24 in ’24 Challenge – The Wrap Up

This summer I decided to tackle my ever growing to-be-read pile by reading and removing from it 24 books. These would be standalone books which had lingered unread for some time – half to be fiction and the other half non-fiction. I decided that they should be read in June, July and August. You can see my blog about the challenge here.

I did read 24 books in the months set aside for them (although the last one was actually finished in the first week of September) which I was pleased about because I was away from home for about three weeks of the period on holiday and I didn’t read challenge books when away. The blogging has, as you can see, lingered into September.

As last year I found this a useful thing to do. Piling up the books to be read and setting myself a time limit to complete them meant that I did read the titles chosen for the challenge and they have now been absorbed into my bookcases or passed on to others who might now enjoy them. Sadly, my to-be-read pile hasn’t diminished at all because I keep on buying new books so I think that next year I will repeat this exercise in the spring and try to remove some more of the older inhabitants.

I read all the books I had originally chosen except one (see below) which I substituted with another title. If you click on any of the titles in the lists below it will link you to my review.

Books that were outstanding

• Crow Lake by Mary Lawson
• A Nest of Magpies by Sybil Marshall
• The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene
• Border Crossing by Pat Barker
• The Long Way to a Small and Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
• An Episode of Sparrows by Rumer Godden

Books that I enjoyed

• The End of the Day by Claire North
• Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo
• The Tale of Beatrix Potter by Margaret Lane
• French Braid by Anne Tyler
• After the Romanovs by Helen Rappaport
• Mean with Money by Hunter Davies
• Around the World in Eighty Days by Michael Palin
• The Bugatti Queen by Miranda Seymour
• The King of Sunlight by Adam Macqueen

Books that were very readable

• Footloose & Fearless @ 50+ by Denise O’Leary
• Penguins Stopped Play by Harry Thompson
• The Care and Management of Lies by Jacqueline Winspear
• The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon
• The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan
• Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
• The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
• Small Boat in the Midi by Roger Pilkington
• To the Poles Without a Beard by Catharine Hartley

The book I didn’t finish

Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey. I don’t usually review books that I leave unfinished but just to wrap up this challenge I need to say that after two chapters I just couldn’t read this book any more. The narrator is an older woman who is obviously suffering some sort of dementia or memory loss and she continually forgets things, doesn’t know what is happening and repeats herself. The thought which keeps recurring to her is that her friend Elizabeth is missing. I greatly dislike books where both the reader and the main character have no idea what is going on and this book seemed to use this approach to storytelling all the way through. I decided not to stick with it because it was annoying me. I accept that this is a matter of personal preference rather than a comment on the quality of the book – the fact that it annoyed me so much implies that the author had written it very well ! This is a popular book which has sold well so it doesn’t need my endorsement – see what you think of it for yourself.