50 Books Challenge 2026 Part Six

@Terpsichore she’s a wonderful writer. Not a word wasted. It’s a real shame there aren’t more of her novels in print.

My uni library has some of her out of print titles but they’re non circulating, which means I’d have to sit and read them in an actual library! I may well do this; it just feels weirdly wrong to me to sit in the uni library and read for pleasure not research. (I’d probably feel less guilty if I were making faster progress with the actual supposed research!)

Delighted you liked Due to a Death, @cassandre! I’m guilty of boring on about Mary Kelly so I’ll just say that when I read it (as a totally random charity shop buy) I can barely remember ever feeling more immersively plunged into a novel from the first couple of sentences.

Correction: the Levy novel is about Stein not by Stein! Argh

43. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein 4/5
    The first work I’ve ever read by Stein (and apparently her most accessible). I’m a Deborah Levy fan, and Levy’s newest novel is by Stein, so I thought I would read Stein first in order to form my own impressions. This was a very striking read; Stein is frustrating and intriguing in equal measure. She wrote this memoir (about her years in Paris from roughly 1907-1932) in the voice of her lover Toklas, which enables the narrator Toklas to proclaim what a genius Stein is. It’s a work of self-promotion, but there’s also plenty of irony and humour running through it (the fact that the self-promotion is not disguised whatsoever somehow makes it more palatable). Commas and capital letters are in short supply; this is a deliberate stylistic choice on Stein’s part. There were many names I recognised (mostly of famous Cubist artists), and many names I didn’t, but I mostly let it all wash over me. Stein entertained the artists in her salon (like a kind of honorary man), and Toklas cooked for everyone and entertained their wives. I found the memoir more gripping when it moved into the war years; perhaps because Stein and Toklas were driving ambulances round to help the wounded, and the narrative seemed less self-indulgent. I’m not sure I like Stein exactly, but I admire the boldness and originality of her voice. I now want to read Hemingway’s A Movable Feast, which apparently describes the same period as Stein’s memoir (he was part of her circle).

44. My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein, Deborah Levy 4/5
    This is presented as a novel, but it’s in the first person and reads very much like Levy’s trilogy of ‘living autobiography’, which I adored. This is a short, witty, very readable novel and I loved it. The unnamed narrator is in Paris, hanging out with two other quirky women whom she has met there, and working on an essay about Stein that seems unlikely ever to be finished (though clearly the novel itself is the finished ‘essay’!). I’m tempted to give the book five stars, but it’s perhaps a little slight; it’s less about plot than about a sequence of stimulating ideas (though that in itself is very Stein-like). The parallels between Stein and Levy herself are evident: both are bold, independent women writers with a sensuous, playful streak, who write about themselves and who emerge as larger-than-life figures. I think Levy has done a great thing by reminding our generation of Stein and of what an interesting thinker and character she was.

45. Gaudy Night, Dorothy Sayers 5/5
    A reread after many years for my work book group. It was a denser read than I remembered (though all of Sayers’ detective novels are dense). It remains my favourite of the Lord Peter Wimsey novels. It’s quite a hybrid book: a mystery, a love story and a university novel. Sayers shows off her scholarly credentials, with plenty of (untranslated!) Latin quotations, and epigraphs to each chapter that consist of arcane 17th century English poetry. I have a soft spot for this kind of retro erudition (though I’m a bit embarrassed to say so). The great strength of the novel I would say is its vivid evocation of what life was like in an Oxford women’s college in the 1930s. The women tutors are stern, committed to their vocation, yet also quite catty and fallible. Most of them are unmarried, and a big theme of the novel is whether women academics can have both a family life and a career (the implied answer unfortunately seems to be no). Sayers herself had only one child, an illegitimate son, who was raised by foster parents and who didn’t discover the biological identity of his mother till after her death… so clearly the tension between scholarship and maternity played a role in Sayers’ own life. Much as I love this novel (which has been called the first feminist detective novel) I was struck this time by how conservative it was in terms of class. The ‘scouts’ or domestic staff are locked into college at night (unlike the women dons, who have more freedom). And Peter Wimsey himself is a kind of madly idealised figure (Wimsey = whimsy?) who is rich, good-looking, witty, clever and the aristocrat par excellence. A thought-provoking read and one I would go back to yet again in the future.

46. Due to a Death, Mary Kelly 5/5
    I bought this earlier in the year on @Terpsichore's recommendation. I’ve read one Kelly novel already, The Spoilt Kill, which features the same private detective (Hedley Nicholson). However, while The Spoilt Kill is narrated by Nicholson himself, Due to a Death is narrated by a young woman who lives in the small village where Nicholson has decided to stay for awhile. I was blown away by this novel; it’s very bleak, but extremely well-written. Three village couples, all rather unhappily married, interact with one another, and the tensions and fractures are gradually laid bare. Great characterisation, and a feminist subplot involving unwed pregnancy and abortion.

Belated thanks @Terpsichore for the tip about the Observer article with Mark Haddon. He does sound like he's still having a tough time of it. Very sad but at least he's still writing in whatever way he can.

Adding my voice to the general congrats to @ÚlldemoShúl for having finished Ulysses! The idea of reading it alongside a handbook seems like an excellent idea to me.

I'm a fan of Ferrante, but at the start I found the series hard going. The characters were quite unsympathetic. I liked it better once the narrator went to university and feminist ideas came more explicitly to the fore. I do think Ferrante is a marmite author. An Italian friend of mine read the books in Italian and disliked them, because they're set in Naples and Ferrante didn't use authentic Neapolitan Italian dialect apparently! I've now recommended Alba de Cespedes to this friend and am holding my breath a bit to see if her review is positive or not!

The discussion of The Eights is interesting. Joanna Miller actually came to our book group to talk about the book when we read it, and she seemed lovely. The book itself left me unsatisfied though. It felt too much as though Miller had transposed the language and setting of contemporary Oxford into the past; the students sounded more like modern-day undergraduates than 1920s ones. It's very hard to write a plausible historical novel.

I recently reread Dorothy Sayers' Oxford novel Gaudy Night (I'll put the review below) and there was so much in that novel that seemed alien to the present day. For example, the tutors and undergraduates spend a lot of time socialising together: they punt on the river together, go to the same parties and so on. One member of my book group studied at Oxford long ago, and she said that was absolutely the case at the time: since all of the tutors and students were living together in college, they did socialise together. She said that on Monday morning though, you would come to your tutorial and the formal relationship would be restored. It would be decidedly odd I think for students and tutors to socialise together today, but that's largely because tutors have a firm demarcation between home life and social life: a demarcation that didn't exist in the same way in the 1930s when Sayers was writing. It's details like this that bring the past alive for me. Miller did a lot of research for The Eights, but I would say that the past as she depicts it doesn't feel 'other' enough.

@TimeforaGandT that's kind of how we do it.
Once a year in Dec, we all propose 3-5 books we fancy, so we end up with about 40 books to choose from, then someone does a list, we vote and the top 10 get chosen for the next year, starting in Jan with the most popular (no meeting in Aug and Dec is a meal and Booky Secret santa). It works well.

Well done on completing Ulysses @VikingNorthUtsire The Odyssey is a much easier read, it moves along quite quickly. I think it would be quite easy to read a chapter a day.

@Tarragon123 I've read Lost Lambs. I found the family more annoying than funny, and the general neglect of the children was ridiculous. The second half does move into more of a kind of spy story, the action ramps up and it all gets pulled together for a rather unconvincing happy ending. But you won't miss out on too much if you dnf.

@MaterMoribund Douglas Stuart created his own tartan which he gifted to Oprah as part of the promo for John of John.

Finished The Eights reviewed up page by Viking. I enjoyed the history a lot and feel quite lucky to have been born when I was. The central "mystery" was pretty obvious though.

Interesting review of Helen of Nowhere @Cherrypi . This one seems to be quite divisive so it's nice to hear something positive. I'm listening to The Vivisectors which I'm very unsure about.

It's several years since I read My Brilliant Friend but I seem to recall it was a slow burn. I read all four so must have enjoyed them!

I think book clubs do require you to be roughly aligned. We discuss a few options and agree which one we want to read. No-one gets to impose a book unilaterally on the group. It works reasonably well.

It's on my TBR. I had misgivings when I bought it that this is how it would be...

So glad you enjoyed Pagans @Tarragon123 ! And Happy Birthday for earlier this week.
I am rattling through books this summer holiday. On to John Of John yesterday and so far, I am loving it. The addition of the Harris weaving history is the cherry on top.

Has anybody hear read Dissection of a Murder by Jo Murray? I'm about a quarter of the way through and wondering whether to keep going.

The plot is somewhat interesting so far, but the writing is so weak. The characterisations are particularly lazy. Every single woman with a speaking role is described by what shade of blonde they are. So far we have icy, platinum, honey, & a mention of recent caramel highlights for the upcoming cooler weather. Everyone is incredibly attractive and, as we're told rather than shown, charismatic. Naturally they're all cheating on each other. Although in fairness the lawyers are all so interchangeable that maybe they genuinely don't notice a switch in bed partner.

Is it worth plowing through? Or is there going to be a last minute 'twist' with no foreshadowing that renders the rest of the book pointless?

I've been absent for a while, but just caught up.

Going back to My Brilliant Friend, I read this last year after a woman in my bookclub listed it as her favourite book ever and I noticed it was available on Borrowbox, so I went for it. Meh. I was marginally interested at the beginning but got bored trying to remember who everyone was. Far too many people to remember. The same woman recommended Lincoln in the Bardo which I also didn't get on with at all. Lovely lady but we obviously have different tastes.
I do quite like my bookgroup, we largely have similar tastes - literary but nothing too heavy, we laugh about books we all (or mostly) hated - Lincoln in the Bardo I am looking at you. We meet in a pub which is another plus. I share a lot of recommendations I get from this thread with them and they have me down as some kind of incredibly well read person with a book brain like Google. It goes to show how good this thread it for the amount of book info I retain.

@VikingNorthUtsire Verity was my first dip into Colleen Hoover and will probably be my last. Utter drivel. I am still annoyed with myself that I finished it. That is time I will never get back.

@Welshwabbit - I am also getting through the Maeve Kerrigan series, just finished After the Fire which was my favourite so far. I liked the way all the different strands joined up or were red herrings, a bit like Unforgotten on TV, which I also love. Planning to sit in garden with next one this weekend.

Also read :

30. The Names by Florence Knapp A bookclub choice - not something I would have picked up otherwise. It’s the story of Cora and her newborn son and the story opens as she is going to register the birth. Her violent domineering husband is insisting her is to be called Gordon like him and his father, but Cora does not want her baby to grow up like him and wants a different name for him. She has three options - Gordon, to keep the peace, Bear - the name her daughter Maya really wants, and Julian, meaning Sky Father. The story then splits into three different realities, each following the family’s story where the baby is called the different names - Gordon, Bear and Julian. Each one is both tragic and uplifting in very different ways, but all interesting enough to hold my interest until the end. Decent read. I found the Domestic violence and coercive control quite disturbing due to my own history, so trigger warning for anyone with similar experience.

90 Pagans – James Alistair Henry. Thank you to @MaterMoribund for the recommendation. I loved this. I do love a story with an alternative setting. I’m very much looking forward to book 2.

Currently reading Lost Lambs by Madeleine Cash but I’m just not feeling it. Its meant to be a funny family story, but not so far it isn’t. Anyone read it and going to convince me to finish it? Otherwise, I’ll DNF.

It was my birthday on Tuesday and strangely enough, I only got one book. DD hasn’t been well, poor lass. So apologetic that she just got me the one book. However, what a book! A Woman is No Man by Etaf Rum. Anyone else read it? I’m only 15% in and I am gripped!!

70. My Hero Academia Vol 8 by Kohei Horikoshi

In this instalment, it’s the end of the practical exam, where pairs of students have to beat professors. Followed by some set-up for future villainous antics and the start of the summer training camp.

It’s all pretty much in line with previous volumes. Minoru Mineta is getting increasingly annoying with his sex pest traits. I’m hoping he manages to get himself expelled soon, or at least gets much less page time.

44 The Harbour house by Rachael Lucas
A successful writer who was fostered as a child returns to the coastal village in Scotland she grew up in. She rents the renovated house she lived in and works on her latest novel she's stuck on. She reconnects with people from her childhood including the handsome man who used to tease her.

Another lovely book in the Applemore series. This one was a bit slower to get going but I enjoy how she puts in slightly bigger social themes in her romances.

45 Helen of nowhere by Makenna Goodman

A misogynist ex professor looks around a house in the country with a realtor. Strange things happen.

This is written like a play. It is quite mad. I enjoyed the ride. The ending is enjoyable to the horrible professor. One I really wanted to discuss afterwards

Congratulation, @ÚlldemoShúl !

53 Vengeance - John Banville
54 Holy Orders - John Banville
55 Even the Dead - John Banville

More murders being solved by the pathologist Quirke in 1950s Dublin with a lot of time spent in pubs either drinking or trying very hard to resist a drink. He is clearly irresistible to women as they seem to leap into bed with him on first encounter which seems quite unlikely in a 1950s Catholic country. The grip of the Catholic Church on people and institutions is apparent and often key to the plots. I like the world this is set in although some of the books deal with troubling matters but am pleased to have got to the end of the solo Quirke books. Onto something different now.

I don't know if any of you follow Alexandra Stedman's The R.U.E on Substack, but she's just written a post about travelling in 2006 which fits perfectly into the discussion here earlier this week:

(I am very much not a substack expert so apologies if this link doesn't work: alexandrastedman.substack.com/p/20-years-ago-i-surprised-myself-and?r=8zqks&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web)

Like most 23 year olds, I rarely considered the dangerous situations I was in until I found myself in them. I had read in my Lonely Planet that the only way to find accommodation in Split was through Pensiones or staying with locals and you just had to flag them down at the train station (only now can I comprehend Lonely Planets at that time were mostly written from a male perspective). When I told some passengers on the train that I was going to stay with whichever stranger held a sign with a reasonable price, they looked alarmed. And admittedly, once I disembarked the train and passed hordes of men shaking signs in my face, the idea seemed less than appealing. I ended up accepting the generosity of an older lady who took me to her flat where I was to sleep on the living room sofa surrounded by many, many portraits of her son in military uniform. I stayed out that evening until as late as possible, nervous to sleep, but when it was time to head home, no one seemed to recognise the address scrawled by the lady on my notepad. It did not help that I spoke not one word of Croatian and couldn’t even fathom what was written down myself. A shudder came over me: all my belongings, my interrail ticket, my passport - they were all left in the apartment. I felt sick and stupid for risking everything. After a few hours of panic and blindly wandering, a stranger overheard and they knew the building. Everything was fine, my sofa set-up was exactly as I left it and the lady had stayed up to ensure I was okay, she even shouted at me for good measure. By 5am the next morning, I had left and felt quite awful that I had even considered that this woman might have robbed me but it did open to my eyes to my vulnerability. I can imagine my daughter doing this exact thing now and it terrifies me.

@ÚlldemoShúl that's an impressive achievement! Congratulations

Latest reads:

Murder at the Palace - Frances Evesham

Latest in the series with chocolatier Libby solving murders that baffle the police. This is really a bit too ‘cosy crime’ for me, bordering on twee, but I read them because they’re all set near where I live. Here someone was murdered at the Bishop’s Palace in Wells.

The Parkwood Murders - Chris Chibnall

Murder at a Centre Parcs type resort in Dorset. I liked this - decent story and characters and I liked the setting.

Pied Piper - Nevil Shute

Read for the Rather Dated thread on here, I loved this story set in 1940 about an older chap escorting an increasing gaggle of random children across France, trying to get back to England before the Nazis arrive. There’s some suspension of disbelief required, but the writing is great and it’s a lovely story. Recommended.

Bing Banged My Lula - Frankie Park

I had a vague recollection of the title of this from when it originally came out in the late 90s, so decided to reread. It’s about four single mums who decide to form a band, while trying to either get together with or get rid of various men. It was fine - it was the title rather than the book itself that had stuck in my head, but I did enjoy the reread.

The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman

I finally got round to watching the film last week so I reread the book to see how close the film was to the book. The answer is - pretty close in terms of story although I wasn’t sure about all the casting decisions.

The Tailor - Tim Sullivan

The latest in the series featuring detective George Cross, who is on the autistic spectrum so doesn’t approach solving murders in the way others might. In this one, a tailor who makes bespoke suits is murdered on a train and George has to find out why. I like this series and this was a good addition although not my favourite of the series.

She Never Lived Here - Rita Maxil

This is one of those books where the premise sounds really intriguing but the payoff is ultimately a bit disappointing. Camila moves to a new estate and is invited round to Erin’s house, where she has a great night. However the next morning the house is up for sale with no sign anyone’s lived there for months, and nobody’s heard of Erin. Started well but lost its way somewhere.

Everything She Didn’t Say - Jane Casey

This is a stand alone book and while I really enjoyed it, it wasn’t as addictive as the Maeve Kerrigan books. Ruth and Maura have been staying at a cliff top cottage, but then Ruth is discovered covered in blood and Maura’s vanished. This kept me guessing and even right up to the end I wasn’t really sure who was telling the truth and who wasn’t.

Death and Deja Vu - Ian Moore

Latest in the Follet Valley series set in France where English B&B owner Richard and French bounty hunter Valerie solve crimes together. All very silly, but fun. However for this one they’re not in their usual village - they’re on holiday on an island where the owner has gathered a group of people together to play a game to win the island, but then people start dying. This is a sort of homage to Christie’s And Then There Were None, but I preferred the earlier books in the series set in more rural France.

V is for Vengeance - Sue Grafton

I’m getting to the end of the series! The books are starting to get too long now - this one could easily have been 100 pages shorter if all the unnecessary description of every person or place was removed. Anyway, Kinsey helps bust a big shoplifting ring and inadvertently solves a couple of murders while she’s at it.

Brilliant achievement @ÚlldemoShúl!

Well done @ÚlldemoShúl when I finished I declared that I would never get those hours back!! I basically remember a discussion on Hamlet and some Catholic references! I liked the end

That’s the way I did it (the two together) and it is hard work. I’d definitely a supporting handbook- there’s bits I wouldn’t have been able to tackle it without it. Reading the analysis made me go back and reread and make (a bit) more sense of it.

It is both wonderful and torture but the sense of achievement is immense! If you do go for it, give yourself plenty of time - sometimes I read 10 pages a day and I only finished this quickly because I’m a teacher on summer holidays- otherwise I’d no doubt be ploughing through for another three months!

Congratulations @ÚlldemoShúl

I have been mulling over a Odyssey - Ulysses double header for next year. What do you think - wonderful feast of reading or torture?

I never had to read Ulysses as a student but I remember great moaning and groaning from all those who did. I loved your review though (and a companion handbook sounds like a genius idea)

Well done @ÚlldemoShúl 👏