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

The Trading Game - Gary Stevenson

Biographical book from the Economics YouTuber. Expelled from school at 16 for selling drugs, Stevenson still makes it to LSE and on to the Foreign Exchange trading floor at Citibank by dint of his cleverness at maths and a trading game competition. He goes on to become one of the top traders in the world by 25, making millions for Citibank and for himself. Inevitably he burns out and questions what it’s all for. He concludes that while the rich get richer and the poor get poorer the world’s economy is doomed (could have told him that with my less than great economics degree from a poly). He also notes that there’s no difference between the lads he grows up with who turn to selling drugs and those he studies and works with except that they have the benefit of wealthy parents and expensive education (again,Gary).
Having said that it’s an incredible story, his writing about his breakdown and his time in Japan is very good and he is incredibly determined. Will be interesting to see where he goes from here as he’s begun to turn up on things like The Rest Is Politics.

Mini book haul after lunch with an ex book club/work colleague. She is from Nigeria and we went to Daunt afterward and she highly recommended Blessings by Chukwuebuka Ibeh and I need the second in the Sea of Poppies trilogy anyway (I appear to have the first and last).

These purchases continue to be made possible by that single voucher, which STILL has £50 available.

Clairedebear101286 · 24/07/2025 09:37

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
(22) Between Sisiters by Kristin Hannah
(23) True Colours by Kristin Hannah
(24) Promise me by Harlan Coben
(25) Long Lost by Harlan Coben

Latest book....

Description taken from the web...

(26) Live Wire by Harlan Coben

The search for the missing husband of a former tennis star leads Myron to discover someone he hasn’t seen in years: his sister-in-law, Kitty, who disappeared years ago with Myron’s brother. Now the clock is ticking as Myron hopes to locate his brother before their ailing father passes away.

Another enjoyable read!

Onto the next!

Happy reading everyone 😀

@AgualusasLover I have Blessings on TBR I might bump it up

2025 #47
Barbara Kingsolver, Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike
Read 13.02.25 to 08.03.25, reviewed 16.07.25
Rating: 4.7

Holding the Line is the first book Barbara Kingsolver wrote, though this non fiction work was published after her first novel, The Bean Trees in 1989. Over 40 years later, her UK publisher, Faber, has reissued it with a new introduction by Kingsolver.

In 1983, Barbara Kingsolver was "fresh out of grad school", working as a science writer, seeking to break into journalism. She landed work covering the Phelps Dodge copper mine strike for several news outlets, driving for several hours from her home in Tucson, Arizona to several small mining towns in the south of the state.

The book details the background to the strike, the responses from Phelps Dodge and from state and national government including the machinery of state represssion, police and troops. Kingsolver's focus is on the many women and their families - female copper miners, wives of strikers organised in the Miners Women's Auxiliary, who took on organising pickets. She also details the historical context - many of the copper miners were Mexican Americans and their unions had organised against discrimination at work and beyond, extending to local schools, services and other businesses in copper mining towns. But also, she mixes writing about the history and the before and after with lots of interviews, and we hear the voices of a whole range of women involved.

There is no happy ever after in this story - the workers lost their jobs and more in these towns entirely owned or very dominated by Phelps Dodge. But the stories of resistance and determination, and of how women developed and grew - some travelled to take their campaign and their story beyond Arizona - is really inspiring. While this is a story from the US, there are many parallels with the Miners Strike in the UK which also took place from 1983 to 1984.

This is non fiction as gripping to read as any novel.

2025 #38
Molly McCloskey, Circles Around the Sun: In Search of a Lost Brother
Read 06.02.25 to 24.02.25, reviewed 21.07.25
Rating: 3.8

Circles Around the Sun: In Search of a Lost Brother opens with a series of quotations from letters to the author, Molly McCloskey, about her brother Mike, expressing varied and sometimes counterposed views. Was he quiet and introverted, sweet and vulnerable, a bit intimidating, or cool and smart? This a memoir about the author's family, and more specifically, the impact of her brother Mike's illness, schizophrenia, on his parents, siblings, ex lovers and former friends.

Mike was 14 years older than Molly and had become ill when she was a child, so she has little memory of the young man who went to a prestigious university and had friends and relationships, though she has memories of wishing he would quietly disappear in a way which didn't impinge on those who loved him. This sounds like the reaction of a selfish teenager, but in the context of this sad and thoughtful memoir, it seems understandable as a response to a family fractured by the stress of a situation which only seems to get worse, as a bright young man who went to a prestigious university is replaced by someone who can't hold down a job or strong personal relationships even with his close family (who certainly try hard).

I sought out this book this after reading her more recent novel When Light is Like Water, published in 2017. This is a well written, thoughtful work, but the sadness of seeing someone so altered by illness is very strong, especially as there is little hope for positive change in the future.

As this was written 15 years ago, it seems likely that some of the author's family have died - she is still writing with her most recent book published in 2022 and some subsequent reviews and articles in newspapers and literary journals.

There is food for thought about how wider society as well as individuals and families live and deal with serious mental illness, but oh, this book is so bleak.

That sounds really good @elkiedee

This is ridiculous - I've finally reviewed a book that I actually read in October 2024 (I'm trying to write about some books before returning them to the library so I can borrow others....). But I really want to say something about a novel which deserves more attention.

2024 #175
Buchi Emecheta, Second-Class Citizen
Read 05.10.24 to 19.10.24, reviewed 21.07.25
Rating: 4.5

Second-Class Citizen is one of two semi-autobiographical novels telling the story of Adah, a young Nigerian woman in 1970s north London. Although it was her second published novel in 1974, chronologically this story comes before that told in Buchi Emecheta's first book, In the Ditch. Penguin have brought out new editions of Second-Class Citizen, In the Ditch and a third novel, The Joys of Motherhood, set in Nigeria, but I think Emecheta's work deserves to be better known, and needs further promotion.

Adah's life has been a challenge from the beginning, fighting to stay at school and enter for scholarship exams. She comes to England with two very young children, joining her husband who is studying law there and soon finds herself struggling to work, study and find childcare for herself, 5 children and her husband.

This book is sometimes sad and upsetting but also has some wonderful wit and humour, as Adah finds her own way of battling through sexism and racism as a black African girl and woman in Nigeria and then in 1970s London. Landlords often don't want black tenants with lots of children. But eventually she gets help from social workers to find childcare, and lands a library job with a colleague who recommends black writers, male and female, and also studies part time. Her reading eventually inspires her to start writing herself, but she also faces jealousy from her husband. I loved Adah as a character and I appreciated the social history in this novel and In the Ditch. I also liked the setting in an an area of London I know a little bit (in/near Kentish Town, I think).

I read and enjoyed the two books in publication order but wonder whether they would have been even better the other way round.

2025 #110
Kit De Waal, The Best of Everything
Read 10.05.25 to 23.06.25, reviewed 22.07.25
Rating: 4.2

In 1972, Paulette is an auxiliary nurse, working hard in a Birmingham hospital, saving hard, looking forward to marriage and children with the man she loves, buying a nice house. Then one day, a knock at the door brings her world crashing down, putting a sudden end to her dreams. Her boyfriend Denton's no-good friend Garfield has come to break the bad news - Denton has been killed in a car crash, and no, Paulette can't rush to the hospital, because his wife, kids and mother are there.

She drifts into a relationship with Garfield, and they have a son, Bird. He is a loyal, loving dad, but Paulette continues to feel that her life has been snatched away by the drunk driver who apparently caused the crash. Then she meets the man who she thinks ruined her life, Frank, and his grandson Nellie. Frank is still struggling with alcohol and struggling to look after Nellie properly. Paulette is furious with Frank, but can't help wanting to reach out and help Nellie.

Any description makes The Best of Everything sound rather sentimental but somehow Kit De Waal's writing balances anger and sadness with dark humour, and it is a powerful, moving story of unlikely friendships and a different kind of love.

2025 #127
Keshia N Abraham and John Woolf, Black Victorians: Hidden in History
Read 22.05.25 to 25.07.18, reviewed 22.07.25
Rating: 4.2

Black Victorians: Hidden in History is a well written, thoroughly researched book looking at the lives of just some of the black people who were part of Victorian Britain. The authors are an African-American woman and a white male English historian who has worked in academia and television here.

After introductory sections by each author and two chapters establishing the context of a British monarchy ruling a growing empire, of trade and industrial development at home and beyond, this book focuses on a selection of Black Victorians in various roles and different parts of society. Migration, including Black people, was always part of Britain's story.

The book is divided into four sections on Struggle and Survival, Church and State, The Arts and Church and Fighting for Freedom. Each section has four chapters, named after and focusing on
twelve men and five women including a bishop, an aristocrat, a scientist, a composer, an actor, a circus performer, a nurse, a soldier and a seaman, several campaigners and others. There are also sadder stories such as that of a man who died in a lunatic asylum. Of those mentioned, I had previously heard of Samuel Taylor-Coleridge and Ida B Wells, but was interested to learn more about both.

Some of the book's "characters" were born here and some came here from other countries. Some studied and trained here and were then sent out as part of an imperial project, including men who joined the Army and Navy, a Bishop and several missionaries (men and women). Many of them married and had children here. While the focus is on a selection of individuals whose life stories were interesting but also well documented in paper records, the authors stress that these are just a few people among a much larger number, that the aim is to establish the extent, range and significance of black presence in British and world history. Studying the contribution of these few individuals does not mean that they were exceptional in their existence, achievements and experiences.

The book is written in a fairly accessible style, with the research backed up by a substantial bibliography and over 30 pages of endnotes. 22 black and white illustrations are distributed through the text on ordinary paper, including reproductions from paintings, posters and photographs.

This is a good contribution to some of the people and events too long neglected by "official" history, and I would like to read more by both authors, and find John Woolf's TV documentary work.

@elkiedee I read Circles Around the Sun many years ago, when I was trying to find something that would help me understand my brother's schizophrenia. It was a very tough read for me at the time, but it was what I needed. It is very hard to find things that are about how mental illness impacts those around you. It is a tricky subject to approach with compassion and without sounding like an absolute arse, because the person with schizophrenia or bi-polar or anything else cannot help it, and their struggle is in many ways harder than those around them - but this book made me feel less alone. I read The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer around the same time and that one featured scenes I totally recognised.

Slight namechange tweak so I can post from multiple devices.

@elkiedee I keep meaning to read something by Kit de Waal- she has a great reputation and yet I didn’t enjoy the shortlist for the Women’s Prize shortlist she chaired the judges for this year. I’ll have to give one a go. In fact I suspect there’s one (not the one you reviewed) lurking on my kindle.

@ÚlldemoShúl
I've read her memoir and a collection of short stories - I liked her memoir a lot. I think I've posted a review on Librarything but I'm not sure whether or not I shared it on MN. I have her first two novels on Kindle TBR, and I think there's also a YA novel which I don't own.

38 The Crimson Road by A G Slatter

Set in the alternative world of Sourdough, a third novel to complement All The Murmuring Bones and A Path Of Thorns, this time it is young Violet Zennor who discovers she is an unwilling participant in an ancient feud (Miren O’Malley, Asher Todd and Ellie Briar also have guest appearances). Her family fortune was built on a dreadful bargain and since the age of seven her father has put her through training a Spartan might wince at. When he dies, she must accept her destiny, but not without a lot of reluctance; the Leech Lords aren’t staying quietly where they were put and the Anchorhold is sending creepy tendrils out into the world.

I’m not a huge fan of fantasy, but when it’s written this well I can’t resist. Slatter has similar world building skills to Pratchett and any magic is incidental to staying true to human nature. Creatures from folk tales exist happily (well, mostly) alongside people, with humour but also occasionally with a sadness that is all the better for not being too laboured (the Hind Girls’ pasts for instance). Slatter excels at the kick-ass heroine and Violet is no exception. When fantasy is this well written I’m more than happy to suspend disbelief and go with it. Also, if I had a Beekie to clean my kitchen I would treat it very politely

#12 Big Dunc Duncan Ferguson with Henry Winter
Once Everton has touched you nothing else will be the same.(Alan Ball)
I am a lifelong Evertonian and up until the birth of DD had a season ticket. A weeknight match, winning under the lights at Goodison is pure magic. A lot of people on mumsnet hate football and there is no denying the ugly side, but to me and millons of others it brings a lot of joy. Duncan was pivatol to Everton in my prime supporting years - his goals have saved us from relegation on numerous occasions. This trip down memory lane brought back a lot of good memories. For that, an unashamed bold.

Thanks for the reviews @elkiedee i like the sound of both Circles Around the Sun and Holding the Line.

I also have Kit de Waal lurking on my Kindle.

Some great reviews - I am afraid mine are a little mundane in comparison.

The Cut - Chris Brookmyre

Read as part of RWYO - I bought it in November 2023.
Two parallel storylines of Millicent (in her early 70s and recently released from prison) and Jerry (in his first year at university, alone in the world and trying to escape from life as a thief) converge. The storyline is also told in flashbacks but I don't want to give spoilers. Very entertaining - tension and humour.

122 Tomorrow Box - Curtis Sittenfield

A short story, borrowed on Prime. About a male teacher whose college friend has become something of a rich lifestyle guru under the “total” hashtag eg totalhonesty. But said friend is still wistful about how he wasn’t the popular one at college. Has the author’s usual insight into human nature.

123 The Only Plane in the Sky - Garrett Graff (NF)

A bold, reviewed on here by others. An oral history of 9/11 and (briefly) of the period afterwards, from many of those trapped in the towers, relatives of those on the planes or rescued from the pentagon. So many different stories that it can get a little difficult to keep track, but overall really well arranged and very moving. I learned things I didn’t know eg about the boat evacuation and the lack of images getting to the President as Air Force One sought safety throughout the day.

124 Uncrowned Queen - Nicola Tallis (NF)

Also a bold. This is a book about Margaret Beaufort, who gave birth to the future Henry VII at the age of 13, when recently widowed, and the extraordinary path of her life thereafter. I saw the author talk at a recent history day and she is just as engaging in person.

98 . What A Way To Go by Bella Mackie

Anthony, a wealthy financier, dies at his own birthday party at his Cotswolds pile. We are given three different POV in alternating chapters; so Anthony, looking on in some sort of afterlife, his wife Olivia who is picking up the pieces and a third POV from a character called The Sleuth, a local keyboard warrior convinced Anthony was murdered. Was he?

This was a game of two halves for me. Initially, I really enjoyed the snooty, sneery tone and the humour. I read this when I had that long wait to be seen and it really hit the spot. I read about 40% of it, but by that juncture the tone had really worn thin and I was bored by it. When you’ve got 3 POV’s going on you have at least got to ensure they are distinguishable from each other. There are a lot of characters here, but in particular the DC of the deceased feel thinly drawn. The true crime aspect (and much of the plot) feels tick boxy and clichéd.
Everyone is ugly and unpleasant to be in the company of and I just wasn’t enthused to finish it and basically dragged myself through the second half. Ending also not amazing. This was only 99p though so I haven’t lost anything.

@SheilaFentiman I loved Only Plane In the Sky

I've put Uncrowned Queen on my wish list. She was born one village away from where I live.

45 Les Cahiers d’Esther: Histoires de mes 14 ans - Riad Sattouf (Fr) DD1 and I have both just read this, a graphic novel in the series following the real-life Esther (though her identity is kept secret) who tells friend-of-the-family Sattouf about her daily life, which he then turns into comic strips. This one was about Esther’s year in 4ème (3rd year of senior school), which DD1 is about to go into. I like the insight into a normal teenage French girl’s life, with the similarities (as well as differences) between her Parisian world and DD1’s experience elsewhere in France, and interesting to see how she changes as she grows up (this is the 5th book, each one covering one school year).

Just For One Day by Louise Wener

Rec by someone on here a while ago. Really interesting read. Music memoirs are usually written by the big guns, the bands who made it and we all know their name and can hum their biggest hits. Well Sleeper were an indie/Brit pop also ran. I know and like their singles (I've been singing What Do I Do Now for the last few days) but they did not hit the big time. And actually the book is all the more insightful for it. She's a great writer and her upbringing and teenage years and the rites of passage really resonated. Recommended for Brit pop fans who remember Sleeper!