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.

Ooh I haven't heard of that one so will keep an eye out. I did read Old Filth a few years ago and liked it, but I suspect that nothing that you read as an adult will ever imprint itself on your soul in the same way as the books you loved as a child.

@VikingNorthUtsire you have to put a space between the number and the full stop

Sorry to see that people didn’t love A Town Like Alice. It’s one of my absolute favourites. I must have first read it when I was about 17, I think, and it feels like an old friend whenever I reread it. I absolutely love all the stufff about the development of the town.

@Arran2024 Richard Evans once sat at the front of a presentation I was giving – and – fell asleep! I saw him in the corridor afterwards and he said how interesting it was.

Ah @RazorstormUnicorn and @Notmymarmosets sets I think The Island of Missing Trees is one of her best, but I actually care a great deal more than the average person about islands, water and figs. I just adore her even in her imperfection – I have seen her speak multiple times and she speaks I am just like ‘what. That is my thought you just articulated.’ Yes, I know I sound like a moron.

@birdysong poor Boxer!

Black and British (and Olusoga more generally) is such a fantastic book. For those who enjoyed it, you might enjoy Olivette Otele’s African Europeans (small) and Zeinab Badawi’s The History of Africa - I;ve not yet got to either (TBR) but went to one of the launches of Badawi’s book and Otele is a fabulous historian, first female black professor of History in the UK.

@NotWavingButReading utReading DH wears one of those to bed, he calls it a longhi. A Town Like Alice is quite high up on my Kindle Library.

Beautiful Women, Barbara Pym
Read for book club and also handily fits my ‘Twee Vicar’ category on my own challenge list. This is very Pym, there is a vicar who lives with his sister, a vicar’s widow and a thoroughly modern couple who move in downstairs. Our heroine is one of the beautiful women, spinsters who get caught up in other people’s mess and help them sort it out. It was lovely and exactly what was needed.

I think I am going in for A Town Called Alice to see if I finally love the same book as @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie s and Palace Walk so I can compare notes with @ÚlldemoShúl

@AgualusasL0ver I hope you love A Town Like Alice because I really wanted to, and I certainly did in parts. The longhi sounds so practical sleeping in the heat. A cover but light, it won't fall off and I imagine it keeps mosquitos off to some extent (in the tropics).

I have A Town Called Alice TBR too, I really liked The Pied Piper by the same author so might read it when I eventually get through The Goldfinch.

@AprilLady I was about the same age when I first read A TreeGrows in Brooklyn and totally identified with Francie. I think I’m due a re-read too.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie same re Alice.

At 50% in The Hallmarked Man and have no idea who all these characters are.

Celestial Navigation - Anne Tyler

In a similar vein to Breathing Lessons, a detailed observation of Jeremy, an agoraphobic artist who accidentally runs a boarding house after his mother dies, and Mary, a tenant who has left her husband and taken their young DD to follow a man who isn’t as separated from hIs wife as she thought.

Well written but agonising in places, as the characters struggle with life and love.

That’s exactly how I felt with THM (Still bolded it though because Strike and Robin’s ‘will they won’t they’ still captivates me for some reason 🤷‍♀️)

The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine
I liked this very much. Reminded me of Kala and The Bee Sting in places.
Misty is a teenage girl who works in a hotel and also earns money on an Only Fans type website. She is raped by three boys from the same community, at a party, and the novel switches from narrator to narrator in the aftermath. As a pp said upthread, the voices of her attackers aren’t really heard, which was pleasing. The voices of the women are the most important, concentrating on Misty and the mothers of the three boys. Class and privilege are dissected with a light, often humorous touch. It really takes a deep dive into what it might be like to be the mother of a boy who would do such an appalling thing, including the rationalisation and minimising you could find yourself engaged in.
Misty’s formidable step-grandma Nana D needs a book of her own!

3 The Wedding People, Alison Espach
I don't usually enjoy chick lit/romances but this was a good read to cheer along flu recovery. It has a darker edge too and dabbles in wider issues, but my overall impression is fun romp, lots going on. It would work without the Victorian literature angle which I found distracting (look how clever Phoebe is!) but that could be the lemsip talking.

5 Dear Dickhead - Virginie Despentes

Oscar is a writer who insults an older actress (Rebecca) online. She sends him an angry email which begins an unlikely sort of epistolary "enemies to confidantes" relationship. Oscar is accused of sexual harassment by his publicist and they are both dealing with addiction issues and navigating the complicated world of sexual and online politics, during lockdown.

I found it a little exhausting. It's talking about important topics, but both main characters are opinionated and often unlikeable, and reading their emails sometimes felt like being bombarded with one furious blog post after another. I enjoyed the last third the most, where both characters undergo personal growth.

4 Hausfrau Jill Alexander Essbaum
Im still working out what I thought of this. It wasn’t the book I thought I was reading going in - a RWYO book that’s sat on my kindle nearly 10 years and the kindle cover art plays up the sexy nature of it, it’s a picture of cleavage basically. I’d forgotten the discussion around it or why I originally bought it.

Reading the first half or so I just thought it was another of those ‘sad, passive woman lets stuff happen to her and more awful stuff ensues as a result of her lack of agency’. And it completely is, but it was darker and probably better written than many of those. Equally frustrating though, Ive had my share of loss, tragedy, mental health challenges but have never really understood the complete passivity these narrators display.

I foresaw the first genuinely awful thing that was coming and it did piss me off a bit, it’s the way women are often ‘punished’ in these stories, but was none the less devastating. The whole thing was more impactful than I expected it to be, the main character was frustrating and hard to relate to, but it did really draw you in. It was hard to understand why she’d given up so much of her agency and personhood, and what had gone so wrong - I’m not sure it’s ever adequately explained. Some of the devices used got a little bit repetitive and old, German grammar as a metaphor for her life, for example.

So mixed review, I’m somewhere between loved it and hated it, not sure where I’ll ultimately end up!

@AliasGrape Is that the one set in Switzerland? I can’t remember the authors name, but I remember the title and that I admired it! Must be 10 years since I read it

… and the tortoise has finally joined the race.

1 Psykhe - Kate Forsyth
Kate Forsyth is an Australian author who writes fairytale retellings, often pulling the narrative into a particular historical context. Here, she sets the tale of Cupid and Psyche (Psykhe) around 500BC - Psykhe and her sisters are Etruscan nobility, drawn into Roman politics at the time of the fall of the monarchy. But there’s also a whole ragbag of other material in here - she leans heavily into the Beauty and the Beast elements of the Cupid and Psyche story; there’s witchery and midwifery; Alpine folktales; Venus has something like a fairy court - oh yes, and Psykhe is an albino (why not?).

Flawed as it is, fairytale retellings are very much my thing and it carried me along with only minor tuts at its daftness; I also like Kate Forsyth’s other books and she seemed lovely when I saw her at a writer’s talk, so I was inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt.

Ithaca - Clare North

What if Hera were to be intervening in Ithaca with Penelope and the suitors, whilst Odysseus was… marooned… with Calypso? What would happen in this land bereft of fighting age men for 18 years, after Odysseus pissed off Poseidon and failed to bring his subjects home?

The first of a trilogy. Treads ground that Atwood, Miller, Haynes, Barker et al have also wandered over, but a good read anyway,

Yes. I've no knowledge of whether it's an accurate portrayal of life in Switzerland/ their culture etc, but had a read of some reviews after finishing the book and it seems others found it accurate. I wonder if it would still be the case more than 10 years on from publication.

1. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields. Absolutely superb. One of those novels that reminds you just how incredible books can be. To try and sum it up would be to diminish it, because "the life of a woman through the 20th century" doesn't sound enough.

It's about who we are, the stories we tell ourselves, being our own unreliable narrator, how others see us, and the wonder hidden in the mundane.

The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly. Just finished this. It’s the second book in a three book series and follows a journalist investigating a murder. There is a complete story within this book and you don’t need to have read the first book, although it may be helpful to have done so. Really enjoyed this; kept me gripped until the end. Actually I highly recommend any Michael Connelly novels to anyone who likes legal and/or detective novels.

@minsmum – I’d recommend Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad by Daniel Finklestein. It was the 50 Bookers top NF for last year.

@AgualusasL0ver – I’ve also got Zeinab Badawi’s The History of Africa on my kindle. So I’ll move onto that after Black and British. Thank you for the recommendation. I also really enjoyed The Island of Missing Trees and passed it on to my Mum, who was a frequent visitor to Cyprus and she loved it too.

I do remember A Town Like Alice being very much a book in two parts, but it was years ago that I read it. I did like it though.

5 How The Light Gets In – Louise Penny (Chief Insp Gamache 9) Gamache gets a call from Myrna in Three Pines to say that she is concerned that a friend has gone missing. She was due to come to Three Pines for Christmas and hasn’t appeared. It emerges that the woman was once one of the most famous women in Canada. Is there a connection? Also, there is loads of office politics going on within the Surete. Who will win the power struggle? I did work out the murderer (for once in my life lol) This was shortlisted for the 2014 CWA Gold Dagger and I can see why.

Do we think that Louise Penny would be categorised as cosy crime? I got an email from someone I follow who has just finished the first book in the series and she reckons its cosy crime. To me, cosy crime is Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club, Rev Richard Coles’ Canon Clement, with an amateur detective. Usually with a charming location. Well, yes, Three Pines is charming, but its not cosy crime to me.

Circle of Friends - Maeve Binchy

Set in the late 1950s about a group of friends at university in Dublin. Benny (a girl) and Eve are friends from the small town of Knockglen, and they become friends with a group including the more glamorous Jack and Nan. I loved this - loved the characters and the settings, both the university life and the small town events. It’s quite a long book but I was completely immersed in it. I’m going to seek out the fun although I gather the ending is different in the film.

@Tarragon123 I read that last year and thought it was very good

@ChessieFL there is a restaurant in Inistioge Kilkenny called Circle of Friends

@ChessieFL I love all of her books. They are all similar with great, detailed characters and gentle humour . Some characters pop up in later books in a minor way.

One of my most favourite books ever. I love Carol Shields - I read Larry's Party last year, which was the one I had somehow missed, but it came across as pretty dated (it's about masculinity, but life is very different now for men than when she wrote about it in the 80s).

Everyone is raving about a new book called The Correspondent, which i read and mostly enjoyed and which reminded me of The Stone Diaries, but it's not a patch on it.

1 Cuddy - Benjamin Myers
The history of Durham Cathedral as narrated by various voices from the past.

The legend of St Cuthbert begins when Brother Cuthbert (the eponymous Cuddy) dies on a small island near Lindisfarne, his remains being removed by monks to escape the attentions of marauding Vikings then trundled around Northern England and Southern Scotland for a few hundred years before achieving their final resting place in the city now known as Durham.

The book is divided into sections taking place 2-3 centuries apart told from the points of view of:
1 - A young woman, travelling with the itinerant monks in the capacity of cook and healer
2 - A woman who escapes the brutality of her existence when her husband goes off to war and she begins a relationship with a stonemason working on the cathedral
3 - The cathedral itself recounting the experiences of Scottish soldiers imprisoned in the deconsecrated Cathedral.
4 - A Victorian archaelogist summoned to oversee the disinterment of Cuddy's remains
5 - A casual labourer in 2019 who secures 2 weeks work assisting the stonemasons engaged in conservation works in the tower

Cuddy himself plays a part in each of their stories, appearing to each as a source of comfort and wisdom. The sense of continuity and permanence of the place is underscored by the repetition of surnames throughout and the presence in each section of a young man with startlingly large eyes.

I loved this, I really enjoyed the different styles of writing for each section and the subtle humour throughout. I've never visited Durham Cathedral and I would dearly love to now I've read this novel, so it probably won't do any harm to the tourist industry in Durham either!