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

How did you find Rejection ? @BadSpellaSpellaSpella it’s on my TBR

Thank you for the shiny new thread @Southeastdweller

Unsurprisingly, I have not read any of the WP nominees.

Happy birthday @RazorstormUnicorn

34 The Sixth Lamentation – William Brodrick as recommended by @Midnightstar76 I’m afraid I struggled through this. It was just too clever for me and the plot was too complicated. I got lost on who everyone was. Sorry @Midnightstar76 , it just wasn’t for me and I so wanted it to be.

Happy Birthday @RazorstormUnicorn ! 🎉
My birthday was in Sept and I treated myself to as many books as I could buy from Foyles and carry round London. Turns out that is 12 paperbacks and 1 hardback. 😅 I've just finished the final one last week.

That sounds very tough @Terpsichore . I really hope it eases soon.

Happy Birthday @RazorstormUnicorn

Good to see you back @BadSpellaSpellaSpella - hope you're doing ok.

Thanks, as always, for the new thread @Southeastdweller

Here's my list:

• Lethal White – Robert Galbraith
• Revenge wears Prada – Laura Weisberger
• Bookish: How reading shapes our lives – Lucy Mangan
• Maurice & Maralyn – Sophie Elmhirst
• Menopausing – Davina McCall + Dr Naomi Potter
• Crazy Rich Asians – Kevin Kwan
• Troubled Blood – Robert Galbraith
• There are rivers in the sky – Elif Shafak
• East of Croydon – Sue Perkins
• Notes on a nervous planet – Matt Haig
• Learn Italian – Paul Noble

I seem to have got into the habit of having too many books on the go at any one time! Almost finished my February chapters of A Tale of Two Cities and* am also still enjoying Strike's antics but The Ink Black Heart is proving to be my least favourite case so far. On my kindle I'm reading, and enjoying, The Light between Oceans set in Australia, and I've just started listening to Marian Keyes' Making it up as I go along* but not enjoying it so far.

Eurotrash - Christian Kracht
The History of My Sexuality - Tobi Lakmaker
Box Hill - Adam Mars-Jones
The Slicks: on Sylvia Plath and Taylor Swift - Maggie Nelson
Dear Dickhead - Virginie Despentes
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Slags - Emma Jane Unsworth
Novel About My Wife - Emily Perkins
A Botanical Daughter - Noah Medlock
The Idiot - Elif Batuman
Lonely Castle in the Mirror - Mizuki Tsujimura
Three Women - Lisa Taddeo
Roadside Picnic - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
The Hotel - Daisy Johnson
Is a River Alive? - Robert Macfarlane
Thank You For Calling the Lesbian Line - Elizabeth Lovatt
The Sound of Distant Cheering - K.M.Peyton
The Giant Dark - Sarvat Hasin
If We Were Villains - M. L. Rio
The Odyssey graphic novel - Gareth Hinds
The Oresteia - Aeschylus, trans. Oliver Taplin
They Do Things Differently There - Jan Mark
Katabasis - R. F. Kuang
Nature's Cathedral: A Celebration of the Natural History Museum
The Girls - Emma Cline

Gah, sorry for bolding failure!

Sorry to hear things are still crap @Terpsichore . Same here, so I was glad to get @Stowickthevast’s rec for some mindless crime reading.

it does, however, mean that I’d have to dress as a charred corpse for world book day.

Lol @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I didn't notice the bad editing but do mainly just whizz through crime books for plot.

@DuPainDuVinDuFromage Love the WBD question. Unfortunately, I've just stared a WP book about child abuse and an International Booker one about a shell shocked soldier so neither of those thanks. I'm also rereading The Great Gatsby I guess it'll have to be either Nick or Jordan, Gatsby is too sad and everyone else is too awful. (Not that Nick and Jordan are great)

Happy Birthday @RazorstormUnicorn. Dh bought me a book yesterday, Perfection, which I already had. Nice thought though. Anyway I went to Waterstones today and swapped it for A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing. And whilst there picked up Wild Dark Shore and A Family Matter in the deals. So all ended well.

The writing is very much of the tell don’t show variety and shares several of Rowling’s worst traits too. I’ve started the second one though, because I really do like the two characters.

17 . John and Paul : A Love Story In Songs by Ian Leslie

In the town where I was born….you get preprogrammed with the lyrics! I think there are 3 of us on 50 Books.

I really enjoyed this, although I didn’t feel that I learned anything new particularly, I think it’s a really worthwhile non fiction and I would definitely recommend it. A bold.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit not born in the town itself but not very far away at all!

@Terpsichore definitely Born but actually raised in the suburban vicinity - could be neighbours!

26 Matilda: Wife of the Conqueror First Queen of England by Tracy Borman

The Norman Conquest is a favourite period of mine, so I was looking forward to this study of Matilda or Flanders, wife of William the Conqueror. Unfortunately I didn’t really enjoy it, the main problem is that there just isn’t enough source material on Matilda to warrant a book. Also the author just wasn’t very good, I spotted at least one mistake and I felt that she presented very tenuous inferences as facts.

If it’s a seaside place beginning with an S or an F then very likely! 😂

@Tarragon123 oh I so agree I did find it complicated and did need to refer to the list of characters but I got so into the story and loved it.

@TerpsichoreOTW as they say locally!

Thanks for the new thread @Southeastdweller

My list so far:

1. The Obesity Code by Jason Fung
2. Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer
3. Is Heathcliff a Murderer? by John Sutherland
4. Can Jane Eyre be Happy? by John Sutherland
5. The Island by C L Taylor
6. Escape Room by Christopher Edge
7. Zero Days by Ruth Ware
8. The Last Odyssey by James Rollins
9. My Hero Academia Vol 5 by Kohei Horikoshi

Loving all the costume suggestions 😄

Gotcha!

@Midnightstar76 I looked up a man who lived near me in Edinburgh when I lived there, Anton Gecas. He was Lithuanian and accused of atrocities during WW2. I couldnt remember what happened to him and then this popped up today:

Former Edinburgh B&B owner to go on trial for war crimes from beyond the grave - Yahoo News UK

Its quite the story!

My list coped across

1 The Sleepwalkers by Scarlett Thomas
2 Hitler's People by Richard Evans
3 Malice by Keigo Higashino
4 The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits
5 Never A Dull Moment 1971 by David Hepworth
6 Murder at Mount Fuji by Shizuko Natsuki
7 A Beginner's Guide to Breaking and Entering by Andrew Hunter Murray
8 The Party by Tessa Hadley
9 Gabriel's Moon by William Boyd
10 Place Brugman by Alice Austen
11 A Quiet Place by Seicho Matsumoto
12 Tokyo Express by Seicho Matsumoto

Here is my review of Tokyo Express. It is the biggest crime novel ever in Japan and considered to be one of the best detective novels of all time in any language. It was written in 1958 and was recently reissued as a Penguin Modern Classic. So I was expecting great things. But it was incredibly complicated, based on train timetables - I could have done with a spreadsheet! I do like Japanese crime fiction. I find the style very soothing. But this, though very cleverly plotted, is not my favourite.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit & @Terpsichore I guessed, but I wasn't sure you came from the same neck of the woods. I was in F just a couple of weeks ago visiting relatives who moved out there. For a tiny segment of my childhood, i lived just round the corner from Forthlin Road. I always wonder what on earth people look at on the national trust tours. Tourists gawping at a 1950s council house - always seems a bit strange but maybe that is just me. Anyway, i digress. I now live in proper countryside where we dont even have mains gas.

Thanks for the new thread southeast .

Happy birthday Razorstorm. Good to see you BadSpella, best wishes Terpsichore.

I’m not getting much reading time and am discarding most of what I’m starting, but I have finally read Cannery Row by John Steinbeck - a lovely evocation of lives lived in the Californian sardine-packing district. Think it was probably reviews on here that made me pick it up a few years ago. Beautiful writing, more upbeat than I’d imagined, and more marine biology too.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit for some reason I thought you were a southerner. I’m back in the north east now but lived in the north west for a long time and got married near Stretton.

I’m another one who hails from your neck of the woods @Owlbookend, @EineReiseDurchDieZeit and @Terpsichore. My dad grew up round the corner from Forthlin Rd - when I visited it was basically a carbon copy of my grandparents’ house and how it must have looked while dad was growing up (and still did in places, they weren’t great decorators!)

Anyway, my trains afforded me enough time to get Tell Me Everything read. I loved it. Strout writes so well about people and mainly mundane, everyday happenings (though there is one significant departure from the everyday!)

Bob and Lucy are close friends and regularly go for walks where they discuss what’s going on in their lives. Lucy also visits Olive Kitteridge to hear her stories - and tell some of her own. There’s enough going on to move the plot along nicely and you get a real sense of the characters. A definite bold and I now want to read everything she’s written.