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?

@ÚlldemoShúl I enjoyed both of those.

28 Sea of Poppies - Amitav Ghosh
In the run-up to the Opium Wars, the Ibis, an ex-slaving ship is converted to transport Indian migrants to Mauritius. The first half of the book introduces us to some key characters: an American sailor with enslaved ancestry; a bankrupt Raja and his caste-related prejudices, an orphaned French teenager and her best friend, a Muslim boy with sailorly ambitions; a widowed poppy farmer and her low-caste lover: a comical Indian beaurocrat and his delusional belief that his deceased female guru has chosen him to manifest herself in his body. The second half takes place on the Ibis as these people set sail across the Black Water to a new life.

This took me ages to read, not because I wasn't enjoying it but because it required a degree of concentration throughout. I love a book that uses unusual language, and there is a lot of that here. Certain passages were reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange in that apparent gobbledegook actually has meaning and it's well worth the effort to understand.

I found out halfway through that this is the first book of a trilogy so will seek out the sequels after a decent pause to cleanse the palette.

Catching up on the thread. Stressful week with elderly parent worries, hence posting at this hour. It’s reminded me how much reading is an escape in difficult times.

<strong>63.	Vagabonds</strong> - Oskar Jensen

Thanks to whoever reviewed this (last year I think, it’s been sitting on my wish list for a while). I read Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor some years ago and was struck by the verbatim (albeit journalised) voices of Victorian London. In this volume the author has deliberately not used Mayhew's work as it would take over, instead tracking down other chroniclers, court and journalists’ reports and various other sources to give a vivid and sensitive flavour of the lives played out on London’s streets in the late eighteenth to late nineteenth centuries.

The chapters reflect the seven ages of man looking at how people survived, some as a temporary measure, others through poverty, changes in circumstance, or even by choice on a permanent basis living on the streets in various occupations, mostly legal and decent. The book returned to some of the same people in different stages of life, and others we met only once. I was familiar with Edmund Kean and Joseph Johnson but most of the stories were unknown, and fascinating, though heartbreaking to see the prejudice and treatment of the poor meted out by ‘charitable’ organisations such as the parochial system and Mendacity Society.

I think my only criticism is with the tone of the book. In a few places it felt overly informal with modern day sensibilities coming through. This is only a minor complaint, and the book is one I’ve been thinking about and enjoying returning to. Possibly a bold, I’ll ponder that.

295 Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty

I really enjoyed this. In a flight a woman goes round telling everyone how old they’ll be when they die, and what they will die of. People then start to become worried when a few of the predictions come true. This follows several characters and how they cope with their predictions. It’s a great idea for a story, and the characters are engaging.

296 Evacuee by Gabriel Alington

I found this after googling for more information about children evacuated to America during the war. It’s a children’s book about a girl who is sent to America. I was hoping for a sort of reverse ‘Back Home’, with her struggling to fit in/all the differences between the UK and US. There was a bit of that but most of the book was about the politics of whether the US should join the war or not. Disappointing.

297 Run by Blake Crouch

Most people have turned into murdering psychopaths because they saw an aurora. Jack’s family were asleep and missed it. Now they’re having to run for their lives. This started well but after a while the number of times they managed to escape from whichever tricky situation they were in started to become unbelievable.

298 Among the Janeites by Deborah Yaffe

This looks into people who are massive Jane Austen fans - fanfiction, conventions and so on. It was interesting but it was almost entirely USA focused (understandable as the author is American) but I would have liked to know a bit more about UK fandom.

299 The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien

Read for the Rather Dated thread and unfortunately I did not enjoy it. More thoughts on the dedicated thread.

300 See No Evil by David Fennell

Second in the series featuring detective Grace Archer. Here she’s chasing down a killer who likes to cut out people’s eyes. This was good.

301 Lisa & Co by Jilly Cooper

Collection of short romance stories written in the 1970s. Dated now but still good fun!

302 Holmes and Moriarty by Gareth Rubin

A Sherlock spinoff which has him working with his enemy to solve a crime. I enjoyed the story but I’m not familiar enough with the originals to know how good it is as a follow on.

303 Estella’s Revenge by Barbara Havelock

A retelling of Great Expectations from Estella’s point of view. It’s a long time since I read GE but I remember the key points and this did seem to pick them all up, and it was nice to have the gaps filled in about what Estella was up to when we don’t see her in GE. I liked this.

304 The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous by Jilly Cooper

Audible reread. My favourite Jilly along with Rivals. Lysander entertains the unhappy wives of Paradise.

305 The Day I Saved Your Life by Louise Candlish

This was disappointing. It’s one of her earlier books, before she moved more into psychological thrillers, but this has been packaged to look and sound more like her later work. As a result I kept waiting for a twist that didn’t come. Two families are on a boat trip in France when a man saves a small child who has fallen in. This brings the families close together which has lasting repercussions from them all. It was ok but too long and just fizzled out.

306 Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin

YA about a teenage girl who is killed in an accident and ends up in Elsewhere, where everyone then lives their lives backwards until they return to Earth to be reborn. Interesting idea but there were a few plot holes that annoyed me.

307 The Answer Is No by Fredrik Backman

Short story - my Amazon first reads freebie. Lucas is happy living a quiet life playing video games and being left alone, but when someone abandons a frying pan outside his apartment block his quiet life is no more. This was great, very much in the ‘Man Called Ove’ vein.

308 Work & Wedlock by Jilly Cooper

Advice on surviving the office and on how to stay married. Hilariously dated now (lots of ‘make sure you look pretty for your husband’) and entertaining to read as a period piece.

309 Mr Finchley Discovers His England by Victor Canning

Written in the 1930s, Mr Finchley, who has barely left London, goes on holiday but things almost immediately go wrong and his plans are thrown into disarray. He ends up on quite an adventure meeting lots of characters along the way. This is nice, gentle comedy and I liked it. There are two sequels which I will seek out at some point.

Sorry to hear about your stresses, @RomanMum, sending much sympathy. The Oskar Jensen book sounds promising - I’m going to investigate that.

80. Shy Creatures - Clare Chambers

Snaffled recently in the daily deals. It’s 1964 and Helen Hansford is an art therapist at Westbury Park psychiatric hospital, a rambling but enlightened establishment which cares for numerous in-patients. Helen has been having a surreptitious, slightly agonised affair with attractive married doctor Gil Rudden. By chance she gets involved in an unusual case when Gil is called to a crisis situation at a nearby house where an elderly woman and a man in his thirties appear to have been living a reclusive life: both are admitted to the hospital and the man, William, though mute, turns out to have a considerable artistic gift. The narrative then splits into two timelines as we discover what led William to his present-day state, while Helen works through her feelings about Gil and how she wants her life to proceed.

I'm trying not to give spoilers as there’s a lot I could blurt out - but I enjoyed this a lot. It’s not high literary fiction and maybe has rather too happy an ending but, as always with this author, was very enjoyable and I raced through it in a day, extremely keen to find out what happens. While the premise might sound a bit unlikely, Clare Chambers explains in an afterword that she was inspired by a true story, at which my mind boggled a bit.

Second holiday read was The Prophet and the Idiot by Jonas Jonasson. His books are so formulaic now. Passed the time - an easy and occasionally entertaining read.

Christmas reads aside and the rest of A Place of Greater Safety to go which I am drip reading, my TBR is down to one book! I can't even find anything I want to buy. I have a few in hardback on my Amazon shopping list but am waiting for paperback.

19.Angel Meadow Victorian Britain’s Most Savage Slum by Dean Kirby

A non-fiction pick

This is described as shocking and I have to agree. Dean Kirby a Manchester journalist brings this piece of history alive in the most notorious slum of the Industrial Revolution. 30,000 folks trapped in extreme poverty, overcrowded lodges and rats. This is a story of a true hell on earth of criminal's, prostitution and scuttler gangs.

It is a bold for me, highly recommend.

I also went on to discover more and discovered this young lad who has created a YouTube video called Angel Meadow people pubs and poverty by Daft Monkey which I thought was well done too. There is a host of other videos I will be exploring later too.

So sorry to hear about your cat, Piggy, and sending sympathy with the family stresses Roman.

All my sympathy for your loss, @Piggywaspushed . That sounds like such a traumatic way to lose a beloved cat 😥

Just a couple of reviews:

70. The Safekeep, Yael van der Wouden 3/5
    This novel has some great scenes, and I liked the overarching plot device, but the characters never really felt convincing to me for some reason. Lots of steamy sex though!

71. Tell Me Everything, Elizabeth Strout 5/5
    Everything Strout writes is a bold for me! I thought the intercalated stories in this novel worked very well, and it was satisfying to see her bring a cast of characters from her different novels together. I thought I wasn’t going to like the ending but I liked it after all.

I think I'm also going to reread Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon purely due to FOMO, ha. I read and reread those books when I was a kid, but haven't revisited them as an adult.

A couple of you mentioned What Katy Did; I have a bit of a cringey memory of that series. Didn't Katy break her back and become bedridden, and then she turned sort of saintlike and all her siblings came to her bed to seek wise advice? Very Angel in the House as I recall! (Though I didn't learn that term till I was older.)

But not nearly as bad as the dreadful Elsie Dinsmore books. I recall Elsie's father as being downright abusive.

I'm a little nervous to reread the Anne books as I loved them so much, I don't want to hate them now!

(Edited to spell Strout's name correctly, oops)

55 Death and Croissants - Ian Moore It took me ages to finish this, which it shouldn’t have done given how lightweight the book was. In the vein of Richard Osman but much worse: the plot didn’t make sense, the characters were irritating and one-dimensional, and I struggled to care. And [spoiler] we don’t even find out who killed the bloody hen! I’ve diplomatically tried to convey the hint to DH that he shouldn’t get me the sequel for Christmas 😂

@Piggywaspushed so sorry about your cat :( I am very much a cat person so you have my heartfelt sympathy.

72 Keanu Reeves Is Not In Love With You - Becky Holmes

This was an easy enough read about romance scammers, but I got a bit bored towards the end. Works better on her Twitter feed which is very funny.

One book on the TBR pile, @Piggywaspushed ? That must be a 50 Booker record!

73 Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil - John Berendt

Unusual and interesting true crime narrative set in Savannah, Georgia in the late 70s/early 80s, focusing on the city’s idiosyncratic residents just as much as the drama of the killing and trial.

I know! It's alarming!

71 Good Girls by Hadley Freeman
I love Hadley anyway, but my admiration deepened for her after reading this account of how anorexia affected so much of her life. Not an easy read at times, but shot through with humour and hope.

I was in London yesterday, using the underground a lot, and realised it probably has a really fascinating history. Can anyone recommend a good book on the history of the London underground?

A couple from Audible which I think will end up being bolds:

57 Odyssey - Stephen Fry
The final volume of Fry’s Greek Myths series, focusing on the return of the Greek warriors from Troy and the various (largely grisly) fates that awaited them. Fry’s narration gives me an overwhelming feeling of being in a safe pair of hands. I was not happy though about the ending of Odysseus’ story - he left out the bit about the hanging of the abused maidservants - which allows Odysseus and Telemachus to come out of the whole thing looking much more like heroes.

58 Super-Infinite: the transformations of John Donne - Katherine Rundell
I didn’t know much about Donne or his work before listening to this, but Rundell is a super-fan who presents an entrancing vision of his poetry: he was a man who could see the horror and beauty and joy of human life all at once and shied away from none of it. I got the hard copy out of the library too so I could take more time reading the extracts from his poetry. (My ears aren’t quick enough to pick up the nuances of Renaissance poetry I’ve never heard/read before.)

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main… Any man`s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.” Beautiful.

Having read a number of “feminist versions” of the classics (Pat Barker, Natalie Haynes, Madeleine Miller etc) I find Fry’s work pretty lazy on that front, TBH.

@satelliteheart I may have to fess up to my own geeky love of the underground here! I can recommend Christian Wolmar's very detailed The Subterranean Railway as a good history - though iirc it isn’t completely up to date with the very latest developments (Elizabeth Line etc). And there are lots of very good illustrated books about the associated signage, design etc, including the iconic tube map, but that’s a bit of an offshoot so maybe the next step if you wanted to take it that far…

I re-read the Katy books a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed them. I feel I missed out on Anne, I can’t remember if I read or not so may give it a try.

Polo - Jilly Cooper Not as good as Rivals but still one of her best. I did get a bit fed up of the descriptions of polo matches but there are some great and some horrible characters plus some very irritating ones. And fabulous descriptions of clothes, food, interior decor and sunsets.

Oops, bought 5 books from today's Kindle daily deals

Doppelganger by Naomi Klein - one I've read but definitely wanted my own copy
3 other wishlist books
Guilty by Definition by Susie Dent (£1.99 - others are 99p)
Wife by Charlotte Mendelson
Hera by Jennifer Saint
and the latest instalment - #25 - Coffin Island in a long series by Kate Ellis featuring a black police detective in Devon

Hoping that any further Kindle bargains on offer are spread evenly and more thinly through the month.

I apparently have no will of my own and bought Rural Hours thanks to elkie, Mr Finchley Discovers his England thanks to chessie, and I'm deep in Jane Casey's Maeve Kerrigan books plus the Invisible Library series.

135. The Masked City, Genevieve Cogman
Irene battles to rescue her student from an alternative version of Venice. Dragons, fae and the power of story. Lots of action and jeopardy.

136. On the Slow Train Again, Michael Williams
Non-fiction - descriptions of train rides on obscure branch lines around the UK. Got this as I was due to taking a lot of train journeys and thought this would be a reminder to enjoy the journey rather than get cranky at delays. Nice enthusiasm but rather more technical information than I require.

137. Comfort Eating, Grace Dent
Follows on from her memoir. Grieving the loss of her mother, this is very much about the power of familiar tastes to transport us back to childhood. Slight but touching.

138. The Burning Page, Genevieve Cogman
More fun at the Invisible Library. Irene goes to dangerous places - werewolf dens, the court of Catherine the Great at St Petersburg. library committee rooms. Inventive.

139. Cruel Acts, Jane Casey
Page-turning police procedural.

140. Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, M R James
Seasonal read. The stories aren't very twisty by modern standards - scholar takes unwise interest in ancient artefact, accidentally summons up the forces of darkness, runs away screaming. There's an enjoyable Edwardian atmosphere, a fug of tobacco and gas lamps while playing whist in front of the fire.

141. The Lost Plot, Genevieve Cogman
Dragon politics this time, and Prohibition-era New York.

142. Confinement, Jessica Cox
Pregnancy and childbirth in the nineteenth century. Very engaging when the women's voices came through, but the author really needed a decent editor - far too much repetition.

143. The Close, Janey Casey
Maeve goes undercover in a prosperous suburb and encounters all sorts of undercurrents.