50 Books Challenge 2025 Part Nine

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the ninth and final thread of the 50 Books Challenge for this year.

The challenge was 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 , the seventh thread here and the eighth thread

Thank you @elkiedee.

Sorry, I was a bit slow to realise there was a new thread and have been in pre-Christmas rush of shopping, cleaning and wrapping (but sadly not reading).

Apologies to list haters - here's mine:

1. Small Bomb at Dimperley - Lissa Evans

2. James - Percival Everett

3. Five Little Pigs - Agatha Christie

4. Spook Street - Mick Herron

5. Shy Creatures - Clare Chambers

6. Hangman Island - Kate Rhodes

7. Blaming - Elizabeth Taylor

8. Strange Sally Diamond - Liz Nugent

9. The Thirteen Problems - Agatha Christie

10. The Wizard of the Kremlin - Giuliano da Empoli

11. The House on the Strand - Daphne du Maurier

12. The Photograph - Penelope Lively

13. Ballet Shoes - Noel Streatfeild

14. Witness 8 - Steve Cavanagh

15. The Eighth Hour - Linda Segtnan

16. Kitchen - Banana

17. Towards Zero - Agatha Christie

18. Three Act Tragedy - Agatha Christie

19. Paper Cup - Karen Campbell

20. The Ink Black Heart - Robert Galbraith

21. The Seven Dials Mystery - Agatha Christie

22. The Good, the Bad and the History - Jodi Taylor

The Very First Damned Thing - Jodi Taylor (novella)

23. Just One Damned Thing After Another - Jodi Taylor

24. A Symphony of Echoes - Jodi Taylor

When a Child is Born - Jodi Taylor (novella)

25. My Father's House - Joseph O'Connor

26. A Second Chance - Jodi Taylor

Roman Holiday - Jodi Taylor (novella)

27. Cards on the Table - Agatha Christie

28. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

29. North Woods - Daniel Mason

30. A Trail Through Time - Jodi Taylor

Christmas Present - Jodi Taylor (novella)

31. No Time Like the Past - Jodi Taylor

32. What Could Possibly Go Wrong - Jodi Taylor

Shops and Stings and Wedding Rings (novella) - Jodi Taylor

33. Lies, Damned Lies and History - Jodi Taylor

The Great St Mary's Day Out (novella)- Jodi Taylor
My Name is Markham (novella) - Jodi Taylor

34. And the Rest is History - Jodi Taylor

A Perfect Storm (novella) - Jodi Taylor
Christmas Past (novella) - Jodi Taylor

35. An Argumentation of Historians - Jodi Taylor

The Battersea Barricades (novella) - Jodi Taylor - Jodi Taylor
The Steam Pump Jump (novella) - Jodi Taylor
And Now for Something Completely Different (novella) - Jodi Taylor

36. Hope for the Best - Jodi Taylor

When did you last see your father (novella) - Jodi Taylor
Why is nothing ever simple (novella) - Jodi Taylor

37. Plan for the Worst - Jodi Taylor

The Ordeal of the Haunted Room (novella) - Jodi Taylor

38. Another Time Another Place - Jodi Taylor

The Toast of Time (novella) - Jodi Taylor

39. A Catalogue of Catastrophe - Jodi Taylor

40. The Good, the Bad and the History of- Jodi Taylor

41. The Crooked House - Agatha Christie

42. Of all Faiths and None - Andrew Tweeddale

43. A Remembrance of Death - Andrew Tweeddale

Lights! Camera! Mayhem! (novella) - Jodi Taylor
Christmas Pie (novella) - Jodi Taylor

44. Some Tame Gazelle - Barbara Pym

45. Learning to Swim - Clare Chambers

46. Death in the Clouds - Agatha Christie

47. Island in the Sun - Katie Fforde

48. Small Great Things - Jodi Picoult

49. The Corinthian - Georgette Heyer

50. The Scarlet Papers - Matthew Richardson

51. Moon Tiger - Penelope Lively

52. The Cypress Maze - Fiona Valpy

53. The Cut - Chris Brookmyre

54. An Officer and a Spy - Robert Harris

55. One, Two, Buckle my Shoe - Agatha Christie

56. Glorious Exploits - Ferdia Lennon

57. Caledonian Road - Andrew O'Hagan

58. Kiss Myself Goodbye - Ferdinand Mount

59. The Talisman Ring - Georgette Heyer

60. Platform Seven - Louise Doughty

61. The Foundling - Stacey Halls

62. Mrs England - Stacey Halls

63. The Man who made Husbands Jealous - Jilly Cooper

64. Syndicate - Felix Francis

65. The Secret Place - Tana French

66. Kristin Lavransdatter : The Wreath - Sigrid Undset

67. Lady of Quality - Georgette Heyer

68. My Family - David Baddiel

69. The House of Doors - Tan Twan Eng

70. The Sittaford Mystery - Agatha Christie

71. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

72. Miss Marple's Final Cases - Agatha Christie

73. Appassionata - Jilly Cooper

74. Kristin Lavransdatter : The Wife - Sigrid Undset

75. Nesting - Roisin O'Donnell

76. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë

77. London Rules - Mick Herron

78. Soldier, Sailor - Claire Kilroy

79. Patricia Brent, Spinster - Herbert George Jenkins

80. Missing Person : Alice - Simon Mason

81. Kristin Lavransdatter : The Cross - Sigrid Undset

82. The Forsyte Saga (Book 1 - A Man of Property) - John Galsworthy

83. The Forsyte Saga (Book 2 - In Chancery) - John Galsworthy

84. Snowdrift and Other Stories - Georgette Heyer

I am currently on Book 3 of The Forsyte Saga which I need to finish before I see the second RSC play in 10 days time. Not anticipating much reading time until guests leave on 28 December.....

My yearly number of books has been 88 for a few years (I think) so I am lagging unless I squeeze some quick reads in at the end of the year!

That’s quite an in-your-face list @TimeforaGandT

Just realised I posted on the old thread so here’s my reply to Elspeth again.

Thank you. I must admit, with all those layers of clothing and all the beards, I don’t think I’d be thinking of sex much.

In a hut in the long polar night
sex wasn’t much on my mind
all the blubber and smoke
put me right off my stroke
And my libido nose dived

The list haters will really hate that one @TimeforaGandT !

Great list @TimeforaGandT
I’ve finished two more today
193 King Sorrow by Joe Hill (audio)
Recent release- a group of teenagers conjure up a dragon to protect one of them from being blackmailed. What they don’t realise is they have to feed it a life every year or one of them will die. This was presented as dark academia meets Stephen King’s (the author’s father) It. What it was was silly entertainment and enjoyable for all that in amongst the fairly dark reads I appear to have picked for myself this winter.

194 Night Crawling by Leila Mottley
I think I’m probably one of the last people on the thread to read this. 17 year old Kiara has to sell herself to pay the rent when she is abandoned in every way that counts by the adults in her life. This leads her further into a life of exploitation. I liked that Kiara was more than her victim hood- she had friends, a little boy she took care of and a love interest too. However this was dark and sad and I’m sure realistic. Hard to believe the author was only 17 when she started to write it. Probably bold- need to sit with it a while.
I’m in the middle of reading another three which I reckon I will probably finish for the end of the year- Project Hail Mary (audio)Buckeye (hardback) and American Dirt (ebook) I don’t think any of the three are shaping up to be bold for me, and doubt I will finish the next book on my tbr (Wolf Hall) before the year is out so will probably do my round up on the other thread tomorrow.

I’ve just laughed so much at your intermittently bigly list @TimeforaGandT 😂😂

Say it isn’t so that the audio of Project Hail Mary isn’t a bold or American Dirt 😔 @ÚlldemoShúl shocked!

To be fair @EineReiseDurchDieZeit I’m early on in both - 11% PHM and 26% AD so I’m being premature in my judgement!

Both huge bolds for me!

@TimeforaGandT Snorted tea out of my nose almost at your list. I desperately wanted to go the Stratford and spent a whole afternoon working out how to see The Forsyte Saga and Macbeth but alas failed, do let us (me) know how it was.

Just HOW huge are we talking Eine? In terms of font that is?😂

I also laughed out at @TimeforaGandT 's list and @Stowickthevast 's wry comment. You gotta love the crazy MN list formatting, it's the Christmas gift that keeps on giving! or not

This link seems pertinent to the interests of the thread…

www.theguardian.com/books/2024/dec/21/the-best-crime-novels-to-read-christmas

@cassandre SUPERMASSIVEBOLDS!!

GLAD TO HEAR IT EINE

😂

I love @TimeforaGandT 's jump scare list and am so glad it wasn't me who did it 😆

98. Reasons to be Cheerful - Nina Stibbe

I just checked back and discovered that it was 2019 when I read Nina Stibbe's Man at the Helm, the first of her vaguely autobiographical novels about her alter-ego Lizzie Vogel’s youth in Leicester, spent growing up in a hopelessly dysfunctional family. This is the third, picked up in a charity shop while I’m away for Christmas, and was a complete delight.
By now Lizzie is 19, restless for change and hoping to embark at last on life’s great adventure. What she actually does is find a job as a dental assistant working for JP Wintergreen and his senior nurse/girlfriend Tammy Gammons. She meets Andy Nicolello, who never quite becomes her boyfriend despite her best efforts, learns to drive, and grows up in many hilarious (and also a few heartbreaking) ways.
Stibbe's style is probably quite marmite, so it’s likely to leave some people cold, but I spent most of this sniggering like Muttley with occasional outright guffaws. Maybe not a book for anyone with a dental phobia (it opens with a fairly wince-making scene), but it’s a very funny, mostly light-hearted read.

Yet another book taken from a recommendation on here, Havoc by Rebecca Wait. This was great! A crumbling, second rate boarding school for girls sees an outbreak of what used to be known as ‘mass hysteria’, which we see from the point of view of Ida (6th form student), Eleanor (geography teacher) and James (neurologist, through faxes to his mentor).
Most people have a Secret, the petty minutiae of a boarding school is given free and hilarious rein, there are some touching moments to do with following your dreams and trying to escape past mistakes.

I did not expect my list to cause that much comment!

@AgualusasL0ver (and anyone else who is interested), the first play in The Forsyte Saga is called Irene (and, as the title suggests, tells her story). It is narrated by Fleur who is trying to understand her family's history and uncover the secrets. Characters and plots are pared back from the book to focus on Irene and her story (and the play covers the first two books). It's very simply staged with only chairs and lots of movements as different family members meet to chat etc. It was very good. We couldn’t get tickets for consecutive nights so are back in early January to see the second play (Fleur).

@TimeforaGandT does your list look like a normal sized font to you? If so then all the comments will be baffling!

Yes, it looks normal size to me (with some irregular spacing). Is it huge for everyone else? Apologies all!

Can you see

THIS IN HUGE LETTERS

@TimeforaGandT? if you can, that’s what most of your list was like…

I assumed you’d discovered the wonder of bigly font and were keen to use it!

@noodlezoodle on the last thread you mention Death in Zion, I love these books too, I have Death in Yosemite and for some reason I particularly enjoy reading about the people who swim past the no swimming signs (at the top of thundering high waterfalls one just spent an hour hiking last!) or people who fall off cliffs after climbing the safety barriers. I'll have to look for the Zion one.

Pigs in Heaven by Barbara King solver

Number 50! Really enjoyed this. It's a follow up of Turtle and her mum Taylor who gets themselves into a bit of legal trouble after a TV appearance. It could stand alone, but since The Bean Trees is great I would read that first. The characters come to life so well.

Hoping I have time for one or two more books, I have finished with work now for this year and have little pressing to do, so might just put on Christmas lights and have a glass of wine in the evening (afternoon?) and read!

A couple of short reviews from me before the festivities start.

The Art Thief, Michael Finkel

This is the true story of Stephane Breitwieser who over the course of 8 years stole over 200 works of art, keeping them in his loft-bedroom at his mother’s house. I thought this was a cracking story but I didn’t love the execution. Did the author want me to feel sorry for Breitwieser??? It felt like a very sympathetic portrait of a massive narcissist.

North Woods, Daniel Mason

I really liked this one! This is about a house in Massachusetts and the lives of its inhabitants beginning with the story of a puritan couple, with each tale bringing us toward the present day. I really loved the writing, the sense of place, how the stories are subtly interwoven (and the ghosts). I feel like this would be a good book club book.

I’m on the hunt for a short book so that I can get to my goal of 30 before the year is out. I’ve got The Mirror & The Light on the go on audio but it’s so incredibly long I’ve got no chance of finishing it. Just 30 hours left!

Happy Christmas to all! Thanks for having me this year, have loved following along with your reading.