50 Books Challenge 2026 Part Two

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the second thread of the 50 Books 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.

The previous thread is

Thank you @Southeastdweller

Currently reading Tunnel 29 as my non-fiction and The Diaries of Jane Somers as my RWYO/fiction. The former is easier-going than the latter, which is Rather Dated!

I thought I would try and add in an audio book as I'm doing a lot of driving. I have never had much success with audio books as I tend to drift off. I decided that maybe non fiction would be worth a try and I'm listening to one of Alan Johnson's autobiographies Please Mr Postman. Borrowed from the library on Borrow box. Will review later if I finish!

I'd be interested in how other people find audio books. I think the reason I struggle is the speed. I read a book much, much faster than an audio book and get frustrated as you can't speed it up.

Thanks Southeast.
Reading Light APenny Candle.

I like an Audiobook if I am doing something else specific (cooking, knitting, painting) but otherwise I zone out.

I think Audible allows you to speed it up.

@NotWavingButReadingI can only do nonfiction on audio and only with a particularly good reader. It’s a way to keep reading during chores, commute and doing my jigsaws - I never do it as a stand alone!

Checking in.
My list so far:
1 Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
2 Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
3 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
4 Milkman by Anna Burns
5 The Ghost Orchid by Jonathan Kellerman
6 Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz
7 Blitzed by Norman Ohler
8 The River is Waiting by Wally Lamb
9 Winter in Madrid by CJ Sansom
10 The Silence by Susan Allot
11 Heart the Lover by Lily King

All except number 11 are RWYO and numbers 6 and 9 may make it to bold if they stick in my head as the year goes on. Great reading so far this year!

@NotWavingButReading I too like to listen to non-fiction on audio. I also use it for some classics and fast paced crime or fantasy. I listen to most things somewhere between 1.5 and 2x speed though as like you, I find the narration slow. I’m a passenger commuter though so don’t have to focus on driving too!

I agree, a good reader is vital.

Thanks @Southeastdweller

I’m hoping to have a little kindle splurge this afternoon, now that I seem to have remembered how to read.

My list, thank you southeast

1. The Lamb by Lucy Rose
2. The Book Of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey
3. Sonny Boy by Al Pacino
4. The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine
5. The Names by Florence Knapp
6. Helm by Sarah Hall
7. Love Forms by Claire Adam
8. Patricia Brent, Spinster by Herbert George Jenkins
9. Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey
10. Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis
11. Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley
12. Paper Cup by Karen Campbell
13. The Wedding People by Alison Espach
14. The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

Hoping to recover from my slump very soon!

Thanks for the new thread @Southeastdweller

Reading 14 books a month in a slump is pretty impressive @EineReiseDurchDieZeit !

List so far:

1. Helm - Sarah Hall
2. So Thrilled To See You - Holly Bourne (audio)
3. The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver (part audio)
4. The List of Suspicious Things - Jennie Godfrey
5. The Manningtree Witches - A K Blakeley (audio)
6. Skippy Dies - Paul Murray
7. Work Like Any Other - Virginia Reeves

@NotWavingButReading I've got into audio in the last year or two. I've noticed I actually remember the books better that I "read" on audio and do wonder if that's because it's harder to speed read them. I have gone for 1.5 speed a few times when they're really slow though.

My one bold so far was half audio and half Kindle which I quite like doing too.

Thanks for the new thread, @Southeastdweller

My list so far:

1. A Dry Spell - Clare Chambers
2. The Bookshop, the Draper, the Candlestick Maker - Annie Gray
3. Two Flamboyant Fathers - Nicolette Devas
4. The Mingham Air - Elizabeth Fair
5. Careless People - Sarah Wynn-Williams
6. The Proving Ground - Michael Connelly
7. Long Live Great Bardfield: the autobiography of Tirzah Garwood
8. Write on Both Sides of the Paper - Mary Kelly

Life’s quite busy at the moment with not much time for reading - plus, I’m getting through the good but very long The Man Who Ate His Boots (as mentioned by Remus on a previous thread) and that’s taking ages. I wish I could cope with audio books as that would boost my total considerably but alas, I just can’t.

@StowickthevastTechnically true but I haven’t read anything for over a week now!

Thank you @Southeastdweller

Here's my list - no numbering for now (given my super big font shouty list last year!)

The Proof of Innocence - Jonathan Coe
Marble Hall Murders - Anthony Horowitz
The Voyage Home - Pat Barker
Passing On - Penelope Lively
Double Cross - Ben MacIntyre
Bleeding Heart Square - Andrew Taylor
Devil's Cub - Georgette Heyer

Four of the above were RWYO.

I can't/don't do audio books.

Thanks for the new thread, Southeastdweller!

Here's my list for January;

1. Prophet Song: Paul Lynch.
2. A Tale of Two Cities: Charles Dickens.
3. La stanza di Natalia: Monica Gentile.
4. The Lark: E. Nesbitt.

I'm reading for study/work purposes at the moment which means less time for reading for pleasure.

I don't do audiobooks because I listen to podcasts/radio to keep up with French and Italian and there aren't enough hours in the day!

You can speed up on BorrowBox. In the bottom left hand corner. I usually listen at 1.5-1.75 speed, anything over 2 is a bit chipmunky. I find that finding a narrator you like is key. I enjoy anything read by Caroline Lee (all Liane Moriarty’s books). Also like Joanne Froggatt’s voice - List of Suspicious things/ The night she disappeared.

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Written by a contemporary of Dickens.

Walter Hartright, on his way to his new employment as a drawing tutor to two sisters, meets a mysterious woman in white on a moonlit road. He realises later that one of the sisters bears an uncanny resemblance to the ghostly woman he had encountered.

Classed as a 'sensationalist' story of its time, I got a sense in the last third of the novel that this was a story that was constructed with the sort of plot twists that were needed for stories that were issued in periodicals.

I enjoyed the start of the novel but felt it got a little too convoluted at the end. So much so that I was willing myself towards the last page.

I was interested to know a bit more about Collins after reading this. He certainly had a rather unusual and colourful approach to relationships. Interestingly, he suffered from idiopathic neuralgia for which he took large quantities of laudanum yet he himself suggested that he may have been a hypochondriac.

Thank you @Southeastdweller for the new thread. I haven’t reviewed my 2026 reads yet so here’s the list and brief reviews.
No definite bolds yet but Trespasses comes close:

#1. Trespasses by Louise Kennedy
Lots of people have read this so I won’t dwell on the plot other than to say it’s set in Northern Ireland and is the story of a 24 year old Catholic teacher who has an affair with a Protestant barrister at least twice her age. It is very much set against a back drop of ‘The Troubles’.
I came to this after the recent TV adaptation and wished I’d done it the other way round. If I hadn’t know how the story was going to unfold I think it would have been a bold. Highly recommended, as is the adaptation.

#2. The Drums by Mike Joyce.
This was my one bookish Christmas present - from DH who paid full price for it in hardback 😳
An autobiography by the Smiths drummer who was born the year before me and grew up in the same area.

I quite like the Smiths music, but I was never a fan as such, enjoyed the singles but didn’t buy the albums. I’ve actually come to appreciate them more retrospectively.
This book is a slow start but once Joyce joins the band it picked up pace and I found his insights interesting. However he says something in the introduction which basically amounts to believing ‘if you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all’. Which is all well and good in a #BeKind kinda way but doesn’t make for the most interesting autobiography, particularly when you’re dealing with a Diva like Morrisey, and have been royally screwed over on royalties by Morrisey and Marr - which only gets mentioned in passing. He does say he wants the book to be a love letter to the Smiths and has no desire to dredge up the disputes and legal disagreements so fair play to him, if I want the nitty gritty I’m sure there’s lots of other accounts out there.

There were quite a few spelling and grammatically errors in this book which I find very irritating - if you’re going to charge £25 for a hardback at least get it properly proofread. (Then I wouldn’t have to do it in pencil as I’m reading 😳)

#3. The Wedding People by Alison Espach
The one where the suicidal divorcee finds a reason to live thanks to various people who are gathered for a week long wedding at the posh hotel she has chosen as the venue for her death scene. Not in the least bit realistic but a fun holiday read and as it was a Kindle deal well worth it.

#4 The Long Shoe by Bob Mortimer
A BorrowBox loan. I enjoyed BM’s autobiography so thought I’d give this a go. Unfortunately it was a bit tedious - some funny lines but not enough to save it. In fact I was so underwhelmed I returned another of his books that I’d picked up for 99p on the deals.

Thank you @Southeastdweller for the new thread.

1 Who Wants to Live Forever, Hanna Thomas Uose
2 The Marriage Portrait, Maggie O'Farrell
3 A Long Way from Verona, Jane Gardam
4 The Two Lives of Louis & Louise, Julie Cohen
5 The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, Margareta Magnusson
6 The Parallel Path, Jenn Ashworth
7 Consider Yourself Kissed, Jessica Stanley
8 Plain Bad Heroines, Emily M Danforth

I remembered one of the things I liked about Plain Bad Heroines was the illustrations. I will attempt to post a couple of pictures. One is from PBH (the one with the big leafy plant), the other from The Wolves of Willoughby Chase which was mentioned on the last thread (I think by @EineReiseDurchDieZeit ?) and which is waiting here for me to read. The b&w, pen and ink style reminded me of many creepy children's books that I have enjoyed.

Thank you @Southeastdweller!

1. Eurotrash - Christian Kracht
2. The History of My Sexuality - Tobi Lakmaker
3. Box Hill - Adam Mars-Jones
4. The Slicks: on Sylvia Plath and Taylor Swift - Maggie Nelson
5. Dear Dickhead - Virginie Despentes
6. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
7. Slags - Emma Jane Unsworth
8. Novel About My Wife - Emily Perkins
9. A Botanical Daughter - Noah Medlock
10. The Idiot - Elif Batuman
11. Lonely Castle in the Mirror - Mizuki Tsujimura
12. Three Women - Lisa Taddeo
13. Roadside Picnic - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

I had difficulty choosing what to bold; I've enjoyed all of these up to a point but wouldn't rave about them. I've had a not great month mood wise which I think can affect my response to books. The last two have stuck in my mind the most and are definitely interesting reads so I'll call them bolds for now. I might change my mind as the year goes on!

Edited to fix weird formatting. I hope it works this time.

@VikingNorthUtsire I adore pen and ink drawings so will look forward to seeing your examples if you post them
Thanks also for your kind wishes and I'm sorry that your brain is giving you a hard time. Thank goodness for books and lovely threads with interesting people on them 🙌

@CrochetGrannySquare I thought The Woman in White was on my to read shelf but it's actually The Moonstone. I hope to get to it next month.

@laddersandsnakes16 Huckleberry Finn had never appealed to me either and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. There are some really problematic aspects, eg use of the N word, lots of patronising / prejudiced attitudes, and a whole section where Jim is treated so badly I nearly gave up on it. However I found the humour and the writing fresh and insightful, and I thought Huck's struggle to overcome conventional attitudes about slavery and do what he thought was right by Jim, was genuinely moving.
I can see why Percival Everett gave it a rewrite though!

Thanks @Southeastdweller for the new thread. Hope to come back tomorrow if not later today to post something more, but bookmarking so thread shows up as one that I'm on.

Am doing the same!

My 2026 reads so far:

1 ) I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue
2 ) North Woods by Daniel Mason
3 ) Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
4 ) The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North

No bolds so far, but Martyr! probably came closest until the ending, followed by Harry August.

Currently have 2 on the go; The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis and A Village In The Third Reich: How ordinary lives were transformed by the rise of Fascism by Julia Boyd & Angelika Patel.

Thanks @Southeastdweller for the new thread. Here is my list:

1 To All The Boys I've Loved Before - Jenny Han
2 Vagabond - Tim Curry
3 Witches Abroad - Terry Pratchett
4 Legends and Lattes - Travis Baldree

Nearly finished The Housemaid by Frieda McFadden which is a bit of a mindless but enjoyable enough read, plus am following the A Tale of Two Cities and Les Miserables readalongs (latter of which I'm listening to on Audible)

Ah it loaded one picture! Seems to take about an hour for MNHQ to process them.

Here (hopefully) is the other

Just checking in on the new thread and I'll post some reviews soon. Thanks southeast!