50 Books Challenge 2025 Part Nine

And Merry Christmas, Internet friends! Love seeing all the book presents. Here is my small but perfectly formed haul.

I have the Death in Yosemite book too! I was there in the spring and I have to say it was immediately clear how many people are blithely unaware of any sense of danger, including paddling in the water at the top of a waterfall, right next to signs telling them to stay out of the water. Don't get me started on the people hiking a steep and slippery trail in heels...

Welcome @Zireael an alphabetic reading challenge sounds interesting.

Some great hauls on here. As suspected, I didn't get any books but my 13 year old who's inherited the reading gene got me a cute bookmark.

I remember reading the BTB years ago @AgualusasL0ver probably as a teen going through Danielle Steel and Jackie Collins at a rate of knots. I read something recently where the main character has violet eyes which seemed like a stretch!

@Cherrypi I'm hearing the Roy memoir is great.

@JaninaDuszejko I really liked Boulder and her next book Mammoth maybe even more.

I realised I had forgotten a book I read - the first of the Jeri Howard anthology that @elkiedee recommended about a private eye in San Fran Kindred Crimes. I quite enjoyed this talw if tracking down a missing woman who was involved in a crime many years before. I'll definitely get to the others.

I've followed these threads on-and-off for years and wanted to join you all again. I might even make it to 50 books for the first year ever! (I have really got into audio books this year)

48. Victoria Park - Gemma Reeves

I picked this for the ‘V’ in my alphabet reading challenge and found that I quite enjoyed it, but it probably won’t stay with me for long.

Over the course of a year, and chapter by chapter, we glimpse into the lives of twelve varied families who live around the titular Victoria Park in Bethnal Green, London. The characters all brush up against each other in small ways as they go about their own lives, without ever knowing the trials and challenges each other faces.

The narrator (Henry Goodman) has a broad repertoire of voices and accents which sounded melodic and plausible, including for the female characters and across the age spectrum, which was refreshing.

Happy Christmas all! I'm enjoying seeing everyone's book gifts. I only got two but I asked for them both, the Margaret Atwood memoir and the Mitford sisters graphic novel.

I'm reading two very light festive books this week, A Christmas Fling by Lindsey Kelk and The Christmas Appeal by Janice Hallet. Both passing the time easily although unlikely to make my books of the year list!

I also read Small Mercies by Denis Lehane, decidedly not festive. It's about an Irish woman in Boston in the 70s who starts a vigilante revenge campaign against the mob after her daughter goes missing - compelling but very violent and unpleasant.

66 The God of the Woods - Liz Moore Much read by 50 bookers so I won’t go into detail - a teenage girl goes missing while on summer camp in the Adirondacks, coincidentally in the same place as her 8-year-old brother disappeared (and was never found) before she was born. We jump between time periods, with flashbacks to the events culminating in the boy’s disappearance in 1961, as well as the events of the summer of 1975 (the book’s “present day”). Good story with a lovely sense of place.

Fans of Gabriel García Márquez may want to check Kindle Daily Deals today.

@cassandre the Roy memoir was handsold me very passionately by a bookseller in my local Waterstones when I was buying the Helen Garner diaries for my mum so I took a picture of where it was in the shop for my husband. He even got me a signed copy. I loved a month in the country. I hope you enjoy it. The author has a blue plaque in my town.

Merry Christmas! I did rather well this year. My family are all readers as well and so we basically swap books (from our wishlists) on Christmas Day. You may recognise some that have been reviewed on here this year.

A few more new books. The Coe and Faludi ones I bought for myself (Coe for a January book group read, Faludi on the strong recommendation of a friend).

The other two were gifts from me to DH, but I also plan to read them myself, cough cough. The Carr book I know is very popular on these threads and I thought DH would like it. The Medieval Bodies book DH actually requested (along with several other nonfiction books not pictured), but it looks like the kind of thing I would like as well.

Merry Christmas 50 Bookers! Am loving the Christmas book photos and lists. @Cherrypi I really want to read the Arundhati Roy memoir. And @Terpsichore I want to read the Helen Garner one! @AgualusasL0ver I'm very glad to hear that you have a bit of luxury planned for the New Year in order to make up for your abstemious Christmas!

My family doesn't dare to choose books for me either, ha. But I got an excellent haul due to giving them very strict instructions about which books I wanted. The Alba de Cespedes books are ones I've already read, but wanted to own and reread, a bit like you @InTheCludgie . And as will be obvious, I'm all ready now for the Les Miz read-along (which I can start with great enthusiasm and then fall behind on in my usual fashion!).

whoops - posted in the wrong thread

No books here, in fact no presents for anyone as we went low key this year due to my joblessness. But since that’s resolved we are off for a family shopping trip in the new year for DS2’s 18th - healthy budgets all round, lunch etc.
A Woman of Substance, Barbara Taylor Bradford
This is quite famous, so I’m sure many already know it, or the 1985 TV series. This is a family saga (really Emma Harte = substance saga), we follow Emma in a rags to riches story where she becomes an international business tycoon from a housemaid at the big house.
I did keep reading so I liked it enough, and I can see in 1979 it might have been a bit more punchy, but honestly Emma and her determination to make something of herself was just a bit annoying and her dislike of the big house family unfounded until a certain point really. Everything she touches turns to gold, she gets lifelong, solid friends along the way and all men want her - and she has green eyes - you know how I know, because approximately every 250 words we hear about her eyes. Everything is described in excessive detail, every person who enters the room we know their hair colour and style, their eye colour - always special for those we need to remember. It was just too much and Emma was annoying for a lot of the time. Now trying to watch the series, and there is a new one with Brenda Blythen as the older Emma in 2026.

I’m so pleased it was a success @CutFlowers!

Another attempt ...

Delighted with my stash. You may notice I have two the same which is a coincidence but I'll take it as a sign. I've got my eye on some other people's gifts when they've finished them as well!
A very happy Christmas to you all 🎄
Hmm, not sure photo has attached but I'll give it a go.

A bit late but have found you all. Happy Christmas! I don't get given books as presents as my relatives rightly believe that I'll sort myself out in that area. Here's to another year of sharing the joy!

Merry Christmas to everyone! I did get a book - The National Trust Book of Scones, which I am v v pleased with as I want some less sugary things to bake. It has 50 recipes so that will be a 50 scone challenge for me to run alongside the 50 book challenge for next year.

Very much enjoying the photos of the piles of books.

Merry Christmas to all. Very pleased to have received two books I asked for but no more as still aiming to RWYO next year.

Thanks to @Terpsichore who I think recommended The Riddle of the Labyrinth - Margalit Fox which I gave as a gift to young adult DS. He was most pleased as he has developed an interest this year in early Bronze age history and was impressed that I knew (I didn't!). I thought he would like the code breaking aspects so delighted it went down so well. It was a bit like the look he used to get when he opened a Lego Jedi Starcruiser or similar and I hadn't seen it for a while 😀 .

Happy Christmas everybody.
Books received here:
Hannah Kent
Always Home, Always Homesick: A Love Letter to Iceland
Mother Mary come to me
Arundati Roy
Bananagrams puzzle book

Forgot to mention that I read Good Wives yesterday. I adore professor B but really hate the Laurie and Amy stuff. Hate the silly baby talk with Meg’s twins too.

A bit late in the day but Happy Christmas to you all. Hoping to get some time between now and the end of the year to read!

Just squeezing in my last book of the year. I could probably manage another couple before the 31st but I’m going to call it a day at a nice round number!

100. Murder While You Work - Susan Scarlett

This is Noel Streatfeild writing for adults under her lighter alter ego. Judy Rest takes up a wartime posting at a factory and is billeted with lovable Mrs Former and her middle-aged daughter Rose. Unfortunately, Mrs Former's tyrannical granddaughter-in-law Clara Roal is also in residence and runs the household with a rod of iron. When sudden deaths start happening, Judy is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery….with the help of the young man, Nicholas Parsons (yes, really 😬 ) who’s getting fond of her. Not exactly the world’s most gripping crime mystery but it made for a nice, easy, undemanding read.

My haul - if MN uploads properly. Looking forward to the reviews from everyone next year! ( @ChessieFL your non-fics look intriguing)

What a stash @ChessieFL

@DuPainDuVinDuFromage so many people have got that this year due to me raving about it. I feel quite nervous!!

Merry Christmas 50 Bookers - lovely to see all the books received🌲. I didn't receive any this year, although I have yet to see my lovely SIL, who often buys me a well chosen book, so hope is not lost! I hope you'll all get the chance to carve out some reading time over the next few days.