50 Books Challenge 2026 Part Six

@RomanMum
I felt the same about Bel Canto, I have loved her other books especially The Dutch House but I felt I was missing something here, I wondered if I was just not in the right frame of mind for it

@SpunkyKhakiScroller that’s a shame about Hekate I’d just bought it and thought it sounded interesting! Oh well it was only 99p.

Im being incredibly cheeky even counting my latest read as it’s a short story, but I’ll take what I can get at the moment - had another gallbladder flare up, another hospital visit and whilst it didn’t end in surgery in the end it can’t come bloody soon enough! But even before that I’ve struggled to pick anything up since holidays.

So, rather sheepishly, my 37 is So Late in the Day - Claire Keegan which I was expecting to be short as in novella length like Foster but I think was about 40 pages in the end and I read it in under half an hour. Like all her work this is exquisitely observed, conveys so much in such brief, precise text, and was beautiful.

I saw that this is on sale as a collection of 3 stories but can only find it on American sites. I’d love to read the others.

@AliasGrape hope you’re feeling better soon

@SpunkyKhakiScroller also in Chapter 25!

Get well soon, @AliasGrape

71. Going Zero by Anthony McCarten

Thriller.

Tech giant Cy Baxter is beta testing his super spyware tech Fusion, which claims to be able to find anyone, anywhere.

Ten candidates, five professionals, five ordinary people, have been selected and designated as Zero 1 through 10. At the “Go” order, they’ve got two hours before the hunt starts.
Anyone who lasts 30 days without being caught wins $3 million. And if the Fusion team catches them all, Baxter stands to gain a $90 billion contract with the CIA.

Most of the focus shifts between Baxter (and his Fusion team) and Zero 10, Kaitlyn Day, one of the amateur participants.

It’s all fairly straightforward large scale hide and seek stuff to begin with, and somewhat similar to a higher stakes version of Channel 4’s Hunted. The Fusion team have access to a terrifying amount of personal detail on just about everyone, which is used to predict behaviour, courses of action etc, and access to just about every form of electronic surveillance imaginable. It’s all dressed up
in noble aims, but also disturbingly easy to imagine how badly that sort of thing could be misused in the wrong hands. I’m not sure if it’s the sort of tech that exists in real life (yet?), but it’s certainly easy enough to imagine real life intelligence agencies doing this sort of stuff.

As the story progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that Kaitlyn’s not as ordinary as she seemed to be at the start, and that she’s got a much bigger agenda than just the money. I guessed some of it, but the extent of it all surprised me.

Overall very entertaining.