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

I don't think I did properly appreciate them at all at that age. I loved the puzzles and only later realised how great she was at capturing character in very economical sentences. Her dialogue is fab too.

I also find Wimsey v annoying

Ah, so glad to see this! They're still great!

The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula le Guin

Warning.This is going to be a very unhelpful review. I didn’t not enjoy it (told you!) but I also didn’t especially enjoy it (see?!).

She makes a huge fuss in the introduction about how important it is that her characters are not white washed, but, other than occasionally saying that her skin is light gold or his skin is red brown, it seemed to have no bearing whatsoever on anything. As far as I can tell, le Guin was white herself, so it just felt a bit tokenistic (is that even a word?). I just felt that if it was such a big deal to her, then it should have mattered more.

As for the story, as I said previously, the central character is very one dimensional for much of it, although he does develop later. The problem is that he spends a lot of time as a loner being one dimensional so there are few characters to bounce off him, and few opportunities for much dialogue. And then the style is quite dispassionate and observational, so I found it very difficult to warm to him, especially when he’s being an absolute fucking idiot.

Le Guin drew a massive map before writing, to shape the world of Earthsea and there’s an awful lot of, “Branflake, the wind weathered isle lies west of Cornflake with its golden turrets and north of Cocopop, with its dreaded currents” which was all fair enough but pretty meaningless and silly for readers, though I’m sure it was fun to write.

I guessed the twist pretty much immediately too, so was just waiting for him to hurry the fuck up and do it.

It’s not a terrible book at all, but it’s certainly not Tolkien or even Harry Potter.

Told you it was going to be a useless review!

Death In The Clouds - Agatha Christie

Mentioned on the thread a few times recently. Pretty sure I’ve read this before as bits of it seemed familiar but still very enjoyable and funny even though I worked out whodunnit (or possibly just remembered).

I was delighted with the word ‘dandiacal’ to describe Poirot. Don’t think I’ve ever heard that before.

18 Dance Moves by Wendy Erskine
A short story collection from the author of The Benefactors. Erskine’s prose is sparse and tight and some of the stories engaging. Like most short story collections, it’s a mixed bag. In this case I find the prose too sparse at times, making it difficult to connect with any of the characters in the short pieces. I don’t know that any of them will stick with me- I suspect not.

I think my reading journey went SVH/goosebumps ha!, Jacqueline Wilson, Judy Blume then Louise Rennison. My absolutely favourite book as a teen was Chinese Cinderella by Adeline Yen Mah, read it over and over.

I’ve had my first DNR of the year (and maybe ever!) Antarctica by Claire Keegan. Audiobook version. Got about 5 or 6 short stories and decided it wasn’t for me. It’s her first publicised collection of short stories, all with dark, unsettling themes.

New audiobook is Midnight Library by Matt Haig. About 1/3 through and enjoying so far, not my usual genre.

Also about 3 chapters away from finishing We Are All Guilty Here by Karen Slaughter. This is my first book of her and I’m seriously impressed. Set in small town Georgia, 2 fifteen year olds go missing, lots of secrets unearthed. Jumps to 12 years later which is where is really picks up the pace. Don’t want to give any spoilers away but it’s great. Believable characters, excellent plot which seem to be tying up all the loose ends.

I read Antarctica but struggled with it, especially the eponymous story, that was dark.

I agree. The opening short story of Antarctica is very dark and disturbing.

I loved Babysitter’s club, SV twins (not so much SVH for some reason) and all of Judy Blume. I remember that you could use the catalogue to see which branches of the library had which books and used to get the bus all over the city to try to read them all.

Also I don’t know if there are any other Scots of my age on here but the Kelpie books were also fantastic- like Flash the Sheepdog and Song of Sula. I loved those.

11.Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

A woman washes up on the shores of an isolated Antarctic island where a family live trying to maintain a seed bank. I enjoyed this but felt like it was being pulled in lots of directions and couldn’t quite decide what sort of novel it should be. Well written though and evocative of the place.

12.Introducing Mrs Collins by Rachel Parris
I love a Pride and Prejudice sequel. Written from the point of view of Charlotte Lucas, we see some of the event of P&P from her viewpoint and then we move beyond to the wedding of Elizabeth and Darcy and to subsequent events.

I won’t spoiler it but I did think some of the events were a tad implausible and out of character but I very much enjoyed the exploration of that character. I have read loads of this type of novel and this definitely wasn’t the worst by any stretch. Decent escapism.

Knew I had missed one!

13.Orbital by Samantha Harvey
I know this has been quite controversial and I am glad that a) it was relatively short and b) I knew that nothing was going to happen plot-wise. I didn’t think this was bold but I did find it quite compelling. The language was largely beautiful (occasionally gusting to overblown wankery- but this is a Booker winner after all so we expect nothing less).

I found the descriptions of the days quite mesmerising and have also bought ‘Ask an Astronaut’ by Tim Peake to satisfy my curiosity further about the every day minutiae of being in space. (Apparently they get callouses on top of their toes because they use them to cling to things and NASA are designing special socks to prevent this).

The Women’s Prize for non-fiction longlist is out. Here’s a link to a short announcement video for anyone who is interested.

I’m trying not to read full longlists this year but did check these out- a couple are in my library and a couple on offer on kindle To Be Young,Gifted and Black is currently 99p and Don’t Let it Break You is currently £3.99

Here is a Waterstone’s link if the YouTube one doesn’t work properly
https://www.waterstones.com/category/cultural-highlights/book-awards/the-womens-prize-for-non-fiction?utm_source=wswpfnflonglist110226&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=award&utm_content=CTA

5 Britain At Bay - Alan Allport

Excellent account of WW2 from the point of view of Britain’s social and political history. Insightful, smart but readable, this volume covers 1938-1941 (second volume is on request at the library!) - I learned lots that I didn’t already know, particularly around why appeasement was a more complex issue than often portrayed.

Yes! And I saw it coming but still, was awful.

9 . Dubliners James Joyce It's my own fault, I shouldn't have read this. I haven't read any Joyce previously but read it to be ‘worthy’. I know I'm not a fan of short stories and couldn't get into it at all. Might try Ulysses later in the year!!
10 Death's End. Liu Cixin. Book three in The Three Body Problem series and really enjoying it so far.
Thanks to everyone who posts. I get some great ideas from here.

I had my first dnf of the year: We by Yevgeny Zamyatin.

Set in the authoritarian OneState, where dreams are considered a mental illness and people are named numerically, this is the book that influenced George Orwell's 1984. The narrator, D-503, keeps a journal of his daily life as the chief engineer of a spaceship which is being sent out to colonise other planet. He's perfectly happy with his mathematically based, heavily regimented existence until one day he meets a woman (I-330) who turns everything on it's head.

The first few chapters were engaging and I enjoyed the world building. Then things suddenly got bogged down with turgid descriptions that often didn't make sense to me. I suspect I'm not just smart enough for this one as I had to read it with a set of sparks notes next to me to make sure I'd understood what had actually happened 😳It didn't help that every other character was more interesting to me than the narrator either. I gave up at the halfway mark.

Catching up on the teen reading chat, like others I was an early and voracious reader, though completely undiscriminating when it comes to quality - in my primary years it was series like the Famous Five, Worst Witch, My Naughty Little Sister, Animals of Farthing Wood. Then in my early teens Sweet Valley High, Stephen King, James Herbert, Discworld, my mum’s extensive Jackie Collins and Mills & Boon collection 🤣 and huge (and I mean huge) amounts of fantasy. Then in my late teens became consciously more hip and moved onto the likes of Pynchon, Ballard, Beat writers etc.

I was obsessed with the Little House on the Prairie books. I had a boxed set of all the books - can't believe i got rid of it. Also Nancy Drew was a huge favourite. And the Ruby Ferguson Jill pony books.

Have you read Prairie Fires @Arran2024 ? I was a fan on the Little House books and that was a real insight

@TheDonsDingleberries I really liked We but remember very little about it. I just searched back on here and I read it in 2016.

@Terpsichore - One thing that did resonate with Lucy Mangan's experience was having absolutely zero memory of learning to read at all

Yes! That was my experience as well.

As a kid I loved the Anastasia Krupnik stories. I wanted to be Anastasia and thought her parents were really cool. I also wanted to go to boarding school thanks to Mallory Towers. The Animals of Farthing Wood series were also reread countless times.

As a teen, the books I remember most vividly are Memoirs of a Geisha, Virginia Andrews' Orphans series, the Inspector Frost books, Bridget Jones' Diary, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, and the Scarlett Pimpernel (I had a crush on Richard E. Grant in the 90s television series).

The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula Le Guin
Very slow going in the first half, with some of the flaws of its predecessor. Much better when she finally brought two characters together. I liked the Afterword, which explored what she had aimed to do and why.

I really thought I was going to like it. The parts describing OneState were great. I wanted to know more about its society and dark underbelly. Sadly it wasn't to be!

Well, there are plenty more sci-fi books in the sea!