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?

I haven't been counting but I should try!

Onto Thirst for love, really boring?!

And also listening on audiobook to Yellowface which is quite the contrast and fun.

Next up:

Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis

Enchanted April by Elizabeth van Armin

The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner After her father's death, Laura (Lolly) Willowes assumes the role of assigned to spinsters at the time this was written in 1926, and goes to live with her brother in London as an "indespensible" maiden aunt. Despite occasional feelings of unexplained disquiet, she remains with the family for years until she follows her sensibilities and moves to a remote village where she discovers her true sense of freedom with the help of a rather startling ally. The writing is gorgeous ("They were dull children, though their dullness did not prevent them having a penetrating flow of conversation.") and I would recommend this to anyone who has recently enjoyed the Sylvia Townsend Warner section in Harriet Baker's Rural Hours.

My Good Bright Wolf, A Memoir, by Sarah Moss Thank you to whoever it was who recommended this and apologies that I can't remember who. This relates the author's upbringing - recognisably middle-class yet austere - where she learnt the lessons of judgement, restraint and self-control which were later to develop into a dangerous eating disorder. I thought this captured beautifully the relentless inner turmoil of her mind while questioning her own thoughts and recognising the unreliability of memory. Quite different from Hadley Freeman's Good Girls but equally compelling.

@Sadik Ive got Scoff and can’t get on with it at all. Happy to pop it in the post for you, if you remind me in the new year. The writing is irritatingly middle class and rather dull imo.

That might be me on both counts, @Boiledeggandtoast ! I loved Lolly Willows but need to take another run at The Corner that Held Them, which has had a bookmark halfway through for several years now.

208 The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller
DH bought me this as an early Christmas present, thinking it was by the same author who wrote Pity (Andrew McMillan) which I had really enjoyed. Serendipitously, though I had read nothing by this author before I really enjoyed this. It’s a study of two couples Eric, the local GP and his pregnant wife Irene, and inexperienced farmer Bill and his wife Rita in the winter of 1962 when there were horrific blizzards. We read from all four of the main character’s POV. This is a quiet book in terms of plot but has depth and is nicely written. Not quite bold but I enjoyed it nevertheless.

209 Deadland by William Shaw
The second DS Alexandra Cupidi murder mystery. Shaw’s cases are twisty and engaging and the characters in these police procedurals are interesting. Enjoyable and pacy. Will read more.

114 Mad Honey - Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finlay Boylan

I enjoyed this. As ever with Picoult, the central premise is a knotty legal problem - this is a “did she fall or was she pushed?” The viewpoint alternates between the dead teenager Lily and Olivia, the mother of her boyfriend, Asher, the accused. Olivia is a beekeeper.

Jordan, the lawyer from The Pact, is back as Olivia’s brother and representing Asher. Olivia’s viewpoint on the case is coloured by her having fled Asher’s dad, who was abusive to her.

51. Heartburn by Nora Ephron
Luckily for the roundup thread, this isn't quite a bold but it's a long way from an italic. A funny, poignant schtick about the collapse of a marriage in 70s East Coast America. I think my problem with Ephron is she writes as if she is finding eternal truths, but everything she writes is incredibly specific to her and to her time and place. It's still really funny, and I want to make her vinaigrette recipe.

Thank you @bibliomania ! I've just this evening borrowed Summer Will Show from a friend on their recommendation.

The Hottest Dishes of Tartar Cuisine Alina Bronsky

I was drawn to this book primarily for the title and the cover. It’s a funny book, telling a dark story. It starts in the Soviet Union and ends in post Soviet Germany. Rosalinda is overbearing in every way, as a mother, wife, grandmother. We only have her point of view for almost all of the book which is disconcerting when, we, as the reader can see the things she isn’t telling us. I thought I would like this more than I did, but I feel like it’s one that might stay with me, so I’m going to reserve judgement. It’s definitely a good enough read to recommend.

I read The Hottest Dishes of Tartar Cuisine back in 2021 and enjoyed it, would agree with @AgualusasLover that it's a good one that stays with you. Here's my review:

50 The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky. Translated by Tim Mohr
A good one for my 50th book (woo hoo). The novel opens in 1970s USSR with Rosa trying to get her teenage daughter Sulfia to miscarry. She doesn't and has a daughter, Aminat, and the rest of the novel follows the three generations of women through the next 30 odd years. Rosa is a gloriously horrendous character, she is single minded and manipulative and has no self awareness at all but the novel is oddly touching.

134. Brooklyn by Colm Toibin (Spotify)

Read by Saoirse Ronan

Eilish Dillon leaves her small Irish town to live and work in the USA

LOVED this, a total bold really got a lot out of it. Film is extremely faithful, so if you've seen it you've read the book really. I still found it a really nice comfort, cosy read and I'm now looking forward to the sequel.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit – yes Dark Angels was not good, very poor in fact. I see @BestIsWest agrees. The next two arent any good either, I’m afraid to say.

117 Real Tigers – Mick Heron (Slow Horses 3). More Jackson Lamb capers. Very enjoyable. A bit more background on Catherine Standish who is one of my favourite characters. I’m now a bit cross as I bought a few of the Slow Horses on 99p Kindle Specials, but for some reason, book 4 wasn’t on the specials. Its consistently been expensive, so I’ll need to go to the library to get it.

I’ve been doing some Advent preparation and have been reading the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, plus the Acts of the Apostles. I’ve been reading a chapter of each every day. Mark is the shortest book and then John, so both of those are finished. I will finish the other three before the end of the month, but because they are only short books, I’m not counting them.

Onto my Kindle challenge, I’m going to start Mick Heron’s first book, Down Cemetery Road, which I thought was a Slow Horses book! Has anyone read it? I noticed that it is also being adapted for Apple TV, just like Slow Horses. Emma Thompson will be starring as Zoe Boehm.

I’ve got 3 Jenny Colgan books on the Kindle and I think I’ll be able to go through them quite quickly. I’d like to finish 125 for the year and as I will have some free time over the next week or so, its not too outrageous a suggestion I hope.

The next two arent any good either, I’m afraid to say

Oh poo

Murder at Holly House by Denzil Meyrick, as forewarned is not specifically Christmassy (and the title is a tad misleading re the plot - presumably so it can be marketed as Christmassy) but it does snow a lot, it's December and it's a jolly post war jape set in a North Yorks village. Better ten the other so called Christmas offerings I have been subjected to this year!

80. Madensky Square: Eva Ibbotson

Set in Vienna in the years before World War One, this is a wonderfully immersive and evocative book. Susanna, a dressmaker, keeps a diary outlining the comings and goings of her neighbours and friends in Madensky Square.

I loved this. I just wanted to visit Susanna's dress shop and sit in a café and spend a few days living in Madensky Square for myself. Saying that, it's not all sweetness and light. Susanna's own story is a sad one and so is her friend's. Everything turns out well in the end and it's all neatly tied up with happy endings all round. Recommended.

81. Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption: Stephen King.

The novella on which the film is based.
An enjoyable read.

82. Les Six Napoléons: Arthur Conan Doyle (trans. unknown).

Someone is going around London breaking busts of Napoleon. And then someone is murdered. Lestrade is puzzled and calls in Sherlock Holmes whose expertise is more than equal to the task of solving this puzzling crime.

A short and enjoyable read from Borrowbox. I'm glad to see they are expanding their collection of books in other languages.

83. Madonna in a Fur Coat: Sabahattin Ali (trans. Maureen Freely and David Selim Sayers).

Another immersive and evocative book. This time it's Berlin in the 1920s. Raif, a shy young man leaves his home in rural Turkey to go to Berlin and learn a trade (making luxury soaps). He couldn't care less about soap, his father or his family. He wants to learn German and explore the vibrant city of Berlin. A would-be artist himself, although he is too fearful and repressed to give himself over to it, he visits exhibitions and galleries. One day, while wandering around an exhibition, he stops, transfixed, in front of a self portrait of a young woman. He falls head over heels in love with the painting and this intense feeling is reinforced upon meeting the artist. Raif's life is forever marked by knowing this woman.

I loved this book. It's full of yearning, passionate longing, love and regret. I read it once but am reading it a second time to savour it. Highly recommended.

I'm nearly finished for the year. I'll read The Inn at the Edge of the World and A Christmas Carol which will bring me up to 85 books.

I’m so behind with reviews but am appreciating everyone else’s! @Terpsichore that was a lovely review of Pym’s A Few Green Leaves. I agree with everything you say.

@ÚlldemoShúl, I also thought Pearl was a wonderful novel.

@inaptonym sympathy to you regarding the South Korea situation. I’m sure most of the complexities of it are sailing over my head, but yikes, so much political drama unfolding in real time! I'm not surprised you're doomscrolling.

I’ve requested Shy Creatures from the library, thanks @AlmanbyRoadtrip . And @bibliomania I decided to copy you and buy myself Period Piece as an early Christmas present to myself; it sounds so good! This thread is also making me think I should try out the Ruth Galloway mysteries.

@Sadik how cool that you were asked to provide that book blurb, and what a relief that you liked the book! I always find it tricky when I read a book by someone I know. Unless I actually love the book enough to give it a glowing review, I tend not to review it at all, because I’m afraid they might come across my review on MN or Goodreads and take offence. This is probably total paranoia on my part, because the odds of them noticing my review and being miffed that I only gave their book three or four stars instead of five are ridiculously slim. But what can I say, I’m a coward.

Which reminds me, I’m actually hate-reading a memoir right now by a mother-daughter team I have met in real life. They live locally to me and in my brief interactions with them, they have both been incredibly bitchy. (Think Tories and Brexiteers.) So far the memoir seems pretty much as self-obsessed as they are. (See how mean-spirited I can be?!) But I won’t post a review of it; I will keep my mean-spirited thoughts to myself.😬

@Boiledeggandtoast My Good Bright Wolf was one of my favourite reads of the year, but I wasn’t the first person on these threads to recommend it!

P.S. @inaptonym I meant to reply to a comment you made ages ago about Empusium, when you said that the French title was Le Banquet des empouses, and that that translation foregrounded the food theme but sacrificed the symposium reference a bit. This is a nerdy detail, but in French, Plato's Symposium is traditionally titled Le Banquet. So I would say it's a perfect translation really!

75. West, Carys Davies 4/5
    Read for my book club. A slim, beautifully written novel (a novella, really) about one man’s journey to the American West in the early 19th c., the daughter he leaves behind, and the young Indian man who becomes his guide. I had some reservations about the book (the character of the Indian feels underdeveloped), but it’s a powerful fable about colonialism. It shows how a man can pursue his dream while being blind to the collateral damage his decision causes to those around him, especially the women.

76. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson 4/5
    A reread of the first Jackson Brodie novel after many years. Very enjoyable.

77. Human Acts, Han Kang, trans. Deborah Smith 5/5
    A powerful account of the 1980 Gwangju Uprising in South Korea and its aftermath, this book is like a series of interlocking short stories, with each chapter moving forward in time and introducing a fresh perspective on events through the eyes of a different character. Although the subject of this novel is quite different to that of The Vegetarian, the creation of layered perspectives works extremely well in both books (in Human Acts, it’s even more rich and complicated). The book ends with the author speaking in her own voice and recounting her own connection to the uprising. It’s rather disturbing to have just finished reading this book about how martial law was imposed in the country in 1980, and then see South Korea’s current president try to impose martial law now, in 2024! Han Kang’s Nobel Prize in literature is certainly timely.

78. Creation Lake, Rachel Kushner 4/5
    This novel moves refreshingly quickly, and is packed with ideas and wit. It’s narrated by a young, beautiful woman spy from northern California who infiltrates a left-wing commune in the south of France. I found the sections about Neanderthal life a bit boring at times (the enigmatic founder of the commune is obsessed with Neanderthals), but there were lots of themes in the book I loved: the settings in California and the south of France, the very funny (and disturbing) descriptions of bad sex with an utterly self-centred boyfriend, and the jokes about post-structuralism and academia. (The heroine has dropped out of Berkeley’s PhD programme in rhetoric, a department that boasts Judith Butler as a long-time faculty member; and the atrociously racist and sexist French writer Michel Houllebecq is satirised via a novelist character called Michel Thomas. The latter allusion is not very subtle, given that Michel Thomas is Houllebecq’s birth name.) My book group has picked this as our January read, and I may well reread it before then, because I raced through it too fast I think. On a second read, it may become a bold.

Started Polo tonight and finally know where @ChessieFL 's name is from

I finished The Dark Tower. Enjoyed lots of it, but I really hate all the Susannah/Mia stuff in Song of Susannah. Also hate the bit in the last one where Roland and Susannah are being chased by the thing under the castle- just feels like pointless padding. Lots of the last book is incredibly moving though. I celebrated finishing it with a hot chocolate- the good kind, mit schlag.

Now on Jane Austen: the Secret Radical but finding it very annoying. I hate the way writers refer to Austen as ‘Jane’ instead of’Austen’. They wouldn’t do that to Shakespeare or fucking Tennyson.

80 A Spy Among Friends - Ben Macintyre

Read this as a follow-up to Le Carre’s The Pigeon Tunnel (it’s referenced in the JLC book, and he provides the afterword here). It’s the stranger-than-fiction story of Kim Philby and the Cambridge spy ring, which I’d heard of but didn’t know the details. Well researched and an interesting read, although the writing is no match for Le Carre’s peerless prose.

The dramatisation on ITV with Damian Lewis and Guy Pearce is good

115 Unseen - Karin Slaughter (Will Trent 7)

In which Lena Adams re-enters the chat story and is involved in a “raid gone wrong” to take down rapist/murderer and a possibly mythical Kingpin, Big Whitey. She and her husband are attacked in their home shortly after.

Will and Sara get closer and Amanda isn’t in it much. Good one, with a back and forth timeline to before and after the raid, which pieces the puzzle together.

99. Tarte Tatin - Susan Loomis

Brazen comfort reading. The author is an American cook and writer who moved to the small French town of Louviers with her sculptor husband Michael, who handily turns out to be capable of planning, designing and building just about anything. This is useful because the picturesque old house they buy needs to be extended and adapted so Loomis can run the cooking courses for American visitors which they plan as their main source of income - this is the sequel to the first book, which explains how they made the move.

The blurb describes this as 'Nigella Lawson crossed with Peter Mayle', which is not far wrong, but it’s entertaining and stuffed with highly seductive descriptions of food, idyllic French lifestyles and cookery. To be fair, there’s also plenty about the crazy levels of French bureaucracy, the frustrations of the educational system (they have two children) and the challenge of integrating into a new country, though it all seems enviably seamless from the way she tells it. There are also recipes, some of which I might try (although as a sourdough baker I’m a bit 🤔 at the suspiciously scanty instructions she gives for Michael's famous loaves).