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

Sorry to hear about your wrist @Terpsichore.

@FuzzyCaoraDhubh- thank you for the French Radio App suggestion. It has been a real breakthrough for me as I’ve struggled to find podcasts that I’ve liked before. So far, I’ve listened to 2 podcasts on the Revolution (useful re A Tale of 2 Cities & Les Mis) & started to listen to an audiobook of Les Liaisons Dangereuses which I’m very pleased about.

Joining in the Maeve Binchy discussion, I agree that most of the men in Light a Penny Candle are vile, and that the book jackets are too floral (and previously put me off reading her work). I did like the dialogue in Light a Penny Candle though - there’s a great bit when Aisling is on a plane with her husband and brother and the dialogue just sparkles. The other Maeve Binchy books that I’ve read have been interlinked short stories and they haven’t had the same opportunity for dialogue. Re the vile men, I was impressed that MB just let them continue to be vile, rather than salvaging one for a happy / sentimental ending.

Re the deals, I have bought Heartburn (thanks to @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupiefor the recommendation) Daughters of the Night (by Laura Shepherd-Robinson author of the Art of the Lie), A Village in the 3rd Reich & the second in the Chronicles of St Mary’s. There are a few more I have my eye on, but I also want to do some more RWYO this month.

Excellent, @Benvenuto!
I'm delighted :)

6 ) A Village in the Third Reich: How ordinary lives were transformed by the rise of Fascism by Julia Boyd & Angelika Patel - My first non-fiction of the year, this was a historical account of life in Oberstdorf, a village in the Bavarian Alps, during the period after WWI through to the aftermath of WWII.

This was a fascinating dive into the individual stories and complexities of human nature in war. Such as the dichotomy of a devoted Nazi mayor who nevertheless took personal risks to protect Jewish inhabitants where he could, and advocated for villagers brought before Nazi courts. Despite this, the book doesn't shy away from the fact that the villagers couldn't have been unaware of the labour camps on their doorstep or the conditions within them. It was also interesting hearing about the resentment that many of them felt about the camp survivors and other refugees being housed in the village and recieving 'preferential' treatment from the American allies after the war.

Finally the formidable Hetty Laman Trip-de Beaufort & Elisabeth Dabelstein deserve a separate mention as the heroes they are. The owner and director respectively of a home for sick children, during the war they registered Jewish children arriving at the home as Aryan, then helped smuggle them across the border to safety in Switzerland. And if that weren't enough, Hetty spent her spare time smuggling provisions to the detainees of a nearby labour camp. Very inspiring women.

Definitely a bold for me.

How Soon Is Now and This is How to Lose the Time War are both 99p in the current deals, time travel story fans

The Reckoning - Jane Casey

Book 2 in the Maeve Kerrigan series. Maeve and the team are investigating the murders of a series of convicted child sex offenders, which turns into a wider investigation of a missing daughter of a local crime boss. I enjoyed this.

Just finished Death Around the Bend by TE Kinsey - a RWYO bought in 2017. An easy to read mystery book with quite a bit of humour between Lady Hardcastle and her maid Florence as they investigate. The third in the series and I’ve enjoyed them all so far.

5 Doppelganger: A trip into the Mirror World - Naomi Klein This started small (Klein's personal feelings about being confused with the feminist-turned-conspiracy-theorist Naomi Wolf) and then went big, covering topics including the pandemic, the Nazi treatment of Jews and disabled people, and (in a pretty terrifying short section towards the end) the climate catastrophe. It's very wide-ranging and its core theme of doppelgangers is an artificial construct to hold together a lot of disparate ideas and subjects, but overall I think the key messages are: the "diagonalism" she talks about (how certain views are shared by people who otherwise have wildly differing worldviews, and the old left vs right explanation of politics doesn't work any more), and the fact that we all have both a light and a dark side to who we are and what we do.

Something that I found particularly interesting was the idea that the political norm during the post-war period was only temporary, and in fact the current populist environment (where hippy wellness gurus agree with gun-toting rednecks about topics like vaccines) is not very different from how people aligned with each other in the 1930s. There was perhaps a bit too much emphasis on the Covid pandemic, reading the book in 2026, but this is understandable given the period in which she was writing it. And the thoughts on Israel-Palestine were sobering given the subsequent events (the book was published in September 2023).

As someone who quite enjoys the BBC's special correspondent for Stating the Obvious Disinformation, Marianna Spring, I agreed with a lot of what Klein says in the book and it gives a useful perspective which supplements the analysis of There is nothing for you here by Fiona Hill, which I finished a few weeks ago.

Sympathies on the wrist, terp.

I finished:
9. How the World Made the West, Josephine Quinn
This was Big History, covering 2500 BCE to 1500 CE, looking not just at Europe but Asia and Africa too. She's refuting the idea of the Western tradition being derived along the trajectory of Greece - Rome - Renaissance, and portrays history as a ferment of goods and ideas and people moving large distances and inspiring each other's development. While she has a Big Picture in mind, she's also good at the smaller You Are Here moments, which is what I really like in history books - you're walking across this space in this moment, and here is what you can see and hear and feel. It took a bit more effort than some of my usual stuff, but I'm pleased to have read it.

I finished book 5: Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson the other day. Meh. I couldn’t stand the main character, thought some of the motivations behind people’s actions was unbelievable, and had sussed out the killer pretty early on. It was entertaining though. The plot is that a woman is attacked and presumed dead, then when she wakes up in hospital she is told that she’s facing a 100% chance of a fatal aneurysm in the next week. So she sets out, after having her head bashed in, to solve her own murder before the week is out. A good premise, but I just found it all very over the top and the amount of various wrong doings committed by the people around her insane. I didn’t feel any empathy for her predicament and had no strong feelings on finishing it. I think this book really requires the reader to switch off and just enjoy the ride, but I couldn’t really do that. Probably says more about me than the book!
Having finished that, I’m on to the third book in the Neopolitan Quartet - Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay - and have loved the first 40
pages so far.

7. A Beginner's Guide to Breaking and Entering by Andrew Hunter Murray

This os one of those supposedly laugh out loud crime/mystery novels, but i don't have that kind of sense of humour, and I didn't even chuckle...

However, it was a perfectly decently plotted story and covered some interesting themes. I won't give them away.

It would make a good summer holiday read - i probably need something a bit meatier.

Found you all on the new thread at last!

I'm so sorry for your loss @PermanentTemporary

And sorry about your wrist @Terpsichore I hope it is not too painful

I scanned through what felt like 356 pages of kindle deals and found nothing at all which is unusual. I'm glad people managed to snap up more Maeve Kerrigan books, I think they really get going once Josh Derwent is established and they become hybrid crime/romance novels.

Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford. Murder investigation set in a kind of alternate history of America, in a Midwest city with an uneasy power sharing arrangement between Native Americans, African Americans and White Americans. A gory murder inflames tensions in the city while the police race to find the culprit. This was definitely very clever and atmospheric, but I did find it hard to follow - not helped by there being a made up language that I couldn't get to grips with.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. Very well known of course but I've only just read! An epic novel following Josef Kavalier, an amateur magician and escapologist, who manages to escape from Nazi occupied Prague and make it to America. He finds his cousin Sam Clay and together they start a wildly successful comic book about a superhero called the Escapist. It then twists and turns through the course of the war, as Kavalier tries to get his family out of Europe, and beyond into the 1950s. It's very long and bits of it meandered a bit, but overall I thought it was a huge achievement and very moving. A little bit like Tomorrow x3 in its focus on a creative partnership, especially for an art form that isn't generally taken very seriously.

I enjoyed your review of the Chabon @GrannieMainland I read it a few years ago and think I enjoyed it but found it overlong. I’m going to try searching for my review to remind myself.

Death of a Stranger by John Pilkington
Readable enough historical crime, with a sequel due out in May which I’ve preordered. Not as good as Sansom, but better than a lot of the other Sansom shadows that I’ve tried. Worth a shot, if you like that sort of thing.

@GrannieMainland I enjoyed Jazz too, but was disappointed by the ending iirc

I think I have Kavalier and Clay on Audible @GrannieMainland- loved the review and moving it up my TBR!

Not this year's reads but @MamaNewtNewt some recent time travel reads.
1.The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths Loved this one which is the first of a series.
2.Time to change by Callie Langridge. Time travel to 1913. Some bits brilliant but others a bit slow and wordy. Worth a read. There are four in the series but I DNFd the second one on the grounds of insufficient time travelling.
3.Stranded by Rosalind Tate . This had so much potential, a really original premise. The protagonists travel back to the early 20th century but history is slightly different. The Titanic never sank. WWI didn't happen. Unfortunately the author had a brilliant idea but failed to come up with enough plot to fulfil it.

It's a few years since I read K&C but remember I absolutely loved it at the time!

@TheDonsDingleberries i loved the morrigan crow series, it had propper Harry Potter vibes and i went and bought book three on the day it was released. I love middle grade books (my daughter is 10 so finally sharing the joy!). It took too many years for book 4 to be released though so I’ve not returned to them.

I’m not sure if I’ve seen a review of it yet but I’m having a lovely time with Lyce Ducet’s The Finest Hotel in Kabul. It follows a hotel built in the 70s and that survives today (I think!) through all the different regime changes there and the people who’ve worked there through it all. It’s really great. I don’t read a lot of NF but this sort where it’s more story telling-y is something I’d like to read more of. Just sad that it won’t fit in my bag for a mini break this weekend and it’s due back to the library next week!

I found my review of K&C (The MN advanced search is so rubbish) and I liked it a lot but was shocked, surprised and sad at the direction it ended up going in.

A couple of recent reads. I’m getting into RWYO, it’s quite cathartic. However I popped into Waterstones today and I’ve added Pagans and The Great When to my wish list for when I can start buying properly again.

7) The Wah-Wah Diaries - Richard E Grant

The story of the making of Richard E Grant’s 2005 semi-autobiographical film in diary form. I enjoyed With Nails, his earlier film diaries, and this is much the same tone. It highlights the struggles he had with his French producer in particular (no love lost between them), and the battle to get the film off the ground. It also brings home the love of Swaziland where the film was shot, and reminisces of episodes in Grant’s childhood/adolescence which are reflected in the screenplay.

8) The Guest List - Lucy Foley

A modern murder mystery set at a society wedding on an island off the Irish coast. The usual fare with unlikeable suspects, jump scares and red herrings aplenty. It was readable enough, but too many coincidences and I’ll probably have forgotten it in a few weeks.

4 High Stakes by Dick Francis
I wanted an easy re-read and this one popped into my head. One of DF’s lightest, and most light-hearted, efforts. Still quite fun, though I doubt the plot would stand up to much inspection. Early enough in the Francis oeuvre that there’s still plenty of horse action and not too much right-wing philosophising.
Steven Scott, a pleasantly rich toy entrepreneur and race horse owner, confronts his trainer with unpalatable truths. The trainer reacts with the fury of the guilty. If Scott wants to make the calls, he needs to find a way, and friends, to take control.

8. The Party by Tessa Hadley

This has great reviews and I can see why - the writing is sublime and it portrays post WW2 England beautifully.

It features two young women, sisters, who attend two parties together, plus we see them at home with their parents and brother and they visit an old neighbour.

Tessa Hadley uses the rather naive style of someone writing at that time, and I liked that.

But I struggled with the ending. I can't give it away. But I would love to discuss it with someone!

It's really a novella - 114 pages - and I read it in one day.

Seascraper by Benjamin Wood

Beautiful and atmospheric, it started very masculine but I enjoyed it more and more as it went on.

@Palegreenstars it was such a fun read. I definitely got Harry Potter vibes, but also pictured Nevermoor with bright, whimsical scenery similar to Wicked/Wizard of Oz.

Looking forward to the next installment.

Sorry to hear about your wrist @Terpsichore - hope it's not too debilitating. 50 Bookers have not had a good start to the year!

9. The Truth about Melody Browne - Lisa Jewell

I am fairly sure I bought this (in 2024) off the back of reviews/recommendations on this thread as she is not an author I have ever read before. I am really pleased I did.

Melody is hypnotised as an audience member called onto stage during a show and it triggers memories of her early childhood which she had forgotten after a traumatic house fire. The flashbacks to her early childhood are interspersed with current day events in her life.

The characters were believable, there was gentle humour, no self-pity and I raced through it

H Is For Hawk and The Mitford Girls biography both 99p on Kindle today.