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.

The Crown is marvellous. I haven’t seen the Keira Nightly P&P. I might give it a watch.

BTW thanks to whoever it was that recommended The Lives and Deaths of the Princesses of Hesse, I’m thoroughly enjoying it.

I don’t really think the ages matter too much. For me, as long as Olivia Colman could feasibly be Emma Corin’s mother then it works.

Emma Corrin is 29 - a bit old for Elizabeth too. She is 20 by the middle of the book.

Is all this casting not just because our ideas of age have changed, though? However old Mrs B is meant to be, she probably would have looked the age of OC to our 21st century eyes? And a 19 ear old actress for Elizabeth would seem too young.

I have no axe to grind. Hate Jane Austen , don't mind a few of the films but not overly fussed on P and P off the telly.

Kiera Knightley was 20 in the previous film. I think being young and naive is part of the plot.

We desperately need a new Jane Eyre imo. I haven't moved on from Timothy Dalton as Mr Rochester.

Possibly! Bit also KK was the new starlet so helped to sell tickets.

Jennifer Ehle was surely quite old?

Tbf it's better than the more typical casting situation, with a man who is far too old to be the romantic partner of the much younger female lead. At least, assuming they don't choose a 25 year old man to play Mr Bennett!

I think the ages do matter. A girl of 20 is very different to a woman of 30.

And part of the characterisation is that people like Mes Bennet and Mr Woodhouse in Emma are hypochondriacs who seem older than their years.

Well, Colonel Brandon and Marianne Dashwood are 17 and 35 iirc. And Knightley must be at least ten years older than Emma, I’d guess.

I hated Jennifer E as Lizzie. All dimples and no fire.

The Ruth Wilson Jane Eyre and the Mia Wasikowska Jane Eyre were both pretty good. Toby Stephens and Michael Fassbender respectively as Rochester.

Remus the 1995 Pride and Prejudice is literally one of my favourite things, I watch it annually at least twice.

I have a 29 year old who is in my team and sits next to me most days, to my mid 40s self she is plenty naive (lovely, but def naive) and I do think that @Piggywaspushed is right, our notion of age and acceptable age has moved on and so casting feeds into that. I definitely don’t want a 14 year old Juliet!

I have enjoyed all those Jane Eyre’s but Zillah and Timothy are my Jane and Rochester and I’m actually too young to have watched it when it was aired. Despite the sets looking very dated I still loved it when I watched it max 10 years ago.

Zelah

Controversially I quite like Emma Corrin & Olivia Coleman. Although they may be around the same age, she looks quite a bit younger than Jack Louden.

Agatha Christie is my comfort read after reading them obsessively as a teen. I never liked the Tuppence ones though.

40. I Who Have Never Known Men - Jacqueline Harpman, translated by Ros Schwartz. Third is a dystopian book first published in 1995 that has gathered momentum over the last couple of years. Apparently the translator did a new translation using more informal language. It's narrated by an unnamed girl who finds herself in a bunker with 39 women. None of them know why they are there or how they got there. It's short and never really explains the why it where of it, but it's a reasonable read. I don't think I'm one of the massive fans of this though.

41. Hagstone- Sinéad Gleeson. This is about Nell an artist who lives on an unnamed possibly Irish island, far from anywhere. There's a group of reclusive women living in a house on the island where they have built a refuge. The leader commissions Nell to do some work to commemorate their 30th anniversary. I listened to this and really enjoyed the atmospheric story telling, the narrator had a great Irish accent which helped. It hasn't got great reviews on his reads though so looks like I'm going against the grain again!

@Stowickthevast. I too, don’t get the recent hype around I Who Have Never Known Men it was good but lacked a resolution

Began well but ultimately sucked.

DH is working nightshift this weekend, I feel a 1995 P&P rewatch incoming...

Agree 100% Overhyped

I like a bit of Agatha Christie - I like mid-twentieth century popular literature anyway, and she can be quietly funny in her own way.

A few long train journeys recently, so I've polished off the following:

41. I Could Read the Sky, Timothy O'Grady
Originally published in 1997, this novel is narrated by an old Irish man looking back on his youthful immigration to England and his work as a casual labourer. I originally assumed this was based on painful personal experience, and was surprised to see that the author was born in Chicago. It draws on lots of real-life experiences as well. It dwells heavily on the pain of exile. It feels like a half-forgotten time. I was rather moved by it.

42. Nesting, Roisin O'Donnell
Much-reviewed story of a young woman who escapes her emotionally abusive husband and struggles to find a new home in Dublin with her small children. I agree with previous posters who said that the hint of romance didn't sit well with the rest of the book. It was very much an Issues Novel. Very readable. Not surprised that it wasn't shortlisted for literary prizes though.

43. Next Exit: Magic Kingdom, Rory MacLean
Travel book focusing on Florida. Published in 2000 so a bit dated now without being old enough for period charm. I'm not very keen on the type of travel writing that focuses on encounters with quirky individuals, which this very much is.

Oops, forgot:

40. The Rest of Our Lives, Ben Markovits
A male midlife crisis novel - the narrator drops off his daughter at college and wonders what he'll do with the rest of his life. He's worried about health, he's thinking about his marriage, career choices, and people he used to know. Embarks on road-trip to encounter some of them again. Set in America - there seem to a lot of these stories of upper middle-class narrators pathologizing family life. I was happy enough to turn the pages but didn't think it particularly stood out.

26. The Girl Who Played with Fire By Stieg Larsson
    A decent sequel, and had to be read, but not the page turner the first one was.
    It is set immediately after the events in "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", a lot of meandering around at the but once a reporter who is about to publish a scoop on the sex trade is murdered it picks up a pace. Lots of characters and places to keep track of but good writing.

27. Atlas- the Story of Pa Salt by Lucinda Riley
    The last one of a long series, and it pulls it all together nicely.
    As the title suggests, after each of the seven adopted daughters of Pa Salt had their own story, they come together and lament how they didn't really know him at all, and very little of where he came from originally and his own background. This final instalment offers that and does it all satisfactorily.
    It's been a long series, and I read the first one a few years ago. They were too samey to read back to back, but enjoyable enough for a light read.

28. Wicked Beyond Belief: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper by Michael Bilton
    I have been reading this on and off for ages after watching The Long Shadow on TV, which was excellent.
    It's a very in depth account of the police investigation into the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper in the 1970s, the investigation itself, the forensic science available to them at the time, how they failed to identify Peter Sutcliff as a suspect despite his name being in their system multiple times and how the inquiry changed how major investigations were run in the future.
    It's well written and researched, but I had to dip in and out - cosy bedtime reading it is not.

Finished The Wrath to Come in which Sarah Churchwell links Gone With The Wind (mainly the book but there are interesting sections on the film) with its Civil War, Depression Era/ rise of Fascism contexts and the rise of Trump and the Capitol insurrection and ideas of American exceptionalism and American mythmaking.

The book came out in paperback at a time when she already needs to write an afterword tbh, since she didn't know Trump would regain power.

It's an insightful, complex and at times deeply troubling with graphic descriptions of lynchings.

I have never read GWTW . I have probably seen the whole of the film in bits. I genuinely had no idea how abhorrently racist the book is.

61 The Reversal - Michael Connelly

Third in the Lincoln Lawyer series (of which I have read book 1 but not book 2; however, book 2 was turned into season 1 on Netflix, which I have watched)

This was an entertaining read and saw Haller and his first ex-wife Maggie working closely together, when Haller crosses the floor to be a prosecutor rather than defense counsel to a man being re-tried for the murder of a 12 year old girl 24 years ago (his conviction was recently quashed on new dna evidence but Haller and team still think he did it)

The courtroom tension was built well but the ending was a smidge rushed.

Malorie by Josh Malerman
The sequel to Birdbox in which the world is invaded by creatures which drive people mad if they are seen. I quite liked Birdbox, which was made into a truly dreadful film starring Sandra Bullock, who was awful. This sequel is also awful.