50 Books Challenge 2026 Part Five

The List Of Suspicious Things
My misgivings were proved correct, I’m afraid. It’s just so dull! Random Yorkshire dialogue thrown in, cliffhangers that aren’t really cliffhangers….Who.Will.Be.The.Next.Suspect??????….who cares?
I just found it very, very amateur and clunky, not a patch on other books written from the pov of a child/child in the 70s. I had, however, forgotten all about the charming game ‘Ripper Chase’ where boys wore their coats as capes I’m the same age as Miv, with the same kind of upbringing but it left me cold and bored. I think she tried to shoehorn in too much social history on top of the Yorkshire Ripper intrigue.

One of my book club friends is desperate for me to read Yesteryear so we can discuss. I'm assuming it will pop up in the deals sooner or later. I saw a thing the author did on Insta dissing all the "male authors finally returning" rhetoric about last year's Booker such made me warm to her. The Correspondent is actually good, IMO.

I also thought I should read Careless People after seeing the Emily Mathis interview @BestIsWest. Just depressing how these people operate.

I worked in a charity bookshop for a number of years by far the books that we had tonnes of were :

Fifty Shades
Da Vinci Code
Sharon Osbourne’s autobiography
Posh Spice’s autobiography

I'm mildly interested in reading both Yesteryear and The Correspondent, but not enough to wait in the 6m+ library queue or to pay for them. I reckon in a few years the book exchanges and chazzas will have loads and I have so much on my tbr already anyway.

Agree

Yeah I didn’t want to comment on your comment because you’re still reading.

My review is only one opinion and lots of people have absolutely loved it.

Didn’t we also disagree on The Correspondent?

This is an extraordinary book - even more so than Wolf Hall, I think - highly recommended.

Careless People -Sarah Winn Williams

I started this a year ago but went back to finish it after listening to Emily Maitlis interviewing her on The Newsagents podcast this week. I would say it’s astonishing stuff but somehow I wasn’t surprised by it.

A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel is in the deals today.

I commented on Yesteryear too, though i am still reading it. Tbh I am surprised that so many of you would dismiss it on one review! I'm enjoying it and learning quite a lot about the influencer world and the tricks they use.

I don't use Spotify but obviously I have been very unobservant! I have been in bookshops too....

I have heard of it but not drawn to it.

Just finished Sally Magnusson's The Shapeshifter's Daughter. This is about woman, dying of cancer, who returns to her childhood Orkney. But it is also a reimagining of Norse mythology (I am not terribly au fait with Norse gods but many are - i am sure in part thanks to Marvel films!)

She writes well and I like that Magnusson always has older women as her central characters. This is about death , grief and grieving but it isn't bleak. I liked this. Not loved but a fine book. The Norse stuff at the beginning takes a bit of wading through.

It seriously is everywhere you look and has been for at least a month. It’s sold millions. I did it on Spotify.

Clearly I live under a rock as Yesteryear had bypassed me, but having read Eine's review it sounds like that's not a bad thing!

A bit slow going for me at the moment thanks to my epic Robert Moses audiobook, but found time for a welcome reread:

28 Three Men In A Boat - Jerome K Jerome

One of those faultless books that it turns out is utterly perfect for reading during a disgusting heatwave.

Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

Set in Virginia in a rural county where farmers are intent on spraying everything with weed killer or hunting coyotes. There are three different threads to this story with different main characters and they start to overlap.

Not all that much happens, I don't have much plot to tell you about, but with Barbara Kingsolver it's really about the characters and the place and the little details.

I gave it 5/5, not quite sure if it's a bold or not...

Thank you for this- I had this put aside as a book for lying by the pool on holiday next week but it just sounds annoying so I’ll pass.

I am half way through atm. I guess it's a satire on the whole trad wife movement and so from that perspective it's clever. It raises so many issues about being a woman, motherhood etc. It would be great to discuss it in a book club. I have heard it has a preposterous ending, so I'm braced for that!

weird @bettbburg

try this link
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?i=digital-text&rh=n%3A205863640031&ref=lp_3017941031_sar

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit thanks for that review. I was dithering over reading it because I suspected it was a compelling hook with not enough to back it up (like The Names and Fundamentally). I have a feeling I would agree with you if I read it - so I won't!

45 . Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (Audio)

If you haven’t been living under a rock then you will have heard of this. Billed as Trad Wife Natalie going back into the past to suffer the realities of traditional roles, the description selling it doesn’t really add up to the content.

She’s not a trad wife for a start, she’s a phoney and a fraud. What she is is deeply insufferable. The past sections are very slight and give way to more and more chapters about Natalie’s rise to trad wife influencer status and the consequences and it’s boring, she’s boring.

The ending is ludicrous and doesn’t work.

I’m glad I finally read something but honestly, don’t believe the hype here. Decidedly average. Dragged myself through it.

Thank you, I did look but there’s nothing like that.

Finished book 32, one of my own which had been collecting dust on the shelf for years - Between the World and Me, by Ta-nehisi Coates. It is a very powerful account by Coates, written to his teenage son, about the experience of growing up as a black kid in America. It focuses a lot on the body; how American succeess was built on the destruction of the black body. It is a very powerful read, and I did somethig unusual with this book; I couldn't really "feel" it, which was the whole point as it is so viscreal and physical, so I downloaded the audiobook, narrated by Coates himself, and listened to it for about half an hour before returning to the print version. I could then hear his voice in my head as I read it.

(should say, as a disclaimer, that I can't do audiobooks. I really struggle to stay focused on audio, but in this case, it propelled me to the text version nicely)

I'm trying to read my physical pile of books as we are moving house soon. I feel like if I'm avoiding reading something year on year, it is probably a good indication to get rid of it and not lug it to the next house.

77 The Bombay Prince – Sujata Massey - Book 3 in the Perveen Mistry series. I’m so enjoying this series. Perveen is such an interesting character. We are back in Bombay in 1921, awaiting the arrival of Prince Edward, who is undergoing a tour of the subcontinent. Ghandi is organising protests and boycotts. Perveen is approached by a young female student, Frenny Cuttingmaster at the local university for advice on non attendance at the celebrations for Prince Edward. Frenny is found dead later on after the procession has passed through. Naturally Perveen investigates.

Lots of different themes here. Womens education, racism, Indian Independence, religious intolerance. I loved it.

Thanks @Stowickthevast i had somehow only found a few deals!

The Spy and the Traitor by Ben McIntyre is in there. Fabulous book. Also there is No Friend to this House by Natalie Haynes, which someone asked about upthread