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?

Just finished Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll I really enjoyed it but kept feeling the need to look up how much was fact and how much was fiction.

Also seemed a bit odd that these were real women (who presumably have living friends and relatives?) and she'd changed their names and made up back storie for them? I was interested to learn that Ted Bundy was not as bright and charming as we're led to believe.

Just started Hamnet which is also making up a backstory for a real person but a lot more removed and with a lot less info!

Didn't know there was a stage version of it!

6. The Undoing of Violet Claybourne - Emily Critchley

Narrator Gillian, in her 70s, looks back on her younger self and the traumatic events of the 1930s after she struck up a friendship at boarding school with the titular Violet. An invitation to spend Christmas with the titled Claybournes at their crumbling country mansion follows, but delight turns to horror as Gillian comes under the spell of Violet’s glamorous elder sisters, Emmeline and Laura, and loyalties are jettisoned amid an unstoppable chain of catastrophic decisions. A reckoning will arrive, but not for many years.

This was an interesting challenge in reading recent genre fiction, something I rarely do these days - but a friend who'll definitely demand my feedback bought it for me for Christmas so I was under an obligation to finish it. I guess this comes under the ‘mystery/suspense' banner and is well-written but ultimately just not in my comfort zone - pretty much all the characters are irredeemably unpleasant and/or flawed; quasi-Gothic doom hangs over virtually everyone and there’s a final twist that neatly resolves the plot but certainly doesn’t lighten anything.

12 Until We Meet E.V Radwinter
Ellie and Rich meet by chance on a crowded train home from work one evening. But they are both in relationships. The story is mainly told from Ellie's POV, and it took me a while to get into it. It was a very slow start. I almost DNFd, but I'm glad I didn't.

Ellie was adopted as a baby and is debating whether she should find her birth family or not. Her adoptive mum died a couple of years ago, and her Dad is seriously ill. I thought the chapters where she was spending time with her dying dad were really beautiful. She's also in a semi toxic relationship. Her boyfriend Ben is awful towards her, but ultimately they are both unhappy and don't want to hurt the other.

Eventually Ellie decides to try and contact her birth parents, with Rich's help. Our was no surprise that they end up together by the end of the book, so I don't think that's a spoiler.

Whilst this book was lovely, the characters felt very real to me and spent time doing things people in books don't usually do (like staring out the window drinking coffee) there was something clunky about the writing. The speech was quite dated at times, using slang that my relatives in their 60s use, rather than my DC in their 20s. And every so often Ellie would reminisce about the past. These sections ended with "back in the present" (or words to that effect) which wasn't needed as it was obvious that she'd stopped daydreaming and was back in the present.

Anyway, I went from "I think I'll DNF this" to "it's OK, but only a 3 star" to rating it 4 stars because it was actually quite lovely.

5 . The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie -

This was an enjoyable read. In the description of new neighbour Poirot in the early chapters by the narrator Dr Sheppard I can't help visualising David Suchet, who will forever more be Poirot to me. I'm not going to say too much about the plot in case it gives the game away to people who haven't, but would like to, read it but there is a twist and the book is considered by some to be controversial. I'm not sure it's my favourite Agatha Christie but I did find it an enjoyable read.

I just went to look at The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and it was £0.32 for the kindle version, so obviously I bought it. (Despite "not buying any more books"!)

@cassandre - thank you for the link, much appreciated.

@TimeforaGandT - I really enjoyed the Shardlake tv adaptation, but then I’ve only just read the first book.

6 The Husband’s Secret - Liane Moriarty After expecting this to be a bit of a dud, I loved this! Set in suburban Sydney, all the characters are involved in the local primary school, either as parents, teachers or support staff. The different plot strands all tie up very nicely. I’ll be looking to read more from LM.

7 Small Bomb at Dimperley House - Lisa Evans. Much loved on here and was in our Top 10 for 2024. I’m not going to review it, just to say I loved it too. It’s 99p on Kindle if anyone hasn’t actually got it already.

10. Polo by Jilly Cooper (Audible)

This has been my audiobook since last year. What I will definitely say about the 3 Jilly's I've now read is that they make excellent audiobooks.

Polo introduces Perdita McLeod and a whole new cast of characters which is something I also like about Jilly's books there's always a large cast to draw from.

It starts when Perdita is 14 and ends when she is 21; beginning at the end of Riders and overlapping with Rivals we do see the return of familiar faces. Perdita's age during this is really grim as a lot of horrible stuff happens to her sexually and no one really cares because she's such a bitch anyway.

Perdita is foul and Chessie is absolutely hideous but somehow you get swept along with it all. Trademark Jilly lines such as people falling into each other's arms constantly are present.

It seems absurd to say that a book called Polo about Polo has too much Polo in it but it's true. I could have done without so many matches.

It would be another rip roaring ride like Rivals except for one thing that really stuck in my throat and that is the dog and the horse that had racist names. Moreover it's played for laughs.

So there's "outdated attitudes" which Jilly is full of and then there is context : 1971? 1981? Yeah, probably still unfortunately socially acceptable but this was published in 1991 I was 10 in 1991 and it was definitely frowned upon in my upbringing at least, I had non white friends and I knew better, better it seems than an author and a publishing house. The mind boggles, not least that the content hasn't since been revised either apparently.

Like Sadik said, the outdated attitudes have become a bit wearing and I'm going to stop here. It's a shame as I do see why they are and were so popular

I’m listening to The Tenant of Wildfell Hall as I write this.

Tarragon123. Small Bomb is showing as £9.99 for me on Kindle but I’ve added it to my wish list to purchase as it sounds like a book that I’d love so thank you for drawing my attention to it.

Welcome to life as a 50 Booker!

I’m supposedly not buying any more books either but I used all of my 14 Audiobook credits yesterday and I’ve just bought 2 Kindle books and I’ve been sitting here adding others to my wishlist.😔

I'm doing Read What You Own and I've broken it already but only to complete a series (so that's ok then)

I’m also eyeing up The Green Cookbook by Rukmini Iyer which is £1.99 on Kindle today but that’s a practical book, so that doesn’t count, right?

I'm doing Read What You Own and I've broken it already but only to complete a series (so that's ok then)

Buying a book to complete a series is entirely justifiable.

@ShelfObsessed Although I don't have a Kindle, I have 2 books left on TBR, and I'm currently considering what to buy for the future. I have saved many posts from this thread with books I'm interested in reading.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I enjoyed The Tenant of Wildfell Hall quite a lot. However, I should have planned my time better to fully appreciate it, especially the first half. I may have to re-read. Thank you again for the recommendation.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit breaking to finish a series is definitely an acceptable reason.

My favourite series! I don't dare start a re-read though, as it's 15 doorstoppers plus some short stories long, and I can't bare to pause in between!

If it's of interest @LuckyMauveReader I actually studied it in uni and it was in many ways a direct response to Wuthering Heights, as in No....THIS is what marriage to a man like Heathcliff would've been like. As well as this the reason it's often viewed as a "lesser work" to the better known two is because Charlotte absolutely hated it and sought to suppress it during her lifetime. It was considered very dark and Charles Kingsley said of it "every man should read it and every man should prevent his wife from reading it"

So I have just finished Book #2: Close to Home - Michael Magee. Sean is back in Belfast after doing a literature degree in Liverpool and has slipped back into his old life: squats, late nights, parties, drugs. On one of these nights he gets into an altercation, (caused by drug fuelled paranoia, possibly) punches someone and ends up in court. Sean is scrabbling for a foothold, loses jobs as soon as he can get them: one bar job he is caught slipping free drinks to his mates and then there is a test to get a permanent job in a coffee shop - the so called black t-shirt test. All the time, the troubles are in the background, the ripples of past events push their way into the present. Life is transient, friends come and go – one to Berlin, others plan for Australia, but family is a constant but with troubling behaviours driven by past events, which leads Sean to write about his brother and leads you to hope that this is a way out for Sean.

My only minor quibble Is that Sean’s ma should have been the subject of Sean’s book, so finely drawn and charismatic when Sean, at one point, has to stay with her, she leaps off the page with all her forlorn resignation and desperate hope.

I liked this much more than I thought I was going to! Onto the next, hoping to get beyond CH2 with a pick up and put down one.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I think I may have read Wuthering Heights many years ago. To read it now with a new light on the rivalry between sisters, would I suppose, be quite entertaining. You have just added another book to my list!! 😁

For Helen to have stood firm and to have left him, especially during that time, was commendable. Although leaving a husband was quite taboo in religious families until maybe 70's/80's. Nobody bats an eye when that happens today so broaching the topic during that period was quite bold.

@Tarragon123 - I am probably being a little unfair on the TV adaptation of Shardlake. I didn’t hate it but didn’t feel it did justice to the book.

@LuckyMauveReader

It wasn't a rivalry as such. Charlotte and Anne were both deeply shocked by Wuthering Heights and couldn't see how insular, quiet, Emily could have written it. Charlotte was more accepting of it because it had fantastical wouldn't "really happen" qualities whereas TTOWH was very realistic by comparison.

The family were very religious and their father was a preacher which gives context.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit Ah ok, now I understand a little better. Now I have read books from the three sisters, you can definitely see they each have their own style of writing. Out of the three (I have only read 1 book from each author), I would say Anne is my preferred style. Does this continue through her other works?

For now, though I will be giving the classics a break so I can try other authors, and widen my limited tastes.

Anne's only other novel (they all died young and Charlotte was probably killed by her pregnancy) was Agnes Grey which though readable does not compare to TTOWH

Thank you, that is on my Wish List and I’ve picked it up, put it back down several times in Waterstones. I bought Wild Houses instead last time but I’ll probably get this one on my next trip.

84 Charing Cross Road has a death, but not for a long time and it is a perfect Lovely Book.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

Maybe a lovely old children’s book like Ballet Shoes