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.

The ugly-wuglies! Now that's a blast from the past.

83 Going Infinite - Michael Lewis (NF)

This was good. Lewis is the Ur of financial scandal writing, with Liar’s Poker and The Big Short both being excellent.

The book is about Sam Bankman-Fried, 20-something founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange and Alameda Research, which collapsed spectacularly in 2022, with SBF later being convicted of 11 counts of fraud etc and imprisoned for 25 years (Alameda used customer money from FTX to repay its loans because SBF had used Alameda money for personal invesimg). It seems that Lewis coincidentally began this book shortly before the collapse and so was along for the ride, in many ways.

It’s a good picture of what happened and the personalities involved (and actually, it seems like most of the lost value has been tracked down and is recoverable)

45. Millions Like Us - Virginia Nicholson

One morning a couple of weeks ago I happened to catch a bit of this being read on Radio 4 Extra, which reminded me I had a copy floating around. It’s an outstandingly good history of women's experience of WW2, traced through diaries and memoirs, some of which I’ve read anyway but many not (and I’d now like to follow up, as they sound great). Mass Observation fans will know Nella Last and Maggie Joy Blunt, and coincidentally I’d just read the diaries of Clara Millburn, but Nicholson has done an amazing job of finding so many gripping personal stories and weaving them through the narrative right through to the end - and satisfyingly, she gives a summing-up of what happened to each of her subjects, unlike so many books where their stories are just left unresolved.

The long and short of it - women stepped up and did an incredible job during the war. And when it was over, they were largely expected to get back in their box and defer to their menfolk again. The heroism of these ultra-intelligent, capable women leaps off the page, as does their frustration and despair at the war's end when 'normal service' was largely resumed. A definite bold for me.

@Terpsichore I can also recommend Singled Out by the same author, about the unmarried women left after the slaughter of the First World War.

Thanks @RomanMum - it’s on the shelf awaiting its turn!

32 The Dark Queens - Shelley Puhak The story of Dark-Age Frankish queens (and sisters-in-law [edit - cousins-in-law, oops!]) Fredegund and Brunhild, each of whom married a grandson of Clovis I (the first king of what is approximately now France) and eventually ruled as queen regent. This was a really interesting historical account of a period, and two powerful women, about which there is very little available detail, and I learned a lot; there are times when Puhak has to make a guess at what happened but I think she did that well and always made clear when the sources were lacking. It’s taken me weeks to read this - I got very bogged down in the middle, in particular, with all the back-and-forth fighting between the various brothers and the various cousins marrying or dying or whatever! But it really picked up towards the last third (or maybe that was just me reading with a bit more focus!), and overall I would recommend it for anyone interested in this part of history or in untold stories of powerful women generally.

I use Fable app to track my books. Helpfully, in your 'library' section, there is a Want to Read, Currently Reading, Finished and DNF. I havent logged many in the Want to Read section, I tend to go straight to Currently Reading. I dont count my DNFs in my totals as I generally decide fairly early on if I'm DNFing.

84 Secret Lives - Diane Chamberlain

Went through a phase of reading this author on holidays a few years back and this is a leftover from that time (2017). Eden is an actress writing a script about the life of her dead author mother whilst getting over a divorce. She is staying with her uncle, who gives her the journals her mum wrote one by one. She also meets Ben, who has a dark past.

Very convoluted, like a less good Jodi Picoult. Passed the time.

Famous Last words - Gillian McAllister
Cam is returning to work after maternity leave when on her first day back information of a live hostage situation becomes breaking news. The police arrive to tell her that her husband Luke is suspected to be the hostage taker.

The book than alternates chapters between Cam and Niall (hostage negotiator) in the immediate aftermath of the situation and in the years following.

Perfect for a few days off when all I wanted was an engaging easy read. Not as good as wrong place, wrong time but very much in the same vein. Suspend disbelief and enjoy the slightly implausible twists and turn and it’s a pretty decent thriller.

No Cure For Death - Hazel Holt Another Mrs Malory, no. 16 I think. Murder afoot in Taviscombe’s medical practice. Mrs Malory meets up with an old school friend who has retired back to Devon from London and finds out a lot about the murdered medic’s past from her. Lots of cake, good works and gossip. I whizz through these so quickly and I’m pleased to say, have managed to track down the two missing books in the series.

22. Sandwich by Catherine Newman

This is a much hyped book, New York Times bestseller, with amazing reviews.

It features a couple with 2 grown up kids and her elderly parents at the beach. They holiday there every year - we see each day unfold over the course of a week.

Rocky, the mother, is the narrator. She is going through the menopause, love bombing her "amazing" kids, fighting with her husband and worrying about her elderly parents, regretting past decisions and dreading the empty nest back home.

So, fun times!!

I enjoyed her take on family relationships. She can certainly write - reminded me a bit of Norah Ephron.

The menopause stuff was pretty grim. But my main beef with it is the feeling that we are constantly being lectured to. It is like several magazine articles about contentious subjects all rolled up into a novel (the author's background is in magazines). Issues are shoe horned in - at one point, she and her husband are discussing abortion (they are both supporters) and she tells us that he used to teach ethics (all through the book he's a physical therapist but suddenly he's an ex ethics teacher, which I thought should have been edited out as it feels like she is bringing out all the ammunition she can to support her case).

I definitely enjoyed the first half more than the second.

I love a bank holiday weekend - I've managed to read 2 books in 2 days.

59. Real Americans - Rachel Khong. This follows 3 generations of a Chinese-American family. The first part, for me the weakest, is about Lily in 1999. She's second generation but has been brought up to be purely American by her geneticist mother - she doesn't speak Chinese or eat Chinese food. She's just graduated and is as an intern at an art magazine, where she meets the editors rich nephew who she falls for. The next part is set in 2021 and follows Lily's child Nick who is mixed race but looks American. And the final part is about Lily"s mother Mei, and tracks her journey from China in the 1960s to Nick's future in 2030. This was the strongest part that pulled the immigration and geneticism strands together and had an interesting background of Mao & the Cultural revolution. On the whole a good easy read.

60. Maurice and Maralyn - Sophie Elmhurst. It's non-fiction about a couple in 1973 who sell their house and buy a yacht to sail around the world. The yacht gets hit a by a whale and they are left to fend for themselves in a dingy and life raft. I thought the first two third was better than the ending which petered out a bit, I guess that's real life. Maurice seemed like a very annoying man to be stuck on a raft with!

I've finished a whole stack of books recently.

Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe. My husband bought this for me after I enjoyed watching the dramatisation. I actually think it was a great adaptation as there wasn't much in these 100s of pages that wasn't captured! I did feel the book ran out of steam a bit and lost some of the narrative thread post Good Friday Agreement. I also thought the accusation against [redacted] based on the evidence he had was quite extraordinary and I'm not surprised there's a legal case. I've also read some criticism since calling into question elements of this book and the Boston oral history project more generally, which seemed fair.

Pages for You by Sylvia Brownrigg. Short novel about a young literature student having a formative lesbian relationship with an older graduate tutor. Nicely written but not hugely memorable.

Think Again by Jacqueline Wilson. I was very intrigued to read this adult update on the Girls series but it was fairly disappointing overall! A nice easy read but weirdly the women still talked like teenagers despite being 40, and it was full of loose threads and undeveloped stories - I expect there's another sequel in the works. Still nice to return to some familiar characters.

Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley. I liked this. A fun novel starting in the year 2000. Percy (a girl) and Joe, a college musician, bond over a love of analysing songs and start writing together, with an undercurrent of romance of course. When Joe's band starts to be successful, Percy questions whether her contribution has been recognised. I liked reading about various music scenes and moments through the noughties, some of which I was a bit too young for but some of which I remember well. The songs themselves were unconvincing but then they always are in books. Not a perfect book but I had a really good time reading it.

Clear by Carys Davies. Very slight but beautiful novella about a Scottish minister sent to evict the last remaining tenant farmer from a remote Shetland island, and the relationship that develops between them. I thought this was really good but actually too short to explore some of the big themes it was aiming for.

Guide Me Home by Attica Locke. Final part and another great instalment of this trilogy following black Texas Ranger Darren Matthews against the backdrop of Trump's election and rising white supremacy. This one was more of a political thriller than the others but with a solid central mystery about a black girl disappearing from a white sorority house. I recommend the full series to anyone who hasn't read it.

@GrannieMainland
I'm reading and enjoying Deep Cuts too at the moment. I've visited Berkeley, California, which has a few interesting book and record shops, or it did - I guess my visits were actually quite close to the time when this book is set, between 1999 and 2006 - maybe 2005 as I'm not sure we made it out to Berkeley in 2006 and I'm sure we didn't on our last visit to the US in 2007, though we did spend a week in San Francisco.

I read Guide Me Home a few months ago (previously read the first and second books in the trilogy). It must have been written before the last presidential election and set in 2016 (before November) I think, and it feels all too topical. I

18. The Politicisation of Mumsnet by Sarah Pedersen
Interesting and quite enjoyable reading about events and changes on here that I remember (and a few I don't). The theme is about the variable political side to MN including politicians' webchats and the general opinion weather on here. I'm not a stats expert myself but I would have liked more numbers in this, though I don't know how illuminating that would really have been.

Bookworm - Lucy Mangan I know others have loved this, I’m about 10 years older than Lucy Mangan so a lot of the books mentioned are after my day - although I probably read them to younger cousins or my own DC they didn’t really have the same resonance. I was a proper book worm though, preferring a book to a children’s party any time so this was familiar territory and of course I worked my way through Enid Blyton, Little Women and What Katy Did etc so I enjoyed it in parts.

@BestisWest

Interesting - I'm 5 years older than Lucy Mangan and a lot of my books seem to have come from the local Oxfam (so secondhand and not very newly published at the time I read them) as well as the library, but there seems to have been a big overlap in our childhood reading - much more so than as adults when the age gap isn't really that significant - and my memory is that many of the books she writes about were not that new in the 1970s or 1980s.

@elkiedee It’s funny, I don’t remember picture books at all from my childhood and yet Where The Wild Things Are was published the year I was born. There must have been some. Lucy Mangan didn’t like animal books so Winnie the Pooh, Beatrix Potter, The Wind in the Willows, Mary Plain, Little Grey Rabbit and Paddington Bear all of which I loved aren’t included (or I missed them). Thomas the Tank Engine isn’t there either and I loved those books dearly. These are the books I remember getting from the library as a small child (only two a week allowed so I did a lot of re-reading). Judy Blume, Noel Streatfeild and CS Lewis didn’t feature at all for me and I think the only Roald Dahl I read was Charlie and the Glass elevator which still gives me recurring nightmares.

I do remember a lot of Ladybird books and Children’s annuals. DM loved a jumble sale and never came home without a book or two so there was a lot of random stuff that I vaguely remember plus stuff from her and DF’s childhoods (Biggles and Elsie J. Oxenham used to baffle me).

While they were published quite a bit earlier in the US, I think Judy Blume's books didn't become widely available here until the late 70s/early 80s, so ages is relevant here. I first read Are You There God It's Me Margaret I think, and I was maybe about 11 (!) and at middle school when I read Forever, aimed at a slightly older audience, the one about having sex for the first time! I'd forgotten the LM not liking animal books - I read most of those you mention, but I kind of skipped Thomas the Tank Engine. I went to jumble sales with my mum often and always headed straight for the book stall. I did devour Noel Streatfeild and I had a lot of 1970s Puffins. From 9 or 10 I was choosing a lot of my own books in bookshops, libraries, Oxfam, jumble sales etc. I still have some of my original Puffins and other paperbacks, as well as quite a lot of ex library books sold off in big library sales in the early 80s. Others were nabbed by my much younger sister or lost.

Puffins I remember and paying in school every week and then choosing a Puffin book stuck a chord, I bought Ian Serrailler’s The Silver Sword and Nina Bawden’s Carrie’s War along with the Glass Elevator that way.

I read just about every children's book in existence by the time I was about 10. I hated fantasy - luckily it wasn't a big genre in the 60s. I particularly liked the Nancy Drew mysteries.

84 Taste -Stanley Tucci (NF)

This was a quick read, Stanley’s childhood, travels and films up to pandemic times. I’m currently watching him on iplayer going round Italy and this was a nice accompaniment (though I laughed when he told off TV chefs for saying everything tastes amazing, because he does exactly this!)

85 Mantel Pieces - Hilary Mantel (NF) (P)

This has been on the go for a while; a collection of her reviews and other pieces for the LRB, interspersed with chatty emails to her editor. I was fine on the reviews of Tudor biographies but got a bit lost on her reviews of French Revolution material (she and the publication are both erudite and do not start with the basics 😀). Some fabulous writing, of course.

Beatrix Potter's books are picture books! I had some but I learned to read at 5 - I came home crying on my first day at school because they hadn't taught us to read yet, and my mum then taught me because I was clearly desperate to access books without depending on adults reading them to me. We then went to China for a year and my dad sent boxes and boxes of books, and I then progressed very rapidly to independently reading chapter books.

Beatrix Potter's books are longer reads than a lot of modern picture books. My brother and sister from my mum's second marriage are a bit younger than me (8 and 11 years) so I probably remember some picture books that I read to them and that were around the house.

Yes, I guess I’m thinking of Mog, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Shirley Hughes, Alan and Jean Ahlberg etc when I think of picture books - the bigger square shiny type which I definitely read to my own DC and to my cousins who were 8, 10 and 16 years younger.
But you’re right, Beatrix Potter counts as picture books as does the copy of The Wizard of Oz that I had. And I loved My Naughty Little Sister which had Shirley Hughes illustrations. I was an early reader too, but from Ladybird books at home, some with the weird phonetic spelling.

Percy Jackson and the Last Olympian by Rick Riordan

Last in the original Percy Jackson series. The children of Poseidon, Zeus and Hades (plus 40 other demi gods) unite to defend Olympus from the forces of Kronos. More fun than Harry Potter.