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

What I Ate in One Year: (and related thoughts) - Stanley Tucci. Mixed feelings on this non-fiction book written in a diary format, mainly about the food he tastes and cooks. He does write beautifully about some of his relationships and the ageing process, so it's baffling that many of the entries (often the ones focused on food) are so mundane with no flair. I was also disappointed how pompous, smug and snobby he came across as - very much one of those celebs who adores all the other celebs in his orbit (or so he heavily implies in this book), wouldn't be seen dead in any other supermarket than Waitrose, and looks down on the 'little people'. It was a quick read, and entertaining even when this is intentional, but his lack of openness, humour and honesty means this book never soars. I also got the impression he is very hard work to live with.

I really enjoyed the first RoL (apart from one part that really bothered me), but they never quite landed for me, and I got increasingly fed up with the cliffhanger endings. I think I also read the first 4 or 5 before calling it quits.

@Benvenuto, to wildly misquote Oscar Wilde, to include one improbable dolphin incident may be regarded as a misfortune; to include two looks like carelessness

I've just rattled through You Are Here by David Nicholls. This was a fun read. He captures men and women so well, quite unusually. It was a nice entry middle age gentle romance really. Excellent holiday read as totally undemanding but enough to get into.

After a rather cross-purposes conversation with one of the DC, I have realised that the Ben MacIntyre book about the Dreyfus affair was in fact called An Officer and A Spy.

I have read A Spy and a Traitor as well some years ago - it was very good too!

Apologies for any confusion caused!

@TimeforaGandT I don’t think Ben McIntyre has written about the Dreyfus affair? An Officer and a Spy is Robert Harris’s historical fiction on it.

Both are excellent books though 😀

According to the Lucy Worsley bio she liked to drink pints of cream.

@SheilaFentiman - good lord, I really am losing it - wrong title, wrong author. Thank you!

I will just go and lie down quietly.....

Aargh no it’s not 99p after all, I had just added it to my wishlist in the hope that one day it would be! Was getting mixed up with something else, clearly my memory is so bad I can’t even remember what I did yesterday 😩 Apologies for the duff info!

No I just bought it! It WAS 99p! Don’t worry!

I liked Jamaica Inn very much. What a page-turner! It's definitely melodramatic but also terrifying in places and very atmospheric. The wreckers and Uncle Joss were very sinister. I didn't love the ending. I would have preferred it to end differently. I really like Du Maurier for all that I have only read four of her books so far and I look forward to reading more.

Welcome @Benvenuto! I remember you from the Count of Monte-Cristo readalong! I have the cat book that you mentioned on my shelf. My children gave me a present of it a while ago. Should really get round to reading it, oops.

54. The House in Paris: Elizabeth Bowen.

Eleven-year-old Henrietta has come to Paris to spend the day at the house of her grandmother's friends, the Fishers, before being put on the train to head south to Menton. She anticipates a boring day ahead, but instead she makes the acquaintance of a boy of around her own age, Leopold, who has come to meet his mother for the first time at this same house.

This is a curious book. The first section is set in the present and is related from Henrietta's point of view as she tries to figure out what is going on and what the mystery is with the strange boy. Henrietta and the reader are equally in the dark. The middle section goes back to ten years previously to describe the passionate but doomed relationship between the boy's parents. The third section reverts back to the present and to Henrietta and Leopold. There is a conclusion of sorts and it may be a happy ending, or not. At least it suggests a new beginning. As for Henrietta, she doesn't get to see the Trocadero, but she gains an insight into the strange world of adults and feels older when she parts company from Leopold at the Gare du Nord.

I liked this book. I love a dark, atmospheric story and this didn't disappoint. Mme Fisher is a properly creepy, odious character, ruling the household from her dreary bedroom. The description of the house is brilliant; claustrophobic and stultifying. The writing is clever, but sometimes I found some of the narrative and dialogues rather enigmatic and hard to follow. I've found that before with Bowen. I'm not always sure what is meant. The description of places is excellent as the story goes between London, Ireland and Paris and I enjoyed the evocation of the era very much.

62. The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway

My fiction / non-fiction alternation has served me well for the last few years, but a combination of multiple life-stresses has well and truly torpedoed all my reading routines and left me struggling to keep up at the moment. So I’m giving myself a break and taking refuge in fiction, the more undemanding the better, until I feel more up to it. Having said that, Hemingway isn’t exactly Jilly Cooper, but this was a book club book and I finished it quite quickly. It was also my first Hemingway, so there’s that too.

It’s very much a roman à clef; a thinly-disguised portrait of the circle of Americans and Brits Hemingway hung out with in Paris in the early 20s. Epic amounts of drinking go on; the narrator, journalist Jake (basically Hemingway) was wounded in the war and can’t do the deed any more, a fact that torments him as he yearns after the alluring but unsuitable Lady Brett Ashley (already divorced, engaged to someone else, and due to have not one but two catastrophic flings before the novel's finished). Loving descriptions of bullfights are given, which definitely isn’t my thing, and I’m not going to pretend that Hemingway is my kind of guy, but the much-vaunted simplicity of the writing made it slip down quite easily. I didn’t love it, or the Hemingway myth, enough to explore his oeuvre more, though.

My abiding memory, Terpsichore, of The Sun Also Rises was the prodigious amounts of alcohol consumed. Their entire life seems to revolve around moving from one drink opportunity to another - they must all have the constitution of an ox!

Oh crossed wires, I thought you were talking about the Poison Tree 😂 all good!

33 A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe. At the start of this book, William is 19 years old and has just qualified as an embalmer. Then Aberfan happens, and he goes along to help with the horrendous task of preparing the dead children for burial. Different sections of the book deal with his time as a Cambridge chorister aged 10 to 14, his embalming training aged 18 to 19 and life in his 20s working in the family funeral business. I would say this book has lots of flaws, mainly around unlikely coincidences and characters behaving in ways that seem very unrealistic and not in keeping with their character. But if you can see past all that, I was really invested in the story and wanted to keep reading.

I'm probably doing this wrong, I haven't mentioned any other books as if I don't do it straight away I forget the plot - makes re-reading good though!!

16 August and Everything After - Jennifer Dktorski

Young Adult fiction. Quinn needs to move on after the death of her friend which she feels responsible for. Meets a musician who needs to exorcise his demons. Kept me engrossed

17 The Bright Sword - Lev Grossman

Retelling of the Arthurian saga. A young knight (Collum) arrives at Camelot eager for sport only to find Arthur died two weeks previously. The remaining knights of the Round Table and Collum have quests to undertake and as Arthurs Britain dissolves the Fae, Monsters and old gods return. I really enjoyed this, totally different.

94. Thrones, Dominions, by Dorothy L Sayers, completed by Jill Paton Walsh
Post-wedding Wimsey and Harriet investigate a murder. I gather some Sayers fans are sniffy about this one, but I thought Jill Paton Walsh did a good job in capturing what was likeable about the series. Wimsey is more appealing when Harriet also features. This was certainly more enjoyable than Five Red Herrings and the period setting (1936) was well evoked.

31) A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson

This was a beautifully written story. The author is originally from Canada, and the descriptions of the town in northern Ontario, are extremely well done (my mother was Canadian and my relatives had a cottage up in the lakes, which we visited on family holidays and it took me right back).

She now lives near me, apparently, which will explain how I have a signed copy.

It was longlisted for the 2021 Booker. Deceptively simple writing style but the book pulls a huge punch.

A man whose marriage has just failed and who has given up his job in the city as an accountant, is left a house by an elderly woman who used to live next door to his family when he was a young child. He doesnt remember her but he comes to check out the house and gets drawn in to the town.

Definite bold.

A few to catch up
120 A Symphony of Echoes- Jodi Taylor
The second St Mary’s book on audio. A silly and fun bit of light relief amongst the Booker books. Jack the Ripper and Mary Queen of Scots shenanigans for our time travelling historians. I have 3 more of these on audio so will continue to listen to them spaced out while I’m still enjoying them.

Then a DNF- started to listen to Martyr by Rory Clements- a Tudor era crime novel. In the first 5 minutes he had given three different descriptions of two different female characters breasts and I just thought no- I have enough to read without this crap. I DNFed swiftly and it means I can also wipe 4 more Rory Clements books off my reading list that I’d picked up in 99p kindle deals (note to self a 99p is not a bargain unless you know you like the writer)

121 Flashlight by Susan Choi
Booker longlist. This book is a mixed bag- there were times I wasn’t really dying to pick it up and then once I hit another section I was riveted. Louisa’s father disappears on the beach in Japan one night when she is a child. The book flips back and forward in time from here switching points of view between Louisa, her father Serk, her mother Anne and brother Tobias- none of whom are particularly likable but all of whom are interesting. There are a few boring sections but the good bits are very good and make it worth the read. RoRo reads on booktube has done a great review of it which I strongly agree with.

I’ve read four of the longlist now- 3 are all 4ish of 5 for me- The South/ The Land in Winter and Flashlight. Good hit rate so far. One Misinterpretation was a dud. Next up is Audition.

@ÚlldemoShúl I am torn because of RWYO to buy the remaining LL as I don’t have enough Spotify credit to carry on with audio and no Audible credits either

I kept the Booker Longlist as an exception to RWYO- so did Stowick. You could do the same…
So far none of the books I’ve read have been bold, but they are good reads imo. @EineReiseDurchDieZeit

I do really want to read Flashlight

I think @Stowickthevast may be reading this one too- may be waiting for her review to get another picture.

Yes, I'm listening to Flashlight but it's so long - 17 + hours. I'm a bit over halfway through but haven't had a chance to listen much over the last few days as an in holiday with friends and it seems a bit anti-social to sit with headphones on! I am liking it though despite the unlikeable characters. I'm 5 in - Audition, Universality, One Boat & The Rest of Our Lives - and this is the one I've liked the most so far.

@Arran2024 Mary Lawson is amazing, how cool that you live near her. I really liked The Other Side of The Bridge too.

95. Ordinary Saints - Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin. This is narrated by Jay (Jacinta) a 29 year old queer Irish woman. Jay is living in London and gets a call from her parents to tell her that they are campaigning for her brother Ferdia to be made a saint. Ferdia died in an accident when she was 16 while he was studying to be priest in Rome. The book then delves into the bonkers world of Catholic saints, Jay's odd upbringing in an ultra religious family with a devout brother and depressed mother, and how her sexuality is at odds with the church's teaching. I really liked this one, maybe a bold.

A Walk In The Woods - Bill Bryson Comfort re-read.

Dave Grohl’s book is in the daily deals today. As a huge Nirvana fan but despiser of cheaty scumbags I’m in two minds about whether I want to read it.