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 read through these threads every year, but rarely post! My goal this year is to try and participate a bit more 😬

Shuggie Bain - Douglas Stuart - 4/5

I've been meaning to read this Booker winner for years. I won't summarise as most of you will have read it. I thought this was good but not always great. Too long and too relentlessly grim, and normally I like a bit of misery!

The Names - Florence Knapp - 4/5

Also good but not great. I did overall really enjoy this debut about a 'sliding doors' moment following three varying life outcomes based on the three different names a baby boy could have been called. I particularly enjoyed the 'Julian' sections, but found the romance aspects dull and the Bear character too perfect.

When Gavin Met Stacey - Ruth Jones and James Corden - 4.5/5

I listened to this on audiobook, which is definitely the best way to read, as there are extra bits and the inclusion of scenes from the series. I found all the behind the scenes information on the making of the BBC series interesting and entertaining, although there was A LOT of RJ and JC going on and on about how much they love each other, tearing up etc, which I found annoying because I'm a grumpy old hag.

The Guardian really does publish any old bollocks these days. Such lazy journalism. It makes Matt Haig seem profound in comparison to half the stuff on there now.

@Frannyisreading I have some sympathy with the Guardian as an ex journo. It's trying not to use a firewall so need to try and build revenue through clicks and advertising sales. A friend who was in charge of marketing there had to make loads of people redundant a few years back which was awful. And they basically have no sub-editors left.

But agree it's not really about the books!!

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie the Filter is specifically designed for advertising revenue in the guise of articles. It helps keep the rest of it free.

Yes, I know- but so much of the so called journalism is shite too. Jess whatshername on fashion is dreadful. I used to like John Crace but he’s just a one trick pony really. I understand why it’s not what it was, whilst missing what it was.

I think the Kindle Daily Deals have a mole on this thread! Both Days at the Morisaki Bookshop and John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs are in the deals today.

All the best @Owlbookend . I do like seeing 50 Bookers out in the wild (and it definitely does get wild out there).

Nice to see you @Owlbookend I rarely head out into the wilds of other boards, and when I do I’m usually a lurker.

7. Long Live Great Bardfield: the autobiography of Tirzah Garwood

The art of Eric Ravilious is enormously popular and collectible now, but his wife, Tirzah (born Eileen - Tirzah was a babyhood nickname that stuck) Garwood, was also a talented engraver, painter, and skilled maker of wonderful marbled papers. She and Ravilious settled in the rural Essex village of Great Bardfield where several artists lived in various degrees of poverty in the early 1930s. With young children and very little money, their lives were far from comfortable, and Eric had affairs, which Tirzah chronicles with unsparing honesty here (her own poignant attempt to retaliate ended in humiliation).
Tirzah developed breast cancer and a mastectomy was needed. Then - Eric having returned to the family - he was reported missing while on duty as a war artist. His body was never recovered. Tirzah struggled on with three small children and eventually remarried very happily, but her cancer returned and she died at the tragically young age of 42.

This threatened to be a DNF at more than one point - not because of the book itself, necessarily, but because it’s enormously long (almost 500 pages) and the level of detail so granular it’s quite hard to take in except in short bursts. Tirzah's voice is unique, quite bonkers in places and often hilarious, especially in the childhood section, which reminded me of Period Piece, but the later parts are so crammed with names, events, places, anecdotes and baffling references that I often had no idea what was going on - though, to be fair to her, she did write this for her own family while she was recovering from her cancer treatment, and her daughter Anne later decided to publish it.

The later sections, adding context about the last months of her life, are very moving. I’d definitely recommend this to anyone interested in art and this period, but more as a book to dip into in snippets.

@Frannyisreading- I didn’t think much of the Guardian article either. If they wanted to do advertising they could have looked at products that help people read (eg cope with dyslexia or vision problems) or just gone looked at some of the really gorgeous editions with sprayed edges etc. I’ve banned myself from buying actual books until I have sent some to charity due to lack of bookcase space & reading on a Kindle suits me, but I was sorely tempted on my last trip to Waterstones as they had such a gorgeous display of books (I bought myself a very small walking guidebook as I couldn’t entirely resist it). It probably wasn’t the best day for me to be tolerant of such an article, as Radio 4 yesterday interviewed people from the Readeasy charity, who help adults who can’t read, & I can’t help thinking that we need a better approach as a society to encouraging & enabling people to read.

In defence of the Guardian, Peter Walker is one of the few journalists to report on road safety seriously & this has reminded me that I have one of his books on my RWYO list. Frankenstein is also on my RWYO list, but I’m trying to forget about it as it was DS1’s GCSE text & he was not a fan.

9 Invisible Agents by Nadine Akkerman - this is a history book about women spies in the 17th Century particularly during the Civil War and how their work has been frequently overlooked or ignored. I’ve wanted to read this for a while after listening to the author talk on a podcast as it’s a fascinating subject and I was particularly intrigued by the story of Lucy Hay, Lady Carlisle, who was the inspiration for Milady in The 3 Musketeers. However, despite learning some Dumas trivia including that although Lady Carlisle was not branded but that the affair of the diamonds was based on a real life event, I ultimately found the book quite frustrating as I found the writing style very dry. The women’s lives were interesting, but they way it was recounted less so. This might not be an issue if you are studying history, but it is for the more general reader (like me). It didn’t help that despite Lady Carlisle being one of the most interesting figures in the book, the author didn’t even devote a whole chapter to her- I found that particularly disappointing as I would have enjoyed reading a Ben Macintyre-style book about her.

That said, the book did inspire me to download the 3 Musketeers (which if I manage to finish it will be my free book for the 52 Book challenge) & I did enjoy spotting some of the historical figures I’ve read about in the other 17th Century themed-books I’ve read this year.

@BestIsWest and other Beatles fans, do you have any recommendations for a good place to start, for a middle aged woman who knows neither the music or the lore? I always thought I didn't like the Beatles (cue all of DH mates trying to mansplain the appeal to me) but DS has recently been listening to them and I think I actually probably do like them, I just haven't been listening to the right songs. A book would be the perfect introduction so please hit me with any recommendations.

@AgualusasL0ver DH is campaigning for Uzbekistan for this year's holiday. There or Georgia. Will report back if we book!

Love to see any love for Milkman, it's one of my favourite books of recent years.

I'd also really recommend Jeanette Winterson's Frankissstein to anyone who has recently read the original Shelley. It's not universally liked (understatement), and is quite batshit, but I found it to be SUCH a thought-provoking companion read. I will have to see if I can find the review that I posted on the 50 Books thread at the time.

4 Louis and Louise, Julie Cohen

A RWYO. Not sure how this book ended up on my bookshelf but it's been there for yonks. Sliding Doors type story with two alternative narratives. In each, a child is born in 1970s small town America, to the same parents, with the same personality, interests and talents: but in one version they are a boy and in the other, a girl.

The sex/gender stuff was reasonably well done - subtler than you might expect, but showing how small differences in how the child was treated could lead to significantly different outcomes, both for them and for the people around them. The storytelling was quite confusing as it starts with the two versions of the child (Louis and Louise, both often called Lou to emphasise that they're basically the same person) as adults, going back to two very different versions of their home town - it was hard to keep track of which events belonged in which version and how they all linked up. Both stories were leading up to a "one fateful night that changed everything", which isn't revealed until towards the end of the book.

The first half made me nostalgic for an 80s American childhood that I never had, and tugged on a lot of "what if things were different" emotions, and at the half way point I was heading towards making this a surprising bold. Without giving spoilers, though, I disliked the choices that the author made later in the book, and ultimately found it disappointing.

@VikingNorthUtsire the best book I’ve read is Mark Lewisohn’s The Beatles : All These Years Vol 1 However it’s about 20000 pages and ends in 1962 when they are just getting going. We’re all waiting for the next volume.

I think Craig Brown’s 1,2,3,4 is quite good as an introduction although it does go off into fantasy occasionally . It’s lighter reading than some of the others. I listened to it on Audible.

If you’ve got Disney+ The Beatles Anthology series is well worth a watch as it’s the three remaining Beatles in the 90s talking about their time together, how they got started, what it was like for them to be in the eye of the storm of Beatlemania and all the fallout, with film clips of the time. There is an accompanying book but I haven’t got my hands on it yet

If you want to listen to the music, you could do worse than listen to the Red album and the Blue album as this will take you through the greatest hits chronologically and you’ll find which era you like best. It’s how I fell in love with them in the 70s as a teenager.

I've abandoned The Fraud, in fact only one person in book group finished it. 😮

I've also started Gabriel's Moon, hoping this is one I can finish* *

@Terpsichore I absolutely loved seeing the Tirzah Garwood exhibition at the Dulwich Gallery last year. The paintings she did while she had cancer were particularly moving.

@AliasGrape that is a lovely story about your daughter! I'd love to see what my 4yo would choose for me at a bookshop...

Heart the Lover by Lily King. Much hyped, a sort of follow up to Writers and Lovers a few years ago. The first half is about the main character at university and the formative relationships she has with two different men. In the second part, she's happily married with children when the college boyfriends come back into her life and they all reassess what happened in that time. It's a deceptively simple but beautifully written book, although it does take an unexpected and tragic turn in the last third - well handled, but I got a bit of a shock after what I thought was just going to be a gentle love story.

Moderation by Elaine Castillo. Not sure how to categorise this really. Girlie is a Filipino American who gets a job 'moderating' a new virtual reality gaming concept, where she wanders round invented worlds looking for bad behaviour from other users. And starts to fall in love with her boss. I wasn't sure if it was meant as tech satire or not, but I felt like it didn't really go anywhere and I wasn't at all interested in the VR. It's been compared to Tomorrow x3 a lot, which I loved, so felt like a disappointment in comparison.

I've given up on A Tree grows in Brooklyn for being too skittish and a kindle cheapie called The book of doors for being terrible. Not sure what to try next.

I knew you’d hate it @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

Try Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley. You’ll love it or hate it I think. Lots of music references.

@GrannieMainland It was great, wasn’t it? DH and I went as I particularly wanted to see it. I think I was only about a third of the way through the book by then! I’m amazed that she had the time to be so prolific.

Catching up on the thread after a difficult week family wise, including two stints in hospital for poor DM for two separate things. I managed to get through quite a lot of reading though while waiting for her to be seen in hospital.

6 Queen Victoria’s Youngest Son. The Untold Story of Prince Leopold by Charlotte Zeepvat

I wasn’t expecting to like this, as it was a soft DNF a few years ago, but I’m glad I gave it another go as part of RWYO, and I really enjoyed it. Prince Leopold was the youngest of Queen Victoria’s son and the earliest confirmed member of the family to suffer from the illness hemophilia, which ran rampant through the royal houses of Europe in the coming years.

Leopold had a complex and sometimes difficult relationship with his mother, who clearly loved him, but would not give him the freedom and intellectual stimulation he needed. Although she had his best interests at heart Queen Victoria was also a spoilt little madam, way too used to getting her own way, and she often made his life (unintentionally) miserable. Leopold wasn’t perfect but he was a kind, intelligent man, who loved and was loved in return. He refused to let his illness limit him, and it’s not hard to imagine that he could have achieved great things given time, and a loosening of his mother’s apron strings.

I’m not sure if this will be a bold, as it could have stood to be a bit shorter, and I’d have liked to see a bit more about his legacy, but it an interesting book about an interesting man.

I tried not to!

Sorry. Just read the sample and it's a hard no.

I’m sorry for your troubles @MamaNewtNewt x

I'm glad I wasn't the only one to feel that way about North Woods @EineReiseDurchDieZeit!

3 ) Martyr! by Kaveh Ahmed - Cyrus, an aimless, newly sober Iranian-American whose vague ideas of suicide are hampered by a stronger desire for his death to mean something, decides to write a book about martyrs. When he learns about a dying artist who plans on spending her final days as a living installation in the Brooklyn Art Museum, he travels to New York to speak to her as part of his research.

I enjoyed this book a lot up until the last few chapters. It's a bit tricky to describe without spoiling anything, but I felt a bit unsatisfied with the ending. Although given the subject matter, that might have been the point! I'd still recommend this book overall.

Yes! @TheDonsDingleberries the end is TERRIBLE. There was a Booktuber I saw threw it across the room