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

Has anyone here read Domesday Book by Connie Willis? I remember we had a lot of discussion of plague-related fiction during the pandemic and I thought I'd read most of the best/well regarded choices then, but I don't recall this one ever coming up. It was a coping mechanism of sorts for me at the time, as however bad the pandemic was, it was never as bad as Captain Tripps or the Black Death. But for whatever reason the interest has persisted, and I came across this recommended elsewhere. I'm trying hard to not deviate from my TBR but the library has it and it's very tempting.

I think a few of us have @PepeLePew . Cotes hated it, not enough explanation of the time travel, too many feelings, not enough happened.

However, I adored it. It is set at Christmas time and I thought the descriptions of the medieval Christmas were incredibly atmospheric so would highly recommend it.

@PepeLePew I really didn’t enjoy Domesday Book. It was somehow just flat. The plague scenes were ok but the Oxford scenes I didn’t enjoy. It was oddly written in a ‘rather dated’ tone but meant to be set in the future and the whole thing was just odd. It didn’t help that the audible reader had an irritating voice. I wouldn’t recommend it personally but I know others have enjoyed it.

2 The Dead of Winter by Stuart MacBride
A police officer and his partner take an old dying criminal to a Highland Estate where a village has been set up to support those who have finished their jail sentence but can’t be released into normal society. It’s snowy and access gets blocked... then someone is murdered.

First few chapters were good then there was a major slump for most of the middle third but the final reveal and denouement was probably worth it. I hadn’t seen the twist coming and that was enjoyable. I wouldn’t read another by this author though. The police officers say ‘Fudge’ a lot when bad things happen and it was deeply irritating.

Now reading Entangled Life by Melvin Sheldrake

7. There and Back: Diaries 1999 - 2009 - Michael Palin

Latest (weighty) volume of the Palin diaries and he's advancing into his 60s, a big star by virtue of his BBC travel documentaries and, of course, his Python fame. I've read all his diaries and found them compulsively readable but an intriguing mixture: the famously 'nice' Palin (which he comments on with weariness several times) does come across as admirably engaged, interested in everything from trains to art to films to books and a hundred other things besides, which makes him very likeable.
But he’s also a driven, highly-organised, meticulous planner who knows seemingly everyone, comments wryly when he spots others 'networking' but is in fact himself a canny businessman and investor (mainly in art) who's adept at quietly generating an income stream (after sighing that he doesn’t want the bother of getting into a bidding war over his latest travel book tie-in, it’s quite amusing to read his process of gradually persuading himself otherwise when the top bidders turn out to be offering a cool 750K).
A pleasure, though, to read about his deep content in his domestic life with his wife of many decades, Helen (who died recently, alas), and his obvious besotted delight in his first grandchild. A rather more complicated man than he’s often taken to be, I felt - something I’ve noticed about other people in comedy I've known personally.

@satelliteheart Five Little Pigs is one of my favourite Christies. The atmosphere is so wonderfully foreboding, and I can visualise all the characters!

The speed with which the first thread moves always takes me by surprise! Here's my list:

1 Winter Swimming - Dr Susanna Søberg
2 The Story of Art Without Men – Katy Hessel
3 Mr Loverman – Bernadine Evaristo

And my latest read:

4 We Solve Murders – Richard Osman

Bought as a Christmas present, this was a fun read. The plot (close protection officer daughter-in-law teams up with recently bereaved ex-cop father-in-law to, er, solve some frankly silly murders involving influencers) was inconsequential, but I enjoyed the characters and the very Osman-esque style. I've not got into the Thursday Murder Club series; read the first, which was fine, and wasn't sure whether to bother with the rest, but the characters have stuck in my mind, so maybe I will if another one crosses my path.

Now thoroughly enjoying City of Destruction, #5 in Vaseem Khan's Malabar House series. I am due to be stupidly busy at work for the next six weeks, so I foresee a glut of crime fiction which is all I can cope with at such times.

Oh, but I did mean to add: my project for the year is going to be reading Troilus and Criseyde alongside a companion book written by an friend from my schooldays who very sadly died a year ago tomorrow. I haven't read Chaucer since A-level so this will be...interesting. I think I've plugged this previously, but my friend wrote a really great book about words about and used by women over the centuries - I'm sure many 50 bookers would enjoy it so I hope you won't mind my plugging it a little here:

https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/9780349015316?gC=5a105e8b&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAv628BhC2ARIsAIJIiK8h0nRTVl-Rr_ezqOlsaeSEYyFcWf9Y6DGwP4jDCsGWNrEm_T2_3dwaAi6bEALw_wcB

Just finished my second read of the year which was Dominion by CJ Sansom. It took me an age to get through this, partly because of some stressful family stuff in the background but also because it is almost 700 pages. It was brilliant though.

For anyone who hasn’t come across it, it’s an alternative history novel set in 1952 where Britain has surrendered to Germany in 1940 & become a sort of satellite Nazi state. Fascist Britain is conjured in horrifyingly plausible detail. The characterisation was excellent and the ending in particular was gripping and moving. I’ve not read his Shardlake books but I think I probably will now.

7 . Dubliners - James Joyce

Series of short stories depicting life in Dublin, published 1914. This is the second unread by me classic that I've read this year. Joyce's writing does evoke a real sense of what life was like in those times but I found it all thoroughly depressing if I'm honest. Probably a lot to do with my frame of mind at the moment though.

Must try something cheerier next!

@TheGodOfSmallPotatoes what did you think of A Mothers Reckoning? I thought it was terribly sad. She has done a TED talk on 'love is not enough'.
If you are interested in the topic, I would recommend Columbine by Dave Cullen

@PepeLePew I love Domesday Book I have read it a few times and when I reread last year it was a bold for me. This is my review in case it helps:

I think I loved this book even more than I did the first time I read it. I also liked the juxtaposition of the pandemic in the present day, with the start of the Black Death, and I think the fact I had a little more experience, what with COVID, might be one of the reasons I enjoyed reading this even more than previously. I can kind of see why cote didn’t rate it. I enjoyed this more from a historical aspect, as the medieval period is a favourite of mine. If I’d been coming at it purely from a science-fiction perspective, it might not have hit the mark.

8. Jill - Philip Larkin

Read for the Rather Dated Book Club. John Kemp, a gauche, working-class 18-year-old from the northern town of 'Huddlesford', arrives at Oxford in 1940 to read English. To his dismay, he finds he’s sharing quarters with the braying Christopher Warner, a charmless boarding-school bully who borrows money from John and, with his equally repellent friends, treats him with contempt. John veers from despair to a kind of terrified worship and emulation of Warner, abandoning his plans for hard work, but after a while a kind of self-protection takes hold as he invents an imaginary younger sister, 'Jill', who offers a kind of mental escape. Then, to his amazement, he actually sees Jill one day in a bookshop - she turns out to be the cousin of a fellow student, one of Christopher's circle, and is even called Gillian. Gradually John's fragile mental state breaks down as he struggles to hold everything together under the intolerable strain of his lonely, confused existence. The novel ends on an unresolved note and we never discover what happens to John or how he deals with his predicament.

Larkin was not long out of Oxford when he wrote this (his first novel, with just one more to follow) and much later, looking back, claimed that it wasn’t an examination of class, although on the face of it this is the most obvious interpretation. Instead it's apparently more to do with John's conflicts over control and his sexual impulses, symbolised by the role played by food in the book (characters are always ordering and eating tea, dinner, sandwiches and cake, and, as Boiledegg mentioned, one of the most excruciating scenes revolves around a tea-party).

Not a perfect novel - the central chunk of 'Jill's' school experiences, swiped straight from Larkin's own schoolgirl stories written under the pseudonym 'Brunette Coleman - make for an odd interlude - but the writing is mostly great and I liked the evocation of Oxford.

8. Relive by KJ Nelson

YA book about people who, when they die, return to the same point in their lives, again and again. This follows Gerald a ‘firsty’ who is coached through the rules of ‘journeying’ by Flint who has lived his own life hundreds of times. There’s an Order, and factions, fighting for supremacy and a memory wiping machine. It was ok, but very badly edited and some of the dialogue, particularly the romantic dialogue, was terrible. I won’t be reading the next book in the series but if that review has sold it to you, this one is free on Kindle Unlimited.

Coupe of reviews to catch up
7 The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt (audio)
This looks at the impact that smartphones and social media are having on the generation who grew up with them and posits that they have increased anxiety and depression in girls and failure to launch in boys. I have seen these problems become more prevalent in the young people I teach so was interested to read it. There is plenty of data to support his suppositions but I found it a bit too simplistic- I think the technology exacerbates problems that are already in our society but doesn’t cause them per se and this wasn’t something he looked into much (though I agree on the affects on sleep, concentration and academic achievement in heavy smartphone users- she said, typing this on her smartphone…) He refers to this issue as ‘the great rewiring’ of childhood which is a bit too conspiracy theory sounding for me, and something I can’t quite put my finger on makes him sound a bit more right-wing than I’m entirely comfortable with. Will be interested to hear anyone else’s take on this.

8 The House of Doors- Tan Twan Eng
This was nominated for the Booker in 2023 so I’m sure many here have read it already. I have all 3 of Tan’s books on my kindle but having read my first Somerset Maugham book recently, I decided to finally get around to this one. The author visits an old army friend Robert and his wife Lesley in Penang. Told in both Willie’s and Lesley’s points of view, this book has a dual timeline with flashbacks of Lesley’s involvement in the past with the political movement of Sun Yat Sen, a Chinese revolutionary. All that said, it’s mostly about love and betrayal and relationships. While the colonial setting can be seen as old-fashioned, I absolutely loved this book. The characters kept me reading and the prose was exquisite- maybe a little purple for some- but I loved it. I felt utterly transported by the book. A definite bold for me.

I've started reading Sweet Pear which was recommended by a PP.

I really like the sound of Annie Bot too, so I've added that to my Kindle wish list.

I have a separate wish list for kindle books, and every day so often I go in and sort by price, low to high, and see if anything is on for 99p.

@ÚlldemoShúl

I have House Of Doors on TBR but I can recommend both The Gift Of Rain and The Garden Of Evening Mists by the same author. Both brilliant.

Thanks @EineReiseDurchDieZeit - those are the other two I have on my kindle so am moving them up the TBR as we speak!

There's a fair bit of style and theme crossover between them, so I would start with Gift

@Welshwabbit that book looks really interesting - I’ve added it to my wishlist. I’m sorry for the loss of your friend, very sad x

@Castlerigg I hope you enjoy Sweet Pear. I'm about to start the sequel which I've got an ARC of.

16 The Hangman's Master Elyse Hoffman
Book 5 (?) In the project 613 series. I still don't know what to make of these. I feel like I should hate them, but I don't!

Despite the timeline being changed in the previous book (Adiel and The Fuhrer) we seem to have reverted to the original one in this book, I'm not sure why.
In this book we find our what happens to some of the people who have died in previous books. They seemed to end up in some kind of place of judgement, but we didn't find out what the outcome of that was. I'm not sure how much of this is really Jewish mysticism, and how much is the authors imagination.

Obviously bad people go to hell, which is run by fallen angels (I think). However these angels don't have the imagination to think up suitable punishments, so they recruit from the living to become the 'master' of a zone. Each zone has any number of souls in, and the master can do anything they wish.

Stefan was beaten by his Father and kicked out of the family home when his parents realised he was gay at age 16. Disillusioned and attracted to the promises of a better future, Stefan joins the fairly newly formed Nazi party. They weren't overly homophobic in the beginning I believe, and one thing this series does well is show how they gained power by being attractive to those who felt downtrodden, and by causing division amongst different groups.

After the night of the long knives, Stefan realises that he can't be a Nazi anymore and joins the fictional Black Fox network. He is then recruited to be master of a couple of different zones in hell. One is full of einsatzgruppen men (they went from town to town massacring so called undesirables). The other has only 1 member. Heydrich. One of the architects of the holocaust.

Stefans ex boyfriend, now an SS officer is also a 'master' and will stop at nothing to gain control of Heydrich.

Like I said, it's hard to know what to make of this series. And to explain it without spoilers!

The next one isn't due out until October so I've got to wait to find out what happens next.

14. Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

Iranian American Cyrus Shams has been orphaned losing his mother at a tender age and his father whilst in college. An aspiring writer and poet he contemplates the concept of martyrdom. One day he hears about Orkideh an artist who is terminally ill running an exhibition called Death Speak at a museum in which she converses with those visiting and he decides to go and speak to her.

I'd heard only praise of this novel, but I found it quite disjointed and at times meandering. I felt as if I was willing the better novel within it to show itself. I've just explained it to a friend who immediately guessed something fundamental to it, so it possibly is not as surprising as it thinks.

Ah that’s a shame, Martyr is on our book club reads this year and was one I was rather looking forward to.

Thought I’d lost you, was wondering why the thread had gone quiet. Nothing to report!

@AgualusasLover

I'm just watching RoRo Reads review it on YouTube and he feels like me it's good but not great and he also criticises how much it jumps around. It's very popular so you may not feel the same.

So, I thought bold meant finished, rather than recommended 😳Sorry

Here is my list so far, with bold for recommendations:

1. Jane Eyre (currently reading) - Charlotte Brontë
2. Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions Into Adulthood (currently reading) - Lisa Damour
3. Anna Karenina (currently reading) - Leo Tolstoy

Read Alouds with my DDs:

1. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - JK Rowling
2. Rip Van Winkle - Washington Irving
3. Paul Revere's Ride - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
4. Kidnapped (currently reading) - Robert Louis Stevenson
5. The Incredible Journey (currently reading) - Sheila Burnford

Despite my insistence that I would refrain from reading another classic, I couldn't resist. I had been meaning to read this for a while, so I was surprised to discover that it was a short story. If these don't get counted, please let me know.

5. Of Mice and Men by John Steinberg

For only 106 pages, it's a great little book. I know that this has been used as a text in the English Literature GCSE, but I'm not sure if it still is. The gradual build-up towards Lennie fatally harming Curly's wife was one thing but the ending was a twist I didn't see coming. Mainly because this was a book used in schools. It's not graphic but maybe I was a little naive.