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?

The Five is 99p on Kindle today, my dear 50Bookers...

<enabler face>

I just realised that I forgot to include a book that I read which was actually book number 4. Apologies.

4. The Museum of Whales That You Will never See: Travels Among the Collectors of Iceland by A. Kendra Greene

This was interesting, particularly learning that most of Iceland’s museums didn’t exist until the ‘90’s. It was a little all over the place for my liking and I wanted to read more about the museums than the people, though they did deserve to have their story told, but I liked it regardless. I enjoy non-fiction on unusual subjects and this fit the bill and had some interesting insights into Icelandic culture. I could have done with fewer pages on the phallological museum though, perhaps because I’d already heard so much about it online.

I just finished book 7 which was The Darling Buds of May by H.E Bates

I enjoyed this though found most of the family members unpleasant and far from charming but the descriptions of the countryside and their homes, habits and relationships are so well written. He describes food wonderfully too though the constant gluttony does become a little wearing. I rarely read series of books but I would continue with this just for the writing.

Evil! Thankfully I already have it and don’t need to break my (barely started) challenge!

Oh God. I still haven't got past a dozen pages of it, even though I enjoyed her much earlier book about Covent Garden ladies.

I liked TTOD. It's not my usual sort of book and I wouldn't have picked it up without this thread.

Having said that, I have very much enjoyed English Passengers, The North Water and Sacred Hunger .. so maybe I like ship-based narratives more than I realised!

I promise to be kind to anybody who doesn't like This Thing of Darkness even though they are obviously wrong.

I have just had a revelation and found out that the writer of Caledonian Road is the same person who wrote Mayflies, which I loved. The former is on Kindle deal, so I've bought it. Really hoping I can get on with it, after the disappointment of Private Rites. I think a few people have already read it, so I'm going to have a search and see what you thought of it.

Gotta love a ship, especially if there's added peril and possibly cannibalism!

I have never read TTOD. Happy to be the outlier.
@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie - I thought Caledonia Road wasn't a patch on Mayflies. It is a very different style of novel and much more sprawling and multifaceted. But he does better when he isn't trying to be Dickens, in my opinion.

@inaptonym thanks for the review on Clear - it's been on my wishlist so was interested in your thoughts.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I loved Mayflies! And Julia Armfield's first novel. I'm sorry Private Rites wasn't what you hoped for.

I'm onto book #5 Wild Houses by Colin Barrett. It's set in small town Ireland and involves criminal gangs. It's a debut novel.

Struggling with Wicked - Jilly Cooper I have a feeling I DNF it before. Too many teenagers who I am totally uninterested in. At 25% and might just cut my losses.

Oh, and Rites of Passage as well, which I've only just discovered is the first of a trilogy.

Peril is good, as are freezing wastes, especially when you're sitting in your reading chair with a drink and the fire on. Cannibalism .. I was traumatised by a Robert Louis Stevenson novel I read when too young. People were being picked off from round a campfire every night I seem to remember.

@Remus, I have Caledonian Road waiting to be read. I also rate Mayflies and I may have mentioned I met A O'H in Australia at a book festival - he was talking about The Illuminations there - and had a chat about growing up in Scotland. Nice guy, very friendly and down to earth.

This looks good but I'm not listening to it all until I've read Caledonian Road, which I think you'll get to before me as I'm a bit bogged down in Ali Smith's Winter just now. She's so well regarded; another writer I really like as a person, and there are some beautiful passages in there, but I seem to do better with a more straightforward narrative. Aiming to get it finished tonight and move on.

I’m feeling that Cal Road might annoy me, having seen these comments and done a search. Dickensian sounds very much not my cup of chai. I’ll give it a go but @highlandcoo has reminded me that I have another non-fiction boat peril book in physical form, so I think I’ll try that first, A Voyage for Mad Men.

Freezing wastes are, of course, the best kind of wastes of all.

@highlandcoo Have you read Cold by Ranulph Fiennes (didn’t spell check his name and might be way out) - it has freezing wastes galore iirc. I really enjoyed it, but didn’t get on with his hot one.

I didn’t like TTOD at all, although I did like his biography of Peter Cook. Bottoms that follow you round the room are obviously more my sort of thing than frozen wastes, unless Michelle Paver is making a rucksack flap about in a sinister way, then I’m all in.

@AlmanbyRoadtrip You are forgiven.

Have you read All the White Spaces? Ghosts in the Antarctic.

That does indeed look like my sort of book, thank you. I’m not even going to mention enabling because it would be wrong to blame anyone else for my lack of book buying control

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie my frozen wastes reading has included Skating to Antarctica by Jenny Diski (a long time ago but I remember really enjoying it) , The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney and The People's Act of Love by James Meek.There must have been others. The People's Act of Love introduced me to the idea of a "pig" when escaping from a gulag in Siberia. It wasn't possible to carry enough food to complete the journey, so it was necessary to escape as a pair, with the knowledge that at some point one man would kill the other and use his body as food, hence the "pig" description. Not a cosy read. Weird and memorable though.

I haven't read Cold but this is my year of having a go at more non-fiction so will put it on the list. Thanks for the recommendation.

Oh, and I'm sure there was another book recently about a group of scientists in a research station in Antarctica where the leader becomes increasingly mentally unstable. I can't remember the title though. It wasn't great literature but quite intriguing as a page-turner.

Greenway is lovely but you have to plan ahead if you’re visiting by car as there’s very limited parking (accessed via a narrow lane) so you have to pre-book parking. You can also get there by ferry.

Not sure if I dare admit that I hated The Tenderness of Wolves and gave up on People’s Act - yikes re the “pig” - that’s truly horrible.

I thought TTOD was a good story poorly told…

Thanks @satelliteheart and @AgualusasLover for the kindle stand tips. I can feel myself heading down a rabbithole here...

Feeling quite a bit of pressure over The Cracked Mirror but can't wait to hear what people think and will check out previous reviews.

V jealous of people who are about to read 84 Charing Cross Road for the first time. It's one of my comfort reads and absolutely glorious.

Are you maybe thinking of Lean Fall Stand by Jon McGregor? I enjoyed it.

Cold by Ranulph Fiennes sounds fascinating.

I’ve just had a look through my notebook covering the last 3 years as this sounds so familiar, but I have a feeling I hated it so much I didn’t even bother to DNF it. Female protagonist who all the other characters inexplicably seem to hate?