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

@DuPainDuVinDuFromage I object to being told about more Ben McIntyre books when I am trying to do RWYO 😀

…sounds like a good one though!!

I like Ben M, so have wish listed that too - apologies for the verbing, which is now doubly amusing my silly little self.

28 Killing Thatcher, Rory Carroll

Thank you, thank you to whoever it was that recommended this book to me after I read and loved Say Nothing earlier this year.

It’s about the build up to the bombing of the Grand Hotel during the Tory party conference of 1984 and the police investigation and events that follow. Once a lot of the initial context is covered the book really picks up pace when it starts to focus on the Brighton event and became a real page turner. I knew basically nothing about the bombing other than Thatcher’s near escape so I was keen to find out what happened next. It was fascinating to read about how painstaking police work could be, particularly the poor souls doing finger print analysis. A bold.

116 The Prodigal Hour by Will Entrekin

Time travel book that is not even half as good as it thinks it is. One of those ‘make it confusing to hide that the author does not have a clue’ types of books. Or I’m an idiot who just didn’t get it.

Sorry Sheila! But you know what they say, once you own it, you can RWYO it 😄

Nice verbing Remus 😊

215 Bloody Scotland - various

Had this on my kindle for several years. It's an anthology of stories by different crime writers (Chris Brookmyre, Denise Mina, Ann Cleeves et al) each one set at a different Scottish landmark, as the book was produced with a grant from a Scottish tourist association. But that doesn't stop murder, mayhem (and wee delinquents occasionally saving the day). Enjoyable.

Ooh, I’ve got a hardback of The Napoleon of Crime, @DuPainDuVinDuFromage - and it had actually been in the back of my mind for ages to read it. Thanks for nudging me. I’ll go and look for it now. I think it was only his second book and he hadn’t quite settled into his war/spy niche.

My latest:

88. The Secret Life of Ealing Studios - Robert Sellers

I love old films, and while exploring the Dean Street Press website I was excited to find that as well as publishing 40s/50s women's fiction under their Furrowed Middlebrow imprint, they also have a film section. This was an enjoyable if not terribly exciting history of the studios from the glory days of Passport to Pimlico, The Ladykillers et al, right through to its sad demise. The schtick is that Sellers interviews the 'behind the scenes' workers - cameramen, assistant directors, script-girls and so on - rather than the stars….which is fine, except that their reminiscences are on the gentle, not-very-riveting side. Still, I whizzed through it, despite the fact that it’s excruciatingly badly written and clearly nobody on the editing side cared about the dangling participles that litter the text.

Affinity by Sarah Waters is a tale centred on a women's prison in the 1870s. There is an enigmatic spiritualist by the name of Selina Dawes who is a prisoner there. Margaret Prior, still grieving the death of her father, becomes a lady visitor to the women in the prison and is intrigued when she first encounters Selina.
I loved this book, mainly for the beautiful writing, but the plot is good too. A ethereal snippet of Victorian and Dickensian Britain bound up with a love story.

42 Pine by Francine Toon - this was a recommendation from the thread and one of the best of my haul of October Kindle deals (thanks to whoever recommended it). The book describes itself as a “Gothic mystery” and is set in the north of Scotland in a small community where Lauren’s Mum went missing 10 years ago. Then Lauren and her father meet a mysterious woman while travelling home, while leads to further mysteries. I really liked the vivid description of the setting - it is very evocative of the Scottish landscape and winter weather, but there’s also a grungy edge due to the quite bleak aspects of the characters live. The actual mystery isn’t as compelling as the atmosphere, but I think I will reread at some point to see if I can spot any clues on a second reading. My only quibble was that I didn’t like the description of drunk driving as I felt it didn’t really hold the character responsible for his behaviour.

43 For Your Eyes Only by Ben Macintyre - sadly this is my last Macintyre book on BorrowBox and apologies to @SheilaFentimanfor the second Macintyre review of the day. This is about Ian Fleming and was written to accompany an exhibition on Fleming’s life and work. Consequently, it’s a lot slighter than his other works but it is very readable. It begins with an outline of Fleming’s life, then looks at the origins of the characters and some other features of Fleming’s writing in the Bond books. I felt a bit short-changed that there was only a brief outline of Fleming’s experiences in the Second World War as he has cameo roles in Macintyre’s other books, but the analysis of his writing was much more interesting than I expected. Looking at the people and events that influenced the novels was interesting (especially as lots of them feature in Macintyre’s other books), as were other features such as how he used elaborate descriptions of food & modern gadgets to entice the reader. I’ve never felt inclined to read the James Bond books (as the films are so well known) but this has almost persuaded me just to see how accurate are Macintyre’s arguments in their favour.

Having never seen a James Bond film, I tried a couple of the books a few years ago. They were not for me. Horribly violent and deeply, offensively misogynistic.

I've finished The Rose Field, the final part of Phillip Pullman's Book of Dust trilogy and probably the last outing of Lyra and Pan. It's a long and winding road trip across East Asia following various characters at various times and introduces lots of plot lines, some of which come to fruitition and others that just fade away. I enjoyed being immersed in the world of daemons again and it was a definite step up from the middle book for me, but didn't meet the heights of the great trilogy. A lot of very intricate plots that all got resolved in a rush at the end which felt a bit odd for a 20 hour book!

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie- that’s interesting (& grim). Some misogyny was acknowledged by Macintyre but I didn’t get the impression from the book it was as bad as you describe. The book was a companion piece to an exhibition though, so it was aimed at fans rather than being a proper critical assessment. It’s definitely a point that worth thinking about, and an uncomfortable one given that the books are still being imitated.

44 The Wolf Border by Sarah Hall - I discovered this author through this thread and I really liked the sound of this book. It’s the story of Rachel, an expert on wolves who returns to her childhood home of Cumberland when a rich and well-connected nobleman decides to create an enclosure for wolves on his estate. I thought it was a great idea for a plot as it is so similar to what is happening with beavers, but with a much greater potential for disaster. I loved both the story of the wolves and the very rich description of Cumbria. Less good was the lack of punctuation for direct speech (a distraction). I also didn’t like the depiction of relationships. Rachel and some of the other characters make some very reckless choices but this is romanticised as the book doesn’t fully address the risks that they are running which is jarring in an otherwise realistic book. (MN probably didn’t help my suspension of disbelief here as it’s all too easy to imagine what the relationship board would say).

Ooh, something I think we can find some agreement on!

I thought I was the only person who'd never watched a James Bond film. I read Casino Royale for a book group discussion over 20 years ago and doubt I'll try another.

61 Soldier Sailor - Claire Kilroy
Deep immersion in the chaotic tedium of toddler rearing, exacerbated by a child-duty avoidant husband. Some lovely detail, like the way the mother’s addled brain can only think of Lego Ninjago characters’ names as potential names for her son’s future friends.

62 If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies - Eliezer Yudkowsky & Nate Soares
Perhaps we should stop and have a think before we rush to build an AI that’s more intelligent than us, works in ways we can’t understand, and can easily get out from under any controls we try to build into the system. Alarmist, but food for thought.

63 Yellowface - R.F.Kuang
June Hayward steals her dead, Chinese-American friend’s manuscript and ties herself in knots trying to pass it off as her own. She doesn’t seem to have any real personal life, or at least there’s no plot beyond her publication journey and social media spats. The analysis of cultural appropriation and cancel culture is clever and nuanced, but not sure a 300 page novel was the right format.

64 The Spirit of the Rainforest - Rosa Vasquez Espinoza
Jungle explorations and insights into Indigenous cosmovisions with deep spiritual connections to nature, from a Peruvian biologist of Indigenous descent. Had potential, but pretty shallow on both the biology and the belief systems.

60 The Disappearing Spoon - Sam Kean Hot on the heels of my last review, I’ve finished the other book I was reading - this one was a physical book I got for my birthday years ago and never got round to reading, partly because the cover made it look a bit boring.

Well the adage is true because, far from being boring, this is one of the most interesting books I’ve ever read. I feel like a Strictly judge who’s given out a load of tens already, when a dance that knocks everyone’s socks off comes along - this is possibly the boldest of all my bolds for this year. Contrary to what the blurb might suggest, this is not a collection of zany anecdotes, one for each element of the periodic table; instead, it’s a fascinating and wide-ranging history of the periodic table and the elements in it, written in an accessible and readable way and with lots of nuggets of information about all sorts of topics.

I’ve already bought it for DM for Christmas, and will be recommending it to all sorts of other people too - if you’re remotely interested in anything sciencey (even if that’s just the history of science), you should definitely read it!

Heartily agree. I only read one.

Your review made me look up Sam Kean books, @DuPainDuVinDuFromage . The Disappearing Spoon is not in my library alas, but I previously realise that I read and enjoyed Caesar's Last Breath by the same author. My library has one other book by him, so I'll give it a go.

I really enjoyed The Disappearing Spoon too. Don't think it appears on any 50 Bookers lists of mine because I bought it DS when he was a teenager.

127 . Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

Two teenagers are caught up in danger when an evil carnival comes to town.

I really struggled with this, even though it’s >300. I should have DNFd but instead I took an extended break and ended up in a slump. My chief complaint about this is there’s so much purple prose that I got lost in what was going on. I definitely got skimmy.

If it reminded me of anything it was Stephen King’s IT if that appeals to anyone, I think Bradbury was an inspiration to King.

I’m 3 books off 130 which I think will be my stop point this year, so I’m going to look for stuff that needs turfing off TBR before the new year, could be random.

The Coworker by Freida McFadden
Natalie has worked in the cubicle next to Dawn for several months but one day Dawn doesn't show up for work. An unsettling phone call leads Natalie to look for her missing coworker.

An easy read and a page turner but with predictable plot twists. I kept wondering why I was continuing to read it. Added nothing to my life except maybe a couple of facts - although I feel the need to fact check though - about turtles!

@MegBusset- I enjoyed Sebag Montefiore on the Romanovs and also his book on Jerusalem. He does write tomes though - I can remember hauling his book on Catherine the Great & Potemkin back from the library years ago. @MamaNewtNewt- I also enjoyed the Anglo-Saxons by Marc Morris.

@SheilaFentiman- I’ve ordered Ink Sister Scribe (I do like BorrowBox recommendations as their algorithms rarely show me stuff that I want to read).

45 Queen James by Gareth Russell. This was a Black Friday Kindle deal, which I bought because I’ve enjoyed listening to the author talking about his work on a few podcasts. The blurb positions the book against Henry VIII in that Henry had 6 wives, James had 6 male favourites so the two must be connected. I don’t think this really works as although there are connections (both kings had significant reigns and both kings had various noble families trying to position their candidate as favourite), 3 of the 6 wives were women of significant charisma and achievement and all evoke considerable sympathy (in that they were married to Henry), whereas with James’ favourites the facts about the early relationships are sparse and there is a lot of deductions, whereas the ones where there is more known really don’t evoke sympathy. That said, the book is very readable and follows on from biographies of Mary Queen of Scots (which were discussed on this thread a while back). Although I’ve read about James’ mother, children and different aspects of his reign, I hadn’t read an actual biography of him since reading a chapter in a Kings & Queens book & the Ladybird book about him as a child, and he probably is due for a re-evaluation. Certainly, the book disproves some things that I have previously read about him (most strikingly his wife Queen Anna - dismissed as an airhead who drove James towards other men in my Kings & Queen book turns out to have been an intelligent and capable Queen & one of the more sympathetic characters in the book). James’ life was particularly eventful, and I did enjoy reading about his Scottish reign which I didn’t know much about. The book does show that there were some admirable things about his reign (not least promoting peace and arranging the translation of the Bible) and that some of the less flattering things written about him were false - but there are still things about him and his reign that aren’t appealing (particularly witches and separating his wife from their eldest son). I was also a bit disappointed that it was only a personal biography rather than looking at his politics as well as it is hard to separate the two at present: there is one dreadful story about a young girl being forced to marry the brother of one of James’ favourites - after reading I realised that her father was the judge known for arguing with James about the Royal Prerogative, which gives the whole episode a different dimension and it would have been good to have that explored in the book.

The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard
Apologies - I can’t remember who recommended this.

For the first 40% or so, I really thought this was going to be a bold. I loved the world building, the tentative friendships and the descriptions of the selection process for the Conseil.

However, I was quite bored in the middle, with the long and miserable section of policing.

And then, I just wasn’t convinced by the ending section, which seemed too neat and with too many things that felt a bit like cheats, or were insufficiently explained.

I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t feel it sustained its early promise.

56 Civilisations - Laurent Binet

Picked up in the library, this alternative history novel is based on the premise that Incas discovered and conquered Europe, rather than the other way round. It’s fun and original, but dips a bit in places and lacks the intellectual and emotional wallop of HHhH.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I do see what you mean - the change of direction halfway through was significant, though I felt that was kind of the point and made me reassess the worldbuilding from the first half. I loved the book, but I do think it has hallmarks of a first novel (which it is) in that the ending was a bit quick and easy, and I’m interested to see how the author develops in future books.

I ended up DNF’ing The Other Valley - I got really bored in the middle! And there were too many things about the world building that didn’t make sense to me - what happened if they went north or south? Where did all the stuff in their town come from - they surely can’t have made/grown everything themselves? It sounded like a good idea but for me did not deliver.