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?

I finished it, but admit to skipping pages and pages of old lady talk. I even found myself hating Gilbert. And I didn’t like Anne much either.

I looked up the summaries of each of the Anne books while ago and remember reading all of them as a young teen. They were in the children's section of the city library. I'm sure I read them back to back then.
I'm intrigued by your reviews, Remus. I'll have a reread of them in the new year. * *

Definitely a case of diminishing returns with the Anne books, Anne of Green Gables was my favourite book growing up, but despite that I think I've only ever read the first sequel, and after a reread of the original a few years ago I was happy to look up summaries of all the other books to satisfy my curiosity about Anne and Gilbert.

After 'Anne of the Island' I thought that the best sequel was 'Rilla of Ingleside'.

@FuzzyCaoraDhubh
I’ve read the bastard things so you don’t have to.

I’m hoping that someone who has made it through to the bitter end will be on soon to tell me that boring Gilbert is squashed by a train tragically young and then Anne fades away of consumption soon afterwards.

Lol @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie
Maybe I'll reread the first one and let the rest of them lie in sweet oblivion ;)

I love the first couple of the Anne books and I know I have read most of them but not sure if I have ever read the last couple. I do have them all so keep meaning to do a full reread of the whole series but have got far too many new books to read at the moment. Maybe next year…

I only read the first Anne book when I was a child and reread recently - sounds like I made the right choice!

Finished the first two books of my holiday.
178 The List of Suspicious Things- Jennie Godfrey
This was just okay. Much reviewed on here. 12 year old Miv and her friends decide to investigate the Yorkshire Ripper case. Everything came together too neatly and it was faaaaar too long for what it was.

179 My Name is Lucy Barton- Elizabeth Strout
Olive Kitteridge blew me away- I didn’t think this could live up to it but it did. Lucy recalls a few days of her hospital stay years ago, when her mother came to visit. There’s something in Strout’s writing that gets to the heart of the matter with prose that seems simple but contains so much. On mothers and daughters she is second to none. Another bold.

DNFed for now The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks, a retelling of the story of King David. I just couldn’t get into it at the moment but would try again because I loved her Year of Wonders.

Now onto Stasiland and The Wall by John Lanchester. Hoping to add the second of the Neapolitan Quartet before the holiday ends on Sunday.

Well done @RazorstormUnicorn lovely pictures. I completely empathise with the stress of unfit trekking. I went to Ladakh years ago and struggled. It's beautiful but tough. We're meant to be climbing a volcano at high altitude next year and am already worrying about it.

98. Caraval - Stephanie Garber. No idea why this was on my Kindle. I think maybe someone compared it the Night Circus. Anyway it's YA and really quite rubbish. There's a bit where one character tries to explain how death and rebirth work in the world they're in, and just says, it's complicated and no-one really wants to talk about it .. Terrible world building.

£10 haul… (I have the first Ruth Galloway already!)

Nice one @SheilaFentiman I think you are my book twin 😂

You didn’t drop off 5 Ruth Galloway books at a national trust recently, did you? 😀

I missed it, what was it ?

It's my second favourite, behind the OG Anne of Green Gables. I live on the coast and I think about it every New Year's Eve, with the old year "going away beautifully".

Agree with PP that we need more pics from @RazorstormUnicorn

The Odyssey. A graphic novel adaptation by Gareth Hinds

Holiday read. It's almost 30 years since I read E. V. Rieu's translation but this is a fun recap of the myth.

I finally finished The Photograph by Penelope Lively. I hate to say it but I was disappointed by it, I didn't really take to any of the characters and nothing really kept my attention on it which was probably why it took me so long to read.

Ah sorry bett I think it was me who recommended it to you. But it would be boring if we all liked the same books!

I'm another who loved the first Anne book and read it over and over but never tried any of the sequels. Now thinking that was a good decision!

It was a girl who'd dropped her phone between two boulders, @bettbburg - she leant down to try and reach it but slipped right through the tiny gap and was trapped upside-down with no way of turning round or manoeuvring out. All you could see were the soles of her bare feet just below the gap <shudder>

Thankfully they managed to get help - she can’t have been on her own, or maybe she called for help? - and emergency services levered the boulders apart to get her out. Nightmare.

She was with a friend who was able to call for help. She was so lucky. It’s the stuff of fiction/nightmares.

70. The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side by Agatha Christie Finished October's Read Christie challenge last night just in time to count it as an October read. Before this challenge I'd never read a Marple and now regretting that as I love them! They're by far my favourite Christie's to read. In this one, Marple has aged a lot from her earlier books and she's feeling out of touch with St Mary Mead as there have been so many big changes, including a large new housing estate, known locally as the Development. When a Hollywood actress buys Gossington Hall and someone promptly dies in the house Marple soon realises life hasn't changed much after all

70 books is also my personal target for this year so feeling really positive about that with two months of the year still to go. This will be my biggest reading year since I started tracking in 2022

I love this thread so much. There are so many good ideas for my TBR list that I'm going to have to stop adding new ones.
I am quite a slow reader so I am really impressed by those of you who do 50 or more in a year. How do you do it? I've read only seven books this year.
Currently reading Long Road from Jarrow by Stuart Maconie. Very informative and entertaining comparison of Britain 1936 and modern day.

79. The Friday Afternoon Club - Griffin Dunne

If you’re an aficionado of slightly low-budget/cultish 80s films you probably know Griffin Dunne as the hapless star of 'After Hours', or 'An American Werewolf in London'. He also comes from a background you might call Hollywood royalty - his father was the producer and writer Dominick Dunne, his aunt was Joan Didion and his best friend was Carrie Fisher.

In this gossipy, enjoyable memoir he writes about his privileged yet dysfunctional childhood and desultory attempts to be an actor, but the dark cloud hovering over everything is the death of his younger sister Dominique, who was strangled by her abusive, controlling boyfriend: the final part of the book documents the trial of the murderer, John Sweeney, who got away with a scandalously light sentence for ‘involuntary manslaughter' after the judge ruled evidence of his past violence towards Dominique and other women to be inadmissible. So this book is a bit of an odd mix of the very serious and the hilarious (Dunne tells a good anecdote), but extremely engaging nonetheless.

Upside Down Boulder Girl :

her.ie/news/woman-trapped-upside-down-for-seven-hours-620128

Horrifying. The sort of thing that makes me panic sweat.

I loved After Hours as a teenager @Terpsichore, borrowing it frequently from the local video shop. Dunne’s gradual bodily disintegration in American Werewolf was a gory treat, too . I’ve put the book on my Wish List, thank you for the recommendation.

3 99p-ers from my Wish List today. Palace Of Shadows by Ray Celestin, William by Mason Coile (both spooky/horror) and Good Girls by Hadley Freeman.
I’ve spent this week mostly trudging up to remote hill forts in Northumberland, dodging cattle, ambling along coastal routes and jumping in and quickly out of chilly seas. Clocked up 50+ miles since Saturday and reckon I deserve a rest. So this afternoon I am going to flump on my Reading Bed and finish Day One, which I have found deeply affecting and gripping and not really a ‘holiday read’. Then onto Day And Night which arrived yesterday.

@AlmanbyRoadtrip thanks for the tip, I think I will get Good Girls. Probably The Mountains Sing too.