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?

@Tarragon123

I found it challenging definitely, the series Netflix did was very succinct I thought. Otherwise it does plod rather

@Tarragon123 I quite liked it until the ending, which I hated.

@Tarragon123 I'm the same as Remus, loved it but wasn't a huge fan of the ending.

Same here as Remus and MamaNewt. It’s the only Atwood I’ve actually enjoyed (despite the ending).

Have all the armchair mountaineers seen this incredible news today?

Hard same on Alias Grace, and I am an Atwood fan. It was excellent, but she plotted herself into a corner, and whiffed the ending.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

I saw that! So many years later! I hope somebody finds Michael Matthews one day. The documentary on Disney + was so interesting

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I got so excited I read it out to DH who didn’t have a clue what I was on about and said ‘Er, nice?’ In a baffled way.

I think Alias Grace is my favourite Atwood. Although it is so many years since I read it that I can't remember many details of the plot. And I think it was the first I read after The Edible Woman that I hated so that might have had an impact. Is the Netflix series good?

Also, yes I saw the news. But it mainly makes me wonder yet again why anyone would want to climb a mountain when the risk of death is so high. It's 1/25 now but would have been higher 100 years ago. His poor family.

I enjoyed the series, yes, though it had been many years since I read the book to be able to say how faithful it was.

@BestIsWest I got a very slightly more enthusiastic response from DP, but similar vibes.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I had to google Michael Matthews. Hadn't heard of him or his apparently famous brother.

The whole Everest business is fascinatingly awful. I can totally understand why people might want to attempt it (not me!) but the odds are so terribly stacked against them.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

He also would have been Pippa Middleton's BIL, she married the other brother, they aren't in the documentary, which is well worth a watch.

I have had over a week off mumsnet & have returned to a very enjoyable time catching up on everyones reviews. Loved your description of swimming in a waterfall @cassandre . I love swimming in the outdoors. I have a friend that in the summer i normally meet weekly for a swim somewhere local. One of the many small sadnesses of cancer is i have had a picc line in my arm that cant be got wet - so no swimming. I wouldnt be up to it at the moment, but could have earlier in the year. Next summer though - i'll appreciate it even more.

I remember liking Alias Grace, but so long since i read it i cant remember much more than that. On to my most recent read.

31. The Light We Carry Michelle Obama I can only assume that i reserved this on borrowbox confusing it with her autobiography as i dont really read self help books that this essentially is. It seems to have two aims to help you to be confident & positive in an increasingly scary and volitile world and to help you be kind to yourself. Well i could certainly do with help in those departments & it passed the chapter 1 readability test so i gave it a chance. It is a bit of a mishmash of a book. Varied advice (take up knitting, cherish your friendships, go high when they go low etc.) is introduced alongside anecdotes about Michelle, her friends, family and people she met on her book tour. The advice im sure is sound, but the delivery i didnt find very engaging. Michelle is so acomplished, confident and has overcome so many obstacles it can leave the rest of us mere mortals feeling a bit lacking. It is all very earnest with little humour or self deprecation. I felt the UK/US cultural divide strongly when reading it. Michelle's personality doesnt really come across & i didnt feel i knew her any better at the end than i did at the start.

Thank you everyone for your feedback on Alias Grace. Its just not grabbing me, so I think I’ll just DNF. I have plenty to be getting on with. I’ve also cleared out a few kindle books that I bought about 5 years ago and are not interesting me now. My kindle collection is down to 44 books, which includes Alias Grace. I’m now going to move onto the Slow Horses series next. I've read book 1, so onto Dead Lions, I think

93 Before the Coffee Gets Cold - Toshikazu Kawaguchi, trans Geoffrey Trousselot. Unlike most 50 bookers, I loved this. I thought it was absolutely charming. It’s a time travel book based in a cafe, but of course, the traveller cannot change the future by visiting the past. There are strict rules on travel and the traveller must return ‘before the coffee gets cold’. I’m looking forward to reading the other four books in the series. Its just a short book, less than 200 pages, I think.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit – I didn’t fancy the documentary on Michael Matthews, just because I’m not a fan of TOWIE and MIC, or those type of programmes. However, I am fascinated at the discovery of Sandy Irvine’s foot, so I might check it out. Its always difficult for OH and I to find programmes that we both enjoy and this might do the trick.

@Tarragon123

It's done with sensitivity and is not like reality TV I've never watched Made In Chelsea or anything like that, just not my thing.

66. Wizard and Glass by Stephen King Number 4 in the Dark Tower series and Roland takes his friends back in time to his first mission as a Gunslinger when he was 14. This is my favourite book in the series, I love reading about Roland's childhood and the world he grew up in.

I'm very aware I haven't read this month's Read Christie challenge yet but I don't want to break away from this series to read it

70 1984: The Year Pop Went Queer - Ian Wade

Written with more enthusiasm than literary finesse (and doesn’t look like an editor gave it more than a passing glance), a fairly fluffy look at the influence of LGBTQ+ culture on the pop music of 1984.

287 The Puzzler by A J Jacobs

Non fiction looking at different types of puzzles. The author tells us the history and development of the puzzles, interviews people who make/solve the puzzles and has a go himself. The book also includes lots of puzzles to have a go at. I really enjoyed this but then I like puzzles!

288 A Spring of Love by Celia Dale

Written and set in the late 1950s, this is about a young woman who meets and marries a young man who seems very nice on the surface - but is he? This is well written and I liked it but there wasn’t really much sense of menace or tension despite the blurb assuring me there was.

Midnight and Blue - Rebus 25 - Ian Rankin
Rebus lands in prison for the murder of Big Ger Cafferty. Due to lack of space on the protected wing, he's put in gen pop with Darryl Christie. A murder on the wing prompts the governor to ask Rebus to investigate.
If you're a fan you'll like it. I've long since thought Rankin was flogging a dead horse with Rebus, but this was a great end to the series.

I'm waiting on the library for my copy. I think I'm 27 on the list. I'm a fan, cant beat a bit of Rebus :)

168 My Brilliant Friend- Elena Ferrante
I believe this is a very marmite book, and I am very late to the party! I loved it- the story of a friendship between two young girls into their teens in 1950s/60s Naples. Our narrator is not always likable. She’s jealous and self-absorbed and at times she seems to love, adore or hate her friend Lila. I found this to be a good account of the friendships of many young girls into their teens- the love and competition and jealousy and closeness all rolled into one. A definite bold. I bought the second of the quartet today before I finished but don’t think I’ll read it straight away- I may well take it on holiday at the end of the month.

Edited to add a DNF for now Titus Groan- always wanted to try the Gormenghast trilogy but I was finding reading this a duty so have put it down for now at least.

I’m about 2/3rds of the way through and I think this one benefits from a smaller scope (the prison setting) than other recent books in the series. I was also very, very bored with Cafferty!

Posting extremely glitchy, so if this appears 3 times, I apologise!

88 The Turning point - Freya North

This was a paint by numbers rom com at the start. Following a twist, it got a little more interesting, but still, nothing more than a pleasantish way to pass the time.

(Girl meets boy, boy and girl live in different countries, both have creative jobs and family ties to their homes, can we they make it work?)

50 The Dictionary of Lost Words - Pip Williams This was a nice idea and I quite liked the book, but I’m not really a fan of “based on a true story” fiction - I’d much rather read complete fiction or a good non-fiction book. I found the author’s note at the end (about the mammoth endeavour that was the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, and the unacknowledged women who worked on it) far more interesting than the story itself. I think the biggest problem is that the main character, Esme, is really just a plot-driven figure which Williams uses to tell the story of the OED - things happen to Esme in a box-ticking sort of way, and I never got a feel for who she really was. And there were quite a lot of anachronisms (in terms of both figures of speech and the modern attitudes of the most sympathetic characters), which always irritates me. Still, a decent book, and not a bad choice for my 50th of the year!