50 Books Challenge 2026 Part Six

41 The Other Bennet Sister - Janice Hadlow
Suffered in comparison with the TV adaptation. It was strong in capturing an Austen-esque voice (without going overboard into parody) and showing how limited women’s agency was when trying to find out a man’s true feelings. But it was really just an ugly duckling meets a fairy godmother (Aunt Gardiner) who helps her buy some nicer frocks and specs - and oh look, then she has some suitors. Whereas the TV series more clearly coded Mary as autistic and made this a story of self acceptance and self determination.

42 Entitled: how male privilege hurts women - Kate Manne
Short feminist exploration of the various forms of male entitlement - not all new ideas, but I liked the concept of ‘testimonial injustice’, e.g. inequalities of whose stories are seen as authoritative, which plays into issues such as medicine - women who complain of pain are hysterical, whereas complaining men must obviously be in agony

Fell off the last thread and late to this one, but bringing my list over - thanks @Southeastdweller

1 Edenglassie – Melissa Lucashenko
2 All the Colours of the Dark – Chris Whitaker
3 Boymum – Ruth Whippman
4 Bramble Fox – Kathrin Tordasi
5 Salem’s Lot – Stephen King
6 Scattered – Aamna Mohdin
7 Hangover Square – Patrick Hamilton
8 Due to a Death – Mary Kelly
9 The Reckoning – Jane Casey
10 The Last Girl – Jane Casey
11 Factfulness – Hans Rosling
12 The Stranger You Know – Jane Casey
13 Recitatif – Toni Morrison
14 The Fire Next Time – James Baldwin
15 Whites: on race and other falsehoods - Otegha Uwagba
16 The Sparsholt Affair – Alan Hollinghurst
17 The Evin Prison Bakers’ Club – Sepideh Gholian
18 The Kill – Jane Casey
19 Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow – Gabrielle Zevin
20 A Woman of Substance – Barbara Taylor Bradford
21 Chosen Family – Madeleine Gray
22 The Secret Hours – Mick Herron
23 The Hallmarked Man – Robert Galbraith
24 The Silence of the Girls – Pat Barker
25 The Women of Troy – Pat Barker
26 The Voyage Home – Pat Barker
27 The Gift of Rain – Tan Twan Eng
28 After the Fire – Jane Casey
29 Mani – Patrick Leigh Fermor
30 Brother. Do. You. Love. Me – Manni Coe
31 Almost Life – Kiran Millwood Hargrave
32 Minor Disturbances at Grand Life Apartments – Hema Sukumar
33 Let the Dead Speak – Jane Casey
34 The Pun Also Rises – John Pollack
35 Sexing the Cherry – Jeanette Winterson
36 Violets – Kyung-Sook Shin
37 She’s Not There – Jennifer Finney Boylan
38 Watermarks – Tanya Shadrick (ed.)
39 Cruel Acts – Jane Casey
40 The Prime Ministers We Never Had – Steve Richards
41 The Edge of Darkness – Vaseem Khan

And the reason why I've been awol for so long...

42 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

When I was 15, I read The Mayor of Casterbridge at the instigation of my wonderful English teacher. She had never previously recommended anything I didn’t love, but this was the exception – and what an exception it was. I hated it so much that I swore I was never going to read another book by Thomas Hardy. But after my post-40 rediscovery of Virginia Woolf, who I didn’t get at all as a teen, and the gentle encouragement of my best reading friend, I decided it was time to give him another try. It wasn't an unbridled success. I’m still not at all sure what I think about this book. It took me a good long while to finish (hence falling off the last thread). It was deeply, deeply depressing and demoralising. The male characters are, almost without exception, awful. In short, it entirely met all my reasons for not wanting to read any more Hardy novels. But he writes so very beautifully about the countryside; it’s incandescent, like a pre-Raphaelite painting. And the ending of the book is so good. I just found myself unable to cope with the relentless misery that leads up to it. I’m glad I’ve read it, and I will be thinking about the characters for some time, I suspect – but I have no desire to read it ever again, and still less desire to read any of Hardy’s other novels.

58. The Last to Drown by Noelle W Ihli

This is like a slasher film that’s set in a white water rafting holiday in the middle of nowhere.

The bereaved protagonist, Kaia, is on an adventure rafting trip when everything starts to go badly and bloodily wrong. There’s plenty of peril, violence and gore. The only way out for the survivors of the initial attack is to navigate down the rapids filled river whilst also dodging the killer.

It’s an adrenaline packed thriller and a fast, gripping read.

This is a review of a book that I finished reading a few weeks ago (#54 of 77 books finished so far this year). I have criticisms of this book but found it interesting - I suspect some of you might hate this one though.

Pink-Pilled: Women and the Far Right by Lois Shearing

I borrowed this book from the library because the title caught my eye in a list of recent acquisitions. Why do women become involved in fascist and far right organisations here in the UK and in other countries? What part is the internet playing?

This is published by Manchester University Press, and like many academic books it comes with very detailed endnotes, comprising around 10 per cent of the text, and an index. The writing style is fairly accessible although the author uses quite a lot of contemporary terminology frequently used online, and associated with discussions of the far right and alt right, also of sexuality and gender identity on social media. Lois Shearing has worked for women's magazines like Cosmopolitan writing about sex and relationships. They describe themselves online as a bisexual activist and now identify as non-binary, though Shearing does acknowledge that in when researching this book, they would have presented as a wite woman.

The research described in the book includes a lot of looking at websites as well as some online and face to face interactions with women active in far right organisations. Pink-pilled is in 7 chapters - defining "girl-fascism", the extent of support from women for the current US government, some history of 20th century women's involvement in fascism, the far right's vision of women's role, how women are radicalised.

I found this book quite interesting and disturbing but also, at times, frustrating. Shearing's research is quite focused on individual experiences, how the far right recruits and views women as individuals. There is not so much about right wing women's organisations. Nor is there much about collective responses and resistance, and how those of us who are horrified by fascism and the far right can offer alternatives. The book is quite short with fairly limited space, and sometimes feels quite superficial.

And while at the beginning the author describes their surprise at reading Andrea Dworkin and finding more that they can agree with than they expected, and they acknowledge that there are different types of feminism, and disagreeing with another feminist writer's views does not necessarily mean that they are right wing, some complexities are not really acknowledged through the book. This is particularly problematic when the author refers to gender identity. While the far right and more traditional conservatives are happy to make use of concerns about gender identity, there are many women on the left who are also concerned about women's rights, space for women, erasure etc. I do not regard myself as gender critical, but the polarisation of the debates on this have left a lot that has not been satisfactorily discussed.

So I am not entirely satisfied with this book, but I think it is worth a read.

@FuzzyCaoraDhubh- you’ve persuaded me to try the Monica Dickens. I remember reading about One Pair of Feet when younger (possibly in a reading comprehension- I used to remember these for book recommendations) but I never got round to reading it.

These are the books that I’ve read since the start of the last thread. No non-fiction but quite a high number of bolds.

59 . The Glass Lake by Maeve Binchy - a mother goes missing in post-war Ireland
60 . By Love Divided by Elizabeth St John - a family splits into Cavaliers and Roundheads as the Civil War approaches
61 . Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy - masterly study of how men can ruin a woman’s life that has many echoes in modern news stories
62 . The Others by Sheena Kalayil - a love triangle at the time of the fall of the Iron Curtain
63 . Rivals by Jilly Cooper - entertaining plotting and scheming in 1980s TV
64 . The Girl in the Glass Tower by Elizabeth Fremantle - fictional account of the life of Arbella Stewart (cousin of James VI & I)
65 . Wildfire at Midnight by Mary Stewart - a woman encounters an old love and a new murder on holiday in Skye
66 . The Rose Field by Philip Pullman - the end of Lyra’s adventures

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit – aw I’m so sorry about your horrible bullies! Also, tbf I’m not a Scouser, I’m Scottish married to one. But I fell in love with Everton when he took me to Goodison, so I am definitely now a Blue.

@Southeastdweller – thank you for the new thread

@Iamnotaloggrip – How could I have forgotten about Leighton Baines?? Although my suggestion, Asa Hartford did also play for Everton (probably way before your time).

@TimeforaGandT – I loved House of Glass so much, I bought it for my Mum

@BoldAquaOP – welcome!

81 The Five Star Weekend – Elin Hildebrand. We are back on Nantucket. I realised that this book has been televised and starts on Sky this week. So I had to read it asap. Probably to tie in with the adaptation, Kindle made it a 99p special. Hurrah. Hollis Shaw is a food blogger extraordinaire. Brought up on Nantucket Island, Hollis marries a Boston based doctor, Matthew and they make their home there. They still maintain a home on Nantucket and takes their annual holidays. Matthew dies suddenly and Hollis, at a loss on how to cope, creates a ‘Five Star Weekend’, bringing together her best friends from different points in her life. There are secrets and lies and I loved every bit of it.

82 Holly – Stephen King. Part of the ‘Stephen King Summer’ online book club that I belong to. The organiser is a huge SK fan. I’ve only been part of her book club since January and had no idea about Stephen King Summer. I’m not really into horror, its not my thing, but I did enjoy this book. Holly Gibney is a small character from Mr Mercedes and he’s now developing this character. I haven’t read Mr Mercedes, but I think I might go back and do that.

Holly is a private detective who is engaged by the mother of a missing woman in her 20s. She feels fobbed off by the police and is sure that something has happened to her daughter. Holly takes on her case, despite the very recent death of her mother. This is set in July 2021 and covid still looms large Being a SK novel, there is a more to this than first appears. Holly is a very sympathetic character and I enjoyed SKs fun with the Trump supporting characters.

I mostly remember her for Follyfoot of course and if you are of a certain age you will now have an earworm.

I remember reading Monica Dickens' books at school - they were great. If I recall correctly she is a descendant of Charles.

Ha ha ha...
Go for it @BestIsWest

Excellent. Not that I’m enabling you or anything 😈

And I have. Though that one was £2.99.

Go on, Best. You know you want to. And you will love it, I promise 😊

(Get One Pair of Feet while you’re there)

I’m so easily swayed. And only £1.49 on Kindle.

One Pair of Hands: Monica Dickens.

This is an account of the eighteen months that the author, a bored society girl, tried her hand at being 'cook-general' for various well-to-do families in 1930s England. Written in a lively, humorous and self-deprecating way, it portrays the last years of the worlds of upstairs and downstairs and the servants who worked their fingers off to satisfy their employers' every whim. I thought this was an excellent read. I loved the wealth of domestic detail and especially enjoyed Monica's happy-go-lucky attitude to domesticity.

Today’s finished books are
102 The Wind in the Willows- Kenneth Grahame
I never read this as a child and wanted to listen to the Book Club podcast on it so I read it over the last couple of days. Love the Mole and Rat bits. Toad is an asshole though and it got worse as it got toadier. Not Winnie the Pooh standard but I appreciate I’m not the target audience

Then a DNF Haven by Emma Donahue. I lived Tbe Pull of the Stars last year but this was just dull. Set in 7th century Ireland, it deals with the monks who established the monastery on the inhospitable Skellig Michael (island off Kerry). But it was extremely slow and where it was going was too clearly telegraphed. (Although I did skim the end to see yes it ended as I expected but with an out of left field twist- glad I didn’t bother)

103- John of John by Douglas Stuart (audio)
This was fabulous. I haven’t read his more famous works yet, but I definitely will move them up my tbr now. It tells the story of John Callum (goes by Cal) a closeted gay young man who returns to his very puritanical Scottish island to help care for his grandmother and focuses on his relationship with his father John. Spare prose, real
characters and I’m a sucker for an island community (and a religious community). Bold for me and hope to see it on the Booker list.

Our Fathers by Rebecca Wait
A tough read as you might expect, dealing with the subjects of coercive control and family annihilation. I found the introductory chapter very difficult, as you know what happens to the mother and two of her children and had to put it away for a while in favour of other books.
However, Wait's writing is so understatedly beautiful that when I picked it back up I couldn't fault it for a respectful treatment of such a situation.
Tom was the only survivor at 8 years old when his father murdered his mother, older brother and baby sister before killing himself. His paternal uncle and aunt took him in but the trauma he suffered affected his behaviour to the extent that he was sent to live with his maternal aunt. Now he has come back to the sparsely populated island of Litta and not everyone is thrilled to have a reminder of what his father did.
We see parts of the story from several points of view, including Katrina, Tom's mother, but the main focus is Uncle Malcolm, now a widower and struggling to find the right way to speak to his troubled nephew.
Masculinity (toxic and otherwise) is explored sensitively and so are the narratives we tell ourselves about our families and our actions.

I Shop Therefore I Am - Mary Portas

Mary’s account of her time at Harvey Nicks in the 90s where she was in charge of the window display team and rose to become their creative and PR director. She’s credited with helping make the brand a fashion leader.
I did enjoy this. Lots about 90s fashion, Diana, Absolutely Fabulous, the posh people who worked and shopped at the store, the different brands like MAC that she helped get launched in the UK and lots about the challenges of being a woman and mother in a working environment not designed for support which rang a lot of bells. She returns to work after three months maternity leave as did I in the 90s going back when DD was 12 weeks old into a job where I was on call 24*7 50% of the time. It seems crazy to me now but it was the norm among my friends and colleagues.

yes that’s exactly how the lists work @Pigtailsandall

Just finished Alwyn Turner's latest slice of social history, A Shellshocked Nation which deals with the lives of ordinary Britons (well, mainly the English) between the wars. I like his books, focusing as they'd on how popular culture both shapes and reflects us. Highly readable with lots of little gems of learning, such as why we pronounce laboratory and margarine as we do.

Also I have not listed the books I've read this year anywhere, I'm just relying on my memory in counting them, so I'll attempt a list:

1. Dream Count - Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche
2. The Vanishing Half - Brit Bennett
3. Creation Lake - Rachel Kushner
4. All the Little Bird Hearts - Viktoria Lloyd Barlow
5. The Safekeep - Yeal van der Wouden
6. All My Puny Sorrows - Miriam Toews
7. Amy & Isabelle - Elizabeth Strout
8. The Names - Florence Knapp
9. You Are Here - David Nicholls
10. Gliff - Ali Smith
11. Purity - Jonathan Franzen
12. Fundamentally - Nussaibah Younis
13. Small Things Like These - Clare Keegan
14. Middle England - Jonathan Coe
15. The Bullet that Missed - Richard Osman
16. Orbital - Samantha Harvey
17. Heart the Lover - Lily King
18. Wild Dark Shore - Charlotte McConaghy
19. Glorious Exploits - Ferdia Lennon
20. Dominion - Addie E Citchens
21. So Thrilled for You - Holly Bourne
22. Milkman - Anna Burns
23. Writers and Lovers - Lily King
24. Demon Copperhead - Barbara Kingsolver
25. The Things We Never Say - Elizabeth Strout
26. Kingfisher - Rozie Kelly
27. To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
28. The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida - Shehan Karunatilaka
29. Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
30. Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? - Lorrie Moore
31. The Last Devil to Die - Richard Osman
32. Between the World and I - Ta-Nehisi Coates
33. Best of Friends - Kamila Shamsie
34. Piranesi - Susanna Clarke
35. Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen

As far as I understand, I'm meant to make my favourites bold? Problem is that I have read a of really good books this year so it's hard to narrow them down!

I finished Northanger Abbey last night while DH watched football - I am reading more now that he's preoccupied most night watching football (which I don't care about at all).
I had forgotten almost everything about Northanger Abbey, having read it when I was 16 or 17, but it slowly came back to me. it's such a delightful, funny, youthful novel, probably the lightest and most frivolous of Austen, and such a stark contrast to Mansfield Park, which I read earlier in the spring. Catherine Morland is also my favourite heroine - Emma is conceited, Elizabeth snobby, Fanny self-righteous and snivelling. Catherine is just funny and full of life.

Quick shout-out to any Michael Connolly fans who want to read Ironwood, the latest in his ever-expanding spin-off series of satellite characters loosely revolving around Bosch (this one featuring Detective Stilwell) - it’s 99p today.

I finished two books this weekend - one highly hyped and utterly dreadful (in my opinion) and one picked solely for its setting, which turned out to be great fun! I read them in parallel because I couldn't wade through the awful one without something to mitigate it.

64. The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig - I read this for my in person book club. It was my first romantasy and I approached it with some trepidation as I am not a fan of the way romance is written nowadays. I like love stories but genre tropes really put me off unless they emerge naturally from the story. Unfortunately this book was about as paint by numbers as it can get. The characters were entirely at the mercy of the plot and behaved in whatever way necessary for the lot to proceed, internal motivation be hanged. There was SO MUCH telling and not showing of the magical world it is set in. And the language veered wildly from eerie, gothic, mystical to modern teenage drama. Every time I was starting to get immersed in the world, I'd be pulled out by a ridiculous word or phrase. It improved slightly in the last 20% but only from insufferable to boring. My first 1 star rating in a long time.

65. The Amok Runners by Colin Cotterill - I went for a wedding to Chiang Mai (Thailand) last week and I always try to read something set in the place I am visiting. This was the only English language book I could find on Libby set in Chiang Mai. From the cover it looked amateurish so I had zero expectations but it turned out to be a very enjoyable read. It is a crime novel set on the film set of a Hollywood blockbuster being filmed in Thailand. Jimm Juree and her brothers are extras in the film and get embroiled in a murder. Jimm, a journalist, naturally decides to investigate. The characters are a bunch of eccentrics (a fat girl, a bodybuilder, a retired ladyboy, and an illegal immigrant historian) and Jimm's voice is cynical and hilarious. The setting feels unique and authentic and the mystery isn't bad either. The author apparently has two series of crime novels (the other set in Laos) and I will probably give them a go at some point.

@minsmum- if you have data, there is the Project Gutenberg website which has copies of texts that out of copyright including most classics. They have them in plenty of formats including as a web page (html). I’ve also finally managed to get the BorrowBox app on my phone. A phone is a bit small to read a book - but it’s better than nothing.

39 Clown Town - Mick Herron An old undercover operation (with strong parallels to the real-life Stakeknife) comes back to bite the hand that fed it, with the now elderly but still professional team that ran it featuring heavily in this latest Slough House instalment. Taverner’s machinations involve the slow horses as usual, and shit happens as it always does - though this time it feels like Lamb’s luck (or ability to predict exactly how events will unfold) may actually be running out. Another bold, and I’m looking forward to the next (and possibly final?) book in the series.