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?

Book 4!!

Having been reading it a handfuI of pages at a time at bedtime to youngest we have finally finished Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.

It could have been at least 100 pages shorter as with all JKR’s books but she can spin a yarn. It has been a real joy to read each of these books together and see the love of a story grow to just short of an obsession. I will be sad when we are done

I think many of us can relate to this! There's a Japanese word (of course) that describes buying books vs. reading books:
https://lithub.com/the-pleasures-of-tsundoku-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-book-piles/

I've made an executive decision that I'm going to post everything I read this year, including coffee table books. I have some lovely ones that I never read because I'm immersed in fiction or other non-fiction, but I've decided they all count and will be proceeding accordingly!

Ooh - why do the climbers not want to read Touching the Void? Is it too close to the bone, or do they dislike the author and his choices?

Too close to the bone, so to speak, @noodlezoodle . I think the reality of the decisions they might need to make and how tenuous their safety actually is was a bit much. I found it a very moving book - the fact that they both contributed to it but no longer talk is quite affecting. No ill will but just too hard

Normally just a lurker on these threads but thought I would try and post this year. Doubt I will hit the 50 books though.
First book down After You'd Gone Maggie O'Farrell. Not read anything by her before but this was a Xmas present.
It took a while to get into as the timeline jumps around but glad I stuck with it. It reminded me somewhat of One Day by David Nicholls although not quite sure why as I felt this was better written.
I enjoyed it, quite emotional so will be looking for something a bit lighter for my next read.

Another DNF. I had a bit of a realisation that considering the number of books on TBR mountain, and the number of books I buy, I'm never going to get through everything so I'm going to be a bit more ruthless about not finishing books I'm not enjoying.

2. Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley

I could have probably carried on with this, I mean it’s not particularly bad, but as I was finding the author’s style quite grating I thought I’d check out a few reviews. I have quite a lot of Christie books still to read and a lot of reviews mention that this book has a few spoilers, so I’m going to give it a miss.

Kurt Seyt & Shura, Nermin Bezmen, trans. by Feyza Howell

I want to start by saying that I enjoyed this, against my better judgement sometimes.

This is the story of Crimean Tatar aristocrat officer and Shura, of Russian upper class. They lock eyes at a ball and fall instantly and devastatingly in love. The problem is everything kicks off around 1916 in St Petersburg, so there is separation, war, escape and exile. The character of Seyt is the writers real life grandfather, though Shura is not her grandmother, so we know it will not end happily ever after.

I mostly read this because I want to watch the Turkish series on Netflix, it looks wonderfully epic and the sentimentality works well in Turkish. On paper this is everything I like: epic, sweeping, Russia/Turkey, early 20th century context and family history to boot.

I have a lot of respect for what Bezmen was trying to do and how much research has been put into the backdrop, but she wear her research heavily, yet I am not totally clear on how much of Seyt and Shura’s story can be known vs what she has embellished, even with her preface and epilogue. There is a lot of detail about their love-making which I assume is made up 😊.

The translation was really quite clunky and I have just seen that Howell is the translator for a non-fiction book on Madam Ataturk that I am looking forward to reading.

All that said, I did enjoy it, I might read the latter books (covering Seyt and his wife and a separate book on Shura) but it is really that period and the intersection of Turkey and Russia that I enjoy.

I dabble in family history and have written some stuff (academic) and some stuff that is wallowing in notebooks, so I admire that she has got this out there.

Not sure I can recommend, because of the irrelevance of so much and the heaviness of the historical context when not necessary. One to reassess at the end of the year I think.

I think I'm going to stop there - the "dated and problematic portrayals of race, homosexuality, gender roles and sexual consent" (thanks Wikipedia) are getting a bit much for novels written well into the 1990s.

I will shortly be finishing Polo and feel exactly this way about it. I will be unlikely to read further @Sadik

@MamaNewtNewt

I have the Lucy Worsley Christie but I haven't even tried it since her Queen Victoria one bored me to death !

Both Hamnet and Into Thin Air have been sitting on my kindle for years waiting to be read! How do you all decide what to read next?

3 The Ministry of Time, Kaliane Bradley

This was a pretty fun read. Set in the near future, our protagonist has been given a job at the new govt Ministry of Time as a ‘bridge’ (a kind of assistant/handler and monitor) for an expat of time travel. The ministry have brought a number of individuals into the future from different points of history, and she has been paired with the expat known as 1847. She has to live with him, help him assimilate and also report on his wellbeing and adjustment. Meanwhile something strange is going on with her colleague Quentin…

This book is trying to do quite a lot (it’s described as a sci-if, romance, thriller and comedy - oof) and this is where it fell down for me. I loved the characters and the historical dialect from the different expats was really fun, reminiscent of Ghosts. The spy thriller aspect wasn’t executed quite so well. Would definitely read more from the author as this does show potential and was fun to read, but it’s not a bold. Great cover design!

Picking up Royal Assassin, by Robin Hobb next, which is the second book in her Farseer Trilogy which I started in December. Hoping it’s good as it’s a doorstop!

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit oh dear, I'm definitely not regretting this decision.

This thread is moving so fast, I'm reading but have been hopeless at commenting (alas, making comments in my head doesn't count!).

@Tarragon123 you asked ages ago about why The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas was criticised. @BlueFairyBugsBooks gave an excellent answer. Here's a short online piece that lists some of the historical inaccuracies:
https://holocaustcentrenorth.org.uk/blog/the-problem-with-the-boy-in-the-striped-pyjamas/

@Terpsichore I want to read A Game of Hide and Seek after your interesting review. I'm a fan of Elizabeth Taylor's novels but haven't read that one yet.

I've also jumped on the bandwagon and reserved The Cracked Mirror at the library. I'd never even heard of Chris Brookmyre before but his books sound right up my street for fun reads.

I've tried Terry Pratchett multiple times, because some of my friends love him so much, but I can't get on with him, I'm not sure why! Comedy/satire isn't my favourite genre, so it's probably that, plus the fact that he writes such a very British form of comedy/satire. I'm originally from the US and I think I unfortunately missed out on the Terry Pratchett appreciation gene.

I loved both Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait. Like @inaptonym I found the portrayal of Agnes as earth mother a bit cliched, but the ending, my god, I was completely won over. Similarly with The Marriage Portrait I thought the prose was ridiculously over the top, but I just decided to surrender to it, and again, I got happily caught up in the world of the story. I need to read O'Farrell's earlier works.

Am also a fan of Nancy Mitford's novels, not because I admire them unreservedly but because they are so good at depicting a whole era and immersing you in it. Then Jessica's Hons and Rebels offered a refreshing change of perspective. Need to read the Letters Between Six Sisters.

Anyway, I said I thought I would read fewer books this year, and somewhat to my dismay, I'm living up to my own prediction by having finished only one so far. But that's OK, it's not a competition, not even with myself! And tbh I do have several reads bubbling along: the MN Martin Chuzzlewit and Dumas read-alongs, plus some pre-modern stuff I'm reading for work/teaching purposes (I usually don't count 'work' books, only 'reading for pure joy' books).

One short 'work' book I've finished reading but am not counting is a devotional poem called The Mirror of the Sinful Soul, originally written by the French queen Marguerite de Navarre, and translated into English by the young Elizabeth I (she wasn't queen yet) at age 11. It opens with a dedication by Elizabeth to her stepmother Catherine Parr and wishes her a happy New Year. Elizabeth copied it out by hand and embroidered a special cover for it, and not only are her translation skills excellent, she has the most beautiful italic handwriting. Honestly that child was brainy, and must have received one hell of an education.

Anyway, the one proper book I've read so far this year, is, drumroll,

1. Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery 5/5

I finally reread this childhood favourite and I find that it’s stood the test of time well, for me at least. So many phrases in it were familiar to me; I must have read it many times as a child, and lots of my own childhood memories came back to me while I was reading it. From my perspective now, I still like Anne: the way she stands up for herself and is actually quite forthright in telling adults what she wants. And the way she’s in love with language of course. There are also a lot of strong women characters in the book: Marilla, Rachel Lynde, Mrs Allan, Miss Stacy, old Aunt Josephine.

Oh yeah my favourite reading time is Saturday morning. I just lie in bed all morning and read. Obviously this was less possible when my DC were small!

Sometimes I feel embarrassed because most people I know actually get out of bed and do stuff on Saturday mornings. But I’m not embarrassed enough to change my ways 😂

I found the Melanie Reid book to be very irritating, her attitude at times really irked me.

3 The Midnight Hour by Eve Chase
Workaday family secrets thriller, which the author writes well, just the same book every time in a different setting, really. This one has the added quirk of the ‘historical’ action taking place on a street where the film Notting Hill was being filmed, so that’s shoehorned in every now and again.
21 years ago, Maggie and Kit Parker’s mum disappeared, leaving them to fend for themselves. Enter a collection of charming rogues, flamboyant hairdressers, bitchy friends and recovering alcoholic aunts. A question mark over paternity of Kit hangs over the family, driving a lot of the plot.
Maggie annoyed me with her constant hankering after Wolf (charming rogue) and the little digs about her weight. Kit never really lifts off the page properly, 90s sleb-mum Dee Dee is wheeled in and out with little rhyme or reason and her story arc had me going “Oh come ON, convenient or WHAT!”.
Worth persevering with for a little light intrigue but it will have blended into all her others by next week.

Lucy Worsley is a dreadful writer imo. Her Jane Austen one looks so pretty, but is entirely unreadable.

I'm not surprised Remus. I've never read any of her books but in 'My Culture Fix' in Saturday's Times, she lists under the 'Overrated' category, "All male writers." Possibly the stupidest comment I've ever read in this feature.

@MonOncle I have all my tbr, both kindle and physical, in a spreadsheet and use a random number generator to choose my next read. Sometimes it's a genre I'm not in the right frame of mind for so I just run the generator again for a different number

With Mansfield Park I always think that had Fanny married Henry it would have lasted about 5 years, but she would have had more fun in those 5 years than a lifetime with bloody Edmund.

I read Buried in the sky by Peter Zuckerman towards the end of last year which I highly recommend if you are after a climbing book. Its about the 2008 K2 disaster where 11 climbers lost their lives.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I didn't particularly enjoy The Salt Path, despite the fact that I'm part way through walking it in stages so am familiar with the locations in the first part . One of my original problems with it was the way that Raynor almost frogmarched Moth through the walk, some of the walk is extremely challenging so if you are not fit & well it must be really arduous.

That said one of my kids had a tutor who has in the last few years been diagnosed with the same neurological disorder as Moth, she has been in touch personally with the Wynns and 100% believes that this kind of trail walking slows the progress of the disorder. She and her husband are taking on trail walking in Wales for as long as they can now and there are studies being done on the science behind the slowing of the progression of the disorder, so that's really interesting.

4 . A Picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde -
This is a book that I had never read and had no pre-conceived ideas about. My first surprise was that it was a gothic novel. Dorian Grey and Sir Henry Ashton are ultimate narcissists and bumble through their lives in the belief that beauty is the most important virtue. I found parts of this very clunky and self indulgent although the device of the curse and the picture were entertaining. Parts of the book are extremely problematic particularly the overt antisemitism. I'm glad I read it but I much prefer the other gothic novels that I have read.

Yes that is quite interesting thanks @lifeturnsonadime

None Of This Is True by Lisa Jewell

I really liked the original ending of this, which meant I kept thinking about the story and what was and wasn’t true. However I then read the bonus chapter she’s written and wish I hadn’t, as it resolves some of the questions the original ending left. Usually I like a more definitive ending but not in this case, as I thought the original ending was sufficient, so I think I will just pretend the bonus chapter doesn’t exist. It did read as though she’s setting it up for a sequel though.

The Dwarves of Death by Jonathan Coe

This is one of his early books (it’s about 35 years old now) and definitely not as good as his more recent work. It has very mixed reviews on Goodreads. I liked it though. It starts with the singer of a band being murdered by two little people. This is witnessed by our ‘hero’ William, and we then go back to see how he ended up in this position. There are weaknesses - the plot is a bit weak and some of the characters are not well developed, particularly William’s girlfriend Madeline, but the writing is good and I liked the ending. It’s also pretty short!