50 Books Challenge 2026 Part Eight

Happy birthday @AliasGrape 🎈

Thanks for the new thread @Southeastdweller

List below, I’m currently reading Demon Copperhead after putting it off for so long and now I’ve no idea why I did, I’m loving it.

It is my birthday today though so I may take a little break for something a little less depressing! Will see.

I received the new Barbara Kingsolver and the new Kate Atkinson for my birthday - I know there were mixed/ not so warm thoughts about the latter and I’ve not caught up with the thread since the BK one has been out to see if anyone had anything to say about that. Looking forward to getting stuck in though. I’ve got my gallbladder op in a couple of weeks and some time off work to recover so may save them for then.

List-

1 The Christmas Appeal - Janice Hallett
2 The Book of Christmas- Jane Struthers
3 Different Class - Joanne Harris
4 Hausfrau - Jill Alexander Essbaum
5 The Lost Bookshop - Evie Woods
6 People Person - Candice Carty-Williams
7 Heated Rivalry - Rachel Reid
8 The Long Game - Rachel Reid
9 Step by Step - Simon Reeve
10 Miss Benson’s Beetle - Rachel Joyce
11 John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs - Ian Leslie
12 For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on my Little Pain - Victoria Mackenzie
13 The Heir - Elodie Hart
14 All the Birds Singing, Evie Wyld
15 The Correspondent - Virginia Evans
16 Odyssey - Stephen Fry
17 The Carer - Deborah Moggach
18 The Silence of the Girls - Pat Barker
19 The Wedding People - Alison Espach
20 The Children’s Book - A.S. Byatt
21 Fever Dream - Elsie Silver
22 How to Lose a Lord in Ten Days - Sophie Irwin
23 Decline and Fall - Evelyn Waugh
24 Really Good, Actually - Monica Heisey
25 We Solve Murders - Richard Osman
26 Vile Bodies - Evelyn Waugh
27 Tamar - Mal Peet
28 The Suite Secret - Tierney Page
29 Emma Watson - Joan Aiken
30 I Who Have Never Known Men - Jacqueline Harpman
31 None of This is True - Lisa Jewell
32 Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal- Jeanette Winterson
33 Night Waking - Sarah Moss
34 The Spare - Elodie Hart
35 Dare to Love Me - Rosa Lucas
36 A Song for Summer - Eva Ibbotson
37 So Late in the Day - Claire Keegan
38 The Convenient Marriage - Georgette Heyer
39 Kala - Colin Walsh
40 Super-Infinite: The transformations of John Donne - Katherine Rundell
41 The Summer Book - Tove Jansson
42 Mrs Quinn’s Rise to Fame - Olivia Ford
43 We Chase Shadows - Richard Osman

102. The Golden Hours by Louisa Young - If the original Cazalets were a 10 and the unfortunate All Change was a 4, The Golden Hours is a solid 8 with occasional sparks of insight elevating it to 9.

The thing that went missing for me in All Change was a sense of the characters as real people. I missed being in their heads, listening to their thoughts, understanding who they were, and why they acted as they did. Louisa Young recaptures that quite well. Her characters may not be quite the same as the original Cazalets but she gives us enough insight into them to make them believable as grown up versions of the people they used to be. We all change as we age after all. The important thing is that they are once again real people. I particularly liked this version of Louise and I am glad Archie is back to being Archie after his personality transplant in All Change!

Having said that, it is a bit uneven. Some of the introspection is a bit woolly and longwinded. There are continuity errors from the previous book though I suspect some of them are deliberate attempts to revise the worst bits of All Change. But I enjoyed reading it and will read the future sequels.

Thanks for the new thread @Southeastdweller .

My bolds since the last thread:
Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans
The New Age of Sexism by Laura Bates
A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne
Mestra by Madeline Miller
Casting Off by Elizabeth Jane Howard

Thanks for the new thread southeast.

Serenity Falls - C J Tudor

I liked Tudor’s first couple of books but then lost interest a bit, but this one caught my eye and I’m glad I read it. British father and daughter Dan and Sadie are left a house in Serenity Falls, a Florida town built by amusement park boss Harold Winsom to be a ‘perfect’ town. It’s all rather creepy, with a body found in their new swimming pool, an ice cream van that drives around at night, and people behaving in odd ways. Needless to say the town really isn’t as perfect as it looks. I liked the setting and the build up, and I didn’t mind the ending although some people might expect a bit ‘more’ from the ending based on how her previous books have gone (sorry, that probably doesn’t make much sense but hard to explain what I mean without spoilers).

Thank you Southeast!

36 Happy Go Lucky by David Sedaris
Thank you to the 50Booker who reviewed this, I’m glad to have read it and disturbed my dp by laughing a lot. I quite like that some of the weirder edge of Sedaris’ writing is no longer there, and that he’s become a bit more publicly romantic and emotional with age. Works for me.

Thanks for the new thread Southeast.

43 - Mother Mary Comes to Me - Arundhati Roy

Much reviewed on here - Arundhati Roy's memoir of growing up with her emotionally abusive mother who was, by contrast, also a brilliant educator and woman. Roy writes so well and manages to convey her very mixed feelings about her mother, and how that shaped her life, beautifully. I also loved reading about her political activism, of which I had previously known nothing. A bold from me, and it's made me want to read more of her books - I read God of Small Things years ago but don't remember much about it and it would be interesting to go back and re-read.

Place marking on the new thread - thanks southeast!

Thanks southeast!

List getting a bit unwieldy so won’t post it. Since the last thread I’ve read:

61 What Moves the Dead - T. Kingfisher
Retelling of the Fall of the House of Usher, transposed to late 19th century Europe and with more sentient fungi. And a non-binary narrator, presumably for reasons of trendiness. It was ok but maybe would have been better if I was more familiar with the original?

Thanks for the new thread South.

I'll be back with my list later, but I was literally just about to post my latest so I'll do that first:

84. A Murder of Quality - John le Carré

A RWYO, an old green Penguin. Strange things appear to be happening at Carne, a public school in Somerset of modest reputation but some antiquity. Stella Rode, wife of one of the masters, writes a letter to a magazine of which she’s a faithful subscriber, confiding her fears that her husband is going to kill her. Miss Brimley, who edits the paper, is worried enough to ask her old friend George Smiley to go to Carne to make discreet enquiries. He arrives to find that Mrs Rode has indeed been murdered. So begins a dark and twisty story of hatred, suspicion and suppressed passions.

A Smiley novel, but not quite as we know it. This was only le Carré's second book, and he hadn’t yet got into the spy groove fully, so Smiley doesn’t quite seem fully realised. Nevertheless I enjoyed this slim novel a lot.

Thanks @Southeastdweller.

Ooo new thread - I've never been on page 1 before!
Celebrating with my list so far

1. A Place of Execution - Val McDermid
2. The Ministry of Time - Kaliane Bailey
3. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
4. The Glass Maker - Tracey Chevalier
5. Nothing Ventured - Jeffrey Archer
6. The Janus Stone - (Ruth Galloway 2) - Elly Griffiths
7. The Reckoning - (Maeve Kerrigan 2) - Jane Casey
8. The Last Girl (Maeve kerrigan 3) - Jane Casey
9. Lincoln in The Bardo - George Saunders
10. After The Party - Cressida Connolly
11. The Briar Club - Kate Quinn
12. Light a Penny Candle by Maeve Binchy
13. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
14. The House at Sea’s End - (Ruth Galloway 3) - Elly Griffiths
15. Annie Bot by Sierra Greer
16. Dreaming the Eagle By Manda Scott
17. The Fair Botanists by Sara Sheridan
18. Bel Canto by Ann patchett
19. Nesting by Roisin McDonnell
20. The Stranger you know (Maeve Kerrigan 4) - Jane Casey
21. Shackleton by Ranulf Fiennes
22. Erebus- The Story of a SHip by Michael Palin
23. The Kill (Maeve Kerrigan 5) by Jane Caesy
24. The Frozen People by Elly griffiths
25. Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez
26. A short History of Nearly everything
27. Our London Lives
28. The Salt Path - Raynor Wynn
29. Entitled by Andrew Lownie
30. After the Fire (Maeve Kerrigan 6) - Jane Casey
31. The Names by Florence Knapp
32. Mythos by Stephen Fry
33. The Circle of Days by Ken Follett
34. The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali
35. Lion - A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierly
36. Heroes by Stephen Fry
37. Let the Dead Speak (Maeve Kerrigan 7) by Jane Casey
38. Isola by Allegra Goodman
39. Cruel Acts (Maeve Kerrigan 8) by Jane Casey
40. The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyles
41. The CUtting Place (Maeve Kerrigan 9) by Jane Casey
42. The CLose (Maeve Kerrigan 10) by Jane Casey
43. London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe

Thanks for the new thread @Southeastdweller
Just checking in before bed. No list for me this time. Taking @SheilaFentiman’s example and listing my bolds for the last few months (not sure which thread)

The Renovation by Kenan Orhan
Stoner by John Williams
The Forbidden Notebook by Alba de Cespedes
Ulysses by James Joyce
The Disappearers by Marlon James
The Shadow of the Gods by John Gwynne
Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
A Private Man by Stephanie Sy- Quia

Thanks @Southeastdweller

Thank youuuu!

My new bolds since the last time I posted bolds:

1. How to Kill Your Family - Bella Mackie
2. The Storied Life of A J Fikry - Gabrielle Zevin
3. Disobedient - Elizabeth Fremantle
4. Big Little Lies - Liane Moriarty
5. Queen James - Gareth Russell
6. The Cheese Cure - Michael Finnerty