50 Books Challenge Part Eight

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the eighth 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 , the sixth one here and the seventh one here .

What are you reading?

There's no coming back from that for Nigel, Pepe.

I was intrigued by his candle descriptions - was there one that smelt like a mossy convent wall? But luckily they aren't sold anywhere in my vicinity so I'm reasonably safe.

Oh Pepe. Nigel really let you down, I’m sorry

I bought some candles that look like the snake things from Beetlejuice, at the other end of the ‘Impulsive Candle Buying’ scale. They were quite expensive, but not Nigel Expensive.
Otherwise it’s plain cream or white church pillar candles.

Mossy convent wall? This has made me laugh far more indelicately than Nigel would approve of.

Nigel also now has his own candle range

www.perfumerh.com/collections/a-feast

I literally had no idea that candles could cost €400.

Mind. Blown.

I'd love to see a Vic and Bob version of the film on this website.

Four hundred pounds for a candle!!?!

Things I would spend £400 on:

TV
New white goods
A bike

Not a jeffing candle!!

Aldi is my candle supplier.

I bloody knew Orbital would win the Booker. It was a weak list anyway, but to give it to the worst book on it really takes the biscuit.

InTheCludgie I start every year with a grand plan and never stick to it. I have lofty ideals of cycles of ten books to include one classic, three non-fic, one lit fic, one contemporary fic, one dated "quality" book etc. In truth I am at the whims of my library holds appearing, usually like buses, and recommendations on here and others. Then I get caught up in reading prize lists. I never learn. I do want to get a hit list of titles I really want to read to have something to aim for rather than being swayed by what's shiny and new.

My big failure this year was to read the physical books in my house and then to give them away. I'm on target for one paper book per month, but none of them have been mine. I'm still 95‰ audiobooks, so maybe next year

I definitely read more of shiny, new things than clearing my TBR

The thing is Eine, if we miss the shiny new things now, they'll only end up in the backlog. We're future proofing our lists. Or so I tell myself....

I'm impossibly behind on reviews. I've taken loads of recommendations from here recently such as Butter, Mongrel and Mayflies. I've enjoyed them, but won't review as I agree largely with what's already been said.

I recently finished The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians - James Patterson which is a collection of vignettes from those in the industry about how they came to the profession and what they love about it. I really liked it and could relate a lot. I think it's perhaps one best dipped into than read cover to cover.

I had my own lovely interaction with a customer today. We have a young man who comes in for a special interest club every week, he didn't read much before and didn't know where to start. I gave him some recommendations and he now asks for advice on what to read next. We've been chatting in general about everything and anything. He usually hovers at the desk for a bit for a chat once the club has finished. He told us today he lost his mum a few years ago and feels a bit adrift. He's been taking on board some of the healthy living advice we've been chatting about and he's now lost 2 stone by following our recommendations. My colleague and I have been giving him job hunting and CV advice and he's started to get interviews. It's lovely to know what we do can make a difference.

A Better Second Half - Liz Earle
A gentle non nagging advice guide for middle aged women to get the best out of their later years by being proactive now in terms of diet and exercise. None of it is groundbreaking and it sometimes felt like an advert for certain supplements, but overall it's a decent kick up the bum if you want to make some sensible changes.

Scaffolding - Lauren Elkin
This explores the relationships of two couples who live in the same apartment in Paris fifty years apart, set against very different social and political backdrops.
This is really tough to review. It's beautifully written and explores some interesting themes around relationships and women's choices. It started really strongly with the modern storyline, but I don't think the 70s storyline worked as well and it felt shoehorned in.

The Examiner - Janice Hallett
Another murder mystery told through email and text interactions. An external examiner is set to moderate an Art MA course which struggled to get funding. The course is full of misfits who have had various difficult interactions while completing a joint installation project for their final grade. The examiner realises something is amiss when he works his way through the material sent to him.
I know this style of book can be annoying, but I quite like these as a bit of mindless fluff.

Madonna in a Fur Coat - Sabahattin Ali
A Turkish cult classic. A story within a story which explores the nature of love. A shy young Turkish migrant in 1920s Berlin falls in love with a cabaret singer after seeing her self-portrait in a gallery. They embark on a short lived love affair.
Gorgeous writing and really captivating.

I've got a few more to mention, but I've run out of steam.

Small Bomb at Dimperley is 99p today on kindle. Rather annoyingly I bought it just a few days ago for £2.99 - it was worth it though!

319 Jolly Super by Jilly Cooper

Another journalism collection - her earliest I think so mainly pieces written in the late 60s. I’m really enjoying reading these even though some of the attitudes wouldn’t fly nowadays.

320 Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans

A lovely, funny book about a young man returning from the war to his rather dilapidated family home, Dimperley, and how all the various residents cope with the changing times and how they’re all going to survive in the future. Some wonderfully written characters. Recommended (especially for 99p!)

Oh no Chessie that’s my first real temptation to break my Read what you Own challenge but I’ll just have to resist!

@ChessieFL thanks for the heads-up - I had managed to resist it at £2.99 so have got it for 99p 😊

I’m up for the Count of Monte Cristo readalong - I have the penguin version and it must be nearly 20 years since I read it. Definitely not going to try and read it in French like I did for Les Liaisons Dangereuses - I gave up on that after about 3 letters as I just don’t have the time or mental space to read in French at the moment!

@FortunaMajor that’s lovely to hear about your library user. When libraries are closed it affects far, far more than ‘just’ access to books.

I started She’s Always Hungry by Eliza Clark last night. My first Content Warning seen in the wild! They aren’t too spoilery so I had a look through them. Bizarre! The cover has a female, alien/dead hand crawling over a bathtub on it and it’s obvious the stories are going to be unsettling, even if you aren’t aware of her previous writing (Penance for example). I really hope it’s meant ironically, but I have a horrible feeling it’s not.

(whisper) I didn't really like Small Bomb At Dimperley

Daphne du Maurier’s The House on the Strand is 99p on kindle, in case anyone is interested. I really liked this when I read it many years ago - enough to spend 99p on a re-read now that I have forgotten most of it!

That's a lovely library tale @FortunaMajor . I have the same shiny new things issues.

I'm reading two books club books at the moment and just really want to get through them so I can read something of my own choosing.
They're both fine but my inner rebel is rebelling. It's like being at school again and having to finish the book so you can write the essay on it.

Thanks @ChessieFL for the Dimperley heads up. I've managed to resist on all previous recommendations but for 99p it seems rude not to buy it

73. The Dark Tower by Stephen King I've finally finished this mammoth re-read with the hugely disappointing ending. I'd actually forgotten that King ends the book before the final reveal and adds it as an appendix with a strong warning to the reader not to read on and to leave the story where it is. He, rightly, states that if you read right to the end you'll be disappointed and I do like the idea of stopping the book when King suggests but I'm too inquisitive not to read to the end! I'd like to know more about why this has happened to Roland, it mentions "time's curse" but I want to know why he's cursed and how it happened!

I feel like the series definitely weakens as it progresses and there are definite errors as if he wasn't familiar enough with the earlier books when he wrote the later ones, which I suppose is part of the problem with a series that is written over such a long period (example: when Eddie & Susannah first sleep together she tells him he's the first white man she's slept with, but in Song of Susannah she recalls a night she spent with a white man). There are a couple of others too which I find frustrating

Overall, this is a fantastic series which I recommend to everyone. Dh is always surprised that I love this so much as it's not my normal genre at all but there's something about Roland that really sucks me in

122. North Woods by Daniel Mason

This book tells various stories in vignettes that are all connected to the titular north woods. Greg from the BookTube channel Supposedly Fun called this a "ghost story" which I suppose it is, it's just not a very good one. I found this such hard work and a bit pretentious, I kept thinking maybe this will improve for me in the next chapter (all different POVs) and it never did. A couple of interesting moments as well as quite at random two beetles having a shag but I was desperate for it to end and skimmed the last 50 pages. This is a real shame as I had high expectations of it and was really looking forward to it. Greg I think DNFd it himself, not enough scare for a ghost story, too disjointed for a successful period piece. Meh.

The Count is live for speculation ahead of our 1 Jan start date.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/5210239-bienvenue-a-marseille-2025-the-count-of-monte-christo-read-a-long

I really want to read Dimperley and have just discovered it is 99p so now I own it, whatever that means. Possibly read it in 1-7 years time.

@FortunaMajor I love Madonna in a Fur Coat. The bookseller in Turkey convinced me I could read it in Turkish so I bought it, but have not yet attempted it.

98. Medieval Woman by Ann Baer
    I saw this recommended on another thread about good books covering the early medieval period. It's the (fictional) year in the life of Marion, who lives in a small Sussex village with two children and her carpenter husband. There's not really any plot as such & it's not a gripping read but I think the author does a pretty good job of imagining what it would have been like to live in that time & place. Definitely one to make you grateful for living in the 21stC, for all our problems.

99. Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans
    I also bought this for £2.99 and was surprised to see it on for 99p! I quite liked it - perhaps I came to it with overly high expectations - I thought it was a decent cosy autumn read with a nice romance, but nothing more than that.