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

Happy Birthday @TimeforaGandT 🎈
We're nearly birthday twins! It was my birthday yesterday.

And a belated happy birthday to you too, @FuzzyCaoraDhubh !

Happy belated birthday @FuzzyCaoraDhubh Hope it was full of 📚

many happy returns to to @FuzzyCaoraDhubh and @TimeforaGandT

Thank you all for the birthday wishes.

Now updating with latest reads:

77. London Rules - Mick Herron

A reread having watched latest series in Apple as I couldn't remember details and always interested to see how faithful adaptations are. The series strayed quite a bit from the book but did it well.

78. Soldier, Sailor - Claire Kilroy

Back on RWYO and picking a short one. Think everyone else read this sometime ago about the relentless nature of early motherhood, the grinding tiredness and dislike of her husband. I thought the love for her child and tiredness were depicted well but was less keen on the writing around the relationships with her husband and male friend.

79. Patricia Brent, Spinster - Herbert George Jenkins

I jumped on the bandwagon to read this and lapsed on RWYO. But it was worth it. Great characters and lots of fun.

@FuzzyCaoraDhubh - we are birthday twins! My birthday was actually yesterday but I only opened presents in the evening and only got round to tidying up and photographing my pile today.

A belated happy birthday!

Belated happy birthday to you @FuzzyCaoraDhubh!

Brilliant 😁
Enjoy your book stash 🎁

47) The Siege by Ben MacIntyre
I devoured this. It's about the Iranian Embassy Siege in 1980 and it takes us through the events of each day of the Siege. I remember it being live on TV- we had never seen anything like it. It's a gripping tale - especially as I couldn't remember exactly what the outcome was.

happy birthday bookdays @TimeforaGandT and @FuzzyCaoraDhubh

211 The Honey and the Sting - Elizabeth Fremantle

Off sick today, so read this easy histfic by the author of Firebrand and Sinners. The book is set in Jacobean times and is about three sisters - Hester, Melis and Hope, plus Hester’s son Rafe. The women are fictional but some of the men in the story are real, including George, Duke of Wellington, who raped Hester when she was working in his household and is now coming to try and reclaim his son as Rafe turns 9. The family run away with the help of a friend and the book is a cat and mouse between them
and the pursuers sent by Wellington. A good read.

Catching up on the thread and chiming in on a few discussions.

@chessiefl I thought the same thing too re the forgotten plot point in Out of Time! I found it sooooo distracting that it really reduced my enjoyment.

Jane Eyre is one of my all time favourite books, but I also enjoyed WSS. I did find for a time afterward reading WSS that it effected my view of Jane Eyre and ruined it a bit for me, so I can understand those who didn’t like it. I find now that I’m able to put enough distance between the two books that I can say I like them both.

I loved Lincoln in the Bardo although I remember it took me a good few tries to get into it. I was very near to giving up and chucking it on the DNF pile.

Miss Pettigrew is one of my favourite reads from the past few years, I agree the racism is jarring, and I’m not excusing it, but it’s a beautiful book overall.

I keep meaning to reread The Children of Green Knowe as I loved it as a kid. I bought it for DD a couple of years ago but she’s (sadly for me) not really into reading.

Happy Birthday @TimeforaGandT (great book haul!) and @FuzzyCaoraDhubh

Some recent reviews:

113 Long Time Gone by Charlie Donlea

A Dr does a DNA test as part of a work thing and discovers she is really ‘baby Charlotte’ who went missing with her parents decades before. When she meets up with her birth family it’s less to reconnect and more to find out what happened to her birth parents. This was predictable and silly and not that well written.

114 The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton

I’ve been inspired by those of you on the RWYO kick, and although I’m not prepared to commit to not buying new books I am making an effort to read some of the books I have had languishing on my kindle (some since 2013!) My plan is to read one for each year of purchase in turn, and this was first up. I only realised I’d actually read this 11 years ago when I added my rating to Goodreads and found one already there.

Laurel witnessed a shocking event when she was 16, which comes to the fore as her mother is dying. The book moves between her investigation of the event, and her mother’s past, and viewpoints from her mother and others during the blitz in London. I really enjoyed this and found it very engaging, and although I guessed (or maybe half remembered?) part of the ending it was really well plotted and a great page turner.

Happy Birthday to @TimeforaGandT& @FuzzyCaoraDhubh!

The pile of books looks wonderful - I have read some of the Forsyte saga many years ago (borrowed bits from the library in random order) but was thinking about it recently as it was mentioned in the Attlee biography I posted about. Les Mis I haven’t read (but really ought to as it’s on my Kindle).

86. Scenes from Provincial Life - William Cooper

This would have been a DNF if it hadn’t been a book-club read and therefore obligatory. My Penguin copy is garlanded with puffs from the likes of CP Snow ('told with subtlety and humour…often hilariously funny'). I do wonder what book old CP read because I can’t honestly believe it was this tome, which managed to be both dull and infuriating.

Published in 1950 but set in 1939, it's narrated by Joe Lunn, a hopeful young novelist with a day job as a teacher. Joe and his friend Tom rent a country cottage, basically as a weekend shag-pad so Joe can entertain his girlfriend, Myrtle - and Tom his boyfriend, Steve (an enjoyably shocking detail for readers at a time when homosexuality was still illegal and taboo).

Joe is very keen to have lots of sex with Myrtle, but he's determined not to marry her. This is, essentially, the basis of the entire plot. Joe confides in us, at length, why he doesn’t want to be 'tamed' by marriage, and that he wants to be free to meet lots of new people, find out about their lives, write about them, and - oh yes, maybe go to bed with them. So he can’t possibly commit to Myrtle, who's mostly treated as a vague but powerfully sexy decorative object without two brain-cells to rub together. Despite this, Joe is enraged whenever Myrtle shows signs of ending the relationship and/or goes out with anyone else.

It's meant to be funny, I think, but I read it in mounting rage at Joe's ponderous, self-important thoughts, and the turgid writing that landed like slabs of suet rather than witty, airy clouds. I'll allow that this book would have been genuinely quite brave in its day - it was undoubtedly shocking, not least because the gay relationship is treated with total openness - and that it’s supposed to have influenced Kingsley Amis to write Lucky Jim, but ugh. I sat in total mystification and didn’t crack a single smile, let alone laugh.

Happy birthday @FuzzyCaoraDhubh and @TimeforaGandT!

I'm up for.a 2026 Les Mis readalong - I'll have to find the thread and hop on.

Happy birthday @TimeforaGandT and @FuzzyCaoraDhubh ! Love the book pile 🙂

I have a paperback copy of Les Mis so will join the readalong - I’ve read it before but a very long time ago, and if it’s anything like Count of Monte Cristo I’ll have forgotten most of it 😄 Is there a thread already?

Happy belated birthday to both @FuzzyCaoraDhubh and @TimeforaGandT and great birthday book pile @TimeforaGandT too. @SheilaFentiman I have A Narrow Door by Joanne Harris and had no idea it was part of a trilogy apparently it is the last one. I never knew Joanne Harris wrote these kind of books so was intrigued enough to get this. It was part of a vintage bargain pile I purchased for something silly like £3.00. Anyway I have enjoyed reading your reviews of her books and have read that mine can be read as a stand alone but I think on her website I can get a look at what happened in the others before this one so will do that I think.

Hi @Midnightstar76

Yes, it goes:

1 Gentlemen and Players
2 A Different Class
3 The Narrow Door

with the book blueeyedboy fitting between 2 and 3 (one of its main characters is a minor but important character in book 2)

ETA Gentlemen and Players is 99p in Black Friday sale

Happy belated birthday @TimeforaGandT and @FuzzyCaoraDhubh🎉
That's a beautiful book stack!

132. Native Speaker - Chang Rae Lee. This was written in the 90s by an American Korean author. The narrator Henry is a kind of corporate spy and gets embedded in various places but importantly always those that are racially relevant to him. I'm this book, he is infiltrating a Korean man's John Kwang attempt to be mayor. This sounds quite interesting but the pacing was a bit off. There lots of exposition about Henry's childhood, his stilted relationship with his father and the housekeeper who lives with them after his mother dies, and Henry's American wife who he's separated from after the tragic death of their child. There were good bits in this but I don't think it worked as a whole.

I've also started listening to the new Phillip Pullman on audio, and realised I don't really remember the last two that well. I've just reread La Belle Sauvage which is quite enjoyable and am now about halfway through The Secret Commonwealth, which I wasn't really a fan of the first time round. I am quite enjoying being resubmerged in the world of daemons but Pullman does like to bludgeon you wth his themes!

@SheilaFentiman thanks for that 🙂 going to have to purchase the first one now far too tempting at that price!

Also happy birthday to @FuzzyCaoraDhubh

The Black Friday deals look largely like they are the November deals, rebadged.

However, here's my link if helpful - filters are Kindle, Black Friday Week, 80-100% discount, £0-£6 price which usually catches all the 99p deals plus some others.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/blackfriday?ref_=nav_cs_td_bf_dt_cr&discounts-widget=%2522%257B%255C%2522state%255C%2522%253A%257B%255C%2522refinementFilters%255C%2522%253A%257B%255C%2522departments%255C%2522%253A%255B%255C%2522341678031%255C%2522%255D%257D%252C%255C%2522rangeRefinementFilters%255C%2522%253A%257B%255C%2522price%255C%2522%253A%257B%255C%2522min%255C%2522%253A0%252C%255C%2522max%255C%2522%253A6%257D%252C%255C%2522percentOff%255C%2522%253A%257B%255C%2522min%255C%2522%253A80%252C%255C%2522max%255C%2522%253A100%257D%257D%257D%252C%255C%2522version%255C%2522%253A1%257D%2522&promotionsSearchLastSeenAsin=B0CVLGRW6W&promotionsSearchStartIndex=450&promotionsSearchPageSize=90

Happy belated birthday @TimeforaGandT and @FuzzyCaoraDhubh.
Hope there was cake. Lovely books.
I loved Les Mis, even the sewers.

Beautiful haul TimeforaGandT. I was beyond excited to pick up this beauty in a charity shop this morning, it’s a bit of a brick isn’t it!

Really pleased for you @DesdamonasHandkerchief

@DesdamonasHandkerchief - what a piece of luck to find it. Certainly is a chunky volume!