday than too few, that's a hill I will die on.

And I'm an old fogey who doesn't like reading on screens. This may change if I become more liberal and open-minded in the future. 😜

Thank you for all your insights, glad I'm not alone in book packing dilemmas. There are books where we're staying but I wouldn't want to rely on them. And we'll definitely be visiting NT places with secondhand bookshops. It's one argument for a kindle but I'm still not convinced yet.

I've started off with 6 (+ 2 that fell into my handbag by mistake): a good mix of fiction and nonfiction, a couple of light reads, a couple pertinent to where we're staying, a couple from the bottom of the TBR, and a couple I picked up at the London meet-up.

I loved Hons and Rebels too, definitely due a reread.

For anyone who wants it and doesn't already have it, Demon Copperhead is £1.19 in daily kindle deals today.

@splothersdog and @inaptonym Pleased to see I’m not alone in my delight with The Bee Sting :)

finished O’Caledonia by Elspeth Barker after seeing it mentioned on this thread. What a joy! Loved this quirky, often dark, novel about a young girls life in a draughty, cold Scottish baronial home. A cross between I Capture The Castle and We have always lived in a castle. Very atmospheric and would recommend.

started Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. It’s safe to say I’m struggling to put this book down!!

Loving the holiday book dilemmas 😀
have a lovely time 😀

I'm glad to see you're taking Les Liaisons Dangereuses on holiday @cassandre Wouldn't want you falling too far behind now ;) I recognise the Penelope Lively book. It was the first of the books we read in The Rather Dated Bookclub.
Enjoy your holiday!

How many books, and how much crochet, to take on holiday is always a dilemma.
It depends how much space you have. We go away in mum's car which is small and she insists on taking loads of stuff then moaning that 2 teens and I need half the boot.

Who's going. If there will be children I barely get any peace and quiet to read.

Where and what we'll be doing. We go out and about most days, so don't get time to sit and read.

Will there be bookshops/swap there.

(There are lots of complicated family relationships in there that mean I can't sit on the beach and read quietly. And opting out of a day out causes arguments)

Now I have a kindle so its less of an issue making the decision.

I’m late to the holiday book debate but DH reminded me that in the happy days when we used to have enough money to go to a lovely place in the Caribbean with nothing much to do but eat the delicious food, swim, sleep, sun ourselves and READ, we used to line our suitcases with 10 paperbacks each, amassed from charity shops in previous months as they caught our eye, read them, and leave them in the hotel bookcase so we didn’t need to haul them home. It was the kind of small, hidden place where people returned year after year and being able to do this was bliss.

One year we overheard the very welcoming hotel manager telling a new couple about what people did at the hotel to amuse themselves, mentioning some nice (but clearly, in his view, slightly eccentric) guests who brought this huge haul of books and actually read them all….we realised he was talking about us…

That is absolutely hilarious @Terpsichore 🤣🤣🤣
What a brilliant idea though 👏 👏👏

@Stowickthevast – I am currently reading Caledonian Road as it was a 99p special on Kindle. I didn’t realise that it was an actual place lol. Enjoying it so far.

@inaptonym – I’ll be interested to hear how you get on with the latest Harbinder book

@Dontstandonthat – ooh thank you! Those look interesting.

@Terpsichore – 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

It was my birthday last week and my daughter put a lot of though into what she bought me (as always). She got me Strange Sally Diamond, well known to us 50 bookers and Before the coffee gets cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. I haven’t heard of the second book, has anyone read it? DD recommends. I didn’t realise the joy I would get out of our wee family book club, just me, my Mum and DD. We love our books and sharing them. Its such good fun. DD went to London last year and I had just finished The Bullet that Missed. I was so excited to spot the swimming pool in the sky. It’s the little things in life 😊

Currently juggling 3 books and 2 of them are fairly long (Caledonian Road on Kindle and David Copperfield on Audio). Book 3 is a library book that was always being suggested on Kindle, so when I spotted in the library, I added it to my pile. Its going to be a while before I manage a review, I think.