50 Books Challenge 2025 Part Five

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the fifth 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 or / and maybe authors as well of books you've read or going to read? It makes it much easier to keep track. Some of us like to bring over lists to the next thread- again, this is up to you.

The first thread of the year is here, the second thread here , the third thread here and the fourth thread here.

It was me, Remus. Glad you enjoyed it.

I keep falling off the thread 🤣

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

This really was an epic read and fast paced despite being very long. It did dip a bit with a drawn out section in Rome and I still don't know why we got all that detail as it largely wasnt relevant. I am so pleased I read this, especially with the read along as we had a lot of knowledgeable people chipping in history and detail and it was fascinating.

Death and The Penguin by Andrey Kurkov

Much read on here a little while back, this was a fairly surreal book. The chapters were short and punchy which I liked but I think made me rave through the book and I possibily missed some of the stronger hints of the darker undertones of his obituary writing. I was also quite disturbed by the fact no one seemed bothered by the poor penguin living indoors.

Consumed by Aja Barber

Non fiction centred on who is losing the fast fashion game (women in poor countries) and what we need to do to stop this. The pollution of the clothing industry is described in detail and so is the intersectionality with feminism and anti-racism. This is chattily written and a fast read.

Because of who I follow on Instagram, I did already know a lot of this, I have been slowing my consumption for some time and half my wardrobe is second hand. So I didn't learn much but it was a good reminder that I could get involved in some activism too.

34. Le Comte de Monte-Cristo: Alexandre Dumas.

I enjoyed this book very much and the company during the readalong was brilliant. Here is a celebratory limerick as a review;

'There once was an eager young sailor,
Who captained the good ship 'Endeavour'.
Accused of high treason,
He was locked up for no reason.
Once free became Monte-Cristo,
The Count, god-like hero!
And he swore to strike down
Those who wronged him'.

Beware of the Count of Monte-Cristo!
He can do anything!

I have so completely fallen off the threads that I am bringing my list over as post 354 of thread 5 (don't hate me!). I will do better....Anyway:

1 Winter Swimming - Dr Susanna Søberg
2 The Story of Art Without Men – Katy Hessel
3 Mr Loverman – Bernadine Evaristo
4 We Solve Murders – Richard Osman
5 City of Destruction – Vaseem Khan
6 Girl A – Abigail Dean
7 The Slap – Christos Tsiolkas
8 Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the World – Mark Aldridge
9 Black Butterflies – Priscilla Morris
10 Portrait of a Marriage – Nigel Nicolson
11 The Sibyl in her Grave – Sarah Caudwell
12 The Dispossessed – Ursula Le Guin
13 Dark Wives – Ann Cleeves
14 The House of Doors - Tan Twan Eng
15 A Mouth full of Salt – Reem Gaafar
16 One of the Good Guys – Araminta Hall
17 Ghost Wall – Sarah Moss
18 Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood

I think that is where I left off (before Easter) - this is what I remember of what I've read since but I'm sure I've missed some!

19 Why We Swim - Bonnie Tsui
I have become a bit obsessed with swimming outside (in a lido rather than in a lake or the sea, although I do the odd bit of sea swimming in the summer) so I'm majoring on the swimming books at the moment. This one was a bit of a tour through swimming over the centuries, touching on early man, samurai swimmers, abalone divers and everything in between, as well as some interesting interviews with people who have completed great swimming feats. Some interesting titbits, and the author's love for swimming is infectious.

20 Such a Fun Age – Kiley Reid
Reading this literally years after everyone else! I enjoyed it. Poses some interesting questions about race, and I thought the author brought all the characters to life; I can still picture them in my mind a couple of weeks after reading the book.

21 Happiness – Aminatta Forna
I thought I would like this, and it started promisingly, but got rather bogged down in the middle. The book tells the story of Attila, a Ghanaian psychiatrist who works in war zones across the world and is in London for a conference. He is also looking for his niece and great-nephew, who have disappeared after an immigration raid. On his travels, he meets Jean, who leads a project on urban foxes. The set-up was good and compelling but the first "drama" comes to an end just over halfway through and then everything just sort of jogs along until it reaches a further resolution of sorts. Parts of it were really beautifully written and I enjoyed the fact that it is set in my area of south London as well as (briefly) in a part of Sussex I know quite well. But it didn't really hang together for me.

I hope everyone's doing OK. I don't think I'm going to be able to catch up on the preceding 350+ posts!

@RazorstormUnicorn a friend made a documentary last year on Netflix Buy Now which is about some of those issues. A good one to watch with teenage daughters!

@FuzzyCaoraDhubh great limerick! I've just finished Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon, which I think you enjoyed a few pages back.

It was a bit of a slow burner for me, mainly because the narrator was a bit of a tool, but as it progressed I got far more invested and ended up really liking it. The ending was very poignant. I would have liked to understand their producer a bit better though.

Yes, @Stowickthevast Glorious Exploits made a strong impression on me. I think that the contemporary Irish voice in the ancient setting of a Syracuse made for an unusual reading experience. I was writing my review of the book when I did something with my phone and lost the thing and I feel that the second time round I rushed it and I didn't do it justice.

I agree with you. The narrator was a bit of a tool, but he grew up during the course of the book and his friendship with Paches was very touching. He really loved the guy. The producer guy was shrouded in mystery. He was an enigma and a very strange character. Clearly we weren't meant to know much about him.

I really liked the ending. When I read it again, I noticed one or two things that mirrored the start of the book. Lampa sitting by the quarry throwing things in (being vague here) and the colour of clothes was very specific as well (again, not saying too much for spoilers). And in general, you got the impression of what comes around goes around. The Syracusians were under threat themselves.

Yes. A memorable book indeed.

@Stowickthevast @FuzzyCaoraDhubh
I don’t know if anyone else noticed this but in the acknowledgements for Glorious Exploits Ferdia Lennon said of his wife ‘I love you as much as Gelon loves Euripides’ which I found funny and touching.

Thank you. A Lovely Book.

I really liked that line :)

@FuzzyCaoraDhubh love the limerick.

@ChessieFL I’ll add The Names to my TBR. In Middle Eastern cultures a lot of emphasis is put on the meaning of names and the weight that those names carry. It’s why often Muslim boys (in some Islamic cultures) have Mohammed as a name they don’t use, because as the prophet’s name (PBUH) it is deemed too heavy for a small child, so they then have a name they use in everyday life - in Turkey they use Mehmet as a diminutive for a similar reason. It’s fascinating.

There’s a bit at the back of The Names where it lists the meaning of all the names used in the book and the author clearly thought carefully about all the characters’ names, not just the main boy. It is interesting.

25 Marriage Material by Sathnam Sanghera

I really liked Empireland but this novel didn’t hit its mark for me. The social history element was a lot stronger than the story element and I felt he didn’t write the female characters well - a shame when a huge part of the story is about Surinder and Kamaljit, two sisters. I couldn’t warm to Arjan, their nephew, but a paragraph or two about his father’s early life was intriguing and I would have liked more than that.
I kept reading however, because I wanted to see where he took the sisters.

Marriage material is being turned into a play, in London.

I loved that too @ÚlldemoShúl

I did some Euripides at school/uni and recently saw Medea - it's made me want to read him again. Pretty sure I can't manage the original anymore though!

Can I apologise for taking an even longer break from these threads than @Welshwabbit? I used to post regularly several years ago, then life, work and bereavement got in the way of reading and thinking so I stopped but have just had a lovely half hour catching up with the most recent posts, lengthened my "would like to read" list by at least 20 on the basis of your reviews and remembered the absolute pleasure reading and occasionally contributing to these discussions used to afford me. So here is my list so far this year - need to move away from non-fiction and comfort repeat reading (and Conclave as per most people recently!) and get into some more 'substantive' novels. So with gratitude to all threaders for the inspiration, here is my list:

1 Truss at Ten - Anthony Sheldon
2 Death Valley in 1849: the Luck of the Gold Rush Emigrants - John Southworth
3 Helter Skelter: the true story of the Manson Murders - Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry
4 One, Two, Three, Four: the Beatles in Time - Craig Brown
5 Northern Ireland: a very short introduction- Marc Mulholland
6 Sweet Home - Wendy Erskine
7 The Twelfth Day of July - Joan Lingard
8 Across the Barricades - Joan Lingard
9 Bad Blood: a walk along the Irish Border - Colm Toibin
10 The Country Girls - Edna O’Brien
11 A Civil Contract - Georgette Heyer
12 Hitler’s People - Richard Evans
13 The Wall - John Hersey
14 A Crack in the Edge of the World - Simon Winchester
15 The Reluctant Widow - Georgette Heyer
16 The Siege - Ben Macintyre
17 The Quality of Mercy - Peter Brook
18 Casting Off - Elizabeth Jane Howard
19 Les Années - Annie Ernaux
20 The Quiet Gentleman - Georgette Heyer
22 Long Summer’s Day - RF Delderfield
23 Regeneration - Pat Barker
24 Easy Riders, Raging Bulls - Peter Biskind
25 Richard II - Shakespeare
26 Titus Andronicus - Shakespeare
27 The Chalet school Goes to it - Elinor Brent-Dyer
28 Back Story - David Mitchell
29 Conclave - Robert Harris
30 The Rules of Acting - Michael Simkins
31 The Election of Pope Francis - Gerard O’Connell
32 The Eye in the Door - Pat Barker
33 Enigma - Robert Harris
34 The Ghost Road - Pat Barker

55.Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, by Jack Weatherford.
This history book has been on my kindle since December 2015, so it's very satisfying to finally get around to it. The story rattled along with brio - from the time his mother was kidnapped as a bride (the same happened to his own bride in due course - he got her back, but there were doubts ever after about the paternity of his first son) to the collapse of the Mongol empire several generations later. The author is very admiring of the Mongolian achievement, and talks up the empire's religious tolerance and how it advanced civilisation by promoting international trade and technology transfer. It is positive that Genghis was against the use of torture and mutilation, but I did feel that the author was glossing somewhat over millions of deaths and a lot of human suffering. From googling, some of the historical detail isn't entirely reliable. For me, it was still useful as a new perspective on world history (including the persecution of scholars working in the area in more recent times).

@Terpsichore and @PermanentTemporary I also have 'fond' memories of Round about a Pound of Week, Booth and the Webbs from being a history undergrad in the early 1990s. As I recall, Maud Pember Reeves was not actually the most patronising - the Rowntree survey in York, counting the men in and out of the pubs, and tracking the children being sent with jugs to fetch beer from the "outdoor" made for pretty depressing reading. I got very into it though, and chose British Working Classes 1890-1914 for my third year special subject. And despite the heavy condescension it did leave me with a soft spot for the Quakers - at least they bothered to notice that people were suffering and took an interest. That and their being the only people who fed the victims of the Irish famine without making them build roads first.

20. Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson

This is a strong do NOT recommend! Started out well but the finale is a farcical take on Cluedo/Downton Abbey - at least it explains why some of the characters were included in the first place (vicar, major, doctor etc). As someone who hates most comedy, it was not for me, and a lot of reviews have agreed with me.

I really enjoyed Firefly Lane but 'The Nightingale' is my favorite so far - I absolutely loved it.
The Four Winds was very good also!

Thanks Claire, I’ll look out for those!

Welcome back @grimupnorthLondon. I'm intrigued by your username as an economic migrant from Leeds to north London (nearly 30 years ago).

I loved Joan Lingard's Kevin and Sadie books - I should dig them and her Maggie books (set in Scotland) out for rereads. I'm also hoping to reread Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls, and the sequels some time soon. I have quite a lot of Irish fiction TBR (and some books I really want to reread because the first time was so long ago and all I can really remember was liking them first time round).

@Arran2024 The thread was divided on DATSOTR but I was firmly in the No camp I didn’t much like Big Sky either so I might be done with Brodie. I’d be interested in a Reggie Chase spinoff series though

I didn't mind Brodie - it was the rest of it (minus Reggie of course)

@AgualusasLover I expect it will make a good play if they cast the sisters right. It just failed to fly as a novel for me.

I started Cloistered last night. Blimey, if she was chocolate, she’d eat herself, wouldn’t she. Amusing, though.

Oh gosh really @AlmanbyRoadtrip that’s put me off!! It’s high on my TBR