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 Red Tent was a DNF for me, many years ago. It perhaps didn’t help that the person who recommended it also recommended Barbara whatshername and also Gilead by Marianne somebody (I think) and I didn’t like those either.

I loved the Red Tent when I read it many years ago. I think it has a bit of a reputation these days as it is loved by US right wing religious women.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie Gilead is hard work but the companion piece Home is wonderful and the way the two line up together with their endings is perfection.

I suspect I’ll never know! 😂 Happy to take your word for it! Hope you’re feeling a bit more human btw. x

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupieI’ve been surprised. A lot less pain than I expected but much more nausea. I’m doing ok, except being in hospital destroyed my sleep and I haven’t reset yet. Thanks.

Good luck with re-setting your sleep routine. It's awful when it all goes wrong.

I think The Red Tent works as a historical book rather than specifically as a biblical retelling, if you see what I mean. I loved the details of the lives of the women and didn’t really think of the biblical aspect much.

37. The Cuckoo's Calling - Robert Galbraith
Well, I'm in.

189. Dear Little Corpses - Nicola Upson

Josephine Tey book 10 (one more to go!). Set in the week WWII breaks out, Josephine is in her cottage in Suffolk with Marta, just as a heap of evacuees arrive in the village, one of whom ends up billeting with them for a few days. At the same time, a village girl (aged nearly 5) goes missing. Margery Allingham makes an appearance at the village fete and in one of the denouements.

It was a more successful evocation of the early days of the war/refugees than it was as a mystery, but a pleasant enough read.

I’m jealous of you getting to read all these books for the first time. Have you seen the BBC adaptation? Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger are brilliantly cast and capture the chemistry perfectly ❤️

No, @Desdemonashandkerchief I haven't seen the adaptation - I'm going in cold. Except for all of the chat on here, of course! Is the adaptation just of the first book?

They’ve done adaptations of all the books up to Ink Black Heart. The Running Grave is due next year.

Thanks @ChessieFL

I think I'll read a few more before I try the adaptation then. I should get my hands on The Silkworm at the end of the month!

120. Bad Luck and Trouble, Lee Child
Reacher gets a cryptic message to say that his old army buddies are in trouble. Who is picking them off and why? Fun to see Reacher amongst his peers for a change.

121. Victoria's Secret, Fern Riddell
The author makes a strong case that Victoria was in love with John Brown, a weaker case that they went through some form of marriage, and a sketchy case that there was a resulting child. It's hard to get a feel for what John Brown was like, but Victoria herself come across quite clearly, in all her monstrous neediness.

122. The Woman Who Laughed, Simon Mason
This is in the Finder series, perhaps less well-known that his police procedurals featuring the two DI Wilkins(es). It's quite different in tone, much more muted. He uses reported speech and a lot of the action is off-camera. I like the mood he creates, and the nod to classic fiction, in this case Austen's Persuasion. It's crime fiction - a missing person investigator looks into a woman's disappearance - but character-driven. The victim feels like a real, compelling individual. An interesting take on a well-worn genre.

123. Cousin Kate, Georgette Heyer
Our heroine goes to live with wealthy relatives and gets more than she bargained for. This is one of GH's later books and not her best - it's a bit over-the-top Gothic and lacks the fizzy dialogue of her other work - but there are still things to enjoy.

102 Never Lie by Freida McFadden

Newlyweds Tricia and Ethan, find themselves trapped in a remote mansion during a blizzard. The mansion belonged to a psychiatrist, Dr. Adrienne Hale, who has been missing for 3 years. When Tricia discovers a secret room full of recordings from Dr Hale’s sessions with her patients she begins to wonder how well she really knows her husband of a year. I thought this was pretty good, with a twist that I did not see coming for once.

I have finally finished a book - it's been at least two weeks!

120. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny - Kiran Desai. Shortlisted for the Booker, this is a tome of 600 odd pages. The 2 main characters Sonia and Sunny are both young Indians leaving in America at the start of the novel and dealing with being away from home. Sonia is in snow bound Vermont and begins an affair with a much older artist, Ilan, one of the most annoying characters I've experienced in a book for a while. The book also goes into great detail of their respective families in Allahabad - their grandparents live near each other - and their parents in Delhi. I think someone, maybe @ÚlldemoShúl , gave up on this and I can see why but I do think it improves once the Ilan part is thankfully over. There are some amusing parts, an oft repeated refrain of one Indian being better than two Indians, some great characters and a lot of themes about immigration, Indian families and a bit of magic realism. I do think it is one of the ones I've enjoyed more on what has been a reasonably underwhelming Booker list but I am generally a fan of family sagas set in India!

121. Bitter Sweet - Hattie Williams. This was a nice easy read after the above. I think I picked it up in the deals as it was said to be like Sorrow & Bliss which I enjoyed. I don't think the comparison really holds that well other than both have young women struggling with mental health as main characters. This is about Charlie who works in a publisher and falls in love with a much older prize winning married author. It was a decent read but for me lacked the humour of Sorrow and Bliss.

Read You Are Here by David Nicolls and found it excellent .
Weirdly this was a book group read , and I'd previously dnf it last year as couldn't get into it .

@Stowickthevast glad you enjoyed it. Yes the whole Ilan storyline switched me off it and I found Sonia impossible to relate to because of it. I will go back and finish if it wins.

I’ve lost track of what I’ve reviewed on here. I think the last one was The Benefactors. If that’s right I’ve done 2 RWYO since.
The Awakening- Kate Chopin
A proto- feminist classic from 1899. Edna is married with a decent relationship, comfortable financially with 2 children that she loves. But she wants more and the children bore her. She wants a life of her own essentially. This was a great read- I’m sure it was greeted with horror when it came out. A bit disappointing that the inciting event was the live of another man but any kind of feminism in those days is a plus.

Men who Hate Women- Laura Bates
I’m late enough to this one that most of her research has made it to mainstream media so there wasn’t a whole pile new here for me in terms of incels, PUAs, MRAs etc, but that’s my late reading not a fault of the author. It does get a little repetitive at times but that doesn’t take away the fact that so little is still being done to combat the extremism that lives on the internet.

@MamaNewtNewt I know you like a mystery and I’m currently reading a library book called The Departed by Sarah Mellor. It’s fast-paced and engaging. Might be a good read for you while you’re feeling low.

79. The Other Dickens: A Life of Catherine Hogarth - Lillian Nayder

Regulars of the Dickens readalong threads may remember that I’m a sad Dickens obsessive, and this book may sound like a worthy tome strictly for geeks like me - but gosh, I finished it with steam coming out of my ears. It’s a well-known fact that Dickens behaved atrociously to his wife Catherine when he ditched her after 22 years of marriage and 10 children, but Nayder drills right down into the whole narrative in a way that doesn’t usually get an airing, and the result is both gobsmacking and enraging.
It's wasn’t exactly surprising to me that a Victorian woman behaved according to the mores of her day - submitting to her husband; not having much agency of her own; being legally pretty much a mere appendage to a man - but the evidence Nader uncovers paints a compelling picture of Dickens as utterly, monstrously controlling right from the start of their relationship. He really was driven by a compulsion to control everything, so naturally that had to include his wife and children, who were also - especially the boys - to suffer from his driving need to direct their lives to the smallest degree.

Obviously there’s a danger in interpreting the past through a modern lens, and I’m pretty sure Catherine Dickens would quibble with some things that Nader says (she always stayed true to Dickens even after he discarded her) but there’s no doubt this book certainly doesn’t burnish Dickens's image. What it does do is give Catherine her full due as a real person with feelings and emotions, not just some sort of dumpy hausfrau who somehow deserved to be kicked to the kerb. Hurrah for her.

Thanks @ÚlldemoShúl I’ll check that out.

190 V2 - Robert Harris (P)

Standard Harris fare, done typically well. Set in November 1944 and follows the alternating story of Graf, a German V2 scientist, and Kay, a WAAF almost struck by a V2 in London and subsequently sent to Belgium to try and discover the launch sites.

I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself by Glynnis MacNicol is 1.99 today.

It was in Daily Deals at 6am but no longer seems to be but is still at that price (for 14 hours) when you search for it. Most odd.

It was hugely recommended some time ago & has been on my wish list for ages.

Doh!! I've just realised it's not there for me as I have bought it!! Didn't realise that happened. Still, I am looking forward to readingit.

I picked that up this morning as well, @magimedi

Thanks @magimedi - that's on my wishlist!