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.

3 Dying Fall by Elly Griffiths

The 5th book in the Ruth Galloway series. Ruth ventures up north when she receives a letter from one of her university friends asking for her help, just after he has died in suspicious circumstances. Ruth is still obsessed with her weight, Nelson is still an arrogant sexist, and Cathbad is still my favourite. I quite enjoyed this one, and funnily enough the regiment (is that the right word here?) of African Roman soldiers who were based at Hadrian’s wall discussed here, was also mentioned in the audible I’m listening to - Black and British by David Olusoga.

Just finished number three, but no standouts for me so far.
1 The Journey into yourself - Eckhart Tolle Nice relaxing audio book for Tolle fans but little new content. Non fiction.
2 There are Rivers in the Sky - Elif Shafak Didn't enjoy this as much as I had hoped, sadly. Seemed a bit contrived and honestly depressing.
3 Small things like these. Clare Keegan Short, I read it in a day. Engaging, but not well developed enough to be captivating

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

Two teens fall in love on Cyprus but one is Turkish and one is Greek and in the 1970s this is a problem.

This is so poetically written I really wanted to love it and the addition of the tree narrator was brilliant. For me it's not a suspension of reality to believe that insects and birds talked to the tree. Maybe this does happen?

However I didn't get drawn into the world. I didn't rush to pick up the book, and I didn't struggle to put it down when I needed to do something. I think I just didn't care about the characters enough. So it's 4 stars for me. A good read, but not the page turner I hoped for.

@Arran2024 I really didn’t like The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas, but I have found myself thinking about it frequently since I read it several years ago, so that must mean there’s something good about it! The Sleepwalkers sounds interesting (and very different from Mr Y) so it’s gone on my wishlist, thank you!

Finished my first book Animal Farm 🚜 I also read 26 books last year so I shall see how I go

Hi all,
Off to a good start…

1. The Christmas Chronicles Nigel Slater - glorious, read and bake from it every year (not sure if it is cheating to put on list?)
2. Death at the Sign of the Rook Kate Atkinson - really enjoyed this, excellent character studies, minor who dunnit - missing art and a murder mystery in a crumbling house. It finished properly which I appreciated. It’s part of the Jackson Brodie series, which I have read over quite a long time span so aren’t overly involved in, but definitely recommended.
3. The Wedding People Alison Espach - read quickly and enjoyed, probably best not to pick it apart too much. Wasn’t sure if it was a romcom or self help guide? depressed woman goes to kill herself in a hotel & ends up a member of a wedding party, saving herself and everyone else there.

4 Black and British by David Olusoga

I have this on kindle but I thought it might be a good audiobook so I picked it up on Audible. Well I thought I did. It turns out that this is a shorter version designed as an intro to black British history for children. It was interesting, but was just an introduction, so I’ll definitely read the full version at some point. Recommended for those of you with children, or who want to just get a brief overview for now.

Ooh @MamaNewtNewt I read this last year and have the full version from the library awaiting my attention. Sometimes non fiction is hard for me to concentrate on, so this intro was great, but I thought I'd challenge myself and try the adult edition.

@MamaNewtNewt – I’ve got Black and British on the kindle at the moment. I do find that it needs a lot of concentration. What a lovely intersection of the two books for you.

@SharpPoet – absolutely not a cheat. It’s a book and you read it 😊

4 The Chalet School Triplets - Elinor M Brent-Dyer (book 49/58). Unsurprisingly given the title, this concentrates mostly on Joey’s family. Len is accused of shoplifting and one of the ‘small fry’ is kidnapped. The triplets rescue the child on their own, because, of course they do. Sick of reading the words ‘small fry’ and ‘dekko’ as in ‘having a dekko’ at something. They are in every book, multiple times.

I’ve moved onto my latest Louise Penny book. I really enjoy them and have slight trepidation at the disappointment I’ll feel later on, going by other reviews.I have to visit Quebec. Maybe this Summer?

@MamaNewtNewt Thanks for recommending the Hans Rosling. I had read a review of the book before Christmas but it's not something I would normally buy. Got the 99p offer.
@minsmum I had no idea James Clavell was still writing in the 90s, I enjoyed Shogun in the 70s I think. Another for my list.
@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I loved E Nesbitt as a child. I can still smell the library I used to get her books from when I was about 8. I have The Phoenix and the Carpet on my TBR as part of my plan to re-read some old favourites this year.

1.A Town Like Alice by Neville Shute
I was looking for fiction set in the Far East during WWII and I think this just wasn’t the book I wanted it to be so perhaps I am over critical. It’s two almost distinct stories and I liked the first but not so much the second.
Published in 1950 and set in the 1940s the tone of the writing and attitudes are very much of it’s time. The style is simple and easy to read but feels a bit like a BBC voiceover
The protagonist is Jean Paget, a young British woman who is working in Sumatra when the Japanese invade and is captured, along with a group of women and children. The Japanese guards had no camp to accommodate the women and they were marched from coast to coast for two years covering some 2000 miles. The part of the book covering this period was fascinating.
I was intrigued by the description of the sarong. A traditional garment worn by the locals. I think of a sarong as a large rectangle of fabric which is draped and tied in different ways. This was a much more practical garment.
From the book
It is a skirt made of a tube of cloth about three feet in diameter. The wearer gets into it and wraps it around their waist "like a towel", with the excess material falling into pleats that allow for free movement. For sleeping, the roll at the waist is undone, and it lies over the person as a loose covering that they cannot roll out of.It is noted as the lightest, coolest, and most practical garment for the tropics because it is simple to make and wash.
The book isn’t narrated by Jean but a solicitor back in England who meets Jean after the war and this second hand narrator jars with me, hearing the story told by a 3rd party didn’t work for me. I found the second part of the book set in Australia such a let down in contrast to the first.

3 Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder its taken me a long time to read this, most of last year if I'm honest. It's about the area where most Jews were murdered during the war. We tend.to think that they died in concentration camps but they mostly didn't. This looks at all the murders committed by the Nazis and the Soviets in Poland Latvia,Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus for the period from about 1933 to 1945. Stalin was as bad as Hitler maybe worse. It is full of such horrific details that I couldn't finish it in one go.
just one example, when the Germans captured Soviet troops they kept them in such small spaces outside they had to stand as no room to sit, no medical treatment and so they all died very quickly.I
The author estimates that in that area alone at least 14 million were murdered

@Frannyisreading you are right it was a great little intro, I definitely learned a lot and it whet my appetite to pick up the full version soon. @Tarragon123 I know I was so excited when someone in the Ruth Galloway book asked whether there might have been black Roman soldiers in Britain and I was excitedly shouting internally “There were!”

I really hope people enjoy the Factfulness book, so glad a few of you have nabbed it for 99p. I thought it was brilliant and I loved the author, he seemed like such a sensible, lovely, and rational man. It really has changed the way I look at some things.

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden

This was an interesting book because it highlighted the experience of Dutch Jews in the war, which I didn’t know much about. However, I didn’t really like it much - I found the writing style a bit disjointed and because of that I didn’t really find the central romance convincing, and also didn’t find any of the characters particularly likeable. The sex scenes are pretty graphic which I didn’t really expect going into it. It wasn’t really the book I was expecting to read.

3. The Voyage Home - Pat Barker

This is the third in the Troy trilogy. I read Silence of the Girls several years ago and was confident I had also read Women of Troy but my lists suggest not. This book is all about Agamemnon's return home after 10 years away fighting the Trojans. He is accompanied by Cassandra, daughter of King Priam, who he has "claimed". The story is told from the viewpoint of Cassandra's waiting lady/slave and I liked the informal style and mundane details. I knew where the story was going but even so found it a page-turner. I prefer Barker's writing style to that of Natalie Haynes.

10 . Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis

Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize last year

Nadia, a lecturer, takes a job at the UN deradicalising ISIS brides in Iraq, once there she becomes attached to Sara one of the younger women in the camp.

I’d been looking forward to this and I hated it. Nadia is chaotic, toxic and unbelievable. Even before the Big Incident, her behaviour at the UN is so unprofessional as to be ludicrous, she should have and would have been sacked for the shit she pulls.

As well as this, the reader is repeatedly bashed about the head with reasons why Nadia “isn’t your perceived/assumed stereotype of a Muslim woman”. It’s not subtle and there’s no nuance to it. It’s the definition of someone telling not showing.

Towards the end she has a really terrible, second hand embarrassment conversation with Sara about sex that just hits a really uncomfortable note. It just cements that Nadia is a really unlikeable protagonist to spend time with.
I think it was Cote who once said “Why does a protagonist have to be likeable?” In this instance, it’s because she’s the heroine, you’re supposed to be rooting for her, but her behaviour just can’t be condoned.

Overall the plot isn’t believable either and focuses more on Nadia’s bullshit than on the ISIS Brides, it’s obvious Shemima Begum was an inspiration here, but it’s a very shallow interpretation of this situation. IMO.

To be avoided.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I wasn’t a fan of Fundamentally either. In fact I found the Women’s Prize list very poor (and the Booker not much better) this year. I don’t think I hated it as much as you though

@ÚlldemoShúl I was reminded of a line from Mean Girls “I’m not a REGULAR MOM, I’m a COOL MOM” it seemed like the emphasis was on How Can I Make This Character as painfully “right on” as possible!

I liked Fundmentally but found it overdid the irreverence in places and the graphic sex was ‘a bit much’ (I am aware this makes me sound like a Maiden Aunt ).

3 My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout. This was a reread - I’d read it some years ago and wanted to read some of the other Lucy Barton books so thought I’d read this first. I remember loving it first time round - not sure I was as keen this time round, but still both an easy and thought provoking read.

@ChessieFL I seem to remember The Cut Out Girl by Bart Van Es as a really good read about the Dutch Jewish experience of the war.

@BestIsWest lovely to find another fan of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn I first read it when I was 11/12 ish - I loved it then and much of it has stayed with me ever since. It is definitely up there as one of my favourite books of all time. It’s a while since I did a reread actually.

This is exactly how I felt when I read A town like Alice. I’ve never read a book with such contrasting halves before. I have got the story of Tenko on my kindle from this though which focuses on a group of women in a prisoner of war camp. I remember the tv programme so I have high hopes.

@TimeforaGandT - I agree that Barker is a far better writer than Haynes, although I still enjoy Haynes. It takes one hell of a writer to match Pat Barker.

I loved the Claire North trilogy of what happened to Ithaca as Penelope holds fast.

@BeaAndBen currently reading the first Ithaca book!

1. A Long Way from Verona, Jane Gardam

Not sure whether I have mentioned it on this thread but I am trying to stick to RWYO this year. This one was an absolute favourite of mine when I was about 10-11 and it was such a huge treat to read it again.

This is a funny, atmospheric, wonderfully awkward book about Jessica, the 13-year-old daughter of a curate living in Teeside during WW2. Not a huge amount happens - there's lots about school, and reading, and one agonising house party with some family friends who are posher and shriek "Isn't she gharsley" behind Jessica's back . But the writing is just fantastic, and it captures so perfectly the awfulness of being a girl in the early stages of adolescence.

Just sharing this passage so you can get a feeling for the spirit and beauty of the writing:

School opened up at the end of April - four weeks ago today. It was the most marvellous morning with great gusts of wind blowing the daffodils flat in the gardens as we walked up Norma Place to Big School for first-morning prayers. The sky was bright purple as if there was going to be a great storm of rain, and a few big drops did keep falling, and then great searchlights of sunshine would shine out. The sea was wild, flinging itself about in all directions, the waves rearing up, tearing in at angles to each other like a battlefield.

AAARRRGHH it said 3 at the top when I clicked the "Post" button 😡 is there a workaround for that?

@VikingNorthUtsire , Bilgewater, by Jane Gardam was one of my favourite books as a teen. I think of it surprisingly often.