50 Books Challenge 2026 Part Five

Loving the pet pics - will add some 🐱🐱 later.

@Owlbookend my 14 year old's favourite book is Song of Achilles, but she does love a gaymance. She also really enjoyed Stone Blind which she read when we were in Greece last year, and also liked Circe. Has your DD done the Percy Jackson books? They're great fun, and surprisingly true to the original myths if not.

@RomanMum Behind the Scenes at the Museum is definitely worth adding to your list, if you like Atkinson’s writing style. That and Life after Life are her best books outside the Jackson Brodie series. She’s a wonderful writer.

Thanks @EineReiseDurchDieZeit @Piggywaspushed @SheilaFentiman I shall investigate those options.

@AliasGrape yes he is a Cavvie (a quite petite one), called Archie, age 3. Barks only at household objects placed in new and unacceptable locations.

I put one dog pic out into the world and got a whole bunch back, thanks 50-bookers!

Loving the pet photos! We haven’t had any after the hamster (RIP) a few years ago.

@NotWavingButReading thanks for the heads up. I’ve heard good things about Jackson Brodie on here so will check them out. Have you tried Behind the Scenes at the Museum? I wondered if it’s worth adding to my wish list - which is currently at 68 books so it may take a while to get round to…

The heat has been awful for both of us!

😍 I am definitely more of a cat person but I do like dogs too. In the main it’s the owners I object to.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit here’s my two for you. They’re brother and sister (we think) that we got from a rescue when they were 5ish.

Ah she’s gorgeous @carefullythere.

Aww, lovely to see all the dogs. We had a black and silver schauzer, @BestIsWest - she was a gorgeous dog and I miss her. We do have a very sweet girl now though, who I will attempt to post a picture of.

Just finished Dream State by Eric Puchner a few minutes ago. I will review properly in a day or two once it has settled. Feeling a little bit torpedoed by it at the moment

Sending thoughts and best wishes to those of you who’ve been having a hard time recently

51. Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire

This is the second in the Wayward Children series of novellas, about children who’ve fallen through cracks in reality and then returned. As if what happened to Alice (in Wonderland) or the Pevensie siblings (Narnia) was a relatively commonplace occurrence and there were dozens of similar children struggling to readjust to the “normal” world.

Anyway, this one features twins Jack and Jill, who featured quite prominently in the first book, and tells the story of how they fell into another world and how that changed them.
I already had an idea of how this would end, given that it’s set before the events of the first book, but I enjoyed the storytelling and character development and finding out how things unfolded.

52. Darkangel by Meredith Ann Pierce

The Darkangel is a vampyre with lots of wings, who’s been kidnapping brides and stealing their souls. After Aeriel’s mistress is kidnapped, Aeriel also finds herself kidnapped by the Darkangel and tasked to serve his brides, before embarking on a quest to avenge the brides and defeat the Darkangel.

It’s got bit of a mix between distant past and a fantasy landscape (possibly they’re living on a moon? The geography of it all confused me somewhat).
And there’s definite romantasy vibes. Or maybe more specifically Beauty and the Beast vibes, given the references to curses and transformations. I’m generally quite fond of fairy tale retellings though so that worked for me.
It’s the first in a trilogy, but this is self contained enough to be a complete story in itself.

I love dogs that have “little old man” face @BestIsWest

Sending thoughts to @HagCymraeg, @AliasGrape and @Tarragon123 (and others who are having hard times).

Two more reviews. I seem to be motoring along this year; I think it's the first time I've ever passed 40 before the end of June, but I have decided to read Tess of the D'Urbervilles, having previously vowed never to touch another Hardy after being deeply scarred by The Mayor of Casterbridge at school. So I could come to a grinding halt.

40 The Prime Ministers We Never Had by Steve Richards

An interesting idea – Richards selects 10 people who got close to becoming PM but never quite made it and looks at their characters and the reasons why they failed to reach the top. Starting with Rab Butler and working through to Jeremy Corbyn, there are some odd choices and omissions (no Michael Foot, but we have Barbara Castle and Michael Portillo), and I got the impression Richards had chosen the ones he wanted to write about rather than the ones who technically best fit his criteria. There’s nothing new or revolutionary here, but I enjoyed reading about the personalities and their strengths and flaws. I couldn’t help thinking that I’d rather have most of them (well, not Corbyn or I think Portillo) than the options we seem to have at present.

41 The Edge of Darkness by Vaseem Khan

Number 6 in the very enjoyable Malabar House series. You know what you’re getting here: Persis Wadia, India’s first female detective inspector, does some inspired detecting, whilst nearly getting herself killed on multiple occasions. This one is a locked room mystery set in Nagaland, a part of India I knew nothing about. One of the things I most enjoy about Khan’s books is the gentle introduction he provides to places with which most of his readers will be unfamiliar. Parts of the plot reminded me a little of Agatha Christie’s The Man in the Brown Suit, which is no bad thing.

Yes @BestIsWest a Musk Turtle. We have 2 of the stupid things.

Is that a turtle @BlueFairyBugsBooks? Or a terrapin? (I am hopeless with these things sorry.)

These are our two. The one on the left is not speaking to me as I’ve given him a bath and a beard trim today after he rolled in something unspeakable.

Thanks everyone for the good wishes, the baby and I are just fine now. And I’m very sorry you have been in hospital too @AliasGrape

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy. Her debut but covering very similar ground to Wild Dark Shore. It’s set in a sort of near future where multiple animal species are extinct. Enigmatic Frannie has talked her way onto one of the few remaining fishing boats to track the migration from the Arctic to the Antarctic of some of the last terns. She has a secret traumatic history which we learn about in flashbacks. It was atmospheric - I enjoyed reading about Greenland when it was 36 degrees outside - and I was very compelled to find out her full story and why she was so dedicated to the birds. However it was a bit repetitive with the same motifs showing up again and again, and I found the very slow drip feed of secrets annoying by the end.

American Fantasy by Emma Straub. Good fun. It’s set aboard a fan cruise for a 90s boyband (essentially New Kids on the Block) who have re-formed to tour with their greatest hits and do this annual cruise for women who loved them as teens. The book follows a disillusioned band member, one of the cruise managers, and recently divorced Annie who has ended up on the cruise alone, as they eventually interact with each other. I found the ending vague but the description of the cruise was very realistic and funny.

I don't have any cats or dogs, but this naughty boy is in the time out bucket as he's decided that trying to eat his brother, having lived happily together for we don't know how long* is a good idea. So now we need a second tank, filter etc as they need to be separated.

*We've had them for about 12 years and are the 3rd owners so have no idea how old they are!

The picture is him in a bowl while the water is changed BTW. The bucket he's in is much bigger!

🤩 At the dogs. Does anyone else have one or a cat to show off? My landlord doesn’t allow pets

@Owlbookend has she read The Amber Fury? it’s an early novel from Natalie Haynes that is more YA.

Gorgeous dog @LadybirdDaphne! Cavvie?

We lost our beautiful Ruby boy about 4.5 years ago now, I’m just starting to feel ready for another dog but he’ll never be replaced, the best boy ever!

Thanks all, I’m definitely feeling much more with it today. Not managed much reading but did take DD to see Toy Story 5! Looking forward to hopefully finishing I Who Have Never Known Men in bed this evening.

Jessie Burton has written a novel called Medusa which is for a YA audience. It's no Natalie Haynes but probably better for a 14 year old.

Read The Correspondent - much lauded , this is a very quick read. The epistolary style worked on the whole (although we never do find out how she met a Belgian husband but never travelled and didn't call her children remotely Belgian names) and the voice and manner reminded me so much of my mother that it was quite a hard read for me personally in places. I do wonder if Americans actually have a different English usage that I can always spot and hear?

The narrator, Sybil, is in turns frustrating, heartless, wounded, capricious and sometimes likeable with a decent character redemption arc. Not as likeable as Theodore, though. She also writes to favourite authors but they weren't ones I especially know.

A couple of things jarred, though. Why use Scotland as a setting (briefly) when the author has spent time in Ireland? (I am sure the Irish quirks in Sybil's voice were deliberate but that jarred too) It seemed less real than everywhere else and overly romanticised. She also could pretty easily have checked (or her editor could have ) that the Notre Dame burnt almost to the ground in April , 2019...

Sybil would be grateful to me for pointing this out. She'd be very annoyed with herself. I feel sure she herself would also point out this error to any author!

@Owlbookend Natalie Haynes? Madeline Miller?

@HagCymraeg - sounds a very challenging time. Empathise with the complexity.
@AliasGrape Glad things seem to be looking up
@Tarragon123 hope the infection gets sorted.

Thanks for all the recommendations for me on the thread a while back. I have made some purchases and am looking forward to them particularly on my holiday in a few weeks time. I have already started The Names and have read about a quarter in actual book format. This is a very pleasing development as I have really only been managing audiobooks recently.

I am back with another request (apologies). This is for 14 year old DD. A while back I got some great suggestions, some which I got her for Xmas and have been read .😊Im sure someone suggested some adult or young adult retelling of Greek or Roman myths. She has expressed an interest in these for our forthcoming holiday, but I can’t find the titles/authors despite searching past threads. If anyone knows what they might be it would be great.

@Tarragon123 Hope you are on the mend.

32) Death on Gokumon Island by Seishi Yokomiso

I do like a Japanese murder mystery and this one was excellent. Set on a fictitious Island shortly after the end of WW2, it was written in 1972 and is a classic in Japan.

It features a lot of details about an older Japanese lifestle. And the story hinges on three lovely haiku verses.

Definite Bold.