50 Books Challenge 2026 Part Five

32. Trust by Hernan Diaz
    This book follows an ultra rich new York financier and his marriage leading up to and after the wall street crash. The book is divided into parts in which the same story is told from different points of view (different enough not to feel repetitive) giving different perspectives on power and the how this effects the characters. The structure is excellent but without this it would be a very dull book, the different perspectives kept me wondering what was the ‘truth’ and cam to the conclusion that none of them were and that the truth was somewhere inbetween. However ultimately I didn’t particularly care but admired the structure.

33. None of this is true by Lisa Jewell
    Standard thriller I listened to on audiobook, overall I really enjoyed this as the book is following a woman making a podcast which lends really well to the autobook format. Predictable ending but I enjoyed the ride.

34. Hunger and Thirst by Claire Fuller
    If you like your books to have a neat tidy end with all questions answered then stay away from this one. This is about a Ursula coming out of the care system who moves into a squat that may or may not be haunted while in a future timeline a true time documentary is being made about an event that happened while the Ursula was living in the squat.
    While the first part of the book follows how Ursula gets on with her life and dealing with loneliness, the second half leads more and more into outright horror. This one will likely stay a bold for me

35. Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito
    Loads of fun and I believe a film is shortly going to be released. A Victorian governess arrives and murder and mayhem ensues. This is a very short book which is about right as the concept was never going to stretch to 300 pages and I enjoyed the references to some of the Victorian governesses tropes.

Lisa & Co - Jilly Cooper Collection of short stories written for women’s magazines in the 60s and 70s. Much as I love her, some of these really haven’t dated well. All those women giving up work upon getting married or hiding away babies, the odd rape. Some sweet ones though. Very JC

I've been reading women's fiction this year, but haven't got very far.

The Rossetti Letter by Christi Phillips (lent to me by a friend) - a historical novel, set in 17th century Venice, which is unstinting in its sex and gore.

Gunk Baby by Jamie Marina Lau - a novel by a young adult living in Australia, which is unsettling in its implied violence, consumerism, and passivity of the main characters.

Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively - I don't like the main character much, but that's not important. It's a clever and lyrical novel, and thought provoking about the impact of war.

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan - a very simply but powerfully written story about man born out of wedlock in Ireland and how he subsequently comes into contact with the cruelty of the Magdalene Laundries.

The Garden Party and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield - I love Katherine Mansfield, though I have to admit I prefer the spell she weaved with her story collection "In a German Pension" published in 1911 and set entirely in Germany, as far as I remember.

44. Black Sunset - Clancy Sigal

This was one of those rare and precious times when a totally accidental discovery turns out to be a cracker of a read. Clancy Sigal is a larger-than-life ex-WW2 serviceman, ex-Union organiser, Jew, movie nut and Communist, racketing round Hollywood in the 1950s at the height of McCarthyist paranoia. Perma-tailed by two FBI agents he christens ‘Mutt and Jeff’, Clancy lands a job as an agent at the prestigious Sam Jaffe agency and steps into the upside-down world of films at a time when names might be named, and nobody knows when they might be denounced to the House Un-American Activities Committee - including Clancy himself, whose undercover work with the group of refuseniks calling themselves the ‘Omegas’, devoted to sticking it to J. Edgar Hoover, continues unabated.

As everyone on here knows by now, I’m not a lover of the continuous present, but Clancy S pulls it off triumphantly in this memoir with huge verve, bite and mordant hilarity, so much so that you can almost see the sparks crackling off the page. A big, beautiful bold for me.

@Stowickthevast A couple of minus points on the audio for Keefe's pronunciation of Loughborough - varied and all incorrect - and Graham (Gram)

Yes, and there are a lot of bits in the book where he explains/contextualises British things for American readers too. That's understandable because it was probably written for an American readership first and foremost, but it grated on me a bit.

@Tarragon123 I really liked Ordinary Saints. I’m a recent convert to Catholicism (brought up C of E but not with any real commitment, family now firmly atheist), so knew my way around faith, but the prominence of saints in RC was quite new to me. Luckily, we followed the Sycamore journey in faith, written and presented by Fr Stephen Wang, which laid out the purpose and importance of saints in a clear and accessible way. I think my prayers to saints are still a bit clunky and self conscious though! Anyone who knows my reviews on here will be able to tell I gravitate towards the Northern Saints - we didn’t have to choose a saint’s name for Confirmation as an adult but if we had, I’d have chosen Saint Hilda of Whitby. The process of canonisation for the modern saints such as Carlos Acutis is fascinating and I thought the book handled the conflicted feelings of the sister very well. I’m particularly interested in the social history of when saints lived; what might have motivated them, where do they fit into faith and what relevance might they have to someone trying the live that faith today?

@SheilaFentiman The Tallis book is one of my earliest kindle purchases, bought in May 2018. I really do need to read it!

@PiggywaspushedA Suitable Boy would be fantastic for a readalong (I would join) not least because there are so many interesting characters & subplots to talk about.

Thanks as always to southeast for the new thread

My latest reads:

41. Enid Blyton - The Valley of Adventure
42. Michael Crichton - Timeline
43. Rachel McLean - The Chesil Beach Murders
44. Michelle Salter - Murder at Big Ben
45. Emily Organ - Murder in the Soho Graveyard
46. Magda Alexander - A Murder in Mayfair
47. Magda Alexander - A Murder in Trinity Lane
48. Magda Alexander - A Murder on the Thames
49. Magda Alexander - A Murder at the Royal Opera
50. Magda Alexander - The Stolen Sparkler
51. Lesley Cookman - Murder in Steeple Martin
52. Deb Marlowe - Murder on the Mirrored Lake
53. Deb Marlowe - Revenge in the Rogue's Hideaway
54. Deb Marlowe - Carnage from the Cursed Crown
55. Tim Sullivan - The Cyclist
56. Lucy Greenhill - An Utterly Unsuitable Lady
57. Rachel McLean - The Beach Hut Murders
58. Lesley Cookman - Murder in Midwinter
59. Deb Marlowe - Betrayal from Beyond
60. Tom Mead - Cabinet Macabre
61. Deb Marlowe - Dark Tidings on the Thames
62. Darcy McGuire - A Lady's Lesson in Scandal
63. Kelley Armstrong - A Rip Through Time
64. MRG Davies - Murder by the Book
65. LM Montgomery - Anne of Green Gables

Not much stands out here - I'm reading lots of tat non-demanding books to make the most of a Kindle Unlimited trial - but I did add in a re-read of Anne of Green Gables. My granny gave me the book when I was about 10 and I loved it, however, from an adult point of view I find Anne quite irritating and what is it about all her friends knowing they can't compare?! Anyhow, I still made it a bold as it's very nostalgic for me, and I'd still love to visit PEI.

@AliasGrape I thought the same about the Sophie Irwin book - really didn't think it worked as a concept - it was just cringe-making in some places. What a shame, as I loved the first two and will probably re-read both this year.

@Terpsichore my book club also had When the Coffee Gets Cold as a choice, which was the only reason I read it - not my cup of tea at all (no pun intended!). Loving your review though

That sounds really interesting @SheilaFentiman

Elizabeth's Rival - Nicola Tallis

Very good - better than Crown of Blood though not quite as good as Young Elizabeth and Uncrowned Queen.

This is non-fiction about Lettice Knollys, who was (probably) the granddaughter of Henry VIII, through Mary Boleyn's DD Katherine (Carey).

Thus she was both niece and first cousin once removed to QEI; Lettice was 10 years younger, bore a strong resemblance to QEI, lived to the age of ninety-one (!!). Also married Robert Dudley as her second husband, after which QEI basically refused to see her again (whilst still welcoming Dudley at court and sending him hither and yon on her business; I feel that QEI and Mrs Thatcher would have had a lot to talk about regarding prioritising men over women). Tallis is a gifted historian and interesting writer - Lettice's letters to her husbands are mostly lost but she puts together her life from other sources.

If you fancy it, it's on Kindle Unlimited at present.

I worked in for a council with plenty of poverty but also some very expensive housing for some years. I was a typist/PA in different roles at different times but working with people who got high value property relatd queries. I was warned to be a bit careful with the gangster types.

There's a lot of stuff about this in books set in Ukraine between the 1990s up to 2010 or so, before things got nastier across Ukraine and the former Soviet Union.

@Stowickthevast Don’t forget his pronunciation of Abramovitch had me correcting him every time

I really liked Ordinary Saints too.

@BauhausOfEliott I have just finished the audio of London Falling too. I thought it was interesting, depressing and slightly frightening as a mother of London teens. I actually didn't know how little investigated Russian caused deaths were, and I say that as someone who has worked in government on Russia related matters. I also thought the whole blaggy nature of everyone involved was interesting, no-one actually had what they pretended to or lived where they said they did. Reminds me of some people I know living in the UAE who seem super rich but are a bit hazy about what they actually do. A couple of minus points on the audio for Keefe's pronunciation of Loughborough - varied and all incorrect - and Graham (Gram).

55. The Weekend - Charlotte Wood. This is by the author of Stone yard Devotional. It's about 3 women in their 70s who met at Christmas in Australia to clear out the beach house of their 4th friend who has recently died. The women are all quite different characters and get exasperated by various habits of each other, but also feel sympathy towards each other. I really liked this as a look at friendship and how it changes.

@Tarragon123 I read Ordinary Saints last year. Loved it.

My 26th book was Night Film by Marisha Pessl. It’s a really odd literary thriller and full of ambiguity around things that may or may not be supernatural. It’s definitely got noir influences. It’s not a fast-paced read and there are some things wrong with it but I loved it and couldn’t put it down - while at the same time completely understanding why a lot of people hate it.

27 and 28 were The Broken Afternoon and The Lost & The Found by Simon Mason. I think they’re vey well-written, character-driven whodunnits and a lot of my reservations about the first one in the series were resolved for me in these two books.

29 was The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin. It’s one of the few books where I think the (original) film is better, mainly because it’s so short that there isn’t really time to build up to the reveal and when it does, it feels rushed and under-explored. But it’s a great story and exactly the sort of concept/premise that Ira Levin was good at.

30 was London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe and - sorry Mumsnet, as it seems de rigeur on here to praise it - I didn’t love it? It’s not that it’s a bad book. Radden Keefe is an excellent journalist and writer. But I just felt it taught me nothing about London and the shady super-rich underworld that I didn’t already know and although I obviously do feel sorry for the Brettlers and their loss, I also just couldn’t connect with them or warm to them as people.

31 is Picnic At Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay which I’m loving so far.

Latest reads:

I Go By Sea, I Go By Land - P L Travers

A lesser known children’s book by the Mary Poppins author. It’s told from the point of view of an eleven year old girl, who is evacuated along with her younger brother to live with relatives in America during the war. This mainly covers their journey but also a bit about settling in to their new life. It was OK but all a bit simplistic and in my opinion surprisingly positive - nothing about the upheaval most children would have felt going through an experience like that. However it was published in 1941 while the war was still going on so maybe she didn’t want to make it too negative and scare children who might still have to go through something similar.

From Source To Sea: Notes From a 215-Mile Walk Along the River Thames - Tom Chesshyre

Pretty much as the title says! I found this interesting although as someone who used to live in Reading I was a bit disappointed that he skipped over that section quite quickly. It’s an interesting mix of nature, history and the people he meets/things he sees along the way.

The Truth About Ruby Cooper

I have enjoyed Nugent’s previous books but I really wasn’t keen on this. The main character is a pretty awful person and I didn’t like the way the story went (hard to explain without spoilers). It’s about Ruby and her family, which splits apart due an event when Ruby is 16 and which has repercussions over the years. Luckily I only paid £1.29 for it - I would have been really annoyed if I had paid more for it.

Havisham - Elle Machray

The story of Miss Havisham before she appears in Great Expectations. Or so it claims to be. As a story in its own right it’s fine, but the characters bear no resemblance to those in Great Expectations, and in fact the ending of this is impossible if it’s going to tie up with Great Expectations. And if it doesn’t tie up, what’s the point?

The Age Of Miracles - Karen Thompson Walker

YA novel. It’s told from the point of view of 11 year old Julia, who lives in California. One day the earth’s rotation starts slowing, so days gradually get longer until time is completely messed up. I really enjoyed this and personally thought it did a great job of building up the scenario. I’m sure those who are more knowledgeable about the science would be able to pull this apart but I found it a really interesting idea. My only quibble really is that Julia’s voice sounded more like a 14 year old than an 11 year old.

R is for Ricochet - Sue Grafton

Latest in the Kinsey Millhone series, where we get endless descriptions of what she’s wearing, what she’s eating, and what everybody and every place looks like. In between all this there’s some sort of plot - here it’s to do with embezzlement and money laundering. I do like Kinsey as a character but I think once I’ve finished the series there will only be one or two that I might want to reread in the future.

Thanks, I read Longbourn a few years ago and loved hearing the story from the servants' side. I've been collecting books that I borrowed from the library and enjoyed, so I jumped at this one when I saw it on the shelf.

The only Jenni Fagan I've read so far is Ootlin (also wonderful but harrowing) so I'm keen to give her fiction a go.

The Stand was a project read for me last year, 100 pages a month and it didn't disappoint but I'd say I've loved some of his others more.

52. The Names by Florence Knapp - Victim of domestic abuse registers the name of her baby son. The timeline splits into three based on which of three names she chooses. It's an interesting premise though slightly misleading because it's not the names that make the difference but what each particular maternal choice tells us about the mother. But still, interesting. I found fascinating the exploration of the idea that abuse leaves trauma on everyone affected regardless of when and if they escape. It affects lives, future relationships, and people who were not even involved. What I didn't enjoy so much was how neatly everything was wrapped up at the end. All three versions of the boy got their redemption arc and happy ever after. I thought this did a disservice to the seriousness of the subject matter and the messiness of real life. I like books that raise questions and make me think, I like less books that tell me what to think and give me the answers. So I am lukewarm towards this one. A quick, easy read that isn't bad. But not a bold for me.

24 - Rewilding - Jane Green
A thoughtful and interesting read: the message is it’s not about reinventing yourself, it’s about remembering yourself. Jane Green is very open and honest about her journey and although I’m not sure I’d be brave enough to make some of the choices she did, I admired her willingness to embrace change. The book occasionally feels repetitive, but I enjoyed her easy, engaging writing style. This was my first Jane Green book, and it has definitely made me interested in trying some of her fiction.

1 The Sleepwalkers by Scarlett Thomas
2 Hitler's People by Richard Evans
3 Malice by Keigo Higashino
4 The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits
5 Never A Dull Moment 1971 by David Hepworth
6 Murder at Mount Fuji by Shizuko Natsuki
7 A Beginner's Guide to Breaking and Entering by Andrew Hunter Murray
8 The Party by Tessa Hadley
9 Gabriel's Moon by William Boyd
10 Place Brugman by Alice Austen
11 A Quiet Place by Seicho Matsumoto
12 Tokyo Express by Seicho Matsumoto
13 Murder on Line One by Jeremy Vine
14 The Names by Florence Knapp
15 Point Zero by Seicho Matsumoto
16 Three Days in June by Anne Tyler
17 Imperium by Robert Harris
18 A Schooling in Murder by Andrew Taylor
19 Arthur and George by Julian Barnes
20 Wise by Frank Tallis
21 The Infamous Gilberts by Angela Tomaski
22 Geneva by Richard Armitage
23 The Vipers by Katy Hay
24 The Ending Writes Itself by Evelyn Clarke

25 The Long Shoe by Bob Mortimer
Utterly silly but very easy and thoroughly enjoyable, quick read

26 The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor
I picked this up in a charity shop - I read it when it came out in 2002 (it was shortlisted listed for the Booker) and I adore William Trevor, and it's just as good as I remember. It reminds me of The Good Soldier (my all time favourite book) as both feature Edwardian English men chaperoning somewhat fragile wives around Europe. It is a great story. Lucy doesn't want to leave the big house the family lives in in Ireland during the fight for the Free State, but it isn't safe for them to stay, so she does something which has a huge impact on everyone around her. Very much a bold.

43 . Fall And Rise : The Story Of 9/11 by Mitchell Zuckoff

I had to abandon the audiobook of this and buy a copy because it just didn’t work for me in that format.

Like The Only Plane In The Sky this is an account of that terrible day. Whilst I think I prefer Only Plane this is similarly affecting and I cried and cried, particularly at the epilogue. Everyone who died is listed at the back of the book as well.

I would be hesitant to strongly recommend it, some truly awful visuals, of children in particular. I’m not saying it isn’t worth reading, it is, but you need mental strength to get through it, perhaps more so than Only Plane

I’m glad I read it though

If you really want to stick to RWYO skip past this. If you have exceptions to this rule, then read with care.

Today's BookBub email is far more hazardous to my bank account than the "Kindle Daily Deals" - I've bought historical fiction, a WWII history book, a classic crime novel by John D Macdonald (intro by Lee Child) and more, mostly 99p. I'm leaving some £1.99 titles by John D Macdonald but want them if they come down to 99p. Yes, it's that ridiculous.

https://www.bookbub.com/ebook-deals/daily-deals?date=20260607

Solidarity @Tarragon123

Thank you @Southeastdweller

Lovely haul @InTheCludgie – I’ll be interested to hear your thoughts on both Luckenbooth and Longbourn

@HagCymraeg – when I was younger, I didn’t read as much. Now I work part time, although I have fairly hefty caring responsibilities. Like others, I listen to Audible books and read a lot in the evening. DH tends to watch a lot of football and I’ll read.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit – I didn’t even finish The Grapes of Wrath. Hated it.

63 Ordinary Saints – Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin. Recommended on here but of course, I cant remember who by! This is the story of Jay, a young gay woman who has left her native Ireland and lives in London. Her brother died tragically young and there is a campaign to make him a saint. I found this very thought provoking, particularly the actual process of becoming a saint. I am a practising RC and I pray to certain Saints. I appreciate that in this day and age, that makes me odd.

64 Murder at the Spirit Lounge – Jess Kidd. Nora Breem 2. Contrary to @MaterMoribund I enjoyed this. I got the Audible and while its she’s not Siobhan MacSweeney, Philippa Dunne is a good sub. We are back at Gulls Nest. Nora is summoned by DI Rideout to attend the home of a local celebrity medium. He is then invited to a séance later on that night. Spooky things happen and then suspicious deaths. My only quibble is the ending, which was not as tight as I would have liked.

65 The Stand – Stephen King. 1200 pager. I’ve been reading this as part of a slow read project that started in January. It’s the only way to tackle these monsters. A mysterious virus is unleashed on the USA (and the world presumably, but only the USA matters to SK) which wipes out 95% of the population and weirdly enough, all the dogs and horses. The survivors have vivid dreams of the two people who will shape the post viral world and migrate towards them both. The vast majority of the book is about the showdown, which I felt was a bit of an anti-climax. Oh well. It was enjoyable doing a slow read readalong.