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.

Thanks for the new thread Southeast

I think Persephone may have a point re some books. I've definitely got some I used to make up the difference on a 5 for £x deal. I could probably have a good weed, but others are going nowhere.

I haven't read that book, Terp, but I think Neville Shute tends to write women well.

I've hit the 50 mark so will write up my list so far:

1. A Walk to the Western Isles: After Boswell and Johnson, Frank Delaney
2. Long Story Short, Jodi Taylor
3. The Haunted Wood: A History of Childhood Reading, Sam Leith
4. The Dark Wives, Ann Cleeves
5. Slow Train to Istanbul, Tom Chesshyre
6. Sweetpea, C J Skuse
7. The Bookseller's Tale, Ann Swinfen
8. Sandwich, Catherine Newman
9. You Are Here, David Nicholls
10. Swan Song, Edmund Crispin
11. More Dashing: Further Letters of Patrick Leigh Fermor
12. The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, Jodi Taylor
13. Holy Disorder, Edmund Crispin
14. The Travel Writing Tribe: Journeys in Search of a Genre, Tim Hannigan
15. The Dictionary People, Sarah Ogilvie
16. Enchanted Islands, Laura Coffey
17. Anne Boleyn and Elizabeth 1, Tracy Borman
18. The Cracked Mirror, Chris Brookmyre
19. All the Rage: Stories from the Frontline of Beauty 1880-1960, Virginia Nicholson
20. The Living Mountain, Nan Shepherd
21. The Case of the Lonely Accountant, Simon Mason
22. West Heart Kill, Dann McDorman
23. Murder Must Advertise, Dorothy Sayers
24. Everywhere I Look, Helen Garner
25. A Killing in November, Simon Mason
26. Shakespeare, Judi Dench
27. Cat Among the Pigeons, Alice Thomas Ellis
28. Absent in the Spring, Mary Westmacott
29. The Broken Afternoon, Simon Mason
30. Death of a Bookseller, Alice Slater
31. The Frozen People, Elly Griffiths
32. The Novice's Tale, Ann Swinfen
33. Lost and Never Found, Simon Mason
34. Sometimes People Die, Simon Stephenson
35. Inheritocracy: It's Time to Talk about the Bank of Mum and Dad, Eliza Filby
36. Miss Silver Intervenes, Patricia Wentworth
37. Bookish, Lucy Mangan
38. The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire, Henry Gee
39. Missing Person: Alice, Simon Mason
40. I Could Read the Sky, Timothy O'Grady
41. The Rest of our Lives, Ben Markovits
42. Nesting, Roisin O'Donnell
43. Next Exit: Magic Kingdom, Rory McLean
44. The Road to Oxiana, Robert Byron
45. Walking, Erling Kagge
46. A Voice in the Night, Simon Mason
47. Living Alone, Stella Benson
48. In Bloom, C J Skuse

And the most recent:

49. Poison in the Pen, Patricia Wentworth
Someone has been sending poison pen letters, upsetting the village. And now people are starting to die. Can the unlikely detective Miss Silver find the culprit? Standard mid-century stuff. I like it as a bit of escapism.

50. Oversharing, Jane Fallon
An influencer appears to have the perfect life. One woman is determined to reveal that it's not true. Not my usual fare, but someone mentioned it on here (sorry, can't remember who it was) and I enjoyed it. It was all rather good-hearted in the end.

51. The Missing Family, Tim Weaver
Two impossible disappearances - a murderer from a locked cell and a family from a boat in the middle of a lake. Can our hero crack the case? I read a few books from this series last year, fired by Chessie's enthusiasm, and they are well done, keeping me reading longer than I should at bedtime.

I'm withholding bolds for now, though I enjoyed nearly everything I read. I'm not sure any of it has really stood out from the rest. I may bestow some retrospectively.

@bibliomania me, I think - I read Oversharing in March :)

@SheilaFentiman - thanks, it was good fun!

Thanks for the new thread Southeast.
I won’t post my list as it’s pitifully short. Latest read was:
The Space Between Us by Doug Johnstone, this was another Between The Covers recommend.
It started well - a journalist, terminally ill cancer patient, bullied teenage school boy and pregnant woman in an abusive relationship are drawn together by an alien life force that falls to earth in a meteor type shower and lives in water. It most closely resembles an octopus but has telepathic and other powers. Initially I felt invested and cared about the characters but as the novel continued and followed the usual tropes of government bad guys vs plucky bystanders trying to save the alien it all became a bit predictable.
it also didn’t have a proper resolution as there’s a sequel called The Collapsing Wave, but by the end I knew I wasn’t invested enough in the outcome to seek it out.

Thanks southeast.

Reading Lessons: An English Teacher’s Love Letter to the Books that Shape Us by Carol Atherton Thanks to inaptonym, Sheila and others who recommended this. Each chapter takes a secondary school set text and discusses it, along with the author’s account of conversations it prompts in the classroom - such as coercive control in the case of My Last Duchess, and social justice in the case of An Inspector Calls - and along the way we get to know we get to know about the author’s career, life and worldview. I enjoyed the book but perhaps not as much as I’d have hoped to enjoy a book about books. I’d have liked more on the books themselves and what it’s like to be a teacher - these were the strongest parts of the book. Atherton sees her role as about teaching citizenship as well as literature - there wasn’t anything I disagreed with, but it became a bit pious and I’d have preferred less teaching points and perhaps a bit less about the author. Perhaps it suffered in comparison to Bookish which I read recently, as it lacked Lucy Mangan’s wit and sparkle. However, all this said I enjoyed the book, just not bold material, for me.

@bibliomania I’m a big Miss Silver fan, knitting and all.

@Terpsichore I think Pastoral may be one of the few of NS’ I haven’t read. I’ll have a look.

Thanks @Southeastdweller for the new thread, here is my list to date:

1. French Braid – Anne Tyler
2. I Wil Find You – Harlan Coben
3. Friends Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing – Matthew Perry
4. The Crossing – Michael Connelly
5. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
6. We Solve Murders – Richard Osman
7. Winter Spirits - Various
8. Funny Story – Emily Henry
9. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

10. Annie Bot – Sierra Greer 11. And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie 12. Crooked Heart – Lissa Evans 13. A Woman of No Importance – Sonia Purnell 14. Deadly Attraction – Diane Hoh 15. The Paying Guests – Sarah Waters 16. The Spiral Path – Greg Weisman 17. Nesting – Roisin O’Donnell 18. At Home – Bill Bryson 19. Glorious Exploits – Ferdia Lennon 20. The Binding – Bridget Collins 21. Dark Fire – C J Sansom 22. The Mystery of Room 913 – Cornell Woolrich

I'm still plodding along and staying up to date with the Count of Monte Cristo readalong and catching up on Little Dorrit, which is fell off the readalong of when that was going a few years ago. I'm now a third of the way through Stephen King's The Stand and am making good time to finish this by the end of the year. Aside from these books which I'm reading slowly, I've not yet decided on what my next read will be. Am waiting on a few from the library - All Fours and The Artist from the Women's prize list and one or two others picked from my random number generator.

Thanks for the new thread southeast and glad you’re enjoying Tim Weaver bibliomania.

My latest reads:

Jolly Marsupial by Jilly Cooper

Another collection of Jilly’s 70s/80s journalism including a trip to Australia. A bit like reading a time capsule. There was one article where a group of famous people, including Jilly, tried to take the exams to get into prep school - most failed or only just scraped through but apparently Joanna Lumley passed with flying colours!

The Ways of the World - Robert Goddard

Set in 1919, James Maxted gets caught up in danger when he investigates his diplomat father’s suspicious death in post-war Paris. Goddard is one of my favourite authors so this was good although not one of my favourites of his books. This is the first in a trilogy so will be catching up with the others soon.

The Other Times of Caroline Tangent - Ivan D Wainewright

Kindle Unlimited time travel book. Caroline’s husband invests a time machine which they use to visit iconic music events. However there is a twist I didn’t expect which made this more interesting than I originally expected it to be.

The Patient by Tim Sullivan

Book 3 in the George Cross detective series based in Bristol. Here the team investigates the apparent suicide/accidental overdose of a recovering drug addict. I’m enjoying this series.

My reads since the last thread:

22 Monsieur Proust - Céleste Albaret
23 A Big Storm Knocked It Over - Laurie Colwin
24 When Women Ran Fifth Avenue - Julie Satow
25 Scoop - Evelyn Waugh
26 Writing on the Wall - Madeleine Pelling
27 The Laughing Policeman - Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, transl. Alan Blair
28 Van Gogh’s Finale - Martin Bailey
29 Roseanna - Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, transl. Lois Roth
30 Appointment in Arezzo - Alan Taylor
31 The Greengage Summer - Rumer Godden
32 What I Ate in One Year (and related thoughts) - Stanley Tucci
33 The Man Who Went Up In Smoke - Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, transl. Joan Tate
34 Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness - Susannah Cahalan
35 The Spy Who Came in From the Cold - John le Carré
36 Mrs. Milburn’s Diaries - ed. Peter Donnelly
37 Pastoral - Nevil Shute

(The crazy numbering has got the better of me despite my best efforts, so I can’t put a full stop after them, but at least they’re there!)

Well, I’ve just bought two Miss Silver books and two Shute books. It turns out each writer still has several that I haven’t read yet. These will hopefully keep me quiet for a week or two.

Thanks for the new thread @Southeastdweller

My list so far

1 None of This is True - Lisa Jewell
2 Daisy and the Six - Taylor Jenkins Read
3 The Vegetarian Han Kang trans Deborah Smith
4 And Then She Fell - Alicia Elliot
5 The Queen of Spades - Alexander Pushkin trans Rosemary Edwards
6 Ali & Nino - Kurban Said trans unknown
7 The Venice Secret - Anita Chapman
8 Walking the Blue Fields - Claire Keegan
9 A Terrible Kindness - Jo Browning Roe
10 Rooftoppers - Katherine Rundell
11 Summerwater - Sarah Moss
12 A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Townes
13 Snowblind - Ragnar Jónassen trans Quentin Bates
14 Flights ‐ Olga Tokarczuk trans Jennifer Croft
15 84 Charing Cross Road - Helene Hanff
16 The Hike - Lucy Clarke
17 The Duchess of Bloomsbury - Helene Hanff
18 Black and British - David Olusoga
19 Forgotten Fire - Adam Bagdasarian
20 At Night All Blood is Black - David Diop trans Anna Moschovakis
21 An American Marriage - Tayatri Jones
22 Faceless Killings - Hennell Mankell trans.
Steven T. Murray
23 Hitler, Stalin, Mum & Dad - Daniel Finklestein
24 Bourneville - Jonathan Coe
25 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
26 The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexander Dumas trans Roger Buss

I shouldn't have finished The Count yet but it was a bit too exciting! Currently reading Shuggie Bain which is very good so far.

Robert Harris Precipice is in the kindle daily deals. I would have bought it but a colleague has already loaned me a physical soupy and it’s next on my TBR.

I just came on to say this, 🤪

Thank you @Southeastdweller . Will be back with my List later.

Cloistered is 99p on Kindle today. As is Marriage Material by Sathnam Sanghera which has been mentioned a while ago on these threads.

They’ve been reading this thread again!

After you’d Gone and All the Colours of the Dark are also in the May deals

Looks like there's quite a few good books on the deals - several I already own!

I've picked up The List of Suspicious Things which I think was recommended by someone, Nora Webster by Colm Toíbin and Consequences by Penelope Lively.

There's also Trust, Wandering Stars and Time Shelter which won last year's international Booker.

@ChessieFL I remember reading that Jilly Cooper article about the prep school exams when it was published in the Sunday Times. Joanna Lumley turned up dressed as a schoolboy IIRC.

Precipice purchased, thanks all.

I bought Precipice. Thank you elspeth!

That's one of life's underrated pleasures, finding unread books by authors you trust.

I thought I was being very abstemious with the deals, but have somehow spent £11, having been tempted by a few books at the £2-3 mark. I was pleased to see there's a new book by Cordelia Fine, Patriarchy Inc and a book about Unity Mitford, Hitler's Valkyrie somehow fell into my basket too.

I liked the fact that it flags up books that you have previously bought, but it's disconcerting to see books that you bought years ago with the intention to get stuck into straightaway, but you still haven't got round to them.

Does anyone have a link to the monthly deals, please.

I just google the daily deal and follow the link to all deals.

Just noticed an article in the Guardian suggesting that Barbara Pym may have worked for MI5 during WWII. Looks like speculation but a fun thought.

I used to do that but this month & last month it brings me up 400 pages! The link someone posted last month was a mere 100+ pages!