26ish books 2026

15 Wild Dark Shore, Charlotte McConaghy

I didn’t make time for reading in the last couple of months. I was back to overdoing doomscrolling too. This book helped me read again. I found it very engaging. I expected a certain ending because of something I saw in an online review. Luckily, it didn’t spoil it for me. 4 out of 5 stars.

1. The Thursday Murder Club, Richard Osman
2. Life Impossible, Matt Haig
3. Atomic Habits, James Clear
4. The Unfinished Business of Eadie Browne, Freya North
5. Thinking 101, Woo-Kyoung Ahn
6. One of Us, Elisabeth Day
7. You’ve Got This, Michaela Dunbar
8. James, Percival Everett
9. Manifest, Roxie Nafousi
10. We Are Here, David Nicholls
11. How to Focus, Thich Nhat Hanh
12. True Love, Thich Nhat Hanh
13. An Artist of the Floating World, Kazuo Ishiguro
14. How to talk to absolutely anyone, Mark Rhodes

Morning :)
Books read so far:
(1) The French for Christmas by Fiona Valpy
(2) The Outside Boy by Jeannie Cummins
(3) Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins
(4) All the Broken Places by John Boyne
(5) A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
(6) Crooked Branch by Jeannie Cummins
(7) Nesting by Roisin O'Donnell
(8) Never Lie by Frieda McFadden
(9) All Her Fault by Andrea Mara (Audio book)
(10) The Locked Door by Frieda McFadden
(11) All the Light We Cannot See by By Anthony Doer
(12) The Book of Lost Names' by Kristin Harmel
(13) The Room on Rue Amélie by Kristin Harmel
(14) The Names by Florence Knapp
(15) The Stationary Shop of Tehran by Marjan Kamali
(16) Her Husband's Lover by Patricia Crouch
(17) Here One Moment by Liane Moriarity
(18) The New Neighbours by Claire Douglas
(19) Don't Let Him In by Lisa Jewell
(20) One Day by David Nicholls
(21) Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
(22) My Brother's Secret by Maggie Hartley
(23) Us by David Nicholls

Latest book....

(24) You are here by David Nicholls

Enjoyed this - it's to be made into a mini-series on bbc so looking forward to watching that -
Happy reading everyone. 😀

29 Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd - I prefer some of his other ones though I can understand why people really like it. Some of it had the slightest shade of Iris Murdoch whose writing I can't stand. It is an interesting study in ambition. Around page 260 I couldn't understand how it was going to fill another 140 pages with plot but wow he does and what happens is very well written.

30 Love is Blind by William Boyd - a very good book. Following Brodie Moncur a scottish piano tuner around Europe/the world. Some of the scottish characters are very interesting and well written, it has a wide and interesting span. Very well written.

31 My Friends by Fredrik Backman - I did not like the writing style. Looking on Amazon I can see he is wildly popular but not for me. I found the style poor, it was also repetitve, the art thing was over done as was how amazing the kids were; lots of full of golden light, too special for this earth on repeat. It had a few wonderfully insightful lines here and there that almost made it worth reading but I would not have finished it if I had not read it over the course of some long and delayed train journeys. It was a bit twee too.

40 - Pen Pal by G.T Geissinger
2.5 ⭐️

This has been in my TBR for a long time but the cover put me over. However, I’ve read a lot of raving reviews which specifically said ‘don’t let the cover put you off’ so I gave it a go.

Unfortunately this book didn’t live up to the hype for me at all. What was it? Psychological thriller? Ghost story? Romance? I thought the sex scenes were just too much and it totally distracted from the story.

🏊27 - Slow Horses by Mick Herron I’m in a spy fiction phase so enjoyed this! Lots of twists and turns and double bluffing which kept me hooked. Will read the next one in the series at some stage

@sleepfortheweek
I also “enjoyed” reading My Dark Vanessa. An extremely dark subject matter portrayed so realistically. My DD was roughly the same age as the main character when I read it, it really affected me.

@sleepfortheweek love my dark Vanessa too - I read it, I imagine it’s very tough to listen to!

33 Girl, Interrupted - Susanna Kaysen

cant even tell you how many times I’ve read this but the last was quite a long time ago. Re-read because my 14yr old just read it then we watched the film together and she wanted to discuss further with it fresher in my mind. My main thoughts now really are that I’m so impressed at the film they managed to make out of it and how borderline personality disorder in her words does sound like what I and a lot of my female friends went through in adolescence. Very interested reading with the perspective of a woman in her 40’s compared to the severely depressed teenager I was when I first read it

Just finished my 38th this year, ‘Everything was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt’. I really enjoyed it, wasn’t a long read (well listen, as I use audible) and although wasn’t the cheeriest of stories it was an interesting read.

my favourite so far this year was ‘My dark Vanessa’ - a very uncomfortable read but so wonderfully written and narrated

13 Three Days in June by Anne Tyler

'Weddings aren't just about the happy couple'.
From The Sunday Times bestseller comes this short (165 pages) novel about the day before, the day of and the day after a wedding.
A look at family relations, work, marriage - everyday life. A nice read.
I'm going to seek out some of Anne Tyler's other work.

3 stars out of 5

11- pa salt the story of atlas.

I have absolutely loved reading the seven sisters. I only started as my husband brought me this not realising it was the final book in a series. Reading this has made me want to go back and reread each of the sisters stories again.

At a loss as to what to read next.

16. Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart.

I read Shuggie Bain a couple of years ago and thought it was an incredible book especially the way he writes about the nuances of relationships. But it wasn’t an easy read so I held out a while for mungo. This book I was expecting to find easier but I truely found it really hard to read. Beautifully written but some very very dark, disturbing parts that I was not expecting. But really again an amazing book despite been a very tough read. He really develops his characters so well and is so talented and capturing the complexities of relationships.

26 - Restless by William Boyd found this in a charity shop am having enjoyed his more recent spy novels (the Gabriel Dax ones) I couldn’t resist another. Really enjoyed it - classic ww2 spy fiction with great characters. Some confusing parts what with all the double agent stuff so had to concentrate but had fun reading it over the last couple of days

32 The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong

a Young made addicted to painkillers and lying to his mother in order to not disappoint her is rescued from throwing himself off a bridge by an elderly woman whom he subsequently moves in with cares for as her dementia increases. A bit day in life, very character driven with beautiful writing and many many characters that you root for. I love his writing
4 out of 5 stars

12 The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn

This is quite a chunky book and slow going in parts so felt a bit of a slog to get through. It was ok though. Follows a family (the 3 children in particular) through to WWII. A story of love and loss. Nicely written.

3 stars out of 5.

@drspouse I really enjoyed In The Unlikely Event by Judy Blume too. She has such a recognisable voice - it must be easily 30 years minimum since I read her teen books but it felt so familiar as soon as I started.

25 - The Amateur by Chris Bohjalian
I’ve never heard of this author before but I thought this boon was excellent. Follows the story of a teenage golf prodigy in the late 70s, and how a tragic accident ricocheted through her life. A really interesting exploration of misplaced guilt, and how young women were treated and viewed in that era. Will definitely look out for more of his work

We also watched A Gentleman in Moscow on Paramount+ with Ewan McGregor. Loved it - highly recommend.

DD finished all the books she brought on holiday so I went to a second hand bookshop that had a few English books, and gave her back her Kindle, so I read
53 The Third Wife by Lisa Jewell. Mildly suspenseful, good holiday read.
54 The Second Penguin Book of English Short Stories. Totally not what I would read normally, I developed an aversion to literature after O level compulsion, but I really enjoyed most of the stories in this.
Then on Kindle
55 Summer Sisters by Judy Blume. Definitely an adult novel though very good.

I seem to be one out but cannot work out where I've gone wrong.

After a false start where I began A is For Alibi, which my 10 year old told me I'd already read...only to realise by page 2 she was right...
21. Leonard and Hungry Paul by Ronan Hession (should be accents over the vowels in Ronan but I can't work out how to do them.)
At times I thought this was a bit wordy, then I found myself re-reading sections and enjoying the writing. Perhaps this is the type of book that maybe you aren't sure what to make of while reading but stays with you. It reminded me a bit of "Fortnight In September" if that helps anyone.

Titular characters are awkward introverts who live at home with their mum / parents well into adulthood. You spend time with a few other characters around them too. The opening set up is Leonard's mum dies leaving him with a new sort of loneliness, and Hungry Paul's sister is about to get married and, in doing so, shift the family dynamic. There's been something of a failure to launch in the conventional sense but our 'heroes' are making progress in their own way.

1. The September House
2. Our Endless numbered days.
3. Then she was gone
4. 1984
5. The Crossing Places Elly Griffiths
6. Game Changer
7. Heated Rivalry
8. Verity
9. One of us is lying

I have been awol a while, started out so well this year but really slacked off the last couple of months.

I am currently reading Mania by Lionel Shriver.

27 Trio by William Boyd I thought this was a brilliant character study. It is about 3 people who are (tangentially and very) involved in making a film. I thought it was brilliant in the descirption of the characters and what they do...until near the end. I often find endings rage inducing and disappointing, this was not rage inducing but for some of the characters the ending did not seemed to fit. I think he tried to write an ending but maybe it should have just stopped (which I often do not like) rather than had an ending as it were.

28 The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier I was not so keen on this at the start and then it was quite gripping. I read the Glassmaker last year which was in a different league to this (and a few themes or motives were present in both). The characters are those involved in the commissioning, artistic creation and manufacture of famous tapestries in France and Belgium and so are across the class spectrum. Different chapters are written from their view points and I found it very well written.

I think both writers are at the top of their game and, though they are prolific, the works they turn out are so much better than most out there.

Book 22 Murderland by Caroline Fraser.
Grim subject matter but mainly interesting. The author wrote the superb Prairie Fires about Laura Ingals Wilder which is why I picked up this book as an impulse buy.
I think I'm going to read the first book of the Cazalet chronicles next, which will be a contrast 🙂

20: The Artist by Lucy Steeds
For me, this was the perfect book for the end of summer. Some of the descriptions (rather than the plot) made me nostalgic for lovely holidays in France

21: One Hundred Days by Lukas Barfuss
A complete contrast - a book set in Rwanda at the time of the genocide and how a young, naive man gets caught up in it.

17 should have been the book thief but I had to pause it as of all of my library books came at once.

So,

17- Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke.

I struggled with it but glad that I finished it.

I’m now reading Another life by Kristin Hannah.
My next three tbr are Kristin Hannah 😂

28 Kill Your Darlings - Peter Swanson
A reverse psychological thriller that starts in 2023 with Wendy plotting to kill her husband Thom, and moves backwards in time to 1982 to reveal the dark secrets binding them. A clever story that looks at the effects of guilt, with plenty of film-noir references.

29 Flesh - David Szalay
DNF, didn't care!