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

9: A Walk Among The Tombstones
By Lawrence Block

Private detective Max Scudder is hired by drug trafficker Kenan Khoury to find the men who kidnapped and killed his wife Francine.

This was my first DNF of the year, it was well written but I found myself not caring about any of the characters or what was going to happen next! I made it through the first few chapters but just couldn’t connect.

It’s perhaps unfortunate that I really like Block’s other series character Bernie Rhodenbarr who I discovered very recently, and I had just finished the amazing Billy Bathgate by E.L. Doctorow. So it might just be the wrong time for this book.

14 Clown Town by Mick Herron
The latest Slow Horses book. This was very fast-paced and I liked how we saw some of the characters in a little more depth. This one links to historic actions during the Troubles (and based on a true story). It was very fast paced and eventful but I can’t say more without spoilers. I feel like the series is drawing towards a close which on book 9 is probably a good thing as sometimes these series can go on for too long. This one was a good read though.

@StowickthevastI got Rebecca Perry’s May we Feed the King for 99p today- think it may have been on the Observer debuts list you mentioned.

25 The Nature of the Beast – Louise Penny – Chief Insp Gamache 11. 9 year old Laurent is the boy who cried wolf. He tells tall tales and of course, no one believes him. However, the one day he tells the truth, no ones believes him and he ends up getting murdered.

I really enjoyed this. Difficult to say more without spoilers. I was musing about Louise Penny’s imagination and was shocked to find out that one of her ‘characters’ was a real person and some of the plot was also real.

After the Fire by John Pilkington
Another historical crime, the first in a series of two, this time with a female actress as the ‘finder outer’.

I didn’t think this was as good as the one I just read by him - too many characters; too many twists; too many points where the protagonist gets a ‘feeling’ about something and proves to be correct; too many episodes of the protagonist getting away from terrible danger - but readable enough. I bought the second one at the same time, so will read it next.

Light Over Liskeard by Louis de Bernieres

This was not what I was expecting!

I read Captain Corelli's Mandolin years ago and remember it as difficult both from the point of view of the subject matter but I also recall the style was awkward? Perhaps interesting grammar or no full stops or something?

Lights couldn't be more different. It's set in the (near?) future when the cloud has taken over and everything is automated and humans are wondering what the point of existing it. It's a bit close to the bone to be honest. A lot to ponder in relation to that. However there is also magical realism that sort of doesn't fit and makes the whole thing a bit dreamlike.

Overall I am incredibly impressed that someone could write two such totally different books and they both be excellent in their own ways.

Thanks @ÚlldemoShúl I've picked it up.

Remus he has written so many different things. I haven't read that but his first three books were a magic realism trilogy set in Latin America - I loved them at the time but it was a while ago He's also done a very traditional world war 1 series.

5 Alive, Alive Oh! by Diana Athill
A short retread of a few familiar themes and events from her previous books, though going into more detail and nuance about some. Nothing particularly wrong with it.

12. Lucy Carmichael - Margaret Kennedy

I've picked up and put down several things to no avail and for some reason this 1951 novel grabbed me, to the extent that I've finished it in a day despite its being a fairly chunky read in several parts (almost 500 pages, I’ve just realised).

We first see Lucy Carmichael through the eyes of her closest friend, Melissa, who’s due to be bridesmaid at Lucy’s wedding to the glamorous explorer Patrick Reilly. But Patrick ditches her at the altar and Lucy flees the scene of her shame and heartbreak for a job at the Ravonsbridge Institute, founded for the promotion of the arts by industrialist Matthew Millwood in an unremarkable market town, and run by various competing factions, headed by Matthew's widow, Lady Frances.
The story that unfolds is one of Lucy’s gradual coming to terms with her devastation as she grows up, begins to love her job, and encounters the prospect of new love.

There’s far too much to describe in a huge plot but suffice to say that I found the journey engrossing and beautifully told; it’s a big, old-fashioned read and at times it strongly reminded me of South Riding in its depiction of an organisation - very like a local council - riven by secret ambitions, scheming and rivalries. It can be hard to keep track of the many minor characters but Lucy is a heroine I wanted to cheer on through all her trials.

Damned with faint praise. Wonderful review! 😂

Thanks @Stowickthevast l will definitely read more. They’re ideal light reading and I can cope with the odd wince over the grammar!

Ooh that sounds interesting, Terpsichore. Will add it to the wish list!

9 The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, V.E Schwab

I really wanted to love this, it came highly recommended by various online book clubs.

"Never pray to the Gods who answer after dark". In c18th rural France, desperate to avoid marriage to a man she doesn't love, Addie makes a Faustian pact. She wants more time. She wants to be free. The God/devil who responds to her pleas grants her wish, but of course, you have to be careful what you wish for. The price of her freedom is that Addie will live as long as she wants, but that people will forget her as soon as they lose sight of her. She can move through the world unencumbered, but she cannot form a friendship, or a relationship. She can't get a job, and the possessions that she acquires have a habit of getting lost or disappearing. She is free, but she is alone.

I found this like eating junk food - it was really compelling to read, I couldn't tear myself away, but it's left me unsatisfied and a little manipulated. There are too many holes in the concept, and too many missed opportunities in the story telling (I could go into detail but avoiding spoilers). For a woman who lives through four centuries, she spends not much time thinking about world events, or what it is to be human. Most of her mental energy is devoted to (1) booooo I hate this curse and (2) which of these two handsome dark-haired men is the right one for me? (I mean, it is more complicated than that, but really not much).

I also hate the "he's controlling and borderline abusive, but he's sexy" trope. And there's a lot of that here - it's deliberate, and while the twists in the last chapters kind of put everything where it should be, you've still had 500 pages of Addie swooning over someone who likes to humiliate and hurt her, and that wasn't what I wanted to read.

Finally, I don't know what the name is for this kind of writing, but I know it's pretty Marmite, so be warned (personally, I am a sucker for a big emotional fanfic, so sign me up for present tense narration and the combination of short single-sentence paragraphs and looooong run-on sentences full of hyperbole and breathless FEELINGS).

And she doesn't know how to say "I can't" when there is no explaining why, when she was ready to spend all night with him. so she says, "I shouldn't", and he says, "Please", and she knows it is such a terrible idea, that she cannot hold the secret of her curse aloft over so many heads, knows she cannot keep him to herself, that this is all a game of borrowed time.
But this is how you walk to the end of the world.
This is how you live forever.

5.Due to a Death: Mary Kelly.

'Due to a Death', published in 1962 and nominated for the Gold Dagger Award is an incredibly dark and bleak suspense novel. The setting of the novel, a decaying village on the Thames estuary, plays a key role; the bleak landscape mirrors the emotional desolation of the characters perfectly.

This was a sad and depressing read and unexpectedly harrowing in places. I appreciated Kelly's sparse and restrained prose, which is very understated but precise. It reminded me of the Maigret books where the focus is on psychology and motivation and feels more like a 'why' than a 'who-dunnit'. There is only a small cast of characters too which adds to its narrow and introspective focus.

Altogether, this was an interesting and unusual read. I'm waiting for the other book from the library, which was written before this one. Thanks to Terpsichore for the recommendation!

Damn numbering!

Interested and pleased that you sought this out @FuzzyCaoraDhubh - you’re absolutely right about the atmosphere, which she evokes superbly, I think. There’s nothing comfortable about the writing, and yet despite this I had to keep reading; in less skilled hands this might have ended in a DNF but I think it’s the mark of a skilled writer that you do feel compelled to go on.

Incidentally I did have a rare DNF. Gabriel Zuchtriegel is the director of the Pompeii site and his book about it is apparently an international best-seller, but unfortunately I just wasn’t feeling it. The translation from German is on the clunky side too.

I’ve read some Mary Kelly books in the British Library editions, I think. I must see if there are any on Kindle that I’ve not seen.

5.Hitler’s Secret by Rory Clements
WWII spy thriller.
A Cambridge professor is recruited for a mission to Germany in 1941.
I had DNF’d another by this writer but really enjoyed this one. Someone on this thread described a book as “plot over prose” and this was all plot with zero characterisation and plenty of action.

6.The War Poems by Siegfried Sassoon
I was familiar with Wilfred Owen but not so much Sassoon and I found these much more readable. Apparently he was irked by being known as a war poet because he continued writing for many years after the war. The poems are in chronological order starting with those he wrote in the trenches and ending after the war looking back. Harrowing stuff, I read a couple a day, not all at once.

@VikingNorthUtsire
present tense narration and the combination of short single-sentence paragraphs and looooong run-on sentences full of hyperbole and breathless FEELINGS
I don't know what that type of writing is called but it's my worst nightmare, thanks for the warning!

The Last Girl - Jane Casey

Book 3 in the Maeve Kerrigan series. The wife and DD of an adulterous barrister are murdered - why, and what does it have to do with gangland killings that Maeve's boss is working on?

The characters of Maeve, Rob, Derwent and Godley are getting into stride now.

The Judas Blade by John Pilkington
More not entirely credible tales of a female actress, this time caught up in intrigue on the continent which may or may not a) earn her some money b) see her dead c) show her loyalty to the king. I wasn’t rushing to pick this one up, but I suspect there will be another in the series at some point which I’ll read if I’m desperate for something.

16 When the Dust Settles by Lucy Easthope

I think this is one of the most bolded books on the thread over the past couple of years, and it sounded very much my kind of thing, so I was expecting great things. I did like it, and found it pretty interesting but it was nowhere near a bold for me. I don’t know if it’s because I have worked in a very vaguely similar field before (disaster recovery and business continuity planning) so some of the general concepts were familiar. I also found the author a bit overly pleased with herself, and I felt she quite often positioned herself as the only person who had thought of something. Maybe that was the case, but there was an awful lot of “I” vs “we”.

Tunnel 29 - Helena Merriman

Very interesting book about the division of Berlin and subsequent escape attempts, successes and failures, focussing on a particular group of 29.

15 The Painted Veil by W Somerset Maugham
Kitty is vain and shallow and expected to make a good marriage because she’s beautiful. In fact she ends up married to Walter, a rather dull bacteriologist living in Hong Kong during the colonial era. But Kitty is bored and Charles Townsend is charming…
This is really only the tip of the story which does not go where you expect it to. It is very much of its time including many racist descriptions of the Chinese people who mainly serve as background characters. The main players though feel like real people with real flaws- none of them very likable but their stories are compelling and Maugham’s descriptions of places are beautiful. There were so many places where he could have veered into the expected storyline and didn’t. I really enjoyed this but not quite bold.

@SheilaFentimanI loved Tunnel 29 when I read it a few years ago.

Me and My Menopausal Vagina by Jane Lewis

A friend was passing this on after she had teda it and I assumed it was about vaginal health in general which was something I hadn't considered before so I thought I better read it.

It's actually focused on vaginal atrophy which is now top of my list on menopausal worries, miles ahead of my shock that my face appears to be sliding off my skull.

It's a quick read and tells her story and how hard she has found it to talk to others and get treatment she needs. She has set up support groups and should I suffer from this in the future I know where to go.

I don't exactly recommend this for everyone, but if you are suffering then this might include information that is helpful.

Gosh this all moves fast. Have been catching up. I am so sorry for your loss @PermanentTemporary.

List so far this year, including 2 new ones:

1. Gabriel's Moon by William Boyd
2. Nesting by Roisin O'Donnell
3. The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters
4. Waist Deep by Linea Maja Ernst
5. Culpability by Bruce Holsinger
6. Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis
7. The Artist by Lucy Steeds. I think this has been discussed on here before. Wouldn't have chosen it, but reading it for book club. When I bought it (in Oxford Blackwells, which is just lovely!), the bookseller raved about it. I had also had a bookseller recommend it in my local Waterstones. I found it something of a slow burner. I wasn't especially interested in the art process, of which there was quite a lot, but I thought the character development was really good.
8. These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean. New England family drama is one of my absolute favourites; this had the added fun of being set on an island with an inheritance game thrown in. All very predictable and neat, but high quality romance writing. Raced through it.

Have been following the Maeve Binchy discussions with interest. I LOVED here as a late teen. My favourites were Light a Penny Candle and Circle of Friends. Might dig them out for a re-read.

Jane is a friend of mine from her horsey days.