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

This.

I haven’t read The Salt Path as reviews here put me off- I’m glad now!
I’ve finished
102 Summerwater- Sarah Moss
A group of unconnected people stay in holiday cabins in Scotland where the summer rain keeps them somewhat confined. I loved the POVs in this. All very different and very real. The engaged couple ones made me actually lol. The tension built nicely though I would have liked more explanation of the ending. Still a good read.

This is my 4th RWYO but it’s my birthday and DH has done a terrific job of choosing books for me- which are now books I own…

Happy birthday ÚlldemoShúl.

What a great haul of books!

Happy Birthday @ÚlldemoShúl 🎈 and Happy Reading 📚

Happy Birthday @ÚlldemoShúl. Great pile of books.

Am agog at The Salt Path stuff. I didn’t like the book much but was looking forward to seeing the film.

Happy birthday! Great haul.

89 . The Bastard Of Istanbul by Elif Shafak

Asya grows up in a house full of aunts in Istanbul. Armanoush, an Armenian American is searching for roots. The two stepcousins combine when Asya is called upon to look after Armanoush during her visit to the city. Family secrets are revealed. Social issues in Turkey are discussed.

I found this a bit lacking, it meanders a lot in the first half and doesn’t really get going. I never felt invested in the characters or connected to them, it felt like fiction, and the best fiction shouldn’t, though I could see some merit in it. I know her novels Island Of Missing Trees and There Are Rivers In The Sky have been more popular but I’m not convinced just off reading this.

This was a RWYO : 2016 so at least I’ve finally read it

Happy Birthday @ÚlldemoShúl

Happy Birthday @ÚlldemoShúl ! Your DH has done very well there.

The Salt Path didn't appeal to me at all, but I was also fascinated to read The Observer's story this morning.

28.The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West.
Rose Aubrey narrates this coming of age novel from her perspective as a middle child in a bohemian and dysfunctional Edwardian family. Mrs. Aubrey, a former concert pianist, does her best to keep the show on the road as her unreliable husband’s schemes and projects plunge the family into social and economic difficulties.

This was rich and enjoyable. There’s a fair bit of plot, including a poltergeist, political lobbying and a murder trial, but the joy is in warm and vivid descriptions of the everyday interactions: the children’s odd imaginary games, shopping trips, and meals out.

This was my pick from the 50 Bookers meet up book swap last year, and if I remember correctly it was donated by @cassandre - thank you for introducing me to a new author! I will definitely explore more of her work .

Happy birthday from me too, @ÚlldemoShúl and congrats on that amazing book pile!

I remember having similar thoughts about the ending of Summerwater. The cause of the tragedy is implied in such an understated way that one could almost miss it.

I'm also fascinated by the Salt Path saga. The witness interviewed in the Observer video is extremely credible. I actually really liked the book when I read it (it had just come out) and even bought it for an elderly friend of mine, because I thought she would enjoy the descriptions of walking the coastline. Embarrassing 🙄However, I subsequently read reviews by MNetters less gullible than myself and agreed with them that the narrator seemed quite unlikable/feckless in certain ways. So I haven't read her most recent two books, and I wasn't planning on seeing the film.

I'm just waiting for the Wikipedia entry on Raynor Winn to be updated with her real name! I also recall searching for her on the internet when the book first came out, and finding absolutely nothing about her prior to the book's publication, and thinking it a little odd. Now it all makes sense - ha!

There's also an interesting local twist in that Raynor/Sally is coming to speak this week at the local art cinema in my neighbourhood, along with a showing of the film. Tickets for this inspiring event are a mere £58 a pop. Part of the proceeds are meant to go to charity, but I'm thinking now that Sally must be receiving a substantial fee as well. !!! It's a bit awkward because a local mum who is a friend of mine and small business owner has invited her, and there have been loads of messages on our school whatsapp group along the lines of, do come hear the wonderful Raynor Winn! and several mums oo-ing and ah-ing about the brilliance of the book and film. I'm so tempted to say something on the whatsapp group, but I think I'll just leave it. No one likes a killjoy. I'm also half-tempted to go to the event and grill Raynor myself, but for £58, no thanks. Maybe the event will be cancelled?

Sorry long post, I do love a literary drama.

Oh gosh. I've just found an old podcast of my friend interviewing Raynor about the difficulties of being a mum and having a career. I wasn't going to say anything to her, but now I'm wondering whether I should message her privately to give her a heads-up about the Observer piece 😢Then she'll at least have time to work out how to handle the cinema event...

Thanks all for the birthday wishes. Giving DH access to my Waterstones wishlist was a good idea!
@cassandre that's really awkward for your friend- I would definitely give her a heads up.

@StrangewaysHereWeCome I cross-posted with you and didn't see your post right away! I'm so glad you liked The Fountain Overflows. To be honest I haven't read much of her other work, but she was clearly a remarkable figure. I keep meaning to read The Return of the Soldier, which is her most famous novel.

@FuzzyCaoraDhubh I meant to say earlier that I'm very impressed and envious you're reading Her Side of the Story in Italian! I hope you enjoy it. I have (or rather had) a smattering of Italian so am half-tempted to try reading de Cespedes in Italian myself, but I'm pretty sure it would be too laborious.

@ÚlldemoShúl I've now messaged my friend about Winn, framing the message as one of regret. I'm sure she would have found out soon enough anyway, but yeah, if I were in her position I would want to know ASAP. When it comes to having believed Winn's story she's certainly in excellent company!

Happy Birthday @ÚlldemoShúl! Lovely haul. I didn't know Sarah Moss had a new book out. I also agree about the ending of Summerwater- I had to rewind the last chapter several times.

40 The Year of the Hare - Arto Paasilinni trans. Herbert Lomas
This is a 1970s Finnish classic about a journalist who finds an injured hare and abandons his life, wife and job to travel around remote parts of Finland having slightly random encounters through his hare. It started off well but I lost interest about a third of the way through. Lots of reviews said if was very funny but I am not sure I really got it.

Hi @cassandre I'm about half way through 'Dalla parte di lei' and I'm enjoying the story. Alessandra is a very compelling narrator and I loved the account of her relationship with her mother, Eleonora, poor woman. The relationships between the women in the book are very well drawn. I particularly liked the Nonna.

However! While I like Alessandra, I was so disappointed when she randomly killed the rooster in the farmyard. Why?! Also, I found her relationship with Uncle Rodolpho a bit disturbing, asking him to kiss her on the lips (I think) on her departure to Rome. It seemed odd. I wonder was it a case of hero worship. Did he seem like the ideal man to her? Or am I reading it wrong? Could be!

Thank you re the Italian. It's good practice. It's not a particularly difficult read as the prose is straightforward. Sometimes I come across sentences that I can't understand and I move on and get back on track. I have the English copy on reserve in the library. I'll skim over it when I get it and see what I've missed :)

Happy birthday ÚlldemoShúl - great birthday book pile!

Also fascinated/shocked by the Salt Path revelations - I wasn’t interested in reading the book or watching the film, partly put off by their names 😄 She sounds like an awful woman!

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I was also not particularly impressed by The Bastard of Istanbul and haven’t felt inclined to read any of her other books as a result.

41 The Heron’s Cry - Ann Cleeves Second in the DI Matthew Venn series, set in Devon. BorrowBox has lots of Cleeves’ books so I keep reserving the next in each of the series - Venn, the Shetland series, and Vera (the first of which has just become available). I like them, they’re gentle and have nice characterisation, though they’re not great literature and I might be starting to need a break (after the ones I’ve got waiting for me anyway!).

Back again. I fell off the the thread for a few days and completely missed the start of the new one. Catching up with the messages now. In the meantime here are the latest reviews: a couple of memoirs.

.32. The Penguin Lessons - Tom Michell

Tom was working as a teacher in an English style private school in Argentina during the 1970s. On a trip to Uruguay he rescued a penguin from a horrific oil slick and brought him home to the school. This is the story of his time with the bird, christened Juan Salvador, and the impact his house guest had on him, his pupils and the fellow staff. I enjoyed it and learned more about the political and social side of the country at that time. Recommended.

.33. Undercurrent - Natasha Carthew

A memoir recounting the childhood of the author, living in the rural poverty of south east Cornwall in the 1970s and 80s. It was an interesting read as I know the area well from holidays; it gives a different,starker view of the picture-postcard tourist haven and there were asides with social statistics of the realities of poverty and hopelessness, brought up to date to chart the impact of Covid on the area. Natasha saw herself as an outsider in many ways: emotionally, economically and sexually. I’m glad she’s been able to make a successful career from writing, the one constant in her life from an early age.

Wow that Raynor Winn article is fascinating! I am someone who should have loved Salt Path and didn't. I was bemused by how they lost their house and apparently had no other option but to wild camp despite not researching another option like going to the council or talking to their children. And they seemed to expect kindness on the trail, and yes there is plenty of goodness as one travels the world but you shouldn't demand it!

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

I am always so reluctant to pick up a book set before the 1990s but it's usually so worth it. The first part took some time to get going as the scene was set but I got drawn into Sue's world of ducking and diving to make a living when a men called Gentlemen comes to offer her a level up into actual villainy but the pay off would be life changing.

What happens next involves so much double crossing I lost track at times of who was conning who and what the real story was. Despite the complexity I could not put this book and I miss the slightly unlikable characters now they are gone.

I think everyone has already read it, it was released in 2002 according to storygraph, but recommended anyway!

I literally stayed awake half the night reading Fingersmith I thought it was so original - I was later disappointed to find that it pays significant homage to The Woman In White which I hadn’t read at the time…I still think it’s brilliant though

I loved both Fingersmith and Woman in White.

In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B Hughes 1947 LA-set thriller from the pov of a serial killer. Will he be caught? The character is well done, an excellent actor with absolute self control, the voice alternately petulant, needy and contemptuous. It wasn’t gory or gratuitous, but I found the friendship with the detective unbelievable and after having had the author on my list for a long time I was a bit disappointed.

Having a lovely catchup on the thread. I was given TSP by a friend who loved it and also quite enjoyed the walking part, though found the loss chapters at the beginning infuriating. If I were the writer, I’d now write an excoriating expose of the publishing industry and how it’s now nearly impossible to make a living writing fiction, so you have to pretend it’s real. Not that I think that’s all true, just that it might be the only way to use her final book deal - to double down and do a rant from the burning stage as the theatre collapses around you.

26 When Women Ran Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion by Julie Satow
Recommended I think by @Terpsichore and other fans of department store literature? Snapped up on the deals some months ago. I really enjoyed this well researched portrayal of three women who ran major American department stores in their 20th century golden age. I still love a department store now, and a holiday highlight in 2019 was a morning in Saks San Francisco lingerie department, but reading about the real high end stuff is mouthwatering. If I were gifted a day in the past it would be hard not to use it in Bendel’s. But the cruel reality is that I’m far too fat for the Bendel look and the strange crash of female leadership in a highly sexist industry is particularly piquant in this book.

109 - Silverview - John Le Carré

Published post-humously after editing by his son, this is a modern day Service, with text messages and emails and Smiley long gone. The story centres on Julian, who quit trading in the city to found a seaside bookshop and who is befriended by Edward, an older man with a dying wife and a hint of a foreign accent, Relationships within the service and elements of betrayal ensue. A good read.

@TimeforaGandT – I read all AC’s books as a teenager, but I have no recollection of Death in the Air!

@Piggywaspushed – I love Sara Sheridan and haven’t heard of On Starlit Sea. Must look out for it.

@ÚlldemoShúl – Happy Birthday!!

@cassandre - £58?!? Griters gonna grift!

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit @DuPainDuVinDuFromage – Elif Shafak’s The Island of Missing Trees was a bold for me.

62 Death of a Lesser God – Vaseem Khan Malabar House 4. I said by mistake that the last Malabar House I read was book 4, but it was book 3, this one is book 4. Persis has been tasked at re-examining the case of a white man who has been found guilty of murdering an Indian lawyer. Can a white man really get justice in post partition India? Persis leaves her home city of Bombay and travels to Calcutta to get to the truth. Her mentee also returns and Persis has an interesting love triangle. The book finishes on a bit of a cliff hanger but I think we can guess what happens.

63 The Summer Seaside Kitchen – Jenny Colgan. Also known as The Café by the Sea, this is book 1 proper of the Isle of Mure books. There was a kind of prequel short story to set the scene, but JC has decided to move the Isle of Mure. In the prequel, it was in the Hebrides, now its North of Shetlands. No matter. You know where you are with JC. Comforting and cosy.

Flora is a para legal living her best life in London. She is required by her work to go back home, to the Isle of Mure, where she hasn’t been since her mother died. She ends up running a pop up café, because she has her mother’s baking skills. Sweet and uncomplicated, this book is dedicated to Jenny’s Mum, who inspired it and presumably the recipes at the end of the book. I was in tears and snotters at some points. Lovely. Cant wait to return to Mure.

64 The Blue Afternoon – William Boyd. RWYO. This has been lingering on my Kindle for a few years, so decided to give it a bash. Hated it. Surprised myself by actually finishing it. Disjointed. Didn’t care about any of the characters or their stories. Very disappointed.

I don’t know much about William Boyd. I don’t know if he considers himself Scottish (his parents are and he returned when he was 9), but it would appear that he had a very privileged upbringing and went to Gordonstoun. He puts in a few Scottish words, which feels really unauthentic, like using ‘drookit’ to describe the weather, when it means that a person (or animal) is very wet. I wont be looking at any of his other books.

The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey is well worth the time. If you like The Five by Hallie Rubenhold then, in my opinion, this far superior. I’m also biased because I studied at Birkbeck when Laite conceived the idea for the book and she took a couple of classes where she brainstormed it with us and I worked with her on a few projects (mine not hers).

I saw the film of In a Lonely Place the other day, Cornish - DH and I had spotted it on Talking Pictures and recorded it for later. A decent bit of noirish drama with Humphrey Bogart as Dix and Gloria Grahame as Laurel, but sadly Bogey couldn’t be seen to be a killer so they fudged it. The book is much better imho.