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

Delurking briefly from deep reading doldrums to rally @cassandre with her Proust-reading. The small group I’m in is just about to embark on the final volume so it can be done! But if you’re hoping for plot…..erm….🥴

Oh wow @Terpsichore last volume! I reckon that’s still two years away for me.

Coming to the end of a very relaxing holiday, I think in hindsight packing 11 books was too many 😁. DH found the stash - “you’ve bought a f’ing library!” Did DNF one and recycled it as it was in no fit state to donate to the holiday centre’s library, but I’ve got Glorious Exploits and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy to keep me going till we get home ☹️. In the meantime:

.35. The Amber Fury - Natalie Haynes

After a recent trauma Alex Morris returns to Edinburgh to escape her past and finds herself working in a pupil referral unit teaching dramatherapy to excluded teens. She turns to Ancient Greek drama to win over her reluctant students with its tales of family, fate and revenge. However, life starts to imitate art and a tragedy unfolds which Alex is unaware of till the tragic denouement.

I enjoyed this suspenseful drama and the Edinburgh location made a change with the city becoming a character in its own right. The exploration of grief was quite moving. Some of the teenagers’ language and actions didn’t entirely ring true but I suspect it’s a difficult age to write about: that aside it was a solid read.

.36. A Fortunate Woman: a Country Doctor’s Story - Polly Morland

Recommended. Thanks to whoever donated this to the book swap at last year’s London meet up, it’s been a year of dealing with the NHS so I wasn’t up for the subject till now. Inspired by a 1960’s classic of medicinal practice, A Fortunate Man, The book recounts tales from the life of an anonymous rural (female) GP culminating in the Covid pandemic. By turns moving, poetic and revealing, the book is part a journal of the natural world, part biographical, and partly looks into the practicalities of running a GP’s practice in modern rural Britain. A definite bold, and a book I’ll pass on.

.37. A Chip Shop in Poznan: my Unlikely Year in Poland - Ben Aitken

I’ve enjoyed Ben Aitken’s books before (The Gran Tour and The Marmalade Diaries) but this one was a bit hit and miss for me. A diary of a year spent as an immigrant in Poland during the Brexit referendum. Some tales were funny (the Poznan half marathon), some moving (a visit to Auschwitz) but ultimately while I ended up with a better idea of the country and its people, I didn’t really take to the author and his spur of the moment travel plans got quite tiresome.

.38. The Bullet that Missed - Richard Osman

Perfect holiday fluff, the third instalment of the Thursday Murder Club books. I enjoyed this a lot and raced through it, even guessing whodunnit which is unusual for me. I’ll definitely be getting the fourth in the series.

Sounds like you picked some good ones @RomanMum
The Booker List is out https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/prize-years/2025
A lot of surprises on there I reckon.
I already have 4 - 2 ebook (Flesh and Audition) and The Land in Winter in hardback and One Boat in paperback. The only one I’ve read is The Land in Winter which I thought was good. The others I have broken my RWYO for (as planned) and ordered through Audible credits and Waterstones vouchers and plus points. My library hadn’t a single one of them!

Forgot to add the screenshot

Interesting list! Poor Alan Hollinghurst...

I have been wanting to read Love Forms as I liked her first novel, and I've never read any Andrew Miller but The Land in Winter sounds up my street. I also have Flashlight on my list (I liked but did not really understand her last book)

Will definitely read the long awaited Kiran Desai when it's out.

I don't like Katie Kitamura or Natasha Brown very much. And have not heard of the others...

Just saw my screenshot didn’t work very well- sorry!
You know more than me @GrannieMainland
This is my first year to attempt reading the whole Booker list - usually I pick what I fancy, but I’m hoping trying this one will make up for what was, for me, a mostly disappointing Women’s Prize this year.

Which audio's are you going for @ÚlldemoShúl? I've been saving a credit. I was thinking maybe The South or The Land in Winter.

I've read Audition - very Bookery but also likely to be very divisive - and The Rest of Our Lives which I thought was pretty awful. So many far better books didn't make it!

I'm excited to read Endling, and will read Universality because it's short but not feeling that excited about the list as a whole. Will definitely read Desai but it's not published until after the shortlist is announced which is annoying.

I’ve ordered The South, considered it for Flashlight too but I didn’t like the narrator’s voice.
I particularly like the sound of Endling, Seascraper and Love Forms. I’m going to start with Misinterpretation because it was one I got on kindle.
I think it’s a surprising list, most of the big hitters missing and I’m surprised to see no Irish or African fiction especially with those judges. And agree- the Desai doesn’t even come out until after the shortlist but I ordered on W’stones as they have 25% off preorders.

Well I’m out of the loop, I’ve only heard of Flesh and vaguely Audition I don’t want to break RWYO for a massive splash out expenditure wise so I’ll wait until the shortlist/others reviews!

I have already bought Audition and The Land in Winter in Kindle format. I have a Netgalley of Endling. And I've borrowed two from libraries: Universality (hardback) and Love Forms (ebook), though I think I'll probably return Love Forms and rejoin a waiting list.

I'm not doing Read What You Own or attempting to resist new acquisitions, though I do have some of my own books in my rather large current reading pile. But my current focus needs to be Reading What I Don't Own.

It would be no bad thing to reduce the library book piles, but my priority just now is to read and return books that I won't be able to renew, starting with a couple that are already overdue, then ones that I'm reading, have on loan or that are awaiting collection from the library, going by due date order.

I have to say I'm more excited to read ones that didn't get picked rather than the ones that did!

I think Saraswati, The Book of Guilt both sound great and maybe The Book of Records.

I feel like this is every prize season. Excitement in anticipation, followed by let down in reality!

My library doesn't yet have four of the Booker longlist and I'd already reserved and collected The South and The Land in Winter in anticipation of them making the list. Both already have other reserves against them so will be dropping other reading to get those two read. I've speedily reserved the others on the list except of course the Kiran Desai. I may reactivate my Audible subscription if I get desperate to get through the unavailable ones!

My library isn’t great at all. It will always have recent Irish fiction but apart from that it’s mostly fantasy/ romance/ crime- and not always the good ones. They did surprise me this year by getting some of the international Booker shortlist.

I've been throwing library reserves on all over the place in anticipation of the Booker. The predictions looked amazing. I think there's only 4/5 that have made the cut. It's a quick turnaround, but I'll do as many as I can get my hands on in time.

Glad you enjoyed A Fortunate Woman, RomanMum - it was me that took it last year as I’d really enjoyed it. Can imagine it’s a difficult read with parents needing care though - the services local to me and to my parents bear no comparison to the personal care provided by the doctor in the book.

O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker - Thanks to everyone who recommended this, I really enjoyed it (after a false start a few months ago). A sort of hymn to the inner life of a 1950s Scottish teenager living in dilapidated grand houses and boarding school, who never manages to fit in. Comically alternates between flights of fancy and the pettiness of everyday concerns, with the macabre ever present. Connoisseurs may wish to know that there is a vicar and a wanking gardener but these are entirely different characters.

Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis - Following a relationship breakup, Nadia turns up Bridget Jones-style to her new job running a UN program to deradicalise ISIS brides in Baghdad. To get anywhere she must learn to play the power games between agencies and try to convince the women’s home countries to take them back. This was entertaining, readable and eye opening and gives insight into why some of the women made the choices they did, but lost me a bit in the second half as the plot didn’t convince and I didn’t need it laid on quite so thick that Muslim women can be liberated too you know.

Thanks Cornish. Yes, the compassion for her patients and the importance of patient knowledge and continuity of care really came through. A completely different story to my DM and late DF’s horrendous experience (though they were eventually put under a sort of holistic geriatric hub which was invaluable with Dad’s various conditions).

Stressful life events have conspired to put an almost total stop to my reading over the last fortnight or so, but I've finally managed somehow to struggle to the end of a couple more reads.

59. The Fire Engine That Disappeared - Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, transl. Joan Tate

Another case for the perpetually diffident Martin Beck and his team in this highly enjoyable series. In this one, a fire in a set of Stockholm apartments appears to be a tragic accident; as almost invariably happens in Beck's vicinity, weeks of agonisingly arduous police detection finally prove something very different.

60. The Riddle of the Labyrinth - Margalit Fox

Gripping real-life detection of a different sort. When archaeologist Arthur Evans excavated the Palace of Knossos on Crete in 1900, thousands of incised clay tablets emerged, bearing incomprehensible symbols. Evans called this unknown language 'Linear Class B', but couldn’t decipher it. Nobody could. Fox follows the story of how one woman, American Alice Kober - a polyglot who had to work on Linear B in her scant spare time from a heavy college teaching workload - came tantalisingly close to unlocking the puzzle before she died tragically young, aged 43, in 1950. Just two years later, a prodigiously-talented young British architect, Michael Ventris, sensationally cracked the mystery of Linear B - though arguably he couldn’t have done it without Kober laying the path before him.
Fox does a great job of explaining the intricacies of how you even start to decipher a language that's totally unknown and is written in a script nobody alive on earth has ever seen.

(I joked at our 50 Bookers meet-up that I might try and write my eventual review in Linear B - obviously I’ve failed miserably at that, but I see that you can download the font and have a Linear B keyboard…)

I hope that your DH is feeling better, Terpsichore and able to do more for himself, although I imagine that recovery must be slow.

I remember you talking about Linear B! It's fascinating stuff.

39 The Boy From The Sea by Garrett Carr
This was a beautiful story about a baby found in a half barrel on the shore of an industrial fishing town. The townspeople start a rota to look after him but soon Ambrose, a fisherman, quietly but assertively says the boy will stay with his household permanently. His wife, Christine, is less enthusiastic at first, but does her best by the child they name Brendan. They have a two year old son, Declan, who never really warms to the little brother he sees as an interloper.
We follow the family into the teenage years of the boys, through economic hardship, the demands of an elderly parent and inter generational sibling clashes.
So far, so gritty, but what lifts this book up from miserable grind is the optimism demonstrated by the characters (mostly!) and the glittering seam of humour that runs through it. At one point it seems it is going to veer off into Ordinary Saints territory, but grounds itself again. Brendan is seen in the early days as a gift to the town and the freshest thing about the writing is the Town as a character. The first few instances of “We all thought…….” made me as that is a conceit that could wear thin very quickly. It doesn’t, however - it’s a nifty little Greek Chorus that isn’t overused. Instead of a paragraph about a peripheral character you might get one line that says everything and it’s delightful!
A definite bold.

@AlmanbyRoadtrip I liked The Boy from the Sea, but didn’t love it- I had gone along to the book launch organised by my local Indy bookshop, and he seemed like such a nice man that I felt bad at not loving it so I’m glad you did 😊

I’ve finished 2 more RWYO before starting into the Booker longlist (which I’m going to alternate with RWYO titles)

115 Blackwing by Ed McDonald
This audio has been on my Audible for years- I think I got it as part of a 2 for 1 so I wasn’t expecting great things. It’s a grimdark fantasy about a drunken soldier who ends up biting off more than he can chew when he decides to help a girl he loved when he was young. It’s very tropey but what takes it above many others is firstly the character voice (also narrated excellently) and secondly the creativity in the world-building. Really enjoyed it. Will get the rest of the series when RWYO is over.

116 Music in the Dark by Sally Magnusson
I’ve been recommended this twice on here- once after enjoying Clear by Carys Davis (as they both look at the Scottish highland clearances). I bought the ebook after this and didn’t get around to reading it. I was recommended it again after bemoaning the nonsense that was All Fours because my feeling that I’d like to read a more ‘normal’ protagonist’s experience of menopause. Finally I’ve read it. And whoever recommended it (possibly one of the B usernames- Best and West/ Boiled Eggs/ Biblio?) Thank you so so much. This was a wonderful read. Beautifully written. 2 memorable POV characters whose lives meet unexpectedly in middle age, with flashbacks to their pasts and connection. A gentle exploration of language and love and trauma. A definite bold for me.

So sorry to hear your family’s experience was horrendous RomanMum.

The Linear B book sounds fascinating Terpsichore, I’ve reserved a copy.

That's nice to hear @ÚlldemoShúl . I have ordered his older book about walking the Irish border. He does seem a thoroughly nice bloke!
Bought The Book Of Guilt and the late Christopher Fowler's fantasy book published posthumously from Waterstones this morning.

I read it a while ago so it could have been me, possibly, although I'm sure others have read it too.