50 Books Challenge 2025 Part Four

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the fourth 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, the second thread here and the third thread here.

A hectic, trying week of work and funeral planning means I haven’t caught up on the thread all week; came to it today and saw it’s up to over 150 new posts. Eek! So, when I get a moment I’ll catch up, but in the meantime these need to be returned to the library on Monday:

’17. The Road - Christopher Hadley

I was worried about this at first and even briefly thought about DNF. However, after a flowery start to the first chapter, it settles down into a slightly more conventional (thank goodness) account tracing Roman Road RR21b from Braughing, Hertfordshire to Great Chesterford, Essex. There were fascinating literary diversions into the historiography of the road, the amateur archaeologists who had influenced the discovery of the route, and the uses of aerial photography, coins and pottery in archaeology. A smattering of travel writing and folklore completed the picture.

I think if I had ignored the shaky start, and I knew more about that part of the world, the book would have been a bold; as it was, a surprisingly enjoyable read nonetheless.

‘18. All the Beauty in the World - Patrick Bringley

Much read by 50 Bookers last year, this made the top non fiction list of 2024. Musing on the life of a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the author brings humanity and charm to his work and the pieces of art over which he has responsibility. I enjoyed his thoughts on the artworks, the visitors and his fellow guards who became his work colleagues after a family bereavement inspired him to take a different journey in life. Engrossing, fascinating and moving: for me a bold.

Now, back to catch up on the thread 😊

Three more reads for me, all of which were better than I’d expected- which is great after a series of disappointing reads!

38 Watching from the Dark- Gytha Lodge
The second in the Jonah Sheens series of police procedurals. Someone on here recommended these to me ages ago- I read and enjoyed the first then kind of forgot about them. This second I discovered in my library audiobooks list and decided a listen would be enjoyably different from my current Women’s Prize reading. Zoe is murdered while Aidan Poole is on a Skype call with her but he can’t see anything. Sheens and his team investigate. Good set up and cast of suspects. I did guess whodunnit but it was distracting all the same.

39 Good Girl by Aria Aber
Nila is a young woman of Afghan descent living in Berlin. She is in denial about her heritage and the loss of her mother. She avoids her father and his family and tells people that her heritage is Greek. She descends into a spiral of drugs, dropping out and a toxic relationship. I generally don’t really like ‘messy’ women books and especially not ones caught up in the drug scene which bored me senseless, but this was good. I feel like we really got under Nila’s skin and it was beautifully written.

Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis
Nadia lands a job at the UN which she feels really unqualified for- setting up a rehabilitation programme for ISIS brides. She is also escaping the end of a relationship and a tricky relationship with her mother. While at the camp she becomes particularly interested in the case of Sara, a young London Muslim who came to marry an ISIS fighter at the behest of her best friend. This is mainly humorous at the start but it does become more serious as it progresses and Nadia learns a lot. I would have preferred the change a bit earlier but this was a good debut and Younis has worked widely in aid and knows what she’s talking about. I will be interested to see what my DSis (an ex aid worker) makes of it.

I am currently reading Dream Hotel (good so far) and Lucy by the Sea. I have nothing on this weekend so hope I might finish these two and maybe even Tell me Everything by the shortlist announcement on Tuesday.
That means I will only have Nesting, Amma and Dream Count left to read I think. I’ll do a shortlist prediction on Monday!

Why can’t we edit posts any more? Anyway, above review of Good Girl should say that drugs stories usually bore me senseless but this one didn’t!

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I don't know yet. Family stuff going down at the moment and I'm not sure of the timescale- makes me reluctant to put anything in the diary at the moment.

I could edit this morning.

*edited this post

*edited again to say I think there’s only a small window of time to edit posts.

Thanks Best is West. I use the browser rather than the app and my only options now are - quote/ react/ add post/ report and bookmark- react has replaced edit

@ÚlldemoShúl I use the browser too. On an iPad. Strange

Aah, do you get the 3 little dots in the top right of a post. The edit function is in there for me.

Just found it in the three little dots- thanks! This will hopefully make my posts more comprehensible again in future!

AlmanbyRoadtrip · 07/02/2025 06:24

9 The Lamb by Lucy Rose
Without a doubt, one of the most disturbing books I’ve ever read and I don’t disturb easily.
Margot lives with her Mama, Ruth, in a little cottage in the middle of nowhere (by geographical clues such as the Helm Wind, I’d guess in the North Pennine region). From the first page it is made clear that they are cannibals, luring ‘Strays’ in from the road and off the hills. Lots of detail about the process of killing them, dressing the carcass, cooking and eating them, counterbalanced with detail about the hills and woods surrounding the cottage.
Margot goes to school but is warned not to draw attention to herself in any way. Naturally, she is very isolated, but has a tentative friendship with Abbie, whose father goes to Margot’s cottage to have sex with Mama occasionally. She is relentlessly bullied by the boys in the area, but the driver of the school bus protects her on her journeys.
One day, a non-Stray turns up. Eden inveigles herself into the household and things begin to change.
It’s not a gross-out cannibal horror by any means. The depictions of insatiable hunger and longing are exquisitely drawn. Margot fitting in the normal world at school where her peers and adults have no idea of her home life are heartbreakingly realistic if you take away the eating people aspect. It’s as much a novel about poverty and isolation as anything else. The ending just about broke my heart.
Minor quibbles - where does Mama find money for the electricity and the small amount of non-Stray food they have? Why does no one notice just how many people go missing in the area - yes, Strays are chosen carefully so a fair proportion will just drop off the radar, but some are just hikers.
It will stick in my head for a fair while and a book that out-bleaks the bleakest of Benjamin Myers is unusual. I can’t wait to see what Rose produces next and I’m going to look up her short folk horror films.

@AlmanbyRoadtrip

Remember you posted this on the other thread ?
I ordered this from the library off the back of your post , and it's only just come and I've managed to read it .
Totally agree with you on how gruesome it was , quite unlike anything I've read before , totally weird and reminded me of another " strange & out of my comfort zone " - The House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward.

Anyway , thank you for the heads up on it. Definitely not for the squeamish , and a strange ending .

@Fictionreader100 glad you ‘liked’ it! Agree it shares a sense of the main protagonist’s Normal being very far away from the average reader’s Normal, like The Last House On Needless Street.

DNF The Echoes by Evie Wyld
I got to 100 pages in then had to put down I was bored by it and not for me. It was recommended on here and I liked the review. However totally not what I thought it would be. It started with a dead ghost of a boyfriend but ended up focusing on the girlfriend that was left and her dark, abusive childhood in Australia. Not for me.

12. The hole by Hiroko Oyamada A woman moves next door to her in laws when her husband gets a transfer at work. The area is rural and she can't find work. One day she follows a mysterious creature and falls in a hole.

This was a short novella I picked up at the library this morning after enjoying the author's other book The factory. This was also readable and disconcerting. Odd ending but I think that is her style.

I finished 51. The Wardrobe Department by Elaine Garvey this morning. It's a debut novel from an Irish writer - about a young woman who moved to London from Ireland to work in theatre. The first half was a bit slow for me but the second half was really relatable so it got to me in the end! I'd say it'd all about what it feels like to be an outsider in places you should belong.

I then absolutely powered through 52. Go Tell it in the Mountain by James Baldwin this afternoon. I didn't expect to read this so quickly but it was impossible to put down. It's very religious - but I did see some of that kind of thing growing up so it wasn't so shocking to me. Baldwin is a brilliant author - I've read three if his novels and one of his non fiction books so far.

Not totally sure what I'll pick up next.

It must be 20+ years since I read We wish to inform you… but it’s a book that I regularly think about. You’ve reminded me that I’ve had A Sunday at the pool in Kigali on my shelf for years and not got round to reading it.

Has anyone found the Kindle Daily Deals today? I usually get to this by going to Kindle Books then Kindle Book Deals, and usually the kindle daily deals are at the top of that page and I click through from there for more information. However the Daily Deals aren’t showing on the Kindle Book Deals page today and I’m not getting anywhere when I search for Daily Deal. Can anyone else find them?

@ChessieFL Yes, I usually just google Kindle Daily Deals UK. No problem accessing them today.

Yes, I had exactly this problem and was just ranting to DH about Amazon being determined to stop us finding the deals! I too have a link set up the same as you, Chessie…..but it simply isn’t anywhere to be seen via that route today.

However, if you just google 'Kindle Daily Deals', it appears. I’ve tested going back to my normal procedure and nope, no way of finding the deals from there. So I've no idea what the heck Amazon have done but it’s very frustrating.

Thanks! I’ve now been able to find them by simply googling but appears to be no way to find them directly from Amazon. Very strange.

Thank you for the title @SheilaFentiman, not sure why I didn’t see that earlier. Added to my list.

I’m currently on chapter 6 of Middlemarch which I am reading because I feel I ought to, and lots of people here have enjoyed it. I’ve never yet managed to read any George Eliot, Jane Austen, or anything similar, except for Little Women which I read as a child. It’s slow going. I’m trying to be a grown up, and I feel like if I was a grown up I would be able to read these types of books. Is it a “persevere, the reward will be worth it” situation? It’s slowing down my reading, because it’s not holding my attention, so I end up putting it down to do other things.

I never took to Middlemarch much. I never quite get the fuss. It has some brilliant passages. I liked her shorter novels far more and prefer Gaskell overall, who I find more entertaining.

@Castlerigg I’m reading Middlemarch too And tbh I don’t love it the way everyone else seems to- I do like it, but still haven’t seen why it’s so loved and I’m on chapter 33. That said I am making my way through it easily as I read 1 chapter a day only so I can fit other things around it easily.

@Castlerigg.

I maybe would have gone with Austen or Bronte as a Gateway To Classics, Eliot is a bit more dense. I would even say David Copperfield over Middlemarch as a beginners classic.

I reread Middlemarch last Summer. I enjoyed it, but there is a chapter or a long section about medicine which made my eyes glaze over.

That’s a good idea @ÚlldemoShúl, maybe I’ll commit to a chapter a day and then read something else the rest of the time.

I read (and enjoyed) 41 Lucy by the Sea in one day- Lucy and her ex husband William spend lockdown together in a rented house in Maine (the house belonging to Olive Kitteridge). This reminded me of some of the parts of the pandemic I had forgotten so I’d advise people who found the whole pandemic traumatic to give this one a swerve. I liked it but didn’t love it and I feel I’ve kind of overloaded on Strout- just when I reach the one that is on the WP longlist! I’m slotting at least one book in between so I’m now reading The Dream Hotel (excellent so far) and have just started Dream Count. Hoping I finish them in time for the short list which is on Wednesday, not Tuesday as I originally thought. An extra day- yay!