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.

Good luck with maths @Midnightstar76

I enjoyed your reviews too, @cassandre
I remember you mentioned Vilain's memoir on the thread last year. (His name is a bit of a pun?! (vilain)) I read Ernaux's book too before. And I'm glad you liked Immaculate Conception. I agree that it's very original.

@TheDonsDingleberries have you read Life After Life by Kate Atkinson? Sounds as though The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North has a very similar premise. Life after Life is one of my all time favourites.

@FruAashild I read very little nonfiction and if I do it has to be something you can dip into between other books, The Happiness Project sounds like something I could do.

I loved both Harry August and Life after Life and agree the themes are very similar. Also enjoyed The Women which I read recently, and The Hypnotist's Love Story - I would definitely end up using those powers on DP if I had them! I can't remember who's reading Kristin Hannah (not very good at keeping up with the thread, sorry) but I would also recommend The Nightingale - I thought that was even better than The Women.

I've just finished Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix with DD...mostly read last year (it's taken ages as her dad usually reads with her of an evening). But I think it still counts?! She loves Harry Potter and we'll be starting on the sixth book soon.

Latest reads:

Meet the Newmans - Jennifer Niven

The Newmans are a real life family who also appear as a family in a TV programme. The programme started in 1952 and has been hugely popular but now it’s 1964, times are changing and the programme is now seen as old fashioned. When Mr Newman has an accident and is incapacitated for a while, wife Dinah sees an opportunity to change things and hopefully save the show. This was fine, but I didn’t like it as much as I expected to - it was a bit slow and I found the ending disappointing - I felt the ending could have been more rewarding after the build up of the book.

Ramona Quimby, Age 8 - Beverly Cleary

I loved this series as a child and this was probably my favourite - it’s the one where Ramona smashes an egg on her head and (separately) has to cook dinner with her sister Beezus with limited ingredients. Loved rereading this.

Ramona’s World - Beverly Cleary

This one was written in 1999 by which time I was at university so I think it passed me by originally. It’s a nice addition to the series.

Wildfire At Midnight - Mary Stewart

This follows the typical Stewart plot structure, with our young heroine finding herself caught up in nefarious doings and ends up falling in love along the way. I always enjoy them and this one was good too. This one is set on Skye, where guests at the same hotel as our heroine keep getting murdered and her ex husband has just turned up. Good fun.

B is for Burglar - Sue Grafton

Second in the Kinsey Millhone series. Here she’s looking into the disappearance of a woman, but the woman’s sister starts behaving very oddly which makes Kinsey more suspicious. I enjoyed this better than the first one.

One Good Turn - Kate Atkinson

The second in the Jackson Brodie series. This one is set in Edinburgh, where a road rage incident has repercussions for everyone involved including the bystanders. I do really like this book (because it’s Kate Atkinson and Jackson Brodie) but not as much as Case Histories.

This Year It Will Be Different - Maeve Binchy

Collection of Christmas themed short stories. These were OK, but what I like about Binchy is the casts of characters, the Irish settings and the development of the story over a long time period and inevitably with short stories all those things were missing.

Heirs and Graces: A History of the Modern British Aristocracy - Eleanor Doughty

Non fiction looking at how life for the aristocracy (those with titles outside the Royal Family) has changed over the last 100 years or so, and what life is like for them today, covering family life, education, houses, jobs, politics etc. Other than the politics chapters in the middle, which I was less interested in, I found this a really interesting read, especially the parts about the houses and how so many have been demolished or handed over to the National Trust.

C is for Corpse - Sue Grafton

Kinsey is hired by a man who thinks someone is trying to kill him, and is proved right when he ends up dead shortly afterwards. I liked the subplot about her landlord’s girlfriend.

Esther Is Now Following You - Tanya Sweeney

Esther goes through a traumatic event and as a result becomes obsessed with a slightly famous actor. She leaves her husband, moves to Toronto and stalks him and his family. The blurb and jacket design led me to expect a dark comedy sort of book but it’s not that, it’s really just dark without the comedy and I just ended up feeling very frustrated with Esther and sorry for her and everyone else involved. The ending is also disappointing - it just peters out. I also noticed several inconsistencies about how long Esther was meant to be in Toronto - at one point there is reference to her being someone’s roommate for a year then later someone says she’s been there for 5 months. Bit of a difference! Anyway it was fine, just not the book I was expecting.

1. Prophet Song: Paul Lynch.

Eileen Stack, a microbiologist and a mother of four, is waiting for her husband, a trade unionist, to come home from work. Instead, there is a knock on the door. Two officers from the newly-formed Irish secret police inform her that he has been arrested for crimes against the state. Eileen battles to keep her family together while the country edges closer and closer towards civil war and life becomes a matter of survival.

This was an incredibly tense book and a very difficult read. The portrayal of 'the dark times', the creeping rise of totalitarianism and the descent into chaos was horrifying. I thought it was very well done, but I had to brace myself all the way through and I read it quickly from beginning to end because I needed to see how things turned out, for better or worse. (Worse!)

6 Mrs England (Stacey Hall)
I really enjoyed this one - I seem to have a thing for novels set in the early 20th century with a female narrator.

2. A Tale of Two Cities: Charles Dickens.

Set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, this is the story of a father and daughter who have been reunited after his imprisonment in the Bastille and are enjoying a peaceful life in London, but end up going back to Paris and facing dangerous revolutionaries.

I absolutely loved this book; the contrast between the two cities, the historical backdrop, the characters, all so intricately bound up together and whose story is expertly told. I read it quickly, but would also enjoy it a second time at a more leisurely pace.

Numbering

Good morning 50 Bookers. I’m back from my 2 weeks holiday. Worse weather in the Canaries pretty much in living memory. I’ve never seen rain like it there. However, I did manage to read a lot, because not much else to do!

@VikingNorthUtsire – best wishes to you 💐

@elkiedee – that sounds like such a great book. I’m adding it to my ever increasing pile!

Every time I see It’s Not a Cult, I read Joey Barton and wonder why on earth would anyone be interested in knowing what he had to say about life 😂

Anyway, my reviews. I’m not reviewing the Chalet School ones. I’m pleased to say that’s me now finished all 58 at long last. The earlier ones are definitely the best, the later ones are very formulaic. I’ll probably give my thoughts over on the Chalet School thread.

6 The Chalet School Reunion – EMBD
7 Jane and the Chalet School – EMBD

8 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte. Dear Readers, I very much enjoyed this. I did find some of it uncomfortable reading from a 21st century eye, but I think that it to be expected.

9 Redheads at the Chalet School – EMBD
10 Adrienne and the Chalet School – EMBD

11 HHhH – Laurent Binet, trans Sam Taylor. RWYO Am I the last 50 Booker to read this? I think I might be. In general, I enjoyed this. Some of it is very hard going, due to the subject matter. I didn’t really know anything about the Sudetenland or Heydrich for that matter, so I learnt a lot. However, the constant stream of consciousness from the author was annoying. I found some of the translation odd too, which was a distraction. Eg using the work ‘jerks’. I suppose the translator is given direction, so use US English?

12 Enigma – Robert Harris. I hadn’t realised how old this book is and I haven’t seen the film. Given that its Kate Winslett and Dougray Scott, I think I might track it down. Good, solid stuff from Harris and I could almost taste the disgusting meals in the boarding house.

13 Summer Term at the Chalet School – EMDB.

14 One True Loves – Taylor Jenkins Reid. A 99p Kindle special which I bought because I’ve enjoyed everything that I’ve read by TJR. But I’m assuming (I didn’t check) that this is one of her earlier books. Its very much chiclit and not TJR’s usual depth. Girl meets boy, girl marries boy. Boy goes off on an adventure and is assumed dead. Girl gets over him and meets another boy and they are engaged. First boy then resurfaces, not dead, very much alive. Who does she choose?

15 Challenges for the Chalet School – EMDB
16 Two Sams at the Chalet School – EMDB
17 Althea Joins the Chalet School – EMDB
18 Prefects at the Chalet School – EMDB

19 The Redemption of Alexander Seaton – SG Maclean RWYO. This has been languishing on my book shelf and I decided to take it away with me. I’m a big fan of SG Maclean and I figured I would share the love by leaving this book in our apartments for someone else to enjoy.

Maclean’s previous books include the Damian Seeker series and the standalone The Bookseller of Inverness. She started off her writing career with the Alexander Seaton books and there are four in the series. Set in Banff in the North of Scotland in 1620s, a young man is murdered for no apparent reason. Can Alexander Seaton, disgraced local man find out why? This is a twisty turny book, I loved it. I feel that its very evocative of the era, we are in the early years of the reign of Charles I and the suspicious of ‘popery’ is everywhere.

20 The Burning Grounds – Abir Mukherjee – Wyndham & Banerjee 6. The boys are back and I am very happy about it. A wealthy Indian businessman is found murdered in the ‘burning grounds’, where the cremations happen. He is a much loved man, who has set up schools for poor children, invests in the arts etc. Who would murder such a man? And why? I devoured this in two days. More please, Mr Mukherjee and don’t leave it too long until the next one!

21 The Restaurant of Lost Recipes - Hisashi Kashiwai trans Jesse Kirkwood. The follow up the Kamagowa Food Detectives. If, like me, you enjoyed Before The Coffee Gets Cold, you’ll like this. Charming and quicky.

I’ll be popping into the library tomorrow to get them to order in Malabar House 6. I tried to reserve it and it should be in as it was released on Friday, but I couldnt find it in the catalogue. My trusty librarians will get onto it!

I loved Life After Life and Harry August both. - exactly my cup of tea. Really pleased to see so much enthusiasm for Immaculate Conception @cassandre

I’n still in a very frustrating slump.

3. La stanza di Natalia: Monica Gentile.

Isabella's parents are going through a rocky patch and her mother has left home. Her father sends Isabella up north to Turin to her maternal grandparents for the summer holidays. They are kind people who want to do their best for their ten-year-old grand-daughter. Her grandmother tries to shield Isabella, but she could have done better to sit down and talk to her. Isabella starts acting up and one day does something very rash that finally causes everyone to wake up and pay attention to her.

This was a satisfactory read. There were some interesting observations about people from the South moving to the North. I felt sorry for Isabella, but felt sorrier for Nonna working two jobs and putting up with everyone.

@VikingNorthUtsire all good wishes heading your way

1. The Shack

I have many words to describe this book. Bilge, drivel, crap, rubbish and so on.

It was recommended to me by various people when it came out. I resisted but now someone picked it for book group. WHY?

For those who have never heard of it, a young girl is taken and murdered. The police have evidence that she was held in a shack. Her father receives a note to go to the shack.

When there he meets the holy trinity. God the father, son and holy spirit.

Badly written with very poor theological arguments. Avoid at all costs.

The only plus side is that nothing I ever pick for book group canbe this bad.

Very annoying about the bad weather @Tarragon123 but well done for making it through some of the pretty dubious late chalet school books!

6 Skippy Dies - Paul Murray. I bought this after reading The Bee Sting and got about 20% of the way through and stopped. So picked up again for RWYO, restarted and this time managed to finish it. It is set in a boys boarding school in Ireland in the 2000s I think. the book starts with Skippy dying and then goes back to explore the events leading up to it and aftermath from various characters including a teacher and the other boys. It's dark and funny and captures the boredom and ridiculousness of boarding school pretty perfectly (from personal experience). There are some great passages and big themes - it deals with everything from teenage sex, drugs, eating disorders, bullying, quantum physics and pedophiles. I think it was a bit too long, over 600 pages, and Murray's writing of women definitely improved between this and the Bee Sting, but on the whole I'm glad I finished it.

Has anyone read The Melancholy of Resistance by Laszlo Krasznahorkai? I've been reading it for about a week now and making very slow progress. Wondering whether to DNF but he did just win the Novel prize so feel like I should persevere.

I’ve just reserved Harry August from the library as I loved Life After Life. I’m really enjoying January because there’s so few plans and so much reading opportunity.

I’m just about to start The Land In Winter by Andrew Miller. And have the 8th in the Morland Dynasty by Cynthia Harrod Eagles on the go on my kindle. I love this period saga - it’s 30 books following one family throughout history who sit close to royalty. They are just very cosy for this time of year.

@Stowickthevast Skippy Dies was a DNF for me, tried several times couldn’t get into it

@cassandre I too enjoyed your reviews.
@Tarragon123 I haven’t read any of Abir Mukherjee’s but your review has piqued my interest. I think DH might have the first one.
@Stowickthevast I have Skippy Dies and another Paul Murray The Mark and the Void both on my kindle. Going to try to get to at least one this year. I also have The Melancholy of Resistance lined up as a book group read in March.

I’ve finished
9 Winter in Madrid by CJ Sansom
This is the oldest book left on my kindle after @bibliomania ’s thread last year. Harry Brett, a soldier pensioned off after Dunkirk, is recruited to spy on old school friend Sandy Forsyth in Franco’s Spain during the Second World War. We also see flashbacks to his time at school and his previous visits to Spain with his other old school friend Bernie Piper who was killed fighting for the Communists in the Civil War. Beautifully written with lots of twists and turns, it’s only kept from being a bold by a few too many coincidences. Sad to read my last CJ Sansom though.

I started reading Heart the Lover by Lily King (my only non-RWYO so far this year) today and I’m at 37% already. Suspect I’ll finish it today. Nicely written page turning coming of age/ romance- not usually my cup of tea but I’m really enjoying it- could be a good reading slump breaker @EineReiseDurchDieZeit

@ÚlldemoShúl I have Writers And Lovers which I think comes first on TBR, soft DNF though

A Voyage Around The Queen - Craig Brown
I started this last year but got a bit bored with it but picked it up again this week and glad I did.
Gossipy, funny, not directly critical or disapproving but leaving the listener to draw their own conclusions as to the outrageousness of it all. I’m a republican at heart but endlessly fascinated by the history and pomp of the Royals. Think I might need to rewatch The Crown now.

The Wedding People - Alison Espach
Eng Lit. college professor accidentally gate crashes a million dollar wedding in a Rhode Island resort. Not my usual thing but enjoyed it a lot.

After the marathon that was The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, I've just finished

4 Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid

I enjoyed this one a lot. I thought it was well-written, it was quite gripping and an interesting perspective, but I can't help but feel like in an attempt to make Lady Macbeth sympathetic, Reid has stripped away so much of her power. I think it was trying to be too many things at once - a retelling, a different perspective, a rewrite, a feminist version, a bit of romantasy... And it just didn't 100% convince me in any of these areas. If it had been a female-centred retelling that didn't deviate too much from the source material, or a totally different story that was inspired by Macbeth but not claiming to be a different perspective, I would have rated it very highly.

@Palegreenstars
There are actually 36 books in the Morland Dynasty series - I've read the first 35 - The Phoenix, set in 1931, published 2013, read in 2016, looked like it was going to be the last one for a while but The Gathering Storm was published in 2024. I still have it TBR on my Kindle. I can only remember now that there seemed to be a lot left unresolved at the end of The Phoenix, but I can't remember what. Maybe whenever I get round to the latest I will go back to the beginning - I have the first 3 on Kindle and the last 8 or 10 in paperback/Kindle, but I'm not sure I'd ever finish such a long series a second time round, and getting hold of the in between books could be a challenge! I started reading the series from Leeds City Libraries in the early 1990s and I've been living in London for over 30 years now! The first books in the series take place over a long period of time, I think about 100 years in #1, but some of the most recent books don't even cover a whole year.

Oh, my DM used to love The Morland Dynasty books. I remember her excitement each time a new one came into the library, especially on the occasions she beat her best friend to it. Maybe I will give them a go.

@elkiedee oh wow that’s amazing, I sort of wish I’d come to them when one was released each year. I’m doing 2 or 3 a year at the moment as they are such tombs. Obviously to keep the dynasty alive there’s a certain amount of ‘keeping it in the family’. But I love the strong female characters she writes - particularly Annunciata who may or may not have been secretly a princess! I’m coming up to the Napoleonic wars I think so plenty of history to go.

It most reminds me of Ken Follett’s century trilogy which despite the heaving bosoms I really enjoyed.

i think they are all on the kindle now - although a fair amount of spelling mistakes abound.

@BestIsWest ah I love that.

I have Skippy Dies in paperback waiting to be read. I don't think I could have loved The Bee Sting more, so I doubt it will match up, but hopefully there's enough there to like.

6. Who Wants to Live Forever by Hannah Thomas Uose
A near future novel about a new drug which stops aging. The novel opens as a referendum is taking place in the UK about whether this drug should be allowed. A ‘no’ campaigner’s husband is having a midlife crisis and secretly starts taking the drug.

There are a few different storylines about character who have and have not decided to take the drug and the timeline goes back and forth exploring their decisions, relationships and some political considerations about the drug. Not a bold but a decent enough read.

7. The Dog Stars by Peter Heller
A post apocalyptic novel which starts nine years after most of humanity has been wiped out by a deadly virus. He is surviving on an air base with his dog and a slightly unhinged older man. He has a small air craft that he uses to secure their perimeter and he decides to go exploring further afield.

This had a slightly irritating writing style with short, non grammatical sentences. However once I got into the flow this became less distracting. It was interesting that it started far in the aftermath of a catastrophe rather than right at the start and made it a bit different from many apocalypse novels.

8. Half His Age by Jeanette McCurdy
A 17 year old starts an affair with her English teacher. For the first few chapters I thought I was going to hate this. It is very sexually explicit and in a crude way that I found difficult given the age of the protagonist. However, as the novel progressed this bothered me much less and was more about the character and her story and became unflinchingly raw rather than deliberately provocative.

I actually thought this was superb and a bold. It is written in the first person and Waldo has a lot of insight into the way she is interacting and the choices she is making and why. It is as much about her relationship with her mother as with her teacher and about how her mother’s interactions with men have shaped her own. Not an easy read but a compelling one and one in which the protagonist really examines her own decisions and is changed by the events around her.

I also loved that it was set in Alaska but there wasn’t a big point made about it. There was mention of a few places but no sweeping glacier descriptions and only a passing comment or two about too much or too little light or a bit of snow here and there. She says at one point that Anchorage is just another town and it felt like it was set here almost to make the point that this could happen anywhere and the setting didn’t matter much. I thought this was an interesting and clever choice by the author.

9. The Rise of the Ultrarunners by Adharanand Finn
I love a non fiction first person adventure book about someone who does something really hard that I don’t really have any intention of doing but want to live vicariously. Finn is a journalist and decides to run the UTMB which is a big mountain race around Mont Blanc. In order to qualify he has to do a number of other ultramarathons leading up to it to gain entry points.

All the ultramarathons are very hard. He hallucinates, he cramps up, he gets hypothermic, he gets lost, he cries. Ultimately he reaches his goals. He also meets a load of ultrarunners along the way and talks about a few major points in the sport- why aren’t more East African runners represented? Why are the UTMB points controversial? Etc

I have run 4 marathons, the last one over 5yrs ago. Am I tempted to do an ultra? Maybe one day. I enjoyed this. Well written and I knew where it was going.

10. A Walk from the Wild Edge by Jake Tyler
See above re: my love for non fiction adventure. Bloke walks round Britain to escape depression. Becomes a mental health advocate and rediscovers himself.

There was a bit too much waxing lyrical in a couple of places but the actual meat of this was good and it did what it needed to.

Finished 2 more today.
10 The Silence by Susan Allot (audio)
Isla gets a call in London from her father telling her he is being investigated for the murder of their neighbour in 1960s Sydney. She returns home and the book flashes back and forth between what happened in the 60s and present day. It does touch on some dark themes- the stolen generation, domestic violence and alcoholism but overall the characters were a bit flat and it never really engrossed me.
11 Heart the Lover by Lily King
I broke my RWYO to buy this when I was in an independent bookshop last weekend and I’m glad I did(still only 1 non RWYO read from 11 so I’m not going to beat myself up over it!) Short read- I read this in one day today. It’s a coming of age/ romance set in an American university. The second and third parts skip ahead years later. Romance isn’t a genre I read much of and I’m not mad on coming of age but I loved this- couldn’t put it down. It’s beautifully written- a bit like Elizabeth Strout I thought. Bold for me. Her other book Writers and Lovers is connected to this (it comes after part 1 but before part 2 and 3) and I have it on my kindle so am moving it up the list. I’m having a great reading month!