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

108 . After You’d Gone by Maggie O’Farrell

Alice Raikes is hit by a car and ends up in a coma we are shown glimpses of her past and what brought her to this point, eventually coming full circle.

I believe this is popular but it drove me absolutely insane. Stylistically and structurally it’s all over the shop, really immensely jarring with both the tenses used and the POV used changing suddenly, sentence by sentence. It’s so messy and could’ve been so easily fixed with a bit of organisation.

I get that this might be a reflection of her being in a coma, but sometimes the narrative does not focus on Alice or even something that Alice would know anything about so it’s not even believable as “drifting fugue”

It annoyed the shit out of me and has left me thinking MOF isn’t for me because I didn’t like this and I didn’t like Hamnet but I’ve still got Marriage Portrait on TBR.

I won’t be getting to it anytime soon.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit Maybe After You'd Gone can be the new boring butler 🙂. It is a long time since i read it (i was young), but i loved it at the time. I cant remember too much about it now & i dont know if it would stand the test of time, but i know i thought it was great back then. I can remember recommending it and lending my paperback copy.

Oh dear, Eine, I have After You'd Gone sitting on my Kindle and was thinking I might get to it soon as part of RWYO.....maybe I will prioritise other books instead!

noodle, I am like you and read The Secret History years ago (probably when it was published), loved it then but have never reread it. Desdemona's review is making me think I should!

Fear not noodlezoodle I think you would get something out of it at any life stage. Maybe you should dig it out and reread …. Oh wait 😀
I can’t believe it’s never been adapted (apparently many attempts - one with Gwyneth Paltrow as Camilla, but none have come to fruition) it would make a great Netflix series!

I still have my very well-thumbed copy back in the US, and I actually bought a Spanish translation of it on the grounds that I know the book so well that maybe I could understand it in Spanish. Not quite sure what I was thinking, given that half the joy of it is the prose (and my Spanish is NOT good!).

@Owlbookend@TimeforaGandTI did like it in its quiet moments the romance angle was good and I liked how 90s it was, no internet, no smartphones

But I couldn’t be doing with the WHO’S THIS NOW element

@noodlezoodle@DesdamonasHandkerchief I love The Secret History her others are not nearly as good.

After You'd Gone is one of my all time favourite books buti read it when it came out in paperback, which must have been around 2002 - i can remember the exact moment IT happens in the book and where I was (on a beach in Cornwall) and how upset I was.

I have read lots of her subsequent books but nothing has come close imo.

But I do think it's partly a zeitgeist thing. It's 25 years old now. It reminds me of Friends and This Life. And I was 25 years younger then too. I'm not sure i would have the same response to it now. It was quite outstanding back then.

Yes @Arran2024 how you feel about a book is definitely about where you are at the time. I’m a cynical near 44 year old on her 108th book of the year and not easily pleased! Not that I’m saying you’re easily pleased but books hit differently depending on where you are in life.

I haven’t read my favourite book in years because I’m afraid I won’t feel the same

@BestIsWest- hope you enjoy the railway book.

@FuzzyCaoraDhubh- not me on the Count of Monte Cristo thread (sadly I missed that one).

@Tarragon123- I’ve just started reading City of Destruction. The opening chapter was very dramatic. I’ve enjoyed the previous books in the series, but I also find Persis an annoying character at times. On thé thème of annoying characters - @EineReiseDurchDieZeit- it’s a long time since I’ve read After You’ve Gone (which I read because I liked Esme Lennox by the same author) but I can still remember being annoyed by Alice’s mother and the way she treated Alice’s father.

12 Potholes and Pavements by Laura Laker. Laura Laker is a journalist with a focus on cycling and Active Travel - I don’t read a lot of travel books (@AlmanbyRoadtrip‘s comment about Boring Man makes the LakeDistrict sound boring really sums up my problem with the genre), but I’ve found some of Laura Laker’s journalism (like her recent work on issues with electric bikes) really interesting. During the book she cycles stretches of the National Cycling Network with someone connected to the NCN and describes both her journey and her conversations with her companions. Her interviewees range from Chris Boardman to a grassroots women’s cycling group in Glasgow, which allows her to explore a range of issues connected with cycling. The most interesting chapters for me, where the ones where she describes the founding of the NCN due to the work of a bunch of gifted volunteers in Bristol, who wanted to create a small cycle route but ended creating a national network and the charity Sustrans. It’s a great story of phenomenal achievement that ended in a boardroom putsch (sadly no-one was prepared to describe the latter in any detail) and it gets across how the NCN is both a national asset but also the historic reasons why some of its stretches are substandard.

Agree re Michael Connelly being the equivalent of comfort eating. Connelly, along with Harlan Coben and Agatha Christie, are my biggest comfort reads and I tend to fly through them fairly quickly.

I agree @Benvenuto but the way it came full circle made it work for the narrative

I started rereading the Bosch books fairly recently but had to give up as I found the main character to be such an annoying, arrogant arse.

I loved The Secret History but haven’t read it until shortly after it came out, I wonder if I’d like it as much rereading, the recent review by Desdemona makes me think I would. I might have to revisit.

80. The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey

Miv and her best friend Sharon live in an unnamed Yorkshire town during the late 1970s. There’s lots going on here, beyond the main storyline of the main characters’ decision to see if they can succeed where the police have failed, and identify the man who has been killing women across Yorkshire. There’s themes of mental illness, misogyny, racism, domestic violence, infidelity, and I think maybe the author tried to shoehorn a bit too much into one book. It took me a while to get into but I quite liked it overall.

I quite like the Bosch books- fast paced easy reading. The TV show Ballard is much better than the books with her and Bosch though.

Im not quite at the Ballard stage yet with the Bosch books, still have the tv series to watch too. I agree he's a tricky character, IIRC the first thing someone says to him in the first book is "fuck you, Bosch", which set the tone going forward 😂

I keep meaning to reread The Secret History too. Dd1 started it 2 summers ago but got a bit bogged down, I think she was too young for it at 13.

97. Albion - Anna Hope. This is about a country house in Sussex and the family who live there. The father Phillip has just died, leaving behind wife Grace, and children Frannie, Milo and Isa. For the 10 years before he died, Frannie and Philip were rewilding the land at the estate, called the Albion Project. All of the children are messed up in various ways - Frannie is stressed about running the estate, Milo wants to set up a psychedelic therapy centre for high net worth individuals and Isa is a socialist who is struggling with her childhood love. None of the characters are particularly nice, except for the old hippy Ned who inhabits the wood. It's a bit obvious but was a decent enough read.

@Stowickthevast yes, I would say 13 is too young, it’s a great Sixth Form/Early 20s book IMHO, though of course people of all ages are appreciating it these days what with the social media resurgence of it

I loved After You'd Gone when I first read it years ago. I do love Maggie O'Farrell's books in general (although this one may be my favourite), so I think it would probably still be a hit for me if I re-read it now.

@Tarahumara do you know what I mean about the weird structure though?

Re Maggie O’Farrell I haven’t read After You’d Gone, thought Hamnet was just okay but absolutely loved The Marriage Portrait and Esme Lennox. I have Instructions for a Heatwave on my bedside table pile of books to read in the next while.

As for The Secret History, it was my favourite book in my 20s which was the age I was when it came out. I was just finished uni so prime reading age for it. I also loved The Goldfinch and The Little Friend is also sitting in my bedside bundle of books but Eine has done a good job of frightening me about reading it!

@ÚlldemoShúl I mean it would be good to get some outside perspective on The Little Friend it’s very, very many years since I read it, but my abiding memory of it is a) the hours I spent on it b) the lack of any resolution or reward for that time. It writes a cheque it doesn’t cash.

Tbh I can't remember a weird structure... it's a long time since I've read it!

IMO The Goldfinch is amazing. The Little Friend is okay but not as good as the other two.

@Tarahumara now I’m feeling a bit more positive about it. Both will be after I get through my Booker reading mind you. Currently on number 7- can only do another 5 in the next while as one not out until September so will hopefully get to either Instructions for a Heatwave or The Little Friend in the gap.

I found The Goldfinch a book of two parts - some were fabulous and others really dragged. It felt poorly edited or maybe only some sections of the storyline resonated with me (I can't keep blaming editors!).

I enjoyed Instructions in a Heatwave - think I bolded it!