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?

11. The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

On an unnamed island, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses. .

Most of the inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those who remember live in fear of the Memory Police.

This wasn't quite in line with the dystopia I expected, it's less about the police as an oppressive force than it is about the nature of memory. It's slow moving and meditative but it was a bit opaque and I found the final third quite silly. A good idea, imperfectly executed.

I'm onto book #8 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides now. Struggling to get into it after 40ish pages.

Oh I read that maybe 15 years ago @IKnowAPlace - I really enjoyed it. Stick with. He hasn't written anything new for ages 🤔

@TimeforaGandT coincidentally I've just started Spook Street too, looking good so far.

@Zireael I can recommend Mischling by Affinity Konar which is a fictionalised account of a set of girl twins who were sent for Megele's experiments.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit thanks for the encouragement! Will try again at bedtime!

Just finished books 5 & 6
The Motion of the Body Through Space by Lionel Shriver, I normally love her books but this was a real slog. I didn't like any of the protagonists and it felt preachy.
The Cracked Mirror I know a few people on the thread have read it. I loved it, it was not what I expected at all and the surprises, for me anyway, kept up right to the end

Second one down TheTasting Menu Stuart MacBride. A short story but reminded me of Flesh House which is part of his Logan Macrae series.
Can't say too much as gives the plot away but really did not enjoy it and do not recommend. Need something much easier for my next read. Possibly a Georgette Heyer as a palate cleanser.

I really liked Middlesex too, it's definitely worth sticking with.

Not a patch on The Virgin Suicides - I prefer the narrower scope and time period of that. Middlesex too bloated.

2. Orbital by Samantha Harvey
This was a contender for the Bloody Boring Butler award wasn't it, in that some of us loved it and some hated? I'm firmly in the 'loved' camp. I finished it in an early bath this morning and I feel I'm looking at the world and my body differently. Harvey chose to write about huge issues and did it with specifics, and I miss the book already.

@BlueFairyBugsBooks yes, I saw a lot about Eva Mozes Kor's path to forgiving the Nazi doctors for what they did. Understandably this offended and outraged many of the other survivors. However she was clear that she forgave for her own recovery and only spoke for herself, not all Jews.

I had been wondering about reading her other books as well, as Echoes of Auschwitz was written before she found that forgiveness and I wondered whether it would change her perspective. If all the books are very similar though, I probably will not continue.

@LuckyMauveReader just to be aware that The Secret Hours isn’t exactly a stand alone book. It’s more of a prequel and fills in the back story of some of the main characters in Slow Horses.

@SheilaFentiman thanks! I’ll see if I can access it here in France. My copy of the book has a still from the series on the front so I was aware of it, and with those actors it’s definitely going to be good!

I read it last (I've read all the others).

I agree it is a prequel in the sense of time line.

But I think it is actually more enjoyable read at the end of the series rather than at the beginning or as a stand alone.

I very much enjoyed figuring out the alternative identities and tying in events from the Slow Horses books.

Agree that The Secret Hours is a SH prequel-sequel with the present day strand following straight on from Bad Actors while solving a mystery set up throughout the series. It's an interesting way in though, and I'd love to see how it affects those readers' perceptions of certain characters. Sadly I think it's also the beginning of the end klaxon.
BTW did everyone already know that the next book is due in Sept? Cunningly hidden (in SH terms) under a fake cover which I'm reading way too much into....

I managed to finish two on the same day!

#2 The Natural Cure for Tooth Decay by Kate Evans Scott (some interesting & plausible information, but also some that I wasn't convinced about)

#3 The Belladonna Maze by Sinead Crowley, which was a bit predictable, but a quick and easy read that has been on my kindle for YEARS. Must have been a 99p job at some point.

I usually have a novel and a non-fiction on the go at the same time, so now I need to choose both new ones. I might return to Dune which is a paperback re-read that I stalled on before Christmas, or I could go for the third Gentlemen Bastards which is on my kindle already.

6, The Crusaders - Dan Jones -

The tag line to this book is 'The Epic History of the wars of the Holy Land'. And that is what it is. Epic. I listened to this in audio version narrated by the author and actually started it last year. It is a broad history of the Crusades spanning over a broader period than many historians give credit to, ending with the voyage of Columbus to America (I hadn't realised that that was in part a religious voyage, to turn the Indias to Christendom). It has a epilogue drawing in to modern times, with far right attackers seeing them selves as modern day Crusaders and Jihad being (at least partially) a response to the crusading westerners. It is gory and filled with detail, energetically written and I genuinely learned a lot of things I didn't know, such as the link of the Crusades with the end of Paganism in the North of Europe. A bold for me.

12. The Unfinished Harauld Hughes by Richard Ayoade (Audible)

This was very short just four hours. I've previously read Ayoade on Ayoade which was very funny and Ayoade On Top which was a bit one note, so you could say I was a fan.

I'm going to cheat and use the blurb here because it's very hard to explain what it was about

The gifted filmmaker, corduroy activist and amateur dentist, Richard Ayoade, first chanced upon a copy of The Two-Hander Trilogy by Harauld Hughes in a second-hand bookshop. At first startled by his uncanny resemblance to the author's photo, he opened the volume and was electrified. Terse, aggressive, and elliptical, what was true of Ayoade was also true of Hughes's writing, which encompassed stage, screen, and some of the shortest poems ever published.

Ayoade embarked on a documentary, The Unfinished Harauld Hughes, to understand the unfathomable collapse of Hughes's final film O Bedlam! O Bedlam!, taking us deep inside the most furious British writer since the Boer War

An assortment of his comedy chums and his wife do all the voices in this and it's a deliberate send up of theatre land pomposity, but whilst I admired parts of it, it wasn't laugh out loud funny to me which made me feel like I wasn't its audience. A bit when does a send up of pseudo intellectualism become pseudo intellectual of itself maybe ?

This wasn't for me I'm afraid. Ayoade has since produced a body of work "by Harauld Hughes" which I feel uninterested in after this which is the opposite of what I'm expected to I think.

I hope I am making sense with this review
Still recommend Ayoade on Ayoade though.

13. I'll Never Cry Again. Roberta Kagan.
    A new Holocaust fiction series from Roberta. Whilst her stories are fantastic, I find they are spoiled somewhat by stupid errors that should have been picked up on. In this one the main character refers to having been born in Germany, but also being born in Warsaw.
    Anyway. Pitor and Mila are a secular Jewish couple living in Warsaw in the 1930s/40s. Mila was raised Orthodox, but left her community to marry Pitor. Despite their lack of faith, the Nazis class them as Jewish, and they are moved into the Ghetto. They also have a young son who hasn't been circumcised, and is blonde haired and blue eyed. That all becomes relevant.
    The book touches on the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and the Lebensborn programme. As you'd expect, it was a really sad read.

14. Sweet Pear. Jessica Butler.
    This was a super short read, just under 200 pages IIRC.
    Elle wakes up after a night out with her friends. Not only is the man in her bed not her husband Ryan, it's her ex boyfriend Josh. And by some weird sliding doors moment, she never met Ryan and is actually married to Josh. In her previous life the marriage had become stale, and Elle had thoughts that she should have stayed with Josh all along. She goes on a bit of a journey of self discovery, and learns that the grass isn't necessarily greener on the other side. I really liked the writing style of this one. The whole thing was narrated by Elle, directly to the reader.

3 The Christmas Bookhunt - Jenny Colgan
I wouldn't normally read 2 of Colgan's books so close together but I picked this up in the 99p deals and didn't want to wait until next Christmas to read it! This is very slight, and is promoted as such - under 150 pages I think. Not my favourite of her reads, everything ties up exceedingly well (!) but it was a cute story in the world of books (and enabled me to avoid picking up A little life again for a short while 😂)
Must get that beast finished!!!

Thanks so much for all the book recommendations. Looks like many of us retreat to childhood favourites in times of stress which makes sense.

I think some of you were on the War & Peace readalong a couple of years ago. I went to the theatre last night to see Natasha, Pierre and The Great Comet of 1812. It's a musical which retells 70 pages of W&P basically Natasha's time in Moscow after she's got engaged. It's totally bonkers but a lot of fun - the intro song goes through the characters giving them one word summaries: Natasha is young, Sonya is good, Anatole is hot, Helene is a slut. Well worth a watch if you're in London.

Anyway back to books. Just finished Exiles by Jane Harper, the last book in the Aaron Falk. It's more of the same really. Nice description of south Australia but I didn't find the plot that compelling, although I didn't guess whodunnit.

That's very kind! I've just DM-ed you

6 Posthumous Papers of the Manuscript Club by Christopher de Hamel
I really enjoyed Meetings With Remarkable Manuscripts after recommendations on here. This book takes a different approach, looking at people who have spent their lives making, using or collecting manuscripts over the centuries. It starts with St Anselm (born in 1033), and ends with Belle da Costa Greene, curator of the Pierpoint Morgan library. It's just as delightful as Meetings, & has been my perfect gentle bedtime reading for the last few months.

7 Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
A re-read following the chat on here, this remains my favourite JA novel. I love that both of the leads are quiet, gentle, kind people who wouldn't normally get a look in as a romantic hero/ine. Also, the supporting cast are just perfection, particularly Mrs Norris.

And I’ve just replied!

This has been sold out since launched. I’m on every mailing list under the sun and have a running list for pay days and I’ve been unable to get tickets for this.