50 Books Challenge 2025 Part Three

Just checking in from the Members' Room at the British Library after seeing the excellent exhibition about medieval women and their books and letters. I couldn't not buy books and couldn't not share the photo. Totally unnecessary as I spent my Christmas book token yesterday and am hardly short of things to read but it was too hard to resist (this was me being restrained).

When I get home I will look at the deals. Last month was disappointing but some of the titles you've all bought are ones I've been eyeing for a while.

Does anyone know what time the Women’s Prize longlist is announced? I know it’s this Tuesday but don’t know the time. If it’s early enough I’ll nip into town after work to grab some reads!

They used to have the monthly deals in a separate section but for some time now I find that you have to scroll through all Kindle book deals.

For some reason my links are not working, but if you Google kindle book deals it should take you to a page with the Kindle daily deals at the top. If you scroll to the bottom it should list all 1000+ .

19, The Midnight Library - Matt Haig

I'm obviously aware that this book was a massive success but I found it to be a bit too twee in parts. It was entertaining though so I'm glad I read it. I hadn't read any reviews so I hadn't had any plot spoilers which I think added to the entertainment factor.

As ever, I can’t find the monthly deals! Can anyone share a link please?

I finished Annie Bot. It was disturbing, difficult in places and a challenging read. Do I think we should all read it ? Hell, yes. It's a wake up call that made me think. Not many books do that.

I had a few wishlist books too

Clean by Alia Trabucco Zeran
The Search for Warren Harding- Robert Plunket
Mothering Sunday- Graham Swift
MadAddam- Margaret Atwood
Girls- Kirsty Capes
Assembly- Natasha Brown
and Long Island Compromise

@StrangewaysHereWeCome I went to see Jonathan Dove's Mansfield Park last night at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and absolutely loved it. Great fun, much more so than the book! Many thanks for the recommendation. (It's on until 3 March if anyone else is in London and fancies it.)

Three of my wishlist books are 99p, including When the Dust Settles, so I’ve picked those up. Trying to resist looking at the full list of deals…

The deals this month are dangerous. I’m
trying to avoid buying books but there’s too many that I want.

These are the ones that I’ve added to my wish list. I tend to add them to my list and buy those that I’m most excited about at the end of the month/deal. I’m definitely buying Brain On Fire though as it’s been on my wishlist for years.

Hands of Time: A Watchmaker's History of Time by Rebecca Struthers
Woman Eating by Claire Kohda
The Consequences of Love by Gavanndra Hodge
Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll
This House of Grief by Helen Garner
The House of Mirrors by Erin Kelly
Thunderclap by Laura Cumming
Unheard: The Medical Practice of Silencing by Rageshri Dhairvawan
Brain On Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Callahan
Reading Lessons: An English Teacher’s Love Letter to the Books that Shape Us by Carol Atherton
Checkpoint Charlie by Iain McGregor
The Eight Mountains by Paolo Cognetti
Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang
Blood, Fire and Gold: The story of Elizabeth I and Catherine de Medici by Estelle Paranque
Young Woman And The Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World by Glenn Stout
Our Hideous Progeny by C.E McGill
Catland: Feline Enchantment and the Making of the Modern World by Kathryn Hughes
The Furies: Three Women and Their Violent Fight for Justice by Elizabeth Flock

Strong Female Character by Fern Brady was also in the deals if anyone wants that

I've just picked up I'm Not As Well As I Thought I Was, Long Island Compromise and Ordinary Human Failings for 99p each.

I’m going to get Killers of the Flower Moon and The Devil and Sherlock Holmes although I think I might have read the latter.

I think I will get these for 99p:

The Second Sleep - Robert Harris
The Brass Verdict - second in the Lincoln lawyer series and the one the first Netflix season was based on
Verity - Colleen Hoover

I love Iain Banks but can see he's marmite.

Agree with Anne Cleeves as a good crime series too - Shetland & Vera & the new series. I also quite like Louise Penny, although they do getting increasingly samey. I read MW Craven's series a couple of years ago after Jen Campbell recommended them, and they're enjoyable too.

I've been doing RWYO for the day two months but did just look at my Kindle wishlist today & think I'm going to break as there are quite a few things in the offers. I was aiming to last till the Woman's Prize announcement but as that's only in a couple of days, I think I will allow myself a break!

Anyway I'm buying:
Assembly by Natasha Brown - she's about to have a second book out which I've seen on WP shortlist predictions
The Lesser Bohemians - Eimar McBride. Has a sequel out which is getting a lot of love
Long Island Compromise -Taffy Brodesser Anker. I know Fleishman was divisive but I liked it
Piglet - Lottie Hazell.

Glorious Exploits is also in the deals but I got the hardback for Xmas.

Haven't trawled through the other offers, those were just from my wishlist.

Eligible - Curtis Sittenfeld
This is a modern day (set in the 2010s) reworking of Pride and Prejudice with Jane and Liz leaving their lives in New York to return to Cincinnati as Mr Bennet has suffered a heart attack. We all know what we are getting in terms of the plot and liked how most of it had been updated for a modern setting and Americanised.

Liz was annoying though! She is a writer for a woman’s magazine but her communication with Darcy and others is so poor yet still she ends up with what she wants is slightly unbelievable to me in a modern setting.

I read complicity in my 20s and thought it was brilliant- maybe I should reread

Wrapping up February with 35. Complicity by Iain Banks (a no from me) and 36. The South by Adolph L. Reed Jr. (This is a short personal history about Jim Crow)

12 The School Reunion - Shalini Boland
Chloe, recently divorced, is invited to her school reunion. She has not kept in touch with anyone as school was not great for her and hints at something bad happening. She then starts getting threatening emails telling her not to go.
There’s a lot more to add to the plot but would contain spoilers. Though saying that I wouldn’t recommend this. It wasn’t particularly well written, though there were a couple of moments that I thought were interesting in terms of structure (you are lead to believe you are following two characters stories but it’s actually more). There was a lot of eye rolling on my part towards the end. The ending I quite enjoyed as Chloe did not turn out to be who I thought she was. But still, easy read, will have forgotten about it in 20 minutes.

27 Paper Cup – Karen Campbell (library). Much loved and recommended on her and rightly so, I loved this. Brimming with empathy, it’s the story of Kelly, a homeless woman who decides to return a lost engagement ring to a stranger. Kelly travels from Glasgow to Galloway, with little money and fighting her demons on the way.

28 The Dutch House – Ann Patchett (Audible) This is my first Ann Patchett book and I wanted to really like it. The story is of Danny, a young boy who lives in the Dutch House with his beloved big sister Maeve and his father. Their mother has left. All is fine until his father remarries and then dies. It’s a long, meandering tale, but I’m just not sure about it. It goes on until Danny is in his 40s/50s. I don’t know what the point was. The best thing about it was the Tom Hanks narration.

@inaptonym it is for the same course. It's an OU English literature module. The block they are part of is about literature and the imagination

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit – yes and no. Certainly two of the books are set in Brighton, but they aren’t the Brighton Mystery Series, which are set in post war Brighton. I havent read the Brighton Mysteries, but I may once I've read the Maeve Kerrigan series.

@LuckyMauveReader – I love this thread for inspiring me and finding new authors/books.

There are a whole bunch of Lucy Clarke books in the 99p daily deals today. 'Travel mysteries' I would call them - a woman or group of women goes on holiday, something happens, sometimes someone dies, general peril and puzzlement until all is solved. I devoured them all on a holiday... so if anyone is feeling uninspired about reading, maybe try one!

Two more for my list:

7 Mayflies by Andrew O'Hagan. This was popular on the thread last year and I can see why. It is in two parts - in the first half, a group of young men from Glasgow in their late teens and very early 20s spend a weekend in Manchester in the 1980s, going to gigs, soaking up the music scene and establishing a lifelong friendship. The second half takes place 30 years later and one of the men has just been diagnosed with cancer. This is very evocative of a time and a place, and tells a lovely story of male friendship.

8 On the Front Line with the Women Who Fight Back by Stacey Dooley. This book focuses on some of the women featured in Dooley's documentaries in countries including the US, Turkey, Iraq and Japan. The women's stories are interesting and important and I have a lot of respect for Dooley, but I think her straightforward, no-nonsense communication style may be better suited to television than a book. I would have preferred to read something slightly more reflective.

I'm reading Annie Bot at the moment, it's raising a few eyebrows but I'm enjoying reading it if that's the right word. I'd recommend it.

I've also just enjoyed the short book (180 pages) If cats disappeared from the world by Genki Kawamura and would recommend it.