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.

46. The Light-Hearted Quest - Ann Bridge

I've never read any of Ann Bridge's novels before, although Illyrian Spring has been suggested for the Rather Dated Book Club. Then someone on TwiX mentioned that she’d also written a number of detective novels featuring Julia Probyn as her sleuth, and I tracked this one down, the first of the series.

It's rather old-fashioned, published in 1956 but somehow seeming older than that - at times a bit as though Barbara Pym had decided to write a travelogue-cum-detective story. Beautiful, clever and posh journalist Julia takes herself off to Morocco in search of her cousin, Colin, who's mysteriously vanished but is needed back home to run the family farm (= ancestral acres) in Scotland. Capers ensue as Julia follows clues around Casablanca, Tangiers, Fez and assorted exotic locations, with liberal local colour and friends pressed into assistance. To be honest the plot isn’t up to much but it’s very charming and good fun (though indeed Rather Dated in its language and attitudes). I’d definitely read more in the series, all of which are set in colourful locations and reflect Ann Bridge's own peripatetic life and travels.

DNF - The Bellini Madonna

bought in 2013, I attempted thjs earlier this year then set it aside. I started again but got slightly further this time and I just don’t like the protagonist, a 50 year old art professor sacked from a New England college for harrowing students. He’s just rocked up at a stately home trying to teach down a missing Bellini and he’s in raptures about the attractions of the 18 year old daughter of the house. I don’t want to spend any more time with him!

26. Kill Chase by M K Farrar
    An Amazon first reads freebie, first in a new police procedural series following DI Ryan Chase. Two fishermen accidentally catch a carrier bag on their hook and it turns out to contain a human arm. This kicks off a murder investigation and a race against time to catch the killer before they strike again. This was fine. I probably won't read anymore in the series

27. Natural Selection by Elin Hildebrand
    Another amazon first reads short story. Sophia's perfect boyfriend ditches her at the airport just as they're about to board a flight to the Galapagos Islands. Sophia heads off on her own and joins the cruise as planned. Thus begins a voyage of self-discovery. This was pretty good. The characters were surprisingly well-fleshed out for a short story although the whole thing was wrapped up a bit too neatly

Im in a slump again. I’ve lost my reading mojo to Match 3 games and in particular one where you find cats. Send Help.

I too am in a slump.
I finished number 79 Small Boat by Vincent Delacroix on Saturday. Another shortlisted International Booker book. This short book packs a mighty punch. Told from the POV of a French emergency response handler who turns down a sinking dinghy of migrants for help because they were in British waters (although they weren’t) this is absolutely horrifying. Based on true events it considers who is to blame. A very difficult read.

I finally reached 41% on A Fraction of the Whole and decided life just isn’t long enough. This tells the story of an Australian dysfunctional family, with most focus on the father and sons. Funny at times but the tone never changes and it’s poorly plotted, jumping in and out of different stories rather than one narrative. All the men sounded the same and the women were flat and I was reading it for what felt like months (even though it was nowhere near that) so I DNFed. Should have done it sooner.
Haven’t been able to settle on anything else since. Still reading my long reads War and Peace and now The Mitfords- Letters between Six Sisters but need something diverting and pacy to get me back into reading again instead of endless YouTube scrolling nonsense.

Real Americans which I just finished may be a good slump book. It's quite an easy read but diverting enough and each section is better than the previous one!

Not sure if either of you have read Confessions but that was another reasonably enjoyable read this year.

A train journey and a night unable to sleep in a hotel room = 2 books finished in 24 hours.

The Garden by Nick Newman
This was favourably reviewed in the Grauniad and came up on the kindle deal a few days ago. It’s advertised as horror, but it isn’t really; more, a sort of folk fairy tale with a couple of dead bodies. I liked it as it went along, but thought it didn’t quite know what it wanted to do or be and I found it ultimately a bit unsatisfying. A few hints of things didn’t actually go anywhere and some stuff at the end didn’t quite add up and was left hanging a bit too much for my liking. I’d read another of his if I happened to see one; I think this was his first adult fiction; he’s apparently written a couple of children’s books under the name Bowling.

Maurice and Maralyn reviewed a fair few times on here now. I liked the story more than the writing. Couple buy a boat; whale crashes into boat; couple abandon boat and spend months on a dinghy trying not to die. The stuff on the dinghy was interesting but I found the clipped, rather distant, writing style increasingly annoying and the author’s attempts at being profound increasingly cringey. An easy read and perfect for a night of insomnia, but could have been better in the hands of a better writer.

My list so far...
(1) The Nurse by Valerie Keogh
(2) The Wrong Child by Julia Crouch and M. J. Arlidge
(3) The Perfect Parents By J.A. Baker
(4) Darkest Fear, written by Harlen Coben
(5) Old Filth by Jane Gardam
(6) The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam
(7) Last Friends by Jane Gardam
(8) American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins -
(9) The Housemaid by Frieda McFadden
(10) The Coworker by Frieda McFadden
(11) Maid by Stephanie Land (Audio Book)
(12) The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
(13) The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
(14) Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education
Book by Stephanie Land
(15) Verity by Colleen Hoover
(16) Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah
(17) Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah
(18) Home Front by Kristin Hannah
(19) The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
(20) Fly Away by Kristin Hannah

Latest book....

(21) Night Road by Kristin Hannah

Description taken from Amazon...

From the number one bestselling author of The Women, in Kristin Hannah’s Night Road, the consequence of one terrible night changes a group of young people’s lives forever.

'There was a beauty in chaos, a wildness that hinted at things gone wrong and mistakes overcome'

Lexi and Mia are inseparable from the moment they start high school. Though different in so many ways – Lexi is an orphan and lives with her aunt on a trailer park, while Mia is a golden girl blessed with a loving family and a beautiful home – they nonetheless recognize something in each other, and Mia comes to rely heavily on Lexi’s steadfast friendship.

The summer they graduate is a time they’ll never forget; a summer of love, best friends and shared confidences. But then one night changes them forever. As hearts are broken, loyalties challenged and hopes dashed, the time has come to leave childhood behind and learn to face a new future . . .

I loved this book - could not put it down, read it in record time :)

I just love Kristin Hannah - her books are there to be enjoyed and tell a story - not too intellectually challenging for me ;)
I think I am now afraid to read books by a different author lol

Onto the next!

Happy reading everyone :)

@Clairedebear101286 I find Colleen Hoover and Curtis Sittenfield somewhat similar to Kristin Hannah if you wanted to try another author!

Signs of life by Stephen Fabes

A doctor cycles off round the world for six years.

Adventure travel books are my thing and I find myself always asking, do I want to do this or read about it? And I only want to read about this.

He sleeps in dodgy situations often in a tent and with insects of varying sizes more than I would like. He cycles over mountain ranges with no description of how he knows how much water to take, he must have no idea where the nearest water source is most of the time. It sounds lonely and friendships are fleeting.

The scenery is amazing and he has been able to get into countries less travelled partly by doing this in the early 2010s and partly by living optimistically no one will shoot him.

On his return to England, there is a whole chapter on getting back into life and that it isn't/wasn't easy which is missing from much of this genre.

Pleased to have read it, going on the charity shop pile as I have a strict one in one out policy for real books and this doesn't earn a place. But it will be 4 stars on storygraph.

I have read three Colleen Hoover books and wasn't impressed but I have never heard of Curtis Sittenfield so thank you will have to look him up!

Curtis S is a woman :-)

On his return to England, there is a whole chapter on getting back into life and that it isn't/wasn't easy which is missing from much of this genre.

This is something I'm interested in as well @RazorstormUnicorn , and I agree it doesn't feature enough in travel books. Over the weekend I skim-read The Impossible Journey, by Thor Pedersen (which I'm not counting as I didn't read it properly) and he also mentions what sounds like depression during journey and after it - he speculates that he messed up his brain chemistry by all that time being on high alert and coping with new experiences.

61. How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, Arnold Bennett
A self-help book from 1908, aimed at men who work in offices 8 days a day, reminding them that, setting aside time for sleep, they still have another 8 hours in the day, which they can use to be develop interests and knowledge about things, whether that's science, music or philosophy. It's very firmly aimed at men with no domestic responsibilities - the woman who does for you won't make you early morning tea? Get her to set a tray outside the door and you can heat it up yourself with with aid of spirit lamp, man! I did still appreciate the fundamental message - your day doesn't have to be defined by your job; we all have 24 hours and even if you've wasted then up till now, you've still got 24 hours again tomorrow, so use them to live a little bit more.

62. The Grand Sophy, Georgette Heyer
Setting aside a stereotyped money-lender, this was sparkling good fun, as the heroine arranges everyone's love-life to her satisfaction, including rescuing the hero from the wrong woman.

28 The Plague And I - Betty MacDonald

Thank you so much to all those who recommended this quite wonderful book, which I never would have heard of otherwise. It’s a brilliantly observed and very funny account of her time in a TB sanitorium in the 1930s - a time before we had a vaccine or antibiotics for TB. (I was surprised to find out, on Googling, that TB is now considered so treatable that it’s no longer on the routine vaccine schedule in the UK. Still have the scar on my arm from my BCG!)

I think this might be out of print but I listened on Audible and would highly recommend this as the narrator is fantastic.

I haven’t been on this thread for a few months as I haven’t been in the reading mood though I have added a few more books to my list but I’ve also gone for considerable periods without reading.

My list…

1)Eject! Eject! by John Nichol(K)
2)Picnic At Hanging Rock by by Joan Lindsay(B)
3)Terms and Conditions: Life in Girls’ Boarding Schools 1939-1979(K)
4)The Museum of Whales That You Will never See: Travels Among the Collectors of Iceland by A. Kendra Greene.(B)
5)The Go-Between by L.P Hartley(B)
6)The Five by Hallie Rubenhold(A)
7)The Darling Buds of May(H.E Bates)(B)
8)The Snow Geese by William Fiennes(B)
9)American Sirens by Kevin Hazzard(A)
10)West by Cary’s Davies(B)
11)The Phantom Menace by Terry Brooks(A)
12)A Furious Sky by Eric Jay Dolin(A)
13) Attack of The Clones by R.A Salvatore(A)
14) The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King(A)
15) Death In The Air by Kate Winkler Dawson(A)
16 )Nathaniel’s Nutmeg by Giles Milton(B)
17 )Potted, Pickled and Canned by Sue Shepard(B)
18 )The Dinner Table: Over 100 Writers on Food by Ella Risbridger and Kate Young.(B)
19 ) The Taste of Sweet by Joanne Chen(B)
20 ) The Hidden World of The Fox by Adele Brand(B)
21 ) A Smell of Burning by Colin Grant(A)
22)Revenge of The Sith by Matthew Stover(A)
23) The Bone Woman by Clea Koff(A)
24)Berlin Games: How Hitler Stole The Olympic Dream by Guy Walters(B)
25)Geneva by Richard Armitage(A)
26 ) No Milk Today: The Vanishing World of The Milk Man by Andrew Ward(B)
27) The Leopard by Giuseppe Di Lampedusa(B)
28) * *A Fishwatcher’s Guide to Life, the Ocean and Everything by Helen Scales.(B)
29) American Midnight: Tales of The Dark Selected and Introduced by Laird Hunt.(B)
30) Sweet Spot: An Ice Cream Binge Across America by Amy Ettinger(B)
31) The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman(B)
32 Brain On Fire by Susannah Callahan(K)
33) Somebody I used To Know by Wendy Mitchell(K)
34) Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean(K)
35) Exposure by Robert Bilott(A)
36) Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson(A)
37) Dracula by Bram Stoker(A)
38) One More Croissant For The Road by Felicity Cloake(K)
39) The Cove by LJ Ross(K)

Unfortunately though having no real urge to read does not correlate with no urge to buy and I’ve picked up far too many books over the past few weeks. I am looking forward to reading them but I may have to implement a one in one out policy as some do.

My recent book haul. All were second hand with the exception of Jane Eyre.

I’m hoping that returning to this thread inspires me to read.

@ShelfObsessed I remember Moondust as being very good.

That's a beautiful edition of Jane Eyre @ShelfObsessed

Lovely haul!

55 Tales from the Café – Toshikazu Kawaguchi trans Geoffrey Trousselot. RWYO. This is the follow up from Before the Coffee gets Cold, which I loved. I didn’t love this one quite so much, but as I’ve got the set, I’ll complete them.

DNF The Girl in the Spider’s Web – David Lagercrantz. I found this really difficult to get into. I love the character of Lisbeth Salander and she doesn’t even feature in the first 60 or so pages I read. This was a 99p Kindle as was The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye and The Girl Who Lived Twice. I’ve put them onto the DNFs too, even though I didn’t actually open them.

Just finished Grace Dent's Hungry. This is a brilliant book - very dray and funny but also enormously tender and sad. I want to give Grace a big hug.

So it's been ages since I updated because I've been so busy:

List so far:

1 , Lessons in Chemistry - Bonnie Gamus
2, Standing by The Wall - Mick Herron
3. The Secret Hours - Mick Herron
4 . A Picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde
5 . The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie
6 . Crusaders - Dan Jones
7 . Dubliners - James Joyce
8 . Man in the Queue - Josephine Tey
9 . A Shilling for Candles - Josephine Tey
10 . 1984 - George Orwell
11 . The Franchise Affair - Josephine Tey
12 . The Cracked Mirror - Chris Brookmyre
13 . To Love and Be Wise - Josephine Tey
14 . Lancaster and York - Alison Weir
15 . Daughter of Time - Jospehine Tey
16 . The Singing Sands - Josephine Tey
17 . Polo - Jilly Cooper
18 . An Expert in Murder - Nicola Upson
19. The midnight library – Matt Haig
20. Six Wives of Henry X111 – Alison Weir
21.The Gunslinger – Stephen King
22. Billy Summers – Stephen King
23. The Last Anniversary – Liane Moriarty
24 . The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn - Colin Dexter
25 . The Dark Tower II - The Drawing of the Three - Stephen King
26 . State of Emergency - Dominic Sandbrook
27 . Rivals - Jilly Cooper
28 . The Tatooist of Auschwitz - Heather Morris

And since I last updated

29 . Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir - This is a bold for me and completely unexpected because I had no idea what this book was about before I read it and honestly it's not a genre I normally read so it was an unexpected delight. Very life affirming. I recommend.

30 . Holy Island - L J Ross - I picked this and the next in the series up on audible because I like a good series and I enjoy detective novels. I am familiar with Holy Island and the surrounding areas because we have family from the area and I used to spend many summers there which I think helped with this novel. It was very readable and I enjoyed it, the main character DCI Ryan is flawed which I also enjoyed.

31 . Sycamore Gap - L J Ross - listened to this in quick succession from the previous one. How sad that we lost this precious landmark. I preferred the story of this one to the first , it seemed quicker paced but also we are getting to know the characters and their back stories which enhances the plot. I'll definitely look out for the rest of the series if the are on offer.

32 . Innocent Traitor - Alison Weir - This was my first attempt at one of her works of fiction. Whilst I enjoyed it she's no Hilary Mantell. I did feel as though I learned a bit more about the 'history' of the story. Poor Lady Jane Grey, what happened to her was awful.

I also loved Project Hail Mary @lifeturnsonadime

@ShelfObsessed The Rose Elliot is an old friend of mine.

31 Patriarchy Inc - Cordelia Fine
Cordelia Fine’s latest argues that inequality in the workplace is due to socially constructed gender and patriarchal power structures, rather than innate biological differences between men and women.

I’m inclined to agree, but it’s one of those things we can’t ever know isn’t it - because there’s no such thing as a unsocialised man or woman we can use as an experimental subject. Found it quite tricky to follow on Audible - but then I gave up on her previous book, Testosterone Rex, in print too. I’m beginning to think it’s her, not me.

32 Stay with Me - Ayobami Adebayo
This is Adebayo’s first novel, which I picked up after being blown away by A Spell of Good Things last year. Yejide is a young Nigerian woman struggling with infertility, to the point where her husband’s family pressure him into taking a second wife. A few too many melodramatic twists and turns follow. This was a gripping page turner, less challenging in style and easier to read than ASoGT but far less accomplished, suffering from that first-novel syndrome of trying to cram all the issues the author cares about into one book. Still fascinating to learn about about Nigerian culture and history, and I will definitely pick up anything else she writes.

33 A Sicilian Affair - Susan Lewis Catie, fresh from prison for a crime we don’t yet know the details of, decides on a whim to go to Sicily to escape her empty house and her memories. Once there, she serendipitously meets a charming Italian and falls in love; meanwhile she writes a memoir which takes us through her back story. As dull as it sounds. The characters are ciphers, Catie is a Mary Sue, and I’m sick of dual timeline novels where not even one of the timelines is sufficiently fleshed out to make me care what happens. Meh.