50 Books Challenge 2025 Part Seven

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the seventh 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 , the fifth thread here and the sixth thread

I read TFLW in uni and what I remember of it is nothing from the book but a guy on my course who always tried to blag having read stuff blagging this one, failing dismally and me having to go next with my notes and feeling like Hermione, it’s LeviOHsa not LevioSA

I liked Crimson Petal but thought it overlong.

Lolly Willowes or The Loving Huntsman by Sylvia Townsend Warner

A strange little novel. Lolly Willowes is a spinster who goes to live with her brother and his family in London after her father dies. And there she stays for 20 year until one day she decides to move to Great Mop, a village in the Chilterns, where she becomes a witch. The first part is a comedy of manners, showing the expectations on a maiden aunt and then in the second and increasingly in the third parts the fantasy elements become stronger. Fun feminist fantasy.

Considering reading some of her other novels, have any of our nun fiction fans read The Corner that Held Them and what did you think?

I didn't realise that Caro Fraser had died. I have quite a few of her books including the series about barristers TBR.

I've not yet read The Covenant of Water though I now at least have it on Kindle - I bought the hardback in a charity shop. I don't mind books being long but over 600 pages, the practicalities of size can be an issue - hardbacks are too huge and it's hard to read a large paperback without damaging it!

It's some years ago now but I thought Abraham Verghese's first novel Cutting for Stone was amazing when I read it, though I've been not getting round to his two memoirs for many years, and Covenant for a while now!

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit belatedly wishing you well.

Rather predictably, I’ll recommend anything Agualusa, they are short, well written and translated, often with an element of the bizarre, other worldly without actually straying into magical realism.

Another one who owns Covenant of Water but not yet attempted it.

I was thinking the Abraham Varghese books may be a good shout if you haven't read them too Eine.
Other things I've read this year that aren't amazing but are reasonable books to get lost in for a couple of days:
A Little Trickerie - Rosanna Pike
Confessions - Catherine Airey

Dream Count is long but more like 4 slightly interlocking stories.

Or for something totally off piste, I did quite enjoy immersing myself in Fourth Wing last summer - totally cliched YA fantasy but quite fun.

@ÚlldemoShúl re Endling, if the meta isn't working for you, I agree with giving up. I'm not sure the meta part was entirely successful either though I did find the yurt makers conversations quite funny. I guess without it, it probably wouldn't have got the Booker listing. I do think the end is a bit stronger - there's a part when they get to Kherson with very strong imagery that has stuck with me - but the book as a whole definitely has its flaws.

106. Death of the Author - Nnedi Okorafor. This is written by a Nigerian American SF worker and is her first foray into literary fiction. It's two stories in one. In the first, we follow Zelu, a disabled Nigerian American woman who is writing a book set in Nigeria about robots - Rusted Robots. In the other narrative, we have extracts from the book. Zelu's narrative is about her unsupportive, ambitious family - Zelu is the black sheep - and her own tantrums and selfishness. The narrative is set slightly in the future, Zelu discovers driverless cars to take her around, and is offered some robot legs after her book is a hit. For me, neither story was particularly compelling. In the first story, Zelu and her family are all a bit annoying and the second doesn't have much depth. There are and interesting descriptions and ideas but it's not brilliantly written. I'm also not sure about the potential ableism involved in Zelu's story, her happiness is very much affected by getting her robot legs.

@JaninaDuszejko I've read The Corner That Held Them. It started off well and I was enjoying it hugely, then after a bit I started losing track of which Prioress we were talking about, and realising the 'action' (which is in some ways the right word for this book, despite it being nun-fiction) had moved on 100 years and it was a different person entirely.

I’d be wrong to say that nothing happens because an awful lot of small things do, all the teeming life of the convent for centuries, and in that sense it’s gripping, but STW's idea I think was to convey the continuity of the religious life in this tiny obscure nunnery in the Fens so there’s a certain sameness to it overarching the daily life events. It covers 1163 to 1382 so there’s a big stretch of time to describe. There’s some fantastic writing in it.

Interesting to read the "swept away" chat - it's a great feeling when you feel completely absorbed in something. I'd agree completely with The Secret History, The Line of Beauty, The Bee Sting and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Of things I've read in the last few years I'd also add Wolf Hall, Middlemarch, Half of a Yellow Sun, and Restoration

Wishing you the best @EineReiseDurchDieZeit. Edith Wharton was the last writer that I can think of that really swept me away. I had heard of her when younger & watched The Buccaneers on TV - but I didn’t read the books (nor watch the film of the Age of Innocence). I started to read her after listening to a podcast about her (probably In Our Time) then read a number of her books and found them very immersive. Most are quite sad though.

18 Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld, in which a comedy writer falls in love with a pop star who (she thinks) is out of her league. This was very easy to read and I enjoyed the first part, which was about the craft of writing a TV sketch show. The second part was set in lockdown - it was a bit startling to read about that (as it isn’t that long since lockdown) & I found it harder to assess the writing about that. I do think it’s good that lockdown is beginning to be written about though. I didn’t like the “woman has failed relationships so ends up on an app” trope though - it completely failed to convey whatever the writer intended as the man from the app just sounded so grim.

19 A Spy Among Friends by Ben Macintyre - thank you to whoever recommended this! This is the story of the MI6 agent Kim Philby, who defected to the USSR, in the context of his friendships with another MI6 agent & a CIA agent. The author’s style is very readable and I liked that while the stories of WW2 & Cold War spying are fascinating, the author is also very clear about the toll of Philby’s betrayal (which starts with unflattering descriptions of his friends but leads to / is linked to many deaths). Interestingly (in view of recent posts on accents), it was the upper-class accented old-boys network of MI6 / CIA that allowed Philby to escape detection for many years, whereas the less posh M15 / FBI were very clear that he was guilty.

@JaninaDuszejko , I found The Corner that Held Them a bit of a slog. There's a recent Blacklisted episode about it that's very enthusiastic though.

My "swept away" book is A Month in the Country, by J L Carr. I got close with The Secret Countess, by Eva Ibbotson last year - just wholeheartedly cheering the heroine on.

@Benvenuto if you are interested in a fictionalised account of the Cambridge spy ring, The Untouchable byJohn Banville, which I mentioned as one of my swept away books, is just that. It is weird that I like it so much as I don't really like John Banville, but for me, that is his masterpiece.

Probably me @Benvenuto and I am now going to look up @Welshwabbit’s recommendation!

152 The Road to Urbino - Roma Tearne

Picked this up at the meet up last year :-) I enjoyed it a lot. A lawyer, Elizabeth Saunders, is interviewing two people: first, her client, Ras, from Sri Lanka, who is accused of art theft and terrorism; second, Alec Benson, a rather amoral character whose life became entangled with Ras tangentially. It’s a lovely book about art and Italy and how losses resound.

So many “swept away” books I’ve also read and agree with. Have I read all the books?! 🤣

@SheilaFentiman – I didn’t even get as far as gruesome (I don’t think). Just wasn’t for me and I remember enjoying QUOM 30 years ago. Also, can you just stop with the good reviews please? I now feel that I need to add Firebrand to my TBR and I cant cope 😂

@MamaNewtNewt – I feel the exact same about hearing how massively fat Ruth is.

@Piggywaspushed – history is written by the winners, right? I’m always still amazed at how little horror (or is it simply knowledge) there is at Stalin’s treatment of, well, everyone really, but the mass rapes of women in Germany, Hungary and Poland.

@ChessieFL – aw! DD loved Mog. She loved one particular book so much that she memorised it and ‘read’ it to herself before she could read. I might buy it as a stocking filler.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit – hope all goes well with your procedure. Do you have a date?

95 A Thousand Ships – Natalie Haynes RWYO (Kindle). Late to the party with this one. Released in 2019 and shortlisted for the Womens Prize for Fiction. It’s a retelling of the Trojan War from a feminist perspective. I loved it. I enjoy Haynes’ Stone Blind, so I’m not sure why its taken me so long to pick this up.

I’ve put a reservation in for Clown Town and am 7th on the list, but there are four copies available, so it shouldn’t take too long.

Arundhati Roy has a memoir out which sounds interesting and Jung Chang's Wild Swans follow up, too. It's like time travelling to when books were really really good!

I forgot Mantel and Atonement in my list yesterday. Interesting interview with McEwan in the ST today.

@Tarragon123it was supposed to be Thursday just gone but it got cancelled. No idea when now.

@MamaNewtNewt Yeah the fat shaming stuff in the Ruth Galloways is really annoying, but fades over time

The most recent book that swept me away was The Observations by Jane Harris which I got at the Manchester meet up last year (thankyou @HighlandCoo). Otherwise, other books not mentioned so far Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrel by Susanna Clarke, anything by Sarah Waters by particularly Fingersmith, lots of Wilkie Collins but obviously Woman in White is the best. Clearly I'm fonder of a melodramatic historical novel than I realised.

I read Covenant of Water in 2023 and loved it. My review at the time was "This was just absolute bliss. It's 700 pages long and I still didn't want it to end. I felt as though I know and love these characters, even though sometimes I've only known them for a few pages. Recommended to everyone who loves a family saga, although owing to size it's not a quick read."

I think it's probably an excellent choice if you're looking to get swept away by a book.

I need to “Book Up” don’t I?

I have the Verghese in my Amazon shopping list.

Just finished my 50th book!! Go me.

This was Emily Maguire's Rapture about the mythical 'Pope Joan'. A quiet book (although with a surprising amount of sex!)

Straight after The Safekeep, I probably could have done without another book on repression. It's also about duality, the past , and gender- so quite similar.

Maguire does write well but there was too much religious stuff for my liking. It goes well with Conclave as a read, albeit many centuries apart.

It has a beautiful book jacket.

Oh, yes, I liked Gillespie and I and Sugar Money by Jane Harris.

I think , looking at my list, Woke Me says I like books about race and identity but it would appear I actually like sweeping Romance. And a good cry.

How HOW did I forget This Thing of Darkness ?? I never would have read it without you guys!

My single greatest contribution to these threads!

Your greatest contribution to the planet, remus! You'll never top it.

A This Thing Of Darkness is exactly what I’m in the market for right now !