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

@SheilaFentiman- I haven’t read any Ishiguro either (except possibly a DNF many years ago) & the comments are not tempting me to try his work. I also haven’t read any books by Sally Rooney & thanks to @JaninaDuszejkocomments re pain I definitely won’t be trying any.

53 The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart - after a chance meeting on Hadrian’s Wall, a young woman is persuaded to masquerade as a missing heiress. This is another book based around the idea of doubles, similar to The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier (which I read recently) but I thought this one was much more successful. I had a bad cold when I read it, and the compelling style & high emotional temperature was exactly what I needed to distract myself from feeling rubbish. It’s also useful for the plot as the idea of doubles is so implausible (twins excepted) that an author needs to keep a reader’s attention to prevent them from noticing this. I’ve read a few of the author’s books this year & she is very good at vividly describing the landscape as well as the decaying of landed estates during the last century. I first read this as a teenager but didn’t enjoy it as much as I did this time - probably because the emotional tone is one of regret, guilt & disappointment which wouldn’t have appealed to me as a teen. The characters in the book use Josephine Tey’s Brat Farrar as a guide to what they are trying to do, so I should probably reread that too.

Congratulations @AgualusasL0ver- that's great news. I quite enjoyed Outrageous although I did spend quite a bit of time googling to fact check!

Congrats @AgualusasL0ver on the new job!

223 Ungovernable: The Political Diaries of a Chief Whip - Simon Hart.

The title was a bit disingenuous, as it starts with BoJo’s 2019 victory and Hart is a minister for implementation then sec of state for wales under him. Cue some partisan and deluded writing on how good Hancock was. Treads ground that Shipman et al have done far better.

The second half was better than the first, when Hart became Chief Whip under Sunak.

Congrats @AgualusasL0ver that’s lovely news!

@Benvenuto I read one interview with Sally R when her first book came out, and it was more than enough to show me that I would hate her books.

224 Dear Dickhead - Virginie Despenses

Like The Finkler Question, this book has won accolades (FT Best book of the year 2024 etc). Like TFQ, the protagonist was unlikeable, self deluded and pompous. Like TFQ, this was a dud for me.

The novel is largely emails between Oscar and Rebecca, both in their late forties. He is an author accused of sexual harassment by Zoe (whose blog posts are occasionally included), a younger woman who used to do PR for his novels. She is a film star who knew Oscar (and his sister) as a child. The two write to each other in ways that people never write, screeds of philosophical chat that barely respond to what the other said. In the meantime, Zoe is destroyed by internet trolls and Paris goes through the COVID lockdown.

I only finished it cos I am stubborn!

I finished my second Christmassy book, the jolly and jaunty Christmas Stocking Murders, Denzil Meyrick's second Christmas murder mystery.

Actually, It made me feel sad. Meyrick died not long after this and there is a very poignant part where the main (40 year old) protagonist reflects on his own possible mortality which made me catch breath. At the very end , it's clear Meyrick had plans for a third Christmas book and I feel sad that I won't get to read it because it sounds like he had a good old locked room mystery in the planning stages.

It's obvious he had great fun writing these books. I feel a bit like the way I feel about Harry S Thompson never getting to write more.

That's sad about Sophie Kinsella. In my 20s I read very little, I was a bit lost reading wise but I did read most of her Shopaholic books and enjoyed them, even if I did sort of grow past them.

Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah

Meredith and her family aren't close and this is thrown into highlight when her dad dies (not a spoiler, this is included in the blurb/overviews). The story follows their struggles to relate after this happens.

I was annoyed in the first third by the families surprise that their 80 something years old dad died. I lost both parents before I was 40 and as a result I have little patience with people who are taken by surprise by loss. Especially when the person has lived a long time. This is a me problem and I maybe need to be kinder.

In the middle third I didn't like the story being told told within a story. I find following two sets of characters a chore and I can't switch view points easily. This is also a me problem.

I've read the final third today on trains and had to put it down several times to stop myself from crying. Despite my low level irritations, this is an incredible book written with feeling and the story within a story is so evocative one really feels the emotions with the teller. Brilliant. I got over myself and loved it. 4.75 stars.

Congrats on the job @AgualusasL0ver !

I have never read any Ishiguru I don’t think! Or if I have, I’ve forgotten…

58 Eurotrash - Christian Kracht

On paper this quirky comic novel is right up my strasse, but I felt it was maybe a bit of an exercise of style over substance. Maybe I have spoiled myself for a while by reading Infinite Jest which makes books like this feel rather lightweight (metaphorically and literally) by comparison.

Congratulations @AgualusasL0ver thats absolutely great news. Especially that it is the one you really wanted.

Congrats on the new job @AgualusasL0ver - hope you get to enjoy a few more days of reading before you start!

FWIW Ishiguro doesn't really inspire strong emotions in me. I think his books are fine, I'll read them but neither love or hate them. I think maybe because his own characters are quite unemotional. Actually I have a book by his daughter on my TBR that I keep meaning to try.

139. The Gathering - Anne Enright. Booker prize winner from 2007. This is narrated by Veronica, the 8th child of 12 in an Irish family. The book starts with Veronica flying to England to identify her brother Liam's body, the closest child in age to her. The story then goes back exploring Veronica's grandmother, historic abuse and the experience of large families. I thought this was very good.

140. Snow Country - Yasunari Kawabata translated by Edward G Seidensticker. This is a classic by the first Japanese author to win the Nobel prize for literature in the 60s. It follows Shimasura, a middle-aged playboy, who goes to "snow country" to hang out with geishas and escape his wife and children. There's no moral judgement in the book about this. The other main character is a geisha called Kamako who seems to be in love with Shimasura (God knows why) and spends her time drunk in his hotel room, and having lots of baths. There are some beautiful descriptions of snow, apparently Kawabata writes mainly in haikus, but it's all very understated and people have odd conversations that don't really go anywhere.

Snow and stars are nice
But where are your wife and kids
Self-centered arsehole

@Stowickthevast- I love the book review by haiku!

@Stowickthevast that gave me a good chuckle. I DNFed Snow Country as a couldn’t bear reading about that self-centred arsehole any longer!

congratulations @AgualusasL0ver - fab news!

On Ishiguro I found The Remains of The Day heartbreakingly beautiful, and Never Let Me Go decent enough, but I am not a sci-fi aficionado.

53.Satin Island by Tom McCarthy. Our narrator, known only as U, is an anthropologist working for an unnamed private sector company working on a project to increase its influence. The anthropologist travels from conference to conference analysing various aspect of contemporary life, such as oil spills, or buffering, or the deaths of skydivers.

The novel is presented as numbered paragraphs, as if reading U's research notes. There's basically no plot here, and the characterisation is (I think) deliberately one dimensional. What that leaves is a series of vignettes, sometimes comic, sometimes reflective and insightful. There were sections I enjoyed, and others that were pretty tedious. Had it been longer I might not have finished it.

I DNFd Satin Island when it first came out.

93. A Year in the World - Frances Mayes

Needed to read this so it could go on the charity pile. Frances Mayes hit gold with her book Under the Tuscan Sun, her account of how an American couple (she and husband Ed) found and restored a beautiful Tuscan villa, Bramasole, and its garden. Various sequels have spun off the original story and this is a fairly random selection of her later travel accounts. The descriptions of food kept me engaged, and I was fairly envious of the beautiful hotels and guesthouses they stayed in throughout Europe (predictably and embarrassingly, their English trip was memorable for grim holiday lets plastered with shouty notices telling guests not to move things - and the focus there was on gardens, not cuisine, as it was everywhere else. They did love Scotland, though).
At times the prose teeters perilously close to Pseud’s Corner territory, and Mayes is a teeny bit Salt Path when it comes to passing judgment on her fellow-tourists (she is a traveller! Not a tourist!) but on the whole, an engaging and enjoyable travelogue (not counting the proof-reading errors that litter the text).

@Stowickthevast – I’ve only read Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. Emma has put me off reading anymore Austen.

Thank you @romansmum

@Piggywaspushed – It drives me to distraction when a book has an historical setting, but doesn’t tell you when. His first vicar one was like that and it annoyed me so much (plus all the Anglican stuff I didn’t understand) I couldn’t read anymore.

I’m a huge Denziel Meyrick fan. I used to listen to his podcast. I visited Kintyre and Gigha because of his books. Such a sad lost.

@Owlbookend – that could have been my review of Queenie!

@SheilaFentiman – I love the ‘Before the Coffee Gets Cold’ series

I’ve only read When We Were Orphans. It didn’t make me want to read anything else by Ishiguro

I enjoyed the tv series of Outrageous. It was previously on Alibi, or some such channel.

Congratulations @AgualusasL0ver

126 Emma – Jane Austen. Meh, why did I bother?

My missing Louise Penny book has finally turned up, so I am going to bash through that.

It's funny, I haven't read a 19th century classic for years, and then I somehow ended up reading two in a row! They are both so well known that you've probably all read them already.

51 A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I had never read this before although I have seen it on the stage. I listened to the Audible version, which was extremely well narrated by Hugh Grant. Fun and Christmassy.

52 The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. This starts with a slightly spooky encounter on the streets of north London late at night between drawing instructor Walter Hartright and a woman dressed all in white. Then follows the tale of who she is and the part she plays in his life, told by a series of narrators with very different characters and writing styles. Due to the faster pace of modern novels I found that it took me a while to adapt to the gradual unfolding of the story, but once I got used to that I enjoyed this enormously.

225 The Little House - Philippa Gregory

So this is what PG did before turning to histfic of dubious veracity! A suspense novel about Ruth, orphaned and married to Patrick, whose life comes slowly but surely under the control of her in-laws when she loses her job and becomes pregnant (not entirely by choice). Lovely and sinister.

@SheilaFentiman I really enjoyed The Little House and often think of it years after reading. The in laws are so believable and so genteely scheming. There are a few great versions of this story when I think of it - Puffball by Fay Weldon and if course Rosemary's Baby, both rather more supernatural but a similar disturbing narrative..

#32. Private - Keep Out by Gwen Grant. As heartily recommended by Lucy Mangan in Bookworm. In fact this is back in print due to the interest in it she created.
I picked up a second hand copy cheaply from Abe books and enjoyed it, but not as much as Ms Mangan, but then she discovered it at the right age as it’s definitely YA in tone.
It’s the imaginary diary of a working class girl from a large northern family. Shades of Just William and a post war Adrian Mole.

#33. Just Kids by Patti Smith. Took me an age to finish despite her having an interesting life. I found it difficult to get my head round her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe which was incredibly dysfunctional in many ways and for much of this book they’re living through grinding poverty. I didn’t know much about her before this, other than the big hit ‘Because The Night’, but she was a lot more arty/indie than I had imagined.

#34. Dombey & Son by Charles Dickens read for the MN read along so I’ll just say I thought it started strongly but lost its way somewhat in the middle. Everything was neatly tied up by the end however, as is always the case with Dickens, and any minor loose ends were really of ‘no consequence whatsoever’.

I’m reading The Book of Guilt which I have precisely zero recollection of buying. Enjoying it so far but it could use some editing. Bleak. Bleak. Bleak. I really hope that little bastard William gets his dues.

I've finally written another two reviews. Next year I hope to review more of the books I read and do so more promptly. Apologies for length, especially this one. I drafted and posted the reviews on Librarything.com.

2025 #188
Monisha Rajesh, Moonlight Express: Around the World by Night Train
Read 10.10.25 to 25.11.25, reviewed 12.12.25
Rating: 4.6

Last year I read and reviewed Monisha Rajesh's second book, Around the World in 80 Trains, written about Rajesh's travels in 2015 with her fiancé Jem, and published in hardback in 2019 (also available in paperback and ebook formats). I really enjoyed her thoughtful account and her observations of some of the people she met on her travels, but had a sense that restrictions of time and money were sometimes an issue - some parts of the book felt rushed, and there were places she couldn't possibly fit in.

So I was quite excited to read about this new book through an LT friend's blogpost, https://librofulltime.wordpress.com/2025/09/02/book-review-monisha-rajesh-moonli...

Now married to Jem with two daughters, Rajesh has continued to travel, but now between home, work and family responsibilities, and rather than trying to cram everything into one great trip, Moonlight Express is about a series of journeys taken over several years, often travelling with friends who share her obsession with train travel (she has shared adventures with Jamie and Marc in previous books), sometimes with family - the Royal Scotsman from Edinburgh to and around the Highlands with her mum, Finland's Santa Claus Express with her husband and children. She also meets up with some friends made through online conversations, who take her to some of their special places and/or offer invaluable help with her journey and access to behind the scenes insights. Most of the book is about European travel but there are also journeys in India, the US, Peru and Turkey.

As in her Around the World book, Rajesh's writing style is witty and self deprecating, and she interacts in more depth with other travellers, hanging out in buffet cars and spaces where there is a chance to talk to strangers. She is not usually completely alone, and I think this might make it easier to strike up conversations while knowing that she has some back up, for safety. It is interesting to see travel writing from her perspective as a British Indian woman.

There are 16 pages of colour plate photographs in the middle of the book (a shiny new hardback borrowed from the library), some of trains and some of travelling companions and other friends met along the way. They are quite clearly labelled, making it easier to relate them to the relevant pages of text.

I look forward to reading about Monisha Rajesh's other train travels in India, and any future books and articles she may write. I've already recommended both Moonlight Express and Around the World to my library book group friend

Rather more rushed, dp is kindly returning this to the library (still has a big queue wanting to read) and picking up some reservations for me. I'm also returning a biography of Barbara Comyns by Avril Horner. I have finally written a review but I actually read the book in summer 2024 (!). I've simply renewed it a lot, including taking it in and borrowing again, but now someone else wants to read it.

2025 #210
Kiran Desai, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
Read 08.10.25 to 21.11.25, reviewed 13.12.25
Rating: 4.4

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is a long novel, nearly 700 pages. Two young Indian people from very privileged backgrounds, Sonia and Sunny first hear of each other through clumsy matchmaking attempts, finally meet years later and fall in love, but there are many issues to get in the way of their relationship, including troubled family histories, other relationships, study, work and travel in the Americas and Europe, decisions about where to live and careers. Kiran Desai also writes about Sonia and Sunny's parents and other family members, their hopes and quarrels.

I am curious about why Kiran Desai's novel came to be so very long, but really enjoyed the read and the twists and turns in the characters' lives.