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

It’s an oldie but a goodie @EineReiseDurchDieZeit.

#26 Bookworm by Lucy Mangan. A re-read. I started off using this to dip into and out of on train journeys and in waiting rooms, and it’s supremely suited to that use, but then on a longer train journey I was enjoying it so much I just kept right on reading when I got home. Not a book that needs any introduction on this thread, so suffice to say I loved revisiting it and it prompted me to buy a copy for my own little bookworm who ruined her eyes trying to read in the dark after lights out. She’s pushing thirty now (and back to 20/20 eyesight thanks to laser surgery) hopefully she’ll love it too.

37. Never Had it So Good by Dominic Sandbrook
Enjoyable, extremely detailed history of Britain from the Suez Crisis to the very dawn of the Beatles by the historian and podcaster. Sadly he’s now too busy to read his own books and I missed his voice on this one. The reader did a decent job but I found it a bit stodgy as a result, though it’s a period I enjoy reading about. I’m not brilliant at getting every bit of an audiobook but I really missed a sense of thematic analysis, particularly a feminist or global lens. It’s not what he does so fair enough, but you’d barely be aware that Britain had any relationships with other countries separately from Suez in this. A bit too much detail about Macmillan’s vacullations in his diary.

Oh dear @Stowickthevast I appear to have purchased Sky Daddy as it is 99p and I am utterly intrigued.

Our uni child is in Scotland, so he has been back for ages, I do miss him, but he gives me access to his dashboard so I can watch the lectures (he studies history like me) and today we have been discussing which essays we would chose.

Thanks for the encouragement with Ali Smith, I am looking forward to the next one.

@ÚlldemoShúl I really love Madame Bovary. I first read it when I got married, young and things were not how I expected and I was totally miserable and I really identified with her. We worked on it and came through, unlike Emma.

I spent the time over the weekend curating a TBR list for October. There used to be something called Victober on BookTube (maybe there still is), which was focussed on Gothic/Spooky stuff in October so I thought I would read all those books I haven't got to that fall into this category.

Carmila, Sheridan le Fanu for Vampires
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hide and Other Stories, Robert Louise Stevenson has been on my shelf forever
Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen, prob the one I will read last, or might not get to as I have read it a few times before
The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre, John Polidori, more vampires
A Sunny Place for Shady People, Mariana Enriquez, for actual mind disturbing. I had to delete The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, her previous collection permanently from my Kindle. I still think about those stories, and can never travel to Barcelona ever again. I will have to rid myself of this one once I have read it.

Oh, I should read Northanger Abbey again, haven't read it for decades.

I have postponed the off-to-uni emotional turmoil for at least a year as DS1 is taking at least a gap year (has thankfully managed to get a job, which I feared would be a struggle). We’ll see what happens after that. Hope all the uni parents are doing ok and the DC are settling in.

48 A Short History Of The World According To Sheep - Sally Coulthard

A quick freebie on Audible in between waiting for credits. Fairly surface level exploration of the relationship between humans and sheep/wool over the millennia- nothing earth shattering but an easy listen and picked up a few interesting ovine facts (like the fact that clan tartan is basically a modern invention with no historical basis).

40) Ordinary Time by Cathy Rentzenbrink

A joy of a book. I will be looking to read some of her other books.

Made me think of Barbara Pym. People have also compared her to Anne Tyler.

Ann is a reluctant vicar's wife. Living an unsatisfactory life with her church-obsessed husband and awkward son, she brightens up when she meets a stranger on a train. But can she have everything?

I loved it and was kind of sad to finish it.

Btw "Ordinary Time" is the periods in the Co E when there are no special days such as Advent. I did not know that.

@Arran2024 Catholic Church also has Ordinary Time!

I was broughtbup in the Presbyterian Church of Scotland and had never come across it.

Sending support to all uni parents here. A few years to go till DD (possibly) heads off but I’m not looking forward to the prospect.

Benvenuto - I loved Operation Mincemeat too. Ben MacIntyre always seems to make his subjects fascinating. We read The Spy and the Traitor for book club a few years ago and I was surprised to become hooked as on the face of it that era of history wasn’t one I was particularly interested in.

.51. Up with the Larks - Tessa Hainsworth

Tessa was a high-powered marketing executive living in London who gave up the rat race with her young family to become a postal worker in Cornwall. I raced through this memoir of starting again with all the trials of a new home, work and community. Very readable: it’s the first in the series and if I find any more by the author I’d be interested to see how her life develops.

@Arran2024 , you've sold me on Ordinary Time - I've reserved it at the library.

Reading with interest about dc going off to university. This should be dd next next, all going well. It's been just the two of us since she was tiny, so it will be a big change. Right now, I'm looking forward to roaming more freely at the weekends, but we shall see.

112. I Hope This Finds You Well, Natalie Sue
An enjoyable recommendation from this thread. Office worker gains access to her colleagues' emails and learns to see her colleagues in a different light. It's a variant on the theme of "socially awkward female starts to engage with people" but well executed and all rather endearing. I loved the cameos by the Iranian mothers and aunties.

113. Adventures on the High Teas, Stuart Maconie
Author ranges over middle England, telling us what he sees with diversions on music, books, films and tv. I don't find this author as amusing as he wants to be. This feels like dispatches from a different time, as his visits (just) predated the financial crash of 2008. The country he describes feels less frayed around the edges.

114. Let's Get Physical, Danielle Friedman
American-focused history of women and exercise, from aerobics and running marathons to Jazzercise and yoga. She acknowledges that women can feel pressure to exercise in order to look a certain way, but her experience is that it becomes a source of wellbeing in its own right. It got a bit same-y as we went from one exercise guru to the next, but I was interested enough to finish.

115. A Winter Away, Elizabeth Fair
Recommended on the podcast Tea or Books, which shares my enthusiasm for mid-twentieth century women's writing. We're in classic territory - young woman takes job as a secretary in a big old house. We're in the 1950s, so it's falling apart and occupied by one fierce old man, who she becomes very fond of. There's a bit of mild comedy, a bit of romance, there are teashops and a curate and it's all very soothing. The relationships were portrayed quite realistically - I liked the father longing for the visit of his grown son but unable to stop himself from quarrelling with him as soon as he arrives.

Currently reading, by coincidence, two books about Brits in Baghdad, written seventy odd years apart: They Came to Baghdad, Agatha Christie and Fundamentally, Nussaibah Younis. An interesting juxtaposition representing a (justified) loss of confidence as the world moves on.

I'm also sold on Ordinary Time thanks to@Arran2024 and have added it to my TBR.

Enjoy Sky Daddy @AgualusasL0ver - I may never look at a plane in the same way.

I just finished Immaculate Conception as recommend by Eine. I enjoyed it, an interesting slightly futuristic take on the world of art and female relationships, with well drawn characters.

If anyone is in the market for Fitzcarraldo books, they have a 40th anniversary sale ending today with 40% off their books. I've picked up the new Olga Tokarczuk book and In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova.

@Stowickthevast I’ve bought Sky Daddy thanks to you!

Pressure!!

172 Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - Barbara Kingsolver

Non-fiction from BK, about her family's year of eating locally, from their farm in Appalachia along with local farmer markets etc, along with musings on the food industry from her professor husband and recipes from her elder DD. It was a bit of a slog to get through the subject matter, TBH, but BK's writing made it doable (and kept the whole thing from getting smug, for the most part!)

I’m rather fond of all those Elizabeth Fair books @bibliomania. They’re very soothing but not totally cosy.

That's true, @Terpsichore - there's a hint of a bite. First Elizabeth Fair book I've read, as far as I remember, but I'll keep an eye out for others.

Another month, another set of deals 😀 only on my phone so far, but have bought The Nightingale for £1.99

I’ve been intermittently following the thread but silent due to quite a bad - months long!! - reading slump. I think I’ve pulled myself out of it now so hoping to be here more regularly and get my numbers back up. Here’s my last few months of books, mostly well known so I’ve neglected descriptions.

20 James, Percival Everett

A bold. I think the hype is justified for this one.

21 The Artist, Lucy Steeds

This was good, a perfect heatwave read, being set in Provençal summer about a reclusive painter, his niece who is his defacto housekeeper/assistant, and a journalist who comes to stay with the intent to write a portrait of the great artist. The use of real historical art world figures did grate for me a bit, and I thought it curious that the big reveal happened towards the start of the book, but they were minor things and this was an enjoyable read.

22 Outline, Rachel Cusk

With this one I feel similarly to how I felt about Miranda July’s All Fours: I admired this book but I’m not sure I actually enjoyed reading it. The protagonist is visiting Athens to give a writing workshop and has a series of conversations during her trip which are the basis for the chapters of this book. I quite like character driven work, which this very much is, so it’s not simply a lack of plot that I didn’t like. Anyway, I am not sure whether to continue with more from Cusk.

Precipice, Robert Harris

Gave this 100 pages before DNFing, may come back to it another time as it was fine but I wasn’t feeling it.

23 The Running Grave, Robert Galbraith

Eventually, at my slumpiest, I had to pull out the big guns. I’d been saving this for just this moment and it did the job! As always with RG/Strike, so f**king long, so many characters, but it hooked me right in.

24 Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell

I have had this sitting around for years, having read another O’Farrell and struggled through it. I am often driven to read a book if there is a film/tv release though, and seeing the film being promoted was motivation enough for me to finally read it. I enjoyed this much more, not quite a bold but nearly!

I’ve been very good and only grabbed Pine by Francine Toon from the deals today as I’ve sooo many unread books on my kindle.

I got a handful of books that have been on my TbR for a while from today’s deals including The Paying Guests, Sofia- Suffragette, Princess, Revolutionary and Dr No.
For those that haven’t read it yet Age of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey is on there- a few of us really enjoyed it earlier this year.

Do you mean Book of Guilt or is Age Of Guilt a follow up?

I got Unsticky Writers and Lovers and Sour Cherry

Sorry you’re right Eine. That’s what I get for typing without checking first. Will see if I can edit!

One of today's more expensive Kindle Daily Deals, £1.99, is The Art of a Lie by Laura Shepherd-Robinson - I borrowed it from the library and am sending it back with dp today. Set in 18th century London, Hannah's husband has been murdered, and she is worrying about holding on to her business, and dealing with a range of men trying to find out what happened.... I thought this, her 4th novel, is her best yet. As the title suggests, it is also a story that raises questions about who is fooling who?

Nothing on the freaks for me this week - I did just read The Book of Guilt with a ln audible credit annoyingly.
Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst is on there for £1.99 for literary fiction fans.

Thanks @elkiedeeI’ve picked that up