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

The cult saga is like 100% better than the Freemason silver nonsense. I literally lost the plot with it.

😂

For work reasons my available reading time has fallen off a cliff recently but I did finish one, could have done with something more edifying if I’d have known how precious reading minutes would be:

Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams memoir by an ex-Facebook policy strategist, who took the job back when it seemed possible (to her at least) that Facebook could engage constructively and be a force for good on the global stage. Extremely readable, often funny, and interesting, but infuriating in many ways, particularly that the world’s most able people are spending their lives chasing clicks rather than working on the world’s problems.

I have got my mitts on The Hallmarked Man so am sorry to hear the frustrations - I will be some time.

51 Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis
I tried to look for 50 Booker reviews of this but MN’s Search facility is a bit rubbish so I couldn’t confirm my impression that opinions were mixed.
I enjoyed it a lot, it wasn’t what I expected. At times the humour seemed to be a tad forced, but still refreshing to hear female voices on female issues of faith, freedom and family.

115 . The Running Man by Stephen King (as Richard Bachman)

In the interests of being able to take The Bachman Books off TBR, I went straight on to this.

It’s basically the TV show Hunted but you die if you get caught. Ben Richards is on the run trying to earn money for his sick child. I found this a bit slow to get going and a bit lacklustre in print but could very much see how well it would work as a film. Due to certain sensitivities I do wonder if they will alter the end….

Thunderclap - Laura Cumming - I read and reviewed this a while ago but recently went to Delft so wanted to read again.

I'm joining the Finkelstein club having finished Hitler Stalin Mum and Dad. It is churlish to critique such a meticulous, thoughtful and detailed piece of writing so I shall say no more than that it is sobering and worth the read.

Jealous of your Delft trip, @BestIsWest Did you like it?

I did, very much. We were only there for a day. Very pretty, lovely food market and churches to visit.

It's definitely on the list of places I hope to visit in the next couple of years.

Combine it with Den Haag which is lovely and there’s a tram between them. The Mauritshuis is wonderful.

We did Thunderclap for book club last year and one of the members then visited the Mauritshuis, it sounded lovely.
I really liked Fundamentally @MaterMoribund, one of the highlights of a generally underwhelming Woman's Prize this year.

111. Getting Away - Kate Sawyer. The latest Kate Sawyer book follows a family from the 1930s to the present day, tracking how their holidays change from days out to Skegness to weeks at Butlins and AIs in Spain and Portugal. There's a bit of drama in family secrets that are gradually revealed, and a bit of an unlikely happy ending for one of the characters. This was ok - I can definitely picture it as a TV series but it didn't live up to her first book, The Stranding, for me.

I absolutely loved Thunderclap, although to my great annoyance I only discovered it literally days after we’d come home from a trip to the Netherlands staying in Amsterdam and The Hague with visits to the Mauritshaus etc. We did go to Delft (easy by tram) but it was a very hot day and rammed with about a million tourists so not a great experience. I’d really like to go back when it’s both cooler and quieter (if it ever is).

38) A History of Britain in 10 Enemies by Terry Deary

I enjoyed this a lot. Packed full of information, much of which I didn't know. I like the way he explained how the Roman domination of Britain segued into the domination (for a while) by the Popes/ Catholic church under the chapter on Italy.

But Terry Deary did write Horrible Histories and he stuffs the book with imo unnecessary jokes. I found them distracting and often annoying.

But overall an enjoyable focus on some of the big themes in British history (the Romans, the Saxons, the Vikings, the French etc).

Very, very belated Happy Birthday to @Piggywaspushedand @Arran2024!

20 Glorious Rivals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes - latest instalment in a YA series where beautiful, rich young people play escape room type games. No the best in the series.

21 Love Off Script by Laura Starkey - kindle deal romantic comedy. This was ok, but not funny enough and the characters weren’t sufficiently believable. A bit of a shame as I quite liked 2 of her earlier books.

22 Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith
23 The Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith
24 The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith
I seem to be behind everyone else in this series as I was sure that something really, really awful was about to happen to Robin in Career of Evil so it was a DNF for me for a long time (I guess says something about the power of the writing). I decided to read the next one because I wanted something engrossing and because I had been reading all the posts about the Hall-Marked Man. I feel like I now know the characters well enough to be invested in what happens and really enjoyed losing myself in their world - will be planning to reread all three in future to spot clues. (I do feel I should have something more critical to say after reading the reviews of the Hall-Marked Man - but I enjoyed reading about cold cases, online games and cults far too much & suspect I will like a Freemasons plot too).

@Terpsichore- I didn’t find the blurb of Dusty Answer that interesting, but I am tempted to read it as I enjoyed 2 of Rosamund Lehman’s books as a teenager. Invitation to the Waltz was very teenage friendly as it is about a young girl going to her first dance and I remember it being very good at capturing the characters’ feelings and the social dynamics. The sequel The Weather in the Streets is set 10 years later and I found it really, really sad. There’s one point where a character reflects of a failing marriage and says something like “my hands always smelt of the washing up bowl” which I can still remember as it just seemed to capture how sad things were in a small way rather than a tragic way. I don’t know why I didn’t read any more of her books as I used to regularly run out of authors as a teenager - and the library did have a lot of a Virago classics.

@Terpsichore we were there on a weekday mid-May, it was t-shirt weather but not boiling hot and really quiet - there were hardly any tourists. We were lucky by the sound of it.

Just finishing this too via audio. Its been on my wishlist for a while, found it very moving and felt a bit teary at times!

The Running Man by Bachman/King
Not as good as I remembered it being, but decent enough. It dragged in parts and I agree with @EineReiseDurchDieZeit that the racism from characters was unpleasant and unnecessary. Unlike a lot of King’s work though, I thought the ending was mighty fine.

165 The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August - Claire North

A bold. I loved this.

Harry is an Ouroboran, meaning he is destined to be born in the same place and time over and over, but with memories of his past lives once he turns five or so. Near death at 68 in one of his lives, a little girl of the same kind finds him and warns him that the world is ending too fast. The book tells the story of his various lives before and after this, and his efforts to prevent the coming disaster. It’s very well done and rarely confusing (unusual for time travel/multiverse books!). For anyone who watched The Devil’s Hour (recommended) - it has some echoes with that but on a larger scale.

@SheilaFentiman I absolutely adored Harry August but none of her others I’ve read have matched it

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie Do you think, because of the visual, they’ll change the ending of the film? I suspect they will.

Oh gosh. I hadn’t thought of that. Struggling to think what they might do instead, whilst keeping a sufficiently powerful gesture.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I’ve watched the trailer. A line of dialogue suggests he’ll do something different…

@SheilaFentiman I loved Harry August too, a real page turner. It was one of my bolds a couple of years ago.

.50. The Dictionary People - Sarah Ogilvie

I’m pleased to give a big bold to No. 50, as expected. As a fan of biographies and being fascinated by the process of compiling the Oxford English Dictionary, when previous reviewers gave this a thumbs up I had to add this book to my wish list. It relates the stories of some of the many people involved in the making of the first OED, from Readers and subeditors to experts and of course the staff and main editors themselves, with James Murray as an overarching character throughout. A mix of people from across the globe, each with their own unique history, this was a joy to read and may end up as my book of the year.

I usually love time travel/multiple lives books but Harry August was a DNF for me, just couldn’t get into it.

My latest reads:

The Day I Lost You - Ruth Mancini

Lauren lives in Spain with her little boy Sam, but one day the police turn up and say that another woman is claiming that Sam is her baby, not Lauren’s. The story then moves back in time so the story is gradually revealed. This wasn’t great and was a bit confusing trying to work out who knows what at any given point in the story. I only finished it because I wanted to know who Sam belonged to.

Beach Hut 512 - Dorothy Koomson

Short story about someone repeatedly vandalising beach huts, when a dead body is revealed in one of the huts. Better than I expected for a short story.

Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë

Love this book, one of my absolute favourites.

Charlotte’s Web - E B White

A children’s book that had passed me by as a child, I really enjoyed this story of the friendship between a pig and a spider. Lovely.

The Boy Who Lived: When Magic and Reality Collide: My Story - David Holmes

David was Daniel Radcliffe’s stunt double in the Harry Potter films until an accident left him paralysed from the chest down. The story of how he copes with his life now is inspiring and I found the stories about how stunts were done interesting, but the author does come across as a bit of a knob at times describing some of the ways he’s behaved.

Lie To Me - Olivia Gavoyannis

Set on Greece in the 1960s this is the story of young naive Jean who gets drawn into the life of glamorous Vivienne until it all ends in tragedy. Good settings, story just OK otherwise.

The Hallmarked Man - Robert Galbraith

Going against the general opinion on this thread, it’s a bold for me. I do agree that the crime wasn’t as compelling as in the last three books but I was still absolutely gripped by it all and didn’t want to put the book down. I need to reread it again more slowly now I know whodunnit so I can spot all the clues.