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?

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.)

Yes. And Pollyanna was very similar.

I was just wondering whether anyone on here had mentioned today's deals @elkiedee as I was debating whether to buy Wife or not. I think I'm going to give it a miss based on the size of my TBR pile but did pick up Susie Dent.

I always liked the later Katy books better as a child - What Katy did at School and What Katy did Next were much less saintly.

96 Other People’s Husbands - Elizabeth Noble

This was reasonably good but had far too big a cast of characters. Six scioolgate mum friends, their husbands, various children. This is a group that holidays together once a year after many of the kids are grown up, which strikes me as rather unlikely. Anyway, a bombshell is thrown into the group when one of the women acts on her attraction to one of the men.

I loved her first book, The Reading Group, but I have only liked the ones she has written since.

I reread the Katy books a year or two ago and really enjoyed them, but I loved them when I was young. Basically I think if you liked them as a kid, you still will, and if you didn't then I doubt you'll feel differently as an adult.

This thread is filling up fast.

Agreed! They are a bit saintly, for sure, but I can mostly let it pass. I just love the silly riddles and the lists of picnic food and the unpacking of boxes from Cousin Helen and all, and there's more of that than the po-faced stuff overall.

@Southeastdweller we nearly need a new thread!

99. The Echoes - Evie Wyld. I thought this was good. It's written from 3 povs, one is "after" and is the ghost of Max, a man in a south London flat. One is "before" and is narrated by Hannah, his Australian girlfriend and follows the events leading up to his death, and the third is "then" which is multiple, 3rd person viewpoints in outback Australia from Hannah's past. There's a lot going on - child abuse, self-harm and generational trauma of native Australians - but I though it was written really well and didn't feel heavy at all given the subject matter.

114. The Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths

Ruth Galloway #2. The archaeologist is called upon to help the police once more. Made me think of MN :

AIBU to agree to go baby shopping with the clueless wife of my childs father?

Yes, Ruth, you really are.

Denoument was a bit silly, but I am pressing on to #3

Finished 181 The Wall by John Lanchester
Dystopian where our protagonist is serving his time as a defender on The Wall, preventing the ‘others’ from entering the country. Some twists were predictable but the execution was good and gave lots of food for thought. I enjoyed this but not quite a bold.

Now on the second of the Neapolitan Quartet and The Line of Beauty
I can almost draw a line from where I stopped reading literary fiction in the 1990s and am now desperately trying to catch up on all that backlist, along with the classics I never read. That said, I need to think about my reading for next year. My top aim will be to read less books. I’ve read so much this year that I’ve lost the love a little- I need to get back to taking my time and stop shying away from longer books.

Ok, it sounds like I remember only the didactic bits of the Katy books and not the good bits!

Intermezzo - Sally Rooney. Her fourth novel, this is about two grieving brothers living in contemporary Dublin, navigating through their grief and their relationships. I was a huge Rooney fan before I read this so I'm sad to say that this was hugely disappointing. It starts off captivatingly, but a third of the way through the pace slows down, which makes her overwriting more obvious, and her occasional stream-of-consciousness style, new to this book, feels jarring and pretentious. Moreover, she is crap at writing male characters. What a shame!

@elkiedee - thank you for the update on Cynthia Harrod Eagles and the Dynasty series. I started rereading them a few years ago and got quite a good way through but ground to a halt in the early twentieth century - I need to pick them up again. Maybe next year!

Found my list - looked like I got to book 26. Not sure how many there are….

All the talk of deals reminds me that I meant to flag A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon to @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie.

My TBR is the very opposite of @Piggywaspushed's, so I really shouldn't be buying anything but I couldn't resist this one.

Thanks @noodlezoodle I’ve bought it. I’m not getting on very well with Comfort Eating which I hadn’t realised was about a podcast I’ve never heard and talking about celebrities I’ve never heard of and features such nonsense as baked beans with Wotsits crumbled on top. I’d choose couch potato peril over powdered Wotsits any day.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/5202865-50-books-challenge-part-eight

@Stowickthevast thanks for the recommendation, have added that one to my tbr

I enjoyed Intermezzo much more than @Southeastdweller did, hoping to try and write something about it. Am posting this here because it's easier not to have to jump between threads to work out what someone is replying to. Now over to the new thread.

I've just finished Intermezzo too and found it disappointing. They didn't read like men to me. They sounded like women particularly the older the brother. I navigated the lack of speech marks on her previous books but this time it was unclear if words were the character speaking or thinking or hearing. Maybe this was a deliberate move but it was confusing.

Found it difficult to care about whether the man got to sleep with the 20 year old or very forgiving old friend and the solution to this seemed very unfeminist. Also the characters did a very annoying thing that never happens in real life -they queued up and bought drinks at a bar and left them without taking a sip.

..

I hope you like it! I'm in the US and if things go the wrong way today I might have to hurl myself into the Grand Canyon for a year-long hike.

Thoughts @noodlezoodle i am going to try and watch some later tonight

Thanks @EineReiseDurchDieZeit - as you can imagine it's been a very tense few months...

It's scary for all bystanders due to the fragile world stage