LittleTaiko - 2024 TBR Challenge

World Book Day

1. The House by the River by Lena Manta (2018) - Greece
2. The Question of Red by Laksmi Pamuntjak (2018) - Indonesia
3. The Gray House by Mariam Petrosyan (2018) - Russia
4. The Light of the Fireflies by Paul Pen (2018) - Spain - 02.05.24
5. The Hangman's Daughter by Oliver Potzsch (2019) - Germany
6. About the Night by Anat Talshir (2019) - Israel - 05.14.24
7. The Dark Heart by Joakim Palmkvist (2019) - Sweden
8. The Passion According to Carmela by Marcos Aguinis (2019) - Cuba - 05.07.24
9. This Life or the Next by Demian Vitanza (2019) - Syria
10. Out of the Silence by Eduardo Strauch Urioste (2020) - Uruguay - 01.25.24
11. The First Mrs. Rothschild by Sara Aharoni (2020) - Germany - 05.01.24
12. Life by Lu Yao (2020) - China - 01.02.24
13. The Man Who Played With Fire by Jan Stocklassa (2020) - Sweden
14. The Girl in the Tree by Sebnem Isiguzel (2020) - Turkey
15. Skoenlapper by Irma Venter (2020) - South Africa/Tanzania - 01.09.24
16. A Single Swallow by Zhang Ling (2021) - China - 05.22.24
17. The Broken Circle by Enjeela Ahmadi-Miller (2021) - Afghanistan
18. The King of Warsaw by Szczepan Twardoch (2021) - Poland
19. The Son and the Heir by Alexander Munninghoff (2021) - Netherlands

Other E-books

20. Plenty: A Memoir of Food and Family by Hannah Howard (2021) - United States - 03.31.24
21. The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel (2020) - Canada
22. The Taste of Ginger by Mansi Shah (2021) - United States/India - 05.24.24
23. The Whiskey Rebels by David Liss (pre-2013) - United States
24. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens (pre-2013) - England

Read: 10
Remaining: 14

Thought I'd go ahead and post my list for next year so that there is no turning back. Every year, Amazon participates in World Book Day where there are several books that you can download for free. I ambitiously downloaded pretty much every book they listed for four years. I've even managed to read some of them and for the most part have enjoyed them.

My 2024 list is intended to encourage me to read the rest of them with a few other older e-books thrown in to round out the list. Any authors or titles from the WBD list that you recognize and recommend as a starting place?

I know very few of these but a lot of them have interesting subject matter. I've seen quite a bit of LT buzz about The Glass Hotel. Expecting I'll be reading Our Mutual Friend around May or so.

Oh good luck with your challenge! I like the international flavor!

oooh, i too love the international flavor :) i could do with the same kind of variety in my reading. will be looking forward to your feedbacks and reviews.

happy reading ^_^

Good luck with the challenge! Nice list, I'll be interested to see which of those titles you recommend.

What a fun theme for your list :) Happy reading in 2024!

1. Life by Lu Yao (3 stars)

Getting my challenge off to a nice start with a surprisingly short and easy to read book. It's been called a novella but seemed to have more pages than that.

From what I understand this is considered a classic in China and is one of only two books the author wrote before dying at an early age. It's set in the 1980's and centers around a young man in his early 20's who has a humongous chip on his should about growing up as a peasant. He's had a brief taste of city life but despite being smart, he didn't get into college. He had settled into a nice job as a teacher but due to small village shenanigans gets fired so that the son of the head of the village can have the job instead. The book focuses on how he handles the situation along with a potential love interest.

It was an interesting look at city versus rural struggles and the difficulties of improving ones lot in life. I'm not sure if it was the translation that made the characters feel a bit simplistic with overly dramatic reactions or if that was the intent of the author.

Let's see ... three days, one down ... times 24 ... so you oughta be done by end of March! :)

>9 Cecrow: - Ha! If only all of them were as short and easy to read.

wow! that was very quick ^_^ havent read a lot of chinese lit...this sounds ideal for toe dipping

>11 riida: - It would be a good way to dip your toes into Chinese literature. I would also recommend two books by Xinran - What the Chinese Don’t Eat and Miss Chopsticks. The first is a series of essays that she wrote for The Guardian and the other is a novel.

2. Hard Rain by Irma Venter. (3 stars)

This turned out to be a sort of mystery set in Tanzania and South Africa. I say sort of mystery, because there is a dead body and a detective, but it just didn’t feel like a traditional mystery. Maybe a semi-thriller without many thrills.

Not sure how I feel about this book. There are things I liked and things that bugged me. First the buggy stuff - I will never be a fan of the fall in love immediately at first sight story line. It just doesn’t make sense to me, especially to the depths that the two main characters, Alex and Ranna, seemed to feel. Also never felt that there conversations or reactions were realistic.

I did enjoy getting a glimpse of Tanzania, even if it rained incessantly during the book - hence the title. Apparently it’s a wonderful place to visit, though I doubt I’ll ever make it there. Also enjoyed seeing a bit of the journalistic world since Alex as a writer and Ranna was a photographer covering various stories in the area.

Overall I’d say this was fine, but if you’re wanting to know more about Tanzania then maybe try a different book.

Your last line says it all, I think. Exactly where I was going in my head with the rest of what you wrote. :)

3. Out of the Silence: After the Crash by Eduardo Strauch (4 stars)

This was an excellent memoir about a very tough and fascinating subject written by one of the survivors of the 1972 plane crash into the Andes. Most of the passengers were from the Uruguayan rugby team who were headed to Chile for a match. They were stranded in the mountains for 72 days.

So hard to wrap my head around how anyone survived much less maintained their sanity. This was a tale of perseverance and hard decisions. I first heard about this crash a few years ago when I went to a museum exhibit about cannibalism. He addresses the topic matter of factly and seriously but doesn't sensationalize it.

He also writes about the struggles to adapt back into society, the magnificence of nature, and the bonds forged on that mountain. It was really quite beautiful.

Apparently there was a movie in the early 1990's called Alive that was based on one of the other survivor's memoir. Kind of interested in seeing it but it may be a bit intense.

Quote from the book: "But nature is neither good nor bad, it simply is. So perhaps its only indisputable quality is its magnificence."

>15 LittleTaiko:, there's been three or four different books about this event, some by survivors and some not. It could be an interesting exercise to read multiple books and compare, but that would be quite a topic to dwell on.

>15 LittleTaiko: wow...am always interested in these kinds of survival stories, but i'm always afraid they may be too much for my nerves...respect for survivors.

coincidentally, just been reading a non-fic that talked about cannibalism for a bit, how its more a social taboo rather than an innate or evolutionary one. the book had a curious anecdote of how while western explorers were shocked to learn that the Wari people of the Amazon ate their dead, the Wari were equally shocked that the explorers buried theirs!

>16 Cecrow: - I’ve heard that the movie was based on a survivor’s book of the same name and that the book was very descriptive with the details of the crash, survival on the mountain, and the rescue. The book I read was more of a spiritual recounting since the author had a deep respect and love for the mountain despite everything that happened.

>17 riida: - I would recommend this one as it tells the story without being too gruesome. As mentioned above it’s more of a spiritual look at the event and how it impacted his life and the bigger meaning of things.

That is so interesting about the Wari people. I can understand their shock as well as the western explorers.

4. The Light of the Fireflies by Paul Pen (3 stars)

Where to start with this? The first half is narrated by an 11 year old boy. He's living in a basement with his family who are only known by Mother, Brother, Father, Grandmother, and Sister. He doesn't know exactly why they are forced to live in a basement or the circumstances under which his family suffered the burns that mar their face. He's a nice mixture of naive and curious. The sister has a baby early on which obviously indicates something unseemly is happening. I was getting some Room vibes during this section.

The second half is a third person narration of the events that happened 11 years earlier that explains what happened to the family and shows what a hot mess they are. Characters I sympathized with in the first half were not as sympathetic when you find out the truth.

I liked the book but the reality behind their circumstances was disturbing and had me questioning what I was supposed to take away from it. I think it was about protecting family at all costs, but I'm not comfortable with what those costs were. Especially since the protection didn't seem to be extended to all members of the family.

Surface impression based on your review, it's a one-trick plot lacking in depth. Author could have at least saved the reveal for the end, maybe?

Maybe, though there would have been a heck of a lot to reveal at the end. So much misdirection that the reveals helped keep me engaged. I think for me the reveals were just too over the top. So many bad things happening all at once and no-one had the emotional tools to handle them in a healthy manner.

Assuming you're not going to read the book, so in a nutshell, the sister caused the brother (not the narrator) to accidentally fall down some steep stairs. Because she was scared of what her parents would say she didn't call for help. By the time he did receive help he was mentally damaged. The parents very vocally blame the daughter and are quite horrible to her. There is then a missing girl on whatever island they live on. The boy brings home her dead body one day - it's assumed he killed her but it's never known. The parents and grandparents freak out but instead of calling for help, decide to hide the body in the septic tank. This leads to them preparing the basement to hide their son in for the rest of his life. The daughter calls the father of the dead girl and he promptly comes over and throws Molotov cocktails into the house, the family except for grandpa flee to the basement and decide to live there forever. Grandpa will provide supplies. Oh yeah, everyone suffered burns besides the girl. The family all hate the daughter still. Enough so that when the son basically rapes her (assumed) and she gets pregnant, they are still trying to protect him.

Sigh. So, as you can see a lot happened and none of it good. Kind of makes me wonder why I still gave it three stars. I think it's because the narrator was such a relief from the rest of the family and had a sweet innocent to him.

you've had very intense reads so far! very intriguing tho....Room vibes like you said...also kind of reminds me of the movie Parasite?

i feel like i really want to read this book, but also i dont wanna read it! :P

5. Plenty: A Memoir Of Food and Family by Hannah Howard 3 stars

Note to self: generally you don’t like memoirs so stop buying them. I usually end up wondering why the author felt the need to share their story with the world. What makes them so special? I know I bought this because it involved the world of food and women. From that perspective it was actually quite interesting and I loved reading about cheese, wine, travel, etc... It’s just the rest of it that didn’t resonate with me. It felt like reading someone’s polished diary.

>5 riida:, it's a hit and miss genre. I recently read Crying in H Mart, also about women and food, and really liked it.

>24 Cecrow: - I've heard good things about that one so might give it a try...someday when I'm ready to try a memoir again. It really is hit or miss isn't it? I absolutely loved Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci. It helped that I listened to the audio version that he narrated.

6. The First Mrs. Rothschild by Sara Aharoni (3 stars)

I'm not up to date on financial family dynasties so somehow was unfamiliar with the Rothschild family. This is a fictional account of the start of their empire. It all started with Mayer and his wife Gutle in the late 1700's. Based on the book it was love at first sight with Mayer full of dreams, schemes, and plans. He came across as really intense - determined to have 10 children which they actually did - five sons and five daughters. They were poor and lived in the Jewish ghetto of Frankfurt.

The families ascent was quite interesting with how they worked the system and figured out ways to thrive in a system set up to keep them down. It was fascinating to see it all unfold during the French Revolution and Napolean's rule.

The story is related through Gutle's journals which gives it more of a distance to the characters somehow. You never feel fully vested in any of their lives. The translation seemed a bit weak too. Their conversations and the tone came across as more modern than expected. Plus there were lots of repetition in words - how many times can a family member go "sniffing around".

Not sure I ever warmed to Mayer either. I'm sure he was a man of his time with his insistence that only the inheritance could pass down to his sons or one of their sons.

So in summary, I found this quite educational and enjoyed the story but there were some flaws.

I like researching my family tree. I'm imagining how helpful it would be to have someone else research my family origins and write a novel about it!

It sure would help, wouldn't it? Plus they'd probably make it way more interesting than reality, at least in my families case.

7. The Passion According to Carmela by Marcos Aguinis (3 stars)

Well this was quite the look at life inside the revolution in Cuba. Fiction but based on interviews with some women who lived through it and some obviously very thorough research. The novel switches narrators from Carmela to Ignacio (her lover) and an unknown third person. Carmela's brother Lucas also plays a big role. From their eager naive enthusiasm for the revolution to the harsh realities over the years you get an inside look at the inner workings. Fidel and Raul Castro are characters along with some other key figures.

I couldn't help but be frustrated with Carmela and Ignacio's unwillingness to face facts for most of the book. The author did a good job of showing their complete buy-in.

>29 LittleTaiko:, I got a pretty good look a few years ago with Che Guevara, A Revolutionary Life, great biography.

>30 Cecrow: - He was a side character too. I'm sure his full story would be quite interesting.

8. About The Night by Anat Talshir (3 stars)

This was a rather timely read. The story is set in Jerusalem and starts in 1948 just before the city is split between the Jewish community and the Christian Arabs. It follows Elias (Arab) and Lisa (Jewish) as they meet and fall in love. I wasn’t crazy about the beginning with the excessive declarations of love but I guess that’s what the beginning part of a relationship can be like.

Obviously once the city is split life becomes way more complicated. The story unfolds over the course of the decades and the reader is given little snippets of their lives. It is narrated from both of their perspectives as well as a couple of others. My favorite was Nomi who was the most practical of everyone.

I struggled with the romance portion of the book mainly because Elias is such a pompous jerk who expects everyone to forgive him for all his mistakes. And they do, sort of.

So, a mixed bag of a read. As always I appreciate learning about places and events that I’m not as familiar with as I should be, but the rest of it could have been a bit better.

9. A Single Swallow by Zhang Ling 4 stars

This book was unexpectedly moving. Initially, I didn’t think it would be, as the focus seems to be on the three men, Pastor Billy, Ian Ferguson, and Lou Zhaohu and their pact to reunite after they have died to reminisce about their time together in China during WWII.

It starts off with the three men finally reuniting. It took Ian quite a while to die so the other two have been hanging out waiting. From there it goes back into time as they narrate their parts of the story and how they each got to the same camp in China doing their part to fight the Japanese. The person who links them together is Swallow, also known as Stella or Wende depending on who is telling the story.

Swallow has had a rough life and I found it slightly annoying that each of the men had a sort of hero complex concerning her. However, that was sort of the point and it was poked fun at during a rather amusing section narrated by two dogs. Yes, there is a dog section. I personally loved it and thought it added something, but then again I love dogs and would love to know what they are really thinking.

I quite enjoyed this.

>33 LittleTaiko:, have you read Fifteen Dogs? Lots of thinking dogs on that one.

No I haven’t, but now that i know that it exists, will definitely be adding it to my book shelves.

10. The Taste of Ginger by Mansi Shah (3 stars)

This weirdly felt like a coming of age story even though the main character, Preeti, was 30 years old. Preeti’s family moved from India to the United States when she was a small child so she grew up walking the line of two different cultures and not completely comfortable with either.

Now as a lawyer she’s still struggling to figure out who she is. When a family tragedy in India occurs it forces her back to India and to learn more about who she is. Preeti seemed a bit too self absorbed and unaware of what anyone else is thinking or feeling to truly enjoy being with her. Yet, there was enough growth to keep going.

It was interesting look at India but seemed a bit unlike any other description of India that I’ve read about. I guess that’s the beauty of different people telling stories, everyone has their own perspective.

My only other quibble is that there was quite a bit of repetition with the character’s thoughts, observations, and conversations.

>36 LittleTaiko:, thematically the same as The Satanic Verses but ... probably not otherwise, lol.