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.

Thanks Shackleton 😍😂

33. The Man Who Went Up In Smoke - Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, transl. Joan Tate

I'm now hopelessly hooked on these excellent Swedish crime procedurals. No. 2 sees lugubrious detective Martin Beck just off on holiday to a nearby island when he gets a call summoning him back to headquarters. A Swedish journalist has gone missing in Budapest and Martin is required to go over there to investigate. Once again the draw of the story is the weary slog of an investigation that seems to be going nowhere. I don’t quite know how Sjöwall and Wahlöö do it but I was gripped yet again.

34. Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness - Susannah Cahalan

This had been on my wishlist for ages when it popped up as a kindle deal recently. Cahalan was a keen young reporter on the New York Post when she started to experience strange symptoms of numbness, then paranoia, insomnia, wild mood-swings, and eventually seizures. Things only got worse from there, and yet a raft of tests gave her the physical all-clear and she was heading towards a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder when one specialist performed the simple test that revealed the truth: she had a rare, life-threatening autoimmune disease that was rampaging through her brain. Cahalan writes honestly and unsparingly about her experiences and the huge toll her illness took on her and her family (not least financial: her treatment cost $1m, but luckily mostly covered by insurance). Although she’s recovered, there’s no guarantee she won’t relapse at some point in the future, which is scary.

Lucky you @Tarragon123, I've just looked up the Aberfeldy Watermill Bookshop and it looks fabulous.

Also greatly enjoying all the museum chat and have the British Museum book on my wishlist.

12. My Favourite Mistake, by Marian Keyes. Another Walsh sisters book, this one a follow up to Anna's story. Anna has given up her life in New York and returned to Ireland, where she finds herself acting as a PR person for Brigit and Colm's new hotel and spa venture, which is being sabotaged by persons unknown. You know what you're getting with Marian Keyes and this was no exception. I love Anna, Narky Joey is a suitably foxy 'hero', and I was fully immersed in all the goings on in the village, and would have quite happily moved there. An excellent light read.

13. The Last Days of Kira Mullan, by Nicci French. Police consider Kira Mullan's death a suicide, and the investigation is quickly closed. Her neighbour Nancy North believes Kira was murdered, but Nancy is recovering from a psychotic break, and no one believes what she's saying. As I'd hoped, Detective Maud O’Connor, who first appeared in Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter is back and picks up the case. This is tense, frightening and very well done and I enjoyed it more than the previous book in the series.

Cider with Rosie Laurie Lee

So after all the discussion about Cider with Rosie I had to read it, although yesterday half way through I had to double check that you hadn’t all been discussing Cider House Rules as, other than dated tropes and idea I didn’t see much wrong - then I realised it really is very much at the end.

I enjoyed a lot of this, his prose is wonderfully evocative and I just saw a picture of his house and it is exactly how I imagined. I particularly enjoyed the chapter about the Grannies and the one about his mother - in fact everything about his mother. She reminded me a bit of the bewildered, always chasing her tail mother in Nanny McPhee. It was very clever really, as he explains some quite distressing things (ignoring the end) in a very matter of fact way that alludes to this cosy nostalgia but belies it.

Anyway, now I’ve looked it up, wondering if Cider House Rules is worth it?

@cassandre I feel sure I’ve met Dan Hicks at a conference but can’t think of a reason we would be at the same conference so maybe we just had a good old Twitter chat.

Thanks for the information, @cassandre - that's interesting context. I'll look out for Dan Hicks (random observation re the shrunken heads: the bit in the Harry Potter film with the shrunken heads talking on the Knight Bus is not dating well).

@AgualusasLover I thought The Cider House Rules was excellent. Well worth a read in my opinion.

39 The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths

I love time time travel and a good crime novel so this sounded right up my street. There were definitely a few problems with it. The science around the time travel is less than convincing and I find it hard to believe that the government department using it would be run in such a ‘hands-off’ way. But I also liked lots about it. As a fellow graduate from QMUL I really enjoyed revisiting the Mile End campus and the East End in general. I think this series has potential and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.

@ÚlldemoShúl – thank you for that. My knowledge of the KKK is from movies, so really lacking. I didn’t even know that they were anti RC! I have added Fever in the Heartland to my TBR.

@noodlezoodle – can you believe my sister used to live nearby and didn’t tell me about it! Or my Mum! I messaged our family chat and they were both like, oh yeah, great coffee and cakes as well as being a great book shop. Bah! I would recommend to anyone in the area, but save yourself for the Highland Chocolatier in nearby Grantully lol.

RWYO is going well on the Kindle, not so much on the physical pile! I’m on 24 kindle books as I have bought a few 99p deals, including The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths which was on my radar. So I need to stop buying books. I think I did quite well in January and February, maybe even March, but I cant remember when I fell dramatically off the wagon. Dusted off and climbed back on lol.

The KKK is part of the thread that runs through The Wrath To Come that I read recently. All the 'decent' Klan members in Gone With The Wind...

Thanks @Piggywaspushed I’ve added it to my TBR.

And I have added Fever to mine!

59 . The Power Of The Dog by Thomas Savage

Got this at some stage in the deals. Never seen the film which I heard was long and boring whereas this is succinct at less than 300 pages.

Bachelor brothers George and Phil Burbank are wealthy landowners but when George becomes taken with local widow Rose, Phil is consumed by resentment and jealousy making Rose’s life as difficult as possible.

The ending is a twist and it’s very very subtle so you kind of have to pay full attention as it goes along. I had to check I’d understood it.

I enjoyed the book overall, another good but not a bold.

Talking of book shops I’ve just got back from a week in Hereford so, of course, had to do a day trip to Hay on Wye. What a place! It’s lovely.
It did feel quite busy though and lots of narrow streets that feel like they should be pedestrianised, but aren’t. Has anyone been to the book festival there? I imagine it’s crazy busy?

The Mysterious Affair at Styles Agatha Christie (audio read by Hugh Fraser

The first Poirot in my very slow AC reading/listening. I’ve read this a few times, when I attempt to start at the beginning and always found it a bit meh. I did doze off a bit between chapters 11-12 so may have missed crucial bits, but I got Poirot doing the round up at the end. This is pretty classic Christie though, red herrings and diversions.

I would recommend you read the next two books in the trilogy, about when he went off to fight in the Spanish Civil War. As I Walked Out One MidSummer Morning is the next one and is a really great read.

@DesdamonasHandkerchief I went to Hay On Wye last year but not for the festival, it is beautiful though. Good ice cream too.

We go to Hay a couple of times a year as it’s only about an hour from us but never been to the Festival. I keep saying we must go. It’s so busy there most of the year. Shepherds Ice cream! Herefordshire is one of my favourite places on earth @DesdamonasHandkerchief.

I've also just finished Cider With Rosie following on from all the discussion upthread (and some 50 years after I originally read it). I thought the descriptive writing was gorgeous and as @AgualusasLover puts it so well, "It was very clever really, as he explains some quite distressing things (ignoring the end) in a very matter of fact way that alludes to this cosy nostalgia but belies it." I think the problem with the "incident" is not so much that it happened and was included in the narrative - I'm sure it was sadly not uncommon - but LL's reaction to it and his pejorative description of the other girls immediately following.

Anyway, it also led me to rereading U A Fanthorpe's rather wonderful poem, Dear Mr Lee. https://anotherhand.livejournal.com/81641.html

A Spell Of Good Things by Ayobami Adebayo

I really enjoyed Stay With Me and was hoping for more of the same with her second book, but I struggled to get into this.

We follow a doctor who is making her family happy by marrying a man before she's 30 and a very poor teenager who desperately wants a little money to pay his school fees. It's obvious their two paths will cross at some point but takes a long time to get there.

There are lots of characters and of course have Nigerian names which I don't know how to pronounce in my head and then it takes me ages to get in my mind who is who. Lots of people are referred to with different names in different contexts and I had to re-read a few passages to make sure I had grasped what was going on.

It took til halfway for me to get interested in what was going on and how the characters were developing.

Three and a half stars. It was fine overall.

Interesting discussion on Spanish Easter & KKK. I've just got back from central America where Easter is equally huge, and I did feel a little uncomfortable seeing people in crusader costumes walking the streets. Incidentally another book which has some KKK back story is The Trees by Percival Everett, done in a more satirical/comic way.

On the way back I finished :
43. The Dream Hotel - Laila Lalimi - much reviewed book from the WP longlist that is set in the near future and follows an American muslim woman, Sara Hussein, who is detained for dreaming about killing her husband. I thought this was generally very good - the dystopian is scarily realistic and it makes good points about big data. There were a few loose ends for me that stopped it from being a bold, but I defiantly would have shortlisted it over a couple of others.

44. Sunset Over Chocolate Mountains - Susan Elderkin. This was a book club read. It's about an Englishman called Theo who moves to the Arizona desert. The story jumps between his story as he moves there, his daughter Josie's story set a few years later and following her growing up, and a couple from the Czech Republic. This was ok but it was quite obvious where it was going, and didn't really stand out for me.

Latest reads

All Wrapped Up by Larry Lamb

This follows a film crew trying to make a film on a tropical island with a political coup going on. Could have been a very entertaining read but unfortunately the dialogue felt very stilted and there was far too much telling not showing.

The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz by L. Frank Baum

Interesting to see the differences between this and the very famous film - in the book the Wicked Witch of the West barely features, and the film makes up a lot of backstory before Dorothy even gets to Oz which just doesn’t exist in the book.

Goodbye Birdie Greenwing by Ericka Waller

Three neighbours, each dealing with their own isolation, are brought together when elderly lady Birdie has an accident. If you like books about lonely people being brought out of their shells and making new friends, this is a good example of that genre.

Their Monstrous Hearts by Yiğit Turhan

Riccardo discovers his grandmother, who he hasn’t seen for years, has died and has left him her house and her butterfly collection. When visiting the house he finds his grandmother’s diary which explains her backstory and why butterflies are so important to her - but there is something dark and disturbing lurking in the house. This was fine as a story but I loved the butterfly imagery.

The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden

Read for the Rather Dated thread on here, this is a coming of age story that’s actually very autobiographical. A family of children end up having an extended stay at a French hotel when their mother is unexpectedly taken into hospital, and they fall under the guardianship of fellow Englishman Eliot, who isn’t all he seems. I liked this but didn’t love it.

The Other People by C J Tudor

Gabe is convinced he saw his daughter being driven away in a car, after she was supposedly murdered. Three years later he’s still trying to find her - but The Other People don’t want her to be found. Decent thriller with a supernatural edge.

The Missing by Jane Casey

Love her Maeve Kerrigan series, but this was just OK. Teacher Sarah is caught up in a murder investigation when she finds the body of one of her pupils who’s been missing for a couple of days. There are similarities to Sarah’s brother going missing as a teenager 16 years ago - are the cases linked? OK story but very irritating main character (and trigger warning for child abuse).

40 Saturation Point by Adrian Tchaikovsky

It’s the near future and climate change has turned the equator into a tropical rain forest in which humans can’t survive without a whole load of equipment. The zone has been completely abandoned by humans, leaving certain animals and plants to thrive. Twenty years ago Marks was one of a group of scientists to study the zone, until the funding was withdrawn. In the present day Marks, as one of the few people to have survived the zone, is co-opted to a search and rescue mission in the zone for survivors of a crash. However it soon becomes apparent that not everything is as it seems with the mission, and that life in the zone has evolved since Marks was last there. This is the third book I’ve read by this author and I’ve enjoyed them all. This one was no exception, I’m not sure if it will be a bold yet, but it was very good.

@DesdamonasHandkerchief I've been to Hay four or five times. The first time we drove down on spec when there were just two tents in a field. We were able to buy tickets that morning to see Ian McEwan and Sebastian Faulkes .. it's nothing like that now. For the popular events you need to be online the second tickets go on sale. And it's huge now. Well organised though ime.

It must be at least ten years since I was last there, however I'm going back this year and camping for a couple of nights so it'll be easy walking distance from the Festival site. All the hotel/B&B accommodation in Hay tends to be taken up by the sponsors and the TV people. Among others, I'll be seeing Janice Hadlow, John Crace and Mary Trump. Sometimes the random smaller events turn out to be the best; I discovered Ann Patchett that way.

And when I was last there it was still enjoyable to wander round the town and the bookshops weren't too overcrowded to enjoy browsing. Looking forward to it!

Finished High Wages by Dorothy Whipple last night and loved it! Such great detail about how women shopped then, and the gradual development of ready to wear clothes. I was rooting for Jane to succeed all the way through. Delighted with this one of my recent Persephone choices.

Thanks for the replies @BestIsWest @EineReiseDurchDieZeit @highlandcoo, the Hay on Wye book festival is now firmly on my bucket list, but I’ll definitely return for another visit and this time make sure I get an ice cream 🍦