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

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie im really enjoying Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban. It doesn’t feel too middle class woman to me. Another plug also for James by Percival Everett, can’t stop telling people about it and can’t remember if you have already read it

It’s really fascinating, and I surprised myself by sort-of half (ish) understanding a bit of the explanation….although grasping it completely would be totally beyond me. I’m perpetually in awe of people like Alice Kober and Michael Ventris who had an innate ability to soak up multiple languages and could - and did - eg learn Ancient Egyptian during a 6-week sea voyage (adding to their existing stock of at least 10 other languages ancient and modern).

It’s just a bit of a pity that the deciphered tablets largely turned out to be boring administrative lists!

Thank you. James is on my list, but not for a holiday read. I'll get the sample of the other, which I must admit I have never heard of.

Just as a PSA many of the Booker LL as audiobooks are available free with Spotify Premium

I have just finished The Tarot Reader of Versailles by Anya Bergman who wrote The Witches of Vardo which I read and reasonably enjoyed a few years ago. Only now have I discovered Bergman is a pen name (presumably to add credence to Scandi credentials for her first book?) and she is in fact Irish. Sorry, Remus but this book fails on the 'being set in Ireland' front. It concerns how the Catholic Irish got tangled up in French revolutionary aims, in part , and features , briefly, the likes of Wolfe Tone and Daniel O'Connell. More of the book is set in Paris, though where Caitlin, the Irish one of our heroines, meets the Tarot reader Lenormand - who was a real person. We are taken though the reign of terror and beyond. Lenormand was something of a monarchist and close to Marie Antoinette. Caitlin is a conflicted revolutionary. But they love each other, although Cait also loves the Irish revolutionary, Reilly (he is made up as is Caitlin) There's quite a bit of sexy stuff. I dunno, this is OK but probably best not to read it not that long after Mantel! The author herself reads Tarot and there was too much of that and magic realism/ mythology/ spirits stuff going on and a forced attempt at a literary 18th century style with all those 'for's and 'yet's. Occasionally, it turned into lessons on Tarot. Yet, it was a quick and entertaining read, for I finished it in two days.

I'm off on holiday on Friday and have three fairly mass market easy read paperbacks to take. That's actually all there is in my TBR pile!! I do have a few due to arrive when I am away, panic not, fair readers!

55. The Ministry of Time by Kalaine Bradley

Time travelling novel. Interesting premise about extracting people from the past to the present. I enjoyed the personalities and the interactions but the background ministry shenanigans and spy aspects didn’t interest me at all. They were too complicated and far fetched to make much sense and it didn’t seem like trying to work it all out was going to enhance the novel.

56. The Holiday by TM Logan

Four close university friends go on holiday with their husbands and children to a villa in the south of France. One woman suspects her husband is having an affair but it isn’t clear who his partner is. Lots of secrets come out. Quite enjoyed this. It read well and was well paced.

57. The Woman in the Cabin by Becca Day

A woman is living off grid with her husband in Scotland. She finds a note under the floorboards from his previous wife and realises all is not as it seems. It is obvious from early on that she is in an abusive relationship. I found it irritating that she spent most of the novel planning to leave. Circumstances change and her need to leave becomes more pressing. It is obvious why the author left it so late so she could reach a dramatic climax but it meant a huge amount of the book was dedicated to her thinking about leaving and then not doing it. Which was annoying.

58. Last One at the Party by Bethany Clift

A woman survives an apocalyptic virus that kills everyone within a few days. She wanders about getting drunk and living in hotels before obtaining a dog and going on journey to find other survivors. This felt very self indulgent but I enjoyed it a lot despite that. You know how people say they had a ‘good war’ this woman has a pretty ‘good apocalypse’ all considered.

I think we all remember the Station Eleven debates and I would be interested to know whether this meets some posters’ (can’t remember who) exacting standards for how exactly a literary apocalypse should be handled.

59. The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel

Non fiction about a hermit who lives in the woods in Maine for 27 years. He lives off the grid but also weirdly close to other people (within the sound of lake cabins and hiking trails). He survives by breaking into cabins and stealing food and supplies. Over the years he becomes a legend in the community because he is so good at going unseen despite living so close to other people. It is this paradox of closeness but separateness that makes this an interesting story. Enjoyable.

Pretty sure I had Last One At The Party from Netgalley @elspethmcgillicudddy but I hated it. Declined to review, iirc. I liked Station Eleven so make of that what you will

I liked both Last One at the Party and Station Eleven as well as another end-of-the world trilogy that starts with The Last Policeman. Hated The Stand, by Stephen King so much that I had to stop reading it as it was genuinely ruining my holiday.

i almost bought this at the meet up as it was very prominently displayed in the bookshop.

I can't see them on mine Eine, I think dh has set me up with a weird account as Dds were complaining about us messing up their wraps. I bought Flesh with an audible credit today. It's quite an intense start.

89. Crow Lake - Mary Lawson. Part of RWYO although I don't think I'd had this one very long. It's narrated by Kate who is in her early 30s looking back at the events of the summer when she was 7-8 after her parents died in a car crash. She lived in far north Canada with her elder brothers Luke and Matt, who were 18 & 16, and her baby sister Bo. I really like Mary Lawson's writing. This was her debut and is not quite as polished as her later books but still a good read.

@Stowickthevast I had to search for each one individually but they were definitely there

I think if you have joint or family Spotify accounts then only the ‘lead’ account gets the audiobook access (DD keeps complaining about this as her account is linked to mine).

Oh that’s 💩

Thanks @Terpsichore for the Proust encouragement! I will definitely keep going. I think I need to keep reading just a few pages at a time, because the language is so poetic. I'm very struck by all the long, beautiful similes, which sometimes become so complicated that I forget the original thing that Proust was talking about in the first place.

The Linear B book does sound amazing, if a bit intimidating! And I send good wishes to both you and your DH. I hope you manage to get a bit more time for yourself soon.

@CornishLizard good review of Fundamentally; I agree with you. I liked the book a lot but sometimes felt the author was dumbing things down a little in an attempt to make the story palatable to a broad audience.

I look forward to seeing people's reviews of the Booker longlist. My library system has 10 of the 13 books, which isn't too bad, but there's a short queue for most of them. I predict that the ones I've reserved will all become available at the same time, just after I've left to go on holiday 😂

None of the titles or authors are familiar to me, except Kiran Desai, and Universality by Natasha Brown, which I've actually just read. I didn't love it, though it was short and engaging enough. Full-on satire isn't normally a genre I get on well with, and I thought it was rather unsubtle in this instance. I preferred Assembly, her previous book.

Oh that's annoying @ChessieFL - will check DH's account. Maybe I can just log in as him instead.

I also like the sound of the Linear B book - and it seems to be free/included if you have Audible membership.

That’s true cassandre - it’s appealing and very accessible. I just found your review where you also recommend Guest House for Young Widows - funnily enough I have had that out for months and not got to it yet whereas I read Fundamentally straight away (partly as I won’t be able to renew it given the queue).

@cassandre I definitely feel as though I’ve read every line of Proust at least 4 times over - it’s so easy to lose the thread and have to go back to the start of almost every meandering sentence to read it again, repeatedly! I can’t even imagine doing it in French (which I'm sure you are?).

61. The New House - Lettice Cooper

Speed-read for the Rather Dated Book Club, appropriately enough over the course of a day, which is how the action of this 1930s novel unfolds. We encounter 30-something Rhoda Powell in mid-move to a new house, as she and her widowed mother prepare to leave Stone Hall, the gracious 19thc family residence set in its own huge, secluded plot of land, and downsize to a small lodge over the road from a housing estate (though still with half an acre of gardens). Also playing a part in the drama are Rhoda's younger sister, the cheerfully-energetic Delia, home to help from her life and job in London, and her brother Maurice, now head of the family business. All have complicated feelings about leaving the old house, but Maurice aches with sorrow at losing what he still thinks of as 'home', bitterly conscious of his unsatisfactory relationship with his ambitious and money-conscious wife Evelyn. Finally, there’s Aunt Ellen, who sacrificed her whole youth to looking after her mother, in the same way that Rhoda seems set to sacrifice hers to Mrs Powell, Ellen's sister. But can Rhoda - yearning for her own life, happiness and independence - break free on this day of change?

More over on the other thread, but this was a fascinating read.

60. The Art Thief by Michael Finkel

Non fiction about a very prolific art thief in the late 90s. The first half is a romp around Europe stealing priceless art from museums and collections, the second half looks into what happened after his arrest. This all felt like quite good fun with this very eccentric character going around the place stealing things from under the noses of museum guards. However, I was quite surprised at my own reaction at the very end when there was an appendix with pictures of the artwork- much of which has never been recovered and was probably destroyed in a fire. What seemed a jape and a caper suddenly became a harrowing desecration. Seeing these lost works was quite devastating.

61. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

For a course. I remember reading this as a teenager and enjoying it. I really hated it this time and wouldn’t have gone near it were it not compulsory reading for my next OU module. I found it disjointed, difficult to follow and irritating. Often having to study these texts means I find some redeemable features... we will see. This was a slog.

I'm going to hold fire on the Booker prize list for now. I quite fancy Audition but I think I will wait for the reviews of the others to come in and see what is really worth my time! Thank you for your service to those of you who will read and review them!!

@elspethmcgillicudddy – what OU course are you doing?

73 Lamentation – CJ Samson, Matthew Shardlake 6. Summer 1546. Henry VIII is slowing dying and Queen Catherine Parr is in a bit of a pickle, terrified for her life and her supporters/servants. She tasks Shardlake to assist her and as ever, things are not straightforward. Catherine Parr is probably one my favourite queens and I enjoyed her portrayal. I’ve moved onto the final book in the series and I’ll be sad to leave Matthew and his circle.

@Tarragon123 Part time English Literature degree. Always a childhood ambition so I am indulging it. This year is A233- telling stories: the novel and beyond.

So my holding fire on the Booker list didn't last long.... (8hrs or something..)

62. Audition by Katie Kitamura

Thanks to whoever said most of the Booker longlist were available on Spotify... I might have to let this one percolate but my immediate thoughts are that I very much enjoyed it. A woman is has dinner with a young man but their relationship is unclear and she examines it through the filter of those around her. This was very navel gazing but the writer got past this by making the main character an actress so quite a lot of the navel gazing feels moderately purposeful as she talks through her responses to a play she is working on. It got a bit weird half way through as the whole narrative shifts. I'm still not entirely clear what was going but somehow it really worked.

There was a scene where the actress is working through a tricky pivotal scene in a play she is in where the whole narrative and direction of the play shifts. This shift is then echoed in the book but what is interesting is the way in which the first person narrator then also subtly changes in her responses and actions regarding those around her.

Overall I think this worked well. I can stand a bit of introspection when it feels like it goes somewhere and reveals something. To me, I can see the worth of this and the storytelling and character development as being so much more effective than, for example, All Fours. Which was a pile of shite. This was not.

@elspethmcgillicudddy it was me, strangely enough I’m also listening to Audition at the moment

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I’ll be really interested to know what you think. I wonder if it would have been as compelling on the page…

@elspethmcgillicudddy how amazing to undertake a childhood ambition! Fabulous. You did send me down an OU rabbit hole tho. Thinking about studying something once I take partial retirement next year, but it might be too much.

I just looked at Ambition. Not quite 5 hours on Audible, so it must have been a really short book.

100 . On The Calculation Of Volume 1 by Solvej Balle

A woman finds herself trapped in the 18th of November and unable to get out of the repetitive cycle that ensues.

This was slow and meditative but a good read and I’ve moved on now to the sequel.

I can’t work out the title though Is it On The Calculation of Vol 1 or On The Calculation of Volume 1

Either way it’s good. Currently 99p and was nominated for this years International Booker