50 Books Challenge 2026 Part One

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the first thread of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2026, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

If possible, please can you embolden your titles and maybe authors as well of books you've read or going to read? It makes it much easier to keep track, especially when the threads move quickly at this time of the year.

Stranger with my Face! there's a blast from the past..

I read The Benefactors last year and think I shared my very positive review of it here but can't remember.
Link here to review dated 29 August: https://www.librarything.com/work/33739025/t/The-Benefactors

Setting: Belfast, Northern Ireland

A young woman is sexually assaulted by three young men. She reports it to the police. There is an investigation.

The assault took place at a party. Misty, Chris, Lyness and Rami knew each other. She thought they were mates. What did actually happen? Can Misty get justice? Does she deserve justice or did she bring it on herself? The story is told from a number of viewpoints, in a mixture of third and first person narrative including Misty, the boys who attacked her, their families, police investigators, local gossips/commentators, and a follower of Misty through Benefactors (an Only Fans style social media account, one of her side hustles alongside a little cannabis dealing).

This story is very much about class and social status, as the young people's families get involved. The boys' mothers are less concerned about what happened than protecting their kids, managing the situation, damage limitation. Perhaps, though, they have underestimated Misty, her rather accidental stepdad, Boogie, who works as a Belfast taxi driver, and his grandmother.

There are so many voices here that I want to go back and work out all sorts of things that I missed totally or struggled to understand on first reading. There is a lot of humour in Wendy Erskine's treatment of several difficult subjects. And everything isn't tied up very neatly at the end.

This is a first novel but Wendy Erskine has previously published two collections of short stories - I have come across one or two in anthologies and I look forward to reading more of her work.

The Dictator's Wife - Freya Berry

An astonishing, uncomfortable, compelling book about mothering, corruption, obsession, madness and misunderstanding. A firm bold.

Laura's parents fled the fictional Eastern European country of Yanussia with her when she was seven. Now in her late 20s (in 1993), she is returning with a partner and a senior associate at her law firm, HSG, to defend Marija, the wife of the former dictator, Constantin Popa, who was killed in the uprising in 1989.

Marija was called the Little Mother of the country, having no children of her own, and her impact on Laura (and on others around her) is beguiling. She is accused of knowingly participating in corruption such as theft of artworks and appropriation of bank funds, and she is under house arrest, where the HSG team are forced to join her. Laura becomes increasingly entangled in her conflicting duties to family and to the law, and increasingly mesmerised by Marija.

Wonderful.

I read this last year @SheilaFentiman
I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Great review!

Happy belated birthday @MamaNewtNewt and sorry about your wrist @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie - get well soon!

2 All the Colours of the Dark by Chris Whitaker

An epic crime novel/thriller/coming of age story set in the Ozark mountains in Missouri, this tells the story of Patch and Saint over a quarter of a century, and an awful lot happens. This is my first Chris Whitaker novel and I had to check that he was British, as I'd thought - it's quite a niche US setting. Patch is a one-eyed boy who leans into the pirate narrative his struggling single mother has built for him; Saint his best friend, brought up by her grandmother. Everything changes one day when thirteen-year-old Patch disrupts the attempted abduction of the town beauty, Misty. I really loved the beginning of this book and thought I would love the whole thing, but whilst I enjoyed it and read it quickly, it wasn't a wholesale success for me. It's very long (although not The Hallmarked Man long!) and I found the middle section quite repetitive and baggy. It's also divided into a huge number of choppy, very short chapters, which is one of my pet hates. Parts of it were also just a bit too implausible for me. Those are the bad things; the good - it certainly has an epic sweep; the central characters, particularly Saint, are great and engaging and the mystery keeps unspooling to the end. I also have We Begin at the End on my Kindle and will read that too, as there's lots to like in Whitaker's style and plotting even if it's not wholly my thing.

The eagle has landed...

Thanks @SheilaFentiman and fuzzy for your comments on The Dictator’s Wife. I couldn’t remember how it had ended up on my kindle and moved it into my ‘maybe delete’ collection- now I’m sure I must have got it after fuzzy’s review and I have now moved it back out of the folder after your review too!

I looked up my review Úll! July '24!

Broken Country - Clare Leslie Hall

Oh I really did enjoy this! Wish it had been longer, the characters were well fleshed out and I would have loved some more inner monologue.

Set in Dorset, in the 1950s and 1960s this follows the life of an intelligent Oxford candidate who finds her life derailed by a mad love affair with a local toff. And her life as a farmer’s wife and mother a decade later, overshadowed by loss. Through in a murder and a court case too and this was a real page turner , an easy read with some beautiful prose and emotion.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I know I was one who bigged up Helm recently and I think it's wonderful you can articulate why you disliked it so much! It was a surprise to me how much I enjoyed it; it reminded me of Cloud Atlas and at times that irritated me intensely so there's not always a logic to these things.

One of my Christmas books and yet to read . Thank you for the review .

@Frannyisreading I also hated Cloud Atlas but weirdly I absolutely loved The Bone Clocks

I really enjoyed Broken Country when I read it last year.

2. Marble Hall Murders - Anthony Horowitz

This was easy reading for a couple of train journeys with lots of changes. Susan, a book editor, is embroiled in murder again when is she asked to edit another Atticus Pund novel being written by privileged but troubled Eliot. It becomes apparent that Eliot has based the novel on his family and they are not coming out of it too well. As with previous books in the series, it moves between Susan's life editing the book (where she makes enemies of most of Eliot's family) and the Atticus Pund mystery. I guessed one of the plot lines but failed on the Atticus Pund mystery. If you like the previous books, you will enjoy this one; if you didn't, you won't!

2 The Lady of the Tower by Elizabeth St John - this was a recommendation from the recent medieval thread - although it is actually set in the early 17th century. It’s based on the true story of an ancestor of the author: a noblewoman, who has to retreat from court after becoming embroiled in a scandalous love affair then later becomes the mistress of the Tower of London. I can see the logic of writing a novel rather than a history book, as while this allows the author to fill in the gaps about what is known about her ancestors, but it does result in the problem that biography is tricky to structure as a novel. I also found the initial love affair unconvincing as it didn’t fit well with what else the reader was told about the main character’s personality (there’s also another problem that I will return to later in this post). Despite this, I enjoyed it although it’s probably one for readers who enjoy history / historical novels. The 17th century hasn’t been as fashionable to write about as the 16th century, but it’s a fascinating era and for a novelist it’s probably better to write about courtiers and others caught up in the great events of that century rather than the kings and their favourites (most of whom aren’t very appealing characters). The book is very good at conveying how easy it was for those seeking a career at court to fall into debt or otherwise ruin themselves. I will probably read this again to look more closely at the main character’s herbal recipes.

3 The Ashes of London by Andrew Taylor - continuing today’s 17th Century theme, this is a detective novel in which a Whitehall clerk and an heiress become caught up in a murder investigation when bodies are found in the ruins of St Paul’s cathedral. This was from yesterday’s deal (mainly bought because I was enjoying reading about the 17th century) and I’m regretting not buying the whole series.

4 The King’s General by Daphne du Maurier - this was a RWYO which I bought some time ago as I loved the book when I first read it as a teen (oddly enough it was in an omnibus edition with the recently reviewed the House on the Strand, which was the book that I really wanted to read - but I preferred this one). The King’s General also has a similar structure to the Lady in the Tower (youthful love affair then a focus on a woman’s later life) and the later book does suffer in comparison as the opening in the King’s General is cracking as the young Honor witnesses the breakdown in her brother’s marriage and then falls deeply in love herself. Teenage me very much enjoyed how desperately romantic the book was (although towards the end I did get annoyed with Honor for failing to solve her problems). Reading it again what struck me was just how brutal the Civil War was for households - and how utterly useless all of the other Royalist commanders were. There’s a real contrast between how brutal the King’s General can be and how unpopular he is with his peers - and how capable he is as a general and how the common people like him as he pays his soldiers and keeps them in order. It’s not a bold as I know it too well and because I found one of the key events upsetting.

I will likely be continuing the 17th century vibe as I’m enjoying it.

Belated happy birthday wishes, @MamaNewtNewt , and much sympathy to you @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie !

@bibliomania , when you said, A non-fiction account of walking the Coast-to-Coast path, I laughed out loud. Classic British understated humour!

@StrangewaysHereWeCome I wasn't a fan of Burnt Sugar when I read it a few years ago. I found the narrator very opaque and hard to sympathise with.

@MaterMoribund Remote Sympathy is impressively researched and very very good. In a completely different (ie far superior!) league to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas IMO.

@Benvenuto The Ashes of London series books come up quite often on Kindle deals, I think, separately or together

I did read and enjoy The Benefactors last year!

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie my ankle is almost better now thank you, luckily a very minor break, I hope your wrist is straightforward as well.

2 Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About The World - And Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling

This book starts off with a little quiz assessing your perception of the current state of affairs in a number of areas, including poverty, female education, climate change, and disease. The author then uses these questions and your answers to show, not only why things are actually better than you think, but also goes into the reasons why we overlook the progress that has been made. The reasons, and what you can do to ensure you use the facts and critical thinking, is interspersed with real life examples that bring these lessons to life. This genuinely has made me feel a lot better about the state of the world and I can see, not only how I can use this approach in day to day life, but also at work too. It’s really well written and not at all preachy. A definite bold and the kindle version is currently 99p.

I remember the cover of Stranger with my Face - I couldn’t borrow it from the library because the cover scared me so much!

Fingers crossed for a speedy recovery @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

1. Afterlives - Abdulrazak Gurnah
A rich and gripping historical novel, telling the story of intertwined characters during the colonial period in Tanzania, from the early days of the German colony to Independence. The section on WW1 is particularly vivid. Slightly abrupt ending.

Big pile of Claire Keegan books 📚 in kindle deals today

Thanks for your review of Factfulness @MamaNewtNewt. It's currently 99p on kindle so I've just bought it.

I’ve also bought Factfulness, and The Benefactors, which is also 99p today.

I haven’t actually finished a book yet this year - have already bought several though!

I'm in the middle of Helm and agree on the strong Cuddy vibes. Luckily I like both!