50 Books Challenge 2026 Part Eight

63 Mary Queen of Scots: and the murder of Lord Darnley - Alison Weir I’ve actually made it to the end of this, hurrah! Feels like I’ve been reading it forever (it’s actually taken about a month, which is bloody ages). Very thoroughly researched analysis of Darnley’s murder and the likely perpetrators, including the extent of Mary’s involvement, with a much briefer bit of biography for Mary’s childhood and later life - the real focus was on a period of about 5 years when she returned from France to rule in Scotland after the death of her first husband the French king; married her cousin and was quickly widowed; then married one of his likely murderers before being imprisoned, escaping, and fleeing to England. All sounds very exciting but it was told in such a dry, academic manner that it was a real slog to get through. I feel much more knowledgeable now, but it wasn’t a particularly enjoyable process! @Benvenuto has recommended the Rest is History podcast mini series on Mary (in response to my whinge on the Oliver Twist thread), and I’ll definitely be checking that out.

We Chase Shadows - Richard Osman

The second in his ‘not the Thursday Murder Club’ series. This series isn’t as good as TTMC, but I still enjoyed it. Won’t change your mind if you’re not a fan though.

Home Front - Kristin Hannah

This looks at the impact on a family when it’s the wife who goes off to war. This was a bit too long and sagged in the middle, but picked up again at the end. Not one of her best.

Other Worlds Than These by Stephen King
One for only the most constant of readers. It was great to return to Mid World, and this had some decent moments but I wouldn’t rush to read it again. Lots of King tropes, a very high body count and ultimately a bit unsatisfying.

@GrannieMainland @elkiedee weirdly I just finished Sophie Standing There this morning. I also wanted to love it and was a bit disappointed. I saw a talk with Ann Patchett and Meg Mason last month, and Meg was so funny in real life. But Sophie was such a passive character, it really frustrated me. I kept nearly DNFing the first part particularly. I agree that it picked up and I actually quite enjoyed the second half once she meets the author but it is a bit of an odd book. I guess she was making a point about famous authors and fans but it was rather flat. Meg Mason did say at the talk that she'd started another book and thrown it away before this one, I wonder if she chose correctly?!
Interestingly for any Ann Patchett fans, she also said that she'd started writing the story within Whistler about the woman and the horse as it's own book but that wasn't working so ended up writing Whistler instead.

Everyone Here is Lying - Shari Lapena

£2 charity shop thriller, easy read. Nine year old Avery Wooler goes missing after school; on that same day, her dad has been dumped by his affair partner (who volunteers at his work and lives on the same street) and so is home early enough to see her and argue with her. But he doesn't confess to doing so and the web gets more tangled as the police try and figure out what happened.

@elkiedee I think I might be unfair to Elizabeth Strout. I did like the book, I just love Olive so much and it doesn’t match up to that imo. Sophie however I really did not enjoy, I hope you have a better time with it!

@GrannieMainland

I've noticed we're drawn to some quite similar fiction before, and this certainly looks the case here from your reviews, I'm readingi two of these currently and have one tbr so thanks for warnings, though I think I might like Sophie and Artie better than you did. It's also occurred to me that I also enjoyed Sorrow and Bliss but haven't yet read Meg Mason's first novel, also Kindle TBR.

Thank you for the Louisa Young tip @elkiedee and My Dear I Wanted To Tell You is currently 99p helpfully.

Thank you as always for the new thread @Southeastdweller and happy birthday @AliasGrape!

Strangers by Belle Burden. Very hyped memoir by Belle, following her husband leaving her and their children suddenly with no explanation during the pandemic. It’s well written and the husband’s behaviour comes across as really chilling at times. She asks some interesting questions overall about how well we can ever know and understand a partner. The thing I found most striking was the incredible privilege - she herself is an heiress and extremely well connected (‘my mother was friendly with Calvin Klein so he designed my wedding dress’) and they owned multiple very expensive properties in New York and New England. None of which lessens the emotional pain of course, but it did feel like reading about another world.

The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout. Her new standalone novel outside the world of Olive Kitteridge/Lucy Barton. We follow Artie Dam, a much loved history teacher, as he grapples with revelations about his marriage and the changing political environment in America. I liked but didn’t love this, for me it didn’t come close to Olive Kitteridge in terms of the depth and complexity of the characters. I found the politics a bit obvious but I don’t know how you could write a subtle book about was happening in America right now.

Crash Into You by Robinne Lee. Highly silly novel about a celebrity photographer having a love affair with a model.

Sophie Standing There by Meg Mason. Oh I had such high hopes for this as I loved Sorry and Bliss! But it seemed to be lacking a lot of the humour and bite. Sophie works as a sound tech at literary festivals and is heartbroken and depressed after being left by her horrible husband. She becomes obsessed by a famous author and then is thrown by the opportunity to meet her at an event. It got going a bit in the final third when the real author turned up but too much of it was just dismal, Sophie moping around listening to podcasts about the author, and most of the characters behaved completely bafflingly.

@Tarragon123 yes it is Alfred Mollina, I think he’s a good fit :-)

104. Marzahn, mon amour by Katja Oskamp - one of my occasional forays into translated literature, this one is set in an unromantic part of modern day former East Berlin. The author has retrained as a chiropodist in her middle years and this is a sort of memoir featuring her patients and her co-workers. It is a little gem of a book and I enjoyed it very much. She writes about the lives of ordinary (often old and infirm) people with such affection and warmth it's really lovely. Woven into it is snippets of relatively recent German history and reflections on midlife, old age, and human nature. A cosy memoir if you will. I am not sure yet but a potential bold.

Ooh thank you @noodlezoodle , I definitely fancy that after enjoying the fictional version. Will see if I can get hold of a copy.

@StrangewaysHereWeCome I am glad you saw hope and lightness in Shuggie Bain too. I've seen a lot of people describe it as unrelentingly bleak whereas I thought its power came from those little gems of love and humanity sprinkled through the darkness (and an ending that I saw as optimistic).

@VikingNorthUtsire you might enjoy Alison Freer's 'How to Get Dressed'. She's a Hollywood costume designer and the book is half manual/tips and tricks, and half stories of her career. I read it years ago but have kept it for reference and it was very funny.

45.Crampton Hodnet by Barbara Pym. Miss Morrow is bored but content making a living as a paid companion to Miss Doggett, who rather fancies herself as a lynchpin of North Oxford society. Her calm existence is disrupted by the arrival of a charming new curate. Meanwhile Miss Dogett’s nephew Francis Cleveland, a university academic, is going through a midlife crisis and develops a romantic attachment to his pretty young student Barbara Bird, all of which sets the Oxford gossip into overdrive.

The plot has just the right amount of silliness and the characters well observed. The main joy however is in the sharp and funny writing and social satire. Very good fun.

46.John of John by Douglas Stuart. John-Calum Macleod is returning to his Hebridean family home after completing his degree at art college due to his grandmother’s failing health. His immediate family comprises his father John and maternal grandmother Ella, his mother’s departure from the family home being a source of great scandal in the island community. Cal is struggling emotionally, having live as an out gay man at college, and now fearful of the impact of revealing his sexuality, particularly to his father. John is wrestling with secrets of his own.

This was brilliant. Stuart gets fully under the skin of both John and Cal, but the small cast of supporting characters is also made very real. The depictions of the crofting community and traditional tweed production were fascinating, and Stuart explores how the palettes and textures of the fabrics reflect the natural beauty of the local landscape. The island’s geographical isolation serves to echo the emotional isolation felt by John and Cal.

One of the things I loved about Shuggie Bain was Stuart’s ability to create little bits of light within the overall darker tone of the novel, and that’s also very much true here. While the overall feel of this is sad, lonely and introspective there are some diversions such as a lads’ trip to the mainland and a failed Lonely Hearts flirtation that provide moments of levity, and it ultimately feels that even in the darkest of circumstances there will be elements of hope. A bold.

Hello all, and thanks @Southeastdweller for the new thread. I fell off the old one, and am sharing my list before I add my most recent reviews

1.Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi
2.The Rest of Our Lives by Benjamin Markovits
3.Bournville by Jonathan Coe.
4.Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
5.Seascraper by Benjamin Wood
6.Shattered by Hanif Kureishi
7.Jump! by Jilly Cooper.
8.Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
9.Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: China’s Stolen Children and a Story of Separated Twins by Barbara Demmick
10.The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
11.Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë
12.Lying in Wait by Liz Nugent.
13.Black and British: A Forgotten History by David Olusoga.
14.Munichs by David Peace
15.Mount! by Jilly Cooper.
16.Unravelling Oliver by Liz Nugent.
17.Cuddy by Benjamin Myers.
18. Heart the Lover by Lily King
19.The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett
20.The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
21.A Family Matter by Claire Lynch
22.The Fortnight in September by RC Sherriff.
23.Rodham by Curtis Sittenfield
24.Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald
25.The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden
26.Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
27.Land by Maggie O’Farrell
28.Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
29.The Art of a Lie by Laura Shepherd Robinson
30.The Human Stain by Philip Roth
31.Precipice by Robert Harris
32.The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
33.My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
34.Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix
35.Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico
36.The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji
37.The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine
38.Come and Get It by Kiley Reid.
39.London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe
40.Wimmy Road Boys by Sufiyaan Salam
41.The Cut-Throat Trial by The Secret Barrister writing as S.J.Fleet.
42.The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley
43.The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
44.Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

Thank you for the new thread Southeast. Happy birthday to those celebrating. My brain has gone blank.

Vera Elizabeth von Arnim

I think this has been widely read by the thread and is credited as somewhat inspiring Daphne du Maurier when writing Rebecca.

I really enjoyed this slow story of a young woman who falls in love with an older man through their shared grief. Wemyss, the man, meets Lucy when her father has just died and he has come to the country to recover from the death of his wife, which was suspicious enough to warrant an inquest. von Arnim's writing is quietly eerie and unsettling.

The problem for me was mine, I was constantly comparing it to Rebecca because it is spoken about so much - but for me I could see why the narrator of Rebecca is attracted to Maxim, but I struggled to see the appeal of Wemyss from the very outset. Maybe that is because I am reading it as a 21st century reading, though I am usually better at putting this aside, but Lucy has a Bohemian upbringing which just makes me think she should be more interesting. I enjoyed the ambiguous ending.

Fell off the last thread. Again. Life has not been conducive to reading. Anyway, here's my list

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
42 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
43 The Cutting Place – Jane Casey
44 An Unnecessary Woman – Rabih Alameddine
45 Conundrum – Jan Morris
46 Dusty Answer – Rosamond Lehmann
47 The Correspondent – Virginia Evans
48 The Close – Janey Casey
49 The Elements – John Boyne
50 Harold Wilson – Ben Pimlott
51 Fightback! – Dianne Hayter
52 Guilty by Definition – Susie Dent
53 La Disparue de Cabin no. 10 – Helen Ware (tr. Heloise Esquie)
54 A Stranger in the Family – Jane Casey
55 The Secret Room – Jane Casey

Three I haven't yet reviewed -

56 Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell

I read this in mid-September. I think I quite enjoyed it but I can't remember anything about it.

57 Agatha Christie’s Marple: Expert on Wickedness by Mark Aldridge

A fun romp through the Marple books and screen portrayals. A few nuggets of new information even for a die-hard Christie fan like me. I've always liked Miss Marple better than Poirot, even though Poirot probably has the best plots. My favourite Agatha Christie is The Moving Finger.

58 The Man with the Golden Compass by Vaseem Khan

I got this at a book festival before it was "officially" published. I absolutely love Khan's Malabar House series but am less keen on his other offerings. This is the latest in his Q series, imagining Bond's gadget man's life after MI6. I enjoyed this more than the first in the series; there's some quality romantic tension building with Q's ex-fiancee, with whom he now has to work, and I also enjoy his fatherly relationship with a young Syrian refugee - as well as the tensions with Q's own father. The plot was barmy, obviously, but this is a James Bond linked franchise, so what did I expect?

@elkiedee I think you're right about daily deals. They seem to be algorithm driven based on what you have bought so I never get much variety. A bit like when I try to clean up my X feed by clicking on lambs and kittens and then that's all I get for a while.
I liked Jane Lovering's Once Upon a Time but I didn't review it at the time and can't remember enough to do it now. If you like Jane Lovering I can wholly recommend Beth Moran who writes in a similar vein and I have loved every one of her books.

@Terpsichore I'm reading A Curious Ending by Sally Page. I'll review it when I'm done but it's quaint and engaging. A slight twist on time slip fiction.

Thanks for letting us know that, because it's nice to know that a little tip has helped someone.

103. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson - I dislike horror and am always stuck when trying to fulfill the spine tingler prompt on Goodreads reading challenges. Luckily this classic was on the list. Last read as a children's illustrated version circa 40 years ago, I found this to be much less adventurous and much more gripping and thought provoking as an adult. I went through the gamut of thinking about mental health conditions vs taking responsibility and the changes and lack of changes in attitudes between Victorian Enfland and now. A short but thought provoking read.

Got it! Thanks 😎

Ooh @Tarragon123 that retreat sounds very interesting, and great to have a positive review as you never know whether these things are worth it.

69 Missing Fay, Adam Thorpe

Thorpe is a British poet and author whose first novel, Ulverton, was one of the It Books of the 90s. This one, set in 2012 and published in 2017, is told through several chapters each from the close POV of a different and loosely connected characters. The thread connecting them is the disappearance of a teenage girl (Fay) from Lincoln, and the characters' chapters are interspersed with short chapters in Fay's voice. She's a spiky little thing with a not-entirely-convincing working class voice: her stepdad is a petty criminal, her mum frequently in bed with depression. Fay's closest friend is her mongrel dog, who she is (unsuccessfully) trying to train, with a dream of winning a TV talent show.

The characters' main preoccupations are sex. class and immigration (the book is set before the Brexit referendum but, with a publication date of 2017, was presumably being written against a Brexit backdrop - it certainly has the feel of a Brexit novel). There are sections that feel like waffly filler as a narrator rambles through their thoughts, but later link to other parts of the story - you have to pay attention. I suspect that a proper, attentive re-read would allow the reader to piece together part of Fay's story that aren't spelled out.

70 There's No Coming Back From This, Ann Garvin (RWYO)

After our recent discussions of less-than-highbrow books, I picked this one off my Kindle as I'd left the hardback of Missing Fay at home while I was away, and with only a couple of chapters to go, I didn't want to pick up anything too heavy as a distraction before I got to finish it.

So I chose this, and ended up thoroughly enjoying it.

It's the sweet story of Poppy, a Midwestern single mother who ends up taking a job as a wardrobe assistant on a Hollywood film production. Initially too nice and way too naive for the ambitious, duplicitous world of showbiz, where you can be fired overnight and where the big names rule (and the little people are anonymous), she's faced with the choice to join the backstabbing or stay true to herself, even if it places her in the firing line.

The joy of this book for me was the wealth of detail of how a film production wardrobe department is run (presumably accurate, but if not, then well imagined). There's a lovely cosiness in the idea of a trailer full of beautiful clothes and shoes, a trusty fanny pack of double-sided tape, nipple covers and safety pins, and the job of delivering outfits to the handsome leading man and helping him to button his shirts every morning. Pure escapism and good fun.

Yes, as @elkiedee says, Forbidden Notebook IS still 99p @nowanearlyNicemum and anyone else who wants it!

Thanks for those recommendations @southeastdweller Just checked out my library catalogue and théy sadly only have Bennett’s work in French. Will have a look for some local second hand options!

Thank you for the new thread @Southeastdweller

I’m way behind with the thread. Also, for various reasons, juggling 8 different books, so I havent finished anything yet.

@SheilaFentiman – I’m thinking that’s the adaptation with Alfred Molina? There is another adaptation with Nathaniel Parker. Really badly miscasted. I think Alfred Molina is a pretty good Gamache.

@Pigtailsandall – I couldn’t finish Lost Lambs. The additional gs drove me bananas. Congratulations on getting your 50 in.

@notwavingbutreading – glad you’re enjoying it so far. Which Sally Page did you pick?

@Iamnotaloggrip – I read God of Small Things after Mother Mary. Loved them both.

Belated Happy Birthday @AliasGrape

@noodlezoodle – I haven’t read The Academy. I probably will once I’ve got through the Nantucket series. I think it will be interesting to compare.

I was away for the weekend on a Books In Places retreat. We were in Norwich for Tombland by CJ Samson. It was so good and I would very much recommend. I’d never been to Norwich before. Such an interesting city. I’m now contemplating my next trip.

I see a mention of missed Daily Deals, and thought I didn't see Alba de Cespedes either. I am noticing that the Kindle Daily Deals only seems to show what I don't have already, and that there's no way I can say, I bought this it's great, unless I see it another way such as Bookbub emails etc. It's irritating.

Forgotten Notebook which I bought last year is still on at 99p. Otherwise, I missed another AdC work too.