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.

Finished Murder at the Nineteenth by JM Gregson, a RWYO bought in 2017. The first in the Lambert and Hook police procedurals and I found it an easy read, and though I guessed the killer, several of the clues did make me doubt myself along the way. Enjoyed.

I've just finished my first ever Chalet School book and I now understand the appeal. It was delightful.

I absolutely love this review! A bit of vitriol about a rubbish book is always cathartic.

I have never heard of the Chalet school books until this thread. I'm imagining Malory Towers or St Claire's?

@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

Not yet @NotWavingButReading, but it's one I'm interested in. When looking at what to read next I tend to avoid books with a similar theme to ones I've just finished, so it might be a while before I get round to it.

I'm also trying to have a no spend year when it comes to books so that I can get through the backlog that I already own. Very difficult when you come onto threads like these and see lots of new recommendations!

12 Menopause. A Comic Treatment ed. MK Czerwiec

A collection of comics from various contributors dealing with the menopause. I liked the approach of having different people contribute based on their own experiences, symptoms, and ways of dealing with things. Perimenopause and menopause symptoms vary so much that hearing from a plethora of women means that something is going to resonate. I thought this was great but not quite a bold.

52 Pickup - Elmore Leonard

First book of his that I have read, though I loved Out of Sight as a movie.

Mitchell has been having an affair with Cini, unbeknownst to his wife Barbara. Three low-to-mid level criminals try to blackmail him
over it, and he tries hard to find out who they are and to protect himself. Everybody has a gun, sometimes two. Rattled along nicely.

3 August Blue, Deborah Levy

Last year I read Outline by Rachel Cusk and remember saying here that I admired it but didn’t particularly enjoy reading it. This reminded me a lot of Cusk in terms of style and subject but it was actually a great read as well 😄, I loved it.

Elsa is virtuoso pianist whose life has been derailed by a disastrous performance in Vienna. She’s now travelling Europe tutoring, she’s dyed her hair blue and on her journey she keeps seeing a woman who she thinks is her double.

My first Levy, absolutely beautiful writing, will certainly try to read more by her.

Good to see the love for the Morland Dynasty books. I started a re-read of these in 2016 and it looks like I inexplicably stopped after book 26 in 2018. Perhaps I need to try again, although it's quite a commitment, so maybe I'll see how well I do with RWYO this year and pencil them in for next year!

3 In a good light - Clare Chambers Really good nostalgic coming-of-age story, reminded me a lot of A change of climate (Hilary Mantel) with its portrayal of a 70s childhood in a happy but eccentric home and the way the children subsequently cope with adulthood. And the last part (set in the “present day” of the late 90s/early 2000s) was a bit Mary Stewart-ish with its low-key romance.

Esther is the main character, and after a brief scene-setting where we learn she’s an illustrator who lives with her disabled brother (he’s in a wheelchair, clearly as a result of an accident of some kind), we follow her through childhood and into her teens as she grows up with morally excellent and loving parents who support the needy at all costs (leaving their two children to mostly fend for themselves in threadbare clothes and a house that rarely sees any domestic touches - they’re clearly very happy despite all that). We also get to know some secondary characters well, and the small cast feel very realistic. The writing is lovely and quite funny, and I can forgive there being one too many silly coincidences at the end. A real comfort read, and a bold.

@DuPainDuVinDuFromage - I remember reading In a good light a few years ago and thought it was great. I know that Clare Chambers seems to be best known for Small Pleasures but lots of her other books are equally good.

@TimeforaGandT I actually preferred In a good light to Small Pleasures (though I did like that one too). Will definitely read more by Chambers!

Take Your Breath Away - Linwood Barclay.

A woman who's been missing for six years suddenly appears to return, throwing the life of her husband - who'd always been suspected of her murder, though there was no proof - and others into disarray.

This was one my son picked for me from our local little library. Entertaining enough, but not a bold.

I keep hearing mention of the Chalet School books...I used to read these as a child, are there now more and should I be reading them?! I used to adore them but haven't seen them around for ages. My old copies are probably still in my parents' loft!

@TimeforaGandT I hadn't spotted reviews for the Moorland Dynasty. I read the first two last year but had enough at that point. I felt that book 2 had too much focus on the historical figures and not enough on the Moorlands. Will return to book three this year. I've just DNFd another Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, one of the Bill Strider series, just a bit dull.

3 Tom’s Crossing - Mark Z Danielewski

Wanted to start the year with a Big Book and at 1,200 pages they don’t come much bigger than this - though I was absolutely gripped and felt like I flew through it. The story of two children who steal two horses to save them from slaughter, with a background of family feuds in the Utah mountains giving it a Western epic flavour. Anyone who’s read Danielewski’s House Of Leaves (one of the most unsettling books I’ve ever read) won’t be surprised to find there are layers of narrative tricksiness which won’t be to everyone’s taste, but I didn’t find this detracted from the story. For me it stands alongside the best of epic Stephen King (and I’m recommending it to @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie and other Dark Tower fans). An absolute bold.

Thanks @MegBusset I’ll get the sample. An epic that I can get into would be very handy right now.

A Narrow Door - Joanne Harris

Last in the St Oswald's trilogy, this one sees the fab character of Roy Straitley, Classics Master, having to deal with a headmistress <gasp> and the school going co-ed <double gasp>

If you haven't read the first two, don't read this :) I enjoyed it, even if there are a rather implausible number of deaths associated with the posh schools of the town now.

Fourth Wing and Iron Flame Dragons, magic, fantasy. I really enjoy these books. I want to reread Onyx Storm as well but I found it so hard going last time I’m not sure I feel like it.

Phantasma This was a sort of paranormal fantasy where the main character is a contestant in a series of deadly games. It was entertaining and I enjoyed it. I’ll read the next one because I already have it. Overall it’s a bit smutty for my taste.

9 Touch and Grow Lisa Gardner a rich family abducted and law enforcement trying to find them. It had a twist at the end that I didn't see coming.I

10 Silverview by John Le Carre interesting but not one of his best

11 How to Lose a Lord in Ten days by Sophie Irwin a nice little romance

12 Let's Make a Scene by Laura Woods very good 2nd chance romsnce

I’m actually reading the second one now- found them lurking on my kindle after you reviewed the second last year.

The Island of the Colour-Blind and Cycad Island by Oliver Sacks Came across this in a charity shop and was intrigued as we have colour blindness in the family (though the colour blindness here is a very different, total colour blindness that comes with low visual acuity and aversion to light). So much of the book is footnotes that you essentially have a choice of reading a 200 or a 300 pager. It wasn’t a huge hit for me - the first part of the book was by far the most interesting, being an account of Sack’s visit with a couple of scientist colleagues, one of them himself living with total colour blindness, to the Pacific island where a significant minority of the population is affected. The cycad island part is a more technical history of research into neurological diseases of a particular island. The history of exploitation and destruction of the Pacific islands is a depressing backdrop. Not, for me, up there with inspiring popular science or a patch on The Man who mistook his wife for a Hat.

6 A child called it - Dave Pelzer

It felt like the whole world was reading this book when it first came out though I seemed to have avoided it. Wish I’d continued to avoid it as it was awful. Badly written, really jumps around with nothing holding it together. Obviously it’s a harrowing topic, but for a bestseller I was expecting more.

Roadside Picnic - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

It wasn't intentional but I seem to be reading a lot of books in translation this year. This one is from Russia in the 1970s. Aliens have visited Earth and the sites of their visits are now uninhabitable Zones filled with bizarre and sinister artefacts. Unauthorised explorers, called Stalkers, venture into the Zones and either bring back items to sell, or are killed trying.

I don't normally read a lot of science fiction but I really enjoyed this. The descriptions of the Zone were so unsettling, and the combination of the weird and often horrible things found there, combined with the Stalkers' pressing need for money and the high stakes of it all, made for a great story. Just 200 pages so I rattled through it.

That sounds fascinating, @Frannyisreading !

4 The White Darkness - David Grann More of a long article than a book (and in fact this was first published in the New Yorker). I have enjoyed several of Grann’s books but didn’t really see the point of this one - maybe if it had been longer I’d have cared a bit more about the outcome. It follows an army officer called Henry Worsley who idolised Shackleton and undertook several Antarctic expeditions, the last of which was an attempt to cross Antarctica solo and unsupported. Spoiler: it doesn’t end well. I’ve read much more interesting and engaging books about polar expeditions and was underwhelmed by this.

Book 6. Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis. Girl breaks up with partner and flees to a UN job in Iraq deradicalising Isis women. Becomes attached to one in particular with far reaching consequences. Warm, thought-provoking and funny - the latter adjective is perhaps the most remarkable given the subject matter.