50 Books Challenge 2026 Part Three

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the third 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 first thread of the year is here and the second thread here

Loved this review, @PermanentTemporary .

Looks like I'm alone in enjoying Our Evenings! I didn't mind too much that not a whole lot happened, I just liked the milieu and the writing. Although I thought Dave's mother's storyline was the most intriguing storyline, and would have like more of this and less Theatreland.

I do remember listening to it pretty much in its entirety on an epic drive from the North to Dorset and back though, so perhaps being trapped on the M5/6 makes almost anything seem exciting and diverting...

I liked Our Evenings too, @StrangewaysHereWeCome.

I loved that review too @PermanentTemporary. It sounds totally mad.

@PermanentTemporary I think Marina Hyde reviewed this a few months ago and remember thinking it sounded great.

As an aside, I just saw an ad for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf which is on in the west end later this year. We did it as an A level text and watched the film with Burton & Taylor. I remember thinking at the time it felt quite like their life!

I’ve just ordered another 3 biographies by Lewis, I want more. Though he says he usually loathes the person he’s writing about by the end, which suggests the bile may overflow in some cases. Not Charles Hawtrey though, apparently.

Erotic Vagrancy is 99p on Kindle - of course I’ve bought it.

Burton was our local Hollywood celebrity when I was a small child so he and Liz were always in the Evening Post. His brother lived about a mile from us. Oh the excitement when they visited once. My Dad saw their car pass! It was talked about for months.

Great review of the Lewis book, @PermanentTemporary. He’s a one-off for sure but very entertaining and definitely doesn’t hold back (to put it mildly). It’s been a while but I remember enjoying his Peter Sellers biography. Also Seasonal Suicide Notes, which is hilarious and bonkers.

I read a Taylor/Burton book a couple of years ago called Furious Love it was only OK. Looks like I picked the wrong one.

Perfect timing @BestIsWest - I’ve bought it too, thanks @PermanentTemporary for the review!

13 The House on the Strand - Daphne du Maurier When I first read this as a teenager I was blown away by it - I love a time-slip novel and the weird 60s drugginess fascinated me. It remains the only du Maurier I’ve ever read, which gives me a bit of an odd perspective on her 😄 though I did see the 90s tv mini-series of Rebecca at around the same time as I read this book.

Revisiting it decades later, I enjoyed the same aspects as previously, though the shortcomings were more noticeable - especially the unconvincing relationship between Dick and his wife (what could they ever have seen in each other? Can people really hate each other that much after just three years of marriage?), and also the hand-waving about the science of the drug (I know it wasn’t meant to be realistic but it was a bit too much “mad scientist” for me). So I don’t think it’s quite a bold, though that might change as I ruminate on it. Definitely an interesting read and I liked the details about the Cornish landscape.

The audiobook for Our Evenings was very well read, @StrangewaysHereWeCome I mixed it up between the two

I quite liked Our Evenings but do take the point that all of his books are quite similar. The BBB is one of my top 10 books of all time though so maybe it’s my cup of tea!

26. The Satapur Moonstone by Suajata Massey - I liked this even better than The Widows of Malabar Hill, probably because the cultural and social background is established and the mystery is better. But the main draw is the character of Perveen Mistry whose success and happiness I am now invested in. Not a bold simply because I am a snob and this is a lightweight mystery but I will continue binging the series!

I’m behind with my reviews!

38 Giant – Edna Ferber – The 1956 film with Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and James Dean was based on this 1952 book. Its part of a USA 250 project read I’m doing. I cant really say that I enjoyed the book. I was more upset at an animal’s death than a human (because it was their fault that both of them died) Some of the cattle scenes were graphic and upsetting. None of the characters were particularly sympathetic. I’m currently watching the film and its interesting to see what changes have been made. Book Jett is particularly awful, quite the pantomime villain. James Dean plays him with nuance.

39 The Bookbinder of Jericho – Pip Williams. Recommended on here but I cant remember who by. Set in Oxford just as WW1 is beginning, it follows the journey of twins who work at the Oxford Printing Press. Enjoyable, but I was expecting it to be better.

40 Watch Them Fall – Marion Todd – DI Clare Mackay 10. Solid Tartan noir . No spoilers from me, but I was utterly devastated at the ending. It will take a while for me to get over it.

1. The Edge - Lucy Goacher

Reasonable thriller about a young woman who has returned to London after the suicide of her shy younger sister Poppy. just as she is starting to accept that Poppy took her own life, she meets Daniel, who has a similar tale about his sister Rachel. But Daniel is convinced Rachel was murdered. Amateur investigations ensue. An easy read with a rather bizarre ending.

13 Wham! George and Me by Andrew Ridgeley. Fun nostalgia, but this isn't going to win any literary awards. I mean, I guess that's usually true of a celeb autobiography, but in this case the standard of writing was really not great.

14 It by Stephen King. I know there are some big Stephen King fans on this thread. I only started reading him a few years ago, and this is my fourth. Obviously this is one that we think of as horror, and there were a few scary bits, but there was also a lot of plain old physical violence, which I don't particularly enjoy reading about. There's no doubt that King is a master storyteller, but this is my least favourite of his books so far (the others I've read are The Stand, 11.22.63 and The Institute).

@Tarahumara I wasn’t a fan of IT Richie was particularly annoying and I didn’t like the overt racism even if it was historically accurate

IT is one of those books I loved when I was younger, but did not like anywhere near as much when I reread it a few years ago.

33 The Chalk Pit by Elly Griffiths

There’s underground tunnels, murdered homeless people, abducted women, and of course bones, because otherwise it would make even less sense for Ruth to be haring round with the police. The Nelson and Ruth nonsense continues. Not my favourite in this series. Another RWYO and I still haven’t bought any books this year - a personal record in adulthood.

Enjoying the Our Evenings chat, I'm planning to read this later in the year as part of a reading challenge.

I've finished my next WP longlist book, Heart The Lover by Lily King, which is my favourite so far from the list. The story's narrator forms a bond with two of her uni classmates, resulting a conplicated 'triangle' of sorts. About two thirds of the way through the story jumps forward in time (not a spoiler, it talks about it in the blurb), when the past then comes back to haunt her.

I picked up two more from the list today at the library, The Mercy Step and The Correspondent so that's my reading sorted for the rest of the month. I'm still working my way through the Les Mis and ATOTC readalongs, though have fallen behind as usual!

Another RWYO.

34 Parable of the Sower by Octavia E Butler

Things have been gradually getting worse, and Lauren, who lives with her preacher father, step-mum, and brothers in a small, fenced community in California, uses her time to prepare for the eventual descent into anarchy. When the community is attacked and overrun Lauren grabs her emergency go-bag, which also includes the beginnings of a kind of religion, that Lauren calls ‘Earthseed’, and heads north. There were some grim moments in this book, but these felt proportionate, and I was grateful that this did not have the unrelenting misery that some post-apocalyptic books have. I don’t think this is quite a bold, but it was very good, and I think I’ll read the next in the series

27. Geneva by Richard Armitage - I am not a reader of thrillers but I enjoyed Richard Armitage's narration of Garden of Angels so much, I wanted to give one of the books he authored himself a try. Respectfully Richard, stick to acting and being hot. This has a good idea - woman with early onset dementia finds herself caught in some kind of conspiracy and tries to figure it out while battling memory loss, confusion, and sickness. Unfortunately, it follows the Harlan Coben style of a lot of fast paced stuff happening while not giving the reader a lot of reason to care. Combined with wooden characters and a weak reveal, it felt like a waste of my time. At least it was short. And it will definitely work much better as the miniseries it clearly wants to be when it grows up.

Finished 2 more- for some reason I seem to finish my books in pairs.
40 Gloria Don’t Speak by Lucy Apps
My 9th read from the WP Longlist (which is the only Longlist I’m sticking to for now- will pick the others up at some point). This tells the story of Gloria, a learning disabled young woman and her friendship with Jack. It is told from Gloria’s POV (the author has worked extensively with learning impaired women and bases the POV on that experience I imagine) and shows how vulnerable not having a full understanding of things can make someone especially when they can’t communicate well. I found this quite disturbing and upsetting but an important issue to consider making it very much deserving of its place on the longlist and the shortlist too I’d like to think. Cludgie I really enjoyed Heart the Lover too.

41 Death of a Lesser God by Vaseem Khan
The fourth Malabar House book sees Persis (India’s only female police detective in 1950) looking into the conviction of a white man (James Whitby) in the murder of a prominent Indian lawyer. Whitney’s execution is scheduled in a week when Persia’s boss asks her to reinvestigate the crime. The mystery is good and Persis develops well. The second half of this becomes a bit far-fetched but is saved by the social history of post partition India. A perfect break from prize lists.

By a strange coincidence I’ve been out tonight seeing 10CC and the young man supporting them sang a song he’d written about Richard Burton and Liz Taylor. There was a bit about trashing hotel rooms. He was very good.

I'm going tonight!

Enjoy @Arran2024!