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

20. The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

I’m sure many of you will have already read this one, about twin sisters growing up in a small southern US black community in the 1950s who end up taking very different paths in life after one twin decides to live secretly passing as white. An absorbing read.

21. Onyeka and the Academy of the Sun by Tola Okogwu

One that my DC gave me to read, it’s about a British Nigerian girl who’s whisked off to a school in Nigeria for children with superpowers after she discovers that she can control her hair with her mind.

Adventurous and a fast paced quick read, although my DC definitely enjoyed it more than I did!

Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner

A woman is sent to stay in a hotel and meets other people there.

Instantly forgettable and thankfully short novel.

Winner of the 1984 Booker prize: what am I not getting?

26 Atmosphere, by Taylor Jenkins-Reid
A female astronomer joins the US space program in the1980s; with several other women who hope to be the first women on the shuttle/piloting the shuttle etc. A reasonably engaging story with a few irritating editing issues and plot holes for the mega pedantic like myself.
I would have liked a bit more on the actual astronaut program, the challenges of being a woman in the program in the 80s, what the astronauts actually did after "graduating" (they seemed to just hang around). Its really a romance, hidden in the backdrop of the space program and it's treated very well by the author.

27 Julie Chan is Dead by Liann Zhang
Twins separated in their toddler years after their parents were killed in a car accident. One adopted by a wealthy family, the other raised by a grabby aunt and in not as wealthy circumstances. No contact between the two over their growing years. Wealthy twin is a big influencer - think Becca Bloom.
Not so wealthy twin gets a mysterious call from Becca Bloom and heads over to her house to find she is dead and ..Julie steals her life. Then she discovers maybe things aren't as perfect as influencers have us believe. Weird don't blink vibes.
This felt like a schoolgirl essay. Well done on winning the school prize.

correction - *weird blink twice vibes

44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith
Pat is on her second gap year and gets a job in a gallery run by a man who knows nothing about art while lusting after her new flatmate. This was serialised in the paper after the editor heard McCall Smith bemoaning the fact it's rarely done any more and he says in the introduction it was a very different approach to writing, with something having to happen in each instalment/chapter. But this doesn't leave much time or opportunity for character development so you only know them on a superficial level, and some of the things that happen definitely defy belief. There are also missed opportunities to develop storylines. It was diverting enough but not a bold.

Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Read with DS, as harrowing as I remember when I read it as a child.

I'm the King of the Castle - Susan Hill
Very similar to the above. A boy and his mother move into a house occupied by a man and his son; said son does not want the other boy there and so starts a campaign of terror against him. I didn't like this - just too horrible and I felt some bits didn't ring quite true. Interestingly, the author in her afterword says it splits opinion with many adults not liking or believing it, but boys in the early teens often relate, which is really quite depressing!

Still slumping along with my long term classic reads- Volume 5 of In Search of Lost Time (which I hope to finish by the end of April), Orlando by Virginia Woolf (which I should finish this week) and Les Mis in the readalong. I’ve added a Daphne du Maurier book of short stories but they’re very similar in their construction so I’m jumping in and out rather than doing them in one go. I tried a reread of The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie on audio but even a reread wasn’t helping so now I’m listening to a free read of A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs- it’s pure nonsense so quite entertaining so far but I don’t know if I’ll finish it either tbh.

I broke my RWYO to buy a couple of books in Waterstones the other day using points. Just two that caught my eye and I hope will help me feel less slumpish. One is The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer- it’s a mammoth true crime so I’ll be saving it for another time. The second was a bold for me
Underwater by Tara Menon. It tells the story of Marissa both in 2004 in Thailand (in the time around the tsunami) where she moves with her father after the death of her mother, and 8 year’s later in New York where she now lives and works as an adult. The themes are about friendship and grief and hierarchies of grief. I found this a moving and thoughtful book and beautifully written. I also loved the nature writing about the ocean.
Here’s hoping this shifts me out of the slumpiness!

Still reading book 17, Black Sheep by Rachel Harrison, and really enjoying it.

Also now listening to the audiobook of Godsgrave by Jay Kristoff as book 18. I think Kristoff is my favourite contemporary fantasy author, along with Joe Abercrombie. Love a bit of grimdark!

29. Great-Uncle Harry - Michael Palin

I remember hearing bits of this when it was a R4 book of the week, but enjoyed it much more as an actual book. Palin set out to investigate the life of his great-uncle - who, as he knew, had died fighting in WW1 - and from fairly small scraps of information he uncovers the story of the youngest son of a prosperous vicarage family in Cheshire who somehow ended up fighting for the New Zealand army.
Palin knew much more about his own great-grandfather and -mother, Harry's parents - in fact, he'd made a film about them - but somehow there’s something infinitely touching about matter-of-fact Harry, evidently a bit of a loner who struggled to settle to a job and failed at colonial-type endeavours in India before heading for NZ and happening still to be there when WW1 broke out. Amazingly, he survived the massacre of Gallipoli only to be mown down in the utter carnage of the Somme, when thousands perished just to gain a few feet of territory. Palin's gentle, rather understated style of unfolding the story succeeds in making the ending all the more poignant.

36. Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion I am really torn on this one. On the one hand the writing is spellbinding, the precision of each word, each sentence, each thought. It's like reading shards of glass. And it is doing exactly what it sets out to do in capturing the illogical, repetitive, deranged way of thinking that comes with grief.

I think anyone who has lost someone will understand the thinking pattern she describes even if, like me, they aren't capable of articulating it like this. So it feels wrong to quibble.

But I find navel gazing tedious after a while and though this is excellent, best in class, outstanding navel gazing, that is what it is and I struggled a little bit with that.

I need a bit more momentum, a bit more emotion to really enter a book and while I understand the premise precludes momentum and it captures the frozen, emotionless feeling of grief beautifully, I think this is one I admire but not love.
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Have started and quickly paused Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy. I loved Wild, Dark Shore but her style and basic characters seem to be similar across books and WDS is too fresh in my memory for Migrations to be enjoyable. I will read it in a year or two so I can enjoy it on it's own merits.

@SpunkyKhakiScroller I also struggled with A Year of Magical Thinking. Upthread I mentioned Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks - similar circumstances but a much sparser style. The grief echoes through but it is much less navel-gazing.

Interested to read the reviews of A Year of Magical Thinking, as I have just finished The Correspondents, in which it features. I'm not sure I will prioritise reading it though.
books 23-25
The Correspondents by Virginia Evans Much reviewed and discussed here already. I liked it very much.
The Weekend by T. M. Logan Daughter's airport paperback. A group of friends find an enormous sum of money on a walk in the Yorkshire Dales. Lives and friendships start to unravel when they decide to keep it. Not really my usual thing but it was an enjoyable, pacey read and there were several clever twists.
Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin. Tells the story of a young intern who is caught up in a Clinton/Lewinsky-style scandal from the perspective of several of the different women involved. Great writing, great story, thought-provoking and uplifting. Really liked it and will seek out more of her books (I've only read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow so far).

I was not a fan of A Year of Magical Thinking and it put me right off Joan Didion

I enjoyed A Year of Magical Thinking, although I just checked my list and it didn't make it to bold status!

71. Bitter Water - Gordon Ferris

The second in the Douglas Brodie series. Works as a standalone but definitely better to read the first one first. Our hero now has a full time junior job at the paper and is trying to work out his love life and professional life in the wake of The Hanging Shed. The lines between what he could do as a cop and what he can do now as a reporter become rather blurry.

This time, a group of vigilantes is terrifying/titillating Glasgow by going after those who unjustly got off, and they've decided Brodie should be their pal in getting the story out. Complicated by some of the gangsters from the last book coming back into play, plus the seagreen incorruptible (ahem) of Glasgow's great and good. Another good read.

There's a book in the daily deals today - The Last of Earth - that made me think of @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie.

Has anyone heard from her? Hoping things have improved and that she will rejoin us soon.

40 . Daughters of the Bamboo Grove by Barbara Demick - this is from the longlist for the Women’s Prize Non-Fiction and is probably my favourite (so far) from the list. It’s the story of twins who were separated as young children at the time of the one child per family policy and the writer’s role in reuniting them. The story is genuinely interesting and suspenseful and the book benefits from writing about a subject that readers are likely to have some knowledge of but are unlikely to fully understand. It also benefits as the twins and their families all come across as very sympathetic - and what happens to them isn’t quite what I would have predicted before I read the book. It’s a bold and I am surprised that this hasn’t been shortlisted.

Thanks to everyone who has posted the reviews for the Women’s Fiction Prize -I haven’t read any yet, but Heart the Lover should be arriving on my BorrowBox very soon, which I am looking forward to reading.

41 . Nights of Rain and Stars by Maeve Binchy - 4 tourists bond after witnessing a disaster in Greece. This was a holiday read over Easter and had some typically sharp insights into parenting. When I reviewed Circle of Friends, someone described MB as “easy reading”, which I thought was a bit harsh as I think CofF is better than that. This one though was definitely easy reading.

Where I visited over Easter also had a print of a Gwen John painting, which I recognised due to the Mackrell book (& associated image browsing) and which looked stunning. The suggestion of a meet-up is a lovely one, but I’m not yet brave / ready enough for one.

@noodlezoodle- I hope things have improved for @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie
too. I have a few more reviews to catch up with including Heartburn, which I think was her recommendation.

Crown of Blood - Nicola Tallis

I bolded her Uncrowned Queen last year but didn’t find this as interesting. It’s a life of Lady Jane Grey and was Tallis’s first book. I think she probably didn’t have as much evidence to make her narrative as well as less experience of writing. Still, I have been meaning to read it for ages so glad I did.

18 The Silence of the Girls - Pat Barker
I mentioned further up that I was going to read this soon, and so many people told me how fantastic it is and they weren’t wrong. It’s hard to say it was ‘enjoyable’ because so much of it was quite harrowing, but it was brilliant and beautifully written and I loved it.

I will definitely go on to The Women of Troy but I may need a little break and some light relief in between.

We'll Prescribe You a Cat - Syou Ishida

I loved the idea of this, but I wish it had gone a bit deeper. Person is glum, is prescribed a cat and as a result re-evaluates their life and sorts it out. Job done. I’d also like the book to have explored / explained the people sometimes not being able to find the clinic despite having been there several times. There were other things that I didn’t quite get too, but that might be just me, I don’t always make connections if things are suggested or implied.

Over all it was ok. Quite quick to read.

@Benvenuto I also thought Daughters of the Bamboo Grove was excellent, and I say that as someone who has many partially read non-fiction books on her Kindle!

35. A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing - Alice Evelyn Yang. Another WP fiction read. This starts with Quinze who's father walked out when she was 14 but had just turned up at their family house 11 years later. The first part is about the impact this has had on Quinze's life but then we get flashbacks to other characters - Wei Hong in the 50s during the cultural Revolution and Ming in the 1920s-30s during the Japanese war. There's a lot of generational trauma going on and a fair bit of folklore and disturbing imagery woven through. I really liked it, a bold.

I've now read all of the long list apart from The Best of Everything which doesn't particularly appeal and Dominion which I may buy but will not get round to reading before the short list is announced next week.

My short list would be:
A Beast slinks Towards Beijing
The Benefactors
Gloria Don't Speak
The Correspondent
The Mercy Step
and either Heart The Lover or Wild Dark Shore

I have a feeling Flashlight will be on there though.

The weakest ones for me were A Guardian and A Thief, Paradiso 17 and The Others.

@Castlerigg I found We'll Prescribe You a Cat quite odd and confusing as well. It put me off Japanese cosy fiction after enjoying Before the Coffee Gets Cold. My faith was restored by What You are Looking for is in the Library, which has the same idea but is much better done. Was a bold for me a few months ago.

I have never heard of Sophie Hannah outside this thread and I can just tell that I wont be reading her any time soon. Not even the Poirots.

@BeaAndBen – I want an embosser now. I mean, who doesn’t. Any recommendations?

@StrangewaysHereWeCome – the latest series of Pilgrimage was based around the North East of England and very briefly into Scotland. I’ve not watched it all but I don’t think it was Melrose Abbey that they went to. I did see the part where they visited Durham Cathedral. I’ve been and it really is a magnificent building. Cuddy is on my wish list.

@MaterMoribund – “mawkish old stick” 😂That’s both accurate and hilarious, I think. But there cant be that many authors who have a railway station named after their books lol.

@myislandhome – from your list, Kindred was a bold for me, but I did not enjoy the Parable of the Sower. I also loved James, but I think its been quite divisive on here. The Wedding People was good fun, but very obvious.

@Piggywaspushed – I think “hauntology” is a new one for us all!

I asked Co Pilot to look at my Trello board, where I track my reading.
“You are a deeply habitual, emotionally intelligent, socially curious reader who reads for both ballast and insight—and knows exactly when they need each.”

@SpunkyKhakiScroller – I have just reserved the first book in the Perveen Mistry series from my library. Thank you! Also, are you Australian?

@Iamnotaloggrip – I read the first Scotland Street book years ago when it was first released as a book, rather than the serial. AMS’s Edinburgh is a trillion miles away from my one. But I suppose that our backgrounds are so different, it couldn’t be anything else.

I managed to get a lot of reading while I was on holiday. Some great books

46 Oh Caledonia – Elspeth Barker. Oh I loved this! Thank you to whoever first prompted the chat. This was so atmospheric. I was whisked back to 1940s/50s Calvinist Scotland. I cant add anything more. A bold. Just beautiful writing.

47 V for Victory – Lissa Evans. From the writer of A Small Bomb at Dimperley, Kindle suggested it as a 99p special for me. What I didn’t appreciate is that it’s the third in a trilogy. Why do I keep doing this?! Anyway, we start in November 1944. Its grim. Life in London (and everywhere else) is very difficult. Vee is trying her best to get a large house afloat with a variety of lodgers and her 15 year old nephew who doesn’t go to school. The lodgers teach him various subjects as part of their rental agreement. Only Vee isnt who she says she is. Can she keep her secret and can she and Noel survive the war? Witty and warm, I loved this.

48 Lady Tremaine – Rachel Hochhauser. I’ve maybe missed if anyone else has read this? Part of one of my American online book clubs, Lady Tremaine is the feminist retelling of Cinderella. Lady Tremaine is the ‘wicked stepmother’, twice widowed with a crumbling mansion and three daughters to find husbands for. She is a total badass and hunts for their food with her hawk Lucy, otherwise no one would eat. This was a definite bold for me.

49 Silent Bones – Val McDermid – Karen Pirie book 7 maybe? I feel that I might have missed a book as KP Nuts is in a relationship with a Syrian refugees who has moved to Canada. I just feel I should have remembered that small piece of information. Anyway. A dead body is found who turns out to be the prime suspect in the murder of a pregnant woman a few years back. KP Nuts and the Mint, plus Daisy who still isnt part of the team proper to get a nickname after 5 years investigating.

50 Reconstruction – Mick Herron. The back story to Bad Sam Chapman, who we know from Dead Lions (?) that the Service sacked him over a small matter of loads of money going missing. What’s a quarter of a billion pounds anyway? This fills in the blanks. If you enjoy the Slow Horses universe, you’ll like this. AFAIA, Bad Sam Chapman is the only character from Slow Horses that appears. I don’t recognise anyone else, but I might have got confused.

@Tarragon123 - no idea where my friend got the embosser, she saw an advert on Facebook. Here's what it looks like

I loved V For Victory as well. Lissa Evans is great, I've got all of them.

I’m a bit put off too, after this and Days at the Morisaki Bookshop. But I’ll look out for the others you mentioned at the library or on kindle deals.

Love the embosser @BeaAndBen Have a feeling there might be a run on them now you’ve posted that pic!
Perfect to jog people’s memories to give back the book you lent them years ago!