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

Merry Christmas all! I have been very lucky with my book haul (my mum is also a massive reader so is very generous buying books for me).

Hope everyone has a lovely day.

Happy Christmas to everyone. I hope that you’re all having a lovely day. I’m very envious of all your great hauls. I moved just 2 weeks ago so we’re not celebrating Christmas until January so no books yet but I just discovered the 12 Days of Kindle Sale and I’ve treated myself to a few.

Thank you @Southeastdweller as ever - and happy Christmas to you and all 50 bookers

46 The Battle for Spain: the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 by Antony Beevor

‘Leaflets appealing for resistance to the bitter end blew in the wind, along with identity cards that had been thrown away.’

This has been a bit of a beast. A big solid military history is harder these days with my phone-shredded concentration, and I did struggle with the patchwork of different organisations that made up the two sides. It’s also relentlessly depressing, as civil wars that act as proxies for a bubbling wider conflict and training grounds for two militaristic dictatorships will always be. But ultimately it is rewarding. Not quite as beautiful as his co-authored ‘Paris after the liberation’, it is nonetheless an elegantly and carefully written narrative that by all accounts is well based on the evidence, not easy in a conflict that has as many myths as histories (I finally know what the band Durutti Column thought they were on about. Feels too bleak to cry about but nonetheless, knowing the post-fascist miracle that is modern Spain, I couldn’t help welling up.

Also many thanks to I believe @Megbusset who wrote about Gamesmasters and also I think the Ian Leslie Beatles book - both received with immense pleasure by DP today 💐

Lovely book pics. No books here, but I’ve got a Waterstones voucher which I might spend on a cook book.

Merry Christmas 50 Bookers - lovely to see all the books received🌲. I didn't receive any this year, although I have yet to see my lovely SIL, who often buys me a well chosen book, so hope is not lost! I hope you'll all get the chance to carve out some reading time over the next few days.

What a stash @ChessieFL

@DuPainDuVinDuFromage so many people have got that this year due to me raving about it. I feel quite nervous!!

My haul - if MN uploads properly. Looking forward to the reviews from everyone next year! ( @ChessieFL your non-fics look intriguing)

Just squeezing in my last book of the year. I could probably manage another couple before the 31st but I’m going to call it a day at a nice round number!

100. Murder While You Work - Susan Scarlett

This is Noel Streatfeild writing for adults under her lighter alter ego. Judy Rest takes up a wartime posting at a factory and is billeted with lovable Mrs Former and her middle-aged daughter Rose. Unfortunately, Mrs Former's tyrannical granddaughter-in-law Clara Roal is also in residence and runs the household with a rod of iron. When sudden deaths start happening, Judy is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery….with the help of the young man, Nicholas Parsons (yes, really 😬 ) who’s getting fond of her. Not exactly the world’s most gripping crime mystery but it made for a nice, easy, undemanding read.

A bit late in the day but Happy Christmas to you all. Hoping to get some time between now and the end of the year to read!

Forgot to mention that I read Good Wives yesterday. I adore professor B but really hate the Laurie and Amy stuff. Hate the silly baby talk with Meg’s twins too.

Happy Christmas everybody.
Books received here:
Hannah Kent
Always Home, Always Homesick: A Love Letter to Iceland
Mother Mary come to me
Arundati Roy
Bananagrams puzzle book

Merry Christmas to all. Very pleased to have received two books I asked for but no more as still aiming to RWYO next year.

Thanks to @Terpsichore who I think recommended The Riddle of the Labyrinth - Margalit Fox which I gave as a gift to young adult DS. He was most pleased as he has developed an interest this year in early Bronze age history and was impressed that I knew (I didn't!). I thought he would like the code breaking aspects so delighted it went down so well. It was a bit like the look he used to get when he opened a Lego Jedi Starcruiser or similar and I hadn't seen it for a while 😀 .

Merry Christmas to everyone! I did get a book - The National Trust Book of Scones, which I am v v pleased with as I want some less sugary things to bake. It has 50 recipes so that will be a 50 scone challenge for me to run alongside the 50 book challenge for next year.

Very much enjoying the photos of the piles of books.

A bit late but have found you all. Happy Christmas! I don't get given books as presents as my relatives rightly believe that I'll sort myself out in that area. Here's to another year of sharing the joy!

Delighted with my stash. You may notice I have two the same which is a coincidence but I'll take it as a sign. I've got my eye on some other people's gifts when they've finished them as well!
A very happy Christmas to you all 🎄
Hmm, not sure photo has attached but I'll give it a go.

Another attempt ...

I’m so pleased it was a success @CutFlowers!

whoops - posted in the wrong thread

No books here, in fact no presents for anyone as we went low key this year due to my joblessness. But since that’s resolved we are off for a family shopping trip in the new year for DS2’s 18th - healthy budgets all round, lunch etc.
A Woman of Substance, Barbara Taylor Bradford
This is quite famous, so I’m sure many already know it, or the 1985 TV series. This is a family saga (really Emma Harte = substance saga), we follow Emma in a rags to riches story where she becomes an international business tycoon from a housemaid at the big house.
I did keep reading so I liked it enough, and I can see in 1979 it might have been a bit more punchy, but honestly Emma and her determination to make something of herself was just a bit annoying and her dislike of the big house family unfounded until a certain point really. Everything she touches turns to gold, she gets lifelong, solid friends along the way and all men want her - and she has green eyes - you know how I know, because approximately every 250 words we hear about her eyes. Everything is described in excessive detail, every person who enters the room we know their hair colour and style, their eye colour - always special for those we need to remember. It was just too much and Emma was annoying for a lot of the time. Now trying to watch the series, and there is a new one with Brenda Blythen as the older Emma in 2026.

Merry Christmas 50 Bookers! Am loving the Christmas book photos and lists. @Cherrypi I really want to read the Arundhati Roy memoir. And @Terpsichore I want to read the Helen Garner one! @AgualusasL0ver I'm very glad to hear that you have a bit of luxury planned for the New Year in order to make up for your abstemious Christmas!

My family doesn't dare to choose books for me either, ha. But I got an excellent haul due to giving them very strict instructions about which books I wanted. The Alba de Cespedes books are ones I've already read, but wanted to own and reread, a bit like you @InTheCludgie . And as will be obvious, I'm all ready now for the Les Miz read-along (which I can start with great enthusiasm and then fall behind on in my usual fashion!).

A few more new books. The Coe and Faludi ones I bought for myself (Coe for a January book group read, Faludi on the strong recommendation of a friend).

The other two were gifts from me to DH, but I also plan to read them myself, cough cough. The Carr book I know is very popular on these threads and I thought DH would like it. The Medieval Bodies book DH actually requested (along with several other nonfiction books not pictured), but it looks like the kind of thing I would like as well.

Merry Christmas! I did rather well this year. My family are all readers as well and so we basically swap books (from our wishlists) on Christmas Day. You may recognise some that have been reviewed on here this year.

@cassandre the Roy memoir was handsold me very passionately by a bookseller in my local Waterstones when I was buying the Helen Garner diaries for my mum so I took a picture of where it was in the shop for my husband. He even got me a signed copy. I loved a month in the country. I hope you enjoy it. The author has a blue plaque in my town.

Fans of Gabriel García Márquez may want to check Kindle Daily Deals today.

66 The God of the Woods - Liz Moore Much read by 50 bookers so I won’t go into detail - a teenage girl goes missing while on summer camp in the Adirondacks, coincidentally in the same place as her 8-year-old brother disappeared (and was never found) before she was born. We jump between time periods, with flashbacks to the events culminating in the boy’s disappearance in 1961, as well as the events of the summer of 1975 (the book’s “present day”). Good story with a lovely sense of place.