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.

Thank you for all the good wishes. I’m finding dark corners to do things in, could quite well become a crepuscular being. My selection of jazzy sunglasses are getting an airing on rotation outside too

Decided I actively loathe We Pretty Pieces Of Flesh. It passed from Gritty to Exploitative last night and I don’t want those images in my head from a book as badly written as that. Several scenes are uncomfortably Male Gaze for me, which when I considered she’s writing about 11 year olds…….ugh. Themes have been better explored elsewhere, imo.

The only way I can find to do this is click on 'limited time deals' on a computer which gets me to the screen where you can filter the deals by the genre of Kindle book:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/deals?discounts-widget=%2522%257B%255C%2522state%255C%2522%253A%257B%255C%2522refinementFilters%255C%2522%253A%257B%255C%2522departments%255C%2522%253A%255B%255C%2522341678031%255C%2522%255D%257D%257D%252C%255C%2522version%255C%2522%253A1%257D%2522

Out of the Past - Patricia Wentworth
I quite liked this, but guessed the murderer relatively early on. Still not feeling well enough to do anything except lightweight reading, but I think three Miss Silvers in 36 hours is more than enough for anybody.

I saw the Salt Path film yesterday. Anyone else? I haven't read the book.

Thanks @SheilaFentiman - I finally did manage to work this out, but it only seemed possible on my desktop….on my iPad (which I’m usually on) I just get the horrible new Kindle homepage with absolutely no way to navigate to anywhere useful. WHYYYYYYYYY are they making it SO difficult? 🤨

I think I end up looking through the first few pages and then looking on here to see who
found good onss!

Me too! Bought Wellness.

I also find Amazon puts likely books for me in the first few pages anyway eg one by an author I have bought before.

I've definitely also been on a slump having just completed a work probation period and my daughter (home ed) is just doing her GCSEs so never seem to have any time, hopefully things will pick up.

33 . The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - I really enjoyed the read along led by @AgualusasLover , I definitely was one of the last finishers with it ending in the middle of DDs exam period. I really enjoyed this book, it wasn't at all what I expected and I enjoyed reading along other peoples opinions and interpretations.

34 . Rise up Women - Diane Atkinson - this is a bold for me. It's a really detailed story of the lives of the suffragettes. All I really remember from school history is Emeline Pankhurst and Emily Davison throwing herself in front of a horse. My son told me about it as he did a his extended project for his history A Levels on the Suffragettes last summer. The forced feeding of the hunger strikers in prison was particularly horrific and i had no idea that that had happened. It's a must read. Particularly in current times when women's rights have seemed fragile.

@SheilaFentimanI’ll have to prioritise Moondust then. It’s been on my wishlist for some time and I saw it in a charity shop a month ago but didn’t pick it up and regretted it so I was happy to see another copy 2 weeks ago in another charity shop in another city and purchased it immediately.

@FuzzyCaoraDhubhIt is isn’t it? I’m going to have to buy the other books in the series. I wanted Wuthering Heights but the store didn’t have a copy in this edition so I decided to go with Jane Eyre. It’s almost too pretty to actually read it.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie Glad to hear that it’s a favourite cookbook. I’ll have to try to make something from it soon. The Rose Elliot has been on my list for some time and I got the original version in April but I wanted a copy of the updated book. I was excited to find a copy recently though a little disappointed that it isn’t quite so wordy as the original book. I love leafing through a wordy cookbook in bed. I’m still happy to have it though and looking forward to making some of the recipes soon.

It’s very similar to the original, but I do find her very soothing to read!

@MegBusset I am currently ordering Gamesmasters for dp's Christmas present (we were at Call of Cthuhlu Live on Sunday night so that places dp on the RPG map for those who know I guess). Thank you x

She really is. I took a few books with me to enjoy on holiday but found myself reading the original edition on of the Complete Vegetarian instead.

Latest reads:

End of a Century - Paul Carnahan

A man goes in search of the original owner of his vintage suit. This was OK, it was a kindle unlimited book so read it for free.

Probably Nothing - Lauren Bravo

Another OK book, this time from the library. A woman goes along with it when the man she’s been on 4 dates with dies but his family believe she was his life partner. All a bit silly - as if you wouldn’t just speak up in that situation!

The Perfect Golden Circle - Benjamin Myers

Two men travel around the countryside one summer making ever more intricate crop circles. This is quite a short book and I never really got into it. I would have loved to see some illustrations of the described designs!

Animal Farm - George Orwell

A reread of the classic.

Dear Fahrenheit 451 - Annie Spence

A librarian writes letters to the books she’s loved and loathed. I usually love a book about books but I didn’t enjoy this. Firstly the author is American which I didn’t realise when I picked it up - not usually a problem but it meant that I had never heard of many of the books mentioned. It’s also written with a really snarky tone which I found off putting.

The Estate - Denzil Meyrick

From the blurb I expected this to be about a family gathering at a remote estate while they are gradually murdered until they work out who’s doing it. That does sort of happen but it’s much more thriller/police procedural than the blurb led me to expect. I didn’t really like the main female detective character and all the family members were awful so I didn’t really care what happened to them! This was ok, just not the book I was expecting.

A bit of a run of fairly mediocre books there (Animal Farm excepted) but the new Taylor Jenkins Reid arrived today so hopefully that will be good!

35 The Survivors - Jane Harper This story takes place in a tiny Tasmanian beachside town, which Kieran and his partner Mia are back visiting with their baby, to help Kieran’s mum pack up the family home ready to move herself into a flat and Kieran’s dad - suffering from dementia - into a care home. On the first night they are back, a waitress at the town’s restaurant/bar is found dead on the beach, and the investigation that follows brings up a lot of history from the terrible storm 12 years ago in which several people died.

I loved this, just like the other books I’ve read by Harper. She’s so good at evoking a sense of place and of small-town life, and I really like her plotting too - a proper murder mystery but focused on relationships and people rather than the procedural or gritty aspects. A definite bold.

I read another Miss Silver but I’ve already forgotten the title. Horrible man gets killed with his own antique dagger. Could have been one of many whodunnit.

I'm also a bit under the weather so have been getting stuck into the Jane Casey books, 2 in the last 3 days and have just purchased the next 5! Safe to say I'm drinking the kool-aid!

The Last Girl - awful criminal barrister's wife & daughter are murdered. Interesting that Jane Casey is married to a criminal barrister! I thought the whodunnit was quite obvious though not necessarily why, but story of Maeve and co progressed nicely.
The Stranger You Know - the one where we get the background on Derwent. Again whodunnit was quite obvious but the final denouement and back story has got me hooked.

One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid

I really like TJR, I think she writes great characters even if they tend to be improbably good looking, funny and usually seem ok for money.

The premise of this book is absolutely ridiculous though.

Emma marries her childhood sweetheart who does in a helicopter crash. She grieves and eventually dates again and is engaged to new guy when her husband calls, not dead after all but stranded on a rocky outcrop for three years. (This is not a real spoiler, this all happens in the first 4 pages or so).

We go back to the start and hear about love story number one, his death and then love story number two and its all good stuff, I am eagerly picking the book up wanting to know who she'll choose but the nagging thought at the back of my mind is THIS WOULD NEVER HAPPEN! Everyone dies in the crash apart from him and he is completely unharmed? And he lives off rainwater on these rocks? I've read enough survival and adventure books to say I don't think so. However thats not the point. So if you can get over the bollocks in the background it's TJR doing her stuff and a quick and entertaining read.

@Stowickthevast Another 50 Booker falls!

Final sick bed reading- Vanishing Point by Patricia Wentworth
Old Maude has served me very well and I’m ready to face the world again. Tired and drained, but otherwise substantially better.

Hope everyone else is getting on okay or at least finding books a help.

30 The Book Of Trespass - Nick Hayes
So-so read with some interesting facts about the laws and history of trespass, buried amongst a lot of fairly predictable polemic and average nature writing.

31 Mutiny On The Bounty - Peter Fitzsimons
Picked this as an Audible freebie, which I hoped would act as somewhat of a sequel to The Wide Wide Sea, as it picks up Bligh’s story more or less straight after the demise of Captain Cook. The prose is overlong (22 hours!), overwritten and overblown, and would have been a DNF in book format but I stuck with it in the gaps between credits in my subscription. The story of the mutiny itself, and the ensuing events of the mutineers and loyalists is extraordinary and deserves a better book than this, sure there must be one out there…

Glad you are feeling better Remus

Thanks @SheilaFentiman Miss Silver had been a real comfort to me! 😂

@MegBusset I enjoyed this Bounty one iirc

John Boyne has done a fictionalised version which was readable enough, but I felt probably drew rather too heavily on the above.

Sorry you’ve been poorly @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie. Nothing like a bit of comfort reading. Hazel Holt’s Mrs Malory is a very comforting detective too. Tea and cake. She’s knitting a lot at the moment.

Dropped off this thread for ages as life got hectic!

28. Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews Saw this reviewed on these threads probably last year? So I added to my wishlist and picked it up when it went down to 99p

Spy thriller following Dominika Egorova, a Russian spy trained at "Sparrow School" where women are trained to use sex to their advantage. She takes on Nate Nash from the CIA and they're both trying to turn the other into a double agent. Who will be successful?!

I enjoyed this but not enough to read the other two books in the trilogy! The author and his wife were CIA spies so I imagine it's relatively accurate. I found the descriptions of torture really difficult, even though they were nowhere near as graphic as they could have been. I also found it frustrating how many Russian words there were in the Russian sections. The characters would be speaking to each other in Russian so there's no need to throw in random Russian words mid sentence and then translate them (this absolutely makes sense when a Russian and American are speaking English and the Russian doesn't know the English word). It just felt like the author was trying to show off that he speaks Russian and it got really annoying after a while