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

Great, thank you!

@AgualusasL0ver – hope employment stuff works out for you

105 Bury Your Dead – Louise Penny – Three Pines 6. You really need to have read the previous book to have any clue about what is happening. There are three separate strands to the story. The first is the follow on from the previous book. I was right, it wasn’t as straight forward as it seemed and actually the truth is utterly heart breaking. The second is the discovery of a body in Quebec city and although its outwith Gamache’s jurisdiction, of course, he gets involved. Thirdly, a rather odd strand, where you aren’t quite sure whats happening. Something happened and it is slowly revealed. Also heart breaking.

106 A Chalet Girl from Kenya – Elinor M Brent-Dyer. Chalet School 33. The more recent ones are not as good as the earlier ones, IMHO, but this was a bit better. Jo is the daughter of an old chalet school girl and is named after Joey. Her parents are in Kenya, hence the title and they go missing after an attack on their plantation. This gives Jack the ideal opportunity to drug his wife (WTAH??). The parents turn up, mostly unharmed, all is well. Mary-Lou and her ‘gang’ are utterly unsufferable. The next book in the series in Mary-Lou of the Chalet School and I’m not sure I can stomach it.

@WelshBookWitch I read the Five for a short lived bookclub, it is well researched and written but filled me with feminist fury - they were all let down by men in a society where women on their own were automatically seen as lesser and disenfranchised in every way - grinding poverty meant they slept on the street or in insecure places and that's why they were killed.

119 . Nesting by Roisin O’Donnell (Spotify)

I mentioned recently that this was a struggle and so it was. Young Mum Ciara struggles to break free from gaping arsehole Ryan

I know it’s really really important that issues of domestic abuse particularly of this kind are highlighted but I had to pull myself through it I was so depressed and frustrated all. the. time. I haven’t taken this long over a book in years. A work of substance but no pleasure

And the whiny voice for Sophie was dreadful

184 Indemnity Only - Sara Paretsky

RWYO, this has been on my kindle for flipping years and I enjoyed it a lot. Paretsky has since written another 20 odd books about Chicago PI V. I. Warshawski so I have plenty to keep me going as and when I allow myself a buying binge 😀

185 Enshittification - Corey Doctorow
Got fed up with RWYO and bought this on the day it came out 😀 a well informed analysis of why Facebook, Amazon et al get shit, and what can be done about it. The author has a nicely dry sense of humour that helps this be very readable. (Though I think ascribing a large part of the blame for Brexit to Nick Clegg is a smidge unfair..)

186 The Dead of Winter - Nicola Upson
Josephine Tey book 9, in which Archie Penrose re-appears and spends Xmas on St Michael’s Mount in the St Aubyn’s castle with Josephine, Marta and a mysterious film star, just before the start of WWII. Unfortunately, murder ensues and no one is very festive. Rolls along nicely and I preferred it to book 8 as it didn’t have the frequent time jumps.

73. Appassionata - Jilly Cooper

I read this (in hardback!) when it was first published but had a copy languishing on my Kindle too. Am slowly doing a Jilly Cooper re-read inspired by Rivals being televised.

This book features the Rutminster Symphony Orchestra and Abigail Rosen (Appassionata) as well as recurring characters from earlier books particularly Marcus Campbell-Black (Rupert's son)and Flora Seymour and Roberto Rannaldini (both from The Man who Made Husbands Jealous). Lots of appalling behaviour by the orchestra in between funding issues and romantic and sexual shenanigans. I have realised why I found this book patchy and it's because I don't like the lead character, Abby Rosen, so I enjoyed the bits without her!

Just noticed Purple Hibiscus is in the daily kindle deal if anyone hasn't read it yet!

Leila Motley's new book The Girls Who Grew Up is also in the deals today - I thought her debut Nightcrawling was excellent.

Really glad you liked Sky Daddy @AgualusasL0ver - best of luck with the job hunting.

I started a new job last week and my reading has been going very slowly since. I've been reading Sonia & Sunny for ages and am listening to Iain McEwan's latest. Hope to finish them both soon and get on to something lighter!

Thanks for that @Stowickthevastthe Leila Mottley was on my Wish List

@SheilaFentiman – that’s some take! Presumably he’s heard of Farage, Johnson, Cummings, Gove, Cummings et al?

107 A Trick of the Light - Louise Penny – Three Pines 7. Six months or so after book 6 and some things have changed and some things haven’t. Clara Morrow, the lovely artist in Three Pines has a solo show, which is successful to the point of life changing for her. She hosts a party at her house in Three Pines and the morning after, a dead body is found. For such a small place, it really does pile up the bodies! Her husband is still the worst. Gamache and Beauvoir are still dealing with the fall out from the events revealed in book 6. Bizarrely enough, my library doesn’t have book 8 and I cannot understand why. So they have ordered it in for me. In the meantime, the library bought in Connective Tissue by Eleanor Thom recommended by @Arran2024 so I will bash on with that.

The Human Stain - Philip Roth is a DNF for me - I've read about 40 pages and it's just not grabbing me. With about 700 books on my wishlist list I'd sooner be spending time reading something else.

@Tarragon123 I think his bitterness about Clegg shilling for Facebook might have got the better of his judgement on other points :>

120 . Light A Penny Candle by Maeve Binchy

Needing a comfort read, I took my own advice to @countrygirl99 and did a Binchy reread

Elizabeth is sent to Ireland as an evacuee and pals up with daughter of the house Aisling. The book then chronicles the two from the age of 10 to late twenties.

I must have first read this when I was 12 or 13 and what impressed me most about this reread was how mature the themes were. Very unsuitable, but I loved it at the time! I’d give specific examples as to why this isn’t suitable for a child but spoilers! I must have been very precocious. But then, loads of us survived Flowers In The Attic in our teens!

As a reread I found it still holds up as a good yarn but it’s not really all that comforting!

@InTheCludgie I’ve managed to read 3 by Philip Roth and I wouldn’t touch him again tbh

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I did go "Oh FFS girl, can't you see the red flags" a few times

And they both fell for the same bullshit and still tolerated him as their friend!! And Elizabeth didn’t advise her and say “yeah he’s a shit give him a wide berth” which would have been solid advice!

49 American Kingpin - Nick Bilton

Would have enjoyed this account of the rise and fall of Ross Ulbricht - the Texan student who built the Silk Road - if it wasn’t in a “narrative non fiction” style which trampled all over the interesting facts with a load of unnecessary detail and imagined dialogue. If I wanted that I’d read an actual fiction book!

I haven't read Light a Penny Candle since the 1980s (at an unsuitably young age) but think that perhaps it should go on my re-read list. Happy to swerve a re-read of Flowers in the Attic.....

@TimeforaGandTultimately The Glass Lake was my favourite I read it several times. Light A Penny Candle was a close second. I didn’t LOVE any of her others though I read a fair few.

57 Autumn Chills - Agatha Christie Felicitous timing in my progress through my kindle purchases from oldest to newest - I bought this about a year ago and happen to have got to it in the right season. It’s a collection of short stories, including several Poirots and Marples. Most of these were ok, if a bit unexciting (I’m not really a fan of short stories as it’s hard to care about the outcome when you haven’t had time to get to know the characters); others I really didn’t like - some very outdated views and comments here and there. Overall, fine for a light read but nothing special.

(edited to add the number!)

I don't recall The Glass Lake so that's another one to add to my list!

187 Why Are You Here, Mrs Hamilton? - Jo Hamilton

If you are going to read one book about the Post Office and Horizon, read The Great Post Office Scandal by Nick Wallis.

But if you are going to read two, I would recommend this one as well. It’s a very chatty style and a little repetitive at times, but draws you into how awful it was for Jo and her family.

As per the itv drama, Jo was effectively coerced by the post office into pleading guilty to 14 counts of false accounting and “repaying” tens of thousands of pounds that she didn’t have, under threat of being charged with theft and getting a prison sentence. Internal PO documents later showed that they did not have the evidence for a theft charge and they knew it.

78. I Married a Dead Man - Cornell Woolrich

One of the classic green Penguins that popped up in the deals a few days ago. I trotted through this one at speed and it was quite the page-turner. Woolrich wrote a clutch of hard-boiled noir novels and stories, including the one filmed by Hitchcock as 'Rear Window', and this also made it to the screen, starring Barbara Stanwyck (actually it was filmed twice).

I won’t give away much of the plot because of spoilers, but it’s about a luckless and pregnant young woman, Helen Georgesson, abandoned by her no-good controlling boyfriend, whose life is upended when she meets a happy pair of young newlyweds aboard the train she’s taking with only 17 cents in her pocket.
Woolrich's writing is classic taut, hardbitten noir, but in a style all his own - short, choppy sentences; striking imagery pinned down in a few words. The plot’s fairly improbable but the power of the situations he creates makes for genuine tension and a nail-biting sense of dread. It was only afterwards I started to wonder how various key plot points could have actually happened….!

I haven’t read any Maeve Binchy since the 80s when I devoured them all. Tempted to give them another go.

My favourite Maeve Binchy was always Echoes- I read it when it first came out in my teens and think the main characters were around my age at the start. Haven’t read any of them since the 80s though.
I finished two more:

A Second Chance by Jodi Taylor (audio)
Enjoyed this one, mainly because of the Troy storyline. This is number 3 in the St Mary’s books and they’re starting to get a bit more convoluted. If that keeps happening I’ll probably quit after a few more- it put me off Rivers of London and I’m not sure I’ll read any more of those- these are fun reads, I don’t need too much head-pickling time loops etc in them.

The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine
This is excellent. It does take a little time to get into as it jumps about between so many people but the constants are the mothers of three teenage boys who sexually assaulted a teenage girl and her and her dad. It’s well done and sadly realistic. It’s not quite bold because it takes time to get into it. Also I found it could have been set anywhere and I like to feel that the setting makes a difference- otherwise why bother. This is especially true when it’s set in my home city.