50 Books Challenge 2025 Part Six

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the sixth thread of the 50 Books 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, the fourth thread here and the fifth thread here

112 The Essex Serpent - Sarah Perry

I didn’t enjoy this much, but I won’t “dud” it because I feel I might have liked it more if read in one go on holiday - there was some nice descriptive language, but I didn’t really “get on” with any of the characters.

The story centres on Cora Seabourne; half the characters are inexplicably in love with her. It’s set in the 1800s and Cora’s abusive husband has recently died, leaving her with an ND child, Francis, and an interest in fossils. Both her companion Martha and a brilliant surgeon, Luke, are in love with her, but she goes fossil hunting in Essex, where there has recently been a sighting of a mythical (…?) serpent and falls - chastely - for William Ransome, a married clergyman trying to allay superstition about the serpent in his congregation. He also falls for her. There’s some hints of the supernatural along the way before we find out what the serpent is.

43. Naufrage: Vincent Delecroix.

'Small Boat'. This was reviewed by cassandre recently who gave an excellent review. This is a work of fiction based on a news item in November 2021 in which twenty-seven migrants died trying to cross the channel. Their calls for help were repeatedly ignored.

Delecroix tells the story from the point of view of the female operator who was on call that night. She sets out her version of events while addressing the chief of police and from the outset she considers herself to be entirely blameless; her conscience is clear...or maybe it's not, as the ending is ambiguous. I thought there were signs of mental strain in her account which led me to think a certain way. This is a difficult read, but an excellent one in its consideration of the migrant crisis and where to draw the line between personal and collective responsibility.

44. The Artist: Lucy Steed.

I think I picked this up following a recommendation by Ulldemoshúl if I remember correctly.

Joseph makes his way to a solitary cottage in deepest Provence, France. The first world war has not long ended and people are putting their shattered lives back together. Joseph wants to become a writer for an art journal and he has been granted permission to interview the reclusive Tartuffe, a genius who lives alone with his niece Ettie who keeps house for him. Gradually, he settles into the household and rather in the manner of peeling off layers of paint on a canvas he finds out what really happening in the house under the surface.

I thought this was a really good read. I think it's a debut for this author. Very atmospheric and a captivating story. Nicely done. Recommended.

I’m exactly halfway through something and I just can’t read in this heat, absolutely drained

The Lamb by Lucy Rose
I wondered if this might be too gory for me, but it’s all done so dispassionately that it doesn’t feel especially gruesome. What it did feel was long, even though I’ve read it in just a few hours. It wasn’t awful, but it was slow in the way that a fairytale stretched to a novel wouldn’t have sufficient meat on the bones, if you’ll pardon my pun about a novel based on cannibalism.

Readable enough, but really very silly. And the ending was ridiculous. Not one I’d recommend overall, although if you like dark fairytales, The Lovely Bones or We Have Always Lived in the Castle, then you might want to give it a try if it’s still 99p.

The Husbands - Holly Graziamo

I picked this up on 99p Kindle deals. I didn’t really have high hopes for it, because it was described as “great fun” and “laugh out loud”, which automatically makes me think it’s going to be silly and annoying, but based on reviews here, I gave it a go. I liked it much more than I expected and it was quite a quick one.

Thanks Fuzzy, great review of Naufrage. And I'm so glad you liked Her Side of the Story! I also admired the ending. I'm keen to hear what you make of Forbidden Notebook as I liked that novel even more.

I'm still on my Alba de Céspedes craze. I saw that she wrote her last novel in French, Sans autre lieu que la nuit (and translated it into Italian a few years later). It's out of print, but I found a cheap secondhand copy on ebay, in the Netherlands of all places. A few days ago a neighbour brought the parcel round to me - he lives a few doors down and Royal Mail had actually a) delivered the book to the wrong address and b) placed it in his small green food waste bin. ??? It was only by chance that he happened to open the waste bin before the bin men came! Ebay is still showing the book as undelivered (?).

But by some miracle I got it in the end! Am looking forward to reading it even though I seem to have half a dozen books on the go already right now. My mind is restless and I'm having trouble sticking with anything.

That's shocking cassandre!
I'm* *very glad you got it on time.

The Kate Atkinson discussion is interesting because when i have rare 'real life book chat' people always assume that i have read them and would like them. The reality is that i haven't read any apart from some of the Jackson Brodies. My (dim, fading) memory is that i really liked the early ones, but i found they got weaker as the JB series went on. I think i became irritated that they became more and more reliant on highly unlikely scenarios and coincidences. However, it is years since i read them so i could easily be mixing them up with something else. I might try one of her 'other' books on holiday.

@cassandre I doubtless read less when life is hard and my head is mashed. I enter into a world of netflix and youtube. At these times i always think i will enjoy something light/heart warming/easy to read, but these rarely hit the spot (there are honourable exceptions) and i end up disappointed. If i can manage to get into something a bit more 'meaty' (not the most elegant literary term 🙂) it usually pays off in the end. However these days my concerntration is a bit shot, so getting over the initial hump can be hard. These threads are a great source of ideas and motivation to keep at least trying to read something.

#The Hawthorne School Sylvie Perry
A psychological thriller chosen from the slim pickings currently available on borrowbox. Single mother Claudia is finding life hard. Her mother, who was a solid support, has died and her son Henry is very challenging at home and preschool. Lost and unanchored she looks into the private and unorthodox Hawthorne School as a more appropriate setting for Henry. The school is alternative (strong Steiner vibes) and welcoming. They offer cut-price tuition in exchange for volunteer hours. Henry settles well, but could things be too good to be true? Yep - everyone except Claudia knows the answer to that.
It wasn't great, but not absolutely terrible either. Very short chapters mean it easy to get into and at the start the slow insidious build up of menace is quite well done. It quickly descends into unbelievable silliness & the end wraps things up in less than 20 pages (all very neat - nothing is left ambiguous). However, I've definetely read worse and it provided some mild entertainment for a couple of hours. You have to suspend thoughts of reality, ignore the massive plot holes & just go along for the ride. Im not sure why, but i kept thinking it would be a better film than a book.

No strong feelings on Kate Atkinson, whether Jackson Brodie or not. I read the last JB one but wouldn't get excited one way or the other.

77 Five Red Herrings, Dorothy L Sayers
Not good. Someone is murdered at the end of chapter one, and there are six suspects, five of whom are red herrings and the other the real murderer. She lays the formula bare, as we plod drearily through each of their alibis and how they might have been able to do it. The characters are indistinguishable from each other. Set in Scotland, so lots of phonetically-rendered Scottish dialogue, including the bits where Wimsey puts on the accent - he should have been clobbered with a fishing rod for this alone. Not worth the time spent ploughing through it.

107 The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel
I absolutely loved The Art Thief earlier this year so rushed to order in this one (and topped it up with the kindle version in the July sale in buying what is hopefully - Booker excluding- my last purchases for a while). This one is about a hermit, Chris Knight, who lived undetected in the Maine woods for over 27 years, within a mile and a half of ‘civilisation’. It starts out great but this one lacks the insight of The Art Thief and it feels more exploitative as Knight really did not want his story to be told.

@Owlbookend no, you have it right about Brodie IMO. The first 3/4 are good and then they taper off

27 Open Secret by Stella Rimington. This is the autobiography of Rimington, who worked for MI5 and was its first female Director-General in 1992-1996. This was good, it (understandably) doesn't go into detail about specific cases, but is an interesting insight into the overall culture of MI5 and how it changed over the 30-odd years that the author worked there. I have huge respect for Rimington, who worked her way up to succeed in a very male-dominated environment (far more so than the normal branches of the civil service) and comes across as a sensible, intelligent, down-to-earth woman.

28 Paper Cup by Karen Campbell. Recommended by lots of you on last year's thread, I absolutely loved this. It is written from the viewpoint of Kelly, a homeless woman who, in the early chapters of the book, experiences two unusual events which have the effect of persuading her to leave her normal stomping ground of Glasgow and go on a mission to return to her home town in Galloway. It doesn't shy away from the realities of homelessness, but also doesn't ram them down your throat. Kelly is a brave and flawed and unique heroine (I'm pretty sure I've never read a book before in which the protagonist is homeless). A definite bold.

@Owlbookend Your memory of them increasingly relying on coincidences is absolutely accurate. It's one of the main reasons I gave up on the JB books.

93 . A Book Of American Martyrs by Joyce Carol Oates

Luther Dunphy, a Christian fundamentalist shoots dead Gus Voorhees an abortion doctor outside a clinic.

The book then follows both families, in particular Luther’s daughter Dawn and Gus’s daughter Naomi as they struggle to deal with the consequences.

This was a good book, if long, but I felt detached from it throughout and was never really in its world. I felt it would have benefited more from featuring the other siblings as well, particularly Melissa and giving a more rounded picture of a family at a loss.

The ending is meant to be profound but it just lacks believability

It was a good idea but wasn’t perfectly executed

I am alone in loving the last Brodie I think. I thought it was great fun and I really don’t mind the coincidences- they are ridiculous but make it fun for me. I’m not a huge fan of the recast of her stuff. Liked Behind the Scenes at the museum.

Currently reading Eva Ibbotson - The Morning Gift, another writer who uses coincidences and quirky characters. They have a bit in common I think.

I loved DATSOTR @BestIsWest ! Nice take on the traditional characters of a Murder Mystery, plus the pretend Murder Mystery sub plot (also used in a recent episode of Death Valley).

@AlmanbyRoadtrip I thought I was alone in loving Death Valley too!

Oh no, it was marvellous fun!

Joining this thread because I read a fair few books and want to make sure I reflect a bit more on what I'm consuming. Unfortunately the book I just finished was a miss for me and I powered through it because I wanted it done with.

43, I'm a Fan by Sheena Patel

While having an affair with a man who treats her dreadfully, the narrator stalks another woman he's having a more meaningful affair with, becoming obsessed with cataloguing the privileges the other woman has (wealth, whiteness, nepotism, cultural capital, Instagram clout). Everything the narrator does is motivated by malice, envy, humiliation, or rage, and she hates everyone, including the woman she stalks, the man she's having an affair with, and her loving and patient boyfriend most of all. She ends the book as she started, trapped in a horrible situation she put herself in and could leave at any time. Though, I guess the point is that structural oppression and toxic social media was what actually put her in there... anyway, I don't think the author wanted me to enjoy reading it and I didn't, so mission accomplished.

I'm now midway through All Fours by Miranda July - though as that has also taken a swerve into pining over a man the narrator is having an affair with, I might take a break from it. Pining over men is among my least favourite topics.

@Snoff Welcome to the thread! I was ambivalent about I’m A Fan but I HATED All Fours some other posters have liked, even loved it, though

Welcome Snoff - ‘I don't think the author wanted me to enjoy reading it and I didn't’ 😂

A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell - a biography of the incredible Virginia Hall, an American diplomat whose pre-WW2 career was frustrated by discrimination but whose wartime exploits were staggering. She joined the fledgling SOE and was sent behind enemy lines to Vichy France where she established networks, supported the Resistance, and masterminded prison escapes, working with people from all walks of life from prostitutes to nuns to gynaecologists to priests. Fascinating and often jaw dropping - such bravery from Hall and many others when stakes were so high. She had a prosthetic leg following a pre-war hunting accident - thankfully this is much less dwelt on than Strike’s. To quibble though, the author does bang on instead about how much recognition Hall deserved and how little she got - readers could have made their own minds up about this - and too often characters were pointed up as villains who were going to behave badly in a few pages. The book often seems to be making the case that Hall was single-handedly responsible for winning the war. However these niggles aside, I was riveted and recommend.

@BestIsWest I also loved Death at the Sign of the Rook! I would have liked a bit more Brodie but I still thought it was great.

@CornishLizard great review, that’s on my paper TBR pile

45. The Book of Chameleons: José-Eduardo Agualusa (trans. Daniel Hahn).

This is a charmingly quirky novel that delves into the landscape of memory, identity and reinvention of the self. Felix Ventura is a man who is an artisan trader of a curious commodity; he can create a new past for anyone who wants one and a completely new lineage if desired.

While people consult him at his house, their transactions are observed by the gecko who lives on Felix's wall in the living room. This is a friendly, articulate gecko who enjoys an occasional laugh with Felix and philosophical ruminations when appropriate.

The book is composed of alternating chapters that switch between a dreamworld where the gecko is the protagonist and the real world which represents Felix's story. This creates an impression of shifting sands for the reader who needs to wait until the thread of Felix's story becomes clear as people are not who they seem (like chameleons, in fact).

This probably sounds very confusing, but in fact it is a compelling read and the switch between the perspective of the gecko and Felix is consistent throughout. I felt that the writing had a hypnotic quality that kept me hooked and interested to know what was going to happen next. Also, the gecko has some really good lines. 'Given the choice between life and books, my son, you must choose books!'

Thanks to Agualusaslover for the recommendation! I have another book by Agualusa to review next.

I'm glad you liked this. I thought it was absolutely beautiful. A real gem of a book.