50 Books Challenge 2026 Part Six

I think book 2 of the series is much better than book 1, @EineReiseDurchDieZeit. But I can see why you might not want to expend more time on them.

An Unlikely Visitor by Joanna Cannon
I’m a big fan of her books and, while undoubtedly farfetched, this is full of her usual compassion and humour.
Jeanie, Margaret and Derek’s 11 year old daughter, went missing many years ago. In the present day Derek has died and Margaret is struggling to reconnect with any part of her life. I found this section particularly affecting due to a close bereavement last year, so just a heads up for anyone in a similar situation. However, Derek is the ‘unlikely visitor’ of the title and together he and Margaret start to unpick what really happened on that awful day. This is where it turns a bit ‘Ghosts’ and whimsical, but I didn’t mind that, as Cannon handles it well (and of course there’s always the alternative interpretation of what might be going on for Margaret, but I ignored that because it’s far too miserable to contemplate ).
She writes older people as people and it made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me go “Oooh, interesting plot development……!”. So, job done, really.

23. RWYO. Tilt, by Emma Pattee. A heavily pregnant and thoroughly fed up Annie is at Ikea in Portland, Oregon buying a crib for her baby when a huge earthquake hits the city. As she begins to walk back to the city to find her husband, we learn about their relationship via flashbacks. This was absolutely brilliant and I think will stay with me for a long time.

I think My Brilliant Friend is very marmite. I absolutely loved it and all the sequels.
I’m about 17% into Helen of Nowhere and close to DNFing. Awful man navel gazing.

Pretty sure it’s been well read and generally well liked on the thread but I just really couldn’t engage with it

Interesting to read your review of My Brilliant Friend @EineReiseDurchDieZeit. I’m an hour into the audiobook and I’m not especially engaged with either the plot or the characters yet...

22 The Queen's Gambit - Walter Tevis
Orphaned at the age of 8, Beth grows up in a Children's Home where the Janitor teaches her how to play chess. She is a natural, and when she is adopted by a childless middle-aged woman she finds a route to making a name for herself as a child prodigy. Her teenage years are spent in the pursuit of fame and fortune on the US chess circuit, along with battling her addition to tranquilizers and alcohol, and she finally realises her dream of competing internationally with the Big Boys of the Russian Grandmaster clique.

I saw the Netflix adaptation of this a few years ago and thought it quite well done. The book version is a little more difficult due to the technical descriptions of chess games. My rudimental knowledge of the game was enough to manage the chess sections, but these weren't the best parts of the novel for me!

52 . My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

In 1950’s Naples Lenù becomes enthralled by Lila, the shoemakers daughter.

This was previously a DNF for me, but I resurrected it due to the Goalhanger podcast. I can’t say I particularly enjoyed it, I was especially bored by all the random townspeople, couldn’t have cared less.

The thing is, I was page counting and when you are counting like that you aren’t enjoying the book.

It ended on something of a cliffhanger but I don’t have it in me to read 3 more. I just haven’t got the energy for it.

meh

45 The Thirty-Nine Steps - John Buchan A quick re-read of an old favourite; just as fun as it always was, and just as silly. A lot of it is very old-fashioned, especially the ideas about foreigners and the right way for a proper Brit (including “colonials”) to behave, but that’s partly the point - it’s an interesting window on the early 20th century British mind-set and the evolution from Sherlock Holmes to James Bond (as explained by Dominic and Tabby in their most recent episode!).

I’m also a huge fan of Mother Mary. I think it will be difficult to find another NF that will top it for the 50Bs.

88 Meet Me at the Seaside Cottages – Jenny Colgan. Still being punted as Book 8 in the Island of Mure series, despite, like the last two books, its not set on Mure. Meh. Predictable. This is my last JC, I think. I was irritated by most of the characters, in particular, the daughter of the main character. I would have cheerfully slapped her. There is a lot to be said about second home ownership, housing in rural communities etc but I just felt that I was being preached to (and I don’t have a second home!). The local authority where Carso is meant to be located have just introduced a 300% council tax charge on second homes, but that isn’t mentioned.

89 Yesteryear – Caro Claire. Much discussed on here. I did enjoy it. I thought the twist was clever, if utterly bonkers.

@VikingNorthUtsire interested to know what you think. If we ever meet in person, I'll give you the goss!

A Private Man by Stephanie Sy Quia
I picked this up on a 99p deal as it had been longoisted or shortlisted for one of the prizes- the Orwell or the Waterstones Debut maybe. Anyway I loved it. It tells the story of David, an English Catholic priest ordained in 1953 and Margaret a student and later teacher of theology who he meets in the 1960s. It also flashes forward to their grandson (not a spoiler- it’s in chapter 1) and Margaret when she’s elderly. I found this a beautiful exploration of love- not just lust but the meeting of minds and the flaws and difficulties that every relationship must encounter. The writing is poetic and the sections in Rome are particularly beautifully written. I cried several times. Really gorgeous book.

Snuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
RWYO and part of my Booker winners project. I’m probably the last to this sad tale of Snuggie and his siblings growing up in poverty in Glasgow with an alcoholic mother who he adores and despairs of. It’s very real and well written but there’s no hope at all which made it a hard read. I think John of John was a better read for me, but maybe that’s because I read it first.

Ooh @Stowickthevast I am star struck! I've just picked up Wifehouse from the library purely because it's written by Sonya Walger.

I'm listening to the How To Train Your Dragon series with my daughter on our car rides at the moment. David Tennant does a great job.

@AliasGrape I'm not sure how old your daughter is, but she might like the Isadora Moon series. It still has fairies in it, but also benign vampires, witches and the main character goes to school with human children. I found them less saccharine and overly gendered than some other fairy books.

Also the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic book series has a range of characters with different interests, dreams, and attributes.

Thanks for the heads up on Black Bag and Dominion

@AliasGrape The Cressida Cowell books are a great transition from fairies etc to more literary children's books.

Highly recommend the audio books of How To Train Your Dragon which are read by David Tennant and are properly funny. We've had a couple of great holidays listening to these when the kids were younger, and they're still their comfort reads.

I’m in exactly the same boat but I’m not rushing through them- I have others I want to read too.

Oh and I missed Mother Mary in the deals yesterday but have some audible credits so I’ve spent one on that, I usually really enjoy memoir on audiobook so fingers crossed.

That’s interesting @Benvenuto thanks! I really can’t wait till DD is interested in things other than fairies, mermaids and unicorns so we can expand our reading repertoire a bit! (I know it’s our job to keep trying different things but, as yet, unless there’s some variety of overly gendered sparkly magical creature involved she doesn’t really want to know).

I picked up Dominion in the deals today. No idea when I’ll get round to it, it may well become a RWYO of the future but I’ll try and get to it before that.

Was also looking at Black Bag but couldn’t decide if I cared enough about men to read it it would be my kind of thing. Has anyone read it? Be interested in hearing what people thought before I commit my previous 99 pence!

Rogues by Patrick Radden Keefe is also
in today’s deals

Thanks @ÚlldemoShúl

Despite thinking I wouldn't read the Booker list this year, I've now got The Renovation and Black Bag on my TBR, and am listening to The Vivisectors. And had already read 4. I guess if Amazon keeps obliging, I'll get through them all!

Mother Mary is still my book of the year so far @Benvenuto @TattiePants

82. Wifehouse - Sonya Walger. The author of this is a friend of a friend and so I know some background to the story before I picked it up, which after reading it, I realised meant I actually knew the plot, so I'm not sure if that really helped. It's about Annie, an Australian housewife living in Connecticut who is married to Hector, an American actor. They gave 2 children, Vita who is 14 and Jackson who is 8. Annie isn't really happy in her marriage and feels overwhelmed by all the life admin. But tbh I couldn't help judging her. She doesn't have a job yet still managed to fail to get her children's presents ready for Christmas, feed them proper meals or actually do any parenting. Her best friend gives her some French lessons for Christmas and she ends up falling for the tutor. The title comes from her French description of herself as a "femme maison". We get more of get back story and abusive childhood as her mother dies and she goes back to Australia. There's some great writing here, although the plot sounds a bit chick lit, it's definitely literary fiction. But the main character is very hard to sympathise with. We get povs from Vita and Hector too which help. It was interesting reading this after Yesteryear although they take quite different routes.

eta - I guess the main take is that it's fine when men have affairs and leave their family but nut when women do.

Prize list lovers Black Bag by Luke Kennard from the Booker is on today’s kindle deals

71. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan - much reviewed on here. I thought it was beautifully crafted and I admired the skill in saying so much with so few words. For me though, I prefer books with more colour and texture, worlds I can inhabit. It felt like an exquisite pencil sketch where I prefer oil paintings. I am interested in finding a more in depth book about the Magdalen Laundries now.

72. XOXO by Axie Oh - chosen purely to fulfill the X in my A–Z challenge, this is a teenage romance between a young cello player and a K Pop superstar. It took me back to my own early teenage reading of the Nancy Drew Case Files where handsome rock stars, cowboys and ski instructors would inevitably fall in love with Nancy and sweep her off her feet.. Xoxo is pure teenage wish fulfilment fantasy but it's so earnest and wholehearted that I found it inexplicably adorable.

44 The Spy in the Archive - Gordon Corera Non-fiction account of the life of Vasili Mitrokhin, KGB officer who ended up running the KGB’s archives (and copying much of them, then smuggling the copies out to the West just after the fall of the Soviet Union). Interesting story, though unfortunately the book doesn’t do justice to it - really not very well-written at all, and I found it plodding and dull. A pity because I enjoyed Corera in his podcast The Rest is Classified (although I stopped listening because his co-host is just too annoying - definitely won’t be reading any of his books!).

@AliasGrapeA lot of A Song for Summer is recycled into Eva Ibbotson’s children’s book The Dragonfly Pool. It’s one of her older children’s trilogy with Journey to the River Sea & The Star of Kazan. Dragonfly Pool was the last of the three that I read to my DC & we all enjoyed it immensely (somewhat guiltily in my case as I expect it could be deemed politically incorrect but it is very funny).

@TattiePantsMother Mary has just arrived on BorrowBox (I’ve had it reserved for months) & I am really enjoying it. I was feeling a bit jaded with prize lists, but this one so far is great & not a book that I would have read without the list.