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

15 . Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart (audiobook)

Fifteen year old Shuggie lives alone in a bedsit. A series of flashbacks reveals his past and how his situation came to be.

This was extremely well written and as for the audio well read. It won the Booker in 2020 and I can see why.

However, this is one of the most singularly depressing books I have ever read in my life, it rivals A Little Life and I think beats it out.

Endlessly, unrelentingly depressing, just when you think it can’t get any more bleak it does, just when you think Shuggie has met someone decent he hasn’t. It literally never ends there’s no light and shade.

Ive heard good advanced reviews of his new book John Of John but I don’t know if I’m put off both this and Young Mungo by just how grim this is.

Would hesitate to recommend though it is a good book

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit Young Mungo is less unrelenting but still dark. The mother is so brilliantly written in Shuggie, though.

@Cherrypi 4 would be too many for me. I'm in 2 and the months where they coincide, I sometimes feel like I'm back at school reading things that I have to read rather than what I want to read!

@Stowickthevast yes. A few times I thought this book should have been called Agnes Bain instead

Hello, I fell off thread one and am late to this one, so I won’t bring my list over.

I’ve just read Heated Rivalry and The Long Game by Rachel Reid, obviously after watching and becoming somewhat obsessed with the TV series. I was going to self censor and not mention/ include them in my list because snobbery, but fuck it I love me some romance and it was over half of what I read last year so, whilst I do want to read more other stuff this year, I’m going to own the fact that I love me some smutty romance too.

I’m also slowly slowly working though Step by Step by Simon Reeve for RWYO. I love Simon and he’s had some truly fascinating experiences, but for some reason I’m finding it a bit of a slog reading about them.

Ooh @Arran2024I knew there was another one I didn't know it was a planned trilogy. I think I may have been ambitious with four but I can probably catch up over half term. I'm not making much progress on reading what I own though.

@Cherrypi that sounds modern to me as well, I think it would have thrown me out of the story temporarily

@AliasGrape I have Heated Rivalry on my shelf awaiting its turn! Looks great fun! Please don't self censor, I love the variety of books on here. Do you read Alexis Hall? I've enjoyed his romance books in the past.

I hope those in the broken wrist corner are on the mend.

The Burning by Jane Casey I’ve gone in! I know the consensus on here is that this first Maeve Kerrigan isn’t the strongest, but it was diverting enough and I’ll be back for more. They are disappointingly not very well stocked by my library service - it’s only taken me this long as I borrowed a copy of this one a while ago and it was so grubby I returned it unread and waited to find it secondhand.

I hope everyone is having a good weekend with plenty of time for reading!

I finished Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver this morning and have to say it is probably my first real bold of this year

13: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
I’ve never read anything by Barbara Kingsolver before, but I definitely will now, this was probably the best thing I have read for quite a while and parts of it will stay with me a good while. It is a loose rewrite of David Copperfield but set in impoverished rural America, primarily Lee Countyy in south west Virginia, in the grip of the painkiller Oxy scandal of the early 00s. I have read David Copperfield a few years ago, the characters came back to me.
Damon/Demon’s father died before he was born and his pregnant junkie mother gave birth alone in a trailer. He is kind of looked out for by his neighbours the Peggots, who have son the same age who becomes Demon’s close friend Maggot. When Demon’s mother dies of an overdose, he gets taken into the underfunded, underresourced foster care and goes through a series of fosterhomes ranging from the substandard to the outright abusive. He eventually runs away and goes in search of his father’s family.
Demon inevitably ends up in a life of drugs and parts of it are really grim, but it is ultimately uplifting. I thought it would be similar to Shuggie Bain, and in some ways it is, but I definitely preferred Demon. I've read A Little Life as well, and found it nowhere near as depressing as that.
I know it's not a book but would highly recommend the series called Painkiller on Netflix if you want more on the background of the Oxy/Purdue scandal on the poorest communities in the US.

I am going back to a bit of a Maeve Kerrigan binge now after buying the next three for 99p last week.

@HagCymraeg I’ve read Demon Copperhead and don’t think it’s quite as depressing as Shuggie Bain but my favourite Kingsolver is The Poisonwood Bible though I found the David Copperfield riffs really interesting

1 Leonard and Hungry Paul by Ronan Hession
2 Wintering by Katherine May
3 Sunset by Jessie Cave
4 The Lie by Helen Dunmore
Thats all I have managed to read so far this year but happy with the variety. My favourite out of them was Leonard and Hungry Paul . This was a lovely gentle read about friendship,family and love. I really enjoyed it but probably wouldn’t have read it if it wasn’t for my book club . I wasn’t so keen on the televised series that I watched after reading the book, nobody was as I had imagined them to be!
Just about to start reading Nesting by Roisin O’Donnell , another book club read.

Out of Shuggie Bain, Demon Copperhead and A Little Life I think I found A Little Life the most depressing but that’s partially because it was so long so the misery was prolonged!

I am impressed @Cherrypi that you manage four book clubs. I don't think I would be able to cope with that number of books to read!

10. Howl's Moving Castle - Diana Wynne Evans

Read as part of RWYO. Apparently I bought this in 2020 - fairly sure it was off the back of a lot of love for it on this thread. Missed it as a child as it was published too late for me but also seemed to have missed it for my DC.

After some ill-advised rudeness to a witch, Sophie is turned from a young woman into an old lady. She leaves her home and job and ends up taking refuge with Wizard Howl (in his moving castle) where she worries about her younger sisters, tries to keep Howl in check and discover the terms of the contract binding Howl to his fire demon, Calcifer.

A more complex plot than I expected but great fun.

Thank you. And no that’s not an author I’ve heard of, I’ll have a google thanks

@TimeforaGandT the film of Howl is also great fun!
My favourite DWJ is Charmed Life but she's written so many.

I love Howl, loved it as a teen/tween, still love it now, recently bought it for a nibling to pass the love on

13. A Father’s Diary - Fraser Harrison

A RWYO. Fraser Harrison worked in publishing in London before he and his wife moved to the depths of rural Suffolk, where he became a freelance writer and she kept a small flock of sheep. Their two children, Tilly and Jack, were almost 5 and just over 3 respectively when he started to chronicle their day-to-day lives and development, publishing the result in 1985.

I was charmed and fascinated by this book - Harrison writes thoughtfully, often lyrically and with utter love for his children, but doesn’t sugarcoat the frustrations he feels - especially with the perpetually-combative Jack, who drives him to despair pretty much every other day with his defiant antics. It’s also very funny at times, while the sociological musing that makes it a bit more than just a personal account is carried off with a light touch (he's also disarmingly honest about his own frequent ineptitude). I’m not a parent so I can’t vouch for the quality of parenting skills on display - occasional smacking happens, which I think would be unacceptable now - but I have been a child, and I think any child would be lucky to have two such loving, interested and involved parents who also seem to really delight in their children as people.

Rumour has it that Howl’s castle is based on our very tiny local castle. I think it’s very unlikely although DWJ’s family lived in the area. I’m pretty sure I met her once.

I have both Shuggie Bain and Demon Copperhead on my TBR. I’m not sure what is putting me off them.

26 The Gathering Storm – Cynthia Harrod-Eagles. The Morland Dynasty 36. I read The Phoenix, book 35 in January 2023 and that was really too long ago for me to remember who everyone was and what had happened. I enjoyed this but I did have to keep checking the family tree to keep track. @Palegreenstars thank you for reminding me of this series. This book is set in 1936 and finishes in 1939. Interestingly, CHE has done a postscript to say who lives and dies during WW2, so I assume from that, no more Morland books. 1936 was quite the year. As well as being the year of the 3 Kings, we have characters getting involved in the Spanish Civil War, the maiden voyage of Queen Mary, the expansion of television (it’ll never catch on!), the first spitfire flight and the publication of Gone with the Wind. Also in 1936 and mentioned, but not directly involving our characters, the Berlin Olympics and the Hindenburg disaster. There was so much going on, I’ve probably missed something.

Can anyone recommend good non fiction about the civil war/commonwealth/ Restoration period? Went to this event this evening and I realised how superficial my knowledge of this era is

Try Ian Mortimer’s The Time Traveller’s Guide to Restoration Britain. Written as if you’re going to visit and tells you what you would need to know.

It’s a period that interests me too @countrygirl99 though I haven’t studied it in extreme depth - Pepys's diary obviously would be good (and Claire Tomalin's biography of him is great) - and for the 1650s specifically - the beginning of the Interregnum - Anna Keay's The Restless Republic was highly-rated and up for the Baillie Gifford Prize a few years ago. I bought it when it was 99p but haven’t read it yet!

Thanks. I'm definitely going to swot up on this period. Polarised politics, trial by public opinion all seems really relevant.

You in the Huntingdon area @countrygirl99? I’m from around there

Shuggie was a bold for me when I read it. Despite the depressing and fury I felt towards his mum, which I suppose is what made it good writing

@Cherrypi and @BestisWest

On women and diet in the 1960s, there was definitely an ideal for women of being very thin in the 1960s. This was the era of slimming pills which were amphetamines, wasn't it? I was born at the very end of the 1960s, when my mum was 25, and she suffered from very severe sickness (not just in the mornings) in all her pregnancies). She told me that in the maternity hospital there were lots of pregnant women who were seen as too fat and needing to lose weight, and that she actually had a conversation in which she pointed out to hospital staff at one point that she had lost 2 stone during the pregnancy (before I was even born), and she was down to 7 stone - so by the time I was born she must have lost at least a third of her body weight. Also, in 1963, her 17 year old sister was advised, by a doctor, that smoking would keep her baby smaller and make giving birth to him easier.

@Cherrypi
On bookclubs, I've belonged to two groups at a time. I'm not always very good at reading the right book at the right time, even with just one group, but I love my local book group very much, and will go to hear the discussions of books I haven't even started..... do you enjoy all four groups?

@MrsALambert the Bedford side of Kimbolton so not too far.

Nice! We are in Ely now