50 Books Challenge 2025 Part Eight

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the eighth 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 , the sixth thread here and the seventh thread here

That review is a bit garbled. I enjoyed the Cherokee legends, I love reading about North American Indigenous people as I admire how they lived on and treated the land.

However the stories with reference to the war between states left me uneasy and not sure what the author was trying to tell me.

The short stories all jumped around a bit in terms of location, history and what it was about.

203 Sinners - Elizabeth Fremantle

From the author of Firebrand, this was very good. Based in Rome in the 1530s, Beatrice Cenci is the 21 year old daughter of a rich, abusive father. Early in the book, one of her brothers is killed by a rival family as retaliation for crimes of her father. The family (which includes her stepmother Lucrezia and half-brother Bernardo, who is neurodivergent) flees out of the city to another residence for safety, where Beatrice slowly falls for one of her father's servants. Has a threatening and eerie atmosphere.

Thank you! They’ll probably have to evict me from the library as I’ll spend so much time there though I’ll have to try not to neglect my TBR pile too.

131. Swimming with Seals, Victoria Whitworth
Memoir by a woman who moved to Orkney and swims in the sea every day. The obvious comparison is with The Outrun. . I thought this was competently done. I'm interested in the same kind of things that the author is and enjoyed the history and archaeology and family memoir aspects. I liked this a lot.

132. All Consuming, Ruby Tandoh
Essays on modern food culture, from bubble tea to MOB. I felt like as if I were at an extended family dinner and I've been sitting next to a sparky young adult niece who told me all about the youth of today. Informative and I appreciated the effort to entertain.

133. Behold, Here's Poison, Georgette Heyer
Crime fiction from 1936. Book 2 in the series, and an improvement on book 1 - I didn't guess the murderer (though I guessed why the second character died and I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often) and I rather enjoyed the interpersonal dynamics (who'd want to live with a sister-in-law?)

125 . Heartwood by Amity Gaige

A woman goes missing on the Appalachian Trail and the novel takes on varying perspectives of that incident. I thought this was good not great. There’s a subplot with a disabled woman that just doesn’t work. That said, I really enjoyed reading it and it passed the time well. I believe Remus also read and enjoyed this recently, it was in the deals, I don’t know if it still is. It’s worth a look, definitely.

@RazorstormUnicorn
Isabel Allende - I have her memoirs and several of her novels TBR, and I really loved The House of the Spirits many years ago, which I think is still on offer for kindle at 99p if you want to see what you think. In about 1992, I went to see a multi part dramatisation at the local theatre where I was living then - there were 3 or 4 parts, each the length of a typical play, with breaks in between (I'd already read and loved the novel).

I quite like the travel writings of Sara Wheeler, particularly her book about the Arctic - she also wrote a book on Chile which I still have TBR.

I was going to suggest Carmen Aguirre, Something Fierce: A Memoir of a Revolutionary Daughter, which I read a few years ago, but thought I'd better check what it's actually about first as I bought it 14 years ago. It seems it's really more about a Chilean family living in exile, then returning to Latin America to join the resistance to other right wing military governments there. So I'm not sure how much it's about Chile and it may not be your thing.

@Piggywaspushed- I love your Muriel Spark story too - very funny. Such a contrast to the response schools get from modern authors on social media.

@Tarahumara- thanks for reminding me about The Body Keeps the Score (now bought). It’s a book I’ve been meaning to read for a while.

@Terpsichore- thanks for the Juliet Nicholson recommendation (it’s on my wish list). Precipice is one of my 50 books & I can remember that the policeman’s story was a lot less interesting than I thought it would be.

@ChessieFL- thanks for the review of Do Admit. Hons & Rebels is my favourite Mitford book so I expect I will love it. I’ve put it on my wishlist as a reward for when I have cleared enough space in my bookcases.

@SheilaFentiman- thanks for the review of Sinners, which I bought in the deals too. I also have The Marquesa by Sarah Dunant from this month’s deals too continue the theme of Renaissance Italy.

Despite not having read all of the books from last month’s haul of the Kindle Deals, I now have more from this month too (many recommended by this thread). Very much appreciating having so many books to look forward too.

I once wrote to Margaret Forster to complain about a book she wrote, which pretended to be based on a woman's diaries, but was revealed at the end to be a work of fiction.

I was absolutely furious to have been duped into believing the diaries were real. I thought it was ethically irresponsible and misleading and so I wrote to her.

She sent me a blistering reply, hand written. Her main defence seemed to be that it was stocked in the novels section in Waterstones. But I had bought it online. It was a book club read, chosen by someone who believed it to be based on the diaries. When we met, we all felt it was misleading and unacceptable.

She was not best pleased!

Ha, brilliant!

”blistering reply” - Amazing. I love it.

This is a lovely email my boys got years ago from the children's author Bob Cattell. The joys of email means we still have it!

Hi S and C ,
Just back from Scotland and now I can answer your message properly. I’m very pleased that you are both Glory Gardens fans and I often think about writing another book in the series – probably about the team going to Australia to play a return match against Woolagong (if you’ve got any better ideas – please let me know). However my publishers think that eight books is enough in the series – maybe the answer is for me to produce an e-book with plenty of cricket matches in it.
I’m very sorry I missed you at Bxxxxd School – we had a brilliant day with the ex England players. I hope your games have not been too disrupted by the terrible weather and good luck for the rest of the season.
Best wishes
Bob

That's how to do it, Bob!

I love @Arran2024 's run in with Margaret Foster!

I got a long handwritten letter from Helen Cresswell in my childhood. I loved the Bagthorpe saga and wrote to tell her that my family were just as eccentric and she kindly agreed. Lord only knows what I told the poor woman.

I also got a letter from Malcom Saville's estate telling me that he was dead but listing his books that I could still buy. I've just googled and found out that he died in 1982, and it was probably only a couple of years later.

Some great correspondence with authors here!

58. The Museum Makers – Rachel Morris

Thanks to bibliomaniac for reviewing this over the summer, just my kind of thing. When museum designer Rachel started delving into the untouched boxes of family memorabilia under her bed, she found out more about her bohemian and unconventional family history. The book relates how she pieced together her ‘Museum of Me’, and also looks into the birth of museums as a concept from the grand national buildings to smaller local museums, with the dedicated, single-minded and often eccentric personalities responsible for curating our shared past. A fascinating read hopping from personal family stories to the history of museums and back.

@bibliomania sorry, poor spelling strikes again

Yep. Decent but too cluttered. Definitely worth a read for relatively mindless but mildly entertaining.

DH has got a letter somewhere from Graham Greene. DH was studying his short stories for O level and didn’t understand one of them so wrote to Graham asking what it was about. Graham wrote back saying to just think of it as the ramblings of a madman! This would have been in the mid 80s.

I am sorely tempted to write to an author who was a teacher at my secondary school. She has written a novel but she has never acknowledged that any of it is based on true life.

I started reading it, completely unaware of who she was (it hadn't clicked) and I was astonished, as the story recounted exactly what had happened to a teacher at my school. I assumed she had borrowed the story from this colleague, but when I checked with an old school friend, that's when I realised she WAS the teacher!

The book is SO based on my old school, and the characters are clearly identifiable.

People often discuss it / her on my town's Facebook page. But we haven't confronted her as far as I know.

I guess she must think that no one from a town /school like mine has read her book!

Anyway, it's the exact opposite of the Margaret Forster situation.

Loving all the author correspondence stories. They couldn’t get away with it today sadly- all must be made perfect for the great PR machine. The Graham Greene quote in particular confirms some of my thoughts about what we read into books that perhaps the author never meant or intended.

Didn’t Simon Armitage famously fail the A Level paper on his own poems?

One of the nice things about this thread is that it keeps me aware of the balance of my reading. I felt as if I wasn’t reading enough non-fiction so my next 2 books are both non-fiction and also both bold!

35 Citizen Clem: A Biography of Attlee by John Bew - this is bold as it has everything I look for in non-fiction (a readable style, a good haul of facts and insights including some that are new to me and sufficient analysis to add heft to the text). Despite being one of the most significant prime ministers of the last century, I only had an idea of the outline of Attlee’s achievements and no idea about his personal life - which isn’t surprising as he tends to be overshadowed by his friend and rival Winston Churchill. The book charts Attlee’s journey from a public school “more Etonian that Eton” through discovering socialism in Stepney, becoming a mayor then an MP, through being leader of the opposition, Churchill’s second in command then finally a radical prime minister in his own right. The book shows the contrasts in Attlee’s life: his early work was enabled by his family’s income yet he became accepted and adopted by the working class; criticised for being “puny” and lacking in charisma he nevertheless had the personal cachet to halt a dockers’ strike; surrounded by more charismatic colleagues who all thought they could do his job better he remained leader of the Labour party for 20 years. The book is honest about Attlee’s limitations (such as his understanding of economics) but it also makes clear the qualities that made him a good leader, not least his concern to improve the living standards of the working class and that those fighting in the Second World War would not be let down in this respect in the same way that had happened after the First World War; his impressive work ethic (shared by his cabinet) and his ability to manage his cabinet so that they were all able to get on with their jobs. The achievements of his government are also worth revisiting as we are moving back towards some of them (such as nationalised railway) and intensely preoccupied with the fate of others (especially the NHS). Also, given I have read / listened to rather too many news reports that are essentially just gossip about what the government might do in the budget, it’s refreshing to learn that Attlee’s first chancellor (Hugh Dalton) had to step down as he leaked part of his plans to the press.

I don’t really listen to audiobooks, so podcasts tend to fill that role for me. I’d coincidentally listened to The Rest is History series on the Young Winston Churchill, which was both immensely enjoyable and useful background to the Attlee book. There’s also a Rest is History podcast with Ben Macintyre, where he talks about my next book.

36 The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre - I bought this as a deal some time ago. It was a DNF for me for a while, although I’m not quite sure why - possibly because I found it quite upsetting as the subjects of the book are in quite a lot of peril. I also found reading the part I had previously read quite a slog (possibly for the same reason) so I wasn’t expecting the book to be a bold for me. But it is: it’s an important story and the second half is gripping. Just like Operation Mincemeat and Agent ZigZag, Macintyre is writing about real events that are more exciting and improbable that most spy stories. I think he has surpassed himself with this one. The book is about Oleg Gordievsky: a KGB agent from a KGB family. Posted to Denmark in the 1960s, Gordievsky is attracted by the culture and liberal values of the West and this eventually leads him to become a double agent with the British. The information he provided informed how Britain and the USA deal with the USSR and supported the rapprochement of the West with Gorbachev. Then Gordievsky began to suspect he was betrayed… One person who emerges well from the book is Mrs Thatcher - her political legacy is complex and contested, but here she shines. She worries about the risks Gordievsky is taking and how it affects his health. While other European leaders earn Russia’s distrust at a state funeral, she charms them with her sympathy and respect - there’s a lovely vignette where the Russians suspect that her bodyguard has guns in his pockets, but it turns out to be her stilettos so she can take her boots off to be properly attired at a reception. Then there’s the story about how she is working on her red boxes in a bothy at Balmoral (which she hates visiting), when a messenger is held up from visiting her by a pompous equerry even though she needs to urgently sign the order to put the plan in motion to save Gordievsky’s life. I found this part of the book fascinating, as it is part of her career that I can clearly remember from my childhood and one that needs to be weighed against other aspects of her premiership (that perhaps are more talked about now) to assess her legacy.

God I hope this is true 🤣

@ÚlldemoShúl AI said :

It is a well-known anecdote that the current Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, inadvertently took an A-level English Literature exam where he had to answer a question on one of his own poems, "Mother, Any Distance".
The event occurred when he acted as a bona fideinvigilator for an A-level exam in the mid-1990s, at the request of the local school's head of English. He was given the exam paper to look over for any issues and was surprised to find his poem in the contemporary poetry section.
In a BBC interview, Armitage recalled the experience: "I couldn't help but glance at the paper... and then I saw my own poem on the sheet". He noted the "weird experience" of reading the questions set by the exam board about his own intentions and themes, some of which he felt were completely different from his original writing process. He has since mentioned this anecdote in various talks and readings, often to highlight the difference between a writer's intention and the formal literary criticism applied in education.
Several of his poems, including "Remains" and "Mother, Any Distance," are now common components of the English Literature GCSE and A-Level syllabi in the UK.

Glad you liked it, @RomanMum !

Jeeves Omnibus volume 5
Some Wodehouse fun. Just what the doctor ordered.

And the Booker Prize winner is

Flesh