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.

Ultra processed people is in the 99p kindle deals. Really enjoyed this last year. Would recommend if you’re interested in the world of processed foods and the global obesity crisis

Hi everyone, excited to join! To ease myself in, my first book of 2026 is Predator by Patricia Cornwell

My first read of 2026 is going to be Weyward by Emilia Hart.

I read a lot of witch-adjacent type books last year that I enjoyed so I'm hopeful!

Breathing Lessons - Anne Tyler
Won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize.

This is a day in the life of Maggie Moran - in her late 40s - and her husband Ira. They set out on a road trip to the funeral of the DH of one of Maggie's schoolfriends. Maggie reflects on her life, marriage and family throughout the day, in particular her son Jesse, who separated from the mother of his DD, so that Maggie now never sees her DGD.

Maggie is an incorrigible meddler and contrasts with Ira, who is more stoic and steady. Very well written.

Hi all, excited to join.

Started reading again for pleasure last year after a very long hiatus thanks to professional exams and 2 babies in 2 years. Read a lot of trash last year, thrillers with fast paced short chapters to get back into the habit - thanks Frieda McFadden.

Aiming for 50 this year.

Currently reading
She didn’t see it coming - Shari Lapena
The bullet that missed - Richard Osman - audiobook
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone - audiobook with DD5

Will be RWYO/library books via BorrowBox. At least I’ll try!

Happy New Year all!

I spent most of my free time last year reading fanfiction on my phone (which included Draco Malfoy and The Mortifying Ordeal of Being In Love @Zireael ) and I need to get back into reading physical published books this year.
Partly because my piles of unread books are getting dangerously out of control, so one of my New Year’s resolutions is to actually read some of them before I end up buried in an unfortunate book avalanche.

Hello. I'm also doing RWYO and am starting with All the colours of the dark by Chris Whitaker. I loved We Begin at the End and so have high hopes.

I read 45 books in 2025 but abandoned 18 so am hoping for better in 2026.

My favorites

the swell kat Gordon
Reading lessons carol atherton
And every morning Fredrick backman
When the cranes fly south
Summerwater Sarah moss
orbital

Our oaken bones
Vianne
the fell

all got 5 stars

Can I join? I read 53 books last year. All of ACOTAR and lots of Angela Marsons but I’ll read anything and often pick up a random book in hotel libraries and in our local phonebox that’s been turned into a book swap. I’m also vowing to only buy books if I have to as I have so many in the house that I’ve not read.

I’m starting the year with Helm by Sarah Hall

1 The Third Gilmore Girl - Kelly Bishop

Kelly’s autobiography which I received for Christmas. I’m a big Gilmore Girls and Dirty Dancing fan so was looking forward to this and I really enjoyed it. Kelly is honest and open through this and doesn’t sugar coat her life in anyway. My only slight irk was that she was quite self-congratulatory about her dancing talent. However, she was also scathing of her singing voice so I can let that go. Really interesting life and finished in one sitting.

I promise I’m not “moving too fast” - I’ve had this on the go for a week and finished last night

3 . Sonny Boy by Al Pacino (audio)

Memoir. Read by the author. He’s 85 now so a life well lived. It makes that celeb memoir mistake of nearly everyone mentioned being so wonderful and so talented.

I love The Godfather so I mainly wanted Godfather gossip but he had a drink problem and was mainly wasted on set! I did find it interesting that the entirety of The Godfather III had to be rewritten because Robert Duvall refused to do it and that is perhaps why III is messy and wasn’t well received. Also Sofia Coppola only did it because Winona Ryder was too wasted in the end.

I was sad about John Cazale who played Fredo, I had no idea that he had died so young, or that he was in a relationship with Meryl Streep at the time.

I was surprised as well that he’d had a relationship with Diane Keaton but her name suddenly disappeared and he next mentioned having a child but not the mother, so I had to do some googling.

Towards the end he goes on a slightly offensive rant about being broke and how £10 million a picture isn’t enough to live on after tax. He clearly lived beyond his means, didn’t know where the money was going and was a bit tone deaf.

I got kind of bored by stories of his youth in the Bronx but all in all it was a good yarn in his gravelly voice.

@MaggieBsBoat if you're planning a slow read of Les Mis, come and join us on the readalong thread.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/5467533-les-miserables-read-a-long-2026-premiere-partie-1?page=1

2 The Book of Christmas- Jane Struthers
I picked this up at a second hand book shop at a national trust place a few days before Christmas, the subtitle is ‘everything we once knew and loved about Christmastime’. I think it’s maybe more meant to be browsed/ dipped into rather than read cover to cover like I did last night when I couldn’t sleep! It’s ok, might have enjoyed it more in the run up. Mix of history and folklore around some of the traditional aspects of Christmas, looking at how and why we celebrate in certain ways. Also random tips, recipes and snippets of knowledge. Structure is a bit loose honestly so it feels a bit like a brain dump of everything this particular author can remember or has found out about Christmas - and most of it I already know/ has been presented in various other books, podcasts, tv shows etc.

Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller is 99p in the Kindle Deals today. I enjoyed it a few years ago, although it did remind me of A Kind Of Intimacy by Jenn Ashworth in places. I also hold it responsible for me thinking I liked books by Harriet Tyce (currently in the new series of Traitors) because I got it mixed up with Blood Orange

Ooh @MaterMoribund , I loved Bitter Orange (and also got it confused with Blood Orange). In fact I have enjoyed all of Claire Fuller's books that I have read before. They all hit that sweet spot of being readable and almost cosy but yet creepy af when you actually realise what's going on.

1. Who Wants to Live Forever, Hanna Thomas Uose

A recent work of speculative fiction, where a silicon valley pharma-tech company have developed a drug which allows people to stop ageing. It cleverly asks the right questions: who would control access to such a drug, and what would the impact of that be? Who would benefit, and are they people you would trust with the future of humanity? Why might you decide to take it, and why might you decide not to?

The reason this failed to hit for me was that the author explores these questions through a set of diverse characters and their (interwoven, time-hopping) POVs. The characters are obviously supposed to be flawed (and therefore human/relatable) but unfortunately I found them all either annoying or dull (or in many cases, both). To the point where it became a chore to finish.

Interesting concept, though - would be great for a book group.

First book of 2026 is Fly, Wild Swans - Jung Chang's update to her famous Wild Swans. I remember being absorbed with the latter when I read it, many many years ago. This later book is very intricate and detailed and all the names , people and politics were a bit much for my head to take in really. The stuff about what all sorts of people had to endure and still endure is shocking but I am not sure it has as much emotional heft in this book. Her mother is a most remarkable woman, however.

Checking In 🫡 Thank you @Southeastdwellerfor starting us off on another year of shared reading and Happy New Year to 50 Bookers old and new.

This was my favourite book of 2025. Enjoy! I have Emilia Hart's latest book Sirens on the list but waiting for a price drop 😅

@Piggywaspushed I saw Jung Chang speak at a festival once, when she was promoting Empress Cixi (TBR) and she was just utterly captivating and so interesting, it was a large auditorium and she totally owned it. She is at various festivals this year promoting the new book, so hoping to see her, maybe in Oxford.

I'm starting the year with I hope this finds you well by Natalie Sue.

Following a workplace incident and subsequent IT error, introvert administrator Jolene is accidentally given access to her entire department's emails and DMs. In the past she's always kept her head down and tried to have the bare minimum of interaction with her coworkers. Now however, as layoffs loom, Jolene realises she can use this new information to her advantage and start playing the office politics game in an attempt to keep her job.

I'm about 80 pages in and it's ok so far. Quite light, but I have a stinking cold, so that's just what I need.

@TheDonsDingleberries I really enjoyed I Hope This Finds You Well when I read it last year. On this thread we call books we really rated bolds in the sense that you highlight them in that way when giving a list of what you’ve read, that book was a bold for me, light as you say, but I also thought the concept was well executed.

Hi. I’d like to join this year too. Over the last couple of years, I’ve really got back into reading. I did not keep count last year, but expect I read comfortably over 50 books, including some full series rereads (McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series and all the previous Strike books) and also the entire Josh Derwent/Maeve Kerrigan series by Jane Casey, which I enjoyed immensely. Biggest disappointment of the year was book 3 in Pullman’s Book of Dust trilogy.

Finished my first book of the year today:

1. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

This had been in my TBR pile for a while, and I don’t know why I waited. Unusually, it’s the story of a deep friendship rather than a romance. It details the ups and downs of the relationship between Sam and Sadie who first meet as nerdy, computer game obsessed children and then reconnect at university when they start creating computer games together. It’s beautifully written - one of those books you don’t want to skim read as you’ll miss the detail and nuance. There were times I found Sadie in particular rather annoying, but the characters were mostly very likeable and relatable. Probably one of my most enjoyable reads for a while and a good start to the year.

I loved this when I read it last year. You're right, it's really beautifully written.

My first book of 2026 is Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel (translated from Spanish by Rosalind Harvey). Laura lives in Mexico City and is convinced that she never wants to have children. During the novel, through the experiences of her friends, her neighbour and her own mum, she encounters different aspects of motherhood, including being childless and caring for another woman's child, having a disabled child, and being unable to cope with parenthood. This is a gem of a book - a great start to the year.

Hello everyone!
I'm currently reading two books at once so won't have anything to report for a short time.
Once I've finished the fiction one I need to leap onto Hamnet as I need to read this before I go see the film with a friend.