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.

The Penguin Lessons by Tom Michell

A true story of Tom who sets out on a big adventure to teach at a school in Argentina and unexpectedly finds himself with penguin.

It can only be described as a heartwarming tale although I also learned a bit about Argentina in the 70s/80s which has increased my desire to visit. The scenery sounds stunning. I think I'll have to come home without a penguin though, it's harder to cross borders with animals today!

Recommended as a quick pick me up. Not a bold but fun. I might try and watch the film at some point.

59. The Babylonian Chronicles. Henry Sipes
    I won't be recommending this, so not going to waste my time writing about it.

60. A Child Far From Home. Lizzie Page
    Book 1 in The Wartime Evacuees series. 3 friends, Valerie, Francine and Lydia are evacuated to Somerset. This book largly focuses on Valerie and follows her from her first placement, which is neglectful/abusive to her next one and through to the 1950s. The struggles she has to maintain a relationship with her mum, and vice versa is really well written. It's a bit "you know what you're getting" but I'm a fan of that kind of fluff.

61. The Bracelet. Diane Clarke
    This was a bold for me. The official blurb says
    Monica Grainger’s life is upended when Harry Powell, the man she believes is her father, fleetingly appears at her grandma’s funeral. Re-examining her past prompts her to negotiate a truce with her prickly tight-lipped mother, Celia; make peace with a decades-old tragedy involving the Powell family; and finally reach out to Harry.
    On the cusp of building a relationship with her father, Celia gives Monica a silver bracelet that triggers alarming questions.
    As Monica unravels the mysteries of the bracelet, her mother’s behaviour alters. Both have the power to derail her dreams of connection with Harry and his family.

Diane's writing is beautiful and I'm a massive fan if hers.

62. Killing Lily. Jilian Gardner
    Mae escapes from a cult, and it's clear that something traumatic has happened in the past. This is a dual narrative, dual timeline split between before and after the escape. This was so close to a bold for me, with a brilliant twist.

63. The Wartime Nursery. Lizzie Page
    Book 2 of The Wartime Evacuees. This one concentrates on Lydia, but more on her Mother, Emmeline. Lydia was thoroughly unlikeable in book 1,and didn't really redeem herself. Emmeline and her younger child have also been evacuation, and Emmeline decides to set up a nursery for women who are doing war work. This was a radical idea and the women who ran them faced a lot of resistance. Like book 1 it carries on the story until the 1950s. I thought the issues faced in setting up nurseries was fascinated, and also wonder if we've gone too far (from women should be at home, we don't need nurseries, to women have to work because life's so expensive. Personally I'd prefer more of an option to stay home)

64. The Wartime Mother. Lizzie Page
    The third and final Wartime Evacuees Book. This was my favourite, and tells Francine’s story. Francine’s Mum bought her home early on in the war, and then the whole family bar Francine and her Father who is away fighting, are killed in the Blitz. Francine is re-evacuated, but not back to Somerset with her friends. She's also Jewish, but doesn't know much about that. She faces antisemitism without really knowing what it is.

65. The Tiger Curtain & Other Stories. Paul Marriner
    A series of short stories and poems, a bold for me.

66. The School That Escaped The Nazis. Deborah Cadbury
    Another bold. This is the true story of "Tante Anna" who could see what was happening to Jews under Nazi rule. So she upped and moved to England, bringing most of the children with her. This book charts the war years and draws on the memories of her students, staff, and some children who survived the Holocaust and came to England after the war and were taken in by Anna.

67. Beyond the Sea. Nina Purtee
    Not going to recommend this. Story sounded great. Badly written

68. Life Gets In The Way. Chris Husband
    Poems. Another bold. All kinds of subjects, including a poem about memes.

69. The Secret of Ruby's Lighthouse. Kristin Harper
    Another "you know what you're getting" book. Meg goes to help her Aunt Ruby run her inn by the sea. Ruby was left the inn by an old friend and Meg wants to know why. Enjoyable little mystery.

70. The Hero Virus. Russell Dumper
    A mysterious virus is spreading which gives people super powers. Which sounds cool, but people will literally kill for it. Fun and different.

71. Three Little Lies. Danielle Stewart
    A psychological thriller. Jo is an over protective Mother who agrees to take in an English exchange student who wants to come and study in the US. Then Eden, the student, disappears and it looks like Jo's husband has killed her. Really liked this.

I've been trying to read more non-fiction recently. First, for book group :

All She Lost by Dala Mawad.

Individual women's accounts of their experiences following the port explosion in Beirut in the summer of 2020. Some lost children, others husbands, brothers or friends, and many were seriously injured themselves.
I remember the shock of this event at the time, however I suspect it wasn't given the attention it deserved due to the news being dominated by the pandemic. There are questions still to be answered about how and why such dangerous material was stored in a residential area, and much fury and bitterness regarding the authorities' lack of support for those affected by the disaster.
Dala Mawad is a Lebanese journalist who was present in Beirut at the time, now based in Paris. Her emotional proximity to all the issues raised is clear .. this makes for a compelling account but also means she is less objective than someone more detached would be.
The various accounts are truly harrowing. To be honest, I almost gave up at page 28. The women's stories are important and deserve to be heard; it's a tough read though.

And a recommendation from our "chat about books" coffee morning:

Maurice and Maralyn by Sophie Elmhirst.

The amazing true story of a couple who set out to sail to New Zealand in a small yacht and, for a more authentic experience, decide to do so without a radio. Additionally, Maralyn has never learned to swim. Some might say elements of this journey were not well thought through ...
When a whale makes a hole in their boat, they have an hour to load up a dinghy and life-raft before they are set adrift for 118 days with limited food and water and no means of communication. The details of how they (only just) survive, how close they become to the natural world, and how their relationship changes during the ordeal, are quite absorbing. Maralyn wrote detailed diaries throughout and they also wrote a book afterwards (to fund their next voyage, amazingly) so Sophie Elmhirst has a lot of original material to draw upon. She tells their tale beautifully I think. A memorable read.

Murder At Gulls Nest by Jess Kidd

Set in the early 1950s, nun Nora Breen leaves her order and goes to the seaside boarding house of Gulls Nest to try and track down what’s happened to her missing friend Frieda. Once there she discovers lots of the other residents have their own secrets. This is marketed as cosy crime and it is in the sense that it’s an amateur solving a mystery, but there is a bit more to it - it’s not as light hearted or whimsical as some cosy crime can be and the characters were drawn well. I enjoyed it and will look out for the next in the series.

15 Paperboy by Callum McSorley
A proper banger of a crime novel, not for the squeamish, faint hearted or readers who get attached to characters - he may make time to fill out their background and make them ‘real’ but that doesn’t mean he won’t bump them off horribly,
DCI Alison McCoist is trying to get back on an even keel after the events that saw Paulo McGuinn killed. McGuinn’s widow Lottie is furious and contacting the various seedy and vicious gangsters who are keen to fill the vacuum left by his death. They want all the power, she just wants to know who pulled the trigger on her husband.
Chuck Gardner is the owner of Simply Shred and his rules of confidentiality are tested due to a gambling habit that sees him drawn in to the gangster world.
Hard to give more detail without spoilers, but it zips along with the same pace as the first book, has the same chewy vernacular (nods to the editor in the Afterword for his efforts with ‘typo or Scottish’) and if you thought Paulo was bad….well, meet Jameison and Callaghan. Or rather don’t, because it’s a really bad idea if they notice you…..

@ChessieFL I am intrigued by the Jess Kidd. She’s one of my favourite writers but I’m not really in the market for ‘cosy’. I don’t mind cosy with an edge though.

Continuing on my Women’s Prize longlist
33 Somewhere Else by Jenni Daiches
I listened to this one on audio. It’s starts with Rosa as a child and her witnessing of a pogrom in Bialystok in which most of her family die. Rosa is adopted by a family in Scotland and the book tells the story of her, their neighbours and her children, grandchildren, great grand children etc throughout Rosa’s life. I found this book a bit meh. I don’t think we ever get to properly know any of the characters- even Rosa, the centre of the whole think. As the book went on, some chapters were 6 minutes about random great grandchild’s life then jump 12 years and location to talk about another distant relative. I found it hard to keep up and harder to care. I’m generally not a fan of multi-generational sagas for the reasons above and while this touched on some interesting parts of Jewish history I struggle to see why this is on the longlist- it’s not much different from the Judith Krantzes or Penny Vincenzo’s that would never be considered for a prize.

I'm currently still reading The Ministry of Time and also Oh William to get ready for the Strout on the longlist. Both are going slowly as I’m on a lovely city break for a long weekend.

I really loved both The Secret Rooms and The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle 🙈

@highlandcoo Maurice and Maralyn is on my wish list.

@AlmanbyRoadtrip i haven’t read anything else by Jess Kidd so can’t say how it compares. I do think it has more of an edge than most cosy crime but whether it would be enough for you wouldn’t like to say!

@ChessieFL I see Kate Atkinson as Cosy Crime and Richard Osman as Too Damn Cosy so I’ll take a chance on this one I think, going off the quirky nature of her previous books. It will certainly be well written.

@Clairedebear101286 💐 I love how books have that effect, it's amazing how they transport you somewhere else - it's almost magical isn't it?

@DuPainDuVinDuFromage I've only read one Jessie Burton book, The Miniaturist, so it's nice to hear positive reviews of her other books. I've had House of Fortune on tbr for a couple of years but this will be the year I read it. I'm being more strict with myself. Less impulse library reserves and more tbr reading!

DD has three friends over for a sleepover, I left them to it and read Deadly Attraction by Diane Hoh, which is a trip back to my teen years. This is part of the Point Horror Nightmare Hall series and follows a college girl, Hailey, as she witnesses the alpha male reject a local girl after briefly dating her. Hailey tries to help the girl but then she and others becomes targets for someone out for revenge... tense stuff! I have a little collection of these books and love the nostalgia element even if the writing is kinda crap.

Zero Days - Ruth Ware
Jack, along with her husband Gabe, are pen testers who are employed by companies to test their physical and online security. Jack is completing a physical pen test, with Gabe in her ear guiding her around when as she is finishing up she is seen by the police and arrested. By the time she clears everything up and returns home Gabe has had has throat cut, Jack becomes suspect number one and goes on the run to clear his name.

This is a pretty generic thriller - probably great for the beach or if you need something that doesn’t require much thinking. It’s completely unrealistic in every way, the twist was obvious and I clocked it from a mile off, none of the characters are particularly like able or realistic and the resolution ties everything up in a neat bow which seems incredibly unlikely.

@AlmanbyRoadtrip interesting, I wouldn’t put Kate Atkinson anywhere near the cosy crime category! To me cosy crime is complete amateurs carrying out the investigating (pensioners, school dinner ladies, nuns) whereas Jackson Brodie is a proper investigator. I agree her writing style is more light hearted than a standard police procedural but it would never have occurred to me to categorise them as cosy crime. Interesting how differently people view the same books! Hope you enjoy the Jess Kidd.

I take it it's a deliberate thing that characters in Paperboy have names like footballers??

I may give Somewhere Else a miss @ÚlldemoShúl unless it makes the shortlist.

28. The Persians - Sanam Mahloudji. Another Women's Prize family saga. This has 5 different narrators of an Iranian family - Grandmother Elizabeth and her childhood in the 1940s, her two daughters Shirin and the dead Sima which explore leaving Iran and moving to the states, and their two daughters Beta who grow up in America and Niaz who stayed in Iran. The voices are quite distinctive but the characters aren't particularly likeable, they're incredibly rich and privileged but also a bit chippy. There were some interesting parts to this and it's reasonably entertaining but I did feel some sections - Sima and Beta - dragged a bit. It felt a little bit too long for me, and while I can understand the themes are quite interesting for the WP, I probably wouldn't shortlist this.

29 & 30. Olive Ketteridge and The Burgess Boys - Elizabeth Strout. I'm also immersing myself in Strout land ahead of reading her new one. I first read Olive when it came out so was glad to refresh it. I think I liked it even better this time and felt more empathy towards Olive. I then moved on to The Burgess Boys which I hadn't read before. I wasn't as sure about this one. It's about the three Burgesses, Susan, Bob and Jim, and their various families. The book starts with Susan's son Zach throwing a pig's head into a mosque, and the fallout from that event when Jim and Bob come back to the small Maine town where they grew up to defend him. The town has had an influx of Somali refugees and part of the book is about that. I didn't think that was as successful but as you get further into the story, it begins to focus more on the Burgess family, particularly Bob, and their relationships which is what Strout does so well. I'm going to read Olive Again and then move on to the newest one.

DCI ‘Ally’ McCoist is named after a fish, I believe . And it’s a recurring theme that people either mention it, or don’t, because she loathes the comparison.

I see... (not that I get the fish bit!)
Paul McGinn is also a footballer!

I have just finished James. I had never heard of Percival Everett before. This novel has been widely acclaimed and is actually top of the bestsellers lists which speaks to its success and its successful promotion. It is an excellent and very clever book with lots of great , witty touches. I cna see why poeple rate it so highly. It's many many years since I read Huckleberry Finn* so I ahve no idea really where the similarities begin and end. James is a great character and Huck is also sympathetically drawn. In some ways the book's picaresque nature stops it from having much depth but it is a book that, like the Mississippi, really carries its reader along.

23 . The last anniversary - Liane Moriarty -

I listened to this on Audible because the Australian narrator is good and having it narrated in an Australian accent adds something for me. Now I enjoyed the book, Moriarty's books are always a good yarn. This is a tale of family lies and flawed characters. But for me there was a massive plot flaw which I still can't work out, I don't think I missed it, but without too many spoilers (I hope) who owned the Alice and Jack house? I can't get my head around how they were so poor but there was an extra house? I may have missed something in the plot with this but if someone has read it and can explain it that would be fantastic as it's irritating me!

I’ve just finished two books:

the extraordinary life of Sam Hell Sam is born with red eyes and experiences discrimination because of this but has a mother who fights his corner, sometimes perhaps in a misguided way but that’s for the reader to judge. As he grows up he forms a firm friendship with two others who are discriminated against fir various reasons, one who could be said to have some responsibility for it or not depending on your point of view.

by any other name a departure from the authors usual book. A fiction book based on the life of a woman thought by some to be the author of some of Shakespeare’s work.

both were very good and I’d recommend them.

the first one wasn’t what is normally read but it was on kindle unlimited and I’m trying to expand what I read.

@InTheCludgie hope you enjoy the House of Fortune! And I used to love Point Horror too 😄 though I didn’t really understand a lot of the American high school culture!

@InTheCludgie Best Point Horror was Freeze Tag <gavel>

I could never get into Caroline B. Cooney back in the day, maybe it was her writing style. I'd happily give her books another chance though!

I Remember Nothing - Norah Ephron

I can’t remember who recommended this collection of writings but I enjoyed it very much. I read Heartburn years ago and enjoyed that too so I’m not sure why I’ve not sought out more of her work given that I loved her films.

16 Best Horror Of The Year Vol. 16 ed. Ellen Datlow

Finished the last couple of stories in here this afternoon. These anthologies (and the sadly missed Best New Horror) used to be the main way I’d find new authors in the genre. Now the quality isn’t quite as high or consistent but I still buy it for old times’ sake. 12 out of the 19 are by men, which is disappointing.
Notable stories for me were:
The Motley - Charlie Hughes
The Scare Groom - Brian Evenson*
The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs - E Catherine Tobler
Jack O Dander - Priya Sharma
The Assembled - Ramsey Campbell