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

Yes, I read 0 Caledonia! a few years ago and am sure I got the recommendation on here as well. Fabulous book, deserves to be better known.

15) Play Nice by Rachel Harrison.
When her estranged mother, Alex, dies suddenly, stylist & influencer Clio ends up inheriting the delapidated childhood home that she and her sisters moved into after her parents' messy divorce. Alex believed the house to be haunted by a demon, which ultimately led to her loosing custody of Clio and her sisters as her alcoholism and erratic behaviour intensified. Bereft but undeterred, Alex wrote a book of her experiences in the house which she insisted were true to her dying day.

Clio decides to renovate the house and flip it, making social media content of the process along the way. She stumbles across Alex's book in her childhood bedroom and starts reading it. As long forgotten memories start to resurface, Clio realises that Alex's claims might not have been so delusional after all...

I really liked to premise of this one, but it was just... Meh. There was very little horror, or even creepiness, and the bulk of the book was about Clio's dysfunctional family dynamics. Which ordinarily is fine, but I was promised demons, damn it! Where are the scares?! Could have done without the boring, shoehorned romance as well.

A solid pass from me.

25 The Women of Troy by Pat Barker

Second in the trilogy, I enjoyed this more than The Silence of the Girls, partly, I suspect, because I'm not so familiar with the story. I was a bit annoyed by the fact that the first 20 pages or so recapped what I'd just read, but I suppose some people (who?!) will start on the second book of the trilogy. Barker does a good job of generating tension and emotion and I felt this book did come more from the women's point of view, so it was more successful for me. Briseis's character is developed and her awareness of her own flaws, along with her growing determination to survive, creates a strong central narrative. The atmosphere in the women's camp is also well evoked.

23 . Boy Parts by Eliza Clark

A young photographer takes fetishistic pictures of men, whilst shagging around and taking lots of drugs.

I am too old for this kind of shit.

I found it crude and unpleasant, and it made me feel dirty. At one point we get the line “I was so angry I could feel it my cunt” and that’s pretty much the tone of the piece.

I have also read She’s Always Hungry and Penance by the same author, the former was forgettable, the latter interesting, if very violent.

I know lots of people have read this, some on here, and that it is generally well regarded but I absolutely hated it. It wasn’t for me AT ALL. Grim.

Some of my recent reads
The Road Not Taken and Other Poems by Robert Frost
This was a Christmas present. I love the title poem but struggled to enjoy the rest. My all time favourite isn't in the book Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.

The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous by Jilly Cooper
After watching Rivals last year I started re-reading my Jilly Cooper books. I adored them at the time and read each one as they were published but wondered how they stood the test of time. The answer for me is yes but I suspect many women under 50 would be unable to get past some of the content which is very much of it's time. Rannaldinni's seduction of his daughter's friend for example. I never batted an eye at the time but even I felt shades of Epstein reading it again, despite the precocious 17 year old Flora being delighted.
Other than that I love the fun, the humour, the resplendent natire descriptions and the animals.

A Murder in Pembrokeshire by Nicola Clifford
Amazon Prime loan
A Police procedural and my first by this author. It's only just a bold because I did enjoy it in spite of a slightly naive writing style. Vicki is a police officer who has been put back into uniform after a misdemeanor. She has ruffled some feathers at the station. Despite not being a DS she manages to investigate two parallel cases. A few tropes and hints of Mave Kerrigan but the writing is not in the same league as Jane Casey.

Harry Shukman was nominated for The Young Writer of the Year in 2025 for Year of the Rat . Harry now works for HOPE not Hate but was at this point a journalist . He went overcover as 'Chris' and infiltrated a number of Far Right groups, going to pubs, camping trips, conferences in Eastern Europe and doing lots of Zoom calls. What he discovered is troubling. There are two threads - the joiners who are almost entirely disaffected, lonely white men , many with drug , alcohol or gambling addictions (or who are just violently racist). More chilling are the 'intellectuals' at the top - ex academics and proponents of race science and pronatalism who often openly admit they manipulate the first group for money. There are a lot of out and out grifters. One person close to the world of politics admits they want the country to 'go to shit' if they get power because only then will they be able to do what they want politically. There are quite a few political opportunists amongst the educated group.

Sobering stuff - more entertaining that I make it sound and a propulsive read.

The Killing Time - Elly Griffiths

Book 2 in The Frozen People series.

Hmm. I enjoyed Book 1 about a secret time-travelling unit in the Met police, but this one less so. I prefer series where each book is a self contained story even though the characters might develop (eg Maeve Kerrigan) and this book didn’t really work like that.

28. The Noise of Time - Julian Barnes

A re-read for me, and I wouldn’t have chosen another Julian Barnes so soon after my last one had this not been a selection for our local book group. However, if anything this was a more immersive read second time round. Barnes brilliantly inhabits the mind of Dmitri Shostakovich, most of whose life was lived under the shadow of Stalinism, and who, from the age of 30 or so, expected to be ‘purged’ at any moment after his opera ‘Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk’ was denounced in Pravda, obviously at Stalin’s direct behest. He actually managed not to join the Communist party until under intolerable pressure in the 1960s, after Stalin’s death, but Barnes portrays an artist haunted for the rest of his life by a mixture of terror, defiance and self-loathing at his own moral cowardice. It’s beautifully written (as always with Barnes) and a great feat of the imagination, since Shostakovich was famously elliptical about his actual beliefs and nobody can be certain what he really thought - although his music offers many clues.

40. Powder and Patch, Georgette Heyer
One of her earliest books, this felt quite clunky to start off with, as if she hadn't yet settled into her style. Philip loves Cleone, but both Cleone and his father are adamant that he needs to leave his country-boy ways behind and acquire a little social polish. And so off he whirls to Paris to do exactly that.

What won me over is his sheer glee in doing so, and it's fun to see a male version of the ugly duckly to swan narrative - he learns to wear pretty clothes, do his make-up and jewellery, and to flirt outrageously, and the narrative approves this as entirely manly. Silly but fun.

@SheilaFentiman I bought The Killing Time on offer at 99p. I really enjoyed the first one but I have found Elly Griffiths to be a bit variable. There's a police procedural series about a policewoman called Harbinder Kaur, a great character with a dry wit. The last one in the series barely features her and I DNF.

Harbinder is my favourite of her main characters too :)

I have just been given a personalised embosser for my birthday so I've been stamping all my books this year with my beautiful new motif with a worker bee and my name.

The Trackers by Charles Frazier is my first embossed book and it's so beautifully written.

Awake by Jen Hatmaker

Jen Hatmaker is an American pastors wife, who is a bit famous if you move in certain circles. I have been following her for about 15 years now on Facebook.

I especially liked a previous book of hers called 7 which was her trying to show a different path from consumerism. She spent a month eating only 7 foods and a month only wearing 7 items of clothing, that sort of thing.

She slipped off my radar at one point and I think it was around when she in an interview she said she believed in LGBT equality, she is also outspoken in her dislike of Trump. Oh yes, and she is anti racist. None of that went down well in conservative Christian circles and she was cancelled. (Sort of, she still has 822k followers on Facebook).

Anyway she popped back on my radar when her marriage broke up. And then again one she started dating someone new.

The book is a memoir of the difficult time after the initial split. I think it could be helpful to someone going through it? But only if you are able to throw money at your well being. She could afford therapy, a new car and house renovations. Also, her online community came in with several offers of free stays in Colorado, NYC and Maine. Something not available to me when I grieved my own losses. She also has a huge friend circle who love her, buy her generous presents and spend lots of time hanging out with her. If you feel a bit lonely, this probably won't make you feel great about yourself.

Despite not going through a divorce right now, I did still resonate with how she feels about the church, that the narrative she taught growing up were rooted in patriarchy.

So overall, pleased I read it, but not really a recommendation!

The Paris Express - Emma Donoghue

Novel based on the 1895 crash of a locomotive at a Paris railway station. This follows various passengers (some real, some fictional) throughout the journey and then during the crash itself. It was fine, but far too many different characters to keep track of.

A Far-flung Life - M. L. Stedman

I loved this. It’s set on a remote sheep station in Western Australia, starting in 1958 with a road accident that has far reaching consequences for the whole family. I loved the setting, which I could really visualise, and thought the characters were very well drawn. I couldn’t put it down.

Yes @NotWavingButReading I’m 44 and really had difficulties with the three Jilly Coopers I’ve read and gave up after Polo

@RazorstormUnicorn I read Awake last year and thought the most interesting thing about her was her surname

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit she's actually really funny but that didn't come across in Awake!

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue
I liked this, it had some zippy dialogue and a sweet ending. Hated James Devlin, what a self absorbed little twerp he was and I would have liked some more revelation about this on Rachel’s part.
Not sure about the TV adaptation, with Mairead Tyres and Ardal O’Hanlon I think I’ll just go into a slump because Extraordinary was cancelled

17. My Hero Academia Vol 6 by Kohei Horikoshi

The wanna be heroes at hero school are trying to choose hero aliases and starting their internships in this installment, before a dangerous villain pops up towards the end of the book.
A dramatic and fast paced easy read.

Great to catch up on everyone's reads! The next part of my 2026 list is:

17. Vanessa Len - Once a Villain
18. Lesley Cookman - Murder under the Cliff
19. David Koepp - Cold Storage
20. Andrea Penrose - Murder at Somerset House
21. JR Ellis - Murder in York
22. Helena Dixon - Murder in Paris
23. Louise Minchin - Isolation Island
24. Deb Marlowe - A Killer in the Crystal Palace
25. Cara Devlin - Cloaked in Deception
26. Georgette Heyer - A Blunt Instrument
27. Josh Silver - Happy Head
28. Alexandra Benedict - The Christmas Cracker Killer
29. Alis Hawkins - The Hunters Club
30. Lesley Cookman - Murder in Bloom
31. Louise Hegarty - Fair Play
32. Catherine Cooper - The Lake
33. Cynthia Murphy - The Midnight Game
34. DL Fisher - Five Liars
35. Lesley Cookman - Murder at the Laurels
36. Rachel McLean - The Poole Harbour Murders
37. Nigel Planer - Young Once
38. Susanna Gregory - A Bone of Contention
39. Deb Marlowe - Death from the Druid's Grove
40. Enid Blyton - The Island of Adventure

I have A Schooling in Murder on my Borrowbox at the moment @Piggywaspushed and @Arran2024 but hadn't realised the 'twist' of it being narrated by the murdered teacher till I read the first few pages - and haven't been back to it since

My DTs (almost 11) have really enjoyed Holes @SpunkyKhakiScroller, they did it at school and have recommended it to me!

I really looked forward to How to Lose a Lord in Ten Days @StitchesInTime but didn't enjoy it anywhere near as much as the previous two Lady's Guide books by Sophie Irwin - do read those too, if you haven't already!

The Hallmarked Man was looooong @Welshwabbit but I raced through it hoping for a conclusion to the cliffhanger of the previous book...

I find the St Mary's plots (and plotholes!) are impossible to follow @EineReiseDurchDieZeit , gave up a long time ago and now just read the books for entertainment if you're still looking for easy/ inspiring reads, do have a look at YA fiction, if you haven't already - I read a lot of it as frankly my brain isn't up to being challenged these days as it's fast paced and entertaining. The Alex Rider series is fun and I love Lockwood & Co and Scarlett & Browne by Jonathan Stroud; incidentally I took DS2 to a Jonathan Stroud event a few weeks ago and he was a thoroughly nice chap

From my most recent reads above, I've been continuing some series I read before on Kindle Unlimited thanks to a cheap subscription offer, and am re-reading some of the Libby Sarjeant series - Murder under the Cliff being the last ever one A special mention to Five Liars in my list for starting well but ending completely ridiculously and with some gaping plotholes that didn't seem to be addressed anywhere...

22 Creatures of a Day - Irvin D. Yalom
Fictionalised case studies from an elderly psychotherapist, focusing on grief and the awareness of death. Key to facing our own mortality are building genuine connection with others, and living life to the full. Quiet, profound wisdom.

23 No One Would Do What the Lamberts Have Done - Sophie Hannah
From the sublime to the ridiculous…
Here’s my theory. Either:
a) She’s written something so very clever that only a few select geniuses can understand it, and I’m not one.
b) It’s completely emperor’s new clothes, and there’s nothing there to understand. There’s nothing beyond the ridiculous plot we’ve been presented with, and the hidden message is (maybe?) that this is just a fiction and we shouldn’t expect a plausible or rational explanation that would make real-world sense? Maybe?

Not sure it’s worth expending further brain power on, but that’s probably not going to stop my brain from trying. Especially at 3am.

@LadybirdDaphne (and others perplexed by Sophie Hannah), I read this interview with her about No One Would Do What the Lamberts Have Done which made me very clear I was going nowhere near it (to be fair I'm not a fan and have given her books a swerve for a while). Don't know if it will help you but here you go (there may be spoilers for those who've not read the book)

https://people.com/sophie-hannah-dog-murder-essay-exclusive-11891532

Not a Happy Family Shari Lapena
Final borrowbox audiobook I listened to whilst away on holiday and without doubt the worst. I have read Everyone Here is Lying, by Lapena and it was and okay as a plot driven thriller. This was just boring. If you like reading about dislikeable, rich and selfish people squabling unpleasantly over an inheritance this is for you. Otherwise avoid.

18 - Fallout - Eleanor Anstruther
Overall this was a thumbs up from me. It’s set around the Greenham Common peace movement and follows a few main characters in early 80s Britain, trying to figure out what they actually want out of life. There’s a lot around traditional roles in marriage, motherhood and attitudes to sexual identity.
It’s an easy read in terms of pace, and the setting really worked for me too — it felt quite vivid, and I liked that sense of being dropped into that moment in time. (I would’ve been about 5 or 6 then, so it had a bit of a nostalgic edge.)
The writing was a bit hit-and-miss in places. I had to reread a few sentences, and there were some typos — probably because it’s an advance copy — but it did pull me out of the story now and then.
I thought it was an interesting take on a time of big social change, with characters that gave you plenty to think about.

Fallout sounds interesting, @nowanearlyNicemum

I think I've pretty much given up on Sophie Hannah too, although if I see the latest in the library, I might pick up out of curiosity. Her books begin so well, but the endings are invariably ludicrous. The Narrow Bed remains my benchmark for most ludicrous motivation for murder ever committed to paper (or pixels).

For some reason I thought Sophie Hannah looked completely different (must have mixed her up with someone else!), but it sounds like the plot of No One Would Do What the Lamberts Have Done is along the same lines as the drivel which was Haven't They Grown (AKA: some hours of my life I'll never get back), so I'll also give it a miss...