50 Books Challenge 2025 Part Three

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the third 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 here and the second thread here.

@Castlerigg

NLMG is just as divisive as the Butler. As I recall I was neither yay or nay and couldn't take a side

Surely you mean I can't believe it's not a different author Butter ?

That was a fail. I thought for a minute that the author had written Butter.

I haven’t read Butter so am unable to confirm if it’s as bloody boring as The Bloody Boring Butler.

I feel like Boring Butler is just straight down the middle divisive, NLMG has a few more on the fence.

Does anyone use Bookbeat? I'm trying it as an alternative to Kindle as attempting to give the Tech bros less money. Not as good a selection but there's a 30 day trial for free, and then £6.99 a month for 20 hours so pricing is similar.

A couple of recent reviews:
22. Theory and Practice - Michelle de Kretser. Interesting experimental novel from Australian writer. It starts off as a conventional tale but then the author says she got stuck writing that. It then moves to a story about the author as a young academic in Melbourne in the 1980s, writing about Virginia Woolf - "The Woolfmother" as she's called throughout - and working through different theoretical ideologies of the day, particularly feminism. I enjoyed it as evocative of a time and place. I did English at uni a few years after the book is set but still recognised some of the things she's gently poking fun at.

23. Bewilderment - Richard Powers. This was part of my Kindle backlog and I think was longlisted for the 2021 Booker. I read Playground by the same author last year and liked it enough to try something else. This is narrated by Theo, an astrobiologist living with his 9 year old neurodiverse son Robin. Theo's wife Alyssa has recently died and both are trying to come to terms to living without her. Robin struggles with school and has severe meltdowns. Theo doesn't want to medicate him so instead enrolls him in experimental neurofeedback therapy which involves mapping to his mother's neural pathways. This is set in a near future with an increasingly authoritarian Trump like president. Theo and Robin are vegans who are increasingly traumatised by the treatment of animals and the demise of species, while Theo is also searching the skies for signs of alien life. It's loosely based on Flowers For Algernon, which I would say I preferred. I find Powers a bit overly didactic, and there are parts of the book where they explore different possible planets that I just found a bit dull. I'm not sure that I'll read more of his books.

I’m still to read TROTD so can’t pass comment on the Bloody Boring Butler but really didn’t like NLMG. It’s years since I read it so can’t remember exactly what pissed me off about it but I do remember the characters being so passive annoyed me.

13 The Wide Wide Sea - Hampton Sides

This was a bit of a punt (came up as an Audible suggestion) but I’m really glad I went for it. A brilliant, gripping account of Captain James Cook’s third and final voyage, which took him in search of the fabled North West passage from the Pacific Ocean side, and ended with his death at the hands of native Hawaiians. Heartily recommended for fans of nautical peril, This Thing Of Darkness etc. @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie think you’d enjoy this one!

My list so far...
(1) The Nurse by Valerie Keogh
(2) The Wrong Child by Julia Crouch and M. J. Arlidge
(3) The Perfect Parents By J.A. Baker
(4) Darkest Fear, written by Harlen Coben
(5) Old Filth by Jane Gardam
(6) The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam
(7) Last Friends by Jane Gardam
(8) American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins -

Latest Book....

(9) The Housemaid by Frieda McFadden (Description taken from Amazon)

"Welcome to the family," Nina Winchester says as I shake her elegant, manicured hand. I smile politely, gazing around the marble hallway. Working here is my last chance to start fresh. I can pretend to be whoever I like. But I'll soon learn that the Winchesters' secrets are far more dangerous than my own . . .

Every day I clean the Winchesters' beautiful house top to bottom. I collect their daughter from school. And I cook a delicious meal for the whole family before heading up to eat alone in my tiny room on the top floor.

I try to ignore how Nina makes a mess just to watch me clean it up. How she tells strange lies about her own daughter. And how her husband Andrew seems more broken every day. But as I look into Andrew's handsome brown eyes, so full of pain, it's hard not to imagine what it would be like to live Nina's life. The walk-in closet, the fancy car, the perfect husband.

I only try on one of Nina's pristine white dresses once. Just to see what it's like. But she soon finds out... and by the time I realize my attic bedroom door only locks from the outside, it's far too late.

But I reassure myself: the Winchesters don't know who I really am.

They don't know what I'm capable of . . .

I flew through this book - easy to read and had me hooked.
I did not realize that it is the start of a series but I am on a book buying ban.

Really enjoying this challenge.

Onto the next...!

23. Murder Must Advertise, Dorothy Sayers
This was raved about on another thread, and I had it on my kindle, so got stuck in. Lord Peter Wimsey infiltrates an advertising agency to look into a suspicious death. Dorothy Sayers herself worked in advertising in the 1920s, and has a lot of fun with her portrayal of petty office dramas and the oddities of the advertising industry. All very sprightly.

I've just downloaded Middlemarch based on the recommendation above (sorry can't remember who it was.

15&16: The Satsuma Complex and The Hotel Avocado by Bob Mortimer

A good easy listen on Audible, a bit dark in places and some good characters including a squirrel who is Gary's inner voice.
Gary is a boring solicitor who lives alone and likes his boring life. He gets dragged well out of his depth into a conspiracy when an acquaintance passes him a thumbdrive just before he is murdered. Gary is then pursued by fake policemen and various other baddies while still having to look after his neighbour Grace and trying to flirt with his new girlfriend.
It worked as an audio book for me as Bob Mortimer's narration gave it a dry turn of phrase that I think I would have missed if I was reading it. Not great literature, and a bit silly in places, but enjoyable enough.
The sequel Hotel Avocado is more of the same.

17: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson

I've just re-read this, having read it for the first time in 2012 - so getting on for 13 years ago. I remember it being a complete page turner the first time around (I was sitting on the beach reading it). Obviously less of a page turner the second time around, as I knew what happens in the end, but enjoyable none the less, and I had forgotten some parts of the story. It has a very Scandiavian feel - very measured and precise details.

Don't judge the book on the rather awful movie with Daniel Craig as Blomkvist (And I say that as a Craig fan)

I've also nearly finished A Single Thread by Tracey Chevalier which I think was recommended on here - will post a review this weekend but it is one of my bolds so far this year - very enjoyable

I enjoyed Elizabeth Fremantle's first novel when I read it a few years ago - Firebrand was originally published under the title Queen's Gambit.

Oh look, the 99p book fell into my amazon checkout...

(I might watch the film of Firebrand on Prime too)

19. When the Dust Settles - Lucy Easthope

Bought in the deals recently along with everyone else. I’m profoundly relieved that Lucy exists and that her experience, care, meticulous planning and thought is being brought to bear on some of the worst things that can happen to human beings. She tells her story vividly and with a righteous anger in places - but I have to say I found this quite a harrowing read. Concentrating on so many stories of horror (I'm profoundly and forever grateful that I was in exactly the place where that bus was blown up in Tavistock Square, at pretty much the same time, but on the day before it happened) was undeniably tough. But she tells it well.

Yes I meant to say this when I reviewed it. I think it probably got changed due to the Walter Tevis book of the same name being adapted by Netflix

14 A Fever In The Heartland - Timothy Egan

Interesting and shocking account of the rise and fall of the Ku Klux Klan in America. Wouldn’t say it was the best writing, but I learned a lot (I hadn’t realised how widespread their political influence was at its height) and there are unavoidable parallels with the recent rise of MAGA.

25. Food Isn't Medicine - Joshua Wolrich (Audible)

Interesting listen, written and narrated by a doctor and nutritionist, debunking "nutribollocks".

@MegBusset Is this the one that’s pretty new? If yes, it’s on my list!

4. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
I'm reading extremely slowly this year but this one has taken forever, especially considering it's not even 200 pages. That's my issue not the book's, though perhaps made a bit more so by its very disjointed structure. I haven't read any other reviews of it so that I can try and give an honest view, but might have to go and read more about it so that I have some idea what I've read! It's very 60s - reminds me a bit of the acid trip scenes in Easy Rider, a little bit of Philip Roth, a bit of Robert Heinlein. Vonnegut seems to have been driven to write about his experiences in the firestorm of Dresden as an American prisoner of war in WWII, but expresses it as fractured, sidelong glances at the unbearable. Billy Pilgrim is his protagonist, and he explicitly says Billy is both not him and is him by putting himself in as a minor character, shadowing Billy at every step but separate from him. Billy lives and dies repeatedly through the novel, marrying the disappointingly fat but bearable Valencia, annoying his bossy daughter Barbara, dancing backwards and forwards through time and into and out of an alien other world where he is taken to make babies by the Tralfamadorians with the pneumatic Montana Wildhack. (As you can see, the names are great). It's so sexist that it kind of comes out the other side, you either accept it as part of a novel which lives entirely in the heads of men traumatised by being forced to endure other men's unimaginable and machine-like violence, or you stop reading. It has great funny sequences as well. I'd recommend it, it's kind of a bold. So it goes.

That’s a great review @PermanentTemporary ! It’s years since I read it and I think I’m due a revisit. I remember thinking Wow, this is even more out there than One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, that’s for sure.

Yes, it came out last year :) Now going to look at what else the author has done!

The Bump by Sidney Karger

A gay couple drives from New York to California to be there for the birth of their surrogate child. On the way they visit family members and learn lots about themselves and their relationship. This was fine, found the main characters a bit annoying.

Scarcely English: An A-Z of Assaults on our Language by Simon Heffer

Does what it says on the tin. Perfect for pedants (I am one).

The Bookseller by Tim Sullivan

This is the 7th in a series. I haven’t read the others but I picked this up because it features the murder of a seller of rare books, and is also set in Bristol which I am familiar with. I enjoyed this - there’s quite a lot about the rare/second-hand book industry which I liked but others may find a bit dull. I don’t think it mattered that I hadn’t read others - there was clearly some back story to do with the main detective but it didn’t affect the story. I will look out others in the series in due course.

The Impossible Thing by Belinda Bauer

Who knew a book about egg collecting could be so interesting! I’ve always liked Bauer’s books and enjoyed this one too. This revisits a couple of characters from one of her earlier books but it’s not really a sequel so it doesn’t matter whether you have read the previous one.

Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld

Collection of short stories which unfortunately I was rather disappointed with. Some of the stories just stopped with no resolution. Others just didn’t interest me. The only one I liked was the one that revisited the main character from Prep, which was a book I really liked so I was happy to find out what happened to Lee later in life.

Annie Bot by Sierra Greer

Many have read this. I liked it but didn’t love it - I would have preferred a bit more explanation about how it all worked. Scary to think that AI may make some of this closer to reality.

The Sublet by Greer Hendricks

Amazon freebie short story about a woman who sublets an apartment and odd things happen. Not good - too short for any real character or plot development.

Our Infinite Fates by Laura Steven

I didn’t realise this was YA when I bought it. It’s about a couple who keep falling in love, killing each other and are then reborn in new lives where the same happens again, over and over for hundreds of years. Intriguing premise but I didn’t understand why they would keep falling in love with someone they knew would kill them and the ultimate explanation of why it was happening was unsatisfying. I might give it to teen DD to see if she likes it more than I did.

Pandora by Jilly Cooper

Reread. I like this one a bit less than some of her others because I’m not that interested in the art world and the characters aren’t as memorable, but still a good read.

Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens

Will share more thoughts on the readalong thread in due course, but while I didn’t understand why enjoy this it’s not one of his best.

The Alibi Girl by C K Skuse

I picked this up in the deals after enjoying Sweetpea by the same author but this wasn’t great - too many plot holes and people behaving in unconvincing ways.

Other People’s Houses by Clare Mackintosh

Two crimes which both turn out to have
links to a set of very posh houses. I like the main female detective in this series and enjoyed this latest one.

41. Dylan Goes Electric! by Elijah Wald

The book on which the recent film A Complete Unknown was based.
Basically the story of how he became the darling of the folk scene before causing scenes at Newport Festival with an electric set

As a Dylan fan, I found this unengaging and lacking in life or charm. I picked it up to put it down several times, it was almost a DNF. If anyone has read a good Dylan biography do let me know as this was my first and there are presumably better ones out there.

Second book this year with a ! in the title, weird, I don't think I've ever read one before.

I am doing a reread of Jilly Cooper’s books and she does love an exclamation mark in her titles!

That's true @ChessieFL ! I stopped at Polo though