50 Books Challenge 2025 Part Two

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the second 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.

The first thread of the year is

23. Good Material by Dolly Alderton (Spotify Audio)

Finished unexpectedly today had some time to kill.

Ben Reads Good on YouTube recommended this as a strong audiobook. It was free to me with Spotify and narrated by Arthur Darvill from Dr Who and Vanessa Kirby from The Crown. Sold you say? Yes I was.

Starring Andy a failed comedian in his late 30s it dissects his break up with Jen. This gets off to such a good start relatable and funny, but quickly gives way to one man and his fragile ego, droning on at length, full of self pity and insecurity. It becomes very clear why someone would dump this man.

90% of this is Andy's selfish boring on. What elevates it slightly is that the last 90 mins of it are told from Jen's perspective shedding sudden light on aspects of the story we thought we knew and didn't.

Set in 2019 what I thought was really great was the twist ending whereby the reader is aware of a bleak outcome for both characters happy ending just by having knowledge they don't. Surprisingly dark in a way.

But I would still only give this 3.5 because the protagonist navel gazing is just excessive.

1. The unselected journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Brower

This is the diary of Emma set in London in 1883. This is a quirky, very readable little novella. It follows the fortunes of Emma returning to London and being cheated out of her inheritance. There's a lovely set of side characters. A promising start to a series. These are self published by an American. I read them on Kindle unlimited.

@InTheCludgie We must live fairly close because snap! I'm not happy about it either, really hope the refurb isn't going to stretch beyond two years. Although it is really good to see money being invested in libraries.

Final one for this month:

7. Blaming - Elizabeth Taylor

I picked this up in a Kindle deal after reading Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by the same author last year and it didn’t disappoint.

The book opens with Amy and Nick on a cruise whilst Nick recuperates from an illness. Amy is biting her tongue on the tour equally annoyed by Nick, the tour guide and her fellow tourists one of whom, Martha, is an American Anglophile. On return to the UK it turns out that Amy is annoyed by lots of other things too including Ernie who is her cook/housekeeper, her granddaughter (who is the child from hell but funny to read about) etc.

Very entertaining as the little details and observations make it very relatable and Amy does have some self-awareness and feels guilt so is not as bad as I have made her sound.

My book 18 is one of these…

18 Human Remains - Elizabeth Haynes

I might put this in italics. I nearly DNF’d it a couple of times. Not because it was badly written, it was fairly workaday, but because it was nauseating.

Annabel, our protagonist, is a police analyst (like the author) and lives alone with a cat, grudgingly visiting her overbearing mother.

The book starts with her discovering the decomposing remains of her next door neighbour and then cycles through the stories of various corpses found in a similar state, along with the story from the POV of Colin (it is made obvious from pretty early that Colin is responsible for the piles of putrefaction)

Because of her job, Annabel starts to spot a pattern and befriends Sam, a local journalist, to try and solve the mystery.

Wayyyy too graphic for me, and I’m a Val McDermid fan. Wouldn’t recommend reading at any time close to meal time!!

@LuckyMauveReader - there is a television adaptation with Damian Lewis as Elliott and Guy Pearce as Philby which was good (although doesn’t stick faithfully to the book).

I can recommend the other Ben MacIntyre books too - all the ones I have read have been very good - I particularly enjoyed The Spy and the Traitor and Colditz.

Yes, many people on here have mentioned the series. I keep forgetting to watch it.

I have really enjoyed Ben Macintyre's style of writing so I will look out for more of his books once I finish the pile I picked up from the library yesterday. I bought 1, loaned 4 yesterday, and have 2 unread of my own. Once I have got through these I'm at a loss as to what to choose next. There are too many I would like to read.

I shall go back and catch up on the thread as I have been away and not following. Many hours in the car, however, have allowed me to fire right thought book 7.

I decided after hearing much about it on old threads to give the Silo series a go so book 7 was Wool by Hugh Howey.

set in a dystopian future where the outside world is toxic, humans live in huge underground structures known as Silos. Lives are restricted and heavily structured around rules and knowing your place within the silo. The key aspect is not to ask any questions.

following mechanic, Juliette, secrets about the Silos start to unravel and hell lets loose.

I absolutely loved this. From the very beginning I was completely gripped in a way I don’t feel I have been for a long time. I listened on a 3 hour car journey and could have gone on driving longer just to draw it out. We learn a little about the silo and what it might mean, but not it all. Hence immediately starting book two of the trilogy!!

Shift didn’t grab me quite as immediately but another long journey of 3 hours had me well into it and absolutely desperate to find out more.

Wool is a bold!

1. The Night Hawks by Ellie Griffiths

This is Dr Ruth Galloway number 13 and it is much the same as the others. Another police case where archaeology is required. Not much Nelson/Ruth in this one but there's a pay off at the end. Lovely to have all the supporting characters back including Cloughy.

I'm seeing this author soon so am trying to finish the series so it isn't spoilt for me by the audience

Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes, I think this is going to be a good year of reading for me. @Thistlebegood I only found out about the refurb by accident when I stopped in yesterday to collect a reserved book. Glad I never held off for longer to pop in!

I love the sound of Wool @Passmethecrisps, I’ve just ordered it from Amazon. I’m currently 100 pages into Onyx Storm and torn between trying to eke it out and wanting to plough on.
Off into Ely to peruse the charity shops for books tomorrow.

Happy Birthday InTheCludgie. I hope that it’s been a good one for you. That’s a very enviable haul.

Happy birthday. You’re in for a treat with Lonesome Dove,

7 To The Island Of Tides by Alistair Moffat

The first book by the this author I’ve read, as I had the impression he was rather dry and dusty. Happily, I was wrong, at least with this book.
As a huge fan of St Cuthbert there was little new here in terms of history, but then again there are as many interpretations of his life as there are writers and this is a fascinating one. Moffat doesn’t take the traditional route of St Cuthbert’s Way, rather sniffily taking the river route he is sure Cuddy sailed as far as he can get without actually climbing in a little boat. Along the way he casts a historian’s eye over the time and intervening centuries, musing on mortality and faith.
As a teenager he and some friends inadvisably tried to beat the Lindisfarne tide across the Causeway and only just managed it. Returning in his 60s he is more cautious and spends several nights there, exploring the island more thoroughly. This was the part I liked best, even down to his first impressions of Holy Island being the Island Of No due to all the signs forbidding various things and the section of the village that appears to exist purely to fleece tourists. I didn’t like it on my first visit either, until I walked out past the castle and round the wilder parts.As he experiences the times when the island is cut off he reaches a more spiritual equilibrium with it and begins to glimpse the elements that made it the place where St Cuthbert wanted to be.

25. The Family Behind The Walls. Shari J Ryan
    I actually read this on Monday, which felt very apt as it was Holocaust memorial day. Told as a dual POV from Mother and daughter Dalia and Jordanna. Following a bombing raid in Poland, Dalia and her husband are taken from a basement shelter by the Germans to help the wounded. Thinking their children will be safer there they don't tell the Germans who the children are. The family are Jewish, and having already fled their native Germany, are all too aware of what could become of them.
    
    The children are subsequently taken to a ghetto for Polish Orphans. If they pass the test for Aryanisation they will be sent to Germany. If not they will be used for labour. The book follows the whole family, told by the women. It really shows how love and hope were so important.

26. Datonga. Martin Smalley
    (I'm copying the blurb for this because its easier than trying to explain it)
    Datonga is a science fiction adventure story which explores the creativity of great scientists. It is hard science fiction, based on time travel round Gödel loops within the known laws of physics. The power source that makes this possible is discovered by Grace O’Malley in 1984 and rediscovered in the Universal world in 3050 by Hu Song. Both geniuses show symptoms of Asperger’s syndrome and Grace’s calculations are like psychotic episodes. The ancient records suggest that Grace was murdered before her breakthrough and a mission is sent back from Datonga, the capital of the Universal world, to investigate the crime.

I really enjoyed this, and even though I'm not scientifically minded understood all the science elements. The use of the terms aspergers/aspie and half-caste did make me wince a little though.

27. Invocation. Aileen Erin
    Samantha is pretty much your average teenage girl, other than the fact that her father is a demon and she's some kind of demon hunter. There's a lovely (if you like that kind of thing) religious thread to this, where praying helps exorcise the demons. Sam can open portals between this world and the spiritual one in order to send demons back to hell. But her Father is considering trying to drag her down there to be with him. I really enjoyed this, although sometimes think I should read grownup books!

28. On The Ledge. Naomi Clarisse.
    The only reason I didn't DNF this is because it was so short. After I'd given it 30 mins, )which I try to do if I'm not enjoying a book to give it a fair chance), I was half way through. Poorly written, awful mangling of language which was a real shame as it had the potential to be so good.
    It's About a teenage boy who realises he's gay in a very homophobic town. Basically he ends up contemplating suicide as a result.

29. The Look of Death. C C Gilmartin
    Book 2 in the Colin Buxton Series. Colin is a gay policeman, and having just broken up with his boyfriend finds himself taking a career break in Berlin. It's set in the late 80's-early 90's, so the fall of the Berlin wall features. Colin finds there have been a series of gay men who have been found dead over the last 8 years or so. The police have closed the cases, don't believe that they were murdered and refuse to look into any potential links. Of course being an ex cop, Colin can't help but investigate and solve the crimes. This is a really well written series imo. The characters are really well fleshed out, and the casual homophobia is reflexive of the period.

Annie Bot is in the kindle monthly deals.

Thank you!

5. The Drowning Game by Barbara Nickless This was an Amazon first reads freebie. Yacht designer sisters Cassandra and Nadia Brenner get caught up with the Chinese Secret Service whilst finishing up their latest superyacht build in Singapore. Can everyone escape alive? And what secrets are their dad and uncle hiding about their shady family past in WWII Austria? This was ok. It was all based around the latest AI and a lot about the geopolitics between China and the US, neither of which are areas I find particularly interesting. I'm also not really convinced the CIA would hire civilians with no training and expect them to withstand torture. It seemed like a very risky policy for the CIA to adopt and the certainty they all seem to feel that their secrets haven't been revealed to the Chinese seems unjustified. Overall a relatively engaging read if you're into modern espionage books but I personally won't rush to read any others by this author

4. Pompeii: An Archaeological Guide by Paul Wilkinson
Guess where I am this week. This is a fine chunk of a book which starts with the history of the city, describes the day of the volcanic eruption, and then describes all the notable excavated buildings with a bit about the archaeology involved. Also accurately predicted lots of things that our local guide would tell us, while pointing out that they're wrong.

The monthly deals aren’t loading for me, for some weird reason. I did what I always do - go to 'all deals' - but then get a message that it’s ’not a functioning page on our site' when I click on any category. Most odd.

@Terpsichore does this link work?

Not that I'm browsing or anything....

That doesn’t seem to work for me, it isn’t showing “limited time deals” or anything similar.

Yes, that seems to for the fiction, thanks @inaptonym. I usually like to look at Biography and History but that’s still returning a big fat ‘not a functioning page’.

However, I found a workaround - I went to the categories then clicked on ‘today’s deals’ in the left-hand column, which then seems to show them - but honestly, they’re making it more and more impossible to find, aren’t they!

These accidentally fell into my bag today which is terribly upsetting

I got 8 things in the deals