50 Books Challenge 2026 Part Eight

Thanks for the new thread @Southeastdweller

Happy birthday @AliasGrape I hope you get some 📚

@DesdamonasHandkerchief I think Netflix is making the title story of Walk The Blue Fields, which should be interesting.

List since last thread

92. The Butcher's Masquerade - Matt Dinniman
93. Go Gentle - Maria Semple
94. Almost Life - Kiran Millwood Hargrave
95. The Story of Lucy Gault - William Trevor
96. The Country Girls - Edna O'Brien
97. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
98. The Wolf Tree - Laura McCluskey
99. Sublimation - Isabel J. Kim
100. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie
101. Dream State - Eric Puchner
102. Switzy - Emma Cline
103. This House of Grief -Helen Garner
104. A Month In The Country - J.L. Carr
105. Pachinko - Min Jin Lee
106. Time To Burn - Ellery Lloyd
107. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë

Near bolds for me were also Almost Life, The Story of Lucy Gault, Dream State and Pachinko.

Dropping by with my list since the last thread (and sending happy birthday wishes to @AliasGrape)

68. Tom Lake - Ann Patchett

69. Patch Work - Claire Wilcox

70. The Things We Never Say - Elizabeth Strout
71. Extra Virgin - Annie Hawes
72. Unnatural Death - Dorothy L. Sayers

73. The Last Journey of William Huskisson - Simon Garfield
74. Cop Killer - Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö, transl. Thomas Teal
75. Just Ignore Him - Alan Davies
76. Perfect Happiness - Penelope Lively
77. Colditz: Prisoners of the Castle - Ben Macintyre
78. Happy-Go-Lucky - David Sedaris
79. How To Be Good - Nick Hornby
80. John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs - Ian Leslie
81. The Night Always Comes - Willy Vlautin
82. Other People’s Letters - Mina Curtiss
83. A Murder of Quality - John le Carré

(Apologies for weird formatting - the usual nightmare forcing this site to accept a simple numbered column 🙄)

Happy birthday @AliasGrape

Happy Birthday @AliasGrape and yes @Cherrypi they get much better

Happy birthday @AliasGrape !

Happy Birthday @AliasGrape 🎈

Thank you @Southeastdweller and Happy Birthday @AliasGrape

My list since the last thread:

67 The Warden - Anthony Trollope
68 The Magician's Nephew - CS Lewis
69 Wavewalker - Suzanne Heywood
70 Human Acts - Han Kang trans Deborah Smith
71 Dead in the Water - Simon McCleave
72 Heart Lamp - Banu Mushtaq trans Deepa Basthi
73 Cracking the Menopause - Mariella Frostrup
74 The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida - Shehan Karunatilaka
75 Earth - John Boyne
76 How to Own the World - Andrew Craig
77 After Dark - Hanuki Murakami trans Jay Rubin

78 Fire - John Boyne
79 The Sympathizer - Viet Thanh Nguyen
80 Air - John Boyne
81 Who Gave Pinta to the Santa Maria - Robert S. Desowitz
82 Taiwan Travelogue - Yang Shuang-Zi trans Lin King

I am currently reading Dead Lions by Mick Herron.

Happy birthday @AliasGrape!

I finished Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst. It was part of read what you own, and one of those books that neither dh nor I can remember buying. We have a few mystery ones.
This is a story of Dave, half-burmese gay man who gets a scholarship in 1962 to a prestigious boarding school. He remains friends with the sponsoring family and becames semi-successful actor.

The novel is long and far too detailed on mundane memories which I skimmed over. Particularly the middle part sagged; i think it was meant to work as a buildungsroman, but the main protagonist remained aloof and inaccessible. He was also meant to have a huge conflict with the sponsors' conservative son Giles, but it never quite materialised like the cover suggested. In fact, Giles disappeared for large part of the novel even though their relationship was meant to be the central conflict. The ending also felt overly melodramatic.

It was fine, but didn't really do much for me.

Happy Birthday @AliasGrape

@Cherrypi I have just finished A Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan #11 I think) - they definitely do get better. I thought the first one was a bit weakm can't remember the plot of The Reckoning at all, I think they pick up from No3 or 4.

1. The Lamb by Lucy Rose
2. The Book Of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey
3. Sonny Boy by Al Pacino
4. The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine
5. The Names by Florence Knapp
6. Helm by Sarah Hall
7. Love Forms by Claire Adam
8. Patricia Brent, Spinster by Herbert George Jenkins
9. Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey
10. Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis
11. Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley
12. Paper Cup by Karen Campbell
13. The Wedding People by Alison Espach
14. The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
15. Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
16. The Favourites by Layne Fargo
17. John and Paul : A Love Story in Songs by Ian Leslie
18. The Trouble With Mrs Montgomery Hurst by Katie Lumsden
19. Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors
20. Last One At The Party by Bethany Clift
21. Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst
22. Death Of The Author by Nnedi Okorafor
23. Boy Parts by Eliza Clark
24. The Beginning Of The End (Apocalypse Z : Book One) by Manel Loureiro
25. On The Calculation Of Volume IV by Solvej Balle
26. The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne by Ron Currie
27. Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green
28. A Court Of Thorns And Roses by Sarah J. Maas
29. A Woman Of Substance by Barbara Taylor Bradford
30. London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe
31. Strange Houses by Uketsu
32. Say You’ll Remember Me by Abby Jimenez
33. Termush by Sven Holm
34. I’m Thinking Of Ending Things by Iain Reid
35. Homeschooled by Stefan Merrill Block
36. Tender Is The Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
37. My Husband’s Wife by Alice Feeney
38. Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth
39. Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe
40. The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell
41. The Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck
42. Look What You Made Me Do by John Lanchester
43. Fall And Rise : The Story Of 9/11 by Mitchell Zuckoff
44. Strange Pictures by Uketsu
45. Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
46. It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell
47. Transcription by Ben Lerner
48. The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell
49. The Bright Years by Sarah Damoff
50. Ask Not by Maureen Callahan
51. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
52. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
53. Meet Me At The Museum by Anne Youngson
54. Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa
55. The Family Remains by Lisa Jewell
56. The Original by Nell Stevens
57. Molka by Monika Kim
58. Bury Our Bones In The Midnight Soil by VE Schwab
59. Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman
60. Our Noble Selves by Kate Atkinson
61. The Night We Met by Abby Jimenez
62. The Puppet Show by M W Craven
63. Black Summer by M W Craven
64. The Shining by Stephen King
65. The Curator by M W Craven

Shockingly low numbers for me and not many bolds

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

I slowed down a bit, but here are the books I've finished since my last full list on thread 7:

39. Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao
40. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpha Lahiri
41. Class Trip by Emmanuel Carrère
42. Make Believe by Mac Bennett
43. Facial Justice by L.P. Hartley
44. Slewfoot by Brom

I'll do a review of Slewfoot in a separate post.

Thanks for the new thread @Southeastdweller and happy birthday @AliasGrape

Here's my up to date list:

1 To All The Boys I've Loved Before - Jenny Han
2 Vagabond - Tim Curry
3 Witches Abroad - Terry Pratchett
4 Legends and Lattes - Travis Baldree
5 The Housemaid - Freida McFadden
6 Last Night at the Lobster - Stewart O'Nan
7 Literary Noir 1 - Cornell Woolrich
8 Eleanor & Park - Rainbow Rowell
9 The School of Night - Karl Ove Knausgaard
10 Burial Rites - Hannah Kent
11 Across The Nightingale Floor - Lian Hearn
12 The Benefactors - Wendy Erskine
13 Gone Tomorrow - Lee Child
14 Heart The Lover - Lily King
15 Kingfisher - Rosie Kelly
16 This Is The Story Of A Happy Marriage - Ann Patchett
17 The Correspondent - Virginia Evans
18 The Best of Everything - Kit De Waal
19 Accidental Tourist - Anne Tyler
20 On Earth As It Is Beneath - Ana Paula Maia
21 The Mercy Step - Marcia Hutchinson
22 A Guardian and A Thief - Megha Majumdar
23 A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing - Alice Evelyn Yang
24 The Director- Daniel Kehlmann
25 Poirot's Early Cases - Agatha Christie
26 Strange Houses - Uketsu
27 A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
28 Future Homemakers of America - Laurie Graham
29 Jamaica Inn - Daphne du Maurier
30 Heated Rivalry - Rachel Reid
31 The Nineties - Chuck Klosterman
32 Three Days in June - Anne Tyler
33 Third Form At Malory Towers - Enid Blyton
34 Kin - Tayari Jones
35 Palaver - Bryan Washington
36 Passing - Nella Larsen
37 The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson
38 Rizzio - Denise Mina
39 Half of A Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
40 Trustee From The Toolroom - Nevil Shute
41 Invasion of the Body Snatchers - Jack Finney
42 Golden Hill - Francis Spufford
43 The Palm House - Gwendoline Riley
44 We Used To Live Here - Marcus Kliewer
45 Sandwich - Catherine Newman
46 Yesteryear - Caro Claire Burke
47 Renovation - Kenan Orhan
48 Chronicle Volume 3 - Various
49 Whistler - Ann Patchett
50 Diary of A Bookseller - Shaun Bythell
51 Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
52 Vigil - George Saunders
53 Life Moves Pretty Fast - Hadley Freeman
54 All Them Dogs - Djamel White
55 Greenlights - Matthew McConaughey
56 John of John - Douglas Stuart
57 The Things We Never Say - Elizabeth Strout
58 Three Fires - Denise Mina
59 Farewell My Lovely - Raymond Chandler
60 May We Feed The King - Rebecca Perry
61 The Travelling Bag - Susan Hill
62 On The Calculation of Volume - Solvej Balle tr. by Barbara J. Haveland

44. Slewfoot by Brom - Set in 1666 Colonial Connecticut, this is a folk-horror tale about a woman called Abitha who is trying to maintain her independence in a Puritan village after the mysterious death of her husband. She needs a successful harvest to settle her debts and keep her farm. In desperation, she teams up with Slewfoot, an ancient forest deity just woken from an enchanted slumber. Meanwhile Slewfoot is suffering from amnesia and hopes Abitha can help him piece together the fragments of memory he still has. But this is the age of the witch trials, so it isn't long before rumours of witchcraft start to fly around the village, and Abitha finds herself on the wrong end of a pitchfork.

This was just ok. I don't read a lot of horror, but I wouldn't really classify this as such. The Puritanical villagers were all very similar to each other, and one dimensional, meaning the ending felt a bit anticlimactic. I also didn't find Slewfoot's story or the secondary spirits particularly interesting.

2.5 out of 5

Thanks for new thread @Southeastdweller and happy birthday @AliasGrape

I'm up to book 40 but these are just the bolds

A Town Like Alice by Neville Shute.
Take a Chance on me by Beth Moran
Holes by Louis Sacher
A Secret Escape by Sarah Morgan
The War Poems by Siegfried Sassoon
Hitler's Secret by Rory Clements
Let the Dead Speak by Jane Casey
Once upon a Thyme by Jane Lovering.
We Belong Together by Beth Moran
Cruel Acts by Jane Casey
The Man Who made Husband's Jealous by Jilly Cooper
The Herring Girls by Chrissy Walsh.
Murder in the New Forest by Carol Cole.
The Siege by Helen Dunmore .
Fall of Giants by Ken Follet.
The Summer Everything Changed by Sian O'Gorman.
Far from Home by Val wood.
How not to be a Political Wife by Sarah Vine.

My reading seems to have revved up a bit in recent weeks - just finished 84. About Time - Penelope Mortimer

A typically-mordant volume of autobiography from this excellent novelist (wife of the serially-unfaithful John Mortimer, her second husband). Mortimer’s childhood was fractured and often bleak, punctuated by frequent house moves as her clergyman father (who had ceased to believe in God) moved parishes. The relationship between her parents seemed fairly nonexistent, and her father intermittently attempted to abuse his daughter sexually. She writes about this with a curious remoteness, and had distant dealings with her mother too; in lieu of secure parental love, young ‘Peggy’ formed deep attachment to places, and clearly still mourns exile from her grandmother’s rambling Wiltshire home. Maybe it’s not surprising that she was married with a baby by the age of 21, at the outbreak of WW2, when this volume ends.
She writes so superbly, and often very funnily, about the grim events of her childhood, that this was a fast read. There’s a sequel, About Time Too, which has definitely joined the tbr list.

Thank you for the new thread @Southeastdweller and happy birthday @AliasGrape 🎂

@Owlbookend Verona is fab when you get the chance to read it.

No new reviews from me, I am on the last chapter of two books though so will be back with thoughts on those.

Looking back over my list, I'm questioning my internal bold-meter, as I think Orbital was as good as a couple of others that made it to bold, but I didn't bold it at the time. Just underlines how subjective and contextual it is!

1 Who Wants to Live Forever, Hanna Thomas Uose (RWYO)
2 The Marriage Portrait, Maggie O'Farrell (RWYO)
3 A Long Way from Verona, Jane Gardam (RWYO)
4 The Two Lives of Louis & Louise, Julie Cohen (RWYO)
5 The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, Margareta Magnusson
6 The Parallel Path, Jenn Ashworth
7 Consider Yourself Kissed, Jessica Stanley
8 Plain Bad Heroines, Emily M Danforth
9 The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, V.E. Schwab
10 Strong Poison, Dorothy L. Sayers
11 Easy Connections, Liz Berry
12 Black and Blue, Anna Quindlen (RWYO)
13 Dream Count, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (RWYO)
14 The Housemaid, Freida McFadden
15 Let's Make a Scene, Laura Wood
16 Everland, Rebecca Hunt (RWYO)
17 Appointment with Yesterday, Celia Fremlin (RWYO)
18 Esther is Now Following You, Tanya Sweeney
19 Smoke and Ashes, Abir Mukherjee (RWYO)
20 Atmosphere, Taylor Jenkins Reid
21 Death in Venice, Thomas Mann
22 A Stranger City, Linda Grant
23 A Bright Ray of Darkness, Ethan Hawke
24 Mind over Money: The Psychology of Money and How to Use It Better, Claudia Hammond
25 The Last Hundred Days, Patrick Mcguinness
26 Christmas in Austin, Benjamin Markowits
27 Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi (RWYO)
28 Heart the Lover, Lily King
29 Orbital, Samantha Harvey (RWYO)
30 The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau, Graeme Macrae Burnet (RWYO)
31 The Book of American Martyrs, Joyce Carol Oates (RWYO)
32 Audition, Katie Kitamura
33 The Girls of Summer, Katie Bishop (RWYO)
34 To Exist as I Am: A Doctor's Notes on Recovery and Radical Acceptance, Grace Spence Green
35 The Dream Hotel, Laila Lalami
36 Albion, Anna Hope
37 Wild Dark Shore, Charlotte McConaghy
38 Creation Lake, Rachel Kushner
39 Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir
40 Set My Heart to Five, Simon Stephenson
41 Flesh, David Szalay
42 Dream State, Eric Puchner
43 The First Act of Summer, Joanna Glen
44 Retirement Rebel, Siobhan Daniels
45 The Two Roberts, Damian Barr
46 Verity, Colleen Hoover
47 Stone Yard Devotional, Charlotte Wood
48 The Eights, Joanna Miller
49 A Traveller In Time, Alison Uttley
50 Mother Mary Comes to Me, Arundhati Roy
51 Wifehouse, Sonia Walger
52 Tigers in Red Weather, Liza Klaussmann (RWYO)
53 The Health and Wellness Lie, Nick Tiller
54 Yesteryear, Caro Claire Burke
55 Asta's Book, Barbara Vine (RWYO)
56 American Fantasy, Emma Straub
57 Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann (RWYO)
58 Death by the Sea, Hannah Ellis
59 Playworld, Adam Ross
60 Ripeness, Sarah Moss
61 Fundamentally, Nussaibah Younis (RWYO)
62 Stargazing: Memoirs of a Young Lighthouse Keeper, Peter Hill (RWYO)
63 Love Marriage, Monica Ali
64 Remarkable Creatures, Tracy Chevalier (RWYO)
65 I'm Glad My Mom Died, Jennette McCurdy
66 It's Not You, It's the World, Joanna Cheek
67
Bitter Sweet, Hattie Williams
68 The Glovemaker, Ann Weisgarber

Thanks for the new thread @Southeastdweller Here’s my list since the last thread and a few reviews.

74 The Stone Circle by Elly Griffiths
75 The Lantern Men by Elly Griffiths
76 My Family by David Baddiel
77 Tell Me How This Ends by Jo Leevers
78 The Stars are Fire by Anita Shreve
79 The Central Park Five by Sarah Burns
80 The Locked Room by Elly Griffiths
81 The Last Remains by Elly Griffiths
82 The Puppet Show by MW Craven
83 Say You’ll Remember Me by Abby Jimenez
84 Black Summer by MW Craven
85 The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood
86 The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood
87 The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
88 Women of Troy by Pat Barker

85 The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

I read a collection of three short stories by this author which I wasn’t keen on as they were all a bit samey but decided to give this one a go when it came up in the daily deals. I do love a fake dating scenario and the STEM setting made this quite enjoyable, esp as it was just on the right side of my personal smut-ometer. I might have to check out the recent adaptation of the book.

86 The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood

When Marian becomes engaged she feels like she’s is being ‘consumed’ by her fiancé and this manifests in a growing inability to eat various types of food. As I was reading I kept thinking of The Vegetarian, which I read earlier this year and how the food the women both ate, or didn’t eat, was one of the few things they had some control over.

I have tried and failed to get into this book a couple of times, but because I love Margaret Atwood I thought I’d give it another go. I’m glad I did, because while it is not one of her best (although to be fair it is her first published book) it is still very good.

87 The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
88 Women of Troy by Pat Barker

I’m currently reading the third in the trilogy so will add a review when I’m done.

Also just finished catching up on the last thread.

Sending love to @elkiedee and anyone else dealing with grief, unfortunately it’s not linear and sometimes it just catches you.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I’m very excited about the new Stephen King book as I really enjoyed The Black House.

And Happy Birthday @aliasgrape

Happy Birthday @AliasGrape and many thanks as always @Southeastdweller !

51 books so far this year.
Bolds are:
The Benefactors - Wendy Erskine
Once Upon A White Horse - Peter Ross
Pagans - Alastair James Henry
Clear - Carys Davies
Solace House - Will Maclean (divided opinions on this
The Two Roberts - Damian Barr
Land - Maggie O’Farrell (the boldest of bolds so far this year)
Little Spark - Jess Kidd
The Underground Railroad- Colson Whitehead
My Name Is Mackenzie Bly - Lissa Evans
Our Noble Selves - Kate Atkinson

I am full of a cold this weekend so comfort reading a pleasing tale of post-plague London and medicinal cannibalism.

Thanks for the new thread southeast and happy birthday Alias!

Question 7 by Richard Flanagan This was recommended on Strong Sense of Place books podcast on their Australia episode for its evocation of Tasmania. I see eine reviewed it favourably last year. It’s kind of a memoir, but broader - a sort of reckoning with the forces of history that converged in the author’s coming to be. His father was a POW in WW2 Japan, and only survived because of the atomic bomb which led to countless other deaths, but his liberation. The book goes into the history of the inspiration for the bomb, traced back to a story by HG Wells. Another thread is the genocide of the first Tasmanians and the gulag slave-society of Van Diemens Land.

Though this may sound both harrowing and egotistical, it is somehow accessible and interesting. It is written in short numbered sections, akin to a non-fiction equivalent of short stories, some of which are freestanding essays on anything from the attitudes of Flanagan’s Oxford contemporaries (not remotely edifying) to comparing modern cultural ‘savage castings-out and swooning agreements’ to his childhood experience of church. It also works as a whole to build a picture of his life and his parents, and of Tasmanian society and the ecological devastation that has happened there.

Thanks to @Southeastdwellerfor the new thread & happy birthday to @AliasGrape!

Also thanks to everyone who has recommended the Book Club podcast, which I’m really enjoying. Favourite episodes so far have been on Rebecca, The Wind in the Willows & Jane Eyre. I need to read more books before I can listen to more episodes, so I’ve also been listening to In Our Time on various authors. I didn’t enjoy their episode on Jane Eyre as much (although it did include the fabulous fact that Charlotte Brontë tended to make her less attractive characters tall (presumably as she was small) which I will be looking out for when I reread her work. I did really enjoy their episodes on The Tenant of Wildfell Hall & Emma.

Here’s my list of books posted on the last thread:

74 . Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez - a couple agree to date each other to lift a relationship jinx
75 . Trustee from the Toolroom by Neville Shute - a family tragedy leads to an unassuming man embarking on a great adventure
76 . Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy - a memoir of the author’s difficult relationship with her mother
77 . The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë - a spoilt young man meets a woman with a mysterious past
78 . The Countess by Jehanne and Katie Wake - a biography of one of the patronesses of Almacks
79 . Something Light by Margery Sharp - an impoverished young woman searches for love.
80 . Madam will you talk? by Mary Stewart - entertaining Provençal mystery with lots of car chases.
81 . September by Rosamunde Pilcher - a community prepares for a party
82 . The Day of the Storm by Rosamunde Pilcher - a young woman meets her mother’s estranged family in Cornwall
83 . The Warden by Anthony Trollope - a social reformer targets a church institution
84 . Tom Lake by Ann Patchett - a woman tells her children about her life & loves as a young actress
85 . 28 Summers by Elin Hildebrand - adultery on Nantucket
86 . The Sixth Wedding by Elin Hildebrand - sequel to the previous book
87 . All You Had To Do Was Stay by Laura Starkey - an estranged couple reconnect
88 . Black Beauty by Anna Sewell - justly famous autobiography of a horse
89 . Paradiso 17 by Hannah Lilith Assadi - a refugee moves to Italy & America
90 . Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy - a woman is shipwrecked on a soon-to-be evacuated island
91 . Corpus by Rory Clements - murder & espionage in 1930s Cambridge
92 . Audition by Katie Kitamura - an actress meets a younger man

Happy Birthday @AliasGrape

I missed the Alba de Cespedes on daily deals yesterday - very annoyed!!
So in a similar vein I’m highlighting the fact that The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey is in today’s deals. Most definitely worth 99p in my humble opinion.

Thanks for the new thread @Southeastdweller as well as for the reminder that I want to read some Alan Bennett. You seem to be quite the fan - Where should I start?

Here’s my list - I've managed to find more time to read than usual in the last few weeks though I’m not at all sure how! Fairly confident I will actually reach 50 books this year (not that I’ve been particularly bothered in previous years when I haven’t 😉)

• Lethal White – Robert Galbraith
• Revenge wears Prada – Laura Weisberger
• Bookish: How reading shapes our lives – Lucy Mangan
• Maurice & Maralyn – Sophie Elmhirst
• Menopausing – Davina McCall + Dr Naomi Potter
• Crazy Rich Asians – Kevin Kwan
• Troubled Blood – Robert Galbraith
• There are rivers in the sky – Elif Shafak
• East of Croydon – Sue Perkins
• Notes on a nervous planet – Matt Haig
• Learn Italian – Paul Noble

DNF - Making it up as I go along – Marian Keyes

• The Ink Black Heart – Robert Galbraith
• The Light between Oceans – M L Stedman
• Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow – Gabrielle Zevin
• Went to London, took the dog – Nina Stibbe
• The Wedding People – Alison Espach
• Home Fire – Kamila Shamsie
• Fallout – Eleanor Anstruther (ARC)
• Project Hail Mary – Andy Weir
• Eat Bitter – Lydia Pang (ARC)
• Death at the sign of the rook – Kate Atkinson
• An unlikely visitor – Joanna Cannon (ARC)
• Summer at the French bakery – Jo Thomas (ARC)
• Rewilding – Jane Green (ARC)
• Hungry Eyes – Dawn O’Porter (ARC)
• Ducks, Newburyport – Lucy Ellmann
• Yellowface – R F Kuang
• How not to be a boy – Robert Webb
• When the cranes fly south – Lisa Ridzén
• We solve murders - Richard Osman
• Thirst – John Robins
• My Brilliant Friend – Elena Ferrante
• Beginning, middle, end – Valeria Luiselli (ARC)
• The Comeback – Mel Giedroyc (ARC)
• Our noble selves – Kate Atkinson (ARC)
• The Ministry of Time – Kaliane Bradley
• The Lion Women of Tehran – Marjan Kamali
• My friends – Fredrik Backman
• Sisters of the midnight sun – Fiona Valpy (ARC)
• The Four Winds – Kristin Hannah
• The Vanishing Half – Brit Bennett
• Deep Blue – Steve Backshall
• The Correspondent – Virginia Evans

Just finished the magnificent 5 star The Correspondent by Virginia Evans which is totally worth the hype as far as I’m concerned. Will post my review shortly.

Currently reading The Mercies - Kiran Millwood Hargrave and listening to Glittering a turd by Kris Hallenga, as well as having already finished my October chapters for the Oliver Twist Dickensalong (preens, whilst realising that audiobooking Dickens might be the key to nowanearly keeping on top of future readalongs 😊)

43 - The Correspondent - Virginia Evans.
I’m quite a fan of epistolary novels, and this one was no exception!
Sybil is a wonderful character – feisty, opinionated, and utterly determined to defend the art of written correspondence. I adored her dogged insistence on the importance of putting pen to paper.
But beneath that sharp wit and fierce independence lies so much sadness. The loss of her young son has shaped the course of her life, contributing to a broken marriage and a distant relationship with her other two children. And now, the prospect of slowly losing her eyesight is especially heartbreaking for someone for whom reading and writing are such a fundamental part of life.
I loved how cleverly the author builds this story through Sybil’s correspondence, letting us piece things together gradually rather than spelling everything out. Thank you Virginia Evans for trusting your readers to be intelligent enough to join the dots!
And the surprise bonus? This book might actually inspire me to pick up a pen and paper and write some letters of my own.