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

I’m sure it has been - you’ve been writing mini-essays probably every week, if not more at times. The end is in sight! 🎉

Good idea!

@SheilaFentiman I’m sure I’ll end up abandoning it at some point too - I’ve been strict so far as I’m worried that if I skip a book it will be the beginning of a slippery slope 😄

I made two kindle folders - one of books bought before 2024 and one of books bought after. I try and pick some from the former fairly regularly but I don't worry beyond that. It does slowly chip away at the TBR!

@Arran2024 do tell!

A clue. I grew up in Scotland and it's a Scottish book.

Are the author’s initials JG? 🤔

I love all the correspondence stories especially Margaret Forster's "blistering" reply!

David McKee, who wrote Mr Benn and many other children's books, wrote a lovely reply to my son's fan mail a few years ago.

For years I intended to write to KM Peyton who is a real hero of mine, but I kept putting it off and sadly now it's too late.

126. The Penelopiad - Margaret Atwood A wonderful (short) retelling of Penelope's story while Odysseus was off dicking about at sea for 20 years. The chorus sections are wonderfully rhythmic and compellingly rhymed.

My DD has also had a couple of lovely replies to letters from Robin Stevens and I think Katie Kirby is the other but I might be wrong. Both sent stickers/bookmarks which DD was delighted with!

Bingo!

That's really interesting @Arran2024- I know exactly the book you mean. I didn't mind it but a friend who borrowed it was also very annoyed by the reveal at the end.

Another one who's bought Patricia Brent! The description reminds me a bit of Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton- listened to that on audiobook recently and loved the start of it but on the whole it got too odd and bleak by the end for me. He's unbelievably good at character description though and it'll stay with me for a long time. On the whole it left me feeling that being stuck living in a boarding house would have been such a bleak existence.

Miss Pettigrew is remarkable. Please read it and report back.

204. Gentlemen and Players - Joanne Harris

The first in a trilogy of psychological thrillers, and a far cry from the Chocolat series. Somewhat confusing in that it swaps regularly between two first person narrators and two time periods - one is the 64 year old Latin master at St Oswald's school, who has been teaching there for over 30 years, and the other is unnamed but was enamoured of a pupil - Leon Mitchell - around 15 years ago, when both were in the early years of secondary, and bears a long term grudge against the school.

Can't write much more without spoilers but it was good once I had got used to the switching!

@Thistlebegood you're spot on with the Patrick Hamilton comparison - that was reverberating with me too, except that it doesn’t have Hamilton’s bleakness. But yes, boarding-house lit is a thing!

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupiei tried Miss Pettigrew…I only got a few pages in. I will at some point try again because I didn’t get far enough to call it a true DNF.

It won’t be for everyone, but it’s groundbreaking for its time and I just love it. In fact, I must be due a re-read before Christmas.

I tried one Patrick Hamilton and hated it. Not just bleak, but bloody boring bleak.

I don't recall a reveal at the end - I distinctly remember reading it in the bath and by page 2 I was transported back to what happened to a teacher at school. It is such a very specific incident. Then the school featured in the book was clearly my school. The coincidences are too great.

Ah sorry- I meant the Margaret Forster book! I think I know who the other writer is and could completely believe it was very thinly veiled autobiography.

I’m 23% into Patricia Brent and totally in love with it. It’s already worth 70 x 75p.

Oh yes, I see, sorry.

The JG book is interesting because her two actual autobiographies are excellent. This is how I ended up reading her novel.

🎉🎉🎉

Finished it. Wonderful. The best thing I’ve read in ages. @Terpsichore Have ten gold stars and go straight to the top of the class.

41 1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin

An account of the Wall Street Crash as it happened, and the financiers and speculators who lived through it and attempted to control or ride it. A bit of a cheeky inclusion as it was the abridged audiobook version currently on BBC Sounds, but I decided it counted! Quite atmospheric and manages to avoid the excesses of the ‘American journalist writes every single fact in a period of history down’ genre - reading Oppenheimer is a good example of the type, gave me a grudge against society and wrists that trail along the ground.#

#That’s a Clive James quote. I once wrote to him, talking of letters to authors. I sent him an email via his website contact form to tell him how much I loved his work, how often it made me laugh and what it had done for me. I laboured over that message for about 2 days, because writing to a favourite writer who expresses such strong views on writing is stressful. Anyway, he was very ill and I didn’t get a letter, but I did get a message via his assistant thanking me for my ‘exceptional’ letter. Only problem was, because I’d used his website I had no copy of what I’d written, so the whole exchange has disappeared. Writ in water, as he himself quoted Keats saying in Postcard from Rome.

I'm also going to read Patricia Brent ASAP, it sounds just the thing for my tired brain. Thank you @Terpsichore !

I'm not surprised exactly that Flesh won the Booker, but I'm miffed. In some ways, yes, it's an original novel in terms of style, but it brought me virtually no reading pleasure. Also, isn't it a bit retro in 2025 to award a prize to a novel about a white alpha male protagonist who can't express his feelings? And women hurl themselves at him and he passively has sex with them... it makes me grumpy.

The author photos also put me off somewhat. Szalay doesn't smile, he just looks serious like a serious manly author. The kind of serious manly author who wins the Booker.

Rant over now. To be honest I really enjoyed the majority of books on the longlist, so I shouldn't complain too much.

I think I've worked out who your Scottish author is @Arran2024 and I'm intrigued!