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.

80 The Ship Beneath the Ice - Mensun Bound (NF)

An absorbing book about the two searches for Shackleton’s ship Endurance which sank in Antarctica in 1915 - through an amazing effort of navigation and salvage, all 28 crew survived. The marine archaeologist Mensun Bound led both searches and this is his account of the risks and frustrations of the first and the learnings for the second.

I’m about half way through Precipice and struggling. I thought it began well, but now I’m finding that I don’t really want to pick it up and if I read it in bed, I keep falling asleep and waking up when my kindle lands on the floor.

Thanks for your review of My Grandmothers and I @Terpsichore . It sounds right up my street, I've just ordered a copy.

Thanks for the heads up Scarlett Thomas other books are not so good. I think I will just leave it at Mr Y being a crazy fun adventure and carry on with my unread kindle books and the books on my TBR shelf.

I'm in a reading flow at the moment - long may it last!

@elkiedee oh that's interesting, I didn't realize. I think I was expecting more Bloomsbury set in there but it was very much an internal musings of Ivy book, which I didn't find as compelling.

My Grandmothers and I sounds really interesting. I'm wondering where I recognise Diana Holman-Hunt's name from - maybe she's quoted in a different Virginia Nicholson book (I have a few of her books but have only read the one on the 1960s so far) or in a similar social history thing. In an odd coincidence, my Goodreads update email this morning includes a review of this book too, by someone whose profile suggests she should and may be in the LibraryThing Virago Modern Classics and Persephone groups. Quite a few LT friends and people I talk to there do own My Grandmothers and I but I don't think the Goodreads reviewer is by any of them (I've met a few in real life). There's a paperback reprint by Slightly Foxed which several friends have.

Diana Holman-Hunt also wrote about her grandfather, the artist William Holman-Hunt - My Grandfather, His Wives and Loves - from reviews on LT, it sounds intriguingly complicated, and fits in well with quite a few books I've read and even more of my many TBRs (complex posh families, artists in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries!)

75 . The Trees by Percival Everett

I have previously read Erasure and James by the same author

In Money, Mississippi several white people are murdered and their genitals mutilated. Alongside their bodies is the corpse of a black man which appears and disappears mysteriously. As investigators search, copycat crimes emerge nationally.

This was a challenging read because it covers the murder of Emmett Till, about which I know shamefully little and lynchings in the historic Deep South.

There was a humour or parody element which made me a bit uncomfortable, but I think this is the sort of novel which is supposed to make you uncomfortable.

Nominated for the Booker, this is definitely worth your time. I will be looking up the book about Emmett Till recommended by @MamaNewtNewt early in this years thread

@elkiedee yes, the intricate interweaving of families is fascinating - Diana H-H’s ‘Grand’ was born a Waugh (I presume a branch of the tree that Evelyn eventually sprang from) and at one point it’s noted in passing that it was pronounced to rhyme with ‘calf’!
Much is also made of the fact that ‘Grand’ was Holman-Hunt’s second wife; his first was her sister, who died, and because it was illegal at the time to marry your SIL (before the passing of the Deceased Wife’s Sister act in 1907), they had to go abroad and get married in secret, which still wasn’t enough to prevent many people cutting them dead as social pariahs when they returned to London.
I must dig out Diana H-H’s other book as I think I have it about somewhere.

Hi , thanks for answering , I first joined to read my favourite authors but went on to read many others I'd not heard of before .
I'm currently on a self imposed ban of requesting willy nilly ( the ones that just take my fancy ) as I had so many accepted and couldn't keep up !

I haven't posted in ages but I've been keeping up with all your posts whilst reading some trash. @ChessieFLmy birthday is the day after yours! Unfortunately I didn't get any books for my birthday this year but might treat myself to something from my wish list as a birthday present to myself

Just finished 22) Score! by Jilly Cooper
The latest in my Rutshire re-read and I love this one! Jilly Cooper taking on crime fiction is my dream book, I wish she'd write more murder mysteries. This feels very Agatha Christie and we have many return appearances from previous books, especially from the one before this, Appassionata

In this one Rannaldini is back, this time making a movie of opera Don Carlos with his French movie director godson Tristan de Montigny. The whole cast and crew move into Rannaldini's sinister mansion, Valhalla, where things immediately start going wrong resulting in a death. Everyone's a suspect and most of them are keeping secrets, but which one is the murderer?

Having read this before I knew whodunnit but I still loved it. Jilly builds the suspense beautifully and it's great to get to know the next generation from previous books, notably Tabitha Campbell-Black and Isa Lovell

Happy belated birthday @satelliteheart

72 She-Wolves by Helen Castor
The oldest book on my kindle (to me) and reviewed on the other thread. This tells the story of English queens before the Tudors- so Matilda, Eleanor, Isabella, Margaret. There was some interesting stuff here but I found the writing quite dry- heavier than what I was looking for. I enjoyed Isabella and Matilda’s sections. The others not as much.

73 The Children of Eve- John Connolly
Like the previous reviewer I never miss John Connolly’s Charlie Parker series- a cross of horror, crime and the supernatural with fabulous writing. These can’t really be read as standalone. Also like the previous reviewer (was it you @AlmanbyRoadtrip ?) this was not one of the best episodes I. The series. I feel he’s getting a bit sick of it now and will only be releasing a book every 2 years for the next while. Hopefully that’ll make him rediscover the love.

74 Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (audio)
Reread for the 100th anniversary. I loved it just as much as the first time. Last time it was Septimus’s story that gripped me the most, this time I also loved Clarissa’s. Fabulously narrated by Annette Benning. Bold. Again.

Happy Birthday @satelliteheart !

Yes, it was me @ÚlldemoShúl . I’m glad he’s cutting down the Parker frequency and I look forward to anything else he turns his hand to. His novel about Stan Laurel (He) was superb and, in the continued absence of Michael Marshall Smith, he’s one of the best writers of supernatural short fiction around. I just wish he’d do an evening appearance near me on his book tours! I’m always at work and I can’t take leave Well, there’s Special Leave but I doubt a lunch with John Connolly qualifies for that, although it should

@AlmanbyRoadtrip John Connolly definitely counts for special leave! I’ve been to a few of his book events which are usually in the evening for me and he’s an interesting guy.

31 White Nights - Ann Cleeves Second in the Shetland series, and another nice easy read. Detective Jimmy Perez is back with another murder to solve, this time an unidentified English visitor to the islands. I like the characters and the setting, and it was a good story. On to the third one once it’s available on BorrowBox!

57. The World According to Colour: A Cultural History, by James Fox
I received this at last year's 50-bookers Northern meet-up - @StrangewaysHereWeCome , am I right in remembering it was from you? I enjoyed this, although I had to read it quite slowly. Each chapter deals with a different colour, taking in science, history, cultural connotations and art. . I'm not a very visual person, and I appreciate someone pointing things out for my attention.

58. Creation Lake, Rachel Kushner
Chapters alternate between the narrator, a young woman attempting to infiltrate an environmental activist group in France, and an older man loosely affiliated with the movement, who talks a lot about Neanderthals, linking early humans to resistance movements. I didn't dislike it, but I felt the author was aiming for something that she didn't quite pull off. It didn't amount to more than the sum of its parts, for me.

76 . Klara And The Sun by everybody’s fave Kazuo Ishiguro (Audible)

Previously read BBB and NLMG I’d say I was on the fence with both actually.

This is the third book this year I’ve read about AI robots. It’s really not intentional!

Klara is an AF robot, an Artificial Friend aimed at children and teenagers. She is bought for Josie, an unwell child, by The Mother and is brought to live in their home.

This was so frustrating. There was so much good in it some really great concepts. I thought it was going to tread a well worn path with the illness and it didn’t it was far more interesting (as was the reason for buying Klara) but there was so much irrelevance. The subplot with the polluting machine doesn’t need to be there, and neither does the subplot of Rick and his mother Miss Helen. There are just so many rich ideas going on that such timewasting is just annoying.

Using the limits of Klara’s intelligence to avoid properly illustrating the world they live in and past events that have occurred was just infuriating.

A brilliant start and a really thoughtful and melancholy end. An absolute mess in the middle.

Annie Bot is better than this, but this was probably better than Service Model

18. My Friends – Hisham Matar I’ve been reading this on my kindle for AGES. I slogged through the first 60, even 70%, telling myself that it should totally be my kind of book and had glowing reviews from many of you on here – and also, by 60% I’d invested a lot of time in it! And then, weirdly, the final quarter of the book was a pleasure to read;

Young Khaled is passionate about the power of literature from an early age, starting in his hometown of Benghazi, Libya. He leaves to study at university in Scotland but is never free from the worry of what is happening to his country, and his family, under the dictatorship of Gaddafi. Circumstances lead him to pursue a life in London, where he’s torn between the life he’s living now and the life that could exist for him back ‘home’. My Friends focusses on the power of friendship during many, many years of exile.

I think I had quite a personal reaction to this as I simply could not understand why he would not go back to his country, even once it was safe to do so. So it’s definitely me, not the book! Some of the writing was exquisite, particularly in the final chapters.

Also, thank you to @EineReiseDurchDieZeit for your review of Crying in H Mart - sounds right up my street!

No problem! Hope it’s for you.

aargh - where did the edit button go??? - is it only visible for a short window after posting???

Yeah @nowanearlyNicemum it goes away very quickly, I got caught out on my review of The Trees

OK, thanks, I'll stop looking then 😂

21. Getting Over Your Parents

Odd one really. My local bookshop had an evening event featuring this book. It's from the School of Life, which produces books on a range of psychological issues, but there is no named author.

Anyway, I bought the book but didn't start reading it. My dad was starting to get ill (he died in March) and I didn't want to go there.

But I picked it up on Sat and am deeply impressed with it, for a self help book. It isn't about blaming anyone but more about understanding the legacies we live with due to the parenting we experienced.

There is a huge amount to think about in it. I am already reassessing some of my values and seeing where they came from.

I'm not giving it a bold because I hesitate to recommend a self help book this deep to anyone, as it touches on potentially triggering issues, and I wouldn't want to be responsible for anyone getting upset. I should really send it to my brother!

But of its type I would say it is pretty good. And a lovely, well produced hard back.