50 Books Challenge 2026 Part Six

Well done on completing Ulysses ÚlldemoShúl. That is a great achievement.

34) The Wedding People by Alison Espach. Widely reviewed on here already so I won't leave a synopsis.

I enjoyed this one, despite thinking Gary the groom wasn't the prize the other characters insisted on telling us he was! I liked the main character, Phoebe, and felt sorry for Gary's preteen daughter, 'Juice'. I also found Lila the bride to be quite compelling, spoilt and ridiculous as she was sometimes.

Having said that it did irk me that almost everyone (bride, groom, mother-of-the-bride, the groom's sister, best man, daughter of the groom) had a meaningful, soul-bearing conversation with newcomer Phoebe the second they were alone with her. I understand Lila, Gary, or even attention-starved Juice doing that for the sake of plot, but the rest was a bit on the nose.

Still worth a read.

Next up Dissection of a Murder by Jo Murray.

I have finished my major project for this summer which I started at the beginning of June and have always wanted to tackle as it is seen as a masterpiece of Irish literature
119 and 120 Ulysses by James Joyce and Ulysses Unbound by Terence Killen
The second book is a handbook to the first without which I would never have persevered past episode 3. This is the story of one day in Dublin and the experiences of our main characters during that day- Stephen Dedalus- a teacher and failed medical student who sees himself as a bit of a genius, Leopold Bloom- middle aged cuckold and Everyman outsider and his wife Molly, she who is having an affair. It is the least straightforward thing I’ve ever read. I went in thinking- it’s stream of consciousness- I like s of c- but the technique changes in every chapter or episode as Joyce calls them. Some of these were clever and funny and you could recognise truths in and others felt difficult for the sake of being difficult or irritating in how farcical they could be. Overall, it’s very male, (even the section in Molly’s PoV is a man trying to imagine what it’s like being a woman) with its obsessions with fatherhood, sex and bodily functions. But it also raises interesting issues and it talks of many things and uses many phrases which my late father used which made it more precious to me. I’m making it bold because I feel a real sense of achievement having finished it.

@Stowickthevast they do get fleshed out as the book goes on, and I did get invested in a couple of their back stories, but as a group they are certainly homogeneous. I kept thinking "surely these servants won't just exist in the background to clear up mess and be patronised by Otto". But apparently they would.

@VikingNorthUtsire I've just started reading The Eights and while I like the history of it, I'm finding the characters very similar. Each one has one thing to distinguish them, but not much depth aside from that.

47 Stone Yard Devotional, Charlotte Wood

I really loved this but made the mistake of reading something else before writing my review, so I am going to struggle to communicate what I loved about.

So firstly: nun fiction alert. The narrator (unnamed, I think) retreats to a small convent in rural Australia to escape problems in her marriage. It is near the town where she grew up, and memories of her childhood and now long-dead parents rise to the surface. She doesn't, it seems, believe in God, or in the power of prayer, but finds a kind of comfort in the mundane hard work and sisterhood of the convent community.

Her peace, though, is disturbed by what Wood has described as three "visitations". Firstly, the less-than-official return of a set of bones belonging to a previous inhabitant of the convent (yes, everyone on the Les Mis thread, it's another secret nun burial, although with less midnight body-swapping). Secondly, the fact that the living nun who is chaperoning the bones on their journey back to the convent is someone connected to the narrator's childhood. And finally an almost biblical infestation of mice, who invade every corner of the convent buildings, chewing and biting and dying in horrific numbers.

This is a quiet and low-key book where much of the substance lies under the surface. The narrator tells us early on that she will leave a lot out. There are many questions unanswered, often arising from remarks that drop quietly, without fanfare. The things that I thought might happen didn't happen. But the writing, and the depiction of the life of the convent, and the interactions between those very human women, is beautiful.

I wasn't sure whether to make it a bold as there are a LOT of loose ends left flapping and I had hoped for at least a few of them to be satisfactorily resolved. But yes, I'm going to declare it bold because I was sure from a few pages in that it would be, so I won't let the anti-climax of the ending put me off. Also I've had very few bolds so far this year - this was definitely one of my best reads of recent months.

48 The Eights, Joanna Miller

1920, and Oxford is admitting female students for the first time. Four very different (1) young women find themselves neighbours in Corridor Eight at St Hugh's College.

I wasn't sure if this would have much substance but I liked it more than I thought I would. Behind the "isn't female friendship just the BEST" are some genuinely moving stories of grief and longing. Miller uses her setting, the aftermath of the Great War, the changing social norms, to good effect.

(1) except not very different. This is one of my main issues with the book. By concentrating on four white, middle- or upper-class young women, Miller has restricted her story very much to one limited patch of history. I would LOVE for someone to do a Longbourn on this and give us the same place and time but tell the story through the eyes of one of the dowdy spinster chaperones (frequent objects of the girls' mockery) or the poor scout who runs their baths and cleans up their messes. The feminism in this book seems almost pointless without those voices.

I've also DNFd Helen of Nowhere from the Booker longlist. Nearly 50 mins of man with big ego waffling on about how his wife has left him and his career has taken a downturn, then on to a realtor talking nonsense while trying to sell a house to said man with big ego. Life is too short so I returned it.

I collected Yesteryear from the library yesterday, so far so good.

47 The Secret by the Lake - Louise Douglas It's 1961 and Amy, a working class young woman from Sheffield, has spent ten years working as a nanny for a family she loves. She returns home to nurse her dying grandmother, but within months she ends up back with the mother and daughter of the family, helping them survive following the father's death. They move to the mother's childhood home on the edge of a creepy reservoir and that's when the weird stuff starts happening...It turns out the mother had a sister who died as a teenager and is doing some hardcore haunting - genuinely scary stuff, especially when the little girl adopts her evil dead teenage auntie as an imaginary friend! Then we gradually get the backstory and it turns out the truth is very different from what everyone has always believed...

This was quite good, and I enjoyed the spooky bits. The twist at the end was well-signposted - some might say it was too obvious but at least there was a credible lead-in to it, which is better than being a "where the hell did that come from?" curveball. Overall, a decent read albeit most of the characters were not fleshed out well enough (and trigger warnings needed for child abuse).

60. The Scientist Who Wasn’t There - Joanne Briggs

Most of my recent reads have been courtesy of recommendations from here - thanks @bibliomania for this one! It’s a memoir/speculative fiction about her father, 'Professor' Michael Briggs - quote-marks because she discovered that, after his legit degree in chemistry, his subsequent stellar scientific honours were all faked - interesting to read just as the Arday scandal is happening.

In Briggs's case this had much more serious consequences, because he was a senior figure in a firm manufacturing synthetic hormones, and marketing a drug called Primodos, given to women as a pregnancy-testing method. It was alleged to cause horrific birth defects although all attempts to win accountability have, sadly, failed. Briggs left his wife, Joanne's mother, and his two children, for another woman and died young, largely estranged from his family.

The true story drew me in although I wasn’t convinced by the fictional passages where the author imagines events in her father’s life, and there was a slightly frustrating unfinished feel to the narrative - though I suspect this reflects the fact that there’s so much she just can’t know about his web of half-truths and outright inventions, and now will never know. Ultimately a sad story.

102. The Bad Seeds, C J Skuse
Final book in the series about a female serial killer - will she get her happy ending? By this point the series has overstayed its welcome and the jokes are worn by repetition. This instalment is mostly set in a small Irish village, not very convincingly portrayed. We find out more about one minor character, which is mildly interesting. I'm at least pleased to have finished the series.

103. Lady of Quality, Georgette Heyer
The last book published before GH's death and very standard GH fare. A young woman unexpectedly finds herself chaperoning a teenage girl who is determined to escape from her home. This brings her into contact with the girl's guardian, her uncle, and, much to no-one's surprise, sparks fly. GH has her usual fun with family relationships, punch dialogue, and amusing bathos - the big proposal here happens when the heroine is suffering from the flu, which is not something you often see.

104. Memoirs of a Fellwanderer, A Wainwright
We get some cranky old man grumbles - the welfare state is ruining people! Bring back the birch! - but there are also some more endearing moments in this memoir, where the author recounts how he fell in love with the Lake District. He doesn't claim any big-man climbing feats - his early encounters with the mountains have him sliding around in his smooth-soled shoes, getting soaked and lost and being intimidated by hotels. His first marriage, he says, "was to prove a mistake although it produced a son who won a beautiful baby competition". The introduction is written by his second wife - it was a late second marriage for each and their happiness together seems to have been a wonderful surprise for both of them. I was rather charmed by this.

105. The Winner's Curse, Marie Rutkoski
The first of a YA trilogy, this was pressed upon me by my teen dd. I'm pleased to report that her taste is reliable. The storyline is inspired by the fate of Greek slaves in Rome and Rome's attitude to Greek culture, a mixture of admiration and contempt. In this fictional state, a young woman of the conquering nation is drawn to a male slave. Fate has, of course, twists in store. Although it's all fairly predictable, it's competently executed.

106. Long Live Great Bardfield: The Autobiography of Tirzah Garwood
The introduction by the author's daughter compares this to Period Piece by Gwen Raverat, and there are similarities both in content (a description of her family and her life in the early decades of the twentieth century) and tone (irresistibly artless and confiding - or at least so it seems). Tirzah married Eric Ravilious and there is plenty here for anyone interested in artistic circles between the wars. The book might have benefited by stricter editing, cutting down on the sheer number of people who flit in and out of the pages. Even so, I really liked this and the authpr's determination to wring as much out of life as she could, before a sadly young death.

107. Return to Kirrin, Neil and Suzy Howlett
I snapped this up after a mention by @ChessieFL , as the Famous Five books were my gateway drug into reading when I was six or seven. It's the 1970s and they (well, four of them) are in their forties, dealing with work and teenagers and modern life, when Julian invites them back to Kirrin Island in pursuit of a particular plan. It's always a risk to read this kind of follow-on book as it can retrospectively colour your childhood image of the characters, but this was an affectionate homage, teasing but without malice, so no harm done.

108. Dead in the Morning, Margaret Yorke
This was part of a kindle offer of a whole crime series (5 books) for 99p. The books were originally published in the 1970s and so far very much in the classic vein - we're in an English village, someone has been killed in the big house, an Oxford don happens to be in the neighbourhood, and due to his superior intelligence, manages to solve the mystery before the police. You know what you're going to get and you get it. It's all done with a light touch and I'll happily read the next.

73. The Everlasting by Alix E Harrow - I have been reading a lot more fantasy recently and this book has made me want to go back to good solid historical novels. Not that it was bad. It was rather good. There was just too much packed into it for my taste. Multiple timelines, overlapping memories and a wealth of themes - legend vs truth, cowardice vs bravery, freedom vs devotion, patriotism vs nationalism, free will vs predestination, and half a dozen more.

It is very well written and I can't fault the execution. But just a bit too much for me.

Intimacies by Lucy Caldwell
Stories centred around motherhood, ageing and the possibility of life turning out not quite as you would have wanted.
I liked these a lot. Interesting to read them straight after the Claire Keegan stories, as they were more ‘everyday’ and so perhaps more relatable.
I must have picked this up on recommendation from here, as I haven’t read anything else by Caldwell and a book of short stories wouldn’t normally be my first point of contact with an author.

48 The Close by Jane Casey

Maeve Kerrigan #10 and I am just about keeping to my resolution of limiting myself to one a month. She's not making it easy, though, with the continued romantic tension! This instalment sees Derwent and Maeve pretending to be a couple as part of a somewhat improbable undercover stakeout in a seemingly-normal close. Predictably, it's anything but normal, and they end up with more than one crime on their hands. I figured one of them out myself, which I don't usually manage with Casey. Enjoyable as always although I found Maeve a bit wetter than normal in this one. Hoping she's back to her spiky self next time.

We went to Turkey years ago on a bargain package that included 'two-centre' B & B accommodation in Bodrum and Kuşadası, but decided to hire a car and just take off for a few days. We got rooms from people who came up to us and offered 😬😱 - there were loads of them all descending on the tourists offering accommodation in their homes in the countryside. I remember being woken in the pitch black by a muezzin, and creeping out of one place to get going early while it was still cool, leaving the cash for the stay on the table. Everything was fine though basic, but there’s no way on earth I'd dream of doing that now!

Inter railing in 1980 we ended up in Rome in a room in a flat with poodle poo in the corridor overlooking a porn cinema. We paid for all 3 beds in the room to have some privacy for adulting and when we came back in the evening found someone else in the 3rd bed. We all argued with the owner and in the end she refunded the other person and they had to go off looking for somewhere else.

68. Charlotte Says by Alex Bell

A YA story featuring evil murderous possessed frozen Charlotte* dolls.
The traumatised protagonist Jemima starts a new job in an isolated girls school ruled by a rigid and cruel headmistress, and when the dolls are sent to Jemima, all sorts of nasty and creepy things start to happen.

Effectively creepy, gruesome in places, and I’m now kind of glad that I don’t have any china dolls around the house!

*these were a sort of doll made in one piece (so no moveable joints). Very popular in Victorian times, usually made from porcelain.

69. Blood of Hercules by Jasmine Mas

I’m a bit confused about what genre this is aiming at. It’s the first in a series.

The world setting has “gods”, all named after the ones in the Greek pantheon and known here as Spartans, who’ve emerged from centuries in hiding to help humanity fight monsters called Titans.

Our heroine Alexis has survived a terrible childhood, when a mandatory blood test reveals that she’s got Spartan heritage and is thus eligible for the Spartan War Academy.
Which features a literal deathmatch massacre as an entry exam, before a 6 month bootcamp from hell. Given that the first chapter of the book talks about the Spartans having fertility issues, it seems crazy that they’re happy for over 4/5ths of their young adults to be killed off before they’re eligible to be citizens, but there we go.

I think it’s meant to be romantasy, but the relationships here are throwing up a veritable WTF forest of red flags. The biggest red flags have got to be the betrothal gifts that contain dismembered body parts from men who’ve flirted with Alexis.

So, I’m not sure where this “romance” is headed. It could be an enemies to lovers thing, it could be some sort of fake out and the main contenders for the romantic pairing at the end of this book end up usurped in the next book, but at the moment, this is all looking like a terribly unhealthy situation for Alexis to be in, regardless of how sexy we’re told everyone involved is.

I don’t think I’d pay for the sequel, but the ebook of the sequel looks to be included in my Prime membership so I’m dithering about whether to borrow it on that, even though I suspect the relationships are still going to be shedding red flags in every chapter.

I liked Days of Light.
I travelled in Croatia with nothing booked but the flights within a year of the war ending. It was so beautiful and quiet. I remember walking through the gates of Dubrovnik at night and us being the only people on the street.
I think that’s one of the things we’ve lost through gaining the internet (and kindle book deals lol) the ability to be spontaneous and flexible and to actually fully switch off by being uncontactable on hols etc.

We ended up in a doss house in an exceedingly dubious part of San Francisco when we decided to do a US holiday based entirely on coupons you could get in fast food restaurants. This was before Trip Advisor and mobiles. There was no lock on the door. It was my anniversary. I slept not one wink, not because of amorous lust, I might add.

Great reviews @carefullythere I also didn't see what the fuss was about Days of Light though people in my online book group and book tubers were raving about it. The diagnosis book sounds interesting. A step relative was diagnosed with Huntingdons a few years ago, and there was lots of debate where his adult children should get tested or not. It affects things like insurance and mortgages if you have a diagnosis, I believe.

I was thinking about travelling and how different it is as had to book an emergency hotel for one night on a Greek island last weekend. I did manage it, but got me thinking about how much easier it was when you just used to wander around town with your guidebook looking for somewhere to stay. I travelled round the whole of southeast Asia like that in the pre internet days. Also only communicated with my parents via poste restante every month or so.

On our honeymoon in Corsica nearly twenty-five years ago, DH and I booked accommodation for the beginning and the end, but nothing for the days in between, to be flexible. On arriving into a busy town, there was nothing available except for separate dorms in a youth hostel, so we stayed there for a night and then moved on. We were travelling by train, so were restricted to routes and schedules. These days, I like to plan everything in advance! Feck flexibility!

We were chatting in the family about travelling and how much it has changed. My cousin was driving from Scotland to France, as my parents did many times in the 1990s. However, my mother’s map reading skills were not the best and many arguments ensued. Mum actually offered my cousin their map from 1990s. ‘At least it has the Chunnel!!’ was Mum’s defence. My lovely cousin declined and went with Google Maps (as presumably we all do?)

Yeah, I went interrailing in 1990, including into the eastern bloc (the wall had fallen just a few months before) and we booked nothing. There were loads of backpackers on the trains and while we used tourist offices to find accommodation in the west, in the east we'd just go home with some random person we met at the station who was offering rooms. If my DC told me they were doing that now I'd be horrified (although, realistically, isn't that what airbnb is). We had some great adventures, including getting arrested in Prague for not stamping our underground ticket before we got on the tube. We had to pay a £5 fine (tickets were 5p).

Re travel, we went on a cycling holiday in the Dordogne in the early 90s armed with oly the Michelin Guide to the Dordogne. We hadn't booked a thing. We got the ferry over to Boulogne, where we put the bikes into a dedicated bike carriage on the sleeper train to Brive, got off and started cycling. We were there for 2 weeks and every day we turned up at a new town or village and looked for a room. We always found one - thank goodness, as it's hard work to cycle to the next town when you think you are done. We did the same in Normandy too. I wouldn't dare risk not booking now

Re. travel plans, I spent a month in Greece 20-odd years ago and only booked the flights there and back, and a hotel for the first night. It was amazing just doing what I felt like (travelling solo, so only myself to please) but I think that’s the only time I’ve not been organised to the hilt - and I did read the Lonely Planet guide cover to cover, which helped! Would love to do another trip like that but these days I don’t think I could cope with the stress of not knowing where I’m going to sleep, and of course everything is better value if you book in advance!

Finished another sunbed book - A Sociopath's Guide to a Successful Marriage. Entertaining, exceptionally silly, mildly satirical.