50 Books Challenge 2025 Part Nine

I didn’t count and haven’t done so for the last few years. I don’t understand why people care if it’s a round number or not though. Why would it matter?

Oh I love the Noel Streatfield discussion. I think there are quite a few I never read as a child. I learnt about the renaming from You've Got Mail, of all places, when Meg Ryan's character helps a book shop customer find 'the shoe books'.

I've just posted my round up on the other thread - finishing on 118/119, just short of a round number!

I also just wizzed through You Are Here @RazorstormUnicorn , agree with your review including the incredulity at the distances! It was a lovely, easy read, perfect for the in between days.

It turns out I can’t count, I had already made it to 30 and that was my 31st. I think it’s pretty unlikely I’ll squeeze another one in before tomorrow but I am going to give it a go.

If anyone is trying to sneak in a quick read before new year, A Child's Christmas in Wales is 99p today.

I would also put in a word for A Month in the Country, which is short and as delightful as everyone says.

If I can finish a book today or tomorrow I’ll be finishing on 40 - a satisfying number in itself, and a personal best. But what will I finish? I’m 26% through the first Chalet School book but the text is so tiny I find it quite hard work. I’m also reading Spook Street, which I’m enjoying, but I’m not sure I’ll finish it in time. Could pull an all-nighter I guess 😀

Mini Waterstones peril haul.

It's not too late, Piggy! I was very moved by the ending of Dombey as well.

I think I'll wind up the year at 70 books. It's lower than last year because I went back to college for two months and I only read a bit of Kristin Lavransdatter during that time.

The link for the new Read What You Own thread is (hopefully) here for anyone who wishes to join.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/5467592-read-what-you-own-2026

I didn't because I hadn't at that point finished it but it would be now.

I think so too. I put it on my list of bolds.

Could be worse. I appear to be ending on 69....

It’s not that I have a number in mind, or a number goal, I just can’t end on a random number

240 Silent Bones - Val McDermid

I admit, I slightly cheated so that I could get to a round 240 😀 I had started A Perfect Spy but didn’t like my chances of getting through 600 odd pages of spycraft in a couple of days.

This is the latest Karen Pirie book; it’s well written, as with the others. This time, Karen’s cold case is a body found when a motorway siding collapses. The body is that of Sam Nimmo, a journalist who disappeared shortly after his pregnant fiancée died in their flat, and the police concluded he had done it and fled.

However, the book opens with a young woman going to a posh party to try and get a marketing job, so we know we will loop back to the terrible events of that night too.

If you like Val McDermid you will like it, and if you find the Tony and Carol series too graphically violent, Karen Pirie is less so.

I just finished Dombey and Son and now I'm Silly Crying. I'm so relieved. It didn't finish how I thought it would and I'm ridiculously, sentimentally happy.

An underrated Dickens, definitely.

Be careful- this book really annoyed me but loads of others have loved it so you may too!

@elkiedee- thanks for explaining the Noel Streatfield rename (which I wondered about as soon as I read the post). I agree about the rename - my favourite NS as a child (I haven’t read them all) was White Boots and I’m not impressed that it has apparently been renamed Skating Shoes.

@ÚlldemoShúlreading your review made me think that I need a list of books not to touch with a barge pole! This thread is as good for that as it is for recommendations!

My last two of the year – I won’t be finishing on a nice round number either. And it’s not a prime number, or even a common or garden odd number, so disappointing all round really. But I am finishing with a bold.

55.Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent. Sally is a 40 year old woman, friendless and jobless, who lives in isolation with her father in rural County Roscommon. When her father dies Sally tries her best to cope, and is bemused that following his light-hearted suggestion to “put me out with the rubbish when I die” gets her into trouble. As Sally comes to the attention of police, healthcare services and the wider community her story of past abuse is understood.

I think this has had pretty mixed reviews on here, but I thought it was a decent enough psychological thriller. It’s most straightforwardly described as a cross between Room and Eleanor Oliphant, and if neither of those was your cup of tea you won’t like this. The supporting characters are very one-note, but it's a plot-driven book so I wasn't so bothered about that. The storyline does peter out rather at the end though.

56. My Family by David Baddiel. An autobiographical work in which Baddiel shares stories of his late parents’ considerable idiosyncrasies – his emotionally blunted father’s struggles in his professional life, and later with frontotemporal dementia; his mother’s refuge in a long affair that she makes no effort whatsoever to hide.

This is far, far funnier, and also more sensitive than I’ve just made it sound. Baddiel reflects on intergenerational trauma, particularly for European Jews, his mother having left Konigsberg shortly after her birth in 1939, and his father’s family settling in the UK after escaping pogroms in Latvia. This underpins their unusual values and behaviours, which despite their roots in trauma provide a rich vein of darkly comic anecdotes. Like @LadybirdDaphne I listened to this on audiobook, missing the photos that Baddiel does his best to describe, but equally his delivery is as sharp as you’d expect from a successful stand-up, so I’d still recommend it. A bold.

Footnote – The Mary Whitehouse Experience era Baddiel was an absolutely huge teenage crush of mine, and this may have affected my objectivity.

I remember loving The Painted Garden as a child because I'd already read The Secret Garden - I think it must have been the first time I'd realised books could be written about other books, iyswim.

Movie Shoes is (according to Wikipedia) an abridged version of The Painted Garden. I still have my old copy, along with Ballet Shoes for Anna which is memorable for starting with the parents dying in a Turkish Earthquake which I had assumed was the big 1939 but I've just realised was publish in 1972 so might refer to a later earthquake.

I'm a big Streatfeild fan and collector but find the more you read of her, the less enjoyable it becomes as she can be so repetitive and use the same tropes repeatedly! Still amazing comfort reads though and some are genuinely brilliant, eg Ballet Shoes. The current production at the National Theatre changes a few things I love about the original but it's a beautiful show nonetheless.

I'm due to finish on 138 for the year if I can get through a non fiction book I'm not making much progress with.

Thanks @elkiedee . I’m pretty sure I’ve read The Painted Garden before actually, but I didn’t remember these characters. Anyway, it was okay but nothing to do with shoes in terms of the movie bits of the story.

Just DNFed The Heart’s Invisble Furies again, and for good this time. Cyril is gutless, and has no regard for anyone else’s feelings. I really don’t want to spend another (what feels like) 40 hours listening to him. I’m out.

Movie Shoes was originally The Painted Garden - think I might still have an old Puffin copy, though my baby sister raided my Noel Streatfeild collection so I have some of my own childhood copies and some replacements and duplicates, not all in the same covers as the ones I had to start with, and some with the daft Americanised Shoes titles. I really wish that they'd publish the books under their original titles - there are 3 books that have "shoes" in the real title and they're not linked in other ways (Ballet Shoes, Tennis Shoes and Ballet Shoes for Anna), whereas Movie Shoes aka The Painted Garden does at least have Pauline Fossil as a supporting character - she also appears briefly I think in Party Frock which has been republished as Party Shoes. Shoes is misleading, there isn't really a series here - there are two 2 book series or books which have a real follow up, and a 4 book series (the Gemma books) and some of the titles are quite silly.

All I really remember is that a family gets the chance to go and live in California, near Hollywood, where one of the children somehow gets a part in a film version of The Secret Garden and also meets Pauline Fossil from Ballet Shoes. I enjoyed it at the time.

I've just recently finished Judith, one of her novels for adults about a neglected child, following her through her teens. It's interesting but Judith is a very frustrating character as she lets herself be pushed around, in contrast to her best books - the Fossil sisters want different things but they come to know what they want.

I don't like to set myself a numerical goal either; I don't want the pressure! But being on these threads has definitely encouraged me to read more books, because people's recommendations are so tempting. I also get sucked into reading prize longlists though those are usually ultimately rather disappointing.

I also have this slightly silly self-imposed goal of reading one nonfiction book per month (since I tend to neglect nonfiction) and one book in French per month (to keep my French going strong). Therefore I need to finish two more nonfiction books and one more French book in order to meet my goal this year. I'm almost there; I just have to finish a few books I've been reading on and off for ages 😂

I actually prefer odd numbers, my favourite number is 7 and @Benvenuto delighted someone else has a favourite set of times tables - I favour the 9s for their sequential pattern.

I’ll hit 62 with 8 more chapters to go with my non fiction. An all time record for me, but setting my target next year at 30 again so I can largely ignore numbers and just read what I fancy - a book club and a free choice a month puts me in a decent position.

I got my good reads email today and I’ve read 19,500 pages, my last read will satisfyingly round this to 20,000 ish.