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

@MegBusset I also had a big Oscar Wilde thing going on as a teen. In my case, it started with a lyric from The Smiths - if you know, you know.

Great find @CornishLizard

@MegBusset you just reminded me of Tom Robbins who I was absolutely obsessed by while at uni. Jitterbug Perfume was one of my favorite books, I worry I may not love it quite as much as I did as a stoned student!

I just googled him and he died this year, there's a guardian obit.

Great find CornishLizard. Looks like lots of us will be reading The Mitfords - Letters between Six Sisters in the coming months.

90. Wine of Honour - Barbara Beauchamp

The end of WW2 brings many changes to the small village of Kirton, as doctor's wife Helen Townsend (having stepped down from her post in the ATS) awaits the return of her husband from the forces and tries to decide whether she really wants to stay with him, or leave to be with her lover of the past two years. This is just one of the relationships explored in this excellent 1945 novel, which must have been written and published at top speed right as the war finished.

Beauchamp focuses on a group of characters within the village, of various social classes, to dig down into the ways in which the brave new world of peace might affect them all - bringing opportunity for some but trauma and challenge for others. It was extremely good, I thought - every character drawn with unusually keen insight and understanding. It's very filmic but I doubt it would have made it to the screen at the time as it’s just so modern in its outlook; if any screenwriters are on the lookout for a story I highly recommend this for a period drama. Probably a bold from me for this.

63 Madam, Will you talk? - Mary Stewart A lovely romance mixed in with a thriller, with a likeable kid, loveable dog, and lots of Provençal scenery. I really enjoyed this - the only slight fly in the ointment was the dramatic car chase, which was not very Mary Stewart and a bit unnecessarily dramatic. It turns out this was her first novel, so she obviously honed her particular style after that, but most of the book was exactly what I was expecting and I really enjoyed it.

42 - Half-arse humans - Leena Norms
I'm not sure why I bought this (audible deal probably) and I had never heard of Leena Norms but the blurb hooked me and the sample of the author reading her own book was pleasant enough.
Her overall take, is that something is better than nothing and rather than sit around saying 'I should do this...' or not starting because we're worried about not doing something perfectly we just need to get stuck in and do SOMETHING. This is very much my take on life.
So I didn't honestly glean very much from Norms' book, unfortunately.
Might help perfectionists gain perspective. But I am far from one of those 😂

The Call of The Wild by Jack London

Inspired by others to re-read childhood favourites, I confused myself here as I have no memory at all of this book and I think I might have read White Fang as a child, so I'll add that to the wishlist for another time!

This was a quick read, 2 hours, about a dog called Buck who is taken from his house and family in California and sold up north to the Yukon where dogs are needed for sledding for the gold rush. I was not so bothered about Buck, but it was interesting to read around those parts of Alaska and I recognised a lot of names from trails you can go and hike, should one have the means to get to Alaska in the first place!

Pleased I read it, also pleased it wasn't any longer.

And I better add a trigger warning, if you someone who loves dogs passionately, this is not the book for you. They weren't always well treated on the trail.

219 Lamentation - C J Sansom

As ever, a good read about Matthew Shardlake’s troubles in Tudor England. This time, Henry VIII is not a well man and Catherine Parr is under threat from the traditionalists at court. Anne Askew is about to be burned at the stake and the manuscript to Parr’s “Lamentations of a Sinner” has been stolen, which may get her into more trouble with Henry. She calls on Shardlake to help her and he tries - and fails - to keep his household out of it. In the meantime, he manages to fall out with Guy Malton over religion and one of his very strange clients about her family history.

@TeamToeBeans – I’ve sent you a PM back

125 The Chalet School Wins the Trick - Elinor M Brent-Dyer
I need to concentrate on my other books. Reading too many of these books atm.

I’m about half way through Emma by Jane Austen. She’s a total pain, isnt she??

57 The Drums - Mike Joyce

One for the teenage Oscar Wilde readers 😉 With none of the bitterness of Moz’s autobiography or the constant name dropping of Johnny Marr’s, it’s my favourite of the ex Smiths’ account of their time together. Joyce radiates enthusiasm and love for his time with the band, making this a joyful read with some very funny anecdotes.

47 Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs - slightly macabre fantasy novel about magical books that need to be fed with blood. This was a recommendation from this group (much appreciated as I don’t always find browsing through BorrowBox easy) and was a enjoyable fun read.

48 Light a Penny Candle by Maeve Binchy - the story of an English girl evacuated to Ireland during the Second World War and the Irish girl who befriends her. This was a Kindle deal and another recommendation from this group. I liked the contrasting personalities of the 2 main characters and the vivid settings & dialogue. The author was very effective in showing how the Irish village was both a great place to grow up in yet a stifling place for a young adult. This was an interesting book to read after the Wolf Border as both books deal with addiction & risky relationships, but whereas the Wolf Border let its characters escape the worst consequences of their actions, this book really doesn’t: reckless actions most definitely have consequences of the bad variety. This generally worked well, although the ending was a bit much. It isn’t a bold for this reason and because most of the men were awful.

49 The Cross - Sigrid Undset - this is the final novel in the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy. This was my first read along, and I have really enjoyed it. (My teenage binge reading of Thomas Hardy was very useful in helping me to make sense of the text as was Kevin Crossley-Holland’s Arthur Trilogy, which I also recommended in the teenage discussion).

50 The Crossing Places - Elly Griffiths - kindle deal and an author much discussed here. I found this engrossing as the mystery and the evocative Norfolk setting worked very well together. It was also nice to read a traditional “who-dunnit” in that you could work out the criminal from the clues in the text (which I just about managed to do). I liked this much better than the time-travel series and will read more.

Very pleased to have reached 50 books - this has certainly made me appreciate how much I like an immersive setting in novels as I suspect I have praised the “evocative setting” in most of the novels that I have enjoyed.

Yes @BenvenutoMaeve Binchy does do a line in arsehole men throughout her books IIRC

@MegBusset I read an interview with Joyce recently and he came across as very sensible and likeable. Morrissey’s autobiography was brilliant at the beginning, but I hated it and him by the end.

Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster
A re-read (I dread to think how many times I’ve read it) of this beautiful book. It astonishes me that it was written in 1912. It’s so fresh and young and fun seeming.

I DNFed Morrissey's autobiography, but am sure I will get on more with Joyce's - he seems like a lovely (charming?) man.

48) Precious Lives by Margaret Forster
I brought this back from my parents' house when I was clearing it out after my dad died earlier this year. It's a hard back, clearly a gift as the price has been clipped out of it on the jacket. I suspect it was probably from me but I have no recollection of it.

I loved Margaret Forster books- until she wrote the one about the old lady's diaries and I wrote to her about it and she sent me a furious response.

So I haven't read anything of hers in a while.

But this was a real treat. It is mainly about the latter years of her father, who died aged 96, and her sister-in-law's terminal illness. That makes it sound depressing, but it isn't.

It is full of such warmth and love. I'm always a bit in two minds about people writing about their family members, who never gave permission for their lives to be made public like this. But it's all done so beautifully.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I also love Daddy Long Legs.

My Sister And Other Lovers by Esther Freud is £1.89 on Kindle today, if anyone has it on their mental/paper list.

@RazorstormUnicorn I’m not often called upon to cry on command, but if I were, Call Of The Wild would be the book to do it! I read it at an even more sensitive age than I am now

Bravo

Just looking on Kindle deals and Anne of Green Gables is on there for £0.49 - on further investigation, the whole series are £0.49 each, but then I found them in a collection for £0.75, absolute bargain! I read them all several times when I was around 11 or 12, I’ll enjoy reading them again.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit- I think you are conditioned as a reader to expect at least one decent man amongst the main characters, but no Maeve Binchy’s men were all ghastly in their different ways. I have a couple more to read from the deals, so I guess I know what to expect now.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I do like Daddy Long-Legs but love the sequel (Dear Enemy). I know it’s problematic due some dated views, but the story of the main character finding her vocation (& a nice man) through hard work is lovely.

@Arran2024I’ve read Precious Lives some years ago and remember it as I found the part about her sister-in-law’s illness harrowing. What was the issue with the book about the letters?

I posted a few weeks ago about how angry I was to read her book supposedly based on a woman's diaries, and at the end she admitted she had made it all up. I had been so invested in this woman and her story. So I wrote to her! And she sent me a furious response. I did find that quite interesting as she had no insight into an alternative point of view and it really put me off her. But when I found this book at my dad's, I thought i would give it a shot.

I enjoyed Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster, but was very disappointed by the sequel, Dear Enemy. I found that the eugenicist views and the prejudices about children in an orphanage run by the main character dominated the book to such an extent that it was difficult to enjoy the story.

Richard Osman was saying on TRIE recently what a universally loved man Mike Joyce is.

I did an extended essay for A level in Emma @Tarragon123, she is very annoying - I couldn't even really believe her redemption arc.