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.

Literally just started Conclave over my lunch break. Whatever else about Robert Harris, the man certainly has range.

43 The Burning by Jane Casey

First in the Maeve Kerrigan series, which has received a lot of love on the thread. I realised I’d bought this a few years ago and never got round to reading it. It was good, and I downloaded the second in the series today.

@MamaNewtNewt Careful! Addiction incoming!

63 . Geneva by Richard Armitage (Audible)

Free to me on Audible. Read by Richard Armitage and Nicola Walker.

Sara Collier is a Nobel Prize Winner lately diagnosed with Alzheimer’s who attends a conference in Geneva.

it was a fairly pedestrian thriller with a bit of a silly and not believable series of twists.

It was well read though

Post #980: New thread needed soon?

I was a bit shocked yesterday by this the introduction to Persephone Pamphlet 2:

"We feel strongly that if a book has been on your TBR pile for a few months you are never going to read it and it should go to a charity shop"

Most of the books I read spend more than a few months in my TBR - even library books only get picked up immediately if it's really urgent, that is, I know I can't renew but am fairly sure I can finish before I have to return it (or before it disappears if it's a library ebook

I have had things on TBR for actual years! I’ve still read them!

@FuzzyCaoraDhubh i haven’t met a Robert Harris book I didn’t like yet 😀

"We feel strongly that if a book has been on your TBR pile for a few months you are never going to read it and it should go to a charity shop"

Persephone IBVU!

I'm disappointed that neither Conclave nor The Burning are available in my library 🙁

"We feel strongly that if a book has been on your TBR pile for a few months you are never going to read it and it should go to a charity shop"

Not true! Some books have been laid down like fine wines for future enjoyment.

Though having looked in a bit more detail, they have all the Robert Harris on Borrowbox Audio in Russian - wtf? Do you reckon that is a glitch? I live in the arse end of north Wales - not many Russians around, it's not like we have a big immigrant community around here.

71 Conclave - Robert Harris

I have a day off, so I have devoured this. Definite bold, it was excellent.

I won’t say much, as so many of us are reading it, but we see the Papal election - in considerable but engrossing detail - through the eyes of Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals. All he wants is to oversee a straightforward election, but as the votes go on, with no white smoke, events and characters turn out far from simple…

Persephone are definitely being very unreasonable there- I’ve read (and enjoyed) books that have been on my shelves- real or virtual for years.

Try donating books to a charity shop these days. Loads won't take them. I was clearing my dad's house - the only charity shop in his little town won't take hardbacks!

Lovely way of putting it!

I’m a terrible person and have vowed to stay away from literary clergymen including popes.

I loved Fatherland but the couple of other Robert Harris books I’ve read were nowhere near as good, I thought. Maybe I should try a few more, but I think it will depend on the period and subject. No popes.

My TBR pile is totally controlled by my random number generator selection. Ones that have been there gor months simply haven't had their number come up yet. They aren't languishing, unloved.

"We feel strongly that if a book has been on your TBR pile for a few months you are never going to read it and it should go to a charity shop"

OMG that is downright absurd.

I do tend to have a recency bias on my tbr but am really trying to read an oldie from the tbr every now and then.

Persephone are being ridiculous.

I liked the Cicero books Remus, also liked Enigma. I wasn't as keen on the Tony Blair one.

I should say that there was a Precipice thread on mumsnet a few months ago and people were mostly complaining about it, so I thought I should give any Robert Harris lovers a heads up. It is apparently not as gripping as his usual style. I have only read Pompeii - I didn't realise he wrote books like Fatherland.

I’m jealous of you having the whole series ahead of you to read for the first time!

I am very much in two minds about The Women which I know many have read. I was wary as I find that Kristin Hannah type books aren't to my taste but so many rave reviews lured me (and a cheap price!). Good points : it does tell an untold story and there is a place for this . It's highly readable.

But it was too 'American' for me and too shlocky. I would have enjoyed the plot just as much without the two love affairs. I thought the ending put things 'right' in a twist I saw coming a mile off although it did right an earlier annoyance I had about which man she picks (I am tryign to avoid spoilers here...)

I also thought it was easily 150 pages too long. And there's a black character who never seems to experience any racism whilst in Vietnam ? Really??

I found the protagonist a bit annoying, must be honest.

I think I’ve read most of Robert Harris’s books and like most of them but couldn’t get on with the second Cicero book

Paging @Southeastdweller(hopefully no one else has and I’ve missed it) as we are ready for a new thread 😊

I’ll look out for Enigma. I was so disappointed by Munich.