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 .

I really wish MN would sort their numbering out! Anyway, here's 3 more reviews.

293. Prelude of Fire. Christine E. Schulze
     Book one in a fantasy series. Lots of different 'folk', magic and so on.

294. A Little Christmas Magic. Suzanne Rogerson
     Short Christmas stories. Add with all sorry stories they never felt fully developed to me. But a nice, easy, festive read.

295. Happyagony. Mem Ferda
     Poetry based on Mem's life. A bold for me. It covers topics such as love, Hollywood, war. I thought it was raw and beautiful.

296. Operation Fools Mate 24. M. L Baldwin
     Book one in a trilogy. This book takes place over the first 24 hours of a terrorist attack on the UK. Leaked papers on how we would deal with a certain attack, man the attackers know exactly what to do to defeat us. There was quite a lot of army talk so I lost track of exactly what was happening at moments. Only in the sense that using army slang, or initials for ranks/weapons etc. My brain forgets what they all mean.

I'm hoping to squeeze in another 4 by the end of the year.

I have just one novel left to review, which I started in late November and only finished a few days ago. I’m not sure how to review it without writing a whole long wall of text, but I’ll try to be brief and hopefully not bore everyone to tears.

90. Houris, Kamel Daoud 2/5 I greatly admired Daoud’s previous novel (Meursault, contre-enquête or The Meursault Investigation), which retells the story of Camus’ L’Étranger from the point of view of the brother of the Arab murdered by Meursault. So when I learned that Daoud’s newest novel had won the prestigious Prix Goncourt, I decided to read it straight away. I was about 100 pages in, when news broke out on the internet that the story of the novel was largely based on the real-life story of a young Algerian woman, Saada Arbane. There were quite a few articles on the topic; here's the BBC one:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg573dgqn

Aube, the heroine of Daoud’s novel, has had her throat slit at age 5 during the Algerian civil war. She survives (unlike the other members of her family) and goes on to have a tracheotomy. She has an energetic, devoted adoptive mother; she owns her own hair salon; she has tattoos in intimate places on her body that recall details of her family’s past; and she plans to have an illegal abortion (the novel is narrated in the form of her speaking to her unborn daughter). It turns out that Daoud stole all these details wholesale from the life of Saada Arbane. How did he know so much about her life? Well, Daoud’s wife was Arbane’s psychiatrist for many years. When I watched Arbane being interviewed, it was uncanny to hear her whispering through her speech tube. This has never happened to me before: seeing a character in a novel turn into a literally living person. It was a strange experience. I felt very indignant on Arbane’s behalf, as it seems to be a clear violation of doctor-patient confidentiality.

Arbane is now suing Daoud, because he reportedly asked her for permission to turn her story into a novel, and she said no. However, Daoud is also being sued because it is illegal in Algeria to write or speak publicly about the Algerian civil war. (Daoud cites this law as a powerful epigraph at the beginning of his novel.) The whole novel is presented as a revelation of the suppressed truth about the Algerian civil war. Which is a worthy ethical project, but what a shame that he decided to ground the novel in the private history of his wife’s patient!

Once I heard Arbane’s story, I found it hard to carry on reading and assess the novel on its own merits. I will say that even before I heard about Arbane, however, I was disturbed by the way Aube’s disability is fetishised and made to function as a symbol. Her tracheotomy is repeatedly said to represent the way the entire violent history of her country's civil war has been repressed. And every time anyone sees her throat, they are confronted with the history of Algeria. So she is less a human being than a walking metaphor. This was disturbing. And the novel is very repetitive, including in the later parts when a taxi driver tells Aube the story of his own family tragedy. Islam’s treatment of women is depicted in the novel as relentlessly horrific (I must say I have some sympathy for Daoud on this front, because he is hated by Islamic fundamentalists). But the novel presents itself as a feminist defence of Algerian women; Aube doesn't want her daughter to be born because she thinks women's freedom is so harshly curtailed in Algeria that her daughter will not be able to live a happy life. (The ‘houris’ of the title, by the way, are the beautiful maidens which Muslim men are promised as a reward in paradise.) So it's ironic at best when this supposedly feminist novel turns out to appropriate the story of one real, living Algerian woman without her permission.

TLDR: Daoud's protest against the Algerian government is admirable but his feminism is dodgy. Read The Meursault Investigation and skip Houris.

I’m sorry this final review has turned out to be my longest one of the year and that it's about a book which hasn't been translated into English yet (though I'm sure it will be). I needed to vent I think!

Apparently there's a new Thursday Next book next year, the final one, but I've been burnt by Mr fforde before.

Argh, I can't get my link to work, sorry!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg573dgqnglo

That's fascinating @cassandre
I heard about it a while ago.

Thanks Fuzzy, I think I've been obsessed with the story to a slightly unhealthy degree. I feel like I need to compose a limerick now to lighten the tone! But the muse isn't smiling on me tonight 😂

It's horrifying also! The poor woman at the centre of it.

Yes! She seems like a very impressive person, however. She says that she wants to publish her own autobiography. I will certainly read it if she does.

That said, I also feel like she's being used by the repressive Algerian government as part of their campaign to discredit Daoud. The fact he stole her story is like a gift to them. (Why couldn't he just have changed the salient details I wonder? How did he think he would get away with it?)

Another famous Algerian writer, Boualem Sansal, was recently arrested by the government when he returned to Algeria from France and has been in detention ever since. It's awful. He's in his 70s. And Daoud has been very vocal about publicising his case in an attempt to save him.

Life and literature can certainly be ethically messy.

Welcoming the new joiners, and sending the very best of wishes to @BarbaraBuncle and your DS - hoping that reading continues to provide a welcome distraction. I'm seeing the year out with Hitler, Stalin, Mum, and Dad which is utterly absorbing so far.

@BarbaraBuncle that sounds tough. I hope things get better

Loving the limericks

If the Thursday Club books amused you
We Solve Murders might float your boat too
It's a whodunit caper
Not a huge waste of paper
Passes time when you're sat on the loo

Loving the Limericks! No new reviews to add, but:

A reminder to you, bookish friend
That you’ve got till this time next weekend
To post on the ‘Round Up’ Thread
Books you’ve loved and hated.
I’ll sort the stats after year end!

I'm always quite dubious when people post that they spat out their tea laughing at a thread, but I am genuinely weeping slightly at the limericks.

You are all fully bonkers but that is at least in part why I love you so much.

Thanks @RomanMum - what a poetic nudge ❤️

@cassandre an interesting background story, thank you for sharing and I hope her book outsells his!

Just adding my admiration for the limericks! Brilliant stuff. You are all very clever.

I realised afterwards that mine is only 4 lines long. In the spirit of people who say 13 line poems are truncated sonnets, I shall claim mine as a sub-limerick.

Fascinating @cassandre - I wasn't aware of any of that.

My last for the year: 160. A World Underneath the Sands, by Toby Wilkinson, non-fiction about Western archaeology in Egypt from 1822 to 1922. Okay - pleased to finally read it as it's been sitting on my shelf for a couple of years. Made me want to go back and read the Amelia Peabody books.

Very interesting @cassandre , what a betrayal of trust.

Loving the limericks, especially Riders! This thread is such a delight

117. West Heart Kill - Dann McGorman

A work of detective meta-fiction
With first, second and third person depiction
You'll either love it or hate it
I did really quite rate it
A book that plays with my mystery addiction!

Not sure who recommended on this but it was fun, poking around in the workings of the detective story against the background of an actual crime.

Fascinating (and excellent) reviews from @cassandre and @inaptonym .

@cassandre TY for the deep dive into the last book/case - I was RIVETED! (And quite sure there are yet more writers working on their ~edgy~ meta-novels about the whole situation as we limerick....)
Also belated thanks for telling me about Le Banquet in French in the last thread 💛

@Piggywaspushed I appreciated your radical development of the limerick form, vive la revolution, down with rulez etc.
Thank you for the Martin Chuzzlewit reminder too: I'm enjoying the readalong even though the footnotes may have peaked with the dog musical.

Speaking of which, I originally came on yesterday to share this genius bit from the Victorian Female Detectives intro:

A bevy of lady detectives are we,
Clever and cute as detectives can be,
No one can equal our skill and finesse,
If you're in trouble, just note our address.
We do all our work without bother or fuss,
No other firm holds a candle to us;
All the virtues adorning our sex
Centre in us, the renowned Lady Tecs.
from Bilberry of Tilbury: A Musical Farce in Three Acts (1989)

Before getting distracted by limericks! (Though now pleased if not entirely surprised to learn Sara Lodge's previous books include a bio of Edward Lear 😁)

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie ty! I forgot to mention for anyone tempted by Paul Griffiths, try to get a paper copy - not just because I think it's a beautiful object but because he does fun things with layout and typography which might get messed up in e-format.

Well done all poets lovely to read, alas I am another who can’t string two words together.
Another finished last night but listened to the final bit again this morning as drifted away to the land of nod. A non fiction
23.Lalechka by Amira Keidar
Set during the war this is about three childhood friends Zippa, Sophia and Irena. The Nazi’s are liquidating the ghetto of Shedlitz, a town based near Warsaw, Poland. Zippa a 27 year old finds shelter in an attic along with her baby daughter and 100 other frightened Jews. When she can escape no more she somehow manages to save her daughter from certain death by smuggling her out. This follows the little girl Lalechka and her journey of survival.
Profoundly moving and emotional.

@LuckyMauveReader

My personal favourite is The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë, very modern in its themes and outlook.

Another vote for The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.