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

Hmm, just finished Lucy Mangan's Bookish. I didn't like this nearly as much as Bookworm. Maybe because it's not so much about childhood reading, maybe because our tastes have diverged in adulthood (where our childhood reading was broadly similar) but also because there is so very much about her Farrow and Ball bookshelves.

I can't say I haven't felt a desire to travel and have adventures that feels uncomfortably connected to understanding that life is short and that I am getting older. I just hope I do it without making a strange, pervy fool of myself.

We can only aspire, @VikingNorthUtsire .

18 Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi

Timely read of this excellent graphic novel based on the author’s childhood and adolescence in Iran during and following the Islamic Revolution.

Just been trying to catch up - this thread moves fast!
New books (numbers 16 - 22):
A Family Matter by Claire Lynch - reviewed a fair bit on here already, this is a dual timeline story, with one strand set in the 1980s when a young mother falls in love with another woman, tells her husband and is deemed an unsuitable mother. The present-day narrative has her daughter finding out what actually happened all those years ago. I really liked this - the writing style was so sparse and understated, and everyone is portrayed with compassion and empathy.

One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Bookclub re-read) I'm a big fan of TJR and I enjoyed this, though I don't think it's one of her best. Premise is that the protagonist's husband is presumed to have died in a helicopter accident. She rebuilds her life and then he returns years later and she has to choose between the two men she loves and the two lives she's created.

Brawler by Lauren Groff Short story collection. I think I admire Lauren Groff's writing but don't love it usually, but I really liked this. I might try to read more short stories if anyone has any recommendations.

Three Days in June by Anne Tyler Agree with the review upthread - classic Anne Tyler; if you like her, you'll like this. I liked it very much.

The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers Girl meets boy at babygroup. They have an instant connection, but also spouses. This weaves together them deciding to be friends and meeting each other's partners and becoming part of each other's lives with a fantasy alternative reality in which they have an affair. There is some funny social commentary. I enjoyed reading it, but I found some of the switching a bit confusing and clunky and some of it stretched credibility.

The Eights by Joanne Miller Four of the first cohort of women to be admitted to Oxford become friends during their first year there in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. We get to know them as they get to know each other, and also discover their backstories over the course of the university year. It's rich in detail about life for women at Oxford then, but also develops a moving story about the four women. I went to Oxford and my eldest daughter is in her first year there at the moment, so there was additional resonance and I enjoyed all the details about the familiar places, but I think I would have enjoyed it anyway.

The Names by Florence Knapp I feel like I've been waiting to get this from the library for ages - much reviewed already. I really liked it and finished it in one sitting. Definitely lived up to my expectations.

Long shot, but if anyone has been through an airport recently - any good airport paperbacks I should look out for? My most bookish daughter and I are going to Rome for a few days and a highlight of flying together for us is choosing an airport paperback each!

15 Sandwich by Catherine Newman. The protagonist, a woman in her 50s facing menopause, an empty nest and ageing parents, spends a week on holiday with her family (her husband plus aforementioned young adult children and elderly parents). I was going to write an "okay, not brilliant" review for this, but just before starting this post I was catching up on the thread, saw @bibliomania's recent review of Wreck and thought "oh good, a sequel, I must add that to my wishlist". So maybe I enjoyed this more than I realised!

16 Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey. This goes into surprisingly little detail about his films and has almost zero celeb name-dropping in it. It's more about McConaughey's principles and attitude to life - at times it reads more like a self-help book! He comes across as a decent, upbeat, thoughtful guy (who is also rather arrogant).

Bitch: A Revolutionary Guide to Sex, Evolution and the Female Animal by Lucy Cooke

This was so very nearly a bold. The initial premise is that Darwin and subsequent famous male zoologists ignored any data that suggested that females of the animal kingdom were anything other that the passive and monogamous females of the Victorian ideal and goes on to be a joyous romp through zoology talking to the (predominantly women) scientists debunking these gender stereotypes. The first third of the book is about mate selection (I now know more than I ever wanted to know about duck penises and vaginas!), then we learn about 'bad mothers', matriarchal societies, lesbian animals, parthenogenesis and hermaphrodites. Then in the final chapter which should have been 'gender stereotypes are bullshit and have limited zoological research for 100 years, there are a multitude of different behaviours across species that are all focused on optimising the passing on of genes to as many offspring as possible' we get 'gender is a spectrum and so it's impossible to determine what sex an animal is', but I can't work out if Cooke really believes that or if she had to add in a transwoman scientist working on clownfish lady brains in her final chapter to get published.

5 Nesting by Roisin O’Donnell
I* *loved this book , a great book club read .It is a difficult read at times with subject matter such as coercive control and homelessness but it highlighted a woman’s courage and resourcefulness while navigating her path out of this situation.

6 The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde by Eve Chase
I enjoy Eve Chase books for a light escapist read after something challenging. Old manor house, mysterious disappearance and sisterly bonds…..a perfect combo for a cosy read and light entertainment.

7 The Other Child by Lucy Atkin, mystery drama and gaslighting in this very improbable yarn. Not keen although I enjoyed a previous book of hers.

8 That Time Everything Was On Fire by Kerry Downes
A book about female friendships in a group of thirty somethings. Despite being in my sixties now I was thirty once and I really loved this book ! It maybe reflected my twenties more as I was deep in the trenches of parenting in my thirties unlike most of these protagonists but nonetheless I loved the characters and really did care what became of them.I thought it was a warm and kindhearted read,I would be interested to know if anyone in the ‘appropriate’ age bracket has read it and if so what they thought.

9 The Sudden Departure of the Frasers by Louise Candlish . Another very light read in
psychological thriller /family drama genre. Intriguing in parts but too long and not my favourite of Louise Candlish’s thrillers.

Just about to embark on next book club read Beloved by Toni Morrison

I very much disliked Sandwich. I thought it was some kind of pro abortion rights treatise disguised as a novel. When the lead character announced that her husband, who was presented all through the book to us as being a physical therapist, used to teach ethics as a philosophy lecturer to drum home the home that he really knows what he is talking about, that's when I decided I had had enough.

Yes @Arran2024 I do agree that it had its flaws.

Finished two more shorties very slowly considering I’m off work. Am a little bit slumpy which is not surprising after reading too much last month.

King Lear by William Shakespeare
Only read because it’s book group read. I don’t get Shakespeare. I don’t know why people only take advice from literal fools and madmen. I don’t know why so many people today still like the ott violence and/or slapstick and people not recognising their brother/ friend etc in disguise is far too frequent a plot point. Reading burn out? Me?

Perspectives by Laurent Binet
Renaissance artist Jacopo Pontarmo has been discovered murdered in the church he is painting for Cosimo de Medici. Furthermore, a somewhat scandalous painting he had done of Medici’s daughter Maria has gone missing. Medici asks Georgia Vasari to investigate. This should be a book I absolutely loved- art theme- crime- history- but I didn’t. It’s an epistolary novel and it’s either that or the translation that just doesn’t work- possibly both. It took far too long to get into, the characters feel too distant and some of them aren’t distinct enough. Disappointing or victim of the slump? Not sure. I have 1 more book club read (Orlando) this month and one more WP book (Paradiso 17) but apart from that I’m going on an easy reading mood reading binge for the rest of April and May. (Tackling Ulysses in June so definitely need to be deslumped by then)

39 . To be Young, Gifted and Black by Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason - another one from the Women’s Prize Non-Fiction longlist, this is a memoir by a mother whose children are outstanding classical musicians or otherwise employed in the Arts. This reminded me of the Ece Temelkuran memoir on the shortlist, in that it is also written by a woman who by some measures is very privileged as her children have educational and professional opportunities that are not available to other children, but who also has suffered traumatic experiences that again differ from most people’s experience. In this case the author and her family have been the victims of racism and what she describes from both her own childhood and her children’s experience is shocking and abhorrent. Again like the Temelkuran book, there are themes in this that I’m interested in including the value of the Arts in Education and her own family history in Wales and Sierra Leone and I would have liked to read more about these - that said, I didn’t completely warm to the author. Again like the Temelkuran, it made me think about how a memoir is quite a tricky format to structure to maintain the reader’s interest.

I'm heading off on holiday tomorrow, but just wanted to pop on to say thank you to the person who recommended Oh Caledonia! I usually make a note of who does the recommending, but I haven't in this case.

It is absolutely wonderful. Thank you!

27. The Private Life of the Diary - Sally Bayley

Started this months ago, put it down for some reason, then just picked it up a couple of days ago and it suddenly clicked in that funny way that happens sometimes. Bayley is an Oxford academic but with a difference - lives on a narrowboat, grew up in a strange and dysfunctional household of 12 children run by women - her grandmother, mother, and dominating aunt. Bayley was a bookish child who loved writing but her neglectful upbringing led her to put herself in care aged 14. We learn a lot of this through snippets about her own life, interwoven with the diaries she quotes from - everyone from Pepys to Alan Clark. She has a special affinity with Virginia Woolf, who features prominently.
I enjoyed this, although it’s not a conventional study of the form of diary-writing; more a slightly dream-like blend of history and memoir. I wasn’t totally surprised to discover that Bayley has actually written a memoir about her upbringing, Girl with Dove, which I'd be quite interested to read.

@bibliomania These Old Shades is my favourite Heyer. I am glad you enjoyed it.

I think there were a few of us, I certainly picked it up on recommendation from here and added my voice to the praise. I would have loved it even more as a teenager.

20 Dead Lions - Mick Herron Second in the Slow Horses series, and along the same lines as the first - the dregs of MI5, exiled to Slough House to carry out safe and boring admin tasks, save the day again. I enjoyed this nearly as much as the first, though the storyline was a bit too far-fetched for it to be a bold.

The Open House Sam Carrington
This was long (11 hours+) on borrowbox audible and had all the standard domestic/psychological thriller features - alternating narrators, long buried family secrets and people not being who they first appear. The first section is quite good. It plays on our fear of someone hiding in our house. Amber is splitting up from Nick and an open house is organised to speed up the sale. She spots 13 people arrive on her ring door bell, but only 12 appear to leave. Then we get noises, lights flashing off and her son saying he sees a man in the night. Is someone hiding in the house? The satilliete characters - Barb the overbearing mother in law, Davinia the nosy neighbour and Carl the creepy estate agent are quite fun to hate.
However, as they often do this falls down in the final section. It doesn't take too long to work out the basics of what is going on - the clues are blaringly obvious. This isnt a problem - I much prefer it to when a totally unhinted at plot line emerges from nowhere. What is a problem is when the whole thing is concluded in double quick time with previously sane characters acting in totally unhinged and irrational ways. By the end any slight sense of menace is gone - it becomes a completely ridiculous violent pantomime. I still enjoyed it as a silly 'page turner' though.

I’m onto No One Would Do What the Lamberts Have Done now. I’ve come to expect batshit endings from Sophie Hannah, but this one seems to have jumped the shark from the start.

Almost Life - Kiran Millwood Hargrave

I loved this. It follows Erica and Laure throughout their lives, from their first meeting in Paris in 1978, through various relationships, until around 2013 or so. It reminded me a lot of One Day so if you liked that it’s worth giving this one a try.

A Stranger In Corfu - Alex Preston

Unfortunately I did not love this! I read it because it’s (partly) set in Corfu, but it’s all about retired spies living on a small island just off Corfu, and events in the past leading up to events in the present (which for the book is around 1996). I did like the setting but I don’t really like spy stories and found that aspect of it hard to follow so this one wasn’t for me.

The Drowned: John Banville.

The third Strafford and Quirke mystery. 1950s rural Ireland. A loner comes across an abandoned car in a field near a beach. He approaches the scene despite his misgivings and finds himself caught up in the disappearance of a woman whose husband claims threw herself into the sea.

This was a slow-paced, atmospheric read. The characters, Detective Inspector Strafford and Pathologist Quirke, are unlikely allies as they can barely stand the sight of each other and it doesn't help that Strafford is romantically linked with Quirke's daughter.

The mystery loops back to the second book in the series ('The Lock-in') which was unexpected. I remember not feeling convinced with the ending of that book; this one brings a resolution. Similar to other books in the series, the description of place and time, particularly the evocation of class differences is brilliantly done and the writing is excellent.

Recommended if you liked the previous books in the series.

I've just finished Almost Life and really liked it too. While I can understand the One Day comparison, I thought One Day was rather overhyped (and I'm irritated that a book written by a man was viewed in a different way from many excellent commercial fiction reads by women) and that Almost Life is a better book.

@SpunkyKhakiScroller , I do slightly wish that I hadn't read The Devil's Cub so I would have known the characters' background.

Oh no, I can see how thar must be annoying. Have you read The Black Moth? That's the first of the three though the characters have different names. Monseigneur is the villain in that one!

I have The Black Moth on my shelf, @SpunkyKhakiScroller , so will do them all in the wrong order.

16. Menopausing by Davina McCall with Dr Naomi Potter

Subtitled “The positive roadmap to your second spring”.

All about the menopause. I suspect I’m getting near to that stage of life, so picked this up to read up about it.
There’s some helpful information in here, but the style of writing in this book was a bit too chatty for my liking. But that’s a me problem. I’m sure plenty of other people would disagree!