50 Books Challenge 2024 Part Nine

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the ninth and final thread of the 50 Book Challenge for this year, possibly the shortest thread in the twelve years the other 50 Books Challenge threads have been going.

The challenge was 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 , the seventh one here and the eighth one here .

Thank you @Tarahumara - just bought Paper Cup and the David Baddiel book too following your tip off.

64 Women Living Deliciously - Florence Given A very kind friend gave me this book recently when I was feeling particularly down about being middle-aged, invisible, fat and unhealthy (as well as not a nice person to be around, as a result of all that). This book isn’t going to solve everything - that needs me to make some changes like eating better, drinking less and exercising more, all of which I am starting to do - but it was a helpful reminder that self-care is important and that it’s good to say no sometimes. It was clearly aimed at people in a different stage of life from me - much of it would have applied to me 20 years ago (and is about to apply to my daughters…), and having looked up the author that makes sense - she’s only 26. But a lot of what she says is still relevant and useful for someone in their 40s like me!

thank you @Southeastdweller for the emergency thread - I think lots of us got panicky when the last one filled up.

I've been on the threads since 2017, although with a name change this year, and only rarely hitting 50.

I have just finished probably my last book of the year: 62.Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. Shy and straightlaced Fanny is sent to live with her more assured and confident cousins the Bertrams at Mansfield Park, where all except Edmund treat her with disdain. The quiet correctness of Mansfield Park is shattered by the arrival of the urbane and glamorous siblings Henry and Mary Crawford.

I didn't love this. Fanny spends much of the novel as "a quiet auditor", disaffected by the social and sexual politics of the various courtships around her, and is hard to warm to despite the horribleness of her situation. I also found the pacing uneven, with the middle sagging and a bit of rush to cram some actual plot into the the last fifth. The men are all a bit rubbish in their different ways as well. I read this because a couple of years ago I watched and enjoyed Jonathan Dove's opera adaptation and I think the charm of the music masked the lack (for the most part) of interesting plot. If anyone gets the chance to see it I'd recommend that over reading it!

Some mini reviews of my festive reads:

92. A Christmas Wish by Lindsey Kelk. Young woman re-lives Christmas Day with her chaotic family over and over again until she makes the right romantic choice. Quite funny, in the Mhairi McFarlane vein.

93. Royal Holiday by Jasmine Guillory. Middle aged woman accompanies her daughter, a stylist, on a trip to the U.K. where she is dressing a duchess for Christmas. She falls in love with the Queen's private secretary, a very vaguely described job. All the usual fun of Americans writing about the royal family, including Sandringham being in 'northern England'.

I think I'm going to be reading A Place of Greater Safety until Easter at this rate!

I also read this morning there is a new Sarah Moss coming in the spring which is exciting!

@StrangewaysHereWeCome I didn't know that Jonathan Dove had written an opera based on Mansfied Park, I'll look out for it.

Speaking of upcoming new books. Goodreads have done a feature on the most anticipated books of 2025.

www.goodreads.com/blog/show/2842-readers-most-anticipated-books-of-2025?ref=BigBooks25_eb

I'm delighted to see the following have something new out

Eimear McBride
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Charlotte McConaghy
Taylor Jenkins Reid
Emma Donohue
R.F. Kuang

If you do a search there are quite a few other lists of books to be published too.

Latest Tom Gauld in the Grauniad:

An opera based on Mansfield Park? What actual hell is this? I’d need Henry Crawford naked and covered in Nutella for it to be tolerable.

In other news - if anybody enjoyed Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield her latest is now 99p on Kindle.

Ooh thank you for the link @FortunaMajor lots to look forward to there!

However my question this year is the same as every year: WHEN will there be a new Sarah Waters?!

@boiledeggandtoast annoyingly there's not a recording, but it seems to have been performed most often at universities and conservatoires. Guildhall is doing a production in Spring if you're in London. @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie is bringing Nutella, I hear...

@StrangewaysHereWeCome Ooh, thank you, I am in London, I'll check it out! I saw The Enchanted Pig at the Young Vic some (many) years ago and very much enjoyed it.

117 The Kept Woman - Karin Slaughter

In which we find out what happened to Angie as a child and whether or not Will (Trent) is going to get over her.

A bold. Angie has gone definitively bad cop now, but she does have a good reason. Many of her circle are murderous and corrupt, and it’s good to see Will finally figure this out.

33 Close Knit - Jenny Colgan
This was exactly what my addled brain and frazzled soul needed. Knitting, friendship, romance and a bit of adventure in a remote Scottish landscape.
So much so, that having just discovered I have another unread Jenny Colgan on my kindle I've decided I'm going to crack on with that.
But first, a few more chapters of A little life.... how incongruous is that!?!!

Thank you @Southeastdweller for the end-of-year thread, and for your efforts all year!

I joined these threads in Jan 2021, but had lurked several years before that.

I'm trying to catch up with my reviews so I can post on the round-up thread. As evidence that I can be very very late with things, here are reviews of the books I read on my summer holidays in August. 😂 When I came back, I had so much work (and sadly, so much work-related anxiety) that I never managed to post reviews.

79. Hons and Rebels, Jessica Mitford 5/5
    Loved this witty memoir by the most politically lefty Mitford sister. Interesting insight into the British upper classes in the first half of the 20th c. Well done to her for standing up to her family! The book ends quite abruptly but I can see why (there is an unexpected bereavement).

80. Starlight, Stella Gibbons 4/5
    A rather strange and wonderful novel, that takes an unexpected turn towards the end. The characters are extremely well painted, especially the two elder sisters who are the novel’s central focus; and the London setting is vivid as well.

81. La Carte postale, Anne Berest 5/5
    An autobiographical novel and a gripping read. The protagonist traces her family’s Jewish history across multiple countries to the present. The story illustrates both France’s treatment of Jews during the Holocaust and the complexities of being Jewish (even being a secular Jew) in modern-day France. The narrative moves quickly and the prose is quite straightforward (for example, the conversational passé compose is used instead of the passé simple normally used in literary works). The author has written screenplays as well, and in some ways the story unfolds like a screenplay. Highly recommended.

82. Lost on Me, Veronica Raimo, trans. Leah Janeczko 4/5
    An entertaining work of autofiction, set in Rome, with a quirky, light-touch treatment of family relations (and the unreliability of whatever stories you may tell about your family and yourself). The Italian title is Niente di vero, a pun which can mean either ‘Nothing True’ or ‘Nothing about Vero’ (Vero being one of the heroine’s nicknames).

83. Days of Abandonment, Elena Ferrante, trans. Ann Goldstein 5/5
    This is the first Ferrante book I’ve read apart from the famous Neapolitan Quartet, and it was great, although quite painful to read at points. The heroine’s husband leaves her and her life falls apart (this is very viscerally described), but she survives. I felt like this book was a welcome antidote to famous male-authored novels like Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina, where the heroines invest so much in men, and go on to take their own lives when the men disappoint them.

84. The Country Girls: Trilogy and Epilogue, Edna O’Brien 4/5
    I can see why these books created such a sensation when they were published in 1960s Ireland. They capture an era very effectively. They were bleaker than I had expected. My favourite book was the middle of the three, The Lonely Girl, where Cait and Baba move to Dublin. The books are very feminist in that they show what bastards men can be (and how vulnerable young girls were in that time and place), but they don’t really show a solution for women: Cait and Baba keep casting their lot in with selfish, predatorial men. Thus the bleakness. Yet O’Brien is a real storyteller and these were a great read. Btw, I meant to join the MN thread on The Country Girls, but missed it because life was so hectic that month! I’ve now read the thread belatedly and enjoyed everyone’s varied reactions and insights.

Thanks @Southeastdweller for the new thread.
@GrannieMainland I've only read Fingersmith so far and have The Paying Guests on order from Waterstones but can see why you're keen on more from Sarah Waters, I feel she has the potential to become a favourite author wirh me.
Has anyone read Stuart Turton's new book? I've read and enjoyed his previous ones but I'm not sure about the latest.

Just finished A Place of Greater Safety which I have been reading chunks of each month for about 5 months now. Immense and rewarding. I don't know how Mantel does it but ,despite such a panoply of characters, nearly all of them really develop as distinct personalities. I did get some of the women a bit confused. But I liked that she focused on the women a lot.

The Wolf Hall telly team would do a cracking job on this.

Yes. Very meh.

Thanks @Piggywaspushed I'll give that one a miss!

Thanks for the review of Starlight, cassandre - it's on my shelf and I'm keen to get to it

Agree on "meh" for the Stuart Turton.

I’ve just checked and I’ve been on these threads since 2016!

354 Lights! Camera! Mayhem! by Jodi Taylor

The regular Christmas short story. This one wasn’t actually Christmassy but I didn’t mind that. A film is being made with the St Mary’s team as historical advisors, but things go awry when the main actress goes missing in Troy. Good fun as always.

355 The Inn At The Edge Of The World by Alice Thomas Ellis

A group of strangers all decide to spend Christmas at a remote Hebridean island inn. Will save more detailed thoughts for the main thread but I didn’t enjoy this.

356 Dickens At Christmas

This is a very hefty book consisting of all 5 of his Christmas books, an extract from The Pickwick Papers, and a collection of short stories and other writings from the various magazines and periodicals he wrote for. The highlight is, of course, A Christmas Carol, but the other stories are good too and I’m glad I have finally got round to reading them all.

Also agree the latest Stuart Turton isn’t worth bothering with - I DNF it earlier this year.

The Wager by David Grann
This has taken me months to get into. The beginning is very slow, but when it gets going, it's really interesting and gripping, although the ending was a bit of an anti-climax. Recommended to those of you who enjoy peril at sea.

DH got given that for Christmas Remus (not by me), so glad to hear it’s good.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie @ChessieFL
The Wager was one of my top five books of 2024 (although I do concur a little with your view on the ending).