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

I can confirm @Desdemonashandkerchief that although you’ve been forced to get the Audible, the narrator is really good, I’ve done them all bar Cuckoo’s Calling as audio.

A few reviews before I also disappear into Hallmarked Man tomorrow.

56 Slow Horses - Mick Herron
Bit disappointed that I didn't really take to this as I thought I would but am going to try watching the adaptation before I give up on the series.
57 Soviet Milk - Nora Ikstena trans Margita Gailitis.
Set in Soviet Latvia from the end of the Second World War until the fall of the Berlin Wall focusing on the strained relationship between a talented but emotionally damaged doctor (the mother) and her daughter, who is raised largely by her grandmother. The mother's career aspirations are thwarted by the oppressive regime, leading to her exile and a deep depression that isolates her from her daughter. Alternating first-person narratives from the mother and daughter reveal the mother's lost potential and the daughter's struggle for identity and freedom, highlighting the stifling effects of the Soviet system on individual lives. This was a very sad and somewhat uncomfortable but beautiful read - I went back and read it again as soon as I finished.

58 The Scapegoat - Daphne du Maurier
An English academic meets his French doppelganger - an aristocrat who tricks him into swapping places for a week. He goes to live with the Count's family who are struggling with various things and tries to help him. I enjoyed this.

I’ve got The Hallmarked Man as an audiobook too but have a couple of others I want to finish before I can dive in as they are coming off audible plus soon. I do like the way they warn you about that. Wish they did it with kindle unlimited too.

46 The Wilding by Ian McDonald
A superior horror/folk horror offering from an author I’d never heard of before but who seems to have quite a back catalogue.
Lisa is a Ranger on a large peat bog reserve in rural Ireland, Lough Carrow, who is looking forward to her next step in life studying English at university. There’s a poignant backstory to this involving car theft, foster homes and W.B. Yeats. One of her last jobs at the reserve is to take five teenagers and their three teachers on a ‘wild camp’. Peat bogs, nature and folklore being what they are……well, it all starts to get a bit too wild.
I really liked this, it wasn’t the usual slasher drivel. McDonald takes time to build up the characters and at first it even seems that the plot is moving a little too slowly. There are characterisations I found amusing (all the walkers have a Cockerpoo with them, an extremely antagonistic farmer, patronising male teachers, hippy-dippy blow-in villagers) and he doesn’t skimp on the descriptions of a truly wild place used for so long in the interests of Man. So, when the monsters start to slink and snuffle out of the bog, you are properly invested in the group and the danger they are in. Not all the words are translated, so if your knowledge of Irish folklore stops at ‘banshee’ then Google is your friend.

146 A Spy Among Friends - Ben McIntyre

And THIS is how you write a book about MI6. Another bold for me; Ben McIntyre is really very good.

This book focusses on the lives of, and friendship between, Kim Philby (the Third Man in the Cambridge spy ring) and Nicholas Elliott, the friend and colleague who defended him for decades but finally undertook the last interrogation of Philby before his defection. Informative, wise and permeated with the author’s quiet horror of just how much the Old School Tie excused in the post war years.

110 . Loved One by Aisha Muharrar (Spotify)

Julia’s close friend Gabe, an up and coming musician, dies unexpectedly. His mother tasks Julia with finding some of his missing belongings. To do this she must enlist Gabe’s ex Elizabeth but both Elizabeth and Julia are keeping secrets.

This was supposed to be a “witty novel about grief” and was written by one of the writers from Parks and Recreation but I didn’t crack a smile once.

I found both Elizabeth and Julia tedious and repetitive and rushed through the whole thing so I can be ready for The Hallmarked Man tomorrow

A pity, not as good as it thinks it is.

I'm glad you enjoyed it @Stowickthevast !

I just got Let the Bad Times Roll by Alice Slater in the deals, I quite liked her first novel Death of a Booksller.

135 Leonard and Hungry Paul by Ronan Hessian
RWYO- A story of two gentle men and their friendship. Not a lot happens but these pair are such a delight and the writing is gentle and warmly funny at times. It’s quiet and life affirming and exactly what I needed right now. Another time I might find it slightly twee, but today it’s a beautiful bold. That’s two in a row.

Thanks for the now not-so-new thread @Southeastdweller. Can't be bothered posting my list but do like reading other people's lists for inspiration.

Just checked the kindle price for The Hallmarked Man (£17.99!!) and think I need to go for the hardback instead as that's just too steep for a kindle book. Im working tomorrow then on annual leave the rest of the week so plenty time to get it read, although I'm planning a bus journey to the other side of the city on one of those days and not looking forward to lugging a 900-plus page hardback with me!

147 The Bean Trees - Barbara Kingsolver

Another bold. I loved this. It’s BK’s first novel and is about Taylor, who has left home in her failing car to make a new life and who ends up fostering a Cherokee child who she calls Turtle. She gets work at a tire store, where the owner (Mattie) takes in refugees and finds a place to live with Lou Ann, whose husband Angel has just left her with a newborn. It’s about trauma and the families you come from
and the ones you make, and female love and support and growth. Beautiful.

£17.99 for the Kindle edition! I’m used to the Kindle price being more than the hardback price but that’s ridiculous. I do have some Audible credits but I think I’ll wait this one out.

My mum always buys the hardback so I’ll just borrow it from her (downside is that I have to wait for her to finish reading it first!)

93 The Shadow Man – Helen Fields RWYO. Still not sure why I picked this book up. It was based in Edinburgh, about a man who kidnaps people (not always women, strangely enough) and keeps them in a house to enact his fantasy family. A detective from London and a criminal psychologist from the US are on the case. I’m not quite clear why. I quite liked HF’s style of writing, but the content was a bit on the gruesome side.

@CutFlowers reading another du Maurier is on my list of things this year, and I own The Scapegoat so maybe this is the one.

@AgualusasLover . I have been trying to remember which of the Du Maurier novels I have read (the titles are so famous!) but any of them would have been a long time ago so think I may need to re-read them all! I definitely remember loving Rebecca (obviously) and the House on the Strand.

I'm so far behind with my reading pace - I've been taking care of my Dad who's very unwell, and my concentration is completely shot to pieces. I have finished one recently though:

27. The Husbands, by Holly Gramazio. Lauren gets home after a night out and finds her husband in the flat - which is upsetting because she isn't married. Except that there are wedding pictures of them together, her friends and family seem to know him, and things in the flat are slightly different than they should be. When the husband goes up into the attic to change a lightbulb, he disappears, and a different husband climbs down. What follows is a cavalcade of different husbands and different lives, as Lauren tries to figure out what she wants. This high concept worked pretty well and was consistently done. I liked it and thought it was very funny, with occasional dashes of profundity - although it was too long. Good, light, fun.

Sorry to hear your dad’s not well, @noodlezoodle - sending you all best wishes

Thank you @Terpsichore, I was supposed to be back in SF by now but unfortunately we're still struggling to get him well. Still thinking about my very enjoyable 50 Bookers meet up day, which was a lovely day off from flexing my somewhat duff nursing skills!

Wishing you well @noodlezoodlex

Sounds a tough time @noodlezoodle , best wishes.

You lovely lot, this is why I always say this is the best corner of the internet. Thank you!

Best wishes to you and your Dad @noodlezoodle I'm sorry that things are still tough. Take care.

Letting people know that Jack Edwards has a new up and coming book podcast called Inklings, which is boasting some heavy hitter names as future guests

His first interview is with Oisin McKenna about Evenings And Weekends which I didn’t like but know other people did!

Sorry to hear things are tough @noodlezoodle

The Husbands sounds totally bonkers and I'm glad you managed to find a loony book at a difficult time.