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?

Normal Mccarthy

Cormac - autocorrect fail

I started it on audiobook and wasn't following it at all so I decided I'd try it as a normal book but tbh I have been very put off by what I listened to.

21.A Gypsy In Auschwitz by Otto Rosenberg

I can’t find the words but a deeply moving, powerful account of the atrocities man/woman have done to others.

@RomanMum well remembered! That was really useful last year.

The Voyage Home - Pat Barker
Third in her Trojan women series.
Told through the eyes of Cassandra's slave as they travel back to Mycenae where a vengeful Clytemnestra awaits.

I have enjoyed this most of the three. I devoured it. I keep saying I'm not reading any more greek retellings, but this felt really fresh.

76. Orbital: Samantha Harvey.

This is a book about a day in the life of four astronauts and two cosmonauts on the international space station who circle the earth sixteen times in twenty-four hours, in Harvey's words, 'a space pastoral'. As the crew complete their daily tasks, they observe the land masses and oceans below in an ever-changing panorama and they are struck by the planet's beauty and its fragility. There are details about some of the characters' lives but these are more like broad brush strokes and it's not easy to differentiate between them although the story about the death of a mother is memorable and moving. There is no plot as such. There is a relentless aspect to it as they go round and round indefinitely. I thought it had a vertiginous quality as well. While it's quite short, I found it took time to read. The writing is carefully crafted and laden with imagery.

I liked this. I thought it was a quiet, gentle meditative book and I liked the contrast between what the astronauts did on board the station and their philosophical reflections. The moral underpinning is obvious but I was okay with it. I thought it was finely balanced and while it was grand in terms of its scope, I did not find it pretentious. Also, the diagram at the start of the book is cool. You can check out the location of the station as they are on the ascent or descent. I'm glad I read it and I admit to reading it twice!

I thought this was a scathing comment on his writing.

I’m about halfway through Night Climbing. Can’t remember who recommended it, but it’s absolutely brilliant so far.

77. Under the Net: Iris Murdoch

On the surface of it this is a comic tale about a hapless, lazy young Irish man called Jake Donoghue who lives in London. He translates rubbishy novels into French and when his money dries up, he is happy to sponge off his friends. He lives a bohemian existence and falls in and out of trouble on a regular basis. He seems to have a knack for making the wrong decision and his most madcap scheme involves kidnapping a dog that starred in action films without knowing that the dog is past its prime and no longer valuable. He's a fruit loop basically, but a likeable one.

The larger framework of the book serves as the basis for Murdoch's musings on Existentialism. Jake's bumbling around is a search for the meaning of life and in his own quest for the truth he pursues a former friend of his, Hugo, with whom he had meaningful discussions in the past. He eventually gains self-knowledge and awareness and in the end makes a huge leap in deciding to write his own book.

I enjoyed this very much. It's witty and funny and very clever. There are lovely passages as well. I particularly liked the scene at the theatre where he tracked down Anna, the part where he ends up in the removal truck and I really liked his trailing around various locations in Paris. His friendship with Max the Dog was sweet. This was a very different book from the last Murdoch I read ('The Bell'). 'Under the Net' was the first of Murdoch's books to be published. She is an intriguing writer.

78. A Sister's Story: Donna di Pietrantonio (trans. Ann Goldstein).

This was a random pick from the library.

My eye was drawn to the translator, Ann Goldstein, who translated Elena Ferrante's books into English.

At the darkest hour in the middle of the night Adriana, her baby in her arms, knocks on her sister's door looking for a safe place to stay. Her sister, who remains nameless throughout, takes her in, but it results in an upheaval in her own life. Years later, she gets an urgent call to go back to Borgo Sud, the fishing village near Pescara where her sister has settled. Her sister needs her help again.

I liked this. It was well written. However, it wasn't clear that this was a sequel to a previous book that explained the background of both sisters and that the nameless one in 'A Girl Returned' spent some time outside of her family unit for some reason. Also, there was quite a lot of hopping about between two timelines at the start which was confusing at first until things settled down. Altogether this was quite a good book as a quick pick.

79. The Little Prince: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (trans. Michael Morpugo)

This came into my head as I was reading Orbital. Enjoyable tale.

Just finished Night Climbing which I gobbled up in an evening. Two books in just a few days, that I’ve enjoyed- really hope this means I’ve got my reading head back!

I thought lots of this was excellent. Mountain peril; Nazis; snow; a storm; secrets best left in the past; a sort of creeping horror growing as the novel progressed. All good. I did think it lost its way a bit towards the end and it got a bit silly. There was a eugenics issue that felt like a too heavily laboured extended metaphor and a few side stories that got rather cluttered and lacked credibility. On the whole I’m glad I read it, but it’s a shame it didn’t quite live up to what it promised.

59 The Wrong Sister - Claire Douglas Tasha and her husband are frazzled parents of young twins, and go on a wedding anniversary trip to Venice while Tasha’s glamorous, high-flying sister Alice and her rich husband Kyle come to look after the twins for the week. But Alice and Kyle are violently attacked in Tasha’s house and it seems that Tasha was the actual target…Well this was mostly much better than the last book I read (also by Douglas) - it started well and was pretty good all the way through (albeit with some unlikely plot developments) until an absolute damp squib of an ending. It was ok, but no more than that.

Glad you enjoyed that remus.

It was me!

I'm probably the only person on the thread who hasn't read it yet, but Americanah is 99p at the moment.

@Tarragon123 there are some really good podcasts on ADHD if that's your thing. My favourite is ADHD AF, and I have dipped in and out listening to topics that most resonated. I was one of those people who thought it's a fad of everyone getting diagnosed now, and I'd watch those Instagram reels thinking 'everyone does that's turns out not everyone does.... And if your friendship group all so, that might be to do with your vibe attracting your tribe and all that!

40. Wolves of Calla by Stephen King
As I have found with all the Dark Tower series, the book starts slow and then grips me about a third of the way through and I have to gallop to the end. Roland and friends are still on a search for the Tower and still getting side tracked.

I'm finding I can't remember well what happened before (which keeps getting referenced!) as I have left big gaps between the series, but I think the next two Kings in my re-read are the final two, so I'll be getting stuck into them early 2025.

The rest of this year will be given over to easy Christmas reads. I strongly suspect I won't manage 10 in the next month to hit target, but it's not about the final number. Well, not really.... I read 66 last year so perhaps I'll aim to average around 50!

Elena Knows by Claudia Piñiero tr. by Frances Riddle This short novel was recently recommended by a guest on A Good Read and Harriet Gilbert said that she’d read it before and was initially horrified when she was going to have to read it again, though she was then pleased to have done so. Having heard that I was not overjoyed when it was picked for book group. Elena is an elderly Argentinian widow with Parkinson’s whose daughter’s recent death has been lazily dismissed by police as a suicide. She persists in investigating, despite her Parkinson’s having advanced to a stage where she has limited control over her body, and has to time her activities around when she takes her medication in order to be able to walk at all. The book conveys the experience of living with debilitating illness vividly, unlike anything I’ve read before. The author is a prominent campaigner for abortion rights (I believe the laws in Argentina have been liberalised since the book was written) and of women’s rights in their own bodies and despite agreeing with her position, I felt that the book veered too far from fiction into exposition. However I found it effortlessly readable and was very moved by Elena’s plight. It was interesting to read about Argentina and the hold the church had over some of the characters so I would be interested to read others of her books.

333 The Christmas Stocking Murders by Denzil Meyrick

1950s set cosy crime. Inspector Frank Grasby investigates murders linked to the illegal smuggling of stockings. Lightly amusing, although not at all Christmassy despite the title (it is set at Christmas but other than the odd mention of some decorations or the weather it really doesn’t feature!)

Thank you. It’s not something I would have come across otherwise, and I did like most of it!

Yes, your review chimes with my thoughts.

Oh, how disappointing . I have just bought this!

Hopefully you’ll still enjoy it Piggy but yes if you did buy it for the Christmas spirit you won’t get that I’m afraid.

109. Whale Fall - Elizabeth O Connor. This is a short debut novel set in a remote Welsh island just before the second world war. It's narrated by Manod, an 18 year old girl who lives with her fisherman father and younger, wilder sister. Manod speaks good English and is fascinated by the mainland so helps out when two visitors, Joan and Edward come to document life on the island. The story is interspersed with folk tales from the island. It reminded me a lot of The Colony which I really enjoyed last year, and also of Claire Keegan, in the short, sparse writing. And there's also a whale that's washed up on the island but that's more incidental than the whale in the Stranding, or even the Whalebone Theatre.

90. Strange Journey - Maud Cairnes

A charming and enjoyable period-piece first published in 1935, reprinted as part of the British Library's Women Writers series. Wife and mother Polly Wilkinson, married to Tom and with young children, glimpses a luxurious Rolls Royce passing down her ordinary suburban road, and is gripped by a sudden longing to be part of that glamorous world. When she sees a picture of a similar car in a magazine, dizziness overtakes her and next moment she comes to in a room in a grand country house, dressed in unfamiliar clothes and wearing jewellery she doesn’t own. Though she soon returns back to reality, more of these episodes occur randomly, and Polly gradually comes to realise that she’s somehow being 'translated' into the body and life of upper-class Lady Elizabeth, resident of Heringdon Place and semi-indifferent wife of attractive but unfaithful Major Forrester.

A happy ending is eventually brought about, but not before much amusement has been had with the class confusion experienced by both Polly, who narrates the story, and Lady Elizabeth (the two eventually meet and discuss their predicament) - for starters, Polly is innocently baffled by the manners and mores of the upper-crust, is horrified by the slaughter of birds at a shoot, and is determined to do justice to the delicious food everyone else only picks at. It’s interesting that Maud Cairnes was in fact a real-life Lady Elizabeth figure (her full name was Lady Maud Kathleen Cairnes Plantagenet Hastings), but she chose to make lower-middle-class Polly the heroine here. Lots of fun.

That sounds great, @Terpsichore , it’s going on my list. Body swaps and a nod to The Prince And The Pauper, what’s not to like!