26ish books 2026

[Tinkhasflown]

A shiny new thread for 2026.

All welcome and note 26 is just a number. Everyone can set their own target and you are welcome here even if you only read 2 books a year.

I personally count the larger novel style books I read to my children and audio books I listen to. Others don't and there are no rules.

I look forward to all your suggestions again this year.

Just finished my 38th this year, ‘Everything was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt’. I really enjoyed it, wasn’t a long read (well listen, as I use audible) and although wasn’t the cheeriest of stories it was an interesting read.

my favourite so far this year was ‘My dark Vanessa’ - a very uncomfortable read but so wonderfully written and narrated

@sleepfortheweek love my dark Vanessa too - I read it, I imagine it’s very tough to listen to!

33 Girl, Interrupted - Susanna Kaysen

cant even tell you how many times I’ve read this but the last was quite a long time ago. Re-read because my 14yr old just read it then we watched the film together and she wanted to discuss further with it fresher in my mind. My main thoughts now really are that I’m so impressed at the film they managed to make out of it and how borderline personality disorder in her words does sound like what I and a lot of my female friends went through in adolescence. Very interested reading with the perspective of a woman in her 40’s compared to the severely depressed teenager I was when I first read it

@sleepfortheweek
I also “enjoyed” reading My Dark Vanessa. An extremely dark subject matter portrayed so realistically. My DD was roughly the same age as the main character when I read it, it really affected me.

🏊27 - Slow Horses by Mick Herron I’m in a spy fiction phase so enjoyed this! Lots of twists and turns and double bluffing which kept me hooked. Will read the next one in the series at some stage

40 - Pen Pal by G.T Geissinger
2.5 ⭐️

This has been in my TBR for a long time but the cover put me over. However, I’ve read a lot of raving reviews which specifically said ‘don’t let the cover put you off’ so I gave it a go.

Unfortunately this book didn’t live up to the hype for me at all. What was it? Psychological thriller? Ghost story? Romance? I thought the sex scenes were just too much and it totally distracted from the story.

29 Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd - I prefer some of his other ones though I can understand why people really like it. Some of it had the slightest shade of Iris Murdoch whose writing I can't stand. It is an interesting study in ambition. Around page 260 I couldn't understand how it was going to fill another 140 pages with plot but wow he does and what happens is very well written.

30 Love is Blind by William Boyd - a very good book. Following Brodie Moncur a scottish piano tuner around Europe/the world. Some of the scottish characters are very interesting and well written, it has a wide and interesting span. Very well written.

31 My Friends by Fredrik Backman - I did not like the writing style. Looking on Amazon I can see he is wildly popular but not for me. I found the style poor, it was also repetitve, the art thing was over done as was how amazing the kids were; lots of full of golden light, too special for this earth on repeat. It had a few wonderfully insightful lines here and there that almost made it worth reading but I would not have finished it if I had not read it over the course of some long and delayed train journeys. It was a bit twee too.

Morning :)
Books read so far:
(1) The French for Christmas by Fiona Valpy
(2) The Outside Boy by Jeannie Cummins
(3) Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins
(4) All the Broken Places by John Boyne
(5) A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
(6) Crooked Branch by Jeannie Cummins
(7) Nesting by Roisin O'Donnell
(8) Never Lie by Frieda McFadden
(9) All Her Fault by Andrea Mara (Audio book)
(10) The Locked Door by Frieda McFadden
(11) All the Light We Cannot See by By Anthony Doer
(12) The Book of Lost Names' by Kristin Harmel
(13) The Room on Rue Amélie by Kristin Harmel
(14) The Names by Florence Knapp
(15) The Stationary Shop of Tehran by Marjan Kamali
(16) Her Husband's Lover by Patricia Crouch
(17) Here One Moment by Liane Moriarity
(18) The New Neighbours by Claire Douglas
(19) Don't Let Him In by Lisa Jewell
(20) One Day by David Nicholls
(21) Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
(22) My Brother's Secret by Maggie Hartley
(23) Us by David Nicholls

Latest book....

(24) You are here by David Nicholls

Enjoyed this - it's to be made into a mini-series on bbc so looking forward to watching that -
Happy reading everyone. 😀

15 Wild Dark Shore, Charlotte McConaghy

I didn’t make time for reading in the last couple of months. I was back to overdoing doomscrolling too. This book helped me read again. I found it very engaging. I expected a certain ending because of something I saw in an online review. Luckily, it didn’t spoil it for me. 4 out of 5 stars.

1. The Thursday Murder Club, Richard Osman
2. Life Impossible, Matt Haig
3. Atomic Habits, James Clear
4. The Unfinished Business of Eadie Browne, Freya North
5. Thinking 101, Woo-Kyoung Ahn
6. One of Us, Elisabeth Day
7. You’ve Got This, Michaela Dunbar
8. James, Percival Everett
9. Manifest, Roxie Nafousi
10. We Are Here, David Nicholls
11. How to Focus, Thich Nhat Hanh
12. True Love, Thich Nhat Hanh
13. An Artist of the Floating World, Kazuo Ishiguro
14. How to talk to absolutely anyone, Mark Rhodes

14 Hex by Jenni Fagan

A powerful, fictional retelling of the North Berwick witch trials in 100 pages.
An ok read though I expected more from this award winning author.

2 stars out of 5

41 - Between you and Me - Lisa hall

Pretty much guessed it from the start, maybe because I listened to it rather than read it? Wasn’t a huge fan of the book. 3 ⭐️

42 - The Devoted Wife (audible exclusive) - Sarah. A. Denzil

Again, I had an idea of the outcome from early on. Not a bad story but fairly predictable. The narration was good. 3 ⭐️