50 Books Challenge 2026 Part Six

One of my most favourite reads so far this year is
Because I killed him by Edith Birde

Did I miscount again and there’s 5 of us @Terpsichore that’s quite the percentage of the overall thread! YNWA

Yay! A kindred (footballing) spirit.
Full disclosure, we also follow Arsenal (my kids spent their early years within a stone's throw of Highbury and are all arsenal fans first and foremost) and our current local team, Plymouth Argyle who my DH has followed since childhood.
We did all get up to Elland Road a couple of years ago for an FA Cup game and the rest of the family were gratifying impressed by the ground, team, fans and city!

Disaster I am off on holiday for 2 weeks, no internet, no tv, just me, Dh,ddog and wine. I have left my kindle behind

Yikes. Find a national trust place or similar with a second hand bookshop!

Order some books from Amazon to the address you are in? Desperate times and all that.

Oh no! I would literally go home for the kindle or order a new one 😂 or order some books on amazon as @MaterMoribund says, for a less drastic option! Hope you find a solution.

Do you have the Kindle app on your phone? If not, download it and you'll be able to access all your books.

Yes, just download the app to your phone, @minsmum. I don’t have a Kindle, I read all my kindle books on my iPad/phone via the app.

Alternatively, the internet tells me (and I have actually tried this):

You can read your Kindle books directly in your web browser without downloading any apps or hardware using Amazon Kindle Cloud Reader. Simply log in with your Amazon account to instantly access your library, read online, adjust fonts, and bookmark pages.
Quick Steps to Read Online:

1. Open your web browser (like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge) on your desktop or mobile device.
2. Navigate to Amazon Kindle Cloud Reader.
3. Sign in using the same email and password linked to your Amazon account.
4. Click on any book cover in your library to start reading directly on your screen

i thiink it is always useful to have a 'spare' kindle in case of accidents. So this could be a good opportunity to purchase a spare? I have two and now make sure I never take both out in the same bag.

Ah, @minsmum - just seen that you don’t have internet where you’re going….that will complicate matters 😬 How's your data allowance?

We regularly order stuff to holiday cottages. Just remember to delete the address on the app. Last year a delivery of frozen dog food went to a cottage in Wales we had stayed at instead of to my house! Luckily I was not to blame!

Checking in, late as always. In holiday packing mode, thanks for all the suggestions re a kindle. I’ll do some research first but it does make sense. In the meantime I’m trying to smuggle into the suitcase more books than the rest of the family put together 😊

Maybe a bookshop excursion will be just the thing.

If there’s any bookshops nearby then an emergency trip to see one would be fully justified.

57. The Opposite of Murder by Sophie Hannah

Once again, I am left with the feeling that what Sophie Hannah really likes is to think of some incredibly improbable scenario and to then build a story around that.

The actual murder motivation actually wasn’t too unbelievable this time, but the whole backstory behind it was hard to swallow.
Not to mention the way the detectives are carrying on at the end. I know they’re just as human as the rest of us, but there’s some seriously unprofessional game playing going on there.

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.

@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.

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.

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 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.

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!

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.

yes that’s exactly how the lists work @Pigtailsandall

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.