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've started a new thread for the year end round up. I'm hoping this link works:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/5456766-50-books-challenge-2025-round-up

To Calais, In Ordinary Time by James Meek
This was rather marvellous, written in a sort of cod-Medieval language that might irritate some, but that I found intriguing.
A seemingly disparate group of people are travelling to France, which seems foolish as the plague is rapidly travelling to meet them on the way. It’s a couple of years after the battle of Crècy and Will Quate is a farm worker who wants to earn his own glory as a bowman as well as half-heartedly earn the hand in marriage of his intended. Also travelling are Lady Berna (full of idealistic fancy based on The Romance Of The Rose), Thomas, a Proctor whose verbose and wry observations are the only ones written in the first person and the other bowmen, who have a captive Frenchwoman called Cess with them.
There’s humour, there’s grim details of the plague and battle injury and there’s some disturbing backstory to Cess’s capture.
It’s prose that you can chew and I loved it, anachronisms and all.

Well I have really fallen off here for a long time, a lot going on! I can't remember where I got up to with my books list so will do some mini reviews.

Broken Country by Claire Leslie Hall. Fairly disappointing romance/mystery about a love triangle between a farmer, his wife and a famous novelist in the 60s countryside. Too many manipulative twists.

Us Against You by Frederick Backman. Second part of the Beartown trilogy, suitably snowy and violent but I didn't enjoy it as much as the first.

Among Friends by Hal Ebbutt. Novel about the tensions between two wealthy friends in New York which come to a head when one man assaults the daughter of the other. Some of this was interestingly written but a strange and inconclusive ending.

A Spell of Good Things by Ayobami Adebayo. I think a lot of people read this a couple of years back. A strong and shocking story about family and political violence in Nigeria. I admired it though it was incredibly bleak.

Sweet Sorrow by David Nichols. Picked this up at the train station in an emergency. Readable and funny, I liked it better than One Day.

Love Forms by Claire Adams. Definitely my favourite of the Booker longlist I've managed to read. It's about a Trinidadian woman's search for the daughter she gave up for adoption as a teenager, and I found it very honest and sad about motherhood and hope.

These Summer Storms by Sarah Maclean. I saw this being raved about all over social media, utterly dire. A tech billionaire dies, leaving behind detailed tasks all his family have to complete to get their inheritance. Why? Unclear! Then some kind of employee 'fixer' turns up and starts an affair with one of the daughters. Avoid.

The Art of a Lie by Laura Shepherd-Robinson. As others have said, great fun, a romp through the Georgian London criminal underworld and confectionery shop scenes.

Ordinary Love by Marie Rutkoski. A woman in her 30s reconnects with her teenage girlfriend, now a famous athlete, following the breakdown of her controlling marriage. Just fine. The scenes of the abusive relationship were upsetting but well done.

What Katy Did has a lovely chapter on Christmas (perhaps I should blame Aunt Izzy and her nailbrush for when I buy practical presents).

Hope you feel better @InTheCludgie

51 The Wych Elm by Tana French - a young man’s life is changed forever first by a brutal atttack and then by a skull being found in his uncle’s garden. This was a kindle deal and a recommendation from this thread. I didn’t like the characters or the ending much, but the narration was gripping.

52 The Searcher by Tana French - a retired cop moves to rural Ireland and becomes embroiled in a teenager’s quest to find his brother. This was another kindle deal. I liked the story much more that the Wych Elm but I preferred the Wych Elm’s first person’s narration. Will be reading more from this author.

There are some absolute crackers in the kindle daily deals today. I can’t recommend A Woman in the Polar Night by Christine Ritter enough. It is about a woman in the 1930s who overwinters in Svalbard with her husband. It inspired a lot of the details in Dark Matter by Michelle Paver

I've just bought it despite looking earlier today and somehow not noticing it. Thanks!

Thanks @elspethmcgillicudddy Ive picked that up too.

I bought it too, and thought it also looked right up @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie's alley.

Bought! Thank you.

I got it also as I’m a fan of Dark Matter. Thanks!

222 The Book of Guilt - Catherine Chidgey

Recommended by several of you, this is a bold. A carefully built sene of suspense and menace about the last three teenage boys (triplets) left in a boys’ home, in an altered version of the recent past (WWII ended in 1943, which had a profound effect on science and politics). Really well put together; a slow but intense burn.

Aargh! The pressure. I hope everyone enjoys it! I've recommended it to quite a few people (esp if they have been going to Svalbard) but I don't think any of them were 'readers' so haven't had any feedback.

96. Every Contact Leaves A Trace by Jo Ward

Memoir of a forensic scientist. I’ve read a few of these types of books but this was probably the weakest. It was good enough but just not terribly exciting or interesting as these things go.

97. Exiles by Mason Coile

Horror science fiction. A near future crew are going to colonise Mars. Robots have gone ahead of them to make it habitable but when they arrive the Bots seem to be doing strange things outside their programming. Passable fun.

98. Seascraper by Benjamin Wood This was exquisite in the detail and description. Much reviewed already I also enjoyed this hugely. I could almost feel the weight of the soggy woolen clothing in the wind and rain.

Found another two read books on my kindle just in time to add a nice round 100 list to the round up thread!

99. The Names by Florence Knapp

Three parallel timelines which all hinge around the naming of a baby and how it influences his life. I enjoyed this. It was well plotted and a clever idea which was well executed. However.... I’m a bit surprised it has received so much in terms of accolades. I didn’t think the writing was that great. I thought the themes of domestic violence were not dealt with much subtlety or nuance. It felt a bit... light. Enjoyable. Perplexed at it being award winning.

100. The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey

Set in a parallel timeline where WW2 ended differently. Three triplet boys are being brought up in a children’s home with various ‘mothers’. I thought that this was good. Difficult to review without spoilers but it was interesting.

It was reminiscent of <* whisper it > Never Let Me Go*. But IMO actually more interesting in the world building. (Actually I can’t remember whether NLMG acts as a hand grenade on this thread or whether it is just other unnamed works by the same author)

(As another aside I was just googling to double check they are the same author and I couldn’t remember the name of the other book just ‘the bloody boring butler’. It’s ruined me, this thread has!)

@elspethmcgillicudddy The Grauniad's reviewer marked it down for being reminiscent of NLMG. Fortunately, I have never read that so it didn't bother me

A satisfying round number, @elspethmcgillicudddy .

My most recent are:

144. Fear Stalks the Village, by Ethel Lina White
Another of my 1930s classic crime reads - I've overdone it on this genre and need a break now (although I have a couple of library books to still get through). Delightful English village falls under a shadow as its inhabitants start to receive anonymous letters. This is quite slow-moving and the first part reminded me more of Angela Thirkell than crime writing. Fine, not earth-shattering.

145. Thorn in my Side, C J Skuse
Latest instalment of the Sweetpea series, narrated by a young woman who wants to (a) be loved and (b) kill people. Can she reconcile these desires? She's now loved up with a fiance and his extended Mexican family, so for much of the book, she's not killing anyone. The fun thing about the series is how the author uses chick-lit style narration to tell a darker tale, but that tension is weaker during the sections where the narrator is living a chick-lit style life. Still, I'm interested enough to read the final book in the series at some point.

146. An English Christmas, by John Julius Norwich
A miscellany of extracts from diaries, memoirs, novels, poems on a Christmas theme. Read in an attempt to generate some Christmas spirit. Skimmed a bit but enjoyed a fair amount of it.

147. Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age, by Eleanor Barraclough This is one of my favourite books of the year. The author talks about the experiences of ordinary people living at the time, rather than telling the big stories of political leaders. There are some charming descriptions of drawings on birch-bark made by a child, for example. I've added a couple of museums to the list of places I want to visit. I loved her writing - very evocative. A pleasure.

148. Out of Time, Jodi Taylor
Latest instalment of the Time Police series. I thought this was a return to form after the tedium of the last book, about the ghost train. Here we have dinosaurs rampaging through a library in a small Welsh town, and the Time Police grapples with a haunting episode from its own past. Good chaotic fun. A couple of people on the thread have pointed out that it seems to contradict previous information - I'm hoping that we'll get an explanation in the next book.

Never Let Me Go is crap. I’d fight anybody who says otherwise, but I’m too tired.

Hand grenade! Hand grenade! Tick. Tick. BOOM!

NLMG is the wanky, highbrow rip off of Spares that Michael Marshall Smith should have sued over. The Book Of Guilt is ok, though.

@elspethmcgillicudddy I agree with you about The Names, I really enjoyed it but didn't think the writing was all that and yes it was a bit light overall despite covering serious topics.
I was also a bit unsure about the message when all was said and done... Choosing different names led to different outcomes but sometimes I felt the mum using her autonomy eventually led to unhappier outcomes, which felt unsatisfying.

I believe, The Bloody Boring Butler was its working title, but he changed it just prior to publication in an attempt to make people believe from the blurb that it was actually about a really interesting butler.

Bollocks. I've done it now!
(I do actually agree though).

I liked NLMG (and The Book of Guilt) but I loved the bloody boring butler. In my all time top 10.

@Frannyisreading and @elspethmcgillicudddy I’m with you two on The Names- I thought it was a good premise but poorly executed.

Oh lord, it'll be a 50Booker Christmas Bust-Up at this rate

🤣