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

@MonOncle have you read Small Things Like These? It’s pretty short.

@RazorstormUnicorn I have been waiting for Pigs in Heaven to be reduced but may have to buy it anyway as I loved The Bean Trees

@SheilaFentiman thank you, I read it last year and loved it, beautiful book!

Thanks @EineReiseDurchDieZeit, I’ve added a couple of those to my kindle list.

@TimeforaGandT this is how your list looks on the mobile site:

Oh really?? Which ones

@MonOncle how about one of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's books? Some of them are v short.

Thank you @SheilaFentiman- I am on the app and everything is one size. I didn't realise it was possible to change font size! Slightly scared to post end of year lists now - perhaps I need to do it via my laptop and the website.....

@MonOnclehave you read Mothering Sunday, The Sense of an Ending, or The Reluctant Fundamentalist? All excellent and super-short.

Little Women
Fancied something a bit festive and this hit the spot. although I skipped the silly poems and would have been happy to skip all the God stuff too.

Don't worry about it, TimeforaGandT, I'm sure it was just a weird MN fluke, and provided some comic relief (which I for one welcome at this time of year as I always find the Christmas prep a bit stressful!). The only downside was that I couldn't tell which books actually were bolds for you.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit

Based on your brilliant one sentence reviews, I’ve added:
The God Of The Woods by Liz Moore
Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens
Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang
Immaculate Conception by Ling Ling Huang
Unsticky by Sarra Manning

There were also a couple I’ve already read this year and an embarrassing number that, when I searched Amazon, said I’d already bought them! Next year, I can’t promise I won’t buy more, but I want to sort my kindle chronologically, and work through, because some of them sound really good!

I won’t achieve 50 books this year, but I’m on track for 40, which will be a personal best.

53 Gillespie and I by Jane Harris. This is a dual timeline novel, with both timelines told from the perspective of Harriet Baxter. The main action takes place in 1888 to 1890, when she is in her 30s and living in Glasgow. She becomes friendly with a neighbouring family, the Gillespies, until a tragedy happens. The other shorter timeline takes place many years later, in 1933, when she decides to write a memoir of the events. I thought this started well and ended well, but sagged in the middle.

Not sure what to start now for my last book of the year!

I need to warn you about Unsticky then! I said it was the worst book I’d read in a long time but I was riveted to it! @TeamToeBeans!!

Almost at 50 though my current read is Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher and I'm only at the beginning.

44. Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism
    Robert Chapman
    A dense academic study on what capitalism gains from the concept of a normal person. Bit dull.

45. Helm
    Sarah Hall
    A collection of lives interacting with a wind in Cumbria. Great concept but I preferred North Woods.

46. The Christmas Tree Farm
    Laurie Gilmore
    Christmas romance fluff but I enjoyed it

47. The Christmas Book Hunt
    Jenny Colgan
    More Christmas romance and thoroughly enjoyable

48. Physics for Cats
    Tom Gauld
    Funny comics from the New scientist

49. Sea State: A Memoir
    Tabitha Lasley
    A journalist has an affair with an oil rig worker. I would have preferred more about the rigs

@Southeastdweller – thank you for the shiny new thread! 💐

@DesdamonasHandkerchief – thank you for sharing that. I have both the book and the audio and find them both utterly uncomprehensible!

@nowanearlyNicemum – safe travels. Jealous of your French Christmas!

129 A Christmas Promise – Anne Perry. Like the Elin Hilderbrand, I picked this up from the library Christmas display. It was just a short story. Nothing special and I’m kicking myself for forgetting who Anne Perry was! Again! Grrrr.

I’ll get another couple in before the end of the year. I’m almost finished The Kamogawa Food Detectives and I’m planning on starting and finishing Memento Mori as recommended on here. I just haven’t been able to get started on it. Not sure why. We’re spending Christmas with the inlaws and I’ve also brough HHhH with me. Not particularly festive, but RWYO that I really want to polish off before the New Year.

Noted, I won’t hold you responsible if it’s terrible 😂 because I won’t remember who suggested it by then

@Cherrypi 😂 at the Sea state review.

Thanks @Southeastdweller for the new thread. Not going to post my list here, will save it for the round-up thread. I've been in a bit of a reading slump, probably during to work and general Xmas stress - I dig out a book, try to read and get caught up with other things. I'm now off work until Monday and plan to get The Stand finished, plus complete the last two hours' listening I left of Dombey and Son. @Piggywaspushed thanks for the recommendation for Denzil Meyrick - I've nearly completed Murder at Holly House and it's been entertaining (when I can focus!). Im looking forward to reading the other two in the series.

99. Clara Reads Proust - Stéphane Carlier, trans. Polly Mackintosh

Clara Poitrenaud works at Cindy Coiffure, a nondescript hair salon in a provincial French town. She lives with her firefighter boyfriend JB and their unfriendly cat. Life is predictable, pleasant enough, but dull. Then one day, a customer leaves behind a copy of Swann's Way, the first volume of Proust's great epic. Clara begins to read it, and little by little, her life changes.

I'll be embarking on the final volume of In Search of Lost Time in the New Year, so this seemed like a good choice. It’s very short - it took me no more than an hour or two - and very French…no great insights, but a fun read.

Meri Kirihimete from New Zealand! 🎅

The Seventh Floor - David McCloskey unfortunately this series has been hit by diminishing returns and this instalment may be the end of the road for me. This is an incredibly poor ripoff of Tinker, tailor, Solider, Spy (a bold for me this year) with paper thin characters, poorly written women and dialogue, ridiculous genre tropes and plotting and ultimately I didn’t care one bit who the mole was. Stick to the podcasting business McCloskey!

I wanted to say Merry Christmas to you all - I post reviews intermittently but spend every Saturday morning with a cup of tea reading the weeks reviews and it is my fave start to the weekend. You’ve really expanded my reading horizons and I’m all the better for it.

Thankfully my library reservation of Strike arrived at the beginning of the week so hoping to spend the rest of my days off engrossed in something to finish of 2025.

Meri Kirihimete @LadybirdDaphne - hope you're having a lovely day so far.

MERRY CHRISTMAS MY FAVOURITE PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET 🎄🤶

Merry Christmas to all!