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.

You're welcome!

11 Close To Home by Michael Magee
This grew on me. It seemed a bit Belfast Trainspotting at first, but developed into an understated coming of age novel set against a backdrop of aimless youth, petty crime, drugs and the shadow of The Troubles (some of the most effective bits centred around the long held memories and grudges concerning the latter).
Sean has returned from Liverpool with a degree in English, which is proving sod all use in job searches. His old mates are keen to welcome him back into the partying lifestyle born of having nothing else to do and when he hits another young man it looks like he’s on a downward spiral. An innate sense of right and wrong tries to chisel its way to his brain through all the coke, speed and booze. His friend from school, Mairead, tries to gently steer him back to the path university had him on, but, like everyone else around him, she has her own issues and struggles. I must admit I felt a bit jaded about Mairead - I seem to have read too many books where young women provide the emotional crutch for wastrels. But then again, Sean is sweet and a well written character and I did choose the book knowing it was about him, not Mairead, so maybe I’m being a bit churlish!
There’s mutterings of child abuse (Sean’s half brother, Anthony) but nothing too graphic, making the impact all the more sad imo.
It’s not quite a bold for me, but I’d certainly look at the next book Magee writes.

As regards the upthread discussion, I can be quite inwardly snobby about some books, but I try to hide it! I’d have missed out on Lisa Jewell, The Bee Sting and many others if I gave into my Inner Book Snob
When it comes to reviews I do play the ball, not the poster. I might think a book is unpublishable bilge and I’d say that, but never that anyone was an idiot for thinking otherwise. I quite regularly have books recommended to me by family and friends but “That doesn’t sound like my sort of thing, really, but thank you” will always go down better than “Read Dan Brown? Are you out of your tiny fucking mind? Thought you said you Read A Book, not checked your critical thinking cells in at the door”

I just bought The Bee Sting after a rave review from a friend, @AlmanbyRoadtrip

@cassandre thank you for putting into Barthes words what I was thinking reading a lot of this thread which I've just caught up on.

Read what you enjoy is fine but I do also think there's a space for read what challenges you and what you may not enjoy. My only 5 star read so far this year is Han Kang's Human Acts. It is not at all enjoyable and was very harrowing but I'm very glad I read it.

I have also read and enjoyed Onyx Storm too which is in no way literary fiction!

I've made a decision over the last few years to read fewer 99p Kindle deals and try and select a more diverse selection of books and actually my reading tastes have changed by consciously doing that.

And it is the best feeling to meet a fellow book nerd who has read the slightly more obscure literary stuff and chat about it.

@Stowickthevast I felt the same about Human Acts. Not pleasurable in the everyday sense of the word, but challenging and thought-provoking.

As you say, it's a boon to have a space to communicate with other readers about titles that may be less mainstream (though I suppose Han Kang is now firmly part of the literary canon now that she's won the Nobel Prize!).

19 Annie Bot by Sierra Greer

This is a prime example of a book I would not have picked up without this thread, and I’m so glad I did. I thought it was excellent, very thought provoking, and infuriating at times. Another bold!

I thought The Bee Sting was good but good only. Hated the ending.

I really enjoyed The Bee Sting. Delighted to see how many people are enjoying Annie Bot. Now if I could just talk a few people into trying Glorious Exploits (though I suspect this one is love or hate!)

I sobbed uncontrollably at the ending of The Bee Sting! While mumbling “It was ALL THERE! The signs were all there! But I didn’t see them, NO ONE LISTENED TO [character]. Honestly, I still think of it now. Love how books can do that to some readers but not to others.
My sister started reading it a while ago but I’m afraid to ask what she thought in case it was a DNF for her. Our tastes are so similar I’d wonder what was going on if she hated it.

I’m strangely resistant to Annie Bot, but I know I’ll end up getting it for 99p, just because of the buzz on here.

I’ve enjoyed reading the discussion today. Selfishly I would love it if more people read more so I had people to talk about books with, including picking apart the bad ones! My work colleagues and I discuss tv, games and movies constantly but none of them read.

On the one hand the popularity of certain books does absolutely baffle me but on the other, when I stopped limiting myself to what I considered to be worthy literature, I became a much happier reader. Oh I’ve read some shit (no book has ever made me as cross for wasting my time as Dark Matter), but also found some brilliant gems that I would have turned my nose up at otherwise. FWIW I enjoyed CCM, didn’t hate Crawdads and DNF’d EO.

Edit to add: today I made a start on Tom Lake and Bring up the Bodies on audio.

Ha! Annie Bot is 99p today. It was meant to be, obviously! Glorious Exploits looks intriguing, I’ll stick that on the list, thank you!

Late to the party to say - really interesting discussion, and thank you to @cassandre for the Barthes list, good to be reminded that nobody should feel they have to follow any rules when reading for pleasure. I think my general approach is not so much “read what you enjoy” as “read what you want” - sometimes that means giving myself a challenge which is maybe less enjoyable but good for me in a different way. I actively like Dickens, but equally there are huge numbers of worthy classics I will never touch with a barge pole, and I love trashy/easy books too. And (partly thanks to this thread, partly due to getting older) I have discovered the joy of DNF! 😄

Now I’ll get back to trying to catch up on the news etc. sufficiently to be able to actually read some books - I never seem to have enough time these days…

I love books and reading. My shopping destination of choice is a Waterstones. I adopted 2 children in 2001 who basically can't read. It is not something they can do for a myriad of reasons, some genetic, some trauma based, some environmental (possible foetal alcohol).

Anyway they both tried really hard to please me / be like me. But they can't do it.

So I can categorically tell you that reading is not for everyone.

27 The Spy and the Traitor - Ben McIntytre (NF)

This was fabulous, a bold. BMcI specialises in non fiction about spies and this is the first of his that I have read, though I watched the itvX adaptation of A Spy Amongst Friends about Kim Philby.

It was absolutely gripping. Covers the career of KGB agent Oleg Gordievsky and how he came to be a spy for the UK whilst rising through the Soviet Union’s ranks. Especially interesting, for me, because he was active during my lifetime, under Thatcher and Reagan and Gorbachev.

Meticulous research (he talks about how he wrote it at the end) and keeps a very strong thread running throughout of respect for Oleg and why he acted how he did.

@ÚlldemoShúl

Glorious Exploits is my next audiobook, but the concept baffles me and I can't help but think if it was Prisoners Of War from a more recent conflict and not one in the very distant past, this story might be considered very disturbing and distasteful eg if it was set during Nazi Germany

Do you see what I mean or am I just waffling? That's what's putting me off it anyway

The Life Inside by Andy West - I loved this. West works as a philosophy teacher in prisons and this memoir is partly about his work and conversations he has with his students, and partly about his own world and inner life. His father, brother and uncle have all spent time behind bars and he lives with a sense of inherited trauma and guilt. An eye-opening, witty and very moving account, highly recommended. Also includes his perspective on Kafka who I’ve long meant to read.

@AlmanbyRoadtrip hope you enjoy Annie Bot!
@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I totally see where you are coming from but it is more sensitive than you expect I think. I’ll be interested to hear your review.

My current audio is Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix- and it’s really not doing it for me so far (2 hours in). Anyone else read it and can advise whether it’s worth continuing?

Rather late to the discussion, but in my experience the people who read the most usually read all different types of books, not just classics or the Booker Prize shortlist, and I think there can be excellence in any genre. The one thing that annoys me is when a less good book is hyped/praised over a better book about the same subject, eg Sebastian Faulkes’ Birdsong vs. Pat Barker’s Regeneration Trilogy.

Anyway, two books I got in the charity bookshop where I volunteer:

8. A Traveller in Time - Alison Uttley
Classic children’s time-slip novel. In the early 20th century, Penelope goes to stay with relatives in rural Derbyshire, and starts travelling back to Elizabethan England. The then-inhabitants of the house, the Babingtons, are plotting to free Mary Queen of Scots from her nearby captivity. Penelope knows it won’t succeed, but can only watch as the plot unfolds. A lot of the pleasure in this book is the recreation of rural domestic life in the two periods; the plot is actually rather low key.

9. The Madness of Grief - Rev Richard Coles
Given the subject matter of this book - the tragic premature death of Coles’ husband from alcoholism - it seems rather mean to say that I was a bit disappointed by this book. I think it’s because it mainly focuses on the period from David’s last days to the funeral, and there’s a bit too much detail on what Coles did day-to-day and not enough reflection.

I’m now reading Greek Lessons downstairs and Cuddy upstairs, though I can only read intermittently at all with DD’s current mental state (very bad OCD).

@ChannelLightVessel very sorry to hear about your DD.

Wishing your DD the best Channel

@ÚlldemoShúl I got Glorious Exploits for Christmas but was saving it to read with my book club when it's my choice, not for a couple of months though. Do you think it's a good one for discussion or should I just dive in solo?

15. Strange Pictures - Uketsu, translated by Jim Rion. This was a quirky Japanese book that DH bought me for Valentine's Day. It's a murder mystery based on pictures. There are 4 separate sections which all have drawings in that are the key to various murders. At the end you find out how they're all connected. The writing is quite basic but the plot is more complex. It's a quick read, but I quite enjoyed this as a different take on a crime book. It's also got a really cool cover. Apparently the author is a famous Japanese You Tuber who always wears a mask and distorts his voice so no-one knows who he is.

@MonOncle are you talking about Dark Matter by Crouch or Dark Matter by Paver?

Also curious to know this!

@Hellohah @SheilaFentiman Sorry for confusion. Blake Crouch! I wasn’t aware of the other.

@ChannelLightVessel best wishes to your daughter

@Stowickthevast there are definitely lots of themes to explore for book club. Looking forward to hearing what you think when you get to it.

I’m currently watching Women’s Prize predictions videos and regretting my choice to read Middlemarch and a new translation of The Iliad in March/April as it doesn’t leave me a lot of time for this year’s longlist.