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

Crikey Remus that was fast!

It’s very readable. I also had a long bath and ignored DP for the evening. 😂

I have 1929 on my wish list - I loved Too Big To Fail. Might check out the BBC Sounds.

I’ll hop on the Patricia Brent bandwagon as well - thank you @Terpsichore .

I’m in the BorrowBox queue for Flesh, somewhat against my better judgement. I did not get on with Spring by Szalay and thought it was pretentious tosh, although I didn’t hate his writing. Anyway, it’s due to arrive for me next week so we’ll see, but I can’t see it beating The Land in Winter for me.

47.The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst. David Sparsholt comes up to Oxford for a year before joining the RAF. His fiancée Connie follows him there, but her presence does not deter a number of male admirers, and he engages in a brief relationship with another man. The story then moves forward to focus on Sparsholt’s son Johnny, and his experiences as a gay man just after the decriminalisation of same sex relationships. Johnny’s work brings him into contact with his father’s university contemporaries, and his father’s experiences before the change in the law cast a long shadow over Johnny.

There are five distinct time periods covered, spanning the whole of David and Johnny’s lives, but the pace of each individual is deliberately slow and detailed, demonstrating fully the inner worlds of the key characters and the depths of their relationships. The contrast between David’s experiences of being forced to suppress his sexuality and Johnny’s freedom to live as he chooses is bittersweet. The prose here is as beautiful (as ever with Hollinghurst*, making this rich and enjoyable despite the frequent sadness of the themes.

48.Skin Deep by Liz Nugent. We first meet middle aged socialite Cordelia Russell on the French Riveria trying to hide the body of a man she has just killed. We then move back in time to Cordelia’s childhood in rural Ireland and follow her as she matures to discover how and why she has found herself in this extreme situation.

This was a reasonably decent psychological thriller with an antihero very much in the vein of Tom Ripley. Sympathy for Cordelia’s difficulties in her early life quickly evaporate as her selfishness and self absorption develop into callousness and total disregard for others around her. At times I think she did become a bit too cartoon baddie, but this was still diverting and gripping enough that I will give Nugent’s other novels a go.

What I particularly loved was the fact that when Patricia was invited to lunch by Lady Peggy, she impressed the Duke of Gayton, with her intelligent grasp of politics. I do like to read a book written in 1918 that treats women as capable of thought.

(I’ve been watching the 1919 film version too - fascinating. Except that Lord Peter is positively superannuated; the actor was in his 40s in RL and had enjoyed a successful stage career in the early 1900s playing Sherlock Holmes 🕵️‍♂️)

I’ve just started to read Patricia Brent too and it’s refreshing to read about a working woman at that time. There is some lovely photographic evidence of women’s emancipation (I particularly like the ones of women in fantastic hats cycling) & I can think of a few blue plaques to suffragettes / working women pioneers local to me so it’s great to read a novel that reflects this.

@Terpsichore- I felt exactly how you felt about us buying PB when you commented on buying the Attlee bio. My take on recommendations is that I’m prepared to put up with a few disappointing reads in exchange for being tipped off about some very good books I might miss (as well as some to definitely avoid).

@cassandre- your comments on no reading pleasure really sum up why I tend to tune out of the Booker. I have enjoyed reading the posts about it though & might try some of the other nominees that people have enjoyed,

Thanks @Benvenuto - and I did go back and buy the Attlee biog thanks to you!

Yes, it’s really groundbreaking. I think my favourite parts were when she stood up to her aunt and meeting Lady T. She and Peggy are both glorious.

Oh and the tea tray.

@SheilaFentiman I really enjoyed Gentleman and Players. I keep meaning to read the rest but haven’t got around to them.

I am also jumping on the Patricia bandwagon (and I’ll get Miss Petiigrew whilst I’m there).

I can’t work out Arran’s teacher novel.
Please can someone DM me so I don’t feel left out and can look up the book.

Me too!

I might as well tell you- it's The Trick is to Keep Breathing by Janice Galloway.

I’ve bought The Rain Girl by George Herbert Jenkins (Patricia Brent writer). I hope it’s better than the nonsense somebody has written for the overview on Amazon. I quote,
In "The Rain-Girl," Herbert George Jenkins weaves a captivating narrative that explores the intersection of nature and mythology through a young girl's enchanting journey. The prose is imbued with lyrical elegance, conjuring vivid imagery that situates the reader within the lush landscapes the protagonist traverses. Thematically rich, the novel delves into the complexities of identity, belonging, and the transformative power of the natural world, all set against a backdrop that resonates with the early 20th-century literary focus on the sublime and the supernatural. Jenkins's craft showcases an impressive command of language, capturing both the wonder and the trepidation of youth as the protagonist encounters her mystical counterpart, the enigmatic Rain-Girl.

Reader - what total and utter bollocks that was. It makes Adrian Mole sound like Tolstoy in comparison.

Thank you @Arran2024 - off to investigate

205 The Martian - Andy Weir
If you liked Project Hail Mary (which I did) then you will like this. Even better if you haven't seen the film (I have). A bold.

Mark Watney is accidentally left behind on the third manned mission to Mars, when his crewmates (very reasonably) believe he was killed by a falling comms antenna in a severe storm that leads them to evacuate.

Mark is a botanist by training and manages to grow some potatoes in an almost-believeable experiment, to supplement the months of space rations left to him. NASA can see he is alive from satellite images, but cannot communicate with him, and decide not to disrupt the two year return journey of his crewmates witht he news that they inadvertently abandoned him.

206 Blueeyedboy - Joanne Harris
Second in the Gentleman and Players trilogy and a very different beast. I would have DNF'd it if I hadn't enjoyed the first one. It tangentially involves St Oswald's school, but is told through the blogs and reader comments of blueeyedboy and, later, Albertine. I don't love that format of storytelling anyway, and this was additionally confusing: firstly, as blueeyedboy referred to the characters in his blog by nicknames such as Mrs Electric Blue, Mrs Catholic Blue but their actual names were also used, making it hard to follow; secondly, as it was (deliberately) muddy as to how much of the blogs were fictional, and how much autobiographical. Lots of people blueeyedboy didn't like ended up dead, anyway.

I will read the third, because the Classics teacher is back in that one!

@SheilaFentiman Blueeyedboy isn’t part of the Gentleman and Players trilogy - that’s Gentleman and Players, Different Class and A Narrow Door. Blueeyedboy may include some of the characters but isn’t considered part of the trilogy/series (in the same way that BlackBerry Wine is set in Lansquenet and features a few of the characters from Chocolat but isn’t considered part of the Chocolat series).

OOOOOH wish I had known that, I would have DNFed!!

Amazon title says 'the second in a trilogy' - maybe it's in a different trilogy!! And it says Different Class is the last in a trilogy. BAH!

Amazon is definitely misleading there! Joanne’s website says The St Oswald’s books are part of a trilogy. All the books stand alone, but if you’d like to experience the full evolution of the world and the characters, they are best read in this order. 1: Gentlemen and Players. 2: Different Class. 3. A Narrow Door. Blueeyedboy is not a St Oswald’s book, but does fit into the series, somewhere between Different Class and A Narrow Door.

❤️❤️ much appreciated

@RazorstormUnicorn I think it's you who is off to Chile - lucky thing. I spent a little while there exploring (over 20 years ago!) and while I was there I read Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia but I can't remember a thing about it. Fortunately, the country left more of a mark on me than my reading matter!

Finally finished:

76. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

Read as part of RWYO as I had both a lovely hardback copy and Kindle version. Must have last read this at school in the 1980s but have watched TV/film versions since. I did enjoy it even though I made slow progress through it and really found St John quite unpleasant by the end with all the pressure he put on Jane and religious arguments he spouted. It's not going to be something I return to time and time again (Jane Austen).

I am very tempted by Patricia Brent but have been really good at sticking to RWYO and not buying any new books so have put it on my wish list for now.

A lovely hardback of Gentlemen and Players has been on my TBR pile forever. I have had a couple of false starts as I couldn't gel with it - don’t know why as have read other Joanne Harris books, enjoy a school setting.

Now re-reading (so no dent in TBR pile) London Rules - Mick Herron as just watched TV adaptation and couldn't remember which bits had been changed.

St John is a dick - a bloody boring dick. Those sections are virtually unreadable.

I found him very attractive in the most recent adaptation. It was Jamie Bell which felt wrong anyway but StJohn should never be fit!

Yes! I watched the version with Jamie Bell in it the other weekend and the personality of St John in the adaptation was very different to the book. TBF he is described as good looking (in other words) in the book but bloody hell he's insufferable about doing God's work - you can see why they have rewritten for film and TV to make him more of a potential option for Jane.