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?

50. None of this is True by Lisa Jewell
Thank you for the reviews of this which led me to read it for my 50th book of the year. It's good. My problem is that I believe I can cope with psychological thrillers when in fact I can't, at all. Can read almost anything nonfiction but fiction is too scarily unpredictable, like this. I'm very relieved to have finished it.

@BestIsWest I do sometimes bite my tongue, but some of it is horrible and then I feel I have to put my oar in!

@cassandre Thanks for explaining the Christie thing so well. I just remember feeling rather bulldozed, especially as I didn’t even like the stupid book much!

Yes, excellent summary @cassandre.

Thanks @BestIsWest !

I should say I'm a privileged white woman and my perspective is definitely not the only one. But I think that when it comes to ethics, it's less about what you read and more about how you read. People on these threads frequently appreciate books and critique aspects of them at the same time, and that is a good thing. It's not a simple binary between good books and bad ones. I would like to think that the way to counter prejudice in literature isn't through censorship, but through countering that speech with better, more reasoned, and more compassionate speech. Though maybe that sounds a bit idealistic 😳

My views are also shaped by the fact that I grew up in a very right-wing conservative Christian environment. Lots of books were labelled bad. As I grew older, I was seduced by 'bad' books. Which was definitely a good thing! But I'm still wary today of the tendency to label books as bad, even if it's lefties doing the labelling. I dislike the idea of banning books regardless of whether you're doing it from a right-wing viewpoint or a left-wing one.

Bravo @cassandre - agree with you 100%

I agree entirely @cassandre

The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks

Saw this in the Kindle sale yesterday. It’s advertised as steam punk, but it’s not really. I was interested in the blurb and a quick search revealed a positive review in the Guardian.

Imagine a sort of steam punk vibe in that it feels vaguely Victorian and there’s a train which is a wonder of engineering. Add a trans-Siberian setting; an orphaned girl; a scientist who has lost everything and has everything to prove; a mysterious widow who is not who she seems; a countess; a troubled engineer; a cartographer who knows more than his maps seem to tell; a wise old man; a mad priest; some bad guys and an ethereal girl who may or may not be a monster.

It won’t be for everyone. Côte would dismiss it as YA (it isn’t, but at times could blur over into it) and you have to be willing to just let some of the strangeness wash over you. I loved it and gobbled it up. 99p in the Kindle sale.

Start talking about how amazing some mainstream literary SF book is? I suggest In Ascension. Would love to hear her views on Orbital!

@PepeLePew great review of All Fours - I thoroughly enjoyed it.

@Piggywaspushed - thank you for review of Conclave. I have read the book and am keen to see the film. Pondering how long it will be in cinemas as to whether it could be a Christmas outing for family members coming to stay (who have also read it). Could be a risky strategy to hang on as I could end up missing it!

@cassandre cheers for plurality!

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I bought that one too, glad to see a rave from you.

@FortunaMajor Re recent rash of Lady Macbeths, have you come across Isabel Schuler's or Joel Morris'? No idea if they're any good as I decided I'd rather just reread King Hereafter.😅

@Stowickthevast I learned Japanese as an adult and got reasonably fluent when I lived there - could read the papers and follow ongoing debates over the real Konkatsu killer, years after the first trial. Also experienced the major nationwide butter shortage in the novel and still have cookbooks from that time with various workarounds, which came in handy during the first Covid lockdown here). But I'm pretty rusty now and mostly stick to manga and commercial fiction - like Yuzuki, who I think writes accessible and unobtrusive prose but not strikingly badly (native-speaker DP has endorsed this message 😅). She used to be a pastry chef and still writes a food column hence the the gastro-lit elements, but for me the particular vividness of the food porn in Butter was deliberate, to contrast with the protagonist's otherwise anodyne good-on-paper life. We agree about the 2/3ds thing - actually I've since DNFed another Yuzuki novel at around the same point.

Anyway, I've far too many reviews to post 😮 so just the gastronomical ones:
Jay Rayner - Nights Out At Home which I enjoyed for the restaurant reminiscences and chef goss, less for the recipes, most of which were too faffy, offally or deep-fryery to make for fun reading, let alone cooking. Or the other extreme, like the 'recipe' for buttered matzo coming dangerously close to Nigella's meecrowahvé tinkliness. The more introspective interludes on nepotism, weight/appetite, systemic problems in the industry etc. offered some insights, but lacked bite - I think I would have preferred them beefed up or left out altogether.

Grace Dent - Comfort Eating Some laughs, some moving moments but generally meh. Relies very heavily on shared nostalgia and assumed familiarity with food, people, references (ok, a food culture, go figure 🤔) that I just found too specific (and unfamiliar) to be relatable. The insistence on only the cheapest UPF 'bad' food as genuinely 'comforting', in combination with her memories of being on/off diets (and labelling food as 'good/bad') for most of her life, also started to make me feel a bit uncomfortable. Sorry Grace, I expect it's me, not you (or your 500 'celeb' besties).

Philip Gwynne Jones - The Venetian Game @PepeLePew's recent review of another in this series made me fish this off the TBR as Venice is one of my favourite places. I liked it more than she did - as setting-as-the-star escapist, foodie, cosy crime it delivered, in competent prose with an enjoyably civilised bemused-Englishman protagonist. At least pacier/plottier than Donna Leon (though tbf she's about 40 books ahead); would read more at 99p.

@inaptonym I agree, Dorothy Dunnett's Lady Macbeth/Ingibiorg is hard to beat.

@inapinaptonym I haven't come across either of those, my reading was triggered by what was shiny and new at the library. I'll certainly look out for both. I'm going to sit and write a hitlist of books before the year is out so I can start strongly in the new year. Too many duds recently.

I think I've been reasonably on top of what's been recommended on here this year, but end of year lists are always helpful to see what's universally in bold.

I've just read Dorothy Dunnett - The Game of Kings which was a second attempt. I wasn't a fan, it took a long time to get going and I was praying for it to end much sooner than it did. It isn't making me want to rush to read anything else of hers.

@Cassandre that's a perfect sum up of dealing with problem books. No doubt in 100 years, much of what we're reading now will get dragged for attitudes that don't chime with the sensibilities of that time.

89. The True History of the First Mrs. Meredith and other lesser lives - Diane Johnson

An unusual and unconventional biography, this, of a woman nobody much will have heard of - Mary Ellen Meredith was the first wife of the Victorian writer George Meredith and daughter of the Regency novelist Thomas Love Peacock. She died young, of kidney disease, having left Meredith and formed a relationship with the painter Richard Wallis, with whom she had a son, Felix.
Johnson, who I knew primarily as a novelist (Le Mariage and Le Divorce are witty novels about Americans living in Paris) sets out here to dismantle the given historical narrative that casts George Meredith as the wronged husband of a mad, flighty wife who left him for a younger man then died, leaving him to bring up their young son. In fact, she reveals Mary Ellen to have been intelligent, resourceful and strong, while the petulant Meredith spent the rest of his life bitterly rewriting her as the villain of his novels and casting himself as the blameless hero (he also messed up their poor son, who effectively rejected his father as an adult).

This is the third of the books I was lured into buying recently by my Backlisted listening, entirely thanks to the rave review they gave it, and while I enjoyed it a lot, I wasn’t quite so taken with it. It’s certainly a different way of writing biography, above all a witty feminist take, but it was first published in 1971 and both biography and history have moved on a lot since then. The Backlisted crew make an awful lot of how deeply the book immerses you in its era, and how they’ve never read anything like it, but I conclude that a) they don’t read much non-fiction, or not the right kind, and b) there are a lot of books now that do immerse the reader in a very vivid and engrossing way. Definitely worth a read, but for me, not the five stars that Backlisted would award.

Just popping in to get some book ideas as currently suffering from complete 'readers block'. Have read through all the reviews and now have a list of possibles to to seek out. I need to break my youtube/netflix dross habit. My 12 year old asked me 'why are you watching this rubbish' - not a good look.

#Teamtheboringbutler #TeamNLMG (admit i loved it & it would make my list of favourite books) Had no idea what TTTW was about so googled - the synopsis including the phrase 'sci-fi romance' suggested it wouldnt be for me.

Terp, I agree with your reservations about some of the Backlisted recommendations - I have just finished a r-read of The Kingdom by the Sea, by Paul Theroux thanks to the enthusiastic Backlisted endorsement, having disliked it when I originally read it a good two decades ago. It's a 1982 travelogue around the UK. Backlisted found Theroux's grumpy persona amusing - I was less entertained by the relentless negativity. Everything and everyone is ugly and sordid, and every conversation is banal. He disdains going to see anything deemed to be of touristic interest, and it wasn't clear why he bothered at all.

150. The Secret Chapter, by Genevieve Cogman
Penultimate instalment of The Invisible Library, involving a heist in Vienna. I've liked the series but one final books feels about right, to avoid outstaying its welcome.

I'm struggling with the start of The Passenger. Does it improve later?

My Mother's Wedding Dress by Justine Picardie Not my usual fare, but lent by a new friend. Part memoir, part fashion reporting, this hangs JP's personal stories on various items of clothing from her wardrobe. Justine Picardie is a good writer but I didn't find this particularly original or enthralling.

A Fortunate Woman by Polly Morland At the risk of outing myself, this was also lent to me by my new friend and was very much more engaging. Back in 1967 John Berger wrote A Fortunate Man, documenting the work of an anonymous country doctor in an unidentified rural area. By all accounts the doctor was something of a maverick who ended up taking his own life, but he was also a much-loved local, dedicated to his valley community, who exemplified the importance of the doctor-patient relationship and personal continuity of care.

Serendipitously PM realised that A Fortunate Man was set in her own home valley and that she knew the doctor's successor, a woman, who serves the same community. A Fortunate Woman describes her work and the changes that have occcured in society, medicine and general practice. It was written in 2022 so it has contemporary relevance and also covers the Covid pandemic. I found it a moving and inspiring account of a very dedicated doctor working through the most difficult of times, recognising the importance of - and striving to maintain - a personal connection with her patients in the face of a changing NHS. Recommended.

@bibliomania Paul Theroux writes from a position of privileged cynicism that is deeply annoying and at times offensive. Horrible book.

Well put, Remus.

@countrygirl99 I was going to say yes it improves but thankfully I checked storygraph and it was The Passage that I enjoyed! I haven't read The Passenger. I am relieved to see up thread it's not just me who gets confused.

Kat Brown - It's Not A Bloody Trend. Living with ADHD as an adult

I listened to this, it's in Spotify premium.

At the beginning of the year my GP suggested I might have ADHD. I am on a waiting list and got bored so am investigating and making my own diagnosis in case I never get seen.

I definitely have ADHD traits. Quite a lot actually. But reading this and a few subreddits has shown me that I don't have it to a debilitating degree some so, I can probably just do with being a bit kinder to myself.

Kat Brown struggled her whole life with various issues, depression, eating disorders, struggling to hold a job and treating those various things/working on them didn't help as ADHD is the underlying issue. She is a journalist so well placed to write a book. There's chapters on various aspects of life and how ADHD might affect you, a cheat sheet on how you can help yourself and science or expert perspective.

I didn't learn much new, apart from I did cry when I realised it's sadly common for women in peri menopause to get a change in hormones and worry they have early on set dementia when ust actually ADHD kicking up a gear. My memory felt like it felt apart in 2018 in my mind thirties to the extent I went to Dr and I just passed the memory test, I was then dismissed as being stressed although I wasn't. It's been a relief to know that my brain just struggles to hold info, and I am less scared, and therefore lash out less at DH. Good stuff all round.

Now, back to Roland. 300 pages left but many hours on a train tomorrow. Maybe I can do it. (If I don't get distracted by an audio book)

Looks like I’m checking in at the right time. Today, my boss gave me a first edition, Crime Club Agatha Christie book for Christmas, because I mentioned to someone that I collect older editions of Christie because I like to covers!! Wholeheartedly, agree with everything Cassandre said.

In other news, I thought HHhH was a very self satisfied, rather annoying book, which means it’s probably the only book Cote and I might have agreed on.

I loved Sanjeev Sahota’s The Year of the Runaways. However, a bit like with Hardy, I have other books by Sahota but I can’t bring myself to read them yet, like the time hasn’t come. I cannot really explain it.

Just came in from watching Macbeth, which is also timely as interested in some of these Macbeth-adjacent texts being mentioned.

Couple of reviews:

Shakespeare: the Man Who Pays the Rent, Judi Dench (and Brendan O’Hea)
I absolutely ADORED this set of conversations between Judi Dench and Brendan O’Hea. Each chapter focussed on a play or theme, and her memories give a nice synopsis of the story, whilst also being erudite and funny. This just felt wholesome, nothing impinged on it, it was two people have a cup of tea or a glass of wine talking about something they love. It’s encouraged me to branch out from my usual diet of every Macbeth ever to come to my city, Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and Cleopatra and Much Ado About Nothing.

Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans
Already widely reviewed. I lost the train of thought on occasion with long, windy sentences, but overall this was a nice cosy read around subjects I enjoy - the servant problem, crumbling Manor House’s and eccentrics.

326 Jolly Super Too by Jilly Cooper

More of Jilly’s early journalism. I’m really enjoying reading these for a slice of life from the early 1970s.

327 The Year of Living Constitutionally by A J Jacobs

I read this because I’ve read and enjoyed all his other books. In this one, he decides to live as the US Constitution says, although he does pick and choose to an extent! I am not American and therefore not really very familiar with the Constitution, so it was interesting to read more about it and its history, but I suspect I might have enjoyed this book a bit more if I was American and the Constitution had a direct impact on my life.

328 The Proof of my Innocence by Jonathan Coe

Phil has recently graduated from university and is back at her parents’ house trying to work out what to do with her life. They are visited by Christopher, a university friend of Phil’s mother, who is a political blogger on his way to a conference. This leads us into a story that’s part ‘state of the nation’ commentary about the short Liz Truss era, and part satire on cosy crime and dark academia novel genres. It’s one of those books that I can’t help feeling was a bit too clever for me to fully ‘get’, but I have kept thinking about it and will reread in the future.

329 The Christmas Book Hunt by Jenny Colgan

Short story about a woman searching for a rare edition of a book. The clues she finds are all a bit too coincidental, and despite the title it’s not that Christmassy, but I enjoyed the book talk and the descriptions of the different bookshops visited.

330 No Easy Deeds by Keith A Pearson

Danny is down on his luck when he gets a job as an estate agent. He then gets a very strange offer from a strange woman - break up the relationship of another woman and he will be given the deeds to a house. Who is the strange woman and what’s this all about? This was an OK read - writing style is a bit clunky but the story was intriguing enough. However the end was a bit inconclusive and at that point the author reveals he’s planning on turning it into a series so I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t get a proper ending.

331 One Day by David Nicholls

This was a reread, but it is a
long time since I first read it so I didn’t remember much of the detail. I loved it when I first read it and loved it again now. For anyone who doesn’t know the plot, Emma and Dexter meet at university in 1988, then we catch up with them both on the same day for the next twenty or so years as they navigate careers and relationships. I love the idea of just seeing the one day a year snapshots, and Nicholls does a good job of capturing those uncertain years in your twenties when you don’t really know what or who you want. I’ve now just started watching the Netflix programme of the book so will be interesting to see what they’ve done with it - DD loved it but she saw it before reading the book whereas I’m doing it the other way round.

@RazorstormUnicorn sometimes the right book comes along for us at the right time, helping to clarify our thoughts.

78 The Whistling by Rebecca Netley
This would have perhaps been a DNF but because I bought the physical stash on Monday I was wary of ditching an ok Kindle book in favour of shiny newness and Rupert Everett. So I gave it a good try but can’t raise an opinion much higher than mediocre and derivative. I like a good Governess In Peril but this was overwrought, overlong and overdone.
Elspeth is all alone in the world after the death of her family (reads like those coroners’ lists of old) so naturally accepts a job on a remote Scottish island looking after a little girl whose brother died. Mary does not speak, strange witchy pebbles with hair wrapped round them appear with tedious regularity, there’s a jolly vicar’s wife, a dour maidservant, a stern Aunt……..it’s about 50 pages too long for the basic plot and I’ll have forgotten it in a week (generous).

Boiledegg I have a copy of A Fortunate Woman (from the May meet-up) and it looks fascinating. Your review has inspired me to put it towards the top of the TBR pile. I'm dealing quite a bit with the NHS at the moment so it'll be interesting to have another perspective.

Fortuna last year we had a separate round up thread (started by Tarahumara IIRC) which was great for posting lists etc. I'm happy to wrangle Excel again and come up with some meaningful stats...

332 Such A Beautiful Family by T R Ragan

Nora is contacted by a woman, Jane, who offers Nora a wonderful new job. However Jane then tries to insinuate herself into Nora’s family in a really creepy way but everyone else thinks Jane is just being friendly. Unfortunately the ending is predictable within the first few minutes of the book but it takes an embarrassingly long time for the penny to drop for the main character. The denouement is just ludicrous with people suddenly appearing in places they couldn’t possibly be. Not recommended!