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?

It might transfer - but then you lose the Donmar experience

2. Hangover Square: Patrick Hamilton

This is the tragic tale of one George Harvey Bone; a large, shambling, quiet, harmless oddball who is obsessed with a beautiful but contemptuous woman to his detriment. He becomes fixated on this woman, Netta, who uses him to fund her lifestyle of drinking and carousing. She uses him, he knows it, but he is powerless to break free of his infatuation. She despises him, her friends despise him but he puts up with it to have her in his life. His heavy drinking exacerbates a condition that he has where he goes into a fugue ('dead') state in which he only functions with one distinct thought; he must get rid of that which is hurting and damaging him. He must kill Netta.

Set against the back-drop of impending WW2, this is a very tense, dark and psychologically deep book which presents the portrait of a troubled man caught up in the cycle of a destructive relationship.

I thought this was utterly brilliant and very masterful. The writing was excellent. I felt very moved by George's situation towards the end of the book. Thanks to @PepeLePew for the recommendation. We had a discussion about this on the thread before Christmas. I understand why this wouldn't be to everyone's taste, but it's a bold for me.

Berserker! - Adrian Edmondson. an average memoir from the actor and comedian. Most of his anecdotes aren't as interesting as he thinks they are, and there's too much about his work, most of which I've never seen. This forgettable book is really only for fans.

I have my eye on the de Hamel book, sadik.. Good to see your review.

7. Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll

I bought this after it was reviewed on the thread a couple of days ago by @runslowtalkfast and raced through it. There was a lot to admire here, the centring of the women, victims and survivors, rather than Ted Bundy, who is never named in the book but is instead referred to through as the ‘defendant’. The misogyny that allowed a serial killer to escape to murder more women and girls, is examined, and the title of the book is a take on the Judge’s description of The Defendant as a “bright young man” and this was after he had been convicted of the murder of two women. But I think the best thing about this book is the deflating of the myths around Bundy, that he was not some brilliant, charming man, who managed to fool his victims, but an incel who chose the most beautiful and bright women to kill, because they were what he was not. The role of the police in perpetuating this myth to cover up their own shortcomings was also eye-opening.

I know a decent amount about the true story, but still had to check what was real and what was not at some points. And that’s where we come to my main reservation about the book. The main characters were fictional, but Ruth, at least was clearly based on one of the actual victims, albeit with a somewhat different backstory, and I don’t think it’s right to take a partial fictionalisation approach. I’m not sure if it’s enough to keep this from being a bold, I think I need a bit of distance to decide that.

It was recommended on R4's Front Row a couple of weeks ago which probably helped.

I didn't realize it was so popular @AgualusasLover. A friend gave me a ticket as she had a spare. Love the Donmar but their card machine wasn't working so no bar!

With huge apologies to the posters who recommended it, I have DNFed All The White Spaces. I just couldn’t get into the narrative, although the descriptions of the day to day life on the ship were very good. It was just too….overwrought and Jo/Jonathan’s voice too purple-prosey. I wanted their dead brothers to drag them under the ice by 25% in, so they’d stop going on and on. Every gender issue had a whacking great illuminated sign over it, to eye rolling proportions. Imo the gender theme wasn’t handled particularly well, but I’ll probably have a look at a few of the books the author credits at the end.

Book 5 finished last night.

on a complete whim I decided to download the free version of Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne. I also downloaded the free Audible by Tim Rice not realising that they are different. I am not sure if the Audible is extended artistically or the Kindle version is abridged.

Professor Otto Lidenbrock is the book’s central character with his long suffering nephew Alex narrating the story. Lidenbrock comes into possession of a text that, once the cypher is decoded, indicates that there is a way to the centre of the earth. So, obviously off they head! Accompanied by the laconic Eider Duck hunter, Hans, the trio start off in a dormant volcano in Iceland and have many adventures!

This was a romp. I really enjoyed it and was able to suspend disbelief at some of the events which take place and just enjoyed the thigh slapping adventure.

It was me, sorry. I thought it was okay - I liked the ship stuff far more than the ghost stuff and it was too long, but my dp loved it.

Her second novel is dreadful, so stay well away!

Just found my review for the second one, called Where the Dead Wait.

...historical icy setting, homosexuality, ghosts.
In the first novel, I liked the setting and story but not the ghosts. In this one, I didn’t like any of it and it was a slog to finish.
Confused and confusing. Far too many characters. Time shifts. Over written and under edited. Repetitive and lazy writing in places - everything was wet: a wet cough / a wet thud / a wet footstep/ - and swallowed a thesaurus syndrome in other places.
I hated it.

It’s ok @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie , I hit gold far more often than lead by following recommendations on these threads, it all evens out in the end!

I'm a huge War & Peace fan and a big theatre goer and this completely passed me by.
Sounds intriguing.

I finished Middlesex this evening. It did get better but I'm still not 100% sure how I feel about it. I've read The Virgin Suicides and preferred that, I'd say.

I'm starting #9 Before My Actual Heart Breaks by Tish Delaney before bed.

Interesting both you and Remus said that as I absolutely loathed The Virgin Suicides

I recently borrowed Before My Actual Heart Breaks from the library and discovered that I bought it in 2022 (on Kindle). So I'm interested in whether it's any good.

The Men with the Pink Triangle by Heinz Heger
Heger is a pen name and this is the alleged account to him by a homosexual Austrian who was incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps. It wasn’t apparently told to him until 1970, and obviously I also read it translated into English, both of which created a rather awkward and desensitising distance from the obviously horrible things being recounted, especially as this was recorded in an oddly matter of fact tone.

Whilst absolutely not wanting to minimise the long unspoken about and unacknowledged suffering of homosexuals at the hands of the Nazis, I must admit I struggled to find it entirely credible that one person could have seen and understood quite as much as what this recounts, or got away with his life quite so ‘easily’ so many times because so many ‘higher ups’ seemed to ‘fall in love’ with him.

To me, it felt less like a single, authentic account and more like an accumulation of several voices and experiences, shaped by reflection and the passing of time.

Having said all of that, it still felt like an important and at times very disturbing and sometimes very moving read. I can’t say I enjoyed it, because obviously the subject matter isn’t enjoyable, but I’m glad to have read it and to have broken my self-imposed ban on German history.

@elkiedee I'm from Northern Ireland, so I always find it hard to be objective about the books set there. Unless they're really terrible!

Have you read Say Nothing ? @IKnowAPlace that's brilliant

8 The Sea House - Louise Douglas

Third in the Toussaint detective agency series. Mila is more and more ensconced in France and looking after step-niece Ani. The mystery of Ani’s parents disappearing at sea is getting more complicated, but isn’t really the focus of this book. Milan’s latest case is to track down Astrid Oates, the old friend of a woman who recently died in the village, and to get her an important bequest. Her quest takes her to Yorkshire and into danger.

Honestly, Mila is a bit of a pillock at this point. Talk to people, woman! Talk to your fiancé Luke, your old friend Carter, your stepmother-boss. And take some damn precautions.

It was an entertaining enough read but I think I need something different now.

This thread is almost full.

There’s a collection of the first three Slough House books on kindle daily deal for 99p today, if anyone’s not tried them yet.

Thanks. Bought.

Book Number Two:

The Wrong Child: The Jaw Dropping and Twisty New Thriller about a Mother with a Shocking Secret
Book by Julia Crouch and M. J. Arlidge

mother with a dark secret...
A daughter dying to tell.

When 3-month-old Max is abducted, his parents are plunged into their worst nightmare. Devastated mum Sarah only took her eyes off him for a second, but that doesn't stop her guilt. Even husband Jake can't hide his anger that their little boy went missing on her watch.

By contrast there are smiles and celebration at a caravan park in Lincolnshire, as baby Blaze is introduced to the Star family. Jenna and Gary are delighted with the new addition to their family. He is their fourth child and a real object of delight to their eldest - fifteen-year-old Willow - who once again will raise the child.

But trouble is brewing for the Star family. Willow is concerned by the desperate online appeals from Sarah and Jake, baby Max has neonatal diabetes and without regular treatment will die. As baby "Blaze" becomes seriously ill, Willow makes a shocking discovery. What is the truth about her family? And how far will they go to hide their deadly secret?

I absolutely loved this book could not put it down, interesting and easy to read!

Give it a read 🙂

9 Giraffe & Flamingo - Curtis Sittenfield (short story)

This was free through Prime as a short story. I don’t (personally) count audiobooks or rereads that I do ahead of starting a new book in a series, so I have decided I will count this.

I liked the books I read from Sittenfield last year and this story, about a professional musician looking back in on her college life and the young men who teased her, is a good slice of life pondering.