50 Books Challenge 2024 Part Seven

[Southeastdweller]

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

What are you reading?

Oh that’s good to know @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie maybe I should give the Ashes series another chance then.

I wouldn't pay more than £1.99 on Kindle for them though - they're not THAT good!

14.In the time we lost by Carrie Hope Fletcher
This was okay but just an okay average read for me. One I will forget in a few months. The story lost its interest with me towards the last third. I honestly did not see the point of Jaxon who seemed to have been lumbered in there. It is a story a bit like ground hog day where Luna the main character just repeats the same day to learn some kind of lesson of learning not to be so miserable. She then gets that she is living the day again and again and ropes the whole place into believing it too. The end!
Yep quite irritated by it actually rating down to below average.

Hope you are recovering well @Piggywaspushed

I don't seem to have posted since page 1 of this thread! And my list has gone even weirder than it looked when I posted it. Oh well.

51 Maskerade by Terry Pratchett

The penultimate Witches book. I am sad I'm nearly out of these to read, because they are pure joyful escapism. Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax are such utterly wonderful characters. The plot doesn't really matter, but this one centres around Nanny and Granny's attempts to replace the now Queen Magrat with Agnes Nitt, who has a miraculous voice and has tried to escape her inevitable witch fate by running off to join the opera. Except the opera house turns out to be haunted by a ghost who is apparently going around bumping off members of the company. Can Nanny and Granny resolve the situation (spoiler: of course they can).

If I love the Witches, can anyone recommend another Discworld strand I might enjoy? I've tried a few of the Death ones but they don't grab me in the same way (although I do like the ones with Susan).

The City Watch ones are the other main strand in Discworld, Welsh. Starts with Guards, Guards.

Thanks @bibliomania I'll give that one a go.

106. We Solve Murders by Richard Osman (Audible)

I wasn't much impressed with Thursday Murder Club and didn't continue the series, but the Audible for this was read by Nicola Walker who I love, so I thought I'd go with it

We Solve Murders sees close protection officer Amy Wheeler enlist the help of her father in law Steve when a series of murders occur in her vicinity.

I like Richard Osman, I like his podcast. I don't particularly care for his writing style with references to specific muffins in specific coffee shops and the Boots meal deal. The banalities of daily life.

Also the Steve character is like Steve's just a bloke, he likes Tipping Point, he's just a bloke, he's obsessed with the pub quiz, just a bloke. HE'S JUST AN AVERAGE BLOKE I TELL YOU!

Wanted to like it. Gave it a chance. Meh.

Latest update:

118. Crooked House, Agatha Christie
One of her one-off books, with no Poirot or Marple. Quite good fun - good old "least likely suspect" reveal.

119. No One Tells You This, Glynnis MacNicol
As I couldn't get her post-Covid pleasure in Paris book, reviewed on here, I went with this earlier memoir about turning 40 with no partner or children. She supports aging parents, her sister with three small children, and various friends, reflects on her love of New York and wonders if she is happy with her life. I've read several quite similar books - readable but not groundbreaking.

120. The Pale Horse, Agatha Christie
Published in 1961. I do quite like watching Dame Agatha grapple with the 60s - girls these days look so sloppy! This felt a bit unusual for AC, as she plays with possible supernatural explanations for the deaths under investigation.

121. Hag's Nook, John Dickson Carr
More Golden Era crime, this one from 1933. The deaths happen in a disused prison, full of manacles and rats and spiders and dusty old Iron Maiden. There's a family curse, and the heir must spend a night alone in the prison and retrieve something from the safe, and it's all a bit Gothic and lurid. It was rather less soothing than Agatha Christie.

122. The Cutting Place, Jane Casey
After reading the love for the Maeve Kerrigan series, I picked this up in the library. It was a good police procedural featuring an investigation into misdeeds in a private gentleman's club. I've reserved a couple of others from the library - will end up reading out of order but never mind.

123. The Magic Pill, Johan Hari
The author started taking Ozempic in 2023 and ponders whether it's the right way for society to tackle obesity, looking at alternatives including the Japanese approach. A lot of it is familiar territory - how we ended up with an obesogenic environment - but I did quite like his own ambivalence around it. I know his integrity has been called into question in previous books (misrepresenting interviews in particular) but it did feel like he was being honest about his own doubts here.

@bibliomania

The risk with reading the Kerrigans out of order, is the relationship elements which are ongoing and develop. I wouldn't but if you don't care it's fine

Agree with this, they’re much better read in order.

Thanks for the tip! I'll see. I'm not sure my library has them all, so I might not read them all anyway.

30. The Janus Stone, Elly Griffiths
I started this series as I like archaeology and this is book 2. It's ok but one or two characters are really annoying. I'll probably go back for book 3 though!

66 The Trading Game - Gary Stevenson

Did enjoy this first-person account of life inside the financial crisis of 2008 onwards though it really left me wanting a more serious, journalistic account of what happened - if anyone has read something along these lines that they’d recommend, let me know!

@Welshwabbit I’m not a fan of the witches books but I really like the Guards ones. I also love Death, but that’s because it tickles my warped sense of humour.

I feel the same @EineReiseDurchDieZeit about the Richard Osman books. I eventually read the first two after a false start but tried the sample of the new one and just couldn’t be bothered to carry on. I know people adore the TMC books but they’re not for me really. Plus he talks over Marina too much on the podcast.

@BestIsWest

They are just the wrong side of cosy/cutesy for my liking

The Eye of the North by Sinead o Hart
A debut children’s novel and another nicely old fashioned adventure. A bit overwritten at times but very enjoyable.

270 We Solve Murders by Richard Osman

In contrast to Eine and Best I enjoyed this! I liked the characters and the story is good fun. But then I enjoyed The Thursday Murder Club books too.

271 Tepper Isn’t Going Out by Calvin Trillin

For reasons that are never explained, Murray Tepper spends his time searching New York for parking spaces, then just sits in his car reading his newspaper. He gradually comes to people’s attention and becomes a bit of a folk hero dispensing life advice. However the authorities don’t like this so it ends up with him against The City. This is better than the description sounds - I liked the character of Tepper and was rooting for him at the end (despite hogging parking spaces being really irritating!)

272 Death at Dartmoor Edge by Stephanie Austin

Book 8 in the Juno Browne series, where antique dealer Juno investigates local crimes. I really like this series, even if the amount of crime in a small Devon town is rather unbelievable! Here Juno comes up against a renowned crime family with fingers in lots of pies, but is helped by an old friend.

273 The Old Man And The Sea by Ernest Hemingway

This is a novella/ short story about an old fisherman who captures and kills a giant marlin, but then loses most of it to sharks trying to get it home. I could have done without all the technical detail about how he caught and killed fish, but I liked the bits with his thoughts and also the bits where the fisherman interacts with a young boy who sometimes works with him.

51 Affinity - Sarah Waters
I imagine everyone read this when it came out in 1999, but I was 17 and too busy with Anne Rice. A gothic tale centred around the extremely grim Millbank Prison. Margaret Prior becomes a ‘lady visitor’ to the prison and is entranced by Selina Dawes, a spirit medium imprisoned for assault and fraud - but is she really in contact with the spirit realm? I found this compelling, but I could see the togs turning a little too much in Waters’ plotting - Margaret learning some unpleasant new fact about prison life with every visit was a bit plodding and an obvious device for Waters to share her research with the reader. And the ‘twist’ became apparent to me about 100 pages before the end. The Little Stranger is still my favourite of hers - much more subtle.

52 Emotional Ignorance - Dean Burnett
Exploration of human emotions and the neuroscience behind them, interwoven with Burnett’s coming to terms with his own emotional experiences after losing his father to Covid. Some interesting stuff, but an editor needed to sort out the rambling structure of most chapters, as half the time I’d forgotten what the point was before he got to it.

@LadybirdDaphne

I read Affinity during my time on this thread, so in the last 4 years. It's not her best, no.

“Too Big To Fail” was very good - about Lehman Brothers and the government bailouts.

@Piggywaspushed – get well soon!

@Drachuughtty – I loved book 4 in Ruth Galloway series. It was a bold for me. Book 3 was very interesting.

87 The Dying Day – Vaseem Khan (Malabar House 2). Back to Persis Wadia. I’m so enjoying this series, thank you again to whoever suggested it. We return to Bombay in 1950. A local museum has a valuable copy of Dante’s The Divine Comedy stolen. Can Persis retrieve it and will she be distracted by a love interest? I’ve said before how much I enjoy an historical crime fiction book. Again, the book gave a more in depth dive into post Colonial India, not a subject that I really had much knowledge about until I read book 1. Looking forward to the next book in the series.

In the meantime, I have gone back to my Kindle Challenge and picked a book from 2019.

We Solve Murders by Richard Osman was interested to see your reviews eine and Chessie. I really enjoyed the Thursday Murder books, though the last was diminishing returns. I got a kick out of seeing the elderly characters take on all comers, and was happily carried along. This book was very much in the same key so didn’t feel fresh, the characters weren’t a patch on Elizabeth, and although I was entertained initially I found it became smug and rather tiresome. I’d have DNFd and avoided a grumpy review if it hadn’t been a gift.

My copy of Intermezzo arrived this week and I'm enjoying it so far - though it is a different style from her earlier books, slower and more contemplative.

67. This Motherless Land by Nikki May. I mentioned upthread, this is billed as a re-work of Mansfield Park set in the 80s between the U.K. and Nigeria. Liv and Funke are cousins but estranged due to Funke's mother marrying a Nigerian man and being cast out of the family. She comes back to live with them after her mother dies, and becomes used to her new life and beloved by their grandmother. Over the years both women move back and forwards between the two countries, the drama driven by who is going to inherit the family home.

I haven't read MP and I looked up the plot but struggled to follow it! So I'm not sure how close this is, though I imagine it veers off course when people start taking ecstasy and faking their deaths... though the final act has lots of fainting and family solicitors unveiling secrets in the will which was pleasingly Regency-esque,

Overall plotty and enjoyable, a nice exploration of what home means to a family split between two countries and cultures.

68. Evenings and Weekends by Oisin McKenna. Set over a heatwave weekend in London following a group of 30 year olds and 2 of their parents, all holding secrets which are naturally revealed around the time the weather breaks. I do like this kind of novel even though it wasn't outstanding. An interesting look at things like the London housing crisis and decisions about staying or leaving the city - which may be of less interest to readers who don't think about London all the time!

67 Munichs - David Peace

Every book I read of Peace’s , I love more than the last. Another footballing novel - this one deals with the 1958 Munich air disaster that killed many of the Man United ‘Busby Babes’, and its aftermath. And a terrific piece of writing that is heartbreaking without slipping into sentimentality.