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?

Get thee behind me Satan 🤣🤣 (bought it!)

😀😀

286. The Girl With The Irish Secret. Susanne O’Leary.
     This is the third book in a series, I haven't read the others. Violet is an aspiring actress who gets offered the lead in a movie about a famous Irish movie star, Kathleen. As well as being offered the lead role, the movie is being filmed at her Grandmother's manor house in Ireland. Whilst researching Kathleen's life for the role, secrets are uncovered and it seems Kathleen wasn't who everyone thought she was. Just gentle "fluff" really. A nice easy read palate cleanser type book.

287. The Photographer's Secret. Ellie Midwood. Almost a bold. I was lucky enough to get an ARC on NetGalley and read it that same night. A dual timeline, in 1920s Berlin Grete and her mother run away in the middle of the night leaving her baby twin brothers asleep in their bed.
     
     In 1945 Maggie is a press photographer with the army working on the front line and at the liberation of Buchenwald and Dachau. It's obvious that Maggie and Grete are one and the same. There's some details of Nazi camps, and also of CSA. So not an easy read. But utterly fantastic.

288. Zero Risk. Simon Hayes Easily a bold. Possibly my top book this year. Set in the 10 days around Christmas 2024, it's a financial thriller. A hacker has managed to hack the banks, adding a 0 to everyone's bank account. Then another 0 and so on. The race is on to find out who it is, and why they are doing it. There's loads of fun cryptic emails with all kinds of references to art, music, pop culture. I never thought I'd enjoy a book that's billed as a "financial thriller" but there we are!

Onto God of Small Things. Beautiful writing but not much of a plot.

107 Fallen - Karin Slaughter

Number 5 in the Will Trent series, and it’s a good one (bold). Faith swings by her (ex-police) mother Evelyn’s house to collect her baby DD and finds a crime in progress. The dead bodies are piling up, the baby is safe but Faith’s mother is missing. Her work partner, Will, thinks it is to do with a past investigation into corrupt cops, which caused Evelyn to resign. Oh, and Evelyn is the bestie of Will’s boss, Amanda.

In the meantime, Will is trying to survive his collapsing marriage with Angie and his blossoming relationship with Sara (who I love).

Gripping story and with lots of relationship stuff too.

129. We Are All Birds Of Uganda by Hafsa Zayyan

In a dual narrative novel, we have Sameer who has always done everything his parents wanted, top grammar school and Oxbridge, but when he is chosen for a job in Singapore against his family's wishes, his life is completely upended.

The second narrative is a man writing to his lost love. It covers the rule of Idi Amin and the expulsion of Asians from Uganda under his rule.

I strongly engaged with Sameer and felt angry for him more than once. I struggled with the historical narrative but did learn things I didn't know.

Initially, I was very into this book and read the first half quickly, but the break I took by going to London didn't do it favours as I found I was not desperate to finish it and had to force myself through it.

It ends on a bloody cliffhanger as well, leaving you the reader to try and decide what happens to Sameer, this annoyed me as there was no resolution.

Middling.

65 A Taste for Poison - Neil Bradbury
An exploration of eleven poisons, how they affect the body and their use in famous murder cases, written by a biochemist. A gripping listen, although my brain’s much better at retaining the human narratives than the technicalities of how poisons work.

66 Rouge - Mona Awad
Big bold and one of my favourites of the year, but almost certainly a marmite book.

Mirabelle, addicted to facial treatments and skincare tutorials on social media, confronts her troubled relationship with her mother in the aftermath of her funeral. Belle follows in her mother’s footsteps to a mysterious spa called Rouge, and is selected for a series of beautifying ‘extractions’ - but at what cost?

So so much going on here and it’s in danger of sounding daft if you try to explain it: retelling Snow White, skewering the exploitations of the beauty industry, exploring mother-daughter relationships and the equation of beauty with ‘whiteness’ (Belle is mixed race). Also throw in Egyptian mythology and, um, Tom Cruise, and weave it into a surreal dreamlike narrative - repetitive, yes, but in a lulling and emersive way.

Can you tell I loved it and wished I’d written it? But I’m a sucker for mythical/fairytale retellings exploring the female bodily experience - one of my other standout reads of the year was Deerskin - more overtly fantasy, but with similar themes.

85. Murder on the Christmas Express by Alexandra Benedict This was a re re-read from last Christmas but I couldn't remember a thing about it. Clearly based on Murder on the Orient Express even down to the investigators complicity in the crime. Recently retired CID officer Roz is taking the sleeper train to Scotland on the 23rd December to be with her daughter when she gives birth. She observes and interacts with several other passengers until one of them turns up dead and the train derails on the side of a mountain, stranding the passengers. People continue dropping like flies until Roz solves the crime I've already bought two more of Benedict's Christmas books which I'm now apprehensive about as this wasn't great. The story itself is ok although the coincidences of all the characters knowing each other are hard to fully accept. But this desperately needed proof reading. Multiple times she mixes up character names which is frankly just sloppy. Also she has this weird thing where she takes words and phrases and turns them into anagrams and hides them in the text (why?! What on earth is the point of this?!) The result is that her anagrams are often grammatically incorrect so they grate when you're reading. Reading the about the author blurb it somewhat screams "jack of all trades, master of none" but I'm possibly being unfair

Oops, posted too soon

86. The Christmas Book Hunt by Jenny Colgan Amazon first reads freebie and I know someone else already reviewed this but I'm afraid I can't remember who. Mirren is tasked by her dying great-aunt to track down a mythical book which exists in only one copy. Booksellers around the country insist it's a myth that never existed but Mirren's aunt claims to have owned it as a child. Incredibly far-fetched and ridiculous, she seems to drive around the country with no rhyme or reason for why as there is no suggestion the book will be in any of the places she visits

Two Christmas reads I got for 99p despite knowing they'd be twee.

The Christmas Party by Carole Matthews
Awful. I used to lap up this stuff and no idea why. The men played rugger. Everyone was very ambitious and wanted to go all the way to the top. The women were scared of reporting sexual harassment. Young women were attractive, women over 40 were past it. Some slightly nice descriptions of Christmas decorations. Do not recommend.

Making Up Your Mind by Jill Mansell
Small village life where everyone is nice and improbably witty. Confusingly had a Christmas tree on the front cover so I assumed it was set at Christmas. The final chapter is set Christmas. I was robbed of Christmas twee ness.

Going to read a Lisa Jewell next I think.

@RomanMum – I’m currently reading Real Tigers on Kindle. I think Catherine is my favourite character in the series. I managed to buy quite a few on Kindle for 99p.

@Terpsichore – I’ve missed the British Library’s Women’s Writers series, so I’ll look that up. Thank you.

@SheilaFentiman – are you enjoying the Will Trent books more than Ruth Galloway?

113 Before and After – Andrew Shanaman. I loved this. I do like a humorous apocalyptical story. Ben is a young man who is trapped in his high rise flat by his 600lb body. He needs to be transported to hospital for a leg amputation. Ben manages everything from his flat with the use of technology, including a genius way of walking his little dog, Brown, who he adores. However, on the day that Ben and Brown survive this new world. I was so rooting for Ben and Brown. There were several laugh out loud parts and very gruesome parts. Might need a CW for fatphobia when some of Ben’s experiences are recounted. There is a second book which I will get.

114 The Stone Circle – Elly Griffiths (Ruth Galloway 11). More of the usual, but I've moved onto the next one already. I felt the plot was a bit recycled. Another baby taken plus found bodies.

@Tarragon123 I think I do, actually. I’m a big fan of Sara Linton from the Grant County books and now she has come into Will’s universe, I enjoy that more.

There’s also a bit more plausibility for a coroner and a cop to keep getting mixed up in murders 😀

I’ve read all the Ruth Galloway books I currently own and I’ll keep an eye out for kindle deals or charity shop wins, but am not in a rush to complete!

Also, not supposed to be buying more books…😀

Finally hit 30 🙄
Abide with me - Elizabeth Strout
Small-town minister, Tyler Casey, tries to come to terms with the death of his wife and bring up two small children while handling the woes and misfortunes of his parishioners.
I would probably have DNF'd this had it been my first encounter with Strout. As it was I kept going and must admit that by the end I was glad I did.

@LadybirdDaphne I read Bunny this year. I didn't love it but I'd be quite interested in trading another book by Mona Awad as it was very odd!

I really like the sound of Rouge - have it and Bunny on my Kindle, and am interested in reading 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl too. I read All's Well in spring 2022 and think from memory that my rating of 3.5 on Librarything might have been a bit grudging, but maybe it was because I was struggling with sight problems at the time - that's about a drama teacher trying to direct a high school Shakespeare production.

80 Death At The Sign Of The Rook by Kate Atkinson
Thoroughly entertaining Murder Mystery. Interestingly, she says in the Afterword that she wrote it at the same time of Shrines Of Gaiety and I think Rook came out best.
Quite light on Jackson Brodie, Reggie isn’t as enigmatic and twee and there’s a solid plot underpinning it all. Missing paintings, dilapidated country houses (shades of Small Bomb At Dimperley at times), and updated twists to the Drunken Major, Escaped Convict, Invisible Servant, Self-Effacing Vicar tropes. I laughed a lot at the Murder Mystery acting troop, because about 10 years ago I was quite into that sort of evening entertainment, much to the bewilderment of DH and DS (the latter resorting to a teenage shriek of despair that he hated being ACTED AT after one particular Halloween event ).
I savoured this as a bedtime read.

@Stowickthevast @elkiedee yes I definitely will try more Mona Awad now if I come across any of her books. Rouge was brilliant on a visual level too, with recurring imagery of mirrors, roses, red, white, and…jellyfish (because obviously). In the right directorial hands it would make a great surreal fantasy/horror movie.

93. Summer at Tiffany - Marjorie Hart

Many thanks to @inaptonym for putting me on to this. Innocent young Iowan Marjorie Jacobson travels to New York with her best friend Marty to find a job in the summer of 1945. To the envy of all their girlfriends, they land roles at super-swanky Tiffany as the store's first ever 'girl-pages', complete with shirtwaister-style uniforms in 'aqua-blue silk jersey'. The summer passes in a whirl of diamonds and pearls, famous customers (Dietrich, Garland and the heir to the Woolworths empire pass through the hallowed doors), evenings at the Stork Club, parties at their Manhattan apartment (cramped but perfect, just about affordable on their $20 a week salary), and dates with handsome midshipmen Jim and John, complete with gardenia corsages - although these 21-year-old women manage to remain charmingly/alarmingly vague about what sex actually involves.

There's mild jeopardy - Marjorie is a cellist and due to return home to resume college studies, is momentarily seduced by the offer of a transfer to Yale, but can’t bring herself to tell her loving, close-knit Norwegian family - but all ends happily when she decides to renounce glamour and go back to Story City like a good girl. Marriage and motherhood await, although it's a relief to learn in an afterword that Marjorie did enjoy a long career as a professional cellist.
This was a captivating memoir of a vanished time, and fed my yearning for books about shops and department stores very satisfyingly!

I have downloaded and tweaked the books on my kindle because I go on holiday for Xmas next week. Long haul flights ahoy!

I have 129 unread books on there now (this is not my global total of unread books but I will freeze there it now)... let's see how many I get through in three weeks!

Good luck with getting that TBR down @SheilaFentiman and enjoy the holiday.

336 Need A Little Time by Adam Eccles

Following his divorce Jamie moves into a new flat and becomes friends with the woman in the top flat. However she doesn’t get all his references and all her tech is 30 years out of date… can Jamie work out what’s going on and whether he and Anna can ever have their time together? I liked this although the time travel bits could have had more of a sense of being in the past.

337 Sherlock Holmes and the Twelve Thefts of Christmas by Tim Major

One of the spin offs written by others. Here Holmes is bothered by Irene Adler leading him a merry dance with a series of thefts. It was OK but again not at all Christmassy despite the title.

338 Jolly Superlative by Jilly Cooper

More 1970s journalism- good fun especially the one about Princess Anne’s wedding!

60 The Hunter - Tana French Second in this trilogy (of which the third book is yet to be published), following a retired American police detective’s new life in the remote Irish countryside, and the relationships he builds with the inhabitants of his new home, the small and parochial township of Ardnakelty. A lovely, gentle meander through village dynamics - the murder didn’t happen until over halfway through the book and the focus is much more on the characters (though the plot is pretty good too, for those who are ok with slow developments). I think possibly I preferred the first in the series, but not by much - this one is also a bold and I’m really looking forward to the final instalment. Also - one for the fans of “heatwave lit” (of which I am one) 😄

I've been laid up with a chest infection so powered through lots of light books:

86. A Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston. Great fun. Elsy gets lost driving through a storm and ends up in an idyllic upstate New York town which, Pleasantville style, turns out to be the setting of her favourite series of romance novels. Except the writer tragically died before finishing the final book so the characters are stuck. Can Elsy nudge then towards a happy ending? And who is the hot grumpy bookshop owner she doesn't remember from the books? 10/10 perfect sick day reading.

87. The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston. I didn't like this as much. Clementine has inherited her aunt's 'magic' apartment which sometimes slips forwards or backwards by 7 years. One day she comes home to find a young chef who stayed there 7 summers ago, falls in love, then encounters him again in her own timeline. All fine enough but time travel just makes my head hurt.

88. My Favourite Mistake by Marian Keyes. Anna Walsh sequel, seeing her move back to Ireland and start working in public relations for her friend's holiday resort in a small town. And reconnect with a face from the past... I know this wasn't that popular over here but I enjoyed it. I didn't care at all about which of the locals were vandalising the holiday cottages, and I don't think Marian did either as that was all dispensed with very quickly. I did think the chemistry and romance was very well done. Just felt slightly odd that it hinges on Anna and (SPOILER ALERT) Narky Joey having been secretly in love for 20 years, which was never hinted at in the original book.

89. Real Americans by Rachel Khong. Sort of family saga following 3 generations of a Chinese-American family as they become entwined with a super rich pharmaceutical dynasty. I liked the family parts a lot, and thought the relationships were all very well written, but there was a weird, almost sci fi plot at the centre about genetic experiments which I found completely unconvincing.

94. The Inn at the Edge of the World - Alice Thomas Ellis

Latest for the Rather Dated Book Club. On a remote Scottish island, Eric (having escaped middle management in Staffordshire) runs a small and sparsely-patronised inn, and regrets his decision to move to this isolated and weather-beaten outpost. On a sudden whim, he advertises for guests who want to get away from it all - literally - to come and spend Christmas. A small handful of strangely-assorted types respond, and are drawn together by odd happenings as they cautiously get to know each other during their stay.

I enjoyed this odd little book, which was whimsical, darkly witty and peculiar by turns. I hadn’t read any ATE before and might now dig out the non-fiction cookery book of hers which I have lurking about somewhere.

42. Sandwich, by Catherine Newman. Menopausal woman has annual beach holiday with her grown up children and parents. Really enjoyed the writing, particularly about menopause. But an infuriating plot twist slightly ruined it for me - would you really tell your daughter about a long held secret that you have never told your husband? That's all that stopped it being a bold for me - it was still funny and enjoyable - and short, if anyone is looking for short reads to bolster their numbers!

43. The Waiting, by Michael Connolly. Latest Ballard and Bosch, and my favourite so far. Renee heads up the cold case department, and we get appearances from both Harry and Madalyn Bosch. Good stuff.

44. Orbital, by Samantha Harvey. I'm out of step with most of the thread because I absolutely loved this. Beautiful, lyrical language, I found it really moving. I don't mind a book with very little plot, so this was a clear bold for me.