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

oh no @MrsALambert - for this distressing moment

The Fraud by Zadie Smith

This is a fictionalised story about the real Tichborne Trial that is still one of the longest trials in English law. There is also the history of the forgotten Victorian novelist William Ainsworth.

This takes a while to get going, the mini chapters jump backwards and forwards in time and it only really comes alive about half way through the book when we jump from Victorian Literary England to a plantation in Jamaica and learn the history of Andrew Bogle (another real person) in a more linear style over ~100 pages. It's got its flaws but overall is witty and intelligent and full of ideas.

8 The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
As mentioned above it's taken at least six years to get into this. Not as good as hyped, but it was a good book.

25 years since White Teeth this year!

I just finished Remember, Mr Sharma, a debut novel from AP Firdaus. I saw this discussed on Sara Cox's programme and , despite their sniffiness - 'you need to know the history of the partition otherwise it's confusing' (you don't) which I found rather ridiculous, I enjoyed this a great deal. Some of the reviewers didn't like the magic realism (there's a talking vulture) but I was fine with that as the vulture was funny and a good storytelling addition.

The novel tells , in part, the story of the violence of partition but also the ripples 50 years on. It's a coming of age novella about loss, separation, family, religion, caste, language, heritage and friendship told through the eyes of Adi as he reaches adolescence. It's not deep and steers away form too much grimness. Its historical scope is wide but its focus small - just on how the trauma affected one family told through the boy's discoveries. It has a few trite plot points and lacks a bit of subtlety on some themes but it's well written.

Not the greatest novel ever on India and Pakistan but an excellent first novel. And , actually, it explains the history clearly and simply, I thought. I'm confused by what the BBC2 guests were confused by , which somewhat explains Sara Cox's bemused face on the show!

A little life is in the daily deals - don't do it!!!

You poor thing @MrsALambert ! Perhaps a bag with a sturdy zip across the top would help next time. Those naughty books would just…..slide off

Thank you for the advice. I appreciate the support at this difficult time

Wild Houses is in the Deals, can recommend for 99p. Still trying to pick my way through the rest of them.

Liane Moriarty’s Here One Moment is in the daily deals although for £1.99. I really enjoyed it when I read it.

If anyone can recommend me a really great audiobook I'd be very grateful, started two last night and hated the voices! It's very much part of my night routine so I'll be lost if I can't find anything!

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I really enjoyed Wellness by Nathan Hill last year- listen to the sample first though- I suspect it’ll be love or hate.

I bought this on the monthly deals

Too Much Too Young: The 2 Tone Records Story: Rude Boys, Racism and the Soundtrack of a Generation

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I adored the audiobook of Judi Dench‘s Shakespeare book, just pure joy.

7 Hitler Stalin Mum & Dad - Daniel Finkelstein

Much reviewed on here so will just add my voice to all those singing its praises - a brilliant and essential story of two families caught up in the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis and Soviets in WW2 Europe.

I DNFd The Nix by the same author but I will take a listen to the preview @ÚlldemoShúl

That's an excellent shout @MegBusset

I've just given up halfway through Ultra Processed People - Chris van Tullekin. I really struggle with even pop science books. I also DNF the much loved Merlin Sheldrake Fungus book. I just can't get interested in science which is honestly pretty shameful, but there you have it.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I also really enjoyed the Judi Dench Shakespeare as an audiobook. Also the first part of Alan Johnson's biography 'This Boy'.

@MrsALambert 😂 I love Band of Brothers, think it's a fantastic read. The adaptation is an annual watch for DH and I

@InTheCludgie my husband loves it too and has been trying to get me to watch it. I might agree to a viewing after I’ve read it which will please him immensely

I had never heard of Lonesome Dove until someone in real life recommended it a couple of weeks ago, so great to see it's so loved on here! On my list.

Having a difficult time at home so I've been reading books but not in a very engaged way. But I've finished these:

A Place of Greater Safety - which took me well over a month. An achievement for both me and Hilary. There were bits I thought were wonderful - snippets of dialogue or action which felt vivid and funny and moving like Wolf Hall. I felt I had a good grip on Danton and Camille and their families, less so on Robespierre, and to be honest not at all on anyone else. I think my main problem was I just couldn't follow the historical thread - they'd suddenly be arresting someone they were friends with and I didn't know why, or executing a minister and I and no idea how he'd fallen from power. It's obviously an incredible book but I can't say I enjoyed all of it.

All Fours by Miranda July. People rave about this but I don't really get why. It follows an artist in her 40s who decides to take a road trip from LA to NYC, but stops at a motel an hour from home and stays there the whole time, lying to her family and starting a sort of love affair with a younger man. It definitely covers important stuff about being peri-menopausal, but I just don't know why everyone in her books behaves so weirdly all the time!

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner. Sort of a literary thriller following an unnamed narrator who is working under deep cover to infiltrate an environmentalist commune in the south of France. I really liked the plot, it was tense and well written and very morally ambiguous. For reasons I couldn't follow though it was interspersed with emails from an older radical about Neanderthals, which must have meant something but I couldn't pull it all together.

The Square of Sevens by Laura Shepherd-Robinson. Expansive, twisty story set in Georgian London as orphan Red sets out to win the inheritance she believes she is due from her true, very wealthy family. With lots about fortune telling and astrology. I found this a bit too long, and didn't get all the details of the legal battle (a common theme for me at the moment as you can see, of not quite understanding what I'm reading) but good fun and some unexpected twists.

Have a great time! Hope to see it one day.

Actually, I'm coming back to this comment as I think I'm being too hard on myself about being hopelessly unscientific.

To be fair (to myself), I really think that for me this book could have been the length of an article. There was a lot of unnecessary filler, like going back to the big bang (?!l.

I think I felt the same about Entangled Lives (runs away as I know how well liked it is 😉)

I could only see a few books in the deals that interested me. I can’t decide if I’m pleased or disappointed.

I went to my local Tesco which has a charity bookshelf and returned with 4 books. One I’d just added to my wishlist last week(The Book of Forgotten Authors by Christopher Fowler)

I couldn’t resist.

I’m currently listening to A Smell of Burning by Colin Grant which I’m pretty sure is going to be a bold and also Death In The Air by Kate Winkler Dawson.

I’m not reading a physical book at the moment but I want to do Foodie February so it’ll probably be something food related.

I feel like I've had a month of totally mediocre books. So despite having books to read by my review deadline today and tomorrow I'm starting The Zone of Interest
If it's rubbish I'm blaming you lot!

The deals are crap.

I've bought Over Sea Under Stone which I've read a fair few times but for some reason hadn't got on Kindle, despite having the rest of the series. The only other thing I've bought is a recipe book called Asian Greens.