50 Books Challenge 2026 Part Six

There was a whole Gothic lit round on UC last night.

For my English Lit A level I did a comparison essay of The Mysteries of Udolpho and Northanger Abbey. Can’t remember much about TMOU now except that it was very long!

27 Cloistered by Catherine Coldstream
Thank you @TimeforaGandT for mentioning this - it being the Modern World, I impulse bought it. Very enjoyable and I liked her descriptions of the natural world. I also have a weakness for nun-lit. I’m a much stonier atheist than I have been while reading other accounts and it does affect how I experience them. I’ve certainly never read an account that ends up with the author not believing in God, not surprisingly, though I suppose Karen Armstrong comes closest. In general I ended up feeling that I probably would have found the author hard to live with as well tbh, though I’m possibly influenced by the vibe of the Acknowledgments. I also came to feel that the cloistered religious life should be something people do for three years, like a degree or a long retreat. I have a Buddhist friend who goes on several silent retreats a year. To me that seems more likely to tap the alleged spiritual benefits while less likely to result in the sorts of distorted power struggles she describes.

"The book had much less of the murderous AI than I expected (possibly my recollection of the film focused more on that than the rest of the film?), and the book was also much more sympathetic towards the murderous AI than I expected. And I’m still not entirely sure what the ending was about"

We recently watched the film and I'd say it matches the book on both counts. Especially the WTF ending.

Also re The Castle of Otranto - I thought I'd read it way back when as an undergraduate, but after reading a synopsis, I think it was actually The Mysteries of Udolpho that I read. Also The Monk, which was very odd. Castle sounds like a good read so thank you, @bibliomania for the review.

I haven't read it but I am curious, as I know it's one of the books that's referred to, and that inspired, Northanger Abbey - a book I find really funny as a crime reader. And it's also about the experience of a young woman growing up (as I suppose most of her other novels are to an extent - other than the Anne in Persuasion who everyone considers "doomed" to be a spinster at the old age of 29 (!), most of her heroines are teenagers.

32) The Summer Guests by Tess Gerritsen. A group of ex-CIA spies have retired to a small town in Maine where they enjoy bird watching, and their cocktail sipping book club - 'The Martini Club'. But when a teenage girl goes missing from one of the holiday homes on a newrby lake, they spring back into action, using their specialist skills to assist local police chief Jo Thibodeau with the case.

This was just ok. It was a quick read, but I found the Martini Clubbers a bit smug and annoying. They kept dropping hints for Jo to figure out rather than just tell her their findings/theories outright, then wondering why the poor woman never had time to sit and eat a proper meal! None of the characters were remotely fleshed out, and I'm still not 100% sure why a couple of people weren't arrested for a historical crime.

This is the 2nd in the 'Martini Club' series, and I've not read the first, so to be completely fair they might have gone into the backstory of the ex-spies a bit more in that one. As it was, there wasn't much to distinguish between them beyond 'the smart one', 'the muscle', 'the silver fox', 'the one who likes to cook', and 'the narrator'. Although I only finished the book a couple of hours ago, I genuinely couldn't tell you the names of 2 of the Martini Club members because they were that irrelevant to the plot.

Entertaining enough to keep me turning the page, but I doubt I'll read any more of this series.

62. The Reappearance of Rachel Price by Holly Jackson

YA thriller. Bel’s mum Rachel disappeared 16 years ago without a trace, with 2 year old Bel the only witness. The Price family have agreed to take part in a true crime documentary, and in the midst of all the filming around that, Rachel reappears and everyone’s life is turned upside down.
I wasn’t totally convinced about the way the characters behaved in this, but Bel’s quest to find out the truth behind Rachel’s disappearance and reappearance was compelling enough to keep me reading until the end.

63. 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C Clarke

This is the book of the film, apparently written in parallel with the screenplay rather than as an adaptation.
I’ve seen the film, but many years ago, so my recollection of it wasn’t great.

Anyway. There’s lots and lots of sciencey details about space and the journey to investigate the mysterious monoliths.
The book had much less of the murderous AI than I expected (possibly my recollection of the film focused more on that than the rest of the film?), and the book was also much more sympathetic towards the murderous AI than I expected. And I’m still not entirely sure what the ending was about.

34) The Truants by Kate Weinberg
This was an extremely satisfying read. I didn't see where it was going at all until the last few pages. It has an intriguing plot and memorable characters.

Jess has started a literature degree at uni and comes under the spell of her charismatic lecturer, Lorna, who is teaching classes on Agatha Christie.

Meanwhile she hangs out with her new best friend, Georgie, and Georgie's striking boyfriend, Alec, and her own boyfriend Nick. They think they are the cool crowd and become massively over-entwined, leading to unhappiness all round.

Thinks get quite dark. There is a trip to a beautiful Greek island. Au unexplained death. And a brilliant ending.

Definite recommend. Btwvit won a lot of awards so some of you may have read it - i picked it up in a RNLI charity shop last year for 50p. Bargain!

I’m still disappointed that Anne Digby didn’t continue the Trebizon books into the sixth form.

I would love it if everyone goes down a Trebizon rabbit hole! They are interesting to read now as bits have not aged well. Eg one of the teachers at a summer camp gives a naughty boy a slap round the head.

I have all of them in paperback but have never read the last one. I believe they are now all on kindle which was why I restarted them thinking I would read them all and then buy the final one.

@StrangewaysHereWeComeRobbie doesn’t read well now. He’s quite moody and controlling. He gets really grumpy when Rebecca is not able to watch his rugby when she has to play tennis.

How odd. The Talisman was available on Audible today!

Funny I thought Land was more like Hammet than any other of O’Farrell’s books. I haven’t read Helm or Cuddy though so can’t come in on that comparison at all.

Recent reads
The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin
Interesting exploration of Mary (mother of Jesus) as a human mother worried about her son who she suspects may be mentally unwell and is being encouraged and even exploited by unscrupulous followers. This little novella could have been longer to help us feel Mary’s humanity more in her earlier life perhaps. I still haven’t found a Toibin as good as Blackwater Lightship but I have about another 5 of them on my kindle so I’ll keep looking.

Dona Barbara by Romulo Gallegos
Part of my book club Reading around the Eorld challenge- this one is for Venezuela. Set on the plains, Santos Luzardo, a well educated doctor decides to return to his family lands in the plains to sell them but when he gets there he decides to make a go of the ranch instead. This brings him into conflict with his neighbour the steely Dona Barbara who dabbles in magic. This is a Venezuelan classic (which Larry McMurtry inexplicably compares to Madam Bovary) but really it’s pretty soapy entertainment. Good fun.

If it helps, I’ve pretty much loved everything O’Farrell has written, with the exception of Hamnet, which I hated and DNFed at least 3 times. So if you usually like her writing, you will probably like this too.

Hmmm. I have it on my Wish List but was the naysayer for the two you have compared with

Not very @EineReiseDurchDieZeit, it’s more the scope and the themes. Plus the voice of an author who really knows their history but prefers to get right down in the metaphorical mud with their characters.

Is it stylistically similar to Cuddy and Helm ? @MaterMoribund

Land by Maggie O’Farrell
A beautifully, dense, folkloric novel which will stay with me a long time.
It follows the lives of Tomàs, his wife Phina and their children Liam, Enda, Rose and Eugene. Set in the aftermath of the Great Hunger it begins with Tomás working as a map maker for the English, producing intricate work that he becomes determined will show every devastated homestead and every old name for the occupied territories. Liam comes under the sway of the local priest, believing he is destined for the religious life. Enda is taught the play the violin, which channels her restless spirit for a while. Rose tries to keep the home going and Eugene remains silent throughout his life. Loyal dogs with golden eyes slide through the narrative.
It has an incredibly wide scope across time and continents but always remains focused on the history and trauma suffered by this single family, whilst understatedly driving home the violence and suffering of the time.
It’s up there with Cuddy and Helm for me, in its ambition and fierce Show Not Tell momentum.

I started that one today!

46 Yesteryear. Caro Claire Burke Bold
Really enjoyed this one, that has often been reviewed here already and not always too positively. We have a disagreeable mentally unwell protagonist and her (to varying degrees) dysfunctional family. An influencer of the most dishonest kind. I had no idea what was going on most of the time but was happy to buckle up for the ride. If even half of this could be true, it's a sad indictment of America and anywhere that values appearances over reality. I thought it was unputdownable.
47 The Island Victoria Hislop. Loved it. Intrigue and lovely writing. It's about the end days of a leper colony in Greece. Maybe not the natural playground for a quite uplifting novel! Tbh I didn't need the modern day characters, but they featured so little I was able to disregard them. I will certainly be reading the follow up.
48 The Year of the flood. Margaret Atwood. Dystopian* fiction *Once I'd tuned into who everyone was, I loved it. Much preferred it to the first in the series Oryx and, Crake. A few plot cross overs but largely an independent story about those who resisted the waterless flood. I'm going to get started on the third - Maddaddam.

Adding Dream State, An Unnecessary Woman and The Human Factor to my wishlist and Falling to my tv watchlist.

Pretty Iconic - Sali Hughes

Sali started our as a make up artist and is now the Beauty Editor of The Guardian and co-founder of Beauty Banks, a charity supporting women with make up, skincare and hygiene products.

This is her personal pick of beauty icons - one page per product, with accompanying photos or illustrations. Ranging from Chanel No 5 through Barry M to Kate Somerville's Goat Milk Moisturiser, this is a nice book to dip into for a few pages at a time.

44 An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine

Latest Shelterbox book. The inner life of Aaliya Saleh, a woman in her 70s who lives alone in her native Beirut and has spent her life writing Arab translations of great literature, that no-one has ever read. Not much happens in this book – it’s a little bit like Mrs Dalloway, in that Aaliya goes about her daily business and we tunnel back into her past. But her voice – spiky, outraged, literary – is a triumph, even more so given that (as I was surprised to realise halfway through) the author is a man. At times the literary references got a bit too much for me – Alameddine has clearly read a lot more books than I have. But he’s also hooked on some of my favourites so ultimately I wasn’t bothered by the digressions. You also get an ephemeral sense of Beirut, which I enjoyed. The ending shifts Aaliya away from her isolation, which I liked, although I agree with a couple of reviews I read suggesting it’s a little pat. But absolutely worth reading for Aaliya, her anger and resilience alone.

@ChessieFL you probably know but the same author wrote 'The Dubrovnik Book Club' which I enjoyed.