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

There's a really good archive edition of 'in Our Time' about Sir John Soane, with a lot of fascinating stuff about the house/museum. Worth a listen - on BBC Sounds on the programme website.

3.The Sixth Lamentation by William Brodrick
Just finished and this was absolutely excellent a definite bold. This was first published in 2003 and is the first of six books in the Anselm series. It is a debut am I find it unbelievable as the writer is so talented you just would not know it was a debut. Sadly I think he has only written this series and three others under a pen name. An old man seeks refuge at Larkwood priory. He is Eduard Schwermann an SS officer in hiding and on the run since the war. Agnes Aubret’s life is coming to an end and now she feels it’s time to unearth her secrets to her daughter Lucy. Agnes was involved in a group called the round table smuggling Jewish children to safety. This was fantastic and highly recommended and will stay with me for a long time. Needless to say I won’t be giving this book away and it had me in tears such an emotional book. I have ordered the next and will certainly read the rest. Never heard of this writer before but yes just great.

Thanks as always to southeast for the new thread

My list so far:

1. Jess Armstrong - The Devil in Oxford
2. Sophie Hannah - The Last Death of the Year
3. Laura Barnett - Births, Deaths & Marriages
4. RS Burnett - Whiteout
5. Deanna Raybourn - Silent in the Grave
6. Deanna Raybourn - Silent in the Sanctuary
7. Terry Pratchett - Jingo
8. Terry Pratchett - Men at Arms
9. Jonathan Stroud - The Outlaws Scarlett & Browne

10. Emma Orchard - A Tale of Two Dukes 11. Ross Montgomery - The Murder at World's End 12. Jodi Taylor - Doing Time 13. Jodi Taylor - Hard Time 14. Susanna Gregory - A Plague on Both Your Houses 14. Susanna Gregory - An Unholy Alliance 15. Harriet Tyce - It Ends at Midnight

Many of these were re-reads whilst recovering from flu, but good to read nevertheless! The Sophie Hannah book was her latest Poirot novel - I quite enjoy these but forget the solution more or less instantly afterwards - although if I remember correctly, the ending to Closed Casket was particularly unsatisfying, @SilverShadowNight.

I think @MamaNewtNewt and @TimeforaGandT are St Mary's/ Time Police fans too? I re-read the first two TP books and thoroughly enjoyed them but do find it frustrating how often St Mary's are shoehorned back into the series - I almost stopped reading the latest TP book as seemingly endless chapters were devoted to Max again I mean I like St Mary's too but if I wanted to read about them, I'd just read a St Mary's book!

I used to listen to more audiobooks and podcasts when I WFH but now I just don't get the time - Geneva (Richard Armitage) was a good listen though, it swaps between chapters narrated by different characters, of which the main two are RA himself and Nicola Walker - both really good.

I own most of the Slow Horses books but (like many others on here!) still can't get into them

They aren't non fiction @countrygirl99 but the Seeker books are really entertaining books set during the Protectorate - and good on detail too.

Really interesting to learn about everyone's local bookshops and the events they hold. Jonathan Stroud is holding an event at a library not far from me soon and I've persuaded DS2 to come with me - he's just getting into that sort of books - but it's mainly for me, as I love the Lockwood books!!

Another rather late review of a book I read last year:

2025 #197
Susan Choi, Flashlight
Read 09.10.25 to 30.10.25, reviewed 14.02.26
Rating: 4.4/5
Borrowed from Islington Libraries, library hardback

This is a complicated and intriguing story of a family keeping lots of secrets from each other, set over decades in the US, Japan, Korea and Europe.

10 year old Louisa and her widowed mother have returned to the US after a year in Japan, and an accident which nearly killed Louisa as well as her father.

Seok grows up in Japan in the 1940s and 1950s, where he faces prejudice and discrimination because of his immigrant family background - his parents are from the South Korean island Jeju and he is considered to be a "Resident Alien". He stays in Japan when his parents and sister take up an invitation to "return" to North Korea, but his education and career ambitions are frustrated until he sees a US study program advertised. There, he meets and marries Anne and Louisa is born.

There are many twists and turns as Louisa grows up with a complicated and mysterious legacy, and escapes to Europe for some years.

I enjoyed this complicated and thought provoking story, although the characters in it are often not very likeable, after lives affected by secrecy, emotional coldness and repression, of truths revealed too little and too late.

Thanks to @FuzzyCaoraDhubh

The Blue Castle by LM Montgomery
I adored this - a very definite bold, even for this non-list keeping, non- book counting, non-bolder.

It’s a wonderful, very amusing and very sweet story of metamorphosis. If you like, Miss Pettigrew, you will like this.

Totally agree @ClaraTheImpossibleGirl it’s time for The Time Police to stand on its own merits now. There’s no need to keep bringing Max back into things, especially with the massive plot hole she brought with her last time that ruined my enjoyment. Really looking forward to the new Smallhope and Pennyroyal this year though, I absolutely loved the last one.

15. Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found - Andrew Graham-Dixon

The main thing everyone knows about Vermeer is a) Girl with a Pearl Earring and b) errr…..that's it, really. He’s virtually absent from all records, died at the tragically young age of 43, and nobody knows quite how he managed to provide for his wife and 11 children by painting what amounted to a very small total number of works - he almost certainly did something else with his time but exactly what is a mystery.

Art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon achieves the brilliant feat of assembling tiny scraps of evidence to reveal that Vermeer was closely affiliated to a religious group in the 17th Dutch republic known as the Collegiants - believers in the Arminian doctrine who rejected Calvinism with its harsh message of predetermination. These free-thinking and liberal Christians also rejected priests and, remarkably, women were given equal respect and standing. AG-D argues that the bulk of Vermeer's most celebrated paintings were all made for one wealthy Delft woman who was an old friend of the Vermeer family, though much higher in social status (and much richer). She paid him a stipend for his paintings and displayed them in her house - possibly to fellow-believers - as if in a gallery; he interprets all of Vermeer's now famous canvases (including Girl with a Pearl Earring) as full of intricate symbolism and religious meaning.

This is a serious book but very readable and his interpretation of the paintings is fascinating. Whether you’re swayed by the argument or not is another thing but it’s very persuasive, and a compelling read for anyone with an interest in art history, or the Dutch republic in this very turbulent era.

However, on to something a bit lighter now, I think!

I don’t mind Max and St Mary’s being brought into the Time Police books. I’ve always preferred St Mary’s anyway so prefer the Time Police when St Mary’s are in it!

Yes Clara I reread all of St Mary's last year to remind myself who some of the people who appeared in the later books were. Although I have probably forgotten who they are again by now!

I am like Chessie in that I don't mind St Mary's popping up in the Time Police books. And like Mama really enjoyed Smallhope and Pennyroyal so looking forward to the next one.

Book 10. World Cup Fever by Simon Kuper. One of DH's Christmas presents. Simon Kuper has been to all the football world cups since Italia '90 (mostly in his role as a journalist). This isn't so much about the football as about the tournaments, people, places, politics and experiences. There are brief anecdotes and longer essays. He's very well connected and a very good writer. Really enjoyed.

I've been amazed at how similar so many of our youthful reading experiences are. I can't remember when I learnt to read, but I was a very prolific young reader. I still read quickly (which is handy as I work as a copy-editor). My dad was always trying to get me to read the classics (and I did read some, though I've still never managed a whole Charles Dickens), but I loved Enid Blyton, Willard Price etc and then Sweet Valley High, seamlessly on to Jilly Cooper, Judith Krantz, Virginia Andrews, Danielle Steel etc etc.

Have any of you listened to the Sentimental Garbage podcasts? The premise is that it's about the culture we love that we're not supposed to. So you get a serious-but-funny analysis of, say, a Maeve Binchy or Daisy Jones and the Six etc. I think it is brilliant!

P.s @Southeastdweller thanks for the new thread. A recent DNF which I really wanted to finish but could not go on with the same drivel.The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper about Amara enslaved in Pompeii’s brothel. I listened to a good chunk of this on borrow box but with four hours left I called it quits as nothing really happened it was literally all about brothels. I wouldn’t have gone for this at all but picked it up for a reading challenge. Safe to say I am highly likely quitting the reading challenge and just reading what I want.

14. Brotherless Night - V. V. Ganeshananthan
This won the Woman's Prize in 2024 and I think lots of people read it then. It tells the story of 16 year old Sashi and her Tamil family during the Sri Lankan civil war from the 1980s and 1990s. This is the first book for a long time that I felt compelled to read and totally absorbing. It is a very sad story but it does so well on the themes of loss and struggle, as well as the conflicting emotions of loving people who have chosen to join an armed struggle and being aware of the contradictions involved. A bold for me.

15. The Woman who Died A Lot - Jasper Fforde. This is the 7th Thursday Next book. Suitably bonkers like the earlier ones but it has the disadvantage of not being set in the Book World which is my favourite part of the earlier series.

@Midnightstar76 – The Sixth Lamentation sounds intriguing. Lucky for me, my local library has it, so I’ll pick it up, either today or tomorrow.

29 The Black Loch – Peter May. Fin Macleod returns to Lewis. I read the Lewis Trilogy years ago and enjoyed them. I was looking forward to catching up with Fin and Marsaili. The last book was published 14 years ago. I don’t know if its me or Peter May, but I really did not like this book. Fin’s son Fionnlagh is accused of raping and murdering a teenager who was one of his students. Naturally, Fin, no longer a detective, returns to Lewis to prove his innocence. Fin has no redeeming features. He is sulky, broody, jealous of any man that his wife gives a second look to and very judgemental. A hypocrite. I was also very uncomfortable with the relationship between Fionnlagh, a 30 year old teacher (and married man) and 18 year old Caitlin, his pupil. At one point, Fin muses that actually, perhaps Fionnlagh was the one person that truly loved Caitlin. Bleurgh. If you still fancy it, be warned, there are lots of animal suffering (salmon and whales) as well. Really needs a content warning.

4 Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

A prequel to Jane Eyre, focussing on 'mad' Bertha.

Wonderful book. Completely annihilates any crush a reader of Jane Eyre might have developed concerning Rochester.

10 Oaxaca Journal - Oliver Sacks
My Library reading challenge included a book about a country - travel not my usual genre but luckily found a short book by the neurologist Oliver Sacks about a natural history trip to Mexico, focusing on local ferns. As always, Sacks’ writing style is lovely, pinging from fact to fact across disciplines - he clearly had an enormous range of knowledge. We also see his growing appreciation for the sophistication of pre-Colombian Indigenous cultures, sweeping away his preconceptions of civilisation as a western phenomenon.

11 The Greatest Nobodies of History - Adrian Bliss
Very silly and whimsical - if you like Adrian Bliss’ social media shorts, you might like this. Fictionalised retelling of famous scenes from history, from the point of view of minor characters, including the ferret in Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine.

12 Hunchback - Saou Ichikawa
Award-winning novel from a Japanese author with congenital myopathy. Like the author, narrator Shaka uses a wheelchair and ventilator. Largely confined to the group home where she lives, Shaka spends her time studying and writing pornographic content for online erotica sites. Exploring themes of the socially-constructed conflicts between disability and desire, and how far Shaka is prepared to go to experience aspects of a ‘normal’ life, this is full of visceral descriptions of the physical reality of her condition, knowingly touching on body horror and monster tropes. No doubt it is aiming to shock, but still packs a powerful punch in its <100 pages.

The Odyssey - a graphic novel adaptation by Gareth Hinds

My youngest suggested I read this as he saw me reading The Odyssey for the read along thread. I really enjoyed it! Sometimes the graphic format definitely added to it, eg little glances between characters, and I loved the way the gods and those under their protection are depicted visually.

I don't know the original well enough (yet?) to comment on the adaptation choices, but it seemed to hit all the plot points and was well-judged as to how much sex and violence it showed (bearing in mind it's for younger readers).

I do still intend to complete the Homer text but I did hear that the Coen brothers had allegedly only read a comic book version when they filmed O Brother, Where Art Thou? I suspect they said that to mess with people but it amused me anyway. I love that film.

8.Wuthering Heights: Emily Brontë.

I wanted to read this again before seeing the film tomorrow.

I think it's utterly brilliant. I love this dark, bitter, twisted tale.

A haiku, based on early reviews;

'A fiend of a book;
An incredible monster,
It's straight out of hell'.

Speaking of travel writing, I’m quite fancying some of anybody has any recommendations.

Totally agree @FuzzyCaoraDhubh, I read Wuthering Heights at a very impressionable age and thought it was the greatest love story ever told. I wanted to be loved body and soul like Heathcliff loved Cathy. Of course reading it again as a mature woman the red flags came thick and fast and I could recognise him as an abusive brute, but it’s still one of, if not my favourite, book. Not sure if I want to go to the cinema to see the film as the reviews have been so dire. I’ll be interested to see what you think.

I like Michael Palin - Pole to Pole or Pacific

I'll go in open-minded, @DesdamonasHandkerchief but I didn't think much of the trailer 😬

I’ve read most of his. Thanks though!

Might be a bit random, @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie but I really enjoyedThe Lost Ark of the Covenant, by Tudor Parfitt.

Thank you but my patience for religious stuff is low at best, especially if it’s one claiming to have solved the mystery but not actually having done so. Is it best avoided, with those caveats or still worth a shot?!