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

Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel

I’ve been listening to this in audiobook form for ages and then it was over too soon. So, so good. I have one tiny complaint about the narrator (Dan Stevens) in that he made Anne Boleyn sound like John from Terry Wogan’s Janet and John but at least it made me smile.

20 The Stranger Diaries - Elly Griffiths

I got a bit meh about Ruth and Nelson last year after initially loving, but this is the first Harbinder Kaur book and it was on my kindle anyway. I enjoyed it and have made it a bold.

Claire is a divorced English teacher who teaches both key stage 3 and adult creative writing. In the latter, she uses a work called The Stranger which was written by RM Holland. The school she works at used to be his house.

Her colleague Ella (also an English teacher who taught Claire’s DD Georgie for gcse) is found stabbed early in the book. There are some parallels with The Stranger which only get stronger as the book goes on.

A nice claustrophobic atmosphere and roster of suspects is built, and I liked DS Kaur. I’ll look out for others in the deals :-)

8 A Curious Cartography by Alison Littlewood
For some reason I’ve never really got on with her full length novels, unless they are under her pen name of A J Elwood but her short stories come up regularly in horror/folk horror anthologies and tend to stand out as well paced, unsettling and fully formed slices of uncanny. This collection from Black Shuck books only contains a couple I’ve read before and is packed full of eerie delights. It’s a sort of showcase for her travels and the different settings do stand out. The Sherlock Holmes one was a bit dull, but the rest made up for it. She ploughs the same lore land as A G Slatter so if you like her stuff you’ll probably like this.

I’m trying to Read What I Own, but I have no boon buying embargo, so, in the Deal I bought:

How I Won a Nobel Prize

The History Gossip (this mentioned Tik Tok in the title so no idea what to expect - seems to an entry per day thing)

M, Son of a Century

Rivers of London (because I’m listening to audio as recommend on here the other day and it was 99p so why not)

Diva, Daisy Goodwin

Europe by Train, would have preferred hard copy but this was £1.99 vs £12.99

Also went to see my folks who have a Daunt on their doorstep.

Apologies all round for typos and not proofing.

I will look at this - Thanks

Anathem was also excellent on audio for another Stephenson doorstop

Just finished East West Street Philippa Sands. very timely for Holocaust memorial. A human rights lawyer investigates her family history and the links with the lawyers who came up with the definitions of crimes against humanity and genocide and one of the Nuremburg defendents. Well written story of coincidence, tragedy, luck and academic rivalry that really made me think.

I loved this book! But I thought it was Philippe not Philippa, so a male writer rather than female?

1. Unruly by David Mitchell. I listened to the audiobook, read by DM himself.

A history of England's kings and (a small handful of) queens from around when they started doing regnal numbers up to Elizabeth I. I can't say it taught me anything but only because I find it hard enough to retain new information as it is. But it was pretty entertaining. The middle third dragged a bit - he clearly knows a lot about history but the most enjoyable parts were when he was weaving his own funny commentary and opinions into the narrative.

I don't get through many audiobooks as I listen to a lot of podcasts, but I do prefer non-fiction as I can easily lose the plot of a novel when I'm listening, so this was just right.

The Nose, Nikolai Gogol trans. by Ronald Wilks

Part of the Penguin Little Black Classics series, this included two very short stories ‘The Nose’ and ‘The Carriage’.

The Nose is absurdist and I have no idea what to make of it. I did find myself smirking throughout but I’m not sure why. Kovalyov, a civil servant wakes up without his nose, at the same time his barber finds the nose in a bread roll. The nose takes on a few guises and strolls about St Petersburg whilst he desperately tries to file an advertisement for its return.

The Carriage is a little more ‘normal’.Chertokutsky goes to a regimental dinner held by a general and tells him about a wonderful carriage he would like to sell to him, but he gets too drunk, forgets he invited practically the whole lot to dinner and looks a bit of an ass. Hangxiety at its best.

I really liked these silly stories. Just what I needed on a Sunday afternoon.

Flipping autocorrect

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I've just finished the third Maeve Kerrigan so will be reading in order. Annoyingly, a few of the later books have been 99p recently so I'm buying them for the future and hoping the earlier ones feature in the deals soon. I did read The Outsider last year without realising there was a crossover so already have a spoiler re Maeve and Rob!

I've started Vaxxers as I've only read one non-fiction so far this year but will also start Annie Bot next week. I hadn't heard of it until the recommendations last week.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie has been on and off my TBR list for years so hopefully I'll be in the love it camp.

Downloaded Annie Bot this morning and just finished it .
Didn't know what to expect but it was excellent .

@TattiePants The Covenant of Water is great if you want a saga - one of my books of the year last year.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I'm listening to The Love Songs of Boysie Singh on audible and am enjoying the Trinidad patois. It's one of those books that must be a very different experience to read.

Tempted by Annie Bot after all the rave reviews.

Right, I’m going in on Dean Koontz’s Velocity, which I purchased in Dec 2011!

Kindle continues to mess up my Read markings but I went through and did several myself yesterday and so I think the number of 140 downloaded and unread is close. Though one title is the complete works of Agatha Christie 😀

(To note, I have more than 140 unread, I just haven’t downloaded more than this)

To Cook a Bear by Mikael Niemi
Historical whodunit, against the backdrop of religiously volatile rural Sweden
Looked it up afterwards and saw there was meant to be a Disney backed tv adaptation, but no further news of it... I'd watch it if it was made, though - would be a very satisfying 6 episode do. Have to say, however, my top takeaway from this story funnily enough is that Sweden must be full of bitey, pesky little insects! Scarcely a chapter went by without characters smoking to disperse the gnats and horseflies, or being enveloped in clouds of them.

@Stowickthevast thank you for your thoughts.....your suspicions are correct I do love dragons so Fourth Wing is definitely going on my list.

I'm starting February with book #8 Your Beautiful Lies by Louise Douglas. She's an author I return to but I haven't read this one before. The synopsis is the body of a murdered girl is found on the Yorkshire moors. Set during the miners' strike in 1984 and the story of the Chief of Police and his wife, and the secrets they are keeping from one another.

I'm reading The Sea House by Louise Douglas at the moment, about 30% in. So far it's good.

8 Summerwater - Sarah Moss

Not the kind of book I’d usually pick up, contemporary lit-fic not really being my bag, but wanted to check out her writing before giving My Good Bright Wolf a go. A story of one day at a rainy Scottish holiday park told through many individual narratives, it hasn’t changed my view that the genre isn’t for me, but I enjoyed the simplicity of her writing and so am minded to give the autobiography a try.

7 The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas

I'm not doing RWYO, but I did think I'd try to read some of the books that have been languishing on my Kindle for years. I bought this one in 2020 and it's one of the oldest unread books on there. I'd been putting it off because some of the reviews I'd seen suggested I wouldn't like it (comparisons with Roth. Not a Roth fan). But actually I found it engrossing. A big sprawling saga of Australian life, spiralling out from the slap of the title. There are chapters from many different characters' point of view, some more successful than others. Some of the characters are unlikeable in the extreme, but there's usually some nugget you can grab on to. I found Aisha very believable, and (perhaps unusually for a novel of this kind) the young characters were rounded and hopeful. I might try something else by Tsiolkas - his latest (The In-Between) sounds promising - anyone read it?

Has anyone ever read The High House by Jessie Greengrass ?
It's a near future climate change book Set in East Anglia and a family ( of sorts ) getting the house ready for the inevitable flooding of the area .
It came out about 3/4 years ago and I still remember how good it was . Think I read it on a tablet , but I'm contemplating getting a physical copy as I feel it's a keeper and want to re read .

#13 - Women Living Deliciously - Florence Given

Hmmm not for me. Probably wouldn't have finished it except I actually used an Audible credit on it, so persevered!

It is a very positive idea for a book, but it was quite disjointed and hectic. The best parts were when the author spoke about her own experiences and I wish she'd done more of that. As it was, I found it a bit ranty and repetitive as well as very poorly edited.

Also, some of the swearing felt off somehow... a bit self conscious maybe.

Anyway, not my cup of tea, although I think I agree with the author in a lot of her opinions.

Hello! I'm so behind on updating this thread! I think #12 was the last update, so here's what I've read since:

#13 The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan - didn't really enjoy this

#14 She's Always Hungry by Eliza Clark - a few stories were memorable, but I think I'm just over short stories now. I really liked her novels.

#15 A Pale View of Hills by Kazou Ishiguro - this was a reread for a group that's reading an Ishiguro most months of this year. Beautiful writing, has stood the test of time.

#16 Piglet by Lottie Hazell - this is pretty lighthearted, an easy read

#17 The White Album but Joan Didion - looks like I'm also not in the mood for essays either! I do enjoy her writing style, though. I'll come back to this.

#18 Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe - it's hard to describe how I felt about this. I learned a lot and I couldn't put it down, but I find what happened so tragic so I can't 'love' the book yet.

#19 The Raptures by Jan Carson - Northern Irish again, all the small town/rural religious vibes. I liked it!

Currently on #20 Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle

24. The Coast Road by Alan Murrin

Small town Co. Donegal in the 1990s. Against the backdrop of Ireland's divorce referendum, three marriages are portrayed under strain : Izzy and James, Dolores and Donal and Shaun and Colette.

And that's basically it, a perfectly good read to pass the time but nothing amazing or earth shattering.