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 also felt unsure of where it was heading, Eine, which, I agree, was a strange feeling.

That makes sense! Interesting.

Some of you (and the beginning of book prize season and the trip to London…) are destroying my RWYO determination as well as my WP reads- mostly library - I have now bought Pagans and I’m Mosltly Here to Enjoy Myself. Damn you 50 Bookers…

I am merely returning the favour which has seen me in need of new bookshelves and a good Kindle weed
Received the new Catriona Ward today, so I’m sure I’ll be recommending that one too very soon

Another one who has immediately wishlisted Pagans - thank you @MaterMoribund.

It's only February and I'm already behind with reviews! I think I have the Jan/Feb blues and am resisting writing anything that requires any mental effort, sigh. Anyway here are a few:

4 A Month in the Country, J. L. Carr 5/5
This book is as lovely as everyone said it was. Written in 1980, it’s set in 1920, and the language and setting (Yorkshire) feel very authentic. I didn’t realise that the plot revolves around the uncovering of a medieval fresco in a church, or I would have read it earlier (medieval fan that I am). As young war veteran Tom Birkin restores the mural, his counterpart James Moon excavates Saxon remains a few steps away (under the pretext of searching for a lost grave). Various members of the community (delightfully described) come to comment and watch. The theme of the book is recovery from trauma, but the understated way in which the narrative develops makes the book something special. I also admired the way that themes of homophobia and Islam were evoked – but again, this is done with a very light touch, which makes the effects all the more moving.

5 Triste Tigre [Sad Tiger], Neige Sinno 5/5
This is an extraordinary short memoir, recommended to me by a friend. The subject matter is grim: the author was sexually abused as a child by her stepfather, from age 7 to 14. When she is 19, she files a lawsuit against him and he is convicted. Decades later, she reflects on what has happened, and on the phenomenon of child sexual abuse in general. Her own memories are interspersed with reflections on the work of other writers who treat the taboo topic of child sexual abuse (Nabokov’s Lolita, Virginia Woolf’s account of being abused by her stepbrother, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and so on). Although it’s specifically about child sexual abuse, the memoir examines broader themes of childhood trauma and recovery: how survivors can hold onto a sense of agency. A line that I found particularly moving was her echo of a quote from Sartre: ‘L'important n'est pas ce qu'on fait de nous, mais ce que nous faisons nous-même de ce qu'on a fait de nous.’ (‘The important thing is not what others do to us, but what we ourselves do with what others have done to us.’) In short, this is a story of resilience and hope, though it poses many difficult questions. Published in 2023, this book has won a whole spate of French literary awards: richly deserved in my opinion! The English translation by Natasha Lehrer came out in 2025. Annie Ernaux is a fan of the book by the way. In short, one of the best books I have read in a long time, and one that will stay with me.

6 Seduction Theory, Emily Adrian 2/5
Read for my book club at work. This is a satirical novel about American academia, that plays with metafiction (the entire book is framed as a creative writing project by a graduate student, who wants to get revenge on a married professor who has flirted with her and dumped her). I’m not sure why I disliked this book so much, but I heartily disliked it. The characters are all extremely shallow and self-centred. None of them seem to have any ethical values to speak of, or even any ideas (one might expect scholars who swan around reading Virginia Woolf all the time to have some interesting conversations with one another about life and literature… but no). There is plenty of graphic sex but despite these scenes, the novel manages to be ridiculously unsexy. I finished this against my better judgement. It made me feel nostalgic for the sharper academic satire of the past, by writers like David Lodge and Alison Lurie.

I went to see Wuthering Heights as well. I didn't love it, but didn't hate it either. My main problem was that I found both Heathcliff and Cathy to be quite flat as characters, which I think was an issue with the script rather than the acting. Setting it up as much more of a classic romance than the book needed characters that I cared about much more to be effective, and so I left dry-eyed. But superficially it looked and sounded great.

By the way I'm enjoying all the film reviews of Wuthering Heights! It makes sense that you can enjoy it if you just think of it as an entirely different entity to the book. I don't think I want to see it though 😂I want to read the novel, however, as it was one of those classic novels I read so long ago that I remember absolutely nothing about it now. It must not have been one of my teenage favourites though, because I know I kept going back to Jane Eyre multiple times as an adolescent, and Wuthering Heights must not have made much of an impression in comparison.

I can still picture vividly a set of 'classics for children' we owned, with matching hardback covers and lettering. Heidi, Jane Eyre, Black Beauty, The Swiss Family Robinson, Robinson Crusoe, Kidnapped ... I can't remember all the titles. I could have sworn that Wuthering Heights was part of this collection, but maybe I've misremembered, because it doesn't sound like a very appropriate children's classic!

I finally saw Hamnet and really enjoyed it, even though it wasn't as good as the book. Parts of the film felt ridiculously over the top and melodramatic to me, but when the story finally moved to London, it was great. It was an interesting choice by the director to have the role of the young boy Hamnet and the role of the young actor playing Hamlet to be played by real-life brothers.

I have a Puffin Classics edition of Wuthering Heights. It does seem odd, thinking about it. But I think there are a few books in that series that aren't really children's books - they would make more sense pitched at teenage readers. On the other hand, publishers may realise that adults are happily buying these books for themselves. I know I could read a lot of 19th century classics for free, but even if they're on Kindle I prefer proper publishers, and although Puffin (and Penguin) publish a lot of stuff which doesn't live up to my image of the publisher when I was a kid, I still associate it with quality.

8 There are rivers in the sky – Elif Shafak

This is the story of one lost poem (the Epic of Gilgamesh), 2 great rivers (the Thames and the Tiger) and 3 remarkable lives. It moves between London and Mesopotamia and covers a time period from the 1800s up until 2018.
I finished this last night and am still not sure how to review it. It has undeniably left me feeling terribly sad and despondent about the way humans treat other humans and desecrate the planet we live on. A previous poster said they found this book depressing, and I can totally understand that sentiment. Personally, I wouldn’t use the word depressing exactly. It’s written so very beautifully, and the different stories linked so cleverly that I loved reading it and I know I’ll be thinking about it for a long time to come. I did find the subject matter quite relentlessly disheartening but the glimmers of beautiful human relationships saved it from being too depressing overall. That said, I have been reading it since October I think, in bite-size pieces, for this reason.

I'm also enjoying reading all the Wuthering Heights talk whilst standing well back. I’ve always found the book totally unreadable and the clips I’ve seen of the film look even more off-putting tbh.

16. The Proof of My Innocence - Jonathan Coe

It's taken me a while to get round to this for various reasons and I’m not quite sure why but it fell a bit flat. It’s structured as a tricksy novel-within-a-novel in the form of cosy crime fiction, with two twenty-something women involved in solving a murder: Phyl, just down from university and back living with her parents in their comfortable home, and Rashida, the daughter of the victim. The whole thing’s set during that mad fever-dream of a period when the Queen died, Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng gleefully proceeded to crash the economy, and the world seemed to have gone mad, so maybe the remembered horror of that time didn’t help me warm to the book.

It's very clever, and often funny, with a well-disguised twist at the conclusion, but I can’t say I ever felt I really connected with it in a way that the most satisfying reads make you feel. Maybe just a me thing at the moment, though.

I can’t contribute anything to the Wuthering Heights discussion. I’ve read the book several times, each to confirm that I hate it. The dialect stuff is unbearable. Margot R seems woefully badly cast and I don’t think I’ll watch the film.

I did, however, see an advertising poster of Cathy and Heathcliffe onto which somebody had stuck big googly eyes, and it amused me more than perhaps it merited.

That I would like to see, @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie 👀😄

I don't know which of us mentioned the Internet Archive, but I've enjoyed reading a couple of Enid Blyton's recently, favourites from my childhood.

I’m with you on this one Remus not a Wuthering Heights fan - love a well placed googly eye too!

Ive finished 22 Taken by Dinuka MacKenzie
I’ve really enjoyed the two I’ve read from this series. This is the second Kate Miles book- a mixed race small town detective in small town Australia - as well as decent mysteries she often has to deal with the old boys club and racism from the public and sometimes her colleagues. In this one Kate investigates a stolen child just as she returns from maternity leave- it’s really good on her mixed loyalties to her job and family too. There’s one more on my kindle and I’m hopeful that it keeps going (and we keep getting them here) after that.

Not intending to see Wuthering Heights. I was in my thirties by the time I read it, and read it as a cautionary tale about the perils of being self-dramatizing.

I had nearly a week of solo travel so got through quite a few books:

13. The Killing Stones, Ann Cleeves
Nice to catch up with Perez in his new life in Orkney. I was completely wrong-footed when it came to the murderer (arguably we weren't given the necessary clues, but I rarely guess anyway).

14. The World Within, Guy Stagg
I enjoyed his first book, which covered his walk from Canterbury to Jerusalem, as a kind of self-medication for shaky mental health. In this book, he follows three twentieth century figures (Wittgenstein, David Jones and Simone Weil) as they went on retreat to religious houses, again to deal with personal despair. I quite liked the travel writing aspect, but both the writer and his subjects tend towards gloominess, so it wasn't the perkiest of reads.

15. May We Feed the King, Rebecca Perry
The framing narrative comes from a historic set dresser who is recreating a king's feast in a castle and developing feelings for the archivist. Nested inside is the story of a newly-crowned and reluctant king, the rumours swirling around him, and his longing to escape. It was all rather strange and elusive - tone-wise it made me think of Piranesi. I liked it.

16. The Lark, E Nesbit
Two young women seek to make a living in the wake of WWI, with all the unabashed optimism of the Bastables in the Treasure-Seekers. It's all a bit of a fairy-story, but I enjoyed the interactions amongst the characters, not least Gladys, the man-eating maid.

17. This Rough Magic, Mary Stewart
Another enterprising young woman features. She's visiting her sister in Corfu and stumbles across dark doings linked to smuggling into Communist Albania (this was published in 1960). It features a dolphin, theories about whether Corfu is the setting for The Tempest, and a villain who really needs to change up his MO - predictability is a hindrance in your next murder. It's all a bit silly but fun.

18. The Bells of Old Tokyo: Travels in Japanese Time, Anne Sherman
I started reading Abroad in Japan and found it all a bit "What I did in my Gap Year", so switched to this more knowledgeable and poetic account of Tokyo instead. It's a slightly forlorn quest for history in a city that endlessly chooses modernity - perhaps not surprising when you consider the history that it has experienced.

Currently on One Fine Day, by Mollie Panter-Downes. This is a short novel published in 1946, following its characters on a single hot summer day as they grapple with how the world has changed since the pre-war days. It very much evokes its era, and it's also rather lovely. I got for 99p in the kindle monthly deals and it's worth a read - would be a great Rather Dated Bookclub read, if it hasn't been done already.

Catching up on recommendations, I have reserved Pagans in the library and I already have I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself on my Kindle. Sounds like that would have been a good holiday read, but never mind, it might brighten my commute to the office.

Crossed Skis by Carol Carnac (also known as ECR Lorac)
A British Library Crime Classic- a group of 16, some known to each other and some friends of friends are assembled for a skiing trip in post-WW2 Austria - but one of the men may not be who he seems. Readable enough nonsense, with a decent detective and a few nice touches of comedy.

@bibliomania we did One Fine Day in 2023 and I know that because I suggested it, having already forced my RL book-club to do it as well! I love it too (as you can tell).

@Terpsichore interesting review of Proof of My Innocence. My neighbourhood book group is reading that next month, so I'll be tackling it soon!

Oh, I’ll be very interested to hear what you (and they) think, @cassandre. @TimeforaGandT I think you reviewed it recently too?

Ah, great minds there, @Terpsichore !

For those that are interested which won’t be everyone, Goalhanger Podcasts have started a book podcast with the guy from The Rest is History. Their first book is Wuthering Heights topically. It’s just called The Book Club

I saw that @EineReiseDurchDieZeit They weren't very positive about the film! I have a soft spot for Dominic Sandbrook as DH was a couple of years below him at school so will definitely check it out.

I thought The Proof of My Innocence was quite clever but agree it didn't quite deliver on substance.

@Terpsichore@cassandre - I enjoyed Proof of my Innocence as an easy read but felt it was trying to be a bit too clever, will probably date because of its setting and relied too much on coincidences etc.

6 Jill - Philip Larkin
John, a conscientious scholarship student from Lancashire, arrives at Oxford to study English and finds himself allocated a room with Christopher, an upper-class wide boy. While John's dearest wish is to be accepted and included in Christopher's circle, they have no time for him and make use of him for money, crockery supplies and copying his work. John invents a younger sister (the eponymous Jill) and for some reason this changes his status in Christopher's eyes and John becomes accepted to an extent. Meanwhile, his work is already suffering, he takes up drinking and smoking, his downfall is cemented when he meets and falls in love with the 15-year-old cousin of one of Christopher's friends.

This is an odd book. Maybe I just don't understand the social mores of 1940s Oxford but I found the actions and reactions of the characters strange. The ending is very strange (a heretofore-unmentioned dog growls at a woman then she gets into a taxi - the End). I'm willing to believe this is a metaphor that has gone straight over my head. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading it!