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?

Rivals is miles better than Riders though. It’s the best of her bonkbusters.

I'm waiting for Rivals on BorrowBox, and have instructed my H that we're not starting on the telly adaptation until after that. It's due to come to me in November.

Best wishes to you @Owlbookend - childhood favourites definitely reach the parts that other books can't.

Riders was free to me on Audible, you have to pay for Rivals

I’m ‘rereading’ Rivals on Audible at the moment too! I’ve read it loads of times before and agree it’s one of her best. I can’t wait for the TV version!

Eine if you can find it there is a TV version of Riders - it’s not a particularly good adaptation but worth watching for the cheesy factor.

Hope all those going through tough times can find something comforting to read.

@PepeLePew Highgate Cemetery is one of my favourite places, so if you can get a booking I'd highly recommend that. Even if you can't get a booking, the other (less old and atmospheric) side is also well worth a visit and has Douglas Adams for at least one literary homage.

For book shops, I'd recommend the wonderful Daunt books in Marylebone, or Judd books and Gay's the Word in Bloomsbury.

If you do Bloomsbury, you can also see the blue plaque for where Mary and Percy Shelley lived for a while.

Well the old spinning wheel has spun out two books with a similar premise together but their execution is completely different. Both books are set in Ireland with a female protagonist with a sick brother, an absent father and a poor relationship with her mother.
162 The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Toibin
Helen (the protagonist) her mother and grandmother are shocked to find out her brother Declan is dying of AIDS in 1990s Wexford. The women bring him back to his grandmother’s house along with two friends. Declan’s relationship with his friends is close and supportive in contrast with that with and of his family. This is written simply but devastatingly and as the daughter of a difficult mother, it left me with questions on my own role in that tumultuous relationship. A bold for me

163 A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride
The prose is the opposite of Toibin’s simplicity- fragmentary, stream of consciousness. It takes time to get into and I’m not sure I ever would have without listening to the audio. This one is brutal covering cancer, child sexual abuse and a religious fanatic for a mother. I think this book had too much going on- too much trauma along with the experimental writing style. It was a debut so I’d be interested to read one of her later books.

274 The Moon Is Down by John Steinbeck

One of his shorter novels (a novella really), this is set in a small town in an unnamed European country that is taken over by the Nazis. Gradually the townspeople rebel against the soldiers. At the time this was published it was banned in many countries, but at this distance the story doesn’t have the impact it once would. I love Steinbeck’s writing though - he seems to be able to say so much without using too many words - so I enjoyed this.

275 I Will Ruin You by Linwood Barclay

A brave teacher manages to avert what could have been a catastrophic event, but then gets caught up in a plot by someone who sees the opportunity for blackmail. Barclay is good at writing very fast paced books, and I enjoyed this although I’m not sure I’ll remember much about it in a few weeks.

276 Death Valley by Melissa Broder

I really didn’t like this - I only finished it because it was short and it was so bizarre that I wanted to see where it was going. The unnamed narrator (most characters in the story aren’t given names) is stressed because her father’s dying and her husband’s ill, so she takes some time out to go and walk in the desert. From there on we basically get a stream of consciousness of her thoughts and what may or may not be hallucinations as she gets lost in the desert. Very odd and really not sure what it was trying to say.

277 Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin

This covers the effects on the women involved in a political sex scandal (clearly loosely based on the Monica Lewinsky episode). Some of this felt very contrived (one section consists of emails written by a child to an Indonesian penpal which just seemed to have been done in order to have lots of different culture discussions which weren’t relevant to the story) but overall I quite liked this.

278 A Thousand Feasts by Nigel Slater

This is a collection of anecdotes and observations, mostly food based but not all. Some are just a sentence, some a few pages. My lifestyle is nothing like Nigel’s and in many ways I wouldn’t want it to be, but there are aspects of his life that I would love to adopt if I had the time and his budget! He writes beautifully about food and gardens and this is a lovely book. I read it straight through but it’s a good one to dip into and I can see myself doing that a lot in future, just reading random bits every now and then. Don’t read it when you’re hungry though!

31. The Household by Stacey Halls. I enjoyed her other books so have been waiting to get to the top of the reservation list at the library for this one. Based on a real house for "fallen" women that Dickens set up in 1847 and funded by Angela Burdett- Courts. It's gripping but understandable delivers a little bit. She went a bit overboard on the number of characters so some of them lacked depth. Still enjoyed it a lot though.

ÚlldemoShúl I love Eimear McBride. I've enjoyed two others of hers, which tend to be quite marmite. I think audio is the best medium for her style. If you enjoy having your ears assaulted in that way, Max Porter works similarly. I'd particularly recommend Shy*.

I meant to post the other day that Netflix is doing an adaptation of East Of Eden

I meant *under delivers!

You Don’t Have to be Mad to Work Here by Benji Waterhouse Thanks to LadybirdDaphne and bibliomania for reviews of this, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The author is a psychiatrist in the NHS and this gives an insight into his work, his patients, and the effect on patients and staff of a system stretched to breaking point. We also get a glimpse into his own background and what drew him to psychiatry. Thought provoking and fascinating.

Some great reviews and recommendations, which I have noted. I'm having a flare up of pain which is pants but I'll be reading.

Nice treble on my Amazon wish list today! The Cracked Mirror, Bonehead and an Abigail Dean.
Not much time for reading as on a work related outdoorsy trip (not to Almanby!) but they can lurk on my Kindle until I get home.

Nothing much in the deals for me. I spotted Rebecca in there for anyone who hasn’t read it yet.

Thanks for the heads up on the sale @AlmanbyRoadtrip - both Day One and The Cracked Mirror were on my wish list!

All the Colours of the Dark by Chris Whitaker is in the Daily Kindle deals, FYI.

Lones Dove is in the sale. I absolutely loved it but it’s a bit of a gore fest.

Thank you for some great recommendations. Weather permitting, I will book a Highgate Cemetery tour today. And then mooch around the British Library and Fitzrovia. I love John Soane's museum but have never been to the Dicken's Museum so that's another good idea.

I am excited for East of Eden, Eine. I can imagine it is a terrificl book to film. Not a cheerful story but having just survived The Grapes of Wrath at the National, I am
in the right mindset for Steinbeck brought to life.

Time to go and check the deals. I really should set up a wishlist to make the whole process more efficient. Still no clue why Amazon doesn't make it easier by recommending things it thinks I would like rather than making me sift through hundreds of books.

I haven’t had time to sift through the deals yet but have bought Tom Lake and The River we Remember from the deals email.

The deals uploaded pretty promptly for me today and I thought there was some good stuff. I got The Wedding People by Alison Epoch which I keep hearing good things about, and Beartown, and a silly festive romance to read at Christmas.

I keep waiting for Rivals to drop to 99p to tie in with the TV series but no luck yet!

Non-fiction-wise, I know there were a couple of people who were interested in Rory Cellan Jones's Ruskin Park - that's in the deals, as is The Dictionary People and the very good East West Street.

84 The Flower Girls - Alice Clark-Platts

This was ok. One I bought in April 2022 (trying to clear my huge backlog!) about two sisters (10 and 6), the older of whom was convicted of murdering a baby and the younger of whom was too young to stand trial and got a new identity. It was written by a former human rights lawyer and had some resonances with the Jamie Bulger case. I won’t be reading any of her other books.