50 Books challenge - 2024 roundup

[RomanMum]

Hello 50 bookers! Here's a separate thread to gather together our top recommendations from the year. Please post your final lists, or just your bolds if you prefer. If you’re posting the full lists just a reminder to please bold your favourites, and italicise the books you wouldn’t even pass on to your worst enemy.

I'll come back later in December with mine!

Please can someone link the new main thread I can't find it

Don't think there is one yet

@Southeastdweller can we have a new thread

There was but it's gone!

I genuinely felt slightly panicky when I saw the old thread had filled up and there wasn’t a new live one yet….that says a lot about my neediness, doesn’t it?! 😂 (note: I am aware that southeast is allowed to have a life)

But I did do one…how strange! I’ll do one again now.

I’m currently on 211 books for this year but am not going to list them all or I’d be here all week! I reckon I will hit around 215 by the end (currently have 3 underway and might squeeze in a fourth)
I’m giving my top 24 in 24 below (one is a current read but unless it goes horribly wrong it should make the list)

1. The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox- Maggie O’Farrell
2. The Moonstone- Wilkie Collins
3. Glorious Exploits- Ferdia Lennon
4. Wellness- Nathan Hill
5. Brotherless Night- VV Ganeshanathan
6. Stasiland- Anna Funder
7. Great Exectations- Charles Dickens
8. All the Little Bird-Hearts- Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow
9. Spring- Ali Smith
10. The Seven Moons of Ali Meida- Shehan Karunatilaka
11. Drive your Plow over the Bones of the Dead- Olga Tokarczuk
12. Clear- Cary’s Davis
13. If Beale Street Could Talk- James Baldwin
14. Pet- Catherine Chidgey
15. My Name is Lucy Barton- Elizabeth Strout
16. The History of Sound- Benjamin Shattuck
17. The Pull of the Stars- Emma Donaghue
18. The House of Mirth- Edith Wharton
19. Enter Ghost- Isabella Hammad
20. The Blackwater Lightship- Colm Toibin
21. Falling Animals- Sheila Armstrong
22. My Brilliant Friend- Elena Ferrante
23. Anna Karenina- Leo Tolstoy
24. Our Evenings- Alan Hollinghurst (current read)

Of these, my top 3 are Falling Animals, Drive your Plow… and my favourite of all Glorious Exploits

Still not showing up as an active thread in What We Are Reading @Southeastdweller how very strange indeed!

I can’t see a thread either……how weird if you’ve started one, @Southeastdweller

Top Fiction

Six Stories by Stefan Zweig
A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel
My Friends by Hisham Matar

Top Non-Fiction

Ways of Life by Laura Freeman
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
Sylvia Pankhurst by Rachel Holmes

DNF

Ultraprocessed People by Chris van Tulleken

We're back up and running!

www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/5238056-50-books-challenge-2024-part-nine?reply=140829619

Unless it confuses things RomanMum, please could I add Orbital to my bold list?

My list of bolds:
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
The House of Mirrors - Erin Kelly
Greengates - R C Sheriff
Death At The Sign Of The Rook - Kate Atkinson
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape - Peter Hedges
Small Bomb At Dimperley - Lissa Evans
The Common Years - Jilly Cooper
Trustee From The Toolroom - Nevil Shute
Homegoing - Yaa Gyasi
The Maeve Kerrigan series by Jane Casey

Plus others that are bolds but were rereads (the above were all new):
The Cazalet Chronicles - Elizabeth Jane Howard
The Poison Tree - Erin Kelly
Rachel’s Holiday - Marian Keyes
New Patches For Old - Christobel Mattingley
My Family And Other Animals - Gerald Durrell
Back Home - Michelle Magorian
Rivals - Jilly Cooper
The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous - Jilly Cooper
One Day - David Nicholls

Rubbish books (excluding those I DNF)
Murder On The Dancefloor - Shirley Ballas
The Second Life of Amy Archer - R S Pateman
With Nails: The Film Diaries of Richard E Grant
A Certain Age - Rebbecca Ray
Death Valley - Melissa Broder
The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
Hotel Lucky Seven - Kotaro Isaka

DNF - can’t remember them all but those I do remember:
The Bee Sting - Paul Murray
The Ministry of Time - Kaliane Murphy
Friends of Dorothy - Sandi Toksvig

I've made it to 250 but think I'll get in a few more by the end of the year.

I'm going to be a complete bore and post my full list as I'm too lazy to extract the good stuff out. I need to learn to do it in Excel so I can colour code and manipulate it more easily.

I don't really keep track of DNFs any more, but there are 2 where I was halfway through 30 odd hour narrations and I lost the will to live. I therefore have no guilt about a sprinkling of shorter books towards the end.

I haven't done my full stats yet to include percentages of female vs male authors, but Storygraph reliably tells me I've read 75% fiction. 95% audiobooks, only 9 print books and 4 ebooks.

Someone recently asked me why I don't actually read anymore and I gave a horrified response of, "What, you mean hold it in my own hands and read it with my own eyes? Preposterous!"

Alas my arms are no longer long enough and I have reluctantly acquired some specs. This may make a difference to my habits in the new year.

The List! (Sorry, not sorry)

1. The Iliad – Homer (new translation Emily Wilson)
2. A Room of One’s Own - Virginia Woolf
3. When the Dust Settles – Lucy Easthope
4. For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain - Victoria MacKenzie
5. Nottingham - Nathan Makaryk
6. The River at Night - Erica Ferencik
7. Cuddy - Benjamin Myers
8. Chrysalis - Anna Metcalfe
9. Soldier Sailor - Claire Kilroy

10. Enter Ghost - Isabella Hammad 11. In Memoriam - Alice Winn 12. Penance - Eliza Clark 13. Rouge - Mona Awad 14. Loot - Tania James 15. Falling Animals - Sheila Armstrong 16. The Glutton - A.K. Blakemore 17. A History of Burning - Janika Oza 18. The Shortest History of Israel and Palestine: From Zionism to Intifadas and the Struggle for Peace - Michael Scott-Baumann 19. The Fraud - Zadie Smith 20. Evil Eye - Etaf Rum 21. Act of Murder - Alan Wright 22. Chlorine - Jade Song 23. The Guest - Emma Cline 24. Land of Milk and Honey - C Pam Zhang 25. Sunburn - Chloe Michelle Howarth 26. Year of Wonders - Geraldine Brooks 27. The Future - Naomi Alderman 28. The Narrow Road to the Deep North - Richard Flanagan 29. Tunnel 29: The True Story of an Extraordinary Escape Beneath the Berlin Wall - Helena Merriman 30. When I Hit You, Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife - Meena Kandasamy 31. Athelstan: The Making of England - Tom Holland 32. What You Are Looking For is in the Library - Michiko Aoyama 33. Tomorrow Someone Will Arrest You - Meena Kandasamy 34. Politics on the Edge - Rory Stewart 35. Ordinary Human Failings - Megan Nolan 36. The Collected Regrets of Clover - Mikki Brammer 37. Orbital - Samantha Harvey 38. The Centre - Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi 39. Talking At Night - Claire Delaney 40. The Museum of Failures - Thrity Umrigar 41. The Vulnerables - Sigrid Nunez 42. Hangman - Maya Bingham 43. Reproduction - Louisa Hall 44. Piglet - Lottie Hazel 45. River East, River West - Aube Rey Lescure 46. Black Narcissus - Rumer Godden 47. Nightbloom - Peace Adzo Medie 48. The Story of the Forest - Linda Grant 49. Brotherless Night - V.V. Ganeshananthan 50. And Then She Fell - Alicia Elliott 51. In Defence of the Act - Effie Black 52. 8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster - Mirinae Lee 53. Doppelganger - Naomi Klein 54. The Dictionary People - Sarah Ogilvie 55. The Secret Book of Flora Lee - Patti Callhgan Henry 56. Clear - Carys Davies 57. So Late in the Day - Claire Keegan 58. Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of A.I. - Madhumita Murgia 59. How to Say Babylon - Safiya Sinclair 60. The Other Side Mrs Wood - Lucy Barker 61. The Maiden - Kate Foster 62. A Flat Place - Noreen Masud 63. Hidden Fires - Sairish Hussain 64. The Night Hawks (Ruth Galloway 13) - Elly Griffiths 65. Three Fires - Denise Mina 66. Diva - Daisy Goodwin 67. Dominoes - Phoebe McIntosh 68. Nobody Wants Your Shit: The Art of Decluttering Before You Die – Messie Condo 69. Dirty Linen: The Troubles in My Home Place – Martin Doyle 70. Death on the Tiber (Flavia Albia #12) – Lyndsey Davis 71. Wayfarer: Love, Loss and Life on Britain’s Ancient Paths – Phoebe Smith 72. Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present – Fareed Zakaria 73. One Little Mistake - Emma Curtis 74. Vox - Christina Dalcher 75. A Short Walk Through A Wide World - Douglas Westerbeke 76. Cwen - Alice Albinia 77. The Swan's Nest - Laura MacNeal 78. Water - John Boyne 79. Coleman Hill - Kim Coleman Foote 80. Absolutely and Forever - Rose Tremain 81. Lies, Damned Lies, and History - Jodi Taylor 82. The Brain Fog Fix: Reclaim Your Focus, Memory, and Joy in Just 3 Weeks - Mike Dow 83. Oscar and Lucinda - Peter Carey 84. The Books of Jacob - Olga Tokarczuk 85. ADHD for Smart Ass Women - Tracy Otsuka 86. Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent - Judi Dench 87. Grown Women Talk: Your Guide to Getting and Staying Healthy - Sharon Malone M.D. 88. Instructions for Traveling West: Poems - Joy Sullivan 89. Caledonian Road - Andrew O'Hagan 90. A Change of Circumstances - Susan Hill 91. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne 92. The List of Suspicious Things - Jennie Godfrey 93. Flight of the Wild Swan - Melissa Pritchard 94. The Sleepwalkers - Scarlett Thomas 95. Decline and Fall - Evelyn Waugh 96. Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life 97. Choice - Neel Mukherjee 98. Restless Dolly Maunder - Kate Grenville 99. Long Island Colm Tóibín 100. Crooked Seeds - Karen Jennings 101. Easy Way to Quit Emotional Eating - Alan Carr 102. Young Queens: Three Renaissance Women and the Price of Power - Leah Redmond Chang 103. Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew - Emmanuel Acho & Noah Tishby 104. Funny Story - Emily Henry 105. She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth - Helen Castor 106. Mary Barton - Elizabeth Gaskell 107. With Love, Grief and Fury - Salena Godden 108. Nights of Plague - Orphan Pamuk 109. The Safekeep - Yael van Der Wouden 110. 90s Bitch: Media, Culture, and the Failed Promise of Gender Equality - Allison Yarrow 111. Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen - Suzanne Scanlon 112. Steeple Chasing: Around Britain by Church - Peter Ross 113. Borderline: The Biography of a Personality Disorder - Alexander Kriss 114. Cloistered: My Years as a Nun - Catherine Coldstream 115. Femina - Janina Ramirez 116. My Own Story - Emmeline Pankhurst 117. Who Cooked the Last Supper: The Women's History of the World - Rosalind Miles 118. Days of Wonder - Caroline Leavitt 119. The End of Woman: How Smashing the Patriarchy has Destroyed Us - Carrie Gress 120. Snap - Belinda Bauer 121. The Sleeping Car Porter - Suzette Mayr 122. Jaded - Ela Lee 123. The Glassmaker - Tracy Chevalier 124. Same As It Ever Was - Claire Lombardo 125. Ask A Historian: 50 Surprising Answers to Things You Always Wanted to Know - Greg Jenner 126. Our Spoons Came From Woolworths - Barbara Comyns 127. Milk: On Motherhood and Madness - Alice Kinsella 128. Sparrow - James Hynes 129. The Black Prince - Iris Murdoch 130. The Course of Love - Alain de Botton 131. This Book may Save Your Life - Karan Rajan 132. The Spoiled Heart - Sunjeev Sahota 133. Thérèse Raquin - Émile Zola 134. Day - Michael Cunningham 135. Hagstone - Sinéad Gleeson 136. My Friends - Hisham Matar 137. James - Percival Everett 138. Blackouts - Justin Torres 139. The Road to the Country - Chigozie Obioma 140. Tremor Teju Cole 141. Wellness - Nathan Hill 142. Parade - Rachel Cusk 143. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store - James McBride 144. Wild Houses - Colin Barrett 145. Absolution - Alice McDermott 146. This Plague of Souls - Mike McCormack 147. Dadland - Keggie Carew 148. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey 149. Whalefall - Elizabeth O'Connor 150. Wandering Stars - Tommy Orange 151. You Are Here - David Nichols 152. The Extinction of Irina Rey - Jennifer Croft 153. Blue Ruin - Hari Kunzru 154. Real Americans - Rachel Khong 155. Martyr! - Kaveh Akbar 156. The Pedant in the Kitchen - Julian Barnes 157. Hard By A Great Forest - Leo Vardiashvili 158. Memory Piece - Lisa Ko 159. Kairos - Jenny Erpenbeck 160. Sandwich - Catherine Newman 161. The Women - Kristin Hannah 162. My Name is Markham - Jodi Taylor 163. The Scottish Boy - Alex de Campi 164. *Birnam Wood - Eleanor Catton 165. The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America - Elizabeth Dias & Lisa Lerer 166. What They Forgot to Teach you at School - The School of Life 167. The Berlin Letters - Katherine Reay 168. Tidy the Fuck Up: The American Art of Organizing Your Shit - Messie Condo 169. Held - Anne Michaels 170. Enlightenment - Sarah Perry 171. Stone Yard Devotional - Charlotte Wood 172. Headshot - Rita Bullwinkel 173. The Hypocrite - Jo Hamya 174. Time's Convert - Deborah Harkness 175. A Trace of Sun - Pam Williams 176. A Bird in Winter - Louise Doughty 177. I Who Have Never Known Men - Jacqueline Harpman 178. Three Rooms - Jo Hamya 179. The Dictionary of Lost Words - Pip Williams 180. Creation Lake - Rachel Kushner 181. Consent: A Memoir - Jill Clement 182. Tell Me Everything - Elizabeth Strout 183. Gratitude - Delphine de Vigan 184. Playground - Richard Powers 185. Passiontide - Monique Roffey 186. Learning to Swim - Clare Chambers 187. Back Trouble - Clare Chambers 188. Midnight and Blue - Ian Rankin 189. Mayflies - Andrew O'Hagan 190. I Cheerfully Refuse - Leif Enger 191. Light Perpetual - Francis Spufford 192. The Last Murder at the End of the World - Stuart Turton 193. Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England - David Mitchell 194. The Drowned - John Banville 195. Number One Chinese Restaurant - Lillian Li 196. The The Bone -Alena Bruzas 197. Pet - Catherine Chidgey 198. Feel Better in 5: Your Daily Plan to Feel Great for Life - Rangan Chatterjee 199. Madonna in a Fur Coat - Sabahattin Ali 200. The Island of Mists and Miracles - Victoria Mas 201. The Reluctant Carer: Dispatches From the Edge of Life - Anon 202. The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians - James Patterson & Matt Eversmann 203. Mongrel - Hanako Footman 204. Butter - Asako Yuzuki 205. The Examiner - Janice Hallett 206. The Black Bird Oracle - Deborah Harkness 207. Unless - Carol Shields 208. Scaffolding - Lauren Elkin 209. The Water: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder - David Grann 210. The Night Ship - Jess Kidd 211. A Better Second Half: Dial Back You Age - Liz Earle 212. Just One Thing - Dr Michael Mosley 213. Ivy and Abe - Elizabeth Enfield 214. Entitlement - Rumaan Alam 215. A Severed Head - Iris Murdoch 216. Killers of the Flower Moon - David Grann 217. *Shy Creatures - Clare Chambers 218. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Simon Armitage 219. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams 220. Cain - José Saramago 221. My Good Brighton Wolf: A Memoir - Sarah Moss 222. Once Upon a Time: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller - Oliver Darkshire 223. Strange Sally Diamond - Liz Nugent 224. Women Who Think Too Much - Susan Nolen-Hoeksema 225. Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut 226. Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis 227. The Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett 228. Epidemics of Modern Life - Oliver Burkeman 229. The Provincial Lady Goes Further - E.M. Delafield 230. The Lover - Marguerite Duras 231. The Book About Getting Older (for people who don't want to talk about it) - Dr Lucy Pollock 232. The Voyage Home - Pat Barker 233. Season of the Raven - Denise Domning 234. The Scold's Bridle - Minette Walters 235. Poor Deer - Claire Oshetsky 236. The Undertaking - Audrey Magee 237. Death at the Sign of the Rook (Jackson Brodie #6) - Kate Atkinson 238. Fire - John Boyne 239. Fraud - Anita Brookner 240. Toxic: Women, Fame, and the Tabloid 2000s - Sarah Ditum 241. The Night Alphabet - Joelle Taylor 242. The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock - Imogen Hermes Gowar 243. The Stone Diaries - Carol Shields 244. How to Let Things Go: 99 tips from a Zen Buddhist Monk - Shunmyō Masuno 245. Lost Heirs of the Medieval Crown - J.F. Andrews 246. Happy AF - Beth Romero 247. Private Rites - Julia Armfield 248. The Amendments - Niamh Mulvey 249. A Brief History of the Countryside in 100 Objects - Sally Coulthard 250. Everything Fat Loss - Ben Carpenter

Cue screams over formatting fails I've inevitably missed...

• Politics On The Edge – Rory Stewart
• Getting Better- Michael Rosen
• Careless People- Sarah Churchwell
• The Drift – CJ Tudor
• The Great Gatsby- F Scott Fitzgerald
• When the Dust Settles – Lucy Easthope
• Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow – Gabrielle Zevin
• How They Broke Britain – James O’Brien
• Pandora’s Jar – Natalie Haynes
• The Wager – David Grann
• In Memoriam – Alice Winn
• The House of Doors – Tan Twan Eng
• Wandering Souls – Cecile Pin
• Demon Copperhead – Barbara Kingsolver
• Four Chancellors and a Funeral – Russell Jones
• Ruth – Elizabeth Gaskell
• The Goodbye Cat – Hiro Arikawa
• The World’s War – David Olusoga
• The Turnglass – Gareth Rubin
• The List of Suspicious Things – Jennie Godfrey
• The Ghost Theatre- Mat Osman
• Close To Death – Anthony Horowitz
• An Equal Music – Vikram Seth
• Paper Cup- Karen Campbell
• Broken Light- Joanne Harris
• Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens
• Reykjavik – Ragnar Jonasson and Katrin Jakobsdottir
• Good Chaps – Simon Kuper
• Eve – Cat Bohannon
• Yellowface – Rebecca F Kuang
• Clytemnestra – Costanza Casati
• Great Uncle Harry – Michael Palin
• The Secrets of Hartwood Hall- Katie Lumsden
• The Unseen – Roy Jacobsen
• Fake Heroes – Otto English
• Doppelganger –Naomi Klein
• Killers of the Flower Moon – David Grann
• Guilty by Definition – Susie Dent
• Death at the Sign of the Rook – Kate Atkinson
• The Assistant – Kjell Ola Dahl
• The Voyage Home – Pat Barker
• The Rest Is History – Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook
• 1795 – Niklas Natt Og Dag DNF
• The Lazarus Solution – Kjell Ola Dahl
• Rites of Spring – Anders de la Motte
• The Gathering – CJ Tudor
• Night Climbing – Sarah Day
• Stuffed – Pen Vogler
• The Bird Tribunal – Agnes Ravatn
• The Prophet and the Idiot – Jonas Jonasson
• Moral Injuries- Christie Watson
• The Winter Spirits – Various
• The 12 Days of Murder – Andreina Cordani
• The Christmas Jigsaw Murders – Alexandra Benedict
• Murder on the Christmas Express – Alexandra Benedict
• Murder at Holly House – Denzil Meyrick
• A Place of Greater Safety – Hilary Mantel

I am normally fairly chilled but quite a lot of absolute duffers this year!

@ChessieFL I'm so glad that you thought Hill House was rubbish. I thought it was a pile of crap, but everyone seems to rave about it.

Yes Remus I was reading it wondering what all the fuss was about! I quite often don’t like the books everyone else likes though so not really surprising. Horror’s not my genre also which doesn’t help.

You may recall that I'm a big Stephen King fan. He thinks Hill House is a masterpiece of horror writing. I remember being so confused and underwhelmed on reading it, after reading King saying how great it is. I didn't like We Have Always Lived in the Castle either, but my dd absolutely loved it.

Bolds for this year:

Win - Harlan Coben
The Third Man - Graham Greene
The Sun Down Motel - Simone St James
River East, River West - Aube Rey Lescure
Tom Lake - Ann Patchett
The Safe Kerp - Yael van der Wouden
My Friends - Hisham Matar
James - Percival Everett
The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

DNF:

Shrines of Gaiety - Kate Atkinson
Intermezzo - Sally Rooney

I think Sally Rooney works better for me in audio format, the lack of speech marks was making me lose focus so I returned Intermezzo to the library pretty quick. The Kate Atkinson I'll probably try again soon, I think my head wasn't in the right place at the right time for that one.

Stats:

73 books
40 female, 32 male, 1 various
8 non fiction

I’ve hit 70, which could well be my lot for the year.

My bolds were:
Unruly - David Mitchell
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
The First Fossil Hunters - Adrienne Mayor
Nightbitch - Rachel Yoder
The Quick and the Dead - Cynric Temple-Camp
Strong Female Character - Fern Brady
Nicholas Nickleby - Charles Dickens
The Covent Garden Ladies - Hallie Rubenhold
The Betrayal - Helen Dunmore
A Spell of Good Things - Ayobami Adebayo
You Don’t Have to be Mad to Work Here - Benji Waterhouse
Deerskin - Robin McKinley
Odyssey - Stephen Fry
Super-Infinite: the transformations of John Donne - Katherine Rundell
Rouge - Mona Awad

No out-and-out italics stinkers as such, but I didn’t think much of How to Say Babylon or Sophie Hannah’s latest Poirot.

Full list:

1. Be a Free Range Human - Marianne Cantwell
2. Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? - Caitlin Doherty
3. The Second Sleep - Robert Harris
4. Poirot’s Silent Night - Sophie Hannah
5. Unruly - David Mitchell
6. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
7. Rising to the Surface - Lenny Henry
8. The First Fossil Hunters - Adrienne Mayor
9. Vital Organs - Suzie Edge
10. Venomous Lumpsucker - Ned Beauman
11. Why Losing Your Job Could Be the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You - Eleanor Tweddell
12. Attack Warning Red - Julie McDowall
13. Shakespeare - Bill Bryson
14. Culture: a new world history - Martin Puchner
15. Vet in Harness - James Herriot
16. Weird Medieval Guys - Olivia Swarthout
17. Why is This a Question? - Paul Anthony Jones
18. Nursery Earth - Danna Staaf
19. Writing for Busy Readers - Todd Rogers & Jessica Lasky-Fink
20. Your Child is Not Broken - Heidi Mavis
21. The Ferryman - Justin Cronin
22. Sacred Nature - Karen Armstrong
23. The New Life - Tom Crewe
24. Medieval Horizons: why the Middle Ages matter - Ian Mortimer
25. Nightbitch - Rachel Yoder
26. The Quick and the Dead - Cynric Temple-Camp
27. The Leader Assistant - Jeremy Burrows
28. You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty - Akwaeke Emezi
29. The Cause of Death - Cynric Temple-Camp
30. Great and Horrible News - Blessin Adams
31. What I Want to Talk About - Pete Wharmby
32. A Curious History of Sex - Kate Lister
33. Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops - Shaun Bythell
34. Strong Female Character - Fern Brady
35. Rizzio - Denise Mina
36. The Final Diagnosis - Cynric Temple-Camp
37. Nicholas Nickleby - Charles Dickens
38. The Covent Garden Ladies - Hallie Rubenhold
39. The Betrayal - Helen Dunmore
40. What About Men? - Caitlin Moran
41. A Spell of Good Things - Ayobami Adebayo
42. Divine Might - Natalie Haynes
43. Rebel Folklore - Icy Sedgwick
44. How to Say Babylon - Safiya Sinclair
45. In Defence of Witches - Mona Chollet
46. Emperor of Rome - Mary Beard
47. You Don’t Have to be Mad to Work Here - Benji Waterhouse
48. Deerskin - Robin McKinley
49. Camouflage: the hidden lives of autistic women - Sarah Bargiela
50. How to Survive the School Year - Lee Parkinson & Adam Parkinson
51. Affinity - Sarah Waters
52. Emotional Ignorance - Dean Burnett
53. Human Origins - New Scientist
54. Impossible Monsters - Michael Taylor
55. This book shall remain nameless
56. A is for Alibi - Sue Grafton
57. Odyssey - Stephen Fry
58. Super-Infinite: the transformations of John Donne - Katherine Rundell
59. The Werewolf in the Ancient World - Daniel Ogden
60. Monsters: what do we do with great art by bad people - Claire Dederer
61. My Husband - Maud Ventura
62. Imagining Decolonisation - multiple authors
63. My Animals and Other Animals - Bill Bailey
64. Insanely Gifted - Jamie Catto
65. A Taste for Poison - Neil Bradbury
66. Rouge - Mona Awad
67. And So This is Christmas - Brian Bilston
68. Foster - Claire Keegan
69. The Deorhord: an Old English Bestiary - Hana Videen
70. A Body Made of Glass - Caroline Crampton

Loving everyone's lists. I read 90 books this year which is my highest ever total I think. I tried to read one book in French every month, and one nonfiction book every month (because I buy nonfiction books and then they tend to sit on my shelves unread). I succeeded in these aims, just!

Stats: 87% fiction, 13% nonfiction
78% in English, 13% in French, 9% in translation
90% women, 9% men, 1% non-binary
80% white, 20% other ethnicities
37% bolds. I bold a lot!

Fiction bolds:
La Carte postale [The Postcard], Anne Berest
Les Disparus du Clairdelune, La Passe-Miroir Livre 2 [The Missing of Clairdelune, The Mirror Visitor Book 2], Christelle Dabos
[I enjoyed this whole fantasy series, but Book 2 was the best.]
Nicholas Nickleby, Charles Dickens
Jamaica Inn, Daphne du Maurier
And Then She Fell, Alicia Elliott
La Honte [Shame], Annie Ernaux
Days of Abandonment, Elena Ferrante, trans. Ann Goldstein
The Hunter, Tana French
Enter Ghost, Isabella Hammad

Stars of Fortune, Cynthia Harnett
[Discovering Harnett was one of the highlights of my year and I read almost all her books, but this one was my favourite.]
Pearl, Siân Hughes
The Vegetarian, Han Kang, trans. Deborah Smith
Human Acts, Han Kang, trans. Deborah Smith
Les Liaisons dangereuses, Choderlos de Laclos
For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain, Victoria MacKenzie
The Spoilt City, Olivia Manning
[The second book of Manning’s Balkan trilogy and my favourite, but books 1 and 3 were also good.]
My Friends, Hisham Matar
Ordinary Human Failings, Megan Nolan
A Little Luck, Claudia Piñeiro, trans. Frances Riddle

I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith
The Wife of Willesden, Zadie Smith
Abide With Me, Elizabeth Strout
Tell Me Everything, Elizabeth Strout
The Empusium, Olga Tokarczuk, trans Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Stone Yard Devotional, Charlotte Wood

Nonfiction bolds:
Le Coeur à rire et à pleurer : Contes vrais de mon enfance [Tales from the Heart : True Stories from My Childhood], Maryse Condé
Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, Anne Fadiman
Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender, Kit Heyam
Un sac de billes [A Bag of Marbles], Joseph Joffo
Revelations of Divine Love, Julian of Norwich, trans. Barry Windeatt
[I finally read the two earliest women writers writing in English: Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe. Margery was quite the read as well, but Julian was my favourite of the two]
Hons and Rebels, Jessica Mitford
My Good Bright Wolf, Sarah Moss
Black and British: A Forgotten History, David Olusoga

Italics:
The Maiden, Kate Foster
Vipère au poing [Viper in the Fist], Hervé Bazin
Houris, Kamel Daoud

Here's my 2024 list:

1 The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
2 A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
3 A Heart That Works by Rob Delaney
4 Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson
5 The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre
6 The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey
7 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
8 Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy
9 Leonard and Hungry Paul by Ronan Hession
10 Lean Stand Fall by Jon McGregor
11 Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup
12 Generations: The Real Differences between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents - and What They Mean for America's Future by Jean M. Twenge
13 Our Wives Under the Sea by Julie Armfield
14 This House of Grief by Helen Garner
15 Kala by Colin Walsh
16 My Body by Emily Ratajkowski
17 Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
18 Delicacy by Katy Wix
19 Piglet by Lottie Hazell
20 Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell
21 We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch
22 Just What Kind of Mother Are You? by Paula Daly
23 Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
24 Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
25 Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell
26 A Change of Climate by Hilary Mantel
27 Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad
28 A Tomb With A View by Peter Ross
29 The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
30 Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer
31 Ultra Processed People by Chris van Tulleken
32 Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman
33 And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliott
34 It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover
35 Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue
36 The Herd by Emily Edwards
37 Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
38 Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey
39 East West Street by Philippe Sands
40 House of Glass by Hadley Freeman
41 The Two Week Wait by Sarah Rayner
42 The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
43 Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister
44 Guest House for Young Widows by Azadeh Moaveni
45 Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
46 Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
47 A Spell of Good Things by Ayobami Adebayo
48 Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra
49 Seven Ways to Change the World by Gordon Brown
50 The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
51 North Woods by Daniel Mason
52 The Wych Elm by Tana French
53 Red Plenty by Francis Spufford

64% female / 36% male
74% fiction / 26% non fiction

Top five (not in order):
Half of a Yellow Sun
House of Glass
Guest House for Young Widows
Mercury Pictures Presents
Red Plenty

See you all in 2025!

My books of the year are Project Hail Mary and The Great Post Office Scandal. I also loved The Lady Astronaut trilogy and I really enjoyed Homegoing which I just finishes but I think you need some distance from reading a book to know how much you truly like it.

My DNFs were Eve - Cat Bohannon which I really wanted to like but it was just irritating and didn't seem to say very much and The Christmas Tree Farm which was total rubbish.

Only one italic which I slogged through but wouldn't recommend anyone read and that's Years of Rice and Salt and Rice - Kim Stanley Robinson. I really don't know who this book would appeal to but it definitely wasn't me nor, I suspect, any of you! Mentions for other books that I didn't enjoy but that's a me problem and I can see why others like them The Gift of Rain - Tan Twan Eng, You are Here - David Nicholls and Enter Ghost - Isabella Hammad.

My full list

1. Lessons in Chemistry - Bonnie Garmus
2. Years of Rice and Salt - Kim Stanley Robinson
3. Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
4. Yellowface - RF Kuang
5. The Great Post Office Scandal - Nick Wallis
6. The Seven Sisters - Lucinda Riley
7. The Kitchen God's Wife - Amy Tan
8. Dreaming the Eagle - Manda Scott
9. The Calculating Stars - Mary Robinette Kowal
10. The Fated Sky - Mary Robinette Kowal
11. Red Side Story - Jasper Fforde
12. Restless Moon - Mary Robinette Kowal
13. One Good Turn - Kate Atkinson
14. Expecting Better - Emily Oster
15. The Gift of Rain - Tan Twan Eng
16. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
17. The Lost Man - Jane Harper
18. Ultra Processed People - Chris Van Tulleken
19. Paper Cup - Karen Campbell
20. The Dry - Jane Harper
21. When the Dust Settles - Lucy Easthope
22. Rachel Ryan's Resolutions - Laura Starkey
23. The Silent Patient - Alex Michaelides
24. Assassins Apprentice - Robin Hobb
25. Royal Assassin - Robin Hobb
26. Assassins Quest - Robin Hobb
27. Over My Dead Body - Maz Evans
28. The Nothing Man - Catherine Ryan Howard
29. The Fellowship of the Ring - JRR Tolkien
30. The Light That Bends Round Corners - Alexandra Carey
31. The Burning Girls - CJ Tudor
32. The Two Towers - JRR Tolkien
33. The Bookbinder - Pip Williams
34. Enter Ghost - Isabella Hammad
35. The Return of the King - JRR Tolkien
36. The Other People - CJ Tudor
37. The Three Body Problem - Liu Cixin
38. The Dictionary of Lost Words - Pip Williams
39. The Dark Forest - Liu Cixin
40. The Gathering - CJ Tudor
41. Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir
42. Hex - Jenni Fagan
43. The Lightning Thief - Rick Riordan
44. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
45. The Finish: The Killing of Osama bin Laden - Mark Bowden
46. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin
47. The Mountains Sing - Nguyen Phan Que Mai
48. The Bonesetters Daughter - Amy Tan
49. The Christmas Appeal - Janice Hallett
50. You are Here - David Nicholls
51. The 12 Clues of Christmas - Rhys Bowen
52. Homegoing - Yaa Gyasi

A bad year for me in terms of both quantity and quality of reading (but a bad year generally - cancer being somewhat distracting). There is a singular bold - Falling Animals that i would really recommend. All the Locke's are good if you enjoy a deep south set thriller with the inevitable comprimised and tortured hero. There are a few so if you like them you can keep going. Far too many children's books in the list, they are 'cheats' really & i wouldnt normally count so many.

The Hiding Place is the only definite italics. Woo chick-lit - almost so bad it was good, but not quite. Honorable mentions also go to 'Has anyone seen Charlotte Salter?', which has had some good reviews on here, but the ending made me want to throw it across the room and 'Pine' that seemed to never end with its boring potentially supernatural ponderousness.

The reading year has ended on a high with the Strout. Finishing a book that was neither a children's book or a thriller seemed a real achievement - treatment has shot my concerntration to pieces. Roll on 2025, im hoping to get closer to 50 (but then i always have good intentions ....).

1. The Cutting Season Attica Locke

2. Jesus Land Julia Scheeres 3. In a Dark Dark Wood Ruth Ware 4. Night Waking Sarah Moss 5. Falling Animals Shelia Armstrong 6. Little Disasters Sarah Vaughan 7. Bluebird Bluebird Attica Locke 8. Heaven My Home Attica Locke 9. Black Water Rising Attica Locke 10. The Ready Made Family Antonia Forest 11. Eating for England Nigel Slater 12. The Homes J. B. Mylett 13. Girl Missing Sophie McKenzie 14. Sister Missing Sophie McKenzie 15. The Survivors Jane Harper 16. The Appeal Janice Hallett 17. Ill Take That One Kitty Baxter 18. Instructions for a heatwave Maggie O'Farrell 19. Pine Francine Toon 20. The Hiding Place Amanda Mason 21 Giving Up the Ghost Hilary Mantel 22 Kala Colin Walsh 23 Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter? Nicci French 25 The Vanishing Half Brit Bennett 26 - 30 Goodbye to Pine Street, Alone at Pine Street, Friends at Pine Street, The Pride of Pine Street, First Term at Ash Grove Mabel Esther Allan 31. The Light We Carry Michelle Obama 32. All the Lonely People Martin Edwards 33. Weightless Sarah Bannan 34. Into the Woods David Mark 35. The Burgess Boys Elizabeth Strout

Why does it do that to the formatting? It didnt look like that for me. Argghhhh!