50 Books Challenge 2026 Part Three

@Stowickthevast I remember finding The Line Of Beauty silly because literally every character turned out to be gay

I couldn’t get over how boring this was, Dave’s life in the theatre world should have been interesting and just wasn’t at all. Nothing came off the page, I mean who wants to read about a mediocre literary festival unless you’re going to be sparklingly witty, they are bad enough to attend !

I can see why you would be annoyed!

Eine I did it as part of an online book. club last year. Loads of people loved it and raved about his writing, I was underwhelmed. The blurb made me keep expecting something to happen with Giles but no, nothing ever did. I thought the relationship with his mother was well done but the rest of it was rather dull.
I do wonder whether Hollinghurst does just write the same book over again. Gay sexual awakening, amazing time at uni and wowed by country houses and cultural life. Also on a personal level, as a mixed race kid who went to boarding school, I don't really feel like I need to read an old white guy's take on it.

The Paying Guests - Sarah Waters

By the author of Tipping the Velvet and many others (which I haven't read). A bold.

Set in the 1920s, Frances Wray and her mother live in a house in South London with little money, following the death of her two brothers in the war and her father from a heart attack. Somewhat to the horror of Mrs Wray, Frances must do all the domestic work as they cannot afford anything else, and the two women take in a young married couple (Lilian and Len) as lodgers.

It's hard to describe it further without spoilers but it builds an amazing atmosphere of domesticity, sacrificed dreams and the pursuit of happiness amidst duty.

14 Redwall - Brian Jacques

I was into this series as a young teen so thought I’d give it a reread. Sadly it didn’t quite live up to my memories of it- it’s written quite ‘young’ with lots of exclamation marks! and has none of the narrative complexity of classics like Watership Down.

9 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
I read this years ago and presumably lent my copy to somebody who never gave it back. As good as I remembered; lovely writing told from the POV of a ND teenager, documenting his attempts to understand the world around him while navigating his own rules for life.

21 . Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst

A biracial gay boy gets a scholarship to public school courtesy of the Hadlow family and the book then charts his life right through to old age.

This got off to a great start and I thought I was in for something special as protagonist David begins to reminisce following the death of his sponsor

It was not to be, the Hadlows are the most interesting part and they are barely in it.

Fuck me this was dull, I swear I’ve never read such a bloody boring book about a bloody boring bloke. I would say it’s more boring than the infamous BBB

This will be going in italics in my list

Has anyone read this ? Tripe!

21.The Storied Life of AJ Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
This was quite gorgeous. A widowed bookseller has his first edition of Tamerlane stolen and then has to rethink his life. It was a bit too saccharine for me to be a bold but I really enjoyed the writing. A gentle read overall.

22.Stardust by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess
A fantasy about a man in an alternate Victorian England who lives in the village of Wall which separates England from Faerie. He sees a falling star and is bidden by the girl he wants to marry to go and get it for her. A long quest ensues.
The first half of this was a slog. I am just not especially into fantasy. The second half was great though as the threads of the story came together.

23.Fenwomen by Mary Chamberlain
Thank you so much to whoever pointed me in the direction of this non fiction about women of the fens in 1970s. Although I am not from these parts I live about 10 miles from the village where these interviews took place. It is unthinkable how different life was such a short time ago with women aspiring to little more than being wives and keeping house. I found it slightly irritating that the place names close to the village were changed as I know the area well but I could have a good guess.

24.The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin
Science Fiction set on an alternate world where a man from an anarchist society moon colony goes to the capitalist main planet to share ideas about physics. A challenging read but very interesting ideas about politics, the nature of freedom, the exchange of knowledge. Read for a course and I am interested in seeing what the formal course material has to say about it.

25.Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon
Much read on here. I went to Athens a couple of weeks ago and thought I should give this a go. I really did not enjoy the first third. I found it brutal and the characters brutish and wasn’t especially interested. But it developed well and I raced through the second half. Worth persevering with for the growth in characters and relationships. It ends up having a delicate emotional touch in a world of brutality without being mawkish or overly sentimental.

Death and Boules - Ian Moore

The latest in the Follet Valley cosy crime series, featuring hapless B&B owner Richard and glamorous bounty hunter Valerie who team up to solve crimes in rural France. All very silly but I like them as a bit of light reading.

Death at the Sign of the Rook - Kate Atkinson

A reread of the most recent of the Jackson Brodie series. I love this one that features a murder mystery weekend at a country house hotel.

Carrie’s War - Nina Bawden

I don’t think I ever read this as a child - it certainly doesn’t ring any bells. It’s about Carrie and her brother Nick who are evacuated to a village in North Wales during the war. It’s a pretty simple story but has some great characters.

Eye Spy - C M Ewan

A thriller set on the Eurostar. Mark spots a suspicious looking man at the check-in, and then discovers this man is sitting near them on the train. He soon realises this isn’t a coincidence, and things go from bad to worse. I enjoyed this - I liked the ‘locked-room’ element of the train setting and it kept me engrossed.

@ÚlldemoShúl We're off to Berlin over Easter so was definitely planning on taking a copy of The Others with me. May also do The Director then.

Mrs Pearcey by Lottie Moggach

October 1890, Camden Square in Camden Town, north London: Hannah Teale loves to read magazines such as Girl's Own Paper, and has even sent in her own travel article - this is not published but the printed response is not totally discouraging. She is engaged to be married to Cosmo, a journalist on Fleet Street, and is looking forward to setting up a new home with him, browsing the advertisements for suitable properties to rent. Just days after dinner with his family, though, Cosmo's grandmother dies and turns out to have changed her will, leaving all her money to Cosmo's father's brother. They will have to live with his parents or her mother. Cosmo immediately starts talking of a plan to improve his prospects and earnings at work, by going undercover and being admitted to a lunatic asylum, then writing about the experience. Just a few days later, news breaks of a murder of a woman and baby nearby, and Hannah starts her own investigation. A woman called Mary Pearcey is arrested and Hannah realises she has met her.

This novel is based on a true story - Mary Pearcey was a real young woman who was convicted of murder in 1890. Hannah Teale and her fiancé, their families, friends, colleagues etc are fictional, and this novel is based on imagining all that was never reported in newspapers, and exploring some of the questions which have never been answered fully satisfactorily or at all.

The fictional plot of Mrs Pearcey is based on a series of coincidences and surprising events, but I enjoyed this story of Hannah's curiosity to look beyond the horizons of her everyday life and wedding plans. I loved all the social history, of the areas of London where everything takes place, of people, including many women, travelling to court and queueing up to get in and watch the trial. I feel I can imagine Hannah quite well, and worry about how quickly she might have become bored with the expectations of respectable married life for a woman of her place and time. Perhaps she could have found a way into earning some money as a writer, whether of magazine stories and columns or fiction of her own?

20. Lessons - Ian McEwan

Read as part of RWYO. For no apparent reason it took me a while to get through as I had no real urge to pick it up but I didn't dislike it. Roland's wife, Alissa, walks out on him and their baby son, Lawrence. The book follows Roland's life with lots of flashbacks to his earlier life - child of military family, boarding school in 1960s and events which shape the rest of his life. As I said, I didn't dislike it and it was well-written but just didn't particularly grab me.

I abruptly decided that I didn't fancy my pile of library books and returned most of them to the library, which felt oddly liberating.

I have a lot of half-read books around me, but the ones I've recently finished are:

29. Loneliness and Time: British Travel Writing in the Twentieth Century, Mark Cocker
I like the idea of travel writing, but it occasionally errs on the dull side, and sometimes I prefer reading about it to reading it. This books covers the heavyweights from the early part of the twentieth century (your Thesigers etc), then there's a chapter each on writing about Greece and Tibet, and then some final chapters on some slightly random points, eg. why travel writers always think they are the last of their kind. Structurally it was a bit odd, but I'm tolerant of an author following his or her interests rather than sticking to a rigid structure. This has been sitting on my shelf for several years, so I'm pleased to have finally read it. Not bad if you know at least a few of the writers and have some interest in the topic, but unlikely to convert anyone else.

30. Reacher: The Stories behind the Stories, Lee Child
Originally written by the author as a series of introductions to his books. I've been enjoying the Reacher books over the last year or so and gobbled this down. It's lightweight - no deep analysis here - but enjoyable to know what was on the author's mind as he wrote each one. He explains why the narrative is sometimes first person, sometimes third person, and points out the single book in the series where Reacher doesn't kill anyone and why. Fun facts for fans.

31. At the Table, Claire Powell
Bought in the kindle daily deal and consumed quickly on my commute, this novel is about two adult children coming to terms with their parents' separation and trying to make sense of family and romantic relationships. I found it a quick and engaging read, but I feel a bit "So what?" afterwards.

Dominion is one of two I bought on paper Stowick. (The other is The Others) because I knew I’d like it from the sample. Hopefully the second is the same. I completely agree on the importance of Young,Gifted and Black but I had to give up- a pity.

peahens like big tails and they cannot lie

Ha, liked this @LadybirdDaphne

@ÚlldemoShúl Dominion sounds great. It's one of the ones with no audio so I'm waiting for a Kindle deal or may just buy the real copy.

I've been stuck at about 40% of the way through Young, Black & Gifted for a few weeks, I just never feel like reding it. I don't like the writing style either but feel like it's an important subject so want to like it.

@Benvenuto I do love P&P! I’m wondering what is the best age to first read it - I would like to get my DDs to read it but don’t want to push it on them too soon. We read it at school in year 9, so I was the same age as DD1, but maybe the language would seem more old-fashioned these days so perhaps I should wait a bit longer…

Finished Dominion by Addie E Citchens from the Women’s Prize Fiction longlist. It tells the story of Priscilla- wife of a Mississippi preacher and mother of Wonderboy, a son she suspects has problems- and Diamond- Wonderboy’s girlfriend. We also get occasional POVs from Wonderboy himself that show that Priscilla is quite right to be concerned. He is violent and arrogant. The two voices are distinct and full of character and the writing is propulsive in this dark exploration of patriarchy, religion and violence. I couldn’t put it down. Bold for me.

However I’ve bounced off a couple of others recently- some I mentioned in other posts, the most recent Young Gifted and Black by Kadiatu Kennah- Mason- WP non-fiction. I couldn’t get on with the writing style at all- it’s overly dense and has a boastful tone- as if her daughter’s success is all about the mother.
I think I’ve overdone the longlist reading so am now taking a bit of a break. I’ll continue slowly with the WP for fiction as I’ve been enjoying that list but otherwise I’m going to read some RWYO by mood.

@HagCymraeg I love a bit of Welsh language geekery (Dr Cymraeg is great). I’m fascinated by the way formal Welsh attempts to make sentences as short as possible - I’m always interested to discover what the original bits that are left out were. Some of it is mystifying. One of our relief tutors is into this kind of thing too. I always enjoy his lessons and sidetracks.

Firefly Summer - Maeve Binchy

This was so much better than Echoes. Wealthy American attempts to rediscover his Irish roots by rebuilding a ruined mansion as a luxury hotel. The impact on the local villagers is not without tragedy. Some really nice writing and interesting characters and insight into human nature.

17 Hero - Katie Buckley
Non-linear, very try-hard literary fiction about a 20-something who’s had a generally rough time with men and consequently can only gaze at her own navel, circling round and round the issue of whether she should get married, and whether women can ever be the ‘hero’ of their own narratives. There is some beautiful poetic and folkloric imagery in here - witches, selkies, sirens - and it should have been my sort of thing, but didn’t quite land. First novel though so I’d give her another try.

18 Birds, Sex & Beauty - Matt Ridley
Explores the idea of evolution by sexual selection (features evolving due to the preference of the opposite sex, peacock’s tails often being cited as the prime example - peahens like big tails and they cannot lie).

There’s an especial focus on birds that lekk - where the males gather together to display and females pick their favourite. A lot of circling round and round the ideas of different scientists since Darwin first came up with the idea of sexual selection 150 years ago, which got a bit tedious, but if you can get through that there are interesting insights into the habits of black grouse, ruffs, birds of paradise… and even peacocks.

I wasn’t especially keen on the bit where he dismissed the whole of Indigenous knowledge in one sentence - western scientific arrogance at its finest.

Also suggests most bird species have lost their penises because of female preference (females less likely to be subject to forced mating from males that don’t have penises) - which might well be true but sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory from one of the nut jobs on Louis Theroux’s latest.

For Vaseem Khan fans the latest Malabar House- The Edge of Darkness is 99p today.

For those into prizes and audios, I just noticed there's a few WP books in the 2 for 1 sale on audible - Heart The Lover, Flashlight and The Benefactors. Annoyingly I've already got the last 2. Flesh, Buckeye and When The Cranes Fly South are also on there. I just need one more I haven't read!

@AliasGrape- Romance is an old genre - it’s been around since the start of the novel in English literature & in other forms before that. It’s also a really interesting one to discuss at present as it’s very vibrant (lots of people writing and reading Romance) and there are intriguing points to think about like how tropes are used to define the books and how various social issues are included / shoehorned into some of them. There’s a feminist argument there too - is it a genre that is being dismissed simply because it appeals more to women? I don’t think we should dismiss a genre simply because it seeks to divert, entertain & console - these are good things for a writer to achieve.

And - perfectly timed to prove my last point - my next review is a romance featuring several social issues, a classic and will probably always be the boldest of all my bolds as I’ve read & enjoyed it so many times…

31 . Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - or could I possibly be correct to believe that Mr Collins might be handsome? Reread after stating this last view on this thread and being rightly contradicted for it. We’re actually told very little about Mr Collins’ appearance other than he is tall (good) and heavy (less good). We’re not told much more about the other men’s appearance, but as it is made clear that Darcy, Bingley, Whickham, Colonel Fitzwilliam and even Mr Gardiner are all handsome / attractive, I think it’s safe to conclude that Mr C is neither. I did enjoy my focus on Mr C and Charlotte - I’ve never noticed before that Charlotte’s marriage is probably in the same mould as her parents. We’re not told much about Lady Lucas other than Mrs Bennett looks down on her for making her daughters cook - that sounds fairly sensible to me & Charlotte clearly doesn’t get her good sense from her father.

I'm deep into Woman's Prize lit and finished a paperback, audio and Kindle today, all from the list.

In order of how much I enjoyed reading them:

The Correspondent - Virginia Evans. I listened to this and really enjoyed the character of Sybil Van Antwerp and her various relationships. I particularly liked her discussions of what she was reading with her friend and her letters to various authors. It's not ground breaking, but an enjoyable read and one I can see myself recommending to people looking for something a bit lighter.

Wild Dark Shore - Charlotte McConaghy. Reviewed a few posts earlier by @ÚlldemoShúl so I won't get into the plot, this immediately drew me in. I loved the setting of the wild Antarctic island and descriptions of the animals and birds (not the seeds as much). The central mystery was a little contrived but it dealt with big themrs like climate change, growing up and grief very well.

A Guardian and A Thief - Megha Majumdar. Set in the near future Kolkata where the river is rising and food is scarce, Ma, her father and her 2 year old daughter are waiting to go to America to join her husband. Then Boomba steals Ma's bag with her passports in it. I found this hard work. Neither of the main characters is particularly likeable and it was quite heavy handed in making it clear from the start that both Ma and Boomba are guardians and thieves. It's unremittingly depressing showing the world deteriorating through climate change, apart from a bit of misplaced nostalgic optimism from Ma's father Dadu. I normally like Indian lit, but just wanted this to be over. It's quite short which I guess was one redeeming feature. Maybe it was just too much with current world events, I needed something more escapist.

Just finished another RWYO which had taken me a while to finish.

32 Four Sisters. The Lost Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses by Helen Rappaport

Four Sisters looks at the lives of the Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia. Although the sisters collectively referred to themselves as OTMA this book did a good job of showing a balanced view of the very different characters of all four sisters. OTMA generally came across as lovely, and pretty unspoiled, and I found the section on their work as nurses / in hospitals during WWI particularly interesting.

I did feel that the middle section could have benefitted from some enthusiastic editing - I don’t think the author needed to include, what felt like, every single mention ever made of how lovely, pretty, and unpretentious the sisters were. Or every mention of their crushes on army officers, and I have to admit I was pretty surprised by how much interaction OTMA were allowed to have with these army officers.

The closeness of the family, along with their deep religious conviction, and willingness to embrace physical labour and hardships with good humour made it all the more poignant, and although Nicholas and Alexandra were absolutely loving and devoted parents, their breathtaking idiocy and naivety was incredibly frustrating, as each stupid decision took the Imperial family nearer to their doom.

Even knowing how the story ends this was a difficult read, and regardless of the political situation, the murder of the sisters, along with their parents, brother, loyal attendants (both with the Imperial Family and afterwards) is a stain on Russian history. It wasn’t quite a bold, because of the bloated middle, but I am glad I read this.

@Terpsichorethat sounds interesting. Im currently on a week long training course for Welsh for Business and the tutor is a language geek who keeps drifting off into language geekery. I think im the only one enjoying those bits .