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

Following on from prize discussion I have added Benefactors and Heart The Lover to my wish list. I also added Charlotte McConaghy prior book Migrations. Although Wild Dark Shore wasn't quite a bold for me, it was 4.5 stars so I'll happily read more by her.

Also, it's my birthday today and I received no books which is fine, I think I would be hard to buy for in that respect.

So I spent a pleasant 15 minutes scrolling my wish list and purchasing two books at full price as a treat. The Last Season by Eric Blehm about the disappearance of a park ranger in the Sierra's and I pre-ordered the paperback of A Walk In The Park by Kevin Fedarko as I am confident that will earn a place on my shelf.

Satisfied with my purchases, I checked my emails for confirmations and the exact minute I placed those orders a friend sent me a very generous amount of Waterstones vouchers!! So I get to do more book shopping! What a pleasant error to have happened!!

Just spotted a 99p deal - non fiction - Barbara Demick, Daughters of the Bamboo Grove

@DuPainDuVinDuFromage apart from poor Fantine, I have the protagonist of Appointment with Yesterday who is a nondescript, middle-aged woman with frizzy hair. So no costume required. Win!

Thanks @Southeastdweller

Finished the first Washington Poe book. I thought it was badly written and really, really needed some editing but a good story and I liked the two main characters. The relationship had something of the Bill/Holly In Stephen King’s Mr Mercedes series. I’ll probably read more now, but would really like to get my red pen out on the writing.

@VikingNorthUtsire that’s the best kind of costume! I also fit that description 😄

@RazorstormUnicorn Happy birthday! Good timing re. the book purchases 😄

the healing seasons of pottery
all my mothers

Finished one and DNFed one
30 Morgan is My Name by Sophie Keetch
This was a free audible book and an Arthurian retelling from the POV of Morgan le Fay. It started out okay but became a bit too romance focused for my tastes. It was very formulaic - misunderstood daughter, becomes interested in healing etc etc. it was fine to while away the time while I did the ironing but I won’t bother with books 2 or 3.

The DNF was Don’t Let it Break You Honey by Jenny Evans- from the WP Non fiction list. It’s a memoir of a sexual assault and its aftermath. I kept reading until 30% to be respectful of what the author had been through and I feel bad DNFing but the writing was flat and when the focus turned to the press and the phone hacking scandal I really lost interest. Not for me.

Happy birthday, @RazorstormUnicorn ! @VikingNorthUtsire I enjoy Celia Fremlin, more for the narrative voice than the plotting, which can be a bit over-the-top.

My list (which I record in a physical notebook, being old school):

1. The Parallel Path, Jenn Ashworth
2. Chinese Parents Don't Say I Love You, Candice Chung
3. Overwhelmed, Brigid Schulter
4. Destination Lapland, Mark Wallington
5. The Hard Way, Lee Child
6. Hamnet, Maggie O'Farrell
7. Patricia Brent, Spinster, Herbert Jenkins
8. The Cutting Room, Louise Welsh
9. How the World Made the West, Josephine Quinn
10. The Unfinished Clue, Georgette Heyer
11. Nothing to Lose, Lee Child
12. Devil's Cub, Georgette Heyer
13. The Killing Stones, Ann Cleeves
14. The World Within, Guy Stagg
15. May We Feed the King, Rebecca Perry
16. The Lark, E Nesbit
17. This Rough Magic, Mary Stewart
18. The Bells of Old Tokyo: Travels in Japanese Time, Anne Sherman
19. One Fine Day, Mollie Panter-Downes
20. A Particularly Nasty Case, Adam Kay
21. Selected Essays, G K Chesterton
22. In Ordinary Time, Carmel McMahon
23. Albany, Gretta Mulrooney
24. The Second Cut, Louise Welsh

Like @carefullythere , I'm holding off on bolding to see what sticks.

Most recently, I finished:
Touch Not the Cat, Mary Stewart
First published in the 1970s, this begins when a young woman receives a telepathic message from the person she calls her lover but whom she has never actually met and whose identity she doesn't know, although she suspects it's her cousin. From there, it gets odder. She learns of her father's death, which may or may not be an accident, and returns to the ancestral home in England to try to decipher his mysterious dying message. It's all preposterous, but redolent of its era and I liked the setting.

Currently finishing the last few pages of The Score by C. Thi Nguyen. The author is a professor of philosophy, and this book explores why artificial scores make games fun (they get you sufficiently invested so that you commit to the playfulness) but why they can cause problems in real-life policy settings (eg. university rankings flattening out the distinct mission of different law schools). Any summary makes it sound like a trite self-help book (Be playful! Chase your own goals, not those set by others!) but he's more thoughtful and nuanced than that. What brings this alive is the author's enthusiasm for play, not just dinner party games and computer games, but rock-climbing and learning yoyo tricks and experimenting with recipes. I have developed a slight crush on him over the course of the book (but will not be dressing up as him, per @DuPainDuVinDuFromage 's question).

Happy Birthday @RazorstormUnicorn I don’t get books either unless I specifically request something because no one knows what to buy me

@DuPainDuVinDuFromage Mines a suit and a Mop Top haircut (the Beatles)

Happy birthday @RazorstormUnicorn. Glad you've sorted yourself a book-treat!
I am also a book giver, rather than a receiver. I have a longstanding tradition with my mother in law that I get her my favourite book of the year for her birthday. But my kids got me Nesting for Christmas this year, which was a random pick that I really enjoyed.

Happy birthday @RazorstormUnicorn.

Currently reading The Upside-Down World: Meetings with the Dutch Masters - Benjamin Moser so torn between dressing up as Girl with a Pearl Earring or Rembrandt’s Portrait of a 62-year-old Woman.
More likely to pass as the latter given my age.

Happy birthday @RazorstormUnicorn

I'm currently reading I'm Not As Well As I Thought I Was so I guess I'm dressing as Ruby Wax 😆

@DuPainDuVinDuFromage I’m coming as Madame Defarge, complete with knitting and gallows!

Oh this is a great idea for my (embarrassingly long) list of kindle and physical books TBR!

@RazorstormUnicorn Happy Birthday!

@Tarahumara I do the exact same thing but using folders in kindle. This is to help me with my RWYO campaign

@DuPainDuVinDuFromage I would be Anne from Anne of Greengables for world book day 🙂

@RazorstormUnicorn Happy Birthday! Well based on books currently reading I would be Elizabeth from Jane Austen’s Persuasion but yep with frizzy hair can’t tame my mass of curls/frizz lol

Happy birthday @RazorstormUnicorn!

Thanks for the new thread, South. Here’s my rather stalled list since the start of the last one - frustratingly, my wrist is being a lot more painful now it’s getting towards being healed, and the stiffness and the surgical scar are really bothering me, so attention span for reading is depressingly low.

9 The Man Who Ate His Boots - Anthony Brandt
10 So Long, See You Tomorrow - William Maxwell
11 The Lark - E. Nesbit
12 Lucy Carmichael - Margaret Kennedy
13 A Father’s Diary - Fraser Harrison
14 Bookish - Lucy Mangan
15 Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found - Andrew Graham-Dixon
16 The Proof of My Innocence - Jonathan Coe
17 The Locked Room - Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö, transl. Paul Britten Austin

Currently halfway through The Crowded Street for
the Rather Dated Bookclub. Sadly I fell at the first hurdle despite all my good intentions re A Tale of 2 Cities and never caught up, so too late to jumpnin now, sadly.

I’m spoiled for choice re World Book Day mainly thanks to the readalongs - like @DesdamonasHandkerchiefI could come as Mme Defarge. Then there’s Athena from the Odyssey & Les Mis offers Mme Thenardier, but I draw the line at Fantine (due to tooth related issues). I’m currently reading Blood & Sugar by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (author of the Art of the Lie) where the main female character gets to wear Georgian gowns, pile her hair up & shake the dice above her head at exclusive gambling salons (she is somewhat younger than me, but that could be concealed with Georgian makeup & hair powder). Failing that, there’s always Mrs Bennet or Lady Catherine from P&P.

My list:

1. The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt - how the transition from an outdoor-based childhood to an online one has led to an unprecedented rise in childhood mental illness.
2. The Lady of the Tower by Elizabeth St John - after being embroiled in a scandal, a Jacobean noblewoman retreats from court only to become mistress of the Tower of London.
3. The Ashes of London by Andrew Taylor - a young man meets an heiress when investigating murders at the Restoration Court
4. The King’s General by Daphne du Maurier - a young woman falls in love with a Cavalier general
5. The Fire Court by Andrew Taylor - more Restoration crime
6. The King’s Evil by Andrew Taylor - even more Restoration crime
7. After you’ve gone by Maggie O’Farrell - what led to a young woman being in a coma
8. This must be the place by Maggie O’Farrell - a man has a midlife crisis after listening to a radio
9. Invisible Agents by Nadine Akkerman - history book about 17th century women spies
10. The Lady of Hay by Barbara Erskine - medieval spirits create havoc after a young woman undergoes hypnosis
11. A Room Full of Bones by Elly Griffiths - a murder takes place in a room full of bones
12. Dying Fall by Elly Griffiths - a mysterious skeleton is found near Blackpool
13. The Outcast Dead by Elly Griffiths - the bones of a notorious murderess are found in Norwich
14. The Ghost Fields by Elly Griffiths - a body is unearthed in a WWII plane
15. The Woman in Blue by Elly Griffiths - a murder takes place in the pilgrimage town of Walsingham
16. The Chalk Pit by Elly Griffiths - bones and tunnels are found under Norwich
17. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin - childhood friends become pioneers in designing computer games
18. Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell - another man goes missing from his family
19. Young Rachel Young by Gabrielle Zevin - the fallout from a scandal involving a politician and a young intern
20. Bluff by Francine Toon - a man returns to Fife and searches for a missing childhood friend
21. Killers of the King by Charles Spencer - what happened to the men who signed Charles I’s execution warrant
22. Circle of Friends by Maeve Binchy - 2 friends discover love / infatuation & friendship in their first year at university
23. The Women by Kristin Hannah - a naive nurse volunteers to serve in Vietnam
24. The Crowded House by Winifred Holtby - a shy girl struggles in Edwardian Yorkshire society
25. A Schooling in Murder by Andrew Taylor - a ghost investigates her own murder in a boarding school
26. Yours for the Season by Uzma - cross-culture romance where 2 families celebrate Christmas in Alaska

The short synopses are because someone put them on the last 2025 thread & I found them helpful.

27 . Indignity by Lea Ypi - this was my first book from the Women’s Prize shortlists. It’s a biography of the author’s grandmother combined with the story of the author searching out information about her grandmother in the Albanian archives. This was very easy to read and an interesting insight into Greece & Albania in the decades following the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

Not too many bolds, but I’ve enjoyed most of the books. Les Mis will definitely be a bold & I will be very surprised if it is not my favourite book of the year. Thanks to everyone who posted about the Women’s Prizes - I’m hoping to read more of the shortlists now that I’ve worked out that quite a few are on BorrowBox (this is yet another thing that wouldn’t have occurred to me without this thread). Gabrielle Zevin is my favourite new author of this year (again thanks to this thread) - I wasn’t planning to buy any deals this month, which lasted until another of her books popped up in the deals.

I am reading Entitled but I refuse to dress as Andrew MB-W or Sarah Ferguson

Maybe I should be Athene from The Odyssey readalong!

Happy birthday @RazorstormUnicorn !

Fraudently checking in after reading .... drum roll .... one book. It was good though My Name is Why by Lemn Sissay.
DD is currently reading 50 bookers recommendation The Chrysalids by John Wyndam (aplogies abouts spellings - no time to check now). I asked her how she was finding it. I quote - "A bit weird". The eloquence of teens.
Nothing more to add apart from that I disliked the Kristin Hannah I read. The Four Winds - I think. Promising start that went rapidly downhill.

PS Happy Birthday @RazorstormUnicorn

Joining in nearly a quarter into the year, various life stuff meant i had to leave the group for a few months although I did keep reading and was able to pop in every now and then although staying away from these threads have been very good for my tbr pile.

Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
The black wall by Elizabeth Sanxay Holding
Old baggage by Lissa Evans
Small boat by Vincent Delecroix
Atlas of unidentified flying objects by Andy McGrillen
Nuclear war and scenario by Annie Jacobsen
Karios by Jenny Erpenbeck
The vegetarian by Han Kang
Rushing to paradise by J.G.Ballard
Rejection by Tony Tulathimitte