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

In The Darkroom sounds really interesting. I have 10 non fiction on my shelf I want to read this year so I really should resist.... But maybe I'll add to my wishlist in case it's ever 99p.

I have just finished Killing Thatcher by Rory Carroll. This was 50 bookers favourite non fiction of last year I think.

As everyone else said, it's amazing just how close the IRA came to achieving their goal. I am sure I watched the film based on her life and I have either forgotten or they glossed over it. I also enjoyed the descriptions of police work at a time when computers hadn't linked everything up and different departments could be working on the same thing and no one knew who anyone looked like as faxed photos of suspects were the best that could be done!

I will also admit, I found aspects of Thatcher to admire which I wasn't expecting. I am not politically conservative, but the book is full of mentions of the letters she wrote to servicemen and hotel staff and the hospital visits she made. I respect that and think it's because she was a public servant. And that is sorely missing from politics these days.

@RomanMum loved The Hitchhiker’s guide as a teenager, one of those books that forms you somehow.

I almost requested the Hitchhiker's Guide for my birthday in 2024 (I was 42...) but ended up with something else - I'm now getting the urge to read it again! And to introduce it to my DDs, though it's probably a bit too dated for them to really get it.

7 A Walk in the Park - Kevin Fedarko I know several 50-bookers have read this over the last year or so, with mixed reviews (as as is the case on Goodreads, where it really seems to be a marmite book). I loved it as much as @noodlezoodle did - beautiful descriptive language which really painted a picture of the Grand Canyon, interesting cultural and historical (and pre-historical) background, and a good central story of Fedarko's hike (in several stages) from one end of the Grand Canyon to the other with his friend and colleague, the photographer Pete McBride. The book starts with Fedarko and McBride being recklessly unprepared for their first stage of their trip, but they very much learn their lesson and they take the rest of the journey much more seriously, and clearly have a huge appreciation for all the support they got from the serious hikers, specialists and enthusiasts who effectively trained them up and coached them through the expedition. There were amusing bits and also lots of serious points - it's not just some privileged, entitled white guys going on a gap year, as some of the Goodreads reviews suggest. A bold for me!

11 Factfulness by Hans Rosling (and others)

I bought this for a friend following the positive reviews on here, and then realised I had in fact bought it for my husband in 2018! So I read it myself. For anyone who doesn't know, it's an analysis of the world through statistics which shows that (almost) everything we think we know about how terrible everything is is wrong. It is as good as everyone says - the statistics are presumably out of date now (although I understand there is an updating website) but the general gist remains true. I particularly liked the comparison of Sweden over the course of the 20th century with other countries as they are now, which makes the pace of change very apparent. The "Dollar Street" sections analysing poverty and the parts about vaccination are also great. Thought-provoking and cheering.

12 The Stranger you Know by Jane Casey

Rattling through the Maeve Kerrigans, and I'm going to start rationing them from now on! This is the Derwent back story segment and it's a cracker. Can I keep it down to one a month and stretch them out over the rest of the year? I'll keep you posted!

Good luck with the rationing, @Welshwabbit ...

@Welshwabbit I'm also going to ration the Maeve Kerrigan books. It will help that I'm not into binge watching series, I prefer delayed gratification. With books I want to spin out the author as long as possible. At least Jane Casey is still writing.
It also helps that I'm too stingy to buy at full price so will hold off for a reduction. Unfortunately I started in the wrong order and do feel it will work better if I read in order. Annoyingly I got book 1 on a 99p deal but it would not open on my kindle and I ended up returning it.
I've found a few of the later books on borrowbox which is a win because my library doesn't put much on there!

Re. rationing books…..I'm finding this with the Martin Beck series. I’m on book 8 now and there are only 10. I'll miss them terribly when they’re all finished.

However I’ve only read one Maeve Kerrigan so far - so another pleasurable experience awaits, going by all the reviews on here!

For those using BorrowBox. How many can you reserve at once. Ours is 4 ebooks and 10 audiobooks but my mum in the next door council area only has a max of 4 audiobooks.

I’ve just checked and it looks like I can have 9 ebooks and 9 audiobooks out at once.

Having said that I’ve never tried having more than one or two out at once!

@campingwidow I can borrow five books and if I reserve any it's counted in the five. Audio is ten afaik but I don't use audio books. I do know that councils vary in content as well. During lockdown I somehow got myself a library membership of the nearest city as well as my own nearest small town and, ahem, no-one has ever questioned it. Different councils.
Years ago I bought a used kobo specifically for Borrowbox because I like my kindle and hate reading on a normal screen. I noticed recently you can get them on vinted very cheap.

10 Libby books
10 borrow box audio books

Nowhere Burning by Catriona Ward
This starts quite slowly, but superbly written, as always. Three sets of people - teenage Riley and her little brother Oliver, documentary makers Marc and Kimble, carpenter Adam working with reclusive celebrity Leaf Winham.
’Nowhere’ is the remote house and complex around which all the action takes place - comparisons to both Neverlands are inevitable - but Ward puts a fresh spin on the rotten core at the heart of innocence as you would expect.
It’s always difficult to review her books for fear of spoilers! I’ll just say it’s pretty much up to her usual standard, but nothing here to match the smack-around-the-head impact of Last House On Needless Street. The ending is maybe a bit bolted on rather than the inevitable conclusion that was there all the time but the reader just didn’t see it, but that’s probably me being a bit picky.

The Curious Case of Mike Lynch - Katie Prescott
A bold. I would imagine work began on this before the death of Lynch (and some of the other people in this book) on the Bayesian yacht. It is a book about his life, business career and fraud trials, and not really about his death. Prescott is a journalist for The Times and this is very well written about a somewhat monstrous man.

The 22 Murders of Madison May - Max Berry
If you've read and enjoyed 'How Soon is Now', 'The 7.5 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle' etc, then you will like this. We open with Maddie May, a 22 year old realtor, showing a house to Clay. He then attacks her.

Felicity, a political journalist, is roped into covering the murder for her paper and discovers a mysterious symbol on the wall. She then discovers that the multiverse theory is not just a theory...

Pretty good, and not as confusing as these books can be sometimes :)

I hope things are picking up for you Sheila.

The Little I Knew by Chiara Valerio tr. from Italian by Ailsa Wood Liked but didn’t love this evocation of life in a small Italian coastal town. The most enigmatic resident has died in her bath. How much does lawyer Lea know about the life of the woman who had settled in the town 30 years ago, and have any circumstances around her death been overlooked? This wasn’t the page-turner that the blurb might suggest, but it was evocative of sea and sunshine which was welcome in the never ending drizzle here and quietly thought provoking about privilege and privacy.

They Do Things Differently There - Jan Mark

This was a YA novel from 1994 based around two slightly misfit teen girls who invent a fantasy world together about a fictional town, Stalemate, hidden beneath or alongside their own terribly dull town. At times they find the story taking on a life of its own and it brings them a lot of joy to create the surreal characters and grotesque happenings. It has a bit of a Gondal vibe and the girls are named Charlotte and Elaine which I presume is a further nod to the Brontes.

I liked the premise a lot, but the actual goings on in Stalemate were a bit too far on the weird fantasy side for me and the book had the effect of a collection of sometimes rambling short stories held together by the narrative about the two girls.

They are a bit better @CornishLizard - work will be horrible for the rest of the week still, but hopefully improve next week.

So glad you liked it DuPain. I ended up buying Pete's book of photographs from the hike(s) and it is absolutely spectacular.

I’ve added that to my wish list - sounds like a great coffee table book!

13 Crypt - Alice Roberts
Explores the archaeology of British burials from the medieval period, especially focusing on osteopathology, or what the bones can tell us about the diseases people were suffering from. This is very up my alley, but as in her other books, Alice Roberts does have a habit of circling round a variety of interpretations until you’re left very confused about what the current consensus (or her personal conclusion) might be. It’s all a bit, ‘we used to think syphilis came from the Americas after 1492, but now we’ve found some earlier burials that might show signs, but then again it could be another related disease… or the same disease… so now it does look like it came from America, except there are these complications…’

I don't find Alice Roberts to be an engaging writer, @LadybirdDaphne . It's a shame, because her subject-matter interests me, but she loses me with the writing.

21. Selected Essays, G K Chesterton
I've been reading a short essay a day for a couple of months. I've enjoyed his essays in the past, but it looks like the person making this selection has different taste to me, so I ended up skimming through quite a few of them. GKC is at his best when he discourses on trivial things with mock pomposity, eg the contents of his pockets. He may be too much of a one-trick pony to read every day.

22. In Ordinary Time, Carmel McMahon
A memoir by an Irish woman who moved to the US in the nineties. She writes about her alcoholism and is interested in how trauma can be handed through the generations. I'm not sure this argument is well fleshed-out. She has enough trauma in her immediate family without needing to go further back. I didn't totally love it, but I did find it readable.

23. Albany, Gretta Mulrooney
Thanks to @RomanMum for mentioning this - I really enjoyed it. A man travels to his parents' house to spend time with his dying mother (again in Ireland - I wasn't consciously seeking out more Irish misery but there you go). It sounds like it should be bleak, but it's not at all - he remembers his mother as she used to be, exasperating and larger than life, and it's warm and funny and affectionate.

24. The Second Cut, Louise Welsh
This is crime fiction featuring a gay auctioneer in Glasgow. It's a sequel, published twenty years after the first book with the same protagonist, and what's fascinating is the backdrop of how gay life has changed in Scotland in two decades. Very engaging.

Agreed. I had to give up on her as she’s such a dull writer, even though I was interested in the subject. Total yawns-ville.

I agree on Alice Roberts- it’s a pity as I enjoy the tv shows she presents.
@bibliomaniaI listened to both Louise Welch books last year read by Alan Cumming and thought they were terrific. There’s a new one just out though I think it may just be a novella.

I’ve finished 26 Passing On by Penelope Lively
I didn’t like this as much as Moon Tiger but the writing was still exquisite and I loved the middle aged siblings after protagonists. It explores the impact of the death of a domineering mother on two (of 3) siblings both of whom were single and still lived in the family home. I found Helen a more sympathetic character than Edward even without the ending which is very much of its time. I have more books by her and will continue reading them but this one was just okay. RWYO

@ÚlldemoShúl I have the newest Louise Welsh on my bookshelf and am about to launch into it.

Oh fab! Let me know how it goes.