50 Books Challenge 2025 Part One

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the first thread of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2025, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

If possible, please can you embolden your titles and maybe authors as well of books you've read or going to read? It makes it much easier to keep track, especially when the threads move quickly at this time of the year.

Who's in for this year?

This thread is moving so quickly and covering such varied topics!

Welcome to all newbies. I finished my first book last night:

1. Small Bomb at Dimperley - Lissa Evans

Lots of 50 bookers have reviewed this already but briefly it’s set at the end of World War 2 in a stately home (Dimperley) which was requisitioned as a maternity home during the war. The family are now struggling with a lack of both servants and money and are an eclectic set of characters. Zena, who gave birth at Dimperley during the war, has remained there (with her daughter) in a secretarial role and has become increasingly attached to life at Dimperley. A lovely start to the year with gentle humour and good characterisation. Zena is fab. Recommended.

@StrangewaysHereWeCome I’m currently reading Hitler, Stalin…. and have just read about the street in Amsterdam and the fate of its residents. Very bleak indeed.

We have charges here too for requested items and overdue books at the libraries. Their maximum charge will be £5. While I can understand the need for an incentive to return items, it'd be so much nicer if they didn't.
For those of you that don't, you're very lucky.

Just finished my first book of 2025:

1. Polo by Jilly Cooper

More rich people behaving badly and having lots of sex. The language / attitudes are definitely 'slightly dated' in the euphemistic sense, but she tells a rattling good story. Actually, I think I'm probably more accepting now than I was when I read these back in the day because it's 'period' (see also, Vidal from Heyer's Devil's Cub). There's enough similarity in the plot to Riders that I think I will now take a break and save The Man Who Made... for my upcoming holiday. (And I might actually cough up a whole £3.99 for Rivals too.)

Hello there, joining. Not participated before.

1. The Christmas Book Club Sarah Morgan

Enjoyable light read, was 99p on kindle. Exactly what you'd expect for this author.
Next up is Butter Witch the first in a series, on audible. Had I read the good reads review before downloading it I may not have chosen it.
Also on the go I have The Book Club C J Cooper, just a couple of pages in so far.
Aim is to read as many of my outstanding kindle books as possible and try not to buy more.
I'm an all formats person and have a library reservation for Small Bomb at Dimperley.
My library was not charging for reservations but I think they may have started again, just checked my app and see that they are charging for renewals, 28p.

Pandora - Jilly Cooper

As Sadik says, ‘More rich people behaving badly and having lots of sex’ which is generally the thrust of a JC book but so well done.
This one is set in the art world with a complex, almost incestuous family of artists and gallery owners plus a cast of hangers on falling in and out of bed and love with each other. As so often with Jilly Cooper there is an adoption story, well handled I think. There is also a complicated plot about a painting looted by the Nazis which comes into the possession of the family and a subsequent court case.
All tied up beautifully with lots of lovely food, dogs, clothes and gardens and happy endings all round. RCB of course comes to the rescue several times.

Very, very long but I enjoyed it much more this time around having read it in the 90s when it first came out.
Do I go on to Wicked? I feel my read through Rutshire is benefitting from the continuity as several characters pop up throughout the whole series. IIRC Wicked is a bit unpleasant.

I am terrible and don’t use the library at all, so have no idea whether they charge or not. I mostly read on my Kindle and usually buy as I see things I want in deal then take an age to read them.

On the Allende discussion, I read House of Spirits years and years ago and enjoyed it so have bought lots more, but again, not got to them yet.

I have been interested in the plaque discussions. I had a couple of colleagues through my MA and failed PhD working on commemoration in various ways. Two that focussed specifically on the Holocaust had very different ideas about what constitutes commemoration - though both agreed in the concept of never forget.

They both worked on larger structural memory like the maintenance of Auschwitz - one believed strongly and somewhat controversially that it should be allowed to decay naturally and not be a museum, and the other firmly believes in its status as a museum. There are obviously lots of nuanced reasons each believes what they do, but both states retain a remembrance of sorts.

1. Valley Of The Dolls by Jacqueline Susann

Anne Welles leaves provincial Massachusetts behind for a life in New York as a secretary to a theatrical agent and befriends two young starlets Jennifer North and Neely O'Hara.

I got this because I was expecting a dystopia like Stepford Wives and it isn't, it's more a social commentary on the ephemeral nature of fame.

As time goes by all three women deal with their star fading and all three turn to "dolls" their name for amphetamines and barbiturates

Tonally, this sounds very much like an old Black and White film as you read the dialogue and there was something "Rather Dated" about it but deliberately so? It was a huge bestseller in its day. It is supposed to be inspired by Judy Garland and Ava Gardner.

I didn't love it but it definitely kept me reading it, though I found it a little odd at times.

Thank you @Southeastdweller for the first thread of the year.

I'm actually thinking I may try to read less this year (50-70 books rather the 90 I finished this year). I tend to use reading as escapism a lot, to the extent it crowds out other worthwhile things I want to do: writing, watching films with my family, exercise, gardening. But reading is also what keeps me sane (and I mean that quite literally), so it's all about finding the right balance.

@FortunaMajor What a shame about your friend's house being flooded; that's very dramatic! And I didn't know you were in the RAF; how interesting.

@CornishLizard thanks for the thought-provoking review of My Good Bright Wolf. I also thought she overdid the critical self-questioning; it made the book quite painful to read at points. But as you say it's also a feature of her mental illness, and of the way she was conditioned from a child to think that she had no right to express her own desires and needs. Which she convincingly ties into her analyses of heroines in literature, and how they are often shown to be policing themselves and practicing self-abnegation combined with hard work.

I also agree with your point about how even though her anorexia had its roots in childhood trauma, not all cases of eating disorders have such a clear-cut cause. I have a couple of dear friends who have teenage daughters with eating disorders, and as you say, I would be reluctant to put this book into their hands, because they're already hard enough on themselves as parents (and they are nothing like Moss's parents). However, Moss does say at the end of the book that her memoir isn't meant to be read as recovery literature (i.e. therapeutic), and she gives a list of titles of books that do fit into that category. In other words, she isn't presenting the book as a general account of eating disorders; it's very much her own particular story. In reality, though, I suppose the boundaries between literature as art and literature as therapy blur, especially in the case of a personal memoir about an eating disorder.

No idea why it isnt allowing me to do numbers

1 Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel

After the BBC series of The Mirror And The Light I felt like I wanted to bring Cromwell back to life straight away, so giving the whole series a reread. I love this first one so much, the irresistible account of Cromwell’s rise to power- though I’m picking up details that I missed on previous readings that cleverly sew hints of TC’s weak spots that will eventually lead to his fall from grace. Pure reading joy.

For those of you new to Allende, her Paula about the death of her daughter, is absolutely brilliant.

I've only read House Of The Spirits which I did love but couldn't get into Daughter Of Fortune at all.

Our library (here in New Zealand) charges $1.50 (75p) for reservations but no late fines. There is also a section of new, likely-to-be popular books that cost $5 (£2.50) to take out for 2 weeks, and they can’t be renewed. This is a good deal because books in the shops are much more expensive than in the UK.

Warning - nerdery!

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit the only way I can get it to do the correct number is to keep a list in Notes on my phone, with a / in front of my current title and author (ie after the list number).

I copy the text after the / when I am finished and then paste that text into a post and add the number at the front.

Afterwards. I remove the / in Notes

So in Notes, 2025 looks like this so far:

1. The Great Alone - Kristin Hannah
2. The Fifth Risk - Michael Lewis (NF}
3. Deadly Cross - James Patterson
4. /The Silent Wife - Karin Slaughter

It also makes a list that copies across with good formatting!

@SheilaFentiman

But that hasn't worked!

I'd like to join please! I work in a library so constantly surrounded by books, but somehow don't read enough 🙈

Currently reading & enjoying A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe

Listening to The Secret Lives of Booksellers & Librarians by James Patterson. Enjoyed to start with but getting repetitive now.

At my library, we are supposed to charge people if we do reservations for them, but I don't 🤫 We do charge 26p per day for overdue books, but they can mostly be renewed over the phone or online (unless on hold for someone else), so not much excuse for late renewals! I will also renew at work for friends if they ask me 😊

It looks right to me :-)

(I am still reading book 4 so haven’t removed the / yet)

I'd love to join in, please, having had far too many evenings without reading over the last few years.

I've just finished I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys, which I've subsequently recommended to my eldest. It brought back memories of watching the news of Ceausescu's fall before and during Xmas 1989, and conversations with my father following his trips to Romania shortly afterwards. It's the sort of book I'd have loved as a child.

I'll have a fair few YA books on my list as I like to have an idea about what my kids are reading and to be able to suggest things that they might like, and also because to get anywhere near 50 I'll realistically need to have a lot of shorter books and include audiobooks. It all counts, right???

@SheilaFentiman

I'm so confused! I thought you were showing me how to get it to post with numbers not bulletpoints?

I do the same, but use the ✅️ at the end of the last book I reviewed.

@BestIsWest Wicked! is in a school setting, and there are some unpleasant moments, but if I remember correctly, those moments aren't drawn out or dwelt on.

@AgualusasLover interesting view points about Auschwitz and both are equally valid of course. I visited last year and it was one of the most moving and harrowing experiences I have ever had. I do not have any personal connections to the Holocaust and so I say with caution, that I think the site should be preserved. No amount of book-research or YouTube videos etc can prepare you for the sense of that place, and the absolute horrors that one person can do to another.

Edited to say that since visiting, my tolerance for non-fiction books about the nazi concentration camps has become almost non-existent. The Tattooist of Auschwitz and The Boy in Striped Pajammas actually made me feel quite angry in retrospect, in particularly the love-story slants.

Tempting Waterstones pic @Stowickthevast Sadly never tried the magic chocolate shop but noting it down if I go to Rome!

Fascinating on commemoration debates @AgualusasLover Belatedly realised that in trying to help people locate the London Stolpersteine more easily I entirely ruined the stolpern aspect 🤦🏻‍♀️
@BlueFairyBugsBooks I think the stones would have been mostly in Berlin in the 90s, and seem most common there still. That's where my dad's family are from, so where we usually went.

Really enjoyed getting your perspective on MGBW @CornishLizard as I came to it from a different place (not a parent, for a start!) Actually 'self-parody' struck me as an illuminating way to describe anorexic self-relation, maybe more than the usual 'self-denial'. I've noticed a few 50Bookers here have read it 'in conversation' with Hadley Freeman - Good Girls but I wonder if any others have read Laura Freeman - The Reading Cure? She took even more of a literary approach than Moss, although IIRC seemed to characterise her anorexia as almost idiopathic? Her mother came across very sympathetically.

Right, off to wrangle roundup list. C&P from a notes list only seems to work for me on Tuesdays with a gibbous moon...