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?

So this is part of my list @endofthecorridoor - italics mean I didn't like it and bold means it was really good

1. Whatever it Takes, Adele Parks
2. Pretty Girls, Karin Slaughter
3. The Great Post Office Scandal, Nick Wallis

Welcome!

The lists are of what you have read so far not what you are planning. A bold in the list shows what you would recommend

Thanks to whoever said that the Anne of Green Gables series is on offer on Kindle. I've read the first before and am thoroughly enjoying a re-visit. I've not read any of the others. All eight might be beyond me, but I'll certainly give the second a go.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

I enjoyed them all but think they diminish after Anne's House Of Dreams quite jealous that I can't have that first time read again

Well hopefully the first few will keep happy for a while!

A review dump of recent books I've read:

64. James, Percival Everett 3/5
    Booker Prize shortlist. I admired this book but never really warmed to it. It deploys a clever literary device: the main character, who is Black, speaks in flawless, high-register prose when he’s talking to other Blacks, but when he’s speaking to whites, masquerades by speaking a kind of pidgin dialect: in other words, he speaks the way whites expect him to speak. On one level this conceit is very effective, but on another level it just feels alienating and ahistorical. Interestingly, Voltaire’s Candide is referred to throughout the text, and I felt a bit about James the way I do about Candide: it’s a brilliant satire, but the characters seem like vehicles for expressing the author’s opinions instead of real human beings.

65. The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, John Carey 3/5
    Lots of lovely insights here into what Oxford University was like in the past. Carey was 80 when he wrote this memoir (he’s 90 now!). He comes across as someone who is a bit curmudgeonly and not entirely likeable on a personal level. As a grammar school boy who got into Oxford, he’s a passionate advocate of grammar schools, and a political lefty. However, in other ways he’s very conservative (there is very little mention of women’s writing, and virtually no mention of work by writers of colour). I was impressed though by just how damn hard he worked all his life, trawling through masses of text in Latin and English. And in terms of how radical he perceived himself to be, it says a lot that that when he came to Oxford as an undergrad in the 1950s, the English literature syllabus ended at 1832! I was also struck by how if you come to Oxbridge as an outsider (which he did as a grammar school pupil), on some level you carry on feeling like an outsider all your life. Even though he eventually became the consummate Oxbridge insider in terms of power and privilege. I wish his very clever wife Gill (who studied at Oxford at the same time, and also got a First) had also written a memoir; I would like to read it.

66. The Living and the Rest, José Eduardo Agualusa, trans. Daniel Hahn 4/5
    Very inventive, delightfully quirky. Set on the Island of Mozambique, where Agualusa now lives with his wife and child. A group of writers from Mozambique, Angola and Nigeria have come together for a literary conference, but are stranded there by a terrible storm. The encounters between characters of different sexes, ages and cultures are very well done. The novel slides into the fantastic so imperceptibly that I would be hard pressed to tell you what happens at the end, but I was happy just to go along for the ride.

67. Jamaica Inn, Daphne du Maurier 5/5
    One of the best novels by du Maurier I’ve read so far, along with Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel. The feisty young heroine gets stuck in a dodgy inn in Cornwall and many dark adventures take place. Gothic, Romantic and very atmospheric, with a plot twist I wasn’t expecting. Du Maurier certainly knows how to tell a good story.

68. A Little Luck, Claudia Piñeiro, trans. Frances Riddle 5/5
    Many thanks to @JaninaDuszejko for this recommendation! A language teacher living in New York goes back to Argentina to confront her past. The first-person narrator is clear-sighted and unsentimental. I actually cried at the end of this novel, it was so moving.

69. Les Liaisons dangereuses, Choderlos de Laclos 5/5
    I reread this book (my third reading) for the MN read-along. Every time I read it, it strikes me as more virtuosic. The long slow grooming of the women characters felt more long and slow to me this time (a bit painful really), but Laclos’ mastery of different voices and the increasingly complex web he weaves make this novel unlike anything else I’ve ever read.

Grace Dent’s Comfort Eating is in the daily deals today.

66. Stone Yard Devotional: Charlotte Wood.

This is a quiet, contemplative novel about an unnamed woman who goes on retreat to a small community of sequestered nuns of the Catholic faith who live in a remote area in Australia where the woman grew up. She only plans to stay there for five days but when she leaves the community she turns around, goes straight back and doesn't leave. It's not that she has made a conscious decision to stay; she's just there. She likes the simple, ritualistic life of the sisters and finds she fits in with them in spite of finding their habits a bit irritating and not being religious herself. It's a means of escape from her present life; the burn-out of her career as a worker with an endangered species organisation and a release from her marriage.

The narrative takes the form of a diary recounting the woman's days. She decides how much of her story she will tell. It also switches back to the woman's childhood and in particular to her mother who she is still grieving for. The comparison between the woman and her mother was interesting I thought, as the mother lived a very Christian life in spite of not adhering to an organised religion.

The story takes place at the beginning of the Covid lockdown which the sisters hardly notice, as they already live so quietly. There is a horribly persistent mouse infestation which is likened to a plague. There is also the return of the remains of one of the sisters who lived there previously and they are in the care of another nun who is a figure from the woman's past; the victim of bullying by the woman and others when they were in school together. There is a pall that hangs over the community with external and internal forces at play.

The woman is forced to examine her conscience as it is easier to hide the truth from herself and bury it but ultimately it will rise to the surface and needs to be dealt with. The book addresses the necessity for forgiveness whether it is the Catholic Church, the Australian state or in interactions between people. To acknowledge it firstly and then whether to grant or to accept it is the question.

The prose is very straightforward; plain and unadorned and following the last book I read ('Held') was a welcome change. It reminded me of Elizabeth Strout's writing which contains profound, simple truths. I liked this book a lot and I recommend it (beware of the mice however!)

67. Les Liaisons Dangereuses: Choderlos de Laclos.

This was excellent. I loved it. I marvelled at how one man spun out a novel consisting of 175 letters between seven characters and in the main, most of the letters were between three people. Really ingenious. I loved the intrigue, the calculated deception, the downfall and the ruination of the two plotters. The grooming of the women made for uncomfortable reading at times. I thought the correspondence between the Duc de Valmont and La Présidente de Tourvel was very long as well. It seemed like the same letter over and over, but that was the point. He wore her down over time.
But yes, a brilliant and unique book.

Back to Mick Herons Slough House series for books 24 to 26:

24. Dead Lions
25. Sleeping Tigers
26. Spook Street

Enjoyed all of them and I'm now reading London Rules, which will be the next book to get the TV adaptation treatment. It's nice to be ahead of the series finally and not know the plot in advance.

@Welshwabbit – good to know about the Insp Chopra series, although I will probably wait until I have finished the Malabar House series.

@endofthecorridoor – welcome!

98 Strange Sally Diamond – Liz Nugent. Winner of the Irish Crime Book 2023. Shortlisted from Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2024.
Oh, this was GOOD. So difficult to categorise and the story and characters will stay with me for a long time. The ending though! Utterly chilling and so believable. Recommended.

111. The Killing Kind by Jane Casey

Jane Casey but NOT Maeve Kerrigan, a stand alone.

Ingrid, a barrister, is stalked when she successfully defends a case. Sometime later, Ingrid must face him again when she believes she is being targeted once more.

Odd one, sailed through the first half in one sitting but afterwards had to really push myself to go back and read the second half.

Ending silly, and overdone, quite melodramatic, will maybe see if the adaptation on ITVX does better.

Anne of Green Gables
This was an absolute beauty of a reread and exactly what I needed at the end of quite a difficult couple of weeks. I’d forgotten the sad bit at the end, or, rather, I remembered that there was a sad bit but I’d misremembered the details. I found myself wishing she’d saved it for the next book and allowed Anne a happy ending in this one, but I forgave her because it’s all so very sweet overall.

What Does It Feel Like? -Sophie Kinsella

Fictionalised account of Sophie’s own story - Novelist Eve wakes up in hospital following surgery for a brain tumour with no memory of what’s happened to her and has to learn to walk and talk again and learns, repeatedly of her devastating diagnosis. A brave, moving book.

Rivals - Jilly Cooper Umpteenth re-read.

My last update listed book 134 while completing skipping over:

133. I'm No Shakespeare: Walking the South West Coast Path, by Cheryl Dummer
As the title suggests, this is a day-by-day account of walking the SWC path. She's not being unnecessarily modest about her literary prowess, and it's really just a glorified blog rather than a work of literature. But I enjoyed the fact that she's in her fifties, walking at an achievable pace, and I could imagine myself in her shoes. While I entertain the occasional fantasy about the Appalachian Trail or Pacific Crest Trail, I think the SWC might be more achievable as closer to home. Also, I'm the type of rugged outdoorswoman who likes her adventures interspersed with regular cream teas.

@bibliomania you sound like my kind of walker!

Thanks @countrygirl99 !

Any fans of Louise Kennedy’s Trespasses? I’ve just seen they are making a channel 4 drama- currently filming near my workplace.

I have no desire to walk any of the American long distance walks but fancy doing the coast to coast over a long time period (a stretch every week or something) when the kids have all left home. I've already walked quite a few bits close to where I live.

I fancy that too, @JaninaDuszejko I've done a few long-distance paths, all bit by bit, and my favourite so far is the Hadrian's Wall Path. The Cotswolds Way was great too. In fact, they're all been good except the bloody Great Glen Way.

I'm trying to plan a long distance walk for next year but when you are solo the accommodation costs are horrendous. DH has health issues that rule out doing one together and none of my friends are really keen on walking. I was looking at North Norfolk as I could base myself in Wells and bus to/ from start/end points as necessary each day and self cater to keep costs down but even that is looking near £1000 to book an Airbnb.

I hear you on the accommodation costs, @countrygirl99 I don't begrudge it if it's for a night or two, but longer than that and it's more painful than the blisters.

I'm tempted to head to Portugal and do part of the Rota Vincenta. No cheaper but the weather is likely to be more reliable.

I hear you on the pain of a single supplement when travelling solo, countrygirl . I have a friend I can usually rope in for a few days walking and we are happy to share a room but otherwise I just have to suck it up. I would really recommend the South Downs Way for anyone looking for a good long distance trail - it has the advantage of having good transport links so if you're starting in the South East it's easy enough to break it into stages and there are several stages you could do as a day trip. And I love the Ridgeway but that gets a bit trickier the further west you head.

Remus, sorry to hear about the last few weeks. Glad that Anne was able to offer some comfort. That's my go-to, alongside Ballet Shoes.

90 Cracked Mirror by Chris Brookmyre
I do really enjoy Brookmyre’s books. The plot of this lost me on a couple of occasions but the fun of two separate detective/murder investigation genres colliding in Scotland and LA kept me going. The ending was not something I’d have had any chance of predicting, but it was none the worse for that.

89 A Colossal Failure of Common Sense by Larry McDonald
McDonald was working in the fixed income department at Lehman Brothers in the run up to the financial crash and Lehman’s failure in 2008. He saw the subprime mortgage market grow and then become all consuming, and was there when it all came crashing down. This isn’t the best account of the crash I’ve read – he tries to explain the (admittedly very complex) financial instruments involved but doesn’t quite land the explanations. In some ways he’d have been better off not even trying, and focusing on the human motivations – greed, ambition, recency bias – that drove the bubble and led to a huge and systemic failure that we are still grappling with today. He’s very clear where the guilt lies (the C Suite of Lehman and other banks, the sub prime mortgage sellers in places like Bakersfield, CA) and where it didn’t lie – essentially, McDonald and his colleagues who were without exception smart, blessed with plenty of prescience and conscience and hardworking. But not – for the most part – willing to relinquish the huge financial rewards they were reaping off the back of the bank’s success. There’s some flim-flam about how the bulk of the reward was tied up in stock options so sticking around made sense, but if they were so convinced the bank was going to fail, then the stock was worthless any way.

88 Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty
What would you do if you were told when, and how, you’d die? This is what a plane load of people on their way from Hobart to Sydney have to grapple with when a woman gets up mid flight and starts telling them all their fates. This isn’t going to qualify as great literature by anyone’s standards but Liane Moriarty tells a good story and in this case, creates characters you care about. The story of the woman who can (or can she?) see the future is woven with the various other protagonists – they weren’t particularly easy to keep track of initially but settled down into distinct personalities that I was rooting for in their different ways. And the ending was clever and well executed. Would make an excellent by-the-pool book for anyone lucky enough to have that in their immediate future.

87 Entitlement by Rumaan Alam
Brooke is 33, and working for a billionaire philanthropist helping him give away his fortune. And good causes don’t come better than Brooke, as far as Brooke is concerned. Why should she not have the apartment, the life and the benefits that her employer and – to some extent – her friends enjoy? This reminded me of Yellowface in some ways – we aren’t really meant to like the protagonist who makes some exceptionally questionable choices while being just the right side of palatable to mean our view of her is at the very least complicated. This is one of several books I’ve read recently that try to address race, class and wealth inequality with a somewhat compromised central character, and it bore an interesting comparison with Long Island Compromise.

86 Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Carl Fisher, a wealthy factory owner, is kidnapped and held hostage for a week. The consequences to his wealthy Jewish family last considerably longer than that, affecting all of them in different ways. His wife Ruth spends the rest of her life protecting his emotional and mental health at the expense of her children. Nathan, the eldest child, sees everything as a threat, and works hard to protect his family from anything that may disrupt their stability and safety. His brother Beamer uses addiction – to sex, substances and power – to manage his fear, while their sister Jenny tries to distance herself from her wealth and privilege, creating her own problems as a result. When they discover that the family wealth has dwindled to almost nothing, they each respond in ways that are predictable but also shocking.

This was excellent. It’s funny and alarming and really gripping in places. As a study of generational trauma, wealth and inequality it’s very sharp and well observed but it never feels worthy or overdone. I thought this was considerably better than her previous novel, Fleishman Is In Trouble.

91 Alison Wonderland - Helen Smith

This was bad. It’s part of my “clear off kindle books from forever ago” project and I wish I had just deleted it. Would have been a DNF but it was short and I thought it might improve.

Alison works for a detective agency and is (rather half-arsedly) in love with her neighbour Jeff and her friend Taron, who wants to kidnap an abandoned baby. The owner of the agency is called Ella Fitzgerald (natch) and she sends Alison to half-arsedly investigate a genetic engineering lab. Or something.

Honestly, there were buckets of random plot strands, none of which had a satisfying resolution.

@ÚlldemoShúl - I read Trespasses and really rated it. Worried as to whether TV will do it justice.