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 loved Lincoln in the Bardo but it did take me a few goes to get into it. I found the start incomprehensible at first but once I got into it I thought it was a beautiful and poignant book.

4. Passing on - Penelope Lively

Unmarried, middle-aged siblings, Helen and Edward lived with their domineering mother, Dorothy, until her death. Now they are free of her and able to make their own decisions and choose how to live their lives but Dorothy's influence and legacy linger. I love Lively's books which are character driven and observational rather than plot-focused. She manages to blend wry humour with sadness. A bold for me.

2.The Rest of Our Lives by Benjamin Markovits. Tom is a college professor experiencing a number of midlife personal and professional difficulties charged with driving his younger child Miri from New York to Pennsylvania to start college. Some years ago, following his wife’s affair, he decided that this would be the point at which he ends his marriage. Seemingly to avoid making this decision, he instead goes on a road trip visiting family and friends scattered across the country.

This was pretty bland. Nothing of great consequence happens until the end, at which point there’s a melodramatic medical crisis which is easy to see coming over the hill from the get go. So apart from that it’s just your standard male midlife navel gazing. Oh, and the basketball. So. Much. Basketball. I am prepared to concede that my lack of knowledge of all things basketball is a personal failing and in no way the responsibility of the author, but there were large sections of the book that might has well have been written in Finnish for all I understood of them. So it’s possible that there’s some extended basketball metaphor that I didn’t get. But I suspect not.

5. Careless People - Sarah Wynn-Williams

Non-fiction, and a jaw-dropping exposé of the abysmal culture (if I can use that word) at Facebook, which an idealistic Wynn-Williams lobbied hard to join, initially thinking she’d landed her dream job. The gilt soon wore off the gingerbread as certain things dawned on her, eg Mark Zuckerberg wouldn’t schedule meetings before midday for anyone, including major heads of state, because he stays up till the small hours coding; Sheryl Sandburg commanded her (female) minions to come and sleep in the bed with her on Facebook's luxury private jet - and flew into a sulk if they wouldn’t (WTF??), and at one point Wynn-Williams finds herself at a celebrity-studded festival trying to ensure Zuckerberg doesn’t go onstage immediately before Big Bird, while simultaneously grappling with her boss's sudden whim for an audience with the pope.
Much worse is to follow, including the woeful treatment meted out to her while pregnant and later so ill she almost dies. Facebook's practices in many dubious ways are laid bare in shocking detail and you have to wonder quite why she stayed loyal for so long. And then in the end, despite her increasing desperation to leave, she's unceremoniously kicked out.

A book to make me profoundly grateful that I’m not on Facebook.

• Midnight All Day - Hanif Kureishi

A collection of short stories (some very short, some more like novella length). Broadly speaking, all of them are about men leaving their marriages and/or having an affair, often with a much younger woman. Well written - I liked Four Blue Chairs particularly - but somewhat depressing as a whole because I disliked most of the characters.

@Terpsichore i became so frustrated with the way she stayed and put up with their absolute nonsense. I lost sympathy at the point she left her ill daughter to go and look for a pair of lost cowboy boots in the middle of the night!

I enjoyed James quite a lot but agree it had some flaws. I've got The Trees on my TBR pile for when I feel up to the challenge.

Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang is 99p today.

Belated happy new year everyone! Just popping on to say The Midnight News by Jo Baker is in the kindle deals today- if you like WWII era stories I'd highly recommend it.

@StrangewaysHereWeCome completely agree with your review of Markovits - still no idea what that was doing on the Booker longlist let alone shortlist!
3
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver. RWYO. This is about the Price family who go to Congo as missionaries in 1959 and follows them over the next 30 years. The book is narrated by the wife/mother Oleanna Price looking back and by each of the 4 daughters as events unfold: Rachel - the prom princess, Leah - the curious, brave older twin, Adah - the disabled, dark intelligent younger twin, and Ruth May - the youngest. There's so much going on it's difficult to summarise but it looks at colonialism, religion, racism, disease, nature and politics but it's never heavy handed. It's dark, funny, powerful and sad. I loved it, a definite bold. On a side note, I partly listened to it and Kingsolver does the audio brilliantly, albeit quite quickly!

Glad you enjoyed The Poisonwood Bible @Stowickthevast - it's in my all-time top 10.

I absolutely loved the first 80% of The Poisonwood Bible. The last 20% dragged on far too long and I think that for me, the book would have been better ending at that 80% mark. Indeed I felt the same about Demon Copperhead. IMO she and Stephen King have the same problem- tell a cracking tale but don’t know how or when to stop telling it.

1 The Hallmarked Man
Nice to catch up with the ongoing saga of Robin and Strike but far too many characters, none of whom I particularly cared about and a totally horrible ending.

I really hope there won’t be too many more because I already know I will read the next one.

1 Lethal White - Robert Galbraith

Finished the first book of the year and what a cracker.
I put off anything I could to reach out for this 600+ page doorstop.
Completely absorbed and desperate to know how it would all come together - and for that matter would Strike & Robin... Yes she needs an editor, yes it's infuriating and offensive when she writes 'accents' but I'm delighted to have got my hands on the next instalment. I just noticed that this hardback monster weighs in at nearly 950 pages. Do the Strike books just keep getting bigger and bigger??

Now to get on with all the things I've been putting off for the past week ;)

Finished my first, the title feels apt considering I started it in the last days of 2025!

1 Slow Horses, Mick Herron

I’ve seen the tv series already (which I loved, Gary Oldman is perfection) but I was curious about the books. This was a fun, pacey read but I don’t think I’ll necessarily carry on with them as the first season at least is very faithful to the book.

I’m also making good progress with The Mirror and the Light which is brilliant (but dauntingly long).

Also wanted to add my love for A Town Like Alice, The Poisonwood Bible and Light a Penny Candle

Weirdly, I thought I had read The Stone Diaries years and years ago but can't seem to remember a thing about it - and your reviews and comments aren't bringing it back for me so I may need a re-read!

4 Many Lives, Many Masters (Brian Weiss)

It's rare that I don't finish a book, but this one can get in the bin.

It's not even the controversial subject matter (past life regression) - I'm interested in spirituality and related woo topics.

It's more the other batshittery - primarily the terrible psychotherapist-patient relationship. For some reason, we need to know Catherine (patient) is a hotty! There are also constant references to scientific literature but no papers are actually cited, lots of historical info to trigger eye rolls, and plenty of current life trauma that is quickly dismissed as 'nothing to see here, can't possibly be the cause of her issues'.

12 . Paper Cup by Karen Campbell

In Scotland, a homeless woman goes on a journey to reunite an engagement ring with its owner.

I had a bit of a weird experience with this, I blasted through the first half but couldn’t motivate myself to go back and finish it and I don’t know why, obviously I eventually did.

It’s poignant and at times funny, there is light and shade but at times it was SO bleak and depressing.

If it reminded me of anything it was The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry but a lot less twee. Some of the plot wasn’t believable but the character herself really was.

I’ll have to sit on this for a while to decide whether it’s a bold or not!

2 Falling Animals - Sheila Armstrong

A body is discovered on a beach in a small Irish seaside destination. There is no foul play and the man has no wallet, no phone and even the labels have been snipped from his clothes.

We eventually find out who he was (kind of), as the book takes a different POV and time period for each chapter, ranging from the woman who first discovers the body to various residents of the small ex-fishing village, through sailors employed on a cargo vessel that ran aground in the bay, police officers and pathologists etc.

It was OK, some nice writing around the landscapes and weather and each character felt real and believable. Not a bold but an absorbing enough read

2. The Last Murder At The End Of The World by Stuart Turton.

4/5, I did really enjoy it, I think there were just certain things that made it feel like a slog. I wasn't a huge fan of the strange narration choices, even though it made sense for the story, it took me out of it a little.

It gave me vibes of the video game "Detroit Become Human" in many ways, which I love - the questions about what is humanity etc - so I definitely enjoyed that element of it.

Nice amount of twisting and turning, even though I think I need another read to fully understand what happened, the general gist makes sense and it was enjoyable.

@nowanearlyNicemum I really enjoyed that one, and yes there are some doorstops to come in that series!

Slags - Emma Jane Unworth

This was a dual timeline story about a) sisters in their 40s going on a road trip around Scotland together and b) their teenage years, mostly revolving around crushes/ entanglements with unsuitable older men.

I found it engaging, particularly the schooldays storyline which had a real impetus to find out what happened next. At times I felt it was trying too hard to be gritty, and I found the title a bit needlessly provocative (although I guess it got my attention? This was on my reserved list at the library and I can't remember why I added it).

The relationships between the girls and women were interesting and at times touching, and the vulnerability of the young women was well drawn, but overall I finished it feeling it wasn't quite my thing.

Well worth it!

Nightwatching - Tracy Sierra

Claustrophobic, sinister, gripping, especially the first half. I had to stop reading it a couple of times, it was so nerve wracking. About a mother of two, in a blizzard, in her house in the woods, when she hears strange noises and catches sight of an intruder. The events of her past, including the death of her mother, give her grounds to be on edge, but is she overreacting to nothing as she hides herself and her children in a small storage space?

V good.

3 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall- Anne Brontë
After my reading slump, I have somehow flown through this over the weekend. As I’m sure everyone already knows, this is mainly told from the letters of Gabriel Markham who tells the story of a newly arrived widow and her son to Wildfell Hall who arouses the curiosity of all those in the village. Slowly her story emerges. I admire how Brontë tackled some of the difficulties women had to deal with in this time period and the extracts from Helen’s diary were at times a difficult read. I did struggle with the po-faced judgemental piety at times and Gabriel’s general idiocy. Still a better read than I thought at the start.

You must have liked it though @ÚlldemoShúl because you read it quick! ?