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.

I found North Woods unreadable.

I read Two Brothers many years ago and remember hating it but not why I hated it. I’m going to see if I can find my review.

Really struggling to find anything to settle to. I’ve rejected two for being over written and boring - one by Emma whatshername who wrote Room.

Found it. It’s not pretty.
Oh dear… - two brothers (one who is adopted) growing up in Nazi Germany – one a Jew, the other not. Unfortunately, despite some interesting characters and some quite moving moments, he’s really not a v good writer. Most of it was exposition – lots of telling instead of showing – and there was an awful lot of Elton a) reminding us that the Nazis were very nasty and b) proving that he’s done some research that he’s determined to cram in. Oh and just in case you weren't quite clear about it, the Nazis really were very nasty. I’d have forgiven both of those if the story itself remained decent. Unfortunately it got more and more ridiculous. Oh and he should be hauled over the coals for his abomination of a ‘black person accent’ which was hideously embarrassing at best and horribly racist at worst. Terrible.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I’m happy to see your North Woods comparison to Cuddy and Helm as I have both the latter (can you say both of the latter- probably not, sorry to any pedants) on my kindle and loved the former.
I think I’m finally starting to exit my book slump. I’ve left Palace Walk aside for a little, have started to really get into The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and am reading a pacy thriller which is always the way to get me out of a book slump (The Ghost Orchid by Jonathan Kellerman)

@ÚlldemoShúl Like in North Woods where each story is connected to the woods but different timelines, focus and characters the others have different central themes but same layout

I have Cuddy, North Woods and Helm all on my kindle TBR which is why I desperately need to RWYO, but last year I did love Mischief Acts which I think is a similar concept, exploring the Great North Wood down through the ages and personifying it by transposing Herne the Hunter there (he’s usually in Windsor).

I’ve finished my first book of the year! Spook Street Mick Herron Slough House #4. I really enjoyed it. After reading 1 & 2 I wasn’t sure whether I’d carry on, as it’s not a genre I’d usually go for, but I’m glad I did.

This was borrowed from the library, and the first paper book I’ve read in a while, which made a nice change.

It’s definitely a different experience than reading on the kindle, and I wonder if this influenced my opinion when I started the series - 1-3 came as a single kindle file, so it wasn’t clear how far through the book I was, and the end of the first one caught me by surprise. (Not sure if I’m making sense here, the kindle file was three books, so when I had almost finished the first, the kindle said I’d read 30%, so I thought I had much more to read before it was finished.)

Anyway, something quick and light next, definitely RWYO.

Finished two more this week, Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon, and James by Percival Everett.

Frozen River- Ariel Lawhon was an easy, enjoyable book-club type of read. It is a retelling (and none too accurate) of the story of Martha Ballard, a midwife in 1700s New England. She is terribly brave, her husband is terribly kind and devoted, the villains are terribly bad. It was a real page turner but lacked some depth.

James - Percival Everett was on my TBR last year and I was really looking forward to it as it had rave reviews. Sadly, I didn’t love it. It was engrossing, and so easy to read and it had some fun satirical moments as well as horrifying moments. But the women were merely plot devices, and there was no real connection for me to Jim. I needed more inner monologue, more about him to get that connection. It was more Django Unchained than anything else.

2. The Long Read Vol. 2 - various

Second anthology of The Guardian’s weekly long articles, which was a Christmas present. An interesting and varied selection; only one is explicitly political, a portrait of Emmanuel Macron, although many touch on current issues eg a doctor writing about his experience of diagnosing ADHD. Recommended.

Have almost finished listening to the first Discworld novel (free with my Spotify subscription), as I’ve spent much of this week with swollen painful eyes after an allergic reaction to an Aldi face product (beware cheap serums).

Cry When the Baby Cries by Becky Barnicoat. I didn't mean to read this today. I'd bought it as a gift and it should have arrived next week but the postie delivered it this morning so I looked at the first few pages and found myself finishing it in one sitting. It's a graphic memoir about the author-illustrator's experience of the early years of motherhood from IVF onwards and it's a very laugh-out-loud, realistic, cheering-up, and full of pros and (lots of) cons sort of book. It might be a bit too close to the bone for my intended recipients who are in the midst of the early days of it all but, if they don't want it, they can give it back because I'd love to have a copy to put with the growing graphic novels etc collection on my shelves.

@inthekitchensink - I agree, I found James a bit boring. An interesting concept taken too far for too long, to the point of tedium.

I also disliked the "shock reveal" at the end, which was a rewrite too far.

I’m going to try and join in this year. I just finished Brimstone which enjoyed but didn’t love and it took a long time. I will read the next one in the series and plan to reread Quicksilver again soon.
im currently reading Want You Dead by Peter James. This is a nice easy crime fiction read. I’ve been reading the series out of order and they can be a bit samey but I’ve enjoyed them all so far anyway.

Just finished my first January book.

I thought I'd give Denzil Meyrick's non vintage non Christmas books a go as I didn't realise he had been so prolific. I read the first in his DCI Daley series Whisky From Small Glasses. Set in Kinloch (a fictionalised Kintyre - warning! lots of Scots and Glaswegian dialect transcribed !) it's a fairly standard, and gritty, police procedural. I hope he got better at a) editing unnecessary waffle and characters b) writing women c) not being misogynistic or overly sexual in his descriptions of women and d) not picking the most obvious culprit!

I didn't not enjoy it. There was enough to make me try another one.

Horrors! Only one book left in my TBR pile!

I loved North Woods. I found it could actually see the location - I don't always experience this, but in this book it was like I was actually there. I liked the use of language, which I figured was authentic for the time.

4 The Golden Oldies Book club - Judy Leigh
A group of women of varying ages who live in Somerset are all at a turning point in their life. Either retirement, divorce, wanting a change etc. One owns a cider farm which features heavily.
This was on my kindle which I think I bought in a sale last year. The characters are dull and lack depth. The storylines are predictable and cheesy and I found myself really not caring what happened to any of them by the end. Quite a few cringe or eye rolling moments. Just badly written.

I loved North Woods too. But I'm also a fan of Helm and Cuddy, so agree that there are similarities between the three. I think North Woods was my favourite, although I liked the Britishness of the other two.

3 Boymum by Ruth Whippman

Read for a work book club, but quite apposite for me given that I have two boys just moving into the teenage years. Whippman, a mother of three boys herself (British but living in the US) is concerned about the conflicting messages about masculinity the world is presenting to her children. She takes a dive into a range of young male arenas - incel reddit, therapy groups run by conservative Christians, mothers whose teenage or young adult sons have been accused of rape. She meets young men who at first seem frightening, but on further investigation are scared, lonely and vulnerable, and her initial perceptions are altered. There are no real answers here, but the book does make some good points about the consequences of the #MeToo movement for young men and, in particular, about society's failure to model close emotional relationships between adult males. As I commented on another (timely!) thread in AIBU, that is something I really want my boys to see, as my own friendships are so important to me. Whippman is a funny, relatable writer and the book is worth a read.

The Pastures of Heaven by John Steinbeck

This is a collection of short stories about people living in Las Pasturas del Cielo, a valley in California. I really liked this - there’s quite a variety of stories here; sad, happy, unusual. This is one of Steinbeck’s earliest works and you can see the groundwork for his later novels.

@inthekitchensink I enjoyed The Frozen River - but I get your point about the characters lacking a bit of depth. It was a nice "Call the Midwife" with added murder mystery vibe. I found the afterword the most interesting when the author was talking about Martha Ballard's diaries.

I've been back at work this week and it has been nuts so not as much time to read as that lovely week between xmas and New year with nothing to do except read and eat cheese.

Have still knocked a couple of easy reads off though:

5. Nothing Ventured by Jeffery Archer
   I picked this up as I was after an easy read and it was available on Borrowbox without a wait. It says it is a novel about a detective rather than a detective novel, and I feel that is true- the case isn’t the real focus, it is more about William, the young detective as he works through a number of cases, so it reads a little more like a series of short stories while he gets used to the job. He is also dealing with his father’s disappointment he is not a lawyer, a new girlfriend and colleagues who view him as a fast-tracked college boy.
   He gets assigned to the team which investigates major art fraud as he has a degree in art history and soon gets involved in a larger investigation. It is the first in a series, and would probably read more, but also working my way through the Maeve Kerrigan and Ruth Galloway series so will probably leave it for while.

6. The Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths
   This is the second in the Ruth Galloway series, much reviewed on here.
   I quite enjoyed it for an easy read whodunnit.
   Ruth gets called in as a bones expert when the headless skeleton of a child is found on the site of a former Catholic Children’s home and it follows the investigation as they trace previous staff and children who lived there.

I'm now struggling through *Lincoln in the Bardo" for my bookclub. Maybe I am just too thick for it but I have no clue what is going on

@HagCymraeg I bloody loved Lincoln In The Bardo all the random voices are supposed to have a Greek Chorus effect. If you have Audible it’s meant to be good as an audiobook, it’s got a full cast so all the voices are distinguishable from each other

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I am listening on Audible, I can differentiate the voices and I am kind of enjoying the meandering chatter, but I just have no clue what is going on

@HagCymraeg there’s not a lot of plot to it, it’s mainly just about grief, loss and communing with the spirit world, if you’ve got that part down you’ve got the book!

@Yolandiifuckinvisser- great review of Cuddy (it’s on my wishlist). The view of Durham Cathedral from the train is absolutely spectacular.

6 The King’s Evil by Andrew Taylor - this was the third in the author’s Restoration detective series & is the only one on BorrowBox (which is s bit annoying - it would make more sense to have the 1st book). It’s about the investigation into a dead body, which is found in the Earl of Clarendon’s well. I liked that some of the action took place in Cambridge and the Fens and the portrayal of Charles II is immensely flattering. Like the others, I found it an enjoyable read and I will look out for more in the deals.

7 After you’ve gone by Maggie O’Farrell - this was reviewed last year, which reminded me that I had read it before many years ago. It’s the story of Alice, who is in a coma after being hit by a car - she may or may not have stepped out in front of the car deliberately. I think my comment after reading the last review of this was that I remember Alice’s mother was awful - and my opinion hasn’t changed on the reread (we’re not told at the end what will happen to Alice’s parents, but I can’t help hoping that Alice’s much nicer father will leave her mother).
I was quite amused that Maggie O’Farrell dedicates the book to her mother “for not being like Alice’s”. After you’ve gone is Maggie O’Farrell’s first book, but it has strong similarities with her later books, not least Hamnet (which I read last year). Like Hamnet, this book has a storyline in the present of the book, with lots of loops back to recount the past. Hamnet has a much stronger structure as it uses chapters to divide the book into episodes / themes - here the sections feel more random and there’s also a switch between first and third person narration at times which also feels a bit random. I do think Maggie O’Farrell has a very distinctive style, and that is clear here although it feels much less polished than her later work. When I first started to read this book, I didn’t think I would enjoy it as much as the first time I read it - but I did get caught up in it once the book reached the very sad part. The cover also means I can tick off the Bookface category in the 52 Book Challenge (although making an actual bookface is a bit beyond my skills).

If you’re not enjoying it, I’d recommend stopping. It gets more and more silly. I hesitate to mention the enormous member, but it doesn’t go away, iirc.

I finished my first book of 2026, the colour of bee larkham’s murder and I’ve now started one called the full moon coffee shop which is looking to be another interesting read..