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

31. Outside The Door by Jane Casey

The latest Maeve and Josh short story. No spoilers, just in case !

18 Just One Damned Thing after Another by Jodi Taylor (audio)
I read this a couple of years ago from recommendations here and didn’t love it, but recently I’ve heard of lots of people praising the series on audio. I decided to reread/ listen to this one to start me off and it is much better on audio- eventful, fast paced and well narrated all of which are entertaining enough to help make the daily chores more bearable. The library has a few more so I’ll definitely give another one or two a go.

19 Knife by Salman Rushdie (audio)
Read by the author, this tells of the horrific attack on Rushdie a few years ago and how he dealt with it physically and mentally. A meaty and thought-provoking read. I also found the parts where he dealt with the aging, illnesses and in some cases deaths of his literary contemporaries very moving.

20 The Boy from the Sea by Garrett Carr
A baby is discovered washed up on a Donegal beach in a barre in the 1970s. Ambrose Bonnar and his wife Christine take him in and bring him up alongside their own son Declan. The book focuses on the tough life of fishing and small towns and the closed off nature of Irish small towns. It also looks at family bonds and rivalries, between Christine and her sister and the two boys growing up in opposition. It’s told in from the POV of the town in third person plural which takes some getting used to and makes it feel a little whimsical at times. The author shows some wry humour too. There are many positives to the book but it just didn’t connect with me personally for some reason.

15. The Dictionary People, Sarah Ogilvie
An account of contributors to the Oxford English Dictionary, previously recommended on here. I do like a good Victorian autodidact, so enjoyed these stories of unsung lives (although it did get a bit repetitive towards the end).

16. Enchanted Islands, Laura Coffey
This starts as a travel narrative, with the author leaving London after the first lockdown to spend time in southern Europe, loosely aligning her travels to the wanderings of Odysseus. That could come across as tin-eared, but she's honest about what she was trying to escape, a hoped-for relationship that didn't work out, a job she'd just resigned from, and her inability to go home to her parents, as her father was terminally ill and determinedly shielding. It later becomes an account of losing him. She writes very well, and I was moved by this.

Two tickets to P&P(so) was one of my Christmas presents; coming up in a month or so. Great to hear so many people enjoyed it.

In other theatre news, I've just seen Ballet Shoes at the National in London. It was one of my favourite books as a child and the adaptation is necessarily different in parts, but absolutely lovely. There are just a few tickets left and it finishes in a week.

15 Swordcrossed by Freya Marske
Matti is the overworked, stressed son of a weavers Guild House. In recent years, a number of unrelated accidents - lost ships at sea, manufacturing errors etc - have reduced House finances to the point where they are on the verge of bankruptcy. To save them, a marriage alliance has been arranged with Sofia, daughter of a wealthy but less prestigious House. Then a mysterious stranger arrives in town, & throws himself (quite literally) into Matti's path.
I really enjoyed Marske's Last Binding alt-Edwardian urban fantasy trilogy last year, so I was looking forwards to her new novel. Sadly it was a real let down - the plot didn't really get moving until about 3/4 of the way through the book, the main characters were much less interesting than side characters that we didn't see much of, and there were too many very long sex scenes that had minimal relevance to the plot. If I'd known what was explained in the afterword - that this was her first, unpublished, novel, that was then brought out following the success of the others, I'd have been more wary. Sadly this one should have stayed in her bottom drawer.

I'm going to see Ballet Shoes on Tuesday. I can't wait. My favourite book ever.

32. Still Life by Sarah Winman

Post WW2 a demobbed British soldier unexpectedly inherits a large property in Florence. Adventure ensues with a large cast of characters.

Sigh. There's a lot of good in this book, a lot of good writing and some moving moments but ultimately I never fully connected with it. Not every character comes off the page and I did often feel like I was being talked at breathlessly about people I neither knew or cared about, lack of speech marks contributed to that.

I've read all of Sarah Winman now. I remember liking When God Was A Rabbit but this and Tin Man have the same fault which is there's clear signs of a better book in there. A Year Of Marvellous Ways was dross of the highest order though, so I don't know if I'm done with Sarah Winman now or not.

I would have loved the book this almost was.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I agree about the juxtaposition in the Richard E Grant book feeling jarring. I also found it unseemly and I wasn't keen on the inclusion of deeply personal letters that were written to his late wife. With Nails is much better.

Look in the Mirror - Catherine Steadman. Piss-poor contemporary thriller mostly told from two perspectives. Nina is a Cambridge professor who unexpectedly inherits a mysterious house in the British Virgin Islands following her father's passing. Maria is a medical student working as a nanny with ambitions and a penchant for adventure, who finds herself embroiled in a heap of trouble - their two lives entwine with lack lustre results.

@Southeastdweller Unseemly is the perfect word for it.

DH bought me a not entirely appropriate book for Valentines Day. He is not a reader, not even of back page blurbs apparently! To be fair I have wanted to read this for a while but it did make me giggle.

I agree Mr Loverman is an odd present from a DH, but it is quite romantic in its way.

I'm struggling with my current read and considering a DNF!

Lessons in Chemistry - ugh I can't believe this was written by a woman. The female lead is fulfilling so many annoyingly clichéd tropes. Tall and slim and striking, so alluring, gets nicknamed luscious lizzie, but she isn't interested in that sort of thing. She just wants to be a SCIENTIST OK??!! 🙄 Her dialogue is so, so bad. I'm 38 pages in and ready to throw it in the bin tbh. This is just an awful book, I'm sorry. Who wrote this? Why did everyone say it was good? Clearly I'm the mad one as this was recommended to me by more than one person but ugh.

I'm giving it to 100 pages max. Then off to the bin...OK maybe the charity bookshop

Yeah, no, I'm not finishing this. I'm irrationally fuming that I spent money on this book 😂 😤

@Pickandmixusername it's a classic bestselling 'book for people who don't read'. It's the chocolate equivalent of a Mars Bar, don't go looking for the finest Belgian or Swiss chocolate. You can enjoy it on its own terms as a better than average easy reading pile of nonsense but don't expect anymore. See also: Where the Crawdads Sing, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine and Captain Corelli's Mandolin (the grandaddy of all summer best sellers).

Yes, he thought it was a romance (which I guess it is). I am looking forward to reading it so it was an excellent choice really.

I finished (but hated) Elinor fecking Oliphant, so you are correct, and didn't finish Captain Correlli.

I can read trash quite happily, but draw the line at trash being lauded as some sort of genius. Haaaaa-rrumph!! I'm sticking to old classics and non fiction for my next reads.

<shuffles off muttering to self grumpily>

I hated it. The stereotyping of the clever-no nonsense-but-patronised lead character drove me mad. I take it you haven't got to the dog-as-narrator yet.... (I put it down and then forced myself to finish it and really, the ending is so twee, with everything tied up in a bow, I just don't see why it's so popular).

Thank you! I'm not glad that you had to plough through it, but thank you for confirming the ending wasn't worth another run at it

I didn't get to the dog narration, no!

@JaninaDuszejko

Captain Corelli? in the same league as Crawdads? (mawkish guff) surely you need to wash your mouth out?*

*One of my first proper adult reads in my late teens so my judgement is coloured by that!

I think we all stay loyal to those early reads that impressed us though I haven't read it in over 25 years!

Oh, I want you to keep going so you can tell me what you think about the dog!

I’m not sure we can still be friends. Crawdads is the biggest pile of nonsense I have ever read - ever. Captain Corelli is, in fact, bloody genius and I love and worship grumpy old Louis de Bernieres and it hurts that it’s @JaninaDuszejko who I consider my book twin.

I am going to need a lie down. 🤣

What I was going to say before my belief in 50 bookers crumbled, was @bibliomania the job that Lauren Coffey left was where I work. She contacted me because I run the book club and I bought the book to add to her preorder numbers but haven’t got to it yet.

Going for that lie down.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I have carefully ensured I have only ever read his books once, in hardback, no re reading. I am very precious over them.

I love Captain Corelli too!

I've just remembered how angry the ending of Captain Corelli made me. Always check your facts!

I loved Captain Corelli- it was the witty writing I enjoyed. That said I haven’t read it since the 90s.
Haven’t read Crawdads or Elinor Oliphant (Purposely avoided this one because I knew I’d hate it)
Lessons in Chemistry was just okay- a light read that certainly didn’t live up to the hype.