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

Happy birthday DuPain! I will be interested to hear what you think of In The Woods. I don’t think I’ve ever been so frustrated by the ending of a book as I was by that one!

Happy birthday @DuPainDuVinDuFromage

Happy birthday @DuPainDuVinDuFromage

Clown Town by Mick Heron
I bit the bullet and paid a fortune for it. Other than falling asleep and dropping my kindle a couple of times when we yet again learn of a fart or a cigarette, I thought this mostly whizzed along.

I liked the old spies and would have appreciated finding out a bit more of their past. I like the slow horse crew a lot, but I do think we’re going to need a bit of character development in Lamb and Catherine in particular, or it’ll get tired.

The ending was annoying, but at least I expected it to be.

A couple of laugh out loud bits - the Boris Johnson character’s daughter’s name really tickled me and the Starmer character is very well drawn.

@BestIsWest – thank you. I’ll probably look out for it in the library. I like the pilot. Not so much the knitter.

@AgualusasLover – I was today years old when I found out that Samuel Becket was 20th century!

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie LOL

@DuPainDuVinDuFromage – Happy birthday!!

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie – I’ve watched the 1st episode of the latest tv series, London Rules. Loved it!

98 The Brutal Telling – Louise Penny – Chief Inspector Gamache (Three Pines 5) This was good. A dead body is found in the bistro, where Gamache and his team have enjoyed hospitality. The team have to find out who the dead man is, where did he come from, where was he killed and of course, who killed him and why. There’s quite a twist in this book and I’m keen to read the next book as I don’t think its quite straight forward. As ever, Clara’s husband is bugging me. I don’t see the point of him and hope that she leaves him. I also wouldn’t be upset if he’s the next murder victim.

Thanks for all the birthday wishes 😊 Oh dear Chessie, that sounds worrying! 😆

So I had The Rest of Our Lives in my bag yesterday as I had planned to take it back to the library after work, but I ended up reading it on the bus and am liking it after about 50 pages in. I think I'll just hold onto it and see this one through.

Happy belated birthday @DuPainDuVinDuFromage
I just cannot get into Slow Horses. I’m at 30% on the third attempt. I’m going to persevere. I loved the TV series and the book is so similar, I’m not getting anything new

Happy Birthday to @DuPainDuVinDuFromage

I've finished The Hallmarked Man and realised it was Book number 50 so 😇

50. The Hallmarked Man by Robert Galbraith
    This is probably one of my favourite ever series, and one of the few books I wait for the new one to come out and read straight away.
    Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacot are called in to investigate a dead body found in the vault of a silver shop. It's been identified by the police as a criminal killed as part of a robbery gone wrong, but their client believes the body is that of her boyfriend who has gone missing. As Strike and Robin get deeper into the case, it turns out there are other possible identities for the body as well, leading to a huge amount of characters. Fairly similar to the third book Career of Evil, when they were trying to figure out who sent Robin a severed leg- grim storyline, lots of red herrings trying to figure out who they are dealing with.
    I found this one's plot very complex, there were a lot of people to keep track of, even within the main case, without characters from the other cases entering into the mix. Also definitely needed a family tree to sort out the Longcaster/Campbell/legard relationships out.
    Robin and Strike also both have a lot going on in their personal lives as well.
    I know what I am going to get from a Strike book, the frustration of Strike and Robin miscommunicating and the complex plots. I understand the complaints about them being over long and needing a good editor, but I am happy with the meander really.
    It probably wasn't by favourite Strike book - I think Troubled Blood and The Running Grave are still my favourites, but definitely enjoyed it.

51. The Franchise Affair by Jospehine Tey
    Read as a quick read as a hangover book to cleanse the palette after THM.
    Cosy little mystery about a girl who claims to have been kept prisoner by two middle aged women in an isolated house for a month. The women deny they have ever seen the girl but she can describe the house and contents of the room she was held in detail.
    Inspector Alan Grant comes to investigate, but to be honest he is not in it much, most of the investigation seems to be done by the solicitor the accused women engage, who begins to unpick the girl's story.

Well done on reaching your 50 @WelshBookWitch

Happy belated birthday @DuPainDuVinDuFromage

@BestIsWest I really struggled with Slow Horses for the same reason so jumped forward in the series to the one that's just been released - London Rules. I thoroughly enjoyed it so will definitely go book first next time.

Sky Daddy - Kate Folk. Well this was thoroughly odd but weirdly enjoyable. Apparently there's a Moby Dick subtext going on which I didn't pick up having never read it, other than the first line which is "Call me Linda". Linda is our first person narrator renting a windowless room in San Francisco and working in a dead end job as a content moderator. But she is sexually obsessed by aeroplanes and dreams of plummeting to her death in one. She spends all her money on flights and gets it on particularly during the plane's flirty turbulence. It's quite funny, I was quite intrigued by it - solid 4/5 for me.

Many happy returns of a couple of days ago, @DuPainDuVinDuFromage.

52 Havoc - Rebecca Wait
Lightly amusing tale set in a decrepit girls’ boarding school. It’s 1984, nuclear drills are a regular occurrence, an assassination attempt is made on Mrs Thatcher - and trapped in this educationally turgid environment, girls start to suffer from unexplained jerks and fits.Well-researched, good pacing and highly readable, but not too demanding on the brain - perfect for my jet lag during my trip from NZ to the UK.

Have also read my Dombey and Son pages, in the early hours of the morning - have very little recollection, may need to skim back over!

99 The Secrets of the Sprakkar – Eliza Reid RWYO. From the physical TBR pile. I think I bought this in October 2022. Written by the former First Lady of Iceland, who is a immigrant from Canada, it is the story of the Sprakkar, the wise women of Iceland. Very interesting tales, which she punctuates with what has happened in Iceland since the mid 1970s

100 Run Rose, Run – James Patterson and Dolly Parton RWYO Kindle. My longest languishing Kindle book from March 2023. Despite my reservations, this was OK! Formulaic, but not awful. A pleasant read and who doesn’t love Dolly? I recommend the sound track as well.

168-170 A Killer’s Game, A Forgotten Kill, A Killer’s Code - Isabella Maldonado

Trilogy about former US army codebreaker/current FBI agent Daniela Vega. More of the same competent and knowledgeable writing/rather implausible plot from this ex-FBI agent/law enforcement professional. I’m deliberately on the easy reads as DS1 has recently gone to uni and it’s essentially comfort food for the brain.

143 The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories edited by Malcolm Bradbury
RWYO- There were a few delicious little stories in here by Graham Greene, Kazuo Ishiguro, Fay Weldon and Graham Swift in particular. Unfortunately many of the others were forgettable and overlong.

72. With A Little Help From Their Friends - Stuart Maconie

Adding to the Beatles love with this. Long but very enjoyable, and with a wry turn of phrase (although some unfortunate editing errors - littered with small mistakes, which is strange, as I’m sure SM knows eg the difference between 'discreet' and 'discrete').
Definitely recommended for any Beatles aficionado though.

Happy belated birthday to @DuPainDuVinDuFromage!

I’ve not come across Sarah Hall but really like the sound of the Wolf Border - thanks to everyone who recommended her (discovering new authors is one of the things that I really like about this thread). I’ve also got Cecily & Fiona Hill book on my Kindle too & must get round to reading both.

25 Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre - I borrowed this after finishing A Spy Among Friends by the same author (thanks to @SheilaFentiman for recommending that one). Operation Mincemeat is about a Second World War operation to plant a dead body with papers on the Spanish Coast to mislead the Germans about invasion plans. I didn’t find the writing quite as compelling as A Spy Among Friends, but it is a story definitely worth telling both with the care the British took with their plans and the circumstances that led the Germans to believe the hoax - events that would probably be condemned as improbably far-fetched if they were fiction. I also liked the connections made to the characters / events of A Spy Among Friends as this helped me to see the links between the Second World War and the Cold War. There are 2 more Ben Macintyre books on BorrowBox and I’ve found one on my Kindle that I must have bought as a deal so I will be reading more of his books.

26 Mary Queen of Scots by John Guy - I’d seen The Rest Is History Mary Queen of Scots podcasts before the discussion about her on the thread, but I hadn’t intended to listen to them as I’d read several books about her. I’m glad the discussion changed my mind as I really enjoyed them (the podcasts would be bold if they were a book). This led me to read the John Guy biography as the podcast mentioned his work reviewing contemporary documents. I found it a very clear biography to read. I liked the detail it provided about Mary’s childhood as it is an important (& interesting) part of her story. I also found the account of Scottish politics when she was ruling in Scotland was very clear - it gave me a much better understanding of who her supporters and opponents were and how they changed sides. Possibly there could have been more focus on her imprisonment - although I did like that it was clear about what happened to Bothwell after Mary was deposed. It’s not a bold as I wasn’t engrossed by it, but I would recommend it to anyone who hasn’t read a biography of Mary before as her story is worth reading.

I haven’t read the book but Operation Mincemeat is also a surprisingly joyous (given the source material) musical in the West End at the moment.

52 Helm by Sarah Hall
This was just incredible. We travel through thousands of years with Helm (the only named wind in the UK), wryly observing the antics of the humans below it in the Eden valley. Each time period focuses on a person - a Neolithic female striving to fulfil her vision of what you come to realise is Long Meg, a glider pilot, an Edwardian inventor, a ‘wayward’ young girl who Helm goes in search of when she is committed to an asylum in Carlisle, a 13th Century soldier priest determined to vanquish the Devil on the top of (Cross) Fiends Fell…….every single story arc more than capable of sustaining its own full length novel but distilled, not diminished, into Hall’s trademark glorious prose. Selima is a contemporary character who is researching microplastic particle effects on clouds and Helm realises that Helm feels different these days - what will become of Helm?
The Eden valley is a place very close to my heart and to see its history laid out through the lives of those within this book’s pages was powerful and touching. Hall brings Helm to life and this is a book I will return to over and over.

47 All The Devils Are Here - David Seabrook

Reread as a follow-up / antidote to Saltwater Mansions. This is the real seedy underside of the east Kent coast, with Seabrook the fascinating, potentially unreliable guide via tales of the faded stars, troubled artists, political outcasts and more who washed up on the Thanet shoreline.

You’ve made me want to read Helm @MaterMoribundI think I’ve read a Sarah Hall before and it was good.

The Accidental Life Swap - Jennifer Joyce

A woman pretends to be her boss when she’s sent to project manage a house renovation. All a bit predictable and silly but a nice light read. Very Sophie Kinsella-ish.

The Secret of Secrets - Dan Brown

The plot is utterly preposterous, full of history/science explanations and unbelievable puzzle solving. The writing is clunky. However, there’s still something intriguing about it all that kept me reading. And I loved the Prague setting as it referenced several places I vaguely remember from when I visited almost 20 years ago.

Ship Of Dreams - Donna Jones Alward

Two women with relationship issues on Titanic. The story was OK but it wasn’t very well written - the main characters were all meant to be English but the writer is Canadian so there was lots of dialogue/internal monologue that English women simply wouldn’t use and I found that very jarring.

The Impossible Fortune - Richard Osman

More of the same. If you’re a fan of the series you’ll enjoy this, if you’re not a fan this won’t change your mind. I enjoyed it!

171 Did You See Melody? - Sophie Hannah

Since this was (a) published in 2017 and (b) is a Sophie Hannah book, I feel
it’s not too spoilery to say What the Fuck was that ending? As ever, with Hannah, gripping plot, credibility… not so much.

Cara Burrows, mother of two, has run away to a luxury resort in Arizona after finding herself unexpectedly pregnant with a less than supportive husband and kids. A blunder at check in means she goes into the wrong room and finds a man and teenage girl sleeping. Following a rather unlikely chain of events, she suspects that the girl is Melody Chapa, whose parents are serving time for her murder, after her suspicious disappearance 7 years ago. Cara and her resort friend Tarin start to investigate, but then Cara herself goes missing. D’oh!

@SheilaFentiman hope you're doing ok. I found it very, very hard when DD1 went to uni over 1800km away. She is now in her 3rd year and we have all adjusted but that initial absolutely physical sadness floored me completely for a while.
Be kind to yourself. Comfort reading is an excellent choice!

Thank you @nowanearlyNicemum whaf a lovely post ❤️

I've just dropped off DS1 for his second year. Sending hugs and solidarity to @SheilaFentiman @nowanearlyNicemum and all the other uni parents on the thread.

DS went back yesterday to start a PHD at the same uni he has been at for 4 years. No long holidays now, so it feels different, very much a shift to a new life stage. But we want them to fly, don't we, so it's all smiles and good luck for the future until we're alone for a bit of a cry! Hugs to everyone on here seeing their DC off to pastures new x