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.

That sounds like CAIS then since she grew up in western countries with good healthcare, it's difficult to identify until puberty when periods don't start. Interesting decision to announce it at the Women's Prize, makes her win more controversial than it might otherwise be, even though she'll fit the criteria of being 'legally defined as a woman'.

Well done @SheilaFentiman - not quite halfway through the year too 👏

On the Calculation of Volume is on the Kindle deals today. This is a Groundhog day type story that was nominated for the international Booker - I thought it was really interesting and well worth a pound or so!

17 When The Dust Settles by Lucy Easthope, read by many on here so needs no introduction. Her descriptions of national emergencies and incidents is compelling and her interwoven biography is interesting and at times sad or funny. I did come away with the feeling she was exceptionally unlucky to be present/involved in various emergency situations that were coincidental to her day job though, not surprised her colleagues nicknamed her Jonah!

18- The List Of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey I liked this more than the PP who reviewed it (sorry didn’t make a note of who that was) although I agree that the back drop of the Yorkshire Ripper murders was problematical.
It felt a bit YA, but given the subject matter obviously isn’t, but it kept me reading and involved in the story. I found the ending a bit sensationalist and obviously looking to go out with a bang that was a bit at odds with the rest of the narrative.

19- Fire by John Boyne.
Fire tells the story, in dual timeline, of a brilliant but psychopathic plastic surgeon who operates on people suffering from disfiguring burns.
She does however have a secret life and the reader is shown in alternate chapters the intricacies of her current life and what has made her the way she is.

I really enjoyed this which I picked up on a whim when it was one of the Kindle 99p deals. JB may not be high art but he can definitely tell a good yarn. I’m eager to read the rest of The Elements novellas now but as I’m not willing to pay the full price I may have to use some of my audible credits which are stacking up.
They definitely should be read in order though as they share characters and Fire annoyingly gives away the plot of Earth.

@SheilaFentiman – whoop, whoop!

DNF – SAS Brothers in Arms: Churchill’s Desperadoes – Damien Lewis. Not sure what the problem was with this or maybe I’m giving myself permission to DNF books that I’m just not enjoying. NF isnt my first choice and this book is one of the reasons why. I found it quite dry, very different from all the reviews which said it was exciting lol. I think the BBC series Rogue Heroes was based on Damien Lewis' trilogy.

Next up: Bad Actors by Mick Heron. I know where I am with the Slow Horses!

Thanks all 😊

I’m taking a bit of a pause on the TBR for a re-read of The Silence of the Girls and The Women of Troy, before I start on the new one.

I am not doing very well at staying on this thread. Best wishes to all those who are unwell or having a difficult time and fingers crossed for all those who have exam-takers.

Since I last posted I have finished:

#31. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

Read on the readalong organised by @AgualusasLover . First time read for me - confounded my expectations and thoroughly enjoyed. Great to do as a readalong to see what I had missed and gain insights from others.

#32. North Woods - Daniel Mason

I got off on the wrong foot on this as I was trying to find links between the people but it's all (perhaps unsurprisingly given the title) about the location which is portrayed through the people who live there over the years. Whilst I enjoyed this (particularly the nature descriptions) some parts were (for me) more engaging than others.

#33. A Trail Through Time - Jodi Taylor
#34. Christmas Present - Jodi Taylor (novella)
#35. No Time Like the Past - Jodi Taylor
#36. What Could Possibly Go Wrong - Jodi Taylor
#37. Shops and Stings and Wedding Rings - Jodi Taylor (novella)
#38. Lies, Damned Lies and History - Jodi Taylor
#39. The Great St Mary's Day Out - Jodi Taylor (novella)
#40. My Name is Markham - Jodi Taylor (novella)
#41. And the Rest is History - Jodi Taylor
#42. A Perfect Storm - Jodi Taylor (novella)
#43. Christmas Past ) - Jodi Taylor (novella)
#44. An Argumentation of Historians - Jodi Taylor
#45. The Battersea Barricades - Jodi Taylor (novella)
#46. The Steam Pump Jump - Jodi Taylor (novella)
#47. And Now for Something Completely Different - Jodi Taylor (novella)
#48. Hope for the Best - Jodi Taylor

Continuing my re-read of the Chronicles of St Marys as I had no idea who half the people were in the latest book. Easy, entertaining reading which is all I can cope with at the moment as work is demanding and I seem to have over-committed myself socially.

I managed to attend the evening with Mick Herron at The National Archives earlier in the week. He was very interesting - just a pity he didn't get to speak more! His interviewer/host seemed to have failed to grasp we were there to hear from Mick and weren't interested in her views.....

Heroes of Olympus: The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan

After only reading graphic novels for the last four years (at least, until 6 months ago when he discovered Percy Jackson), DS read the first two of this series over half term and is now on the fourth in the series and is expecting me to keep up. The Heros of Olympus starts six months after the culmination of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians pentalogy. Percy is missing from Camp Half Blood and there are some new mysterious demigods to meet, one of whom seems to know Latin. Still fun but feels a bit older and darker than the original series.

The 8th Strike Novel The Hallmarked Man is released on the 2nd September. Being a glutton for punishment I’ve preordered on Audible 🤗

I have as well @DesdamonasHandkerchief!!

Me three @DesdamonasHandkerchief and @EineReiseDurchDieZeit

Also have finished book 85 Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
The story of Charles Ryder and his relationship with the Flyte family. Also an exploration of Catholicism and religion in the upper classes in the interwar years. I’ve no idea why it took me so long to get to this seeing as I had read and enjoyed many of Waugh’s other works in my teens and early 20s. This one is different in that it’s more nostalgic and less acerbic but I enjoyed it all the same.

I haven’t preordered Strike - I’m counting on my mum buying it in hardback and I can then borrow hers - only downside is having to wait for her to finish it first!

I'm currently reading All Fours and don't know what to make of it, it's all a bit bizarre and I'm not sure I want to continue. Am tempted to just skip to the last few pages to see what happens as I'm not really invested enough to care about reading the whole thing.
It's rare that I DNF a book but yeah, life's maybe a bit short to invest more time in this one.

skip to the last few pages and see what happens

NOTHING @InTheCludgie What a pile of shite it was!

If you aren’t enjoying All Fours, it doesn’t change, so skip ahead!

@InTheCludgie I'd say the first half is definitely stronger than the second so if you're not enjoying the first part, you won't get much out of the end. I liked it but can understand why it's divisive.

Agree with the others @InTheCludgie I didn’t love the book overall but definitely the first part was better than the second.

31 The Death Of Us by Abigail Dean

I don’t think this has been universally liked on here, but I found it incredible. It has the tone of a David Nicholls but a grim streak runs through it.
Isabel and Edward meet as teenagers, move in together, discuss careers and having a family. One night, when they are 30, there is a home invasion. Isabel is raped and Edward….well, no one is sure what happens to Edward in that five and a half hours until quite far on in the book. For the next fifteen years Isabel and Edward try to deal with the aftermath, as the attacker remains free (even escalating to murder). Then he is caught and they prepare to read their witness impact statements out in court.
It’s a chopped up timeline, of course. Isabel’s sections are in the first person, memoir-style and it appears as if she is writing to their attacker.
Edward’s sections are third person, more remotely observed, in keeping with the reader’s sense of him being the more reserved character. Through both sets of eyes we see their friends, their families and their supporters (I was rooting for the glorious Freddie all the way through).
It’s never gratuitous, but it doesn’t flinch away from occasional detail, either - or rather, Isabel doesn’t. So, although we don’t do content warnings much on here, err, here’s a content warning for rape and violence.
I found it compulsive reading as it switched back and forth between viewpoints and timelines. You’d probably have to like the main characters, I’d say, and I did like Isabel very much. In the wrong hands, it would have been a grimy, mawkish pile of shite, but it isn’t.

I, too, have now read Natasha Solomons' Fair Rosaline. It was OK. Some of the ides were clever. But the contrivances to get Rosaline in the right place to witness key events verged on silly at times. It was also a bit like 'spot the line from the play being wedged in' bingo. Solomons gets away with it though because she writes well.

I wasn't convinced by making Tybalt a slip of a boy and Romeo a man. I just do not buy that from Shakespeare's characterisation of Tybalt who will forever be Michael York in my head. But I can see that the writer wanted to scratch the itch of Rosaline as Romeo does appear to have dumped her and moved on very rapidly!

@Piggywaspushed agree with all the above. I am convinced that Romeo is moping at the beginning of the play as Rosaline doesn’t return his love, so I had to put that to back of mind given what happens. I think I appreciated the attempt here, and I enjoyed Tybalt, though agree that he and Romeo are more equal in age/stature etc, I’ve always liked Tybalt.

The Book of Chameleons Jose Eduardo Agualusa, trans by Daniel Hahn

The last of the Agualusa books on my shelves. I do feel bereft at having finished it. Told from the point of view of a 🦎 gecko, it tells the story of a man who sells pasts. I can’t really tell you more, it’s not a spoiler type book, but some stuff does happen but a lot is just beautiful prose and musings.

When I read my first Agualusa, I finished it in a cafe in the West End one Saturday afternoon, and after ten mins of awed silence I went straight to the nearest bookshop and bought everything they had by him - just two book in fact. He is definitely on my list for my book buying voucher session.

Special mention of Daniel Hahn who has translated all of the books that are available in English.

37 The Long Call - Ann Cleeves First in a different series, about a detective called Matthew Venn and set in North Devon where Cleeves grew up. You can tell she really knows the area - it had a strong flavour of local knowledge and a really convincing community. A man is murdered on the beach near Venn’s house, and the various lines of investigation all converge on the arts centre run by Venn’s husband - all a bit too close to home, but Venn soldiers on through the investigation with the help of his team, especially his sergeant, a single mum from Liverpool and a very likeable character. Looking forward to reading more from this series.

Thanks all, All Fours is now going back to the library, don't think I can face trying to finish it. I've now started Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, only 15 pages in and gripped so far.

Ooh, @DuPainDuVinDuFromage The Long Call sounds good. I'm a Cleeves fan but have read only Vera ones so far.

@InTheCludgie enjoy Americanah, it's one of my favourite novels ever!

Still doing catch-up reviews:

35. Le Comte de Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas 5/5
    Much reviewed here already. I joined the read-along a little half-heartedly and then was completely swept away by the story. Preposterous and melodramatic, rich and insightful in equal parts, this was a fantastic read. Robin Buss’ English translation is excellent and matches the text of the Gallimard Folio Classique edition (unlike the earlier English translation I consulted at first).

36. Bodies of Light, Sarah Moss 4/5
    I’m still reading my way through Moss’ earlier novels. This is the story of two daughters growing up in Victorian Manchester, with an artist father and an austerely religious mother, who is nonetheless radically committed to philanthropic causes (such as saving fallen women) and who encourages her older daughter Ally to become one of the first ever women doctors in Britain. Having read Moss’ memoir My Good Bright Wolf, I couldn’t help seeing parallels between the mother here and Moss’ own mother. It’s not always easy to read about Ally’s internalised self-hatred, but she slowly moves away from her mother’s fierce dogmas into a life of her own making.

37. Naufrage [Small Boat], Vincent Delecroix 5/5
    International Booker Prize shortlist. I thought this was amazing. The story is based on a real-life incident when an inflatable dinghy sank in the English Channel in 2012, and 27 people died. It’s narrated from the point of view of the French woman operator who answered the phone calls that came from the boat asking for help. Addressing a woman police officer who bears a striking resemblance to herself, she defends (in a bizarrely dispassionate fashion) her failure to assist the refugees. Yet as the layers of her words unfold, the ethical picture becomes increasingly complex. The book is harrowing but short. I was so moved by it that I bought the English translation to give to my DH, as he works on migration issues. That said, he may not read it as he always says that he prefers his leisure reading not to be as distressing as his work, which is fair enough.

@AgualusasLover I do adore the way that when you fall in love with a writer, you REALLY fall in love with them! As your username suggests 😂❤

@cassandre I haven’t read any of the Vera books yet, despite them being set in my neck of the woods (we sometimes saw them filming outside our office 😄) - I’ve got the first one on reserve on BorrowBox. Not sure why I didn’t read anything by Cleeves sooner, but I’ve been really enjoying the Shetland series and it seems to be a rich seam to mine! My kindle backlog will just have to wait…😂