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.

Made a small dent in my vouchers. Sadly, the shop I opted for today had no Agualusa, and no Kristin Lavransdatter.

Pleased with my mini haul:
She Speaks, Harriet Walter
Mouthing, Orla Mackey (looking forward to this)
Loitering with Intent, Muriel Sparks
Glorious Exploits, Ferdia Lennon (DS1 asked for this and I quite fancy it after reviews on here so a hard copy seemed sensible)

33 Mason & Dixon - Thomas Pynchon

One of my very very favourite books, and perhaps the 4th time round of reading (it’s a long book and not to be rushed!). Based on the astronomers’ surveying of the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland, with the typical Pynchon shaggy dog stories and jokes, but a real depth and humanity at its heart - both in conveying the relationship between the pair, and America’s shameful slave-owning history.

A small but perfectly formed Haul @AgualusasLover !

That's a lovely haul @AgualusasLover
I'm pleased you got GloriousExploits.
I also love those bookends!

The bookends were also a leaving gift. My colleagues knew me well.

Wow what fabulous colleagues @AgualusasLover - book vouchers and those beautiful bookends! Great haul too.
Finished 2 more this weekend:
86 The Unworthy by Agustina Bazzterica Translated by Sarah Moses
Bazzterica’s previous novel Tender is the Flesh was a horrifying bold for me. This one is eylqually horrifying with overly detailed abuse but without packing the same punch in terms of theme. This is a dystopia where our narrator lives in the House of the Sacred Sisterhood as one of the ‘unworthy’ - one of the last safe places to live in a world destroyed by climate change. About half way through it gets better but it was a hard slog getting there (even though the book is under 200 pages)
87 The End of the Road is a Cul de Sac by Louise Kennedy
A book of short stories written by the author of Trespasses. These are really well written but very bleak depictions of relationships between men and women mostly in modern day Ireland. These prose is very samey throughout though sparse and beautiful it feels a bit one note at times. It’s a mixed bag that said the stories that are good are excellent.

Latest reads;

37: Westwood: Stella May Gibbons.

A 'Rather Dated' read.

Set in wartime London, Margaret Streggles is a plain, earnest girl; part-time teacher, full-time day-dreamer with her mind on Greater Things like art and literature. Following a chance encounter in the park, she becomes besotted with the noted playwright Gerard Challis and his family who live a very privileged life. She manages to ingratiate herself into his household as a useful pair of hands. Meanwhile, unknown to her, Gerard has met and become infatuated with Margaret's friend Hilda, whose prettiness encapsulates this shallow man's idea of the perfect woman.

I liked rather than loved this book. I wanted to like it more and I'm still not sure why I didn't love it wholeheartedly as it ticks many boxes for me. I think it was because I found the main characters unlikeable, particularly Margaret in her endless quest to bask in the glow of Gerard's attention and her willingness to be a doormat for people who didn't care for her. Gerard's character was very well drawn and the descriptions of his terrible plays were very entertaining.

There were two rambling passages pertaining to the local countryside which were not relevant to the story, I don't think. However, to counter this, there was the long-awaited but highly entertaining encounter in Kew Gardens which I definitely enjoyed.

It was good, interesting and entertaining in parts. I might read 'Cold Comfort Farm' at some stage.

38. The Secret Room: Jane Casey.

The latest book in the Maeve Kerrigan series. When the body of wealthy Ilaria Cavendish is found in scalding hot water in the bathroom of her luxury hotel in Central London, Derwent and Maeve are called in to investigate. No-one has been seen to enter or leave the room, but clearly someone has succeeded in committing a terrible murder.

While this investigation is struggling to get underway, Derwent has other problems. He becomes chief suspect in another crime and is under investigation. He may lose everything he cares about; his career, his reputation, his relationship with his girlfriend's son and he pushes Maeve away too. Maeve, of course, ignores his orders to keep out of his business and puts all her energies into sorting out this mess.

This was action packed, although the action occurred mainly in the Derwent affair and this took precedence over the hotel bathroom crime which was only revisited towards the end of the book. It felt like it came in second place to the Derwent Dilemma and the Maeve/Josh dynamic. However, I'm not complaining. I enjoyed all of it very much. It was definitely a book for the fans. An absorbing read and I enjoyed the last pages in particular, wondering how it will go on presuming there is another book to come in the series.

39. The Ghosts of Rome: Joseph O'Connor.

This is the sequel to the book 'My Father's House' (which I haven't read) and the second book in a planned trilogy that features an organisation called 'The Choir', a resistance group that smuggles escapees out of Nazi-occupied Rome from the diplomatic safe space of the Vatican.

Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty is the architect of the Escape Line and is already struggling to keep things together when the group is divided on the subject of how to care for an unidentified injured airman who is seriously ill and possibly about to die.

The organisation is already at risk of falling apart, leaving thousands of vulnerable people at the mercy of the Nazi rulers, the head of which is SS Commander Paul Hauptmann, a man who loves and loathes Rome in equal measure, who has been ordered to dismantle and capture the Choir members. The price of failure is high as his own family is under surveillance in Berlin and he is under significant strain to succeed in his mission.

This was an incredibly tense and gripping read. From the outset the reader is bombarded with a series of images in a sharp staccato prose which hammers home the brutality of the war and the difficulties that people face.

I found it a bit difficult to differentiate between some of the male characters (or maybe it was only two of them) and wondered if I was supposed to know them from the previous book. The perspective switches between various people and I really enjoyed the voice of the Irish woman Delia and I liked the Comtesa Landini very much as a character. We don't really learn her story here. Maybe this covered in the first book, but it didn't matter. There are also extracts from interviews told at a future date which help to tie up the loose ends of the story, so this makes for a richly-woven tapestry of a book, incredibly tense and very absorbing once you got into the swing of it, which kept me entertained during the flight which took me part of the way home following a few days in the eternal city of Rome.

Fuzzy, I have read the first book in The Choir series and all the characters and their back stories were covered in that book. Planning to read the next one so good to hear it’s gripping.

Thank you @TimeforaGandT that's good to know. I'll go back to the first one, then.
I really liked the setting. It's very atmospheric.

22 The Physio by Jonathan Smith
Jonathan Smith, a retired English teacher and novelist, has Parkinson’s disease and employs a physiotherapist to improve his mobility and function. He learns about her adventuresome and physically impressive life (including swimming the Channel) and muses on a life spent reading and teaching literature.

This is an odd and rather disjointed book with very little about the physio in it. As a speech therapist I was a bit cross that although he did vocal work with a speech therapist he credits the physio with ‘making him sing again’… but I can get over my professional grump. What it does do well is express his delight in literature and the experience of writing and has left me busily getting hold of some of his recommendations.

I know a few on here have read Hitler, Stalin And Mum And Dad by David Baddiel. How did you find the ‘tone’, for want of a better word? I think it’s coming across as quite spiteful and mean spirited towards his parents.

Are you thinking of My Family, Almanby? I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it - I think it’s just his style. I suspect that as a family they adopted this brusque way with each other anyway. His father was certainly a pretty full-on character. DB used to have a Twitter account reporting on his Dad's escapades when he was stricken with a peculiarly awful form of dementia, but I always thought his fundamental love for his dad was there at the heart of it all. Same with his mother even though she too was a deeply odd character, and their family life was…..unusual, to say the least….

ETA - the above doesn’t apply if you’re talking about the Finkelstein book!

It's by Daniel Finkelstein, not David Baddiel. He writes for The Times and does have a pretty acerbic style.

I think you’ve confused two different books @AlmanbyRoadtrip

Oh lord, yes I have! I was looking at them both on my Kindle the other night and plumped for the Baddiel one. I might move on to the Finkelstein one instead, because Baddiel is coming across as very sneery towards his deceased parents and although I get it’s supposed to be affectionate, it’s missing the mark by a mile for me. Plus, it opens with a ‘joke’ about child abuse so that pissed me off straight away.

82 . She Speaks by Harriet Walter (Audible)

Harriet laments that Shakespeare’s women have the least lines and are perhaps underwritten. She seeks to resolve this by assigning words they might have said to them. These usually come in the form of poems she’s written. I’ll be honest and say I found this a bit naff, a bit twee. It wasn’t for me and it wasn’t a patch on Judi Dench’s similarly themed effort, though that was more career based.

That said I do hope @AgualusasLover enjoys it and it’s just me being fussy! It’s very short, thankfully.

No wonder I thought it was a bit light on the history and a bit heavy on the confessional. It helps if you’re reading the book you think you’re reading 🤦‍♀️
Actually @Terpsichore , the stuff about his Dad’s dementia rings a bell with me now. I didn’t like it at the time. Cautionary tale about scooping up 99p - ers from Kindle without stopping to consider if you might like them

@AlmanbyRoadtrip I keep a wish list and try (fail sometimes, but getting better!) to only buy 99p books that are already on the wish list.

I must have missed the David Baddiel as a Kindle bargain. I heard him on Radio 4 recently and found what he had to say about some of his books quite interesting, though I was even more interested in a children's book about a parent agency - apparently inspired by something his son said. I've wondered about the Daniel Finkelstein book but am a bit put off partly by the expected political slant but also because it was one of the few Radio 4 Pick of the Week serials which didn't make me want to read the whole book!

I really like his books for children and Jews Don’t Count.

I sometimes bump into Harriet Walters walking our respective dogs and she is incredibly frosty - maybe she just doesn't like my dogs. Anyway it has put me right off reading her.

Also love the bookends. I really liked Loitering With Intent. I saw Mouthing in a bookshop a few weeks ago and it's now in my library TBR.

I'm hoping to get to at least one of the two of various forthcoming literary events at the Owl Bookshop in Kentish Town, which is a large former indie bookshop now part of the Daunt chain but with its own character. I'll try to remember to have a look for you as they have a bit of space but are better at stocking literature in translation and literary fiction than some places I've visited.

Ooooo @Arran2024 I bet she does a proper death stare as well!