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.

I think I recommended Young Americans @ÚlldemoShúl but glad the reading slump has passed.

I haven't got round to reading Good Girl but I actually quite liked the other fiction ones bar The Persians which was a very questionable shortlist choice. I think my favourite for a win would be Fundamentally as it's a fresh voice that did a good job of balancing humour, religion & politics. I think it would be weird to give it to Strout as a 5th book in a series - while you can read it as a stand alone, you gain a lot more from the background of her previous books.
I do think All Fours may win it though - I liked it but can totally see why people don't.

For me Nesting was the stand out of the others, and I haven't got round to it but A Little Trickerie also seems to have a lot of love.

The only NF I read was the heart so will be happy if that wins!

A couple of reviews:

66. After the Fire - Jane Casey. Another Maeve Kerrigan, I wasn't as enamoured by this one which is good as it means I'm ready for a break!

67. Audition - Katie Kitamura. Has anyone else read this? It's quite odd. I haven't read anything else by her and this was a choice for my online book club. It's a book in two halves. In the first half, the first person narrator - an actress - meets a younger man Xavier for lunch. It's an awkward meeting and we find out that the first time they met, he thought she might be his mother which she says is impossible. He then becomes involved in a play that she is acting in and there's lots about how she is playing the part in the play. Halfway through the novel completely changes, and the narrator and her husband are now having dinner with Xavier as if he is their son. The whole thing is very meta and doesn't really give any clear answers about what is going on. Which half of the story is real? Is the narrator reliable? Is the whole book actually the play? The writing is quite like Rachel Cusk in it's depth about ordinary things but also emotional detachment. An interesting book - it's a very quick read but has definitely got me thinking.

Clairedebear101286 · 28/05/2025 08:05

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
(21) Night Road by Kristin Hannah

Latest Book:

(22) Between Sisiters by Kristin Hannah

Description take from Amazon:

Tender, funny, bittersweet and moving, Kristin Hannah's Between Sisters skilfully explores the profound joys and sorrows shared in a close relationship, the mistakes made in the name of love, and the promise of redemption.

We all make mistakes, but for Meghann Dontess the terrible choice she made some years ago cost her everything, including the love of her sister, Claire. Meghann is now a highly successful attorney, and has put all thoughts of love completely behind her – until she meets the one man who believes he can change her mind.

Claire has fallen in love for the first time in her life, and as her wedding day approaches she prepares to face her strong-willed older sister. Reunited after two decades, these two women who believe they have nothing in common will try to become what they never were: a family.

Another easy to read, enjoyable book.

Onto the next!
Happy reading everyone :)

I DNF The Last Word by Elly Griffiths. It was silly and dull and I didn’t care about any of the characters. I dunno, I usually like her books but this series has been a damp squib I think.

Also DNF Shakespeare - The Man Who Pays The Rent - Judi Dench on audio. I know it’s been loved on here but it wasn’t doing it for me.

#19. City of Destruction by Vaseem Khan

Still loving this series set in post Partition Bombay. Learning a lot. Happy he is publishing a sixth book.

I had slightly missed that The Safekeep was on the WP shortlist, I only read it recently and thought it was extraordinary, so that's what I'd like to win, but I also expect it to be All Fours. Which I didn't like very much but I did see it was interesting and inventive, so I wouldn't mind.

On my holiday I read:

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson. We were staying in coastal Finland so this was perfect. More a series of vignettes than a novel, each chapter tells of something that happened to 6 year old Sophie and her grandmother spending summer on an isolated island in the gulf of Finland. It's heavily based on Tove's own family holidays and there was a lovely afterword by her niece. This was a quiet book, very little really happened, but a lovely window into life on the very remotest islands.

Our London Lives by Christine Dwyer Hickey. This follows two characters who have emigrated from Ireland to London, Millie who arrives pregnant in the 70s, and Pip, recently out of rehab, around 2018. Slowly we see how they're connected and the relationship that developed between them. This is a big, expansive book with lots of twists and a great portrayal of London changing and gentrifying over the years. I did find it slightly too long though and there were some big gaps in time which left me a bit confused about what was happening at certain points.

Cover Story by Mhairi McFarlane. Her newest, just as you'd expect. Bel and Connor fake being in a relationship to do some kind of undercover journalism to expose the mayor of Manchester's wrongdoing - the details escape me. Lots of fun though one of the worst depictions of journalism I've ever seen in a book!

98 The Surf House - Lucy Clarke

Standard Lucy Clarke - woman finds herself in holiday destination (coastal village in Morocco), mystery and violence ensue.

I binged all her books a couple of years ago on holiday and this is the first new one for a while. Passed the time but perhaps she’s best read on holiday 😀

99 Bad Dreams and Other Stories - Tess Hadley (P)

This was a lovely collection. Mostly snapshots into the lives of women and girls. Beautifully written, a bold.

Oooh thank you @ShackletonSailingSouth that reminds me about the Malabar House series. I’ll need to get back to them! Vaseem Khan does a podcast with Abir Mukerjee about crime writing. Very entertaining. They make a good double act.

81 . Born To Run by Bruce Springsteen (Audible)

Read by the author (who was a tad monotone at times)

My favourite teacher was a massive Springsteen fan, my fandom is a lower level but still a fan

This was a good, solid, music memoir. As is often the case the early years before his fame were the most interesting. Growing up in New Jersey, his father was mentally unwell and left with Bruce’s mother and sister to go to California in the days before internet, leaving Bruce and his sister Virginia who was pregnant, still just teenagers without family support and practically homeless.

The music stuff is what you’d expect everyone famous he meets is amazing and a total blast. Most memoirs are dishonest like this I find

He does admit to tensions within his own band The E Street Band and sometimes comes off as arrogant and big headed. But I suppose he has a right to given his success!

He’s also a long way from his working class hero days when he’s talking about all the horses he owns

He cheated on his first wife (with his second) and seems to have deployed weaponised incompetence with Patti, his second wife. It’s obvious he struggled with fatherhood given his own father, but there is minimal focus on his DC, probably to protect their privacy.

All in all it was a good yarn and I’m gutted I missed out on tickets for him recently. I would have liked to have ticked him off my list.

The Rest Of Our Lives - Benjamin Markovits. I thought this was going to be a male version of the menopause novel like All Fours or Sandwich, both of which I enjoyed. The premise is good. Tom is driving his 18 year old daughter Miri to college. His wife Amy had an affair 12 years before and Tom said he would stay until their youngest child Miri left home. So instead of going back to Amy, he keeps driving. But Tom is a very unengaging character that doesn't really have any idea of what he wants. The book turns into a road trip across America with episodes where Tom stays with various friends and relations but these don't really progress any story. There's a back story of Tom's illness going on and one about a book he may write about playing basketball - there's far too much basketball in this book for my taste! - but not much else. He also has a really distracting habit of dropping brand names into the text, which I rarely knew like " she still had a box of Entemann's". Not sure who this book is for... Definitely not me.

@Stowickthevast oh I hate the brand name thing, it’s so unnecessary, Richard Osman does it heavily

@Stowickthevast I agree with your review. It was all a bit "So what?"

48. Story of a Murder - Hallie Rubenhold

Most people probably know the outline of the Crippen murder case of 1910 - mild-mannered American-born doctor kills his wife, failed music-hall performer Belle Elmore, and flees with his mistress and former typist, Ethel Le Neve. He dresses Ethel up as a boy for their furtive transatlantic dash by boat across to Canada, but the sharp-eyed captain spots them, sensationally uses the new-fangled wireless telegraphy to alert police, and the two are intercepted. Both are tried; Crippen hangs while Le Neve is found not guilty of any crime.

Rubenhold's speciality lies in exploring the stories of women in history and she’s done a cracking job here. All the above is true, but her impeccable research uncovers a wealth of detail about the case - that Crippen was a practised fraudster and conman, far from a henpecked figure of pity, and very possibly already a murderer (his first wife died in questionable circumstances); that Belle wasn't the talentless joke she’s so often made out to be, but a much-loved and valued organiser of London's music-hall charity, with many devoted friends - these women were instrumental in prodding the reluctant police into action when Belle disappeared.
Le Neve, Crippen's willing accomplice, almost certainly knew exactly what he was planning for Belle and possibly even assisted in her death, and certainly at the aftermath; her 'sweet little innocent' act served her well although her life post-Crippen plunged her into a psychological nightmare. Fascinating if you’re interested in true crime.

49. Yellowface - Rebecca Kuang

Not something I’d have read myself but it was a book club choice. I’m sure everyone knows about this but SPOILER ALERT anyway - aspiring but only middlingly-competent writer June Hayward purloins the draft of a novel about Chinese workers in WW1 by her on/off frenemy and much more successful rival Athena Liu when Athena dies. After intensive rewriting she publishes it as her own, agrees to let herself be marketed as the ambiguously-named 'Juniper Song' and experiences runaway acclaim….but soon the Twitter hate starts, as do disturbing glimpses of the dead Athena. Can June/Juniper sustain the deception?
This was an easy read, very of its time in its fixation on social media; very American and quite forgettable. I didn’t really care about any of the characters, tbh.

Glad to see what (in my mind anyway) were the best nominees for the Women’s Prize win
The Non-Fiction prize went to Rachel Clarke for The Story of a Heart (who also made a fabulous speech).
The fiction prize went to Yael van der Wouden for The Safekeep who made a speech which may be more controversial than the organisers would want.

Ooooo @ÚlldemoShúl what was controversial about it? Glad about Rachel Clarke it was really a stand out book in general for me so far this year not just in non fiction

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit she talked about the fact that she was born intersex and about trans rights which I think is a conversation the Women’s Prize (and this thread) are keen to avoid.

Her being intersex is really interesting, didn’t know that!

Her speech suggests that she found out later - she said "I was a girl until I was 13" - the implication I think is that she was assumed to be female at birth and the intersex bit was a later discovery in her teens/at puberty.

Oh wow, I had a hunch Safekeep would win. It wasn't my favourite book, but I love Yael van der Wouden's speech. Top marks to her for that! She's brave to come out as intersex and say that she's had the medical treatment she needed (while also clarifying that not all intersex people want/need medical treatment).

I'm thrilled The Safekeep won! I'll have to look up her speech, that sounds very interesting.

Ha! Yes, we still have that here. My DDs are very close in age and as small children they were taken to the same activities but now as teenagers one is sporty and arty and the other is musical and mathsy. Thankfully they both like science and reading or I'd have to disown them.

I'd completely missed that it was last night 🤦‍♀️. I usually get email updates.

To be honest this year, I was so uninspired by the short list that I didn't really care what won. I think they had too short a timeframe from long to shortlist. and then too long until the winner was announced. I've lost all interest in the gap. I liked The Safekeep but didn't love it. Much better books didn't even make the shortlist. I feel so meh about the whole thing this year to the point I don't feel I can be bothered next year. I know I'll get FOMO when the time comes though.

I'm very pleased The Story of a Heart won the NF. It was a very powerful narrative. Again, some others on the shortlist didn't deserve to be there in my view.

All eyes to the Booker now, longlist out 29th July.

@FortunaMajor I agree both in terms of the generally uninspiring shortlist (of which The Safekeep for me was by far the best, though not as some of the longlist) and the gaps between being too long or short. I hope they fix the gaps in between at least for next year. Looking forward to the Booker announcement.

100 Cover Story - Mhairi McFarlane

I hit my hundred!

As said upthread, this was a fairly standard Mhairi book. Thirty something woman working in creative profession (investigative journalist) meets stroppy thirty something guy (finance bro turned journalist intern). They work on something together (an undercover MeToo investigation where they have to pretend to be a couple) and then - spoiler - fall in lurve.

This one has a stalker ex as well as the usual flighty but insightful BFF to our heroine. A nice read.