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

Also, I feel like an idiot but people keep congratulating @GrannieMainland and I can’t find a post that says why. Congratulations anyway, for whatever it is!

A baby Grannie is on its way, @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie .

@MaterMoribund thank you! I have read something by a Swedish author a few years back I also enjoyed/was scared by, but that description is not enough to find it on my storygraph.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie as I wrote it I wondered if i had got the genre right for God in the woods but then didn't go and Google 😀And then I actually decided on Extreme Economies instead. I don't exactly have nightmares after reading horror books but I do have restless sleep thinking/dreaming about how they are going to get out of the situation and I wanted a break from that!

I also couldn’t find the post but I only went back two pages @GrannieMainland 🥳

Still reading the very long, very meandering and rather dull The Hallmarked Man.

I am about 20% of the way through Sonia & Sonny and an quite engaged in what happens but she's already way overdue in ditching the awful artist. I am trying to read Tess for book club though so S&S feels like light relief by comparison.

53 Boy Parts - Eliza Clarke
Powerful but deeply unpleasant exploration of the disturbed and damaged mind of young photographer Irina, who commits increasingly extreme acts on young men in the name of fetish art. Devoured it almost in one sitting (long haul flight) and almost immediately wished I hadn’t. There might be some sort of feminist (?) meta narrative about how far a female artist (writer/photographer/whatever) can go before people will actually perceive her as powerful and dangerous. Leaves you feeling sullied.

54 Matrix - Lauren Groff
So, in penance, I took myself to a nunnery.

Inconvenient and ungainly 17-year-old Marie de France, bastard half sister of Henry II, is sent off to be prioress of a failing abbey. In shocking lesbian-finds-she-actually-likes-living-in-a-woman-only-community twist, Marie comes to love the religious life, not least in the opportunities it provides her for self-aggrandisement. In making the abbey rich and herself powerful, Marie builds an empire parallel to that of her sister-in-law (and big crush) Eleanor of Aquitaine. Surprisingly light on detail on how Marie achieves this, but without doubt she’s a legend in her own mind.

55 Thou Savage Woman - Blessin Adams
Completing a trio of books about transgressive women, I guess. In her second book on early modern crime, Adams explores the cases of (alleged) women murderers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. While some of these were undoubtedly nasty pieces of work, others were victims of domestic violence acting in self-defence or condemned for committing murder through witchcraft. The stories are interesting, but there’s no analysis of the reliability of the sources, which are taken pretty much at face value.

I'm sorry to hear people struggling with Sonia and Sunny, I've been looking forward to it.

Yes @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie my news is I'm pregnant, and have also revealed my secret identity as a 30 something mother to young children, not a grandmother at all!

Very sad about Jilly Cooper.

I’ve bought a new kindle and I cannot work out where the deals are. Very annoying.

@MonOncle – its funny how we enjoy different books. I loved James, Precipice and Hamnet. Precipice is possibly my favourite book so far this year.

@bettbburg – I loved The Sewing Machine. I think I spotted Natalie Fergie’s new book and maybe someone here has recommended it?

@SheilaFentiman – I’ll need to buy Operation Mincemeat now! You’ve sold me with a Precipice reference

@bibliomania – highly recommend Katie Morag

@GrannieMainland – congratulations. I also assumed that you were already a grannie
@nowanearlyNicemum – Yes, I saw Cally Beaton at the Edinburgh Fringe a few years back. She was very good. Most amusing.

102 Chums – Simon Kuper RWYO. Bought in July 2023 when I was visiting London with DD. We had to visit Foyles and I picked this up as it was buy one, get one half price. I bought it along with Stone Blind, which I loved and read almost straight away. This one lingered on my bookshelf for a while. Its fairly short at 211 pages (not including the notes). The original edition was 194. It’s about the small gang of Oxford Tories who started off at Oxford in the 1980s and came to fruition in the 2010s, Johnson, Gove, Hannan, May, Green, Rees-Mogg, Cummings et al. Interesting and a bit entertaining. Recommended if you have an interest in Westminster politics. Reading it, I was stuck by the difference in Westminster and Holyrood (not for the first time!). I thought that all the Scottish First Ministers were state educated, but I double checked and two out of the seven were private educated. However, one dropped out of school at the age of 15. I cant imagine that happening in Westminster.

Hey

for those not on the Strictly threads I had that procedure yesterday - none stop vomiting I’m really sick but better today hopefully get out of hospital tomorrow

Oh @EineReiseDurchDieZeit hope the sickness improves and you get home. 💐

Sympathise, @EineReiseDurchDieZeit That sounds miserable. Hope you feel better very soon.

Wishing you a speedy recovery, @EineReiseDurchDieZeit. Hope you are home in your own bed asap!

Oh no @EineReiseDurchDieZeit that sounds grim, hope you feel better soon.

Oh, so sorry to hear that, @EineReiseDurchDieZeit - hoping you’re feeling better now and will be able to get home asap.

Sorry to hear you're sick @EineReiseDurchDieZeit, but glad that the procedure is done and you'll hopefully be hale and healthy soon.

How grim @EineReiseDurchDieZeit ! Best wishes for your recovery

Feel better soon eine. Hopefully you have something for the sickness. Ondansetron is the bee's knees.

@GrannieMainland Huge and more specific congratulations. I’d also assumed you were a real granny and now have to entirely alter my vision of you. I’m assuming you haven’t got a sweet little bun and rosy apple cheeks? Please tell me that you at least have an apron?!

Sorry to hear you’re unwell @EineReiseDurchDieZeit. Sounds rotten.

@RazorstormUnicorn You’re safe with The God of the Woods. It’s not horror at all.

Oh no @EineReiseDurchDieZeit - hope you feel better soon. Can you manage an audiobook as distraction?

Wishing you a speedy recovery @EineReiseDurchDieZeit x

That sounds horrible @EineReiseDurchDieZeit so hoping you feel better quickly,

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
This is a masterpiece. I'm left wondering how on earth did she write this, bearing in mind the scant information on Thomas Cromwell's private life. With her use of 'he' for Cromwell, boy, does she make you work when reading this, but the personal pronoun works so well - like seeing through Cromwell's eyes.

That’s on the deaks so I’ve bought it, thanks.

Get well soon, I hope you are home now with a well stocked Tbr pile within easy reach