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?

Yes I often think about both of them! It’s quite strange really how you can get to ‘know’ someone quite well on certain threads but then they just vanish and you never know why.

Côte pops in very occasionally. I miss both of them.

Iv been wondering about deleting Mumsnet, because deleting Twitter has really helped my mood and my sleep and because most of MN really annoys me. You lovely lot make me keep coming back though.

Don't go Remus!

Just realised the terrible mis-spelling in my previous, so I might have to leave in shame. 😂

I need to be more disciplined and just look at this thread!

MN is my only social media now but I am really choosy about what I post on. I try and avoid bunfights or anything controversial

No don’t go @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie or stay on this thread!
I feel the same about deleting X but stick to three or four fairly ‘safe’ threads on here.

Time to dust off the tin colander used as a helmet and get the pop corn ready.

Has anyone else read Val McDermid's Queen Macbeth yet?

It's meant to be an empowering feminist retelling, but I felt this made her a bit wet and pathetic.

I've also reserved Ava Reid's Lady Macbeth to see if that fares any better, but I've got about a month's wait.

I recently found my GCSE exam copy of Macbeth filled with copious notes in the tiniest writing in every blank space.

On the fence about all the marmite books!

North Woods is in the deals - I think quite a few people liked it on this thread, but not @EineReiseDurchDieZeit!

I have never read any of Patrick Hamilton and I’ve just realised I thought he was Patrick Melrose who I thought was a real person. Doh! I also have no idea what the butler chat is about.

@FortunaMajor – I got Queen McBeth as a 99p Kindle special and was thinking about reading it next.

Has anyone read Butter yet? I see its on @Cashew1's and @bettbburg's TBR.

109 Midnight and Blue – Iain Rankin (John Rebus 327) Rebus is in the jail for murdering his arch nemesis, Big Ger Cafferty. One of his cellmates is murdered. Can Rebus stay out of bother while trying to solve the murder? Siobhan Clark, Christine Esson and Malcolm Fox all feature. Enjoyable and very clever.

110 Brotherless Night – VV Ganeshananthan. Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2024 and rightly so. This was another hard read in part. I’d recommend not reading either right after or right before Say Nothing. I read a huge chunk of it and the Iain Rankin came up in my library holds, otherwise I’d needed to have taken a break and read something else. My favourite of the Women's Prize contenders. A bold for me.

Yeah I was actually gutted about it because it should really have been my thing

I gave Butter a bold @Tarragon123

@inaptonym has read it as well and wasn't as keen.

I liked the Butler and Never Let Me Go but didn’t understand all the fuss about Station Eleven 🙈

I got All the Light You Cannot See and The Kind Worth Killing in the deals today. I bought North Woods in a previous deal but haven’t got round to it yet. I’ve been slightly put off by the mixed reviews, although I loved Cloud Atlas when I read it (many years ago now) and it seems to be often compared to that.

I deleted Twitter during the first lock down. I have the same struggles with Mumsnet, I actually mentioned it to my therapist (several years ago, following a traumatic birth) and she said lots of women talk to her about it in their sessions! But I love these threads (although I mostly lurk 🙈).

I love The Bloody Boring Butler and liked NLMG but I've not read Station Eleven.

62 The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years by Shubnum Khan

I used to think I really didn't like magical realism, and over the years, I've come to realise that actually I don't like specific authors who do magical realism rather than not liking magical realism itself. So whilst I couldn't get along at all with Midnight's Children and have never managed to finish anything by Isabel Allende, I do like Arundhati Roy, absolutely loved Augustown by Kei Miller and also really like Nicola Barker (although I think she is more magical surrealism - to be honest, I struggle trying to work out where the boundaries lie). Anyway, this was definitely magical realism, but I still enjoyed it very much. Fifteen-year-old Sana moves into a strange old house in Durban with her father after the deaths of her mother and (years before) her conjoined twin sister. Sana is haunted by her sister's ghost; and the house itself is clearly haunted, not only by the djinn of the title but by years of secrets. Once a grand residence, it is now divided into apartments occupied by Indian Muslims who have immigrated over the years. Each of them has their own story. As Sana finds secrets in the house, we also learn about the story of the man who built it and the tragedy of his family. The two stories are deftly woven together; all the characters are well drawn and it's very well written. Worth a read if the premise sounds appealing to you (and possibly even if it doesn't!).

HHhH is also in the deals, I remember Remus and I loved it

I didn't like Butter that much. It's a decent idea but I found the writing really clunky, the book overlong and the plot didn't really know where it wanted to go - I think this was partly due to being based on a true story, but the last part was particularly weak. I'm quite surprised it's getting so many plaudits though so maybe it's just me.

So much for not buying new Kindle books (I had been Quite Good of late)

I got for 99p

Marple
All the Light We Cannot See
The most recent Will Trent book
Station 11 (so I can see what y’all love/hate 😀)

If that’s it for the month (ahem) well, it could have been worse 😀

I got from my List

Pizza Girl and Nightbitch

@JaninaDuszejko I loved The Observations, found her other book Gillespie and I a bit disturbing but still well worth a read. I wish the author would write more books!

@Tarragon123 the bloody boring butler chat is referring to Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro.

LOL, thank you! I'd never have guessed. Also a book I've never read :)

#teambutler

She left ! Nooooo.....

As ever, I can't find the monthly deals link....please some kind soul ?

@InTheCludgie she's got a third book, Sugar Money about the Slave Trade.