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

Celia Fremlin sounds rather like Mariana Enriquez.

194 /Drayton and MacKenzie - Alexander Staritt

A bold.

(James) Drayton is academically gifted, gets the top first in PPE. (Roland) Mackenzie, in the same college, gets a 2.2 in Physics and Philosophy. The two know each other vaguely, from a term of college rowing, but their paths diverge and them converge again when MacKenzie is hired by McKinsey, where Drayton has been working since graduation, and he inadvertently gives Drayton the idea for an educational analysts project in India.

Real life is part of the plot, with cameos from Ben Bernanke, Mario Draghi and the Brexit vote. The two men become unlikely but firm friends, with Drayton having the brains and graft, MacKenzie the ideas and people skills. They are inspired by a recession to start up a new company, named after themselves, and the novel then follows the trials of growth and VC funding.

A strong exploration of friendship and of purpose in life.

The Familiars Stacey Halls

I really enjoyed Mrs England by the same author and obviously picked this up in the deals at some point.

This is set during the Pendle witch trials and features a number of real life characters, though totally fictionalised. We follow Fleetwood Shuttleworth of Gawthorpe Hall. She is 17 and on her third pregnancy, the previous two having ended in stillbirth. She chances to meet Alice Gray in the woods and Alice is a midwife and the two become unlikely friends. This was decent, I enjoyed it and will continue to read more Stacey Halls, though I’m not in a rush.

This had a gothic touch, so I’m going to say this is the end end of my October reading now - and also my 50th book. I think 48 has been my personal best before though there might have been one year of 52, but I’ve not been numbering them here and I have been reading whatever I want taking no account of size so am quite pleased with this.

I know how to find the deals and look forward to them every month, but I find that while there are sensible books at first, later pages are filled with dodgy-looking manga with the occasional ‘normal’ book interspersed. Anyone else have this problem?

@LadybirdDaphne Yes! I go to "See All Deals" & there are 400 pages! Used to be anything between 80 & 120.

Edited to say that that the later pages are the saame as you are finding.

Yes, lots of trawling through rubbish. I'm willing to set an hour aside to work through it - worth it for the bargains. Lots of Georgette Heyers on today btw

Amazon used to clearly categorise the Kindle monthly deals and I’m not sure why they changed it - probably profit-related. I can’t be bothered trawling so every so often instead I look at the best selling and movers and shakers lists.

Congrats @AgualusasL0ver🥳

On my phone, I select all discounts and sort by price low to high. That shunts all the manga ones to the end. I stop browsing once the kindle price gets to £1.29 or whatever so I never get as far as the manga again 😀

Thanks everyone, I’ll try doing a sort next month! Also helps when everyone shares what they’ve bought - looks like @EineReiseDurchDieZeit found some good ones.

I just put anything I come across that I fancy reading on my Amazon wish list and then just check that to see what’s gone down in price. Saves having to trawl through all the deals!

That’s what I do too, Chessie.

Juts finished Jonathan Coe's The Proof of My Innocence. Set mainly during the febrile days of Truss' premiership, this is an odd confection of a book which is fairly entertaining and moves at a pace- but at times it is irritatingly meta. The page on everything being Woke did make me chortle , though.

The Jonathan Coe is also in the deals today. It was quite meta but enjoyable I thought, he did spoof the different genres cleverly.

125. Havoc - Rebecca Wait. This was a bit odd. It's set in a girls boarding school in the 80s that is falling apart and has a headmistress obsessed with nuclear war. The story is narrated by Ida, a Scottish girl who joins in the sixth form, and Eleanor, one of the teachers. I guess it's meant to be a sort of satire on school stories but the jokes felt a bit obvious. And the school was pretty much Roedean. Having been at an all girls boarding school in the 80s, maybe I wasn't the right audience? Part of the way through, girls start coming down with a mysterious illness and the second half of the book is more of an exploration of that, with journalists and doctors making an appearance. I just don't really know what it was trying to be, though I did want to know what happened.

I have that one on my Amazon shopping list!

I quite enjoyed reading Havoc though it was rather strange. I've read The Proof of My Innocence from the library but am pleased to now have my own copy, courtesy of the daily deals.

It often takes a few hours, up to a day, for the monthly deals to actually be useful to browse through. I also usually do a sort by price, but the bargains are also mixed up with a lot of Amazon's own publications.

Apart from a number of books already mentioned, I bought a debut novel by Heather Clark, Scrapbook. I recognised her name as she wrote an excellent and very long biography of Sylvia Plath, Red Comet, a few years ago.

From my wishlist,
Lola Jaye, The Manual for Good Wives - was planning to borrow this from the library
Sarah Dunant, The Marchesa - historical fiction set in Renaissance Italy

I bought a copy of Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits - her first novel - and Tim Winton, Dirt Music - an Australian novel published in 2001 which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

123 . Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss

The arresting imagery in the prologue of a girl being led to an uncertain fate, really made me feel like I was going to love this, but it wasn’t to be. Only loosely connected to the prologue; the bulk of the book focuses on Silvie, a young girl dragged along to an Iron Age re-enactment by her Dad and I found it deathly dull. I did say to myself that I wouldn’t read another Sarah Moss after Night Waking but she’s popular on the thread so I thought I’d give her a second chance. 131 pages should not drag. Not for me.

Oh the shame of it - I've just scrolled through the first 60 pages of the kindle monthly deals and have found no fewer than 12 books that I have bought and not yet read.
Timely reminder for nowanearly to RWYO!!!! 😊

I sate my monthly deal frenzy by adding them to wish list. Then I wait a few days to see which ones I really want!

That’s a good idea- I’ve really curbed myself this time. 2026 is going to be a year of reading favourite authors and books I already own I think, trying to make a start now.

Finished 2 more
Ravencry by Ed McDonald this is the second in a grimdark fantasy series which I listened to on Audible. Well-narrated, pacy and plotty- great audiobook. Going straight onto the next and final part for my next audio read.

Days of Light by Megan Hunter
This book is loosely based on the life of Virginia Woolf’s niece and covers a number of turning points in the protagonist’s life on the same date in April- the first of which is a family meal on Easter Sunday 1938. It feels very like Atonement in some ways and Ivy’s character voice could come from any number of writer’s - I never felt she had her own. It also lost momentum about half way through and I didn’t find Ivy completely convincing as a character. Okay but disappointing.

I bought Naomi Alderman's book The Future as I've been really enjoying her substack. She's just challenged everyone to spend half their average daily screen time reading each day in November. I also got Isabella Nag and the pot of basil by Oliver Darkshire as I really enjoyed his non fiction book about an antiquarian bookshop. I've been in a bit of a reading slump since September with a stressful new job but managed to finish a book this morning so hopefully I can get back into the swing of things now. I've just picked up Helm from the library and the new Lily King.

195. Romantic Comedy - Curtis Sittenfeld

Loved this - a bold.

This is the story of Sally Milz, a writer on The Night Owls, which is a very lightly veiled version of Saturday Night Live. Having had a failed 'starter marriage' in her early 20s, she has more or less given up on relationships, apart from a vague booty call arrangement with Gene. At work in 2018, she meets gorgeous musician and guest host Noah Brewster when working on a sketch with him, in the same show where Sally has pitched a sketch on why attractive celeb women fall for average looking male writers, but not vice versa. Sally is a great character whose strengths and insecurities are well written and compelling.

I managed to scroll the deals AND go into an actual book shop and not buy anything yesterday. I did pick up a Turkish writer I saw in the window, and almost paid, but then I put it back.

I am easily in the hundreds for unread across Kindle and shelves and I’ve now finished spending my voucher so am trying to settle down a bit.

Things that are in the monthly deals which I already own or have added to Wish List @LadybirdDaphne

Rodham - Curtis Sittenfeld
All the Colours of the Dark - Chris Whitaker
How to Disappear - Gillian McAllister
Archangel - Robert Harris
The Martian - Andy Weir
Dark Matter - Michelle Paver
Colditz - Ben McIntyre
Tudors in Love - Sarah Gristwood
A Life of my Own - Claire Tomalin
The Birth of Venus - Sarah Dunant
A Place Called Winter - Patrick Gale