Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

What we're reading

Find your new favourite book or recommend one on our Book forum.

50 Books Challenge 2026 Part Four

692 replies

Southeastdweller · 23/04/2026 09:10

Welcome to the fourth 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 as this makes it much easier to keep track of books or authors that may appeal (or not appeal) to everyone else.

Some of us bring over our updated lists to the new thread. Again, this is up to you.

The first thread of the year is here the second thread here and the third thread here

OP posts:
Thread gallery
5
Terpsichore · 12/05/2026 08:27

Belated Happy Birthday @ChessieFL and thanks for the book-haul photo, which alerted me to the interesting-sounding Nicholas Royle!

ÚlldemoShúl · 12/05/2026 08:28

Two new reads, both bold for me
A River Red with Blood by John Connolly
The latest instalment of the Charlie Parker series now 27 years old. I’ve read every book as it’s released for those 27 years and it’s one of the only books I pre-order. In this one Charlie is investigating the death of a teen at a reform type school in country Maine. This one also leans heavily into the overarching story of who Charlie really is. The usual supporting characters are here- serious appearances from Louis and Angel and the Fulcis, as always provide some comic relief. It’s not a place to start the series, but it’s a solid instalment for those who’ve been following along.

London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe
Already reviewed by Eine. Fascinating and propulsive story of the death of a teen posing as the son of a Russian oligarch. As always, PRK is the king of narrative non-fiction (even if his pronunciation of Abram-oh-vitch made my teeth itch like yours @EineReiseDurchDieZeit)

ChessieFL · 12/05/2026 08:39

@Terpsichore I’ll be reading the Nicholas Royle next so I’ll let you know what I think!

Thanks for all the birthday wishes.

HagCymraeg · 12/05/2026 08:53

Happy Birthday @ChessieFL 🎂

bibliomania · 12/05/2026 09:34

Happy birthday, @ChessieFL and I'll also be interested in how you find Nicholas Royle.

I've been racing to finish this short series during my free Kindle Unlimited trial - it ends tomorrow so pleased to have finished on time:

50. The Hanging Shed, Gordon Ferris
51. Bitter Water, Gordon Ferris
52. Pilgrim Souls, Gordon Ferris
53. Gallowglass, Gordon Ferris
This is a short crime fiction series set in post-WWII Glasgow. Our hero brings his army/police/crime reporter experience to bear in fighting crime. This more about action than the cerebral unravelling of a puzzle - imagine Jack Reacher sent back in time. I think the author decided to end it at the right point, with a fond farewell to his characters. Thanks @SheilaFentiman for the recommendation - a good read.

54. The Corinthian, Georgette Heyer
This is a pure caper - a young woman jumps out of a window to escape an arranged marriage, straight into the arms of a world-weary young aristocrat who has never been in love. Well, you can see where it's going, but there is fun along the way.

55. Ghosting, Jennie Erdal
A memoir by a woman who starts off working for a publisher as editor of the Russian translation list, and who somehow ends up ghost-writing his novels, including, at his insistence, some cringeworthy sex scenes. Her employer is a very compelling character. This is quite funny in places and insightful about writing.

56. The Years of Travelling Anxiously, Tom Sykes
Part of the attraction of travel writing for me is the idea of strolling into an unknown place with an air of insouciance and letting the experience unroll. The author of this book is a travel writer (and academic) but there's no insouciance here - he's prone to getting overwhelmed and being carted off in an ambulance with panic attacks. The part that most interested me was his account of going to Nigeria, firstly for his wedding to a Nigerian woman, and later for IVF treatment. I wouldn't say it's inherently a great book, but I liked it as an account of someone's experience. I half-expected him to play it for laughs, but not at all - it's an account of learning to cope with mental health challenges.

elkiedee · 12/05/2026 10:13

ChessieFL · 12/05/2026 08:39

@Terpsichore I’ll be reading the Nicholas Royle next so I’ll let you know what I think!

Thanks for all the birthday wishes.

Belated birthday greetings,

I think I need a copy of Finders Keepers, as well as my own copy of White Spines by Nicholas Royle. There are two Nicholas Royles - the other one is slightly older. This one lives between Manchester and London - I think he has a home a couple of miles from me but is employed as an academic in Manchester. He edits the annual Best British Short Story anthology and has written a couple of novels as well.

But White Spines is about trawling round charity bookshops and secondhand booksellers, particularly looking for copies of Picador books published over several decades with white spines. But he's started collecting Virago Modern Classics and other stuff as well. I couldn't resist buying a follow up - brand new paperback - a couple of weeks ago. Finders Keepers is the third book in a series about someone who's hooked on trawling secondhand bookshops the way I do, and it's quite new out. Obviously they're not novels with a plot so I see no reason why they can't be read in any order.

I look forward to your review of FK and the rest.

LadybirdDaphne · 12/05/2026 11:30

Happy Birthday @ChessieFL !

28 Sedated - James Davies
Critique of psychiatry and the pharma industry, focusing on how it suits late-stage neo-liberal capitalism to locate the causes of distress in individual mental ill-health, rather than in social and structural factors. Brilliant if you’re an old-fashioned leftie like me - although, Davies is much more strongly anti-psychiatry than am I, and I’d want to have my own look into the evidence on the effectiveness of antidepressants before throwing the SSRI baby out with the self-interested big pharma bathwater.

29 Good Girl - Aria Aber
19 year old Nila is running from the past and from her identity as a child of Afghan refugees in Berlin, into the bad-choice arms of techno music, drugs, and a sadistic has-been older boyfriend. Overlong for the minimal (or, more generously, subtle) plot and character development, it does give a genuine insight into the identity dilemmas faced by second generation immigrants who don’t feel truly part of either their ancestral or adopted cultures.

30 Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits - Emma Wilby
Academic study of encounters between early modern British cunning folk (magical practioners) and their ‘familiars’ - the ghostly, fairy, animal or (according to witchcraft trial accounts) diabolical helping spirits who facilitated their healing and divination work. Argues that these encounters were genuine psychological / visionary experiences, arising from a pre-Christian shamanistic oral tradition . I don’t think the historical evidence, which derives largely from unsympathetic witch trials, will ever be sufficient to prove this - but Wilby gives pointers to the tantalising hints that, while learned witch hunters were telling one story about demonic pacts, the common people were telling different stories entirely.

ChessieFL · 12/05/2026 12:19

A Plot To Die For - Ardal O’Hanlon

TV gardening expert Finn goes back to the small Irish town where he grew up, where he gets dragged in to helping try and win the Tidy Towns competition and helps solve a couple of murders along the way. This was OK - I’ve read better in the cosy crime genre but I’ve also read worse.

bibliomania · 12/05/2026 12:39

throwing the SSRI baby out with the self-interested big pharma bathwater.

Love how you put this, @LadybirdDaphne .

Terpsichore · 12/05/2026 12:39

35. The Half-Crown House - Helen Ashton

I’ve read several post-war books now where the action all takes place within one day - this is yet another. It’s all set at Fountains Court, a slowly-crumbling stately home owned by bedridden, rapidly-declining Lady Hornbeam, once a famous beauty. Her granddaughter Henrietta, helped by her war-wounded distant cousin Charles, works her fingers to the bone trying to keep the place going, with a small band of faithful family retainers. They’ve been reluctantly forced to open to the paying public (hence the ‘half-crown house’) but can landed families continue to exist in the brave new world of the 1950s - and should they even hope to? Questions of tradition, history and continuity wrestle with the realities of a new order - an American airbase is nearby and this plays a
pivotal role in the final resolution of the plot.

This was a strange mixture of a book - it immediately reminded me of Small Bomb at Dimperley, but without the comic slant (and someone on Goodreads remarked on that as well). Helen Ashton was a prolific writer, biographer and qualified doctor who liked writing about moments of change in her characters’ lives, and she certainly does put them through it here…! I have two more of her novels to read so hope to get onto those sooner rather than later.

Stowickthevast · 12/05/2026 13:36
  1. May We Feed The King - Rebecca Perry. This was odd. I'm still processing it. The unnamed, ungendered narrator is a curator who is brought to a palace to arrange some historical tableaus for a 750 year anniversary. The book starts with lavish descriptions of the food they will use for this exercise. At the palace, they meet the archivist (also unnamed, ungendered) who introduces them to the historical records. From a short entry, they choose a king to base the tableaus on. We then move to the main part of the story which is the imagined life of the reluctant king, the third of 3 brothers who never expected to be King. Then finally there's a short return to the curator's world. Like I said, odd, but I quite liked reading it. It was very short which helped. @ÚlldemoShúl I think you picked this up too, interested in your thoughts if you've read it.
StrangewaysHereWeCome · 12/05/2026 15:12

Belated Happy Birthday @ChessieFL , and get well soon @BestIsWest Flowers.

@LadybirdDaphne I will add Sedated to my wish list. There are lots of ideas I like in antipsychiatry, but I do think a good chunk of it is written from a perspective of privilege (health-wise) or wilful ignoring of the very sick, so I would be interested to see what this brings to the table.

BauhausOfEliott · 12/05/2026 17:36

No.17 - Black Sheep by Rachel Harrison. A really dark and subversive horror novel about a young woman who has left a strict religious cult and reluctantly goes back to visit a few years later to attend her cousin's wedding, at which she finds out all sorts of things about herself and her family that she'd rather not have known. I enjoyed it a lot; the narrator is chaotic and flawed in ways I could somewhat identify with.

No.18 - Darkdawn by Jay Kristoff. Concluding novel in a gripping grimdark fantasy trilogy, the Nevernight series, about a girl out for revenge on the man responsible for her family's deaths. I enjoyed the whole trilogy a lot and adored so many of the characters who rally around Mia, the main character, on her journey. Very dark, very gory, often funny, often sad.

No.19 - Deadpool Kills The Marvel Universe by Cullen Bunn. I mean, what can I say? If you like Deadpool and are familiar with Marvel Universe, it's great; if you don't, it isn't. I enjoyed the dialogue a lot and there's a lot of very clever self-referential stuff in it, although the plot isn't up to much.

No.20 - Deadpool Killustrated by Cullen Bunn. Again, you're going to need to like Deadpool for this, and it also helps if you're familiar with classic literature, because in this one Deadpool, on his quest to annihilate the Marvel universe, also decides to assassinate a whole host of characters from classic novels on whom he believes Marvel characters to be based. Very clever, very irreverent, very funny, if that's your thing.

No.21 - A Deadly Episode by Anthony Horowitz. The latest in the Hawthorne & Horowitz series, beginning with a murder on a film set as a production company adapts Horowitz's first Hawthorne book for the screen. Meanwhile, Anthony delves more into Hawthorne's shady past. It's not my favourite of the Hawthorne series but I still enjoyed it a lot and am a huge fan of Hawthorne overall.

No. 22 - A Killing In November by Simon Mason. Not as sparse and Camus-like as his 'Missing' series, but a very well-written crime novel with a very unusual (and infuriating at times) police detective. DI Ryan Wilkins is everything Mumsnet hates, so naturally I loved him.

No. 23 - The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. Having re-read Paradise Lost by John Milton earlier in the year I thought I'd read The Divine Comedy for the first time. It's brilliant and I honestly found it hard to put down. Also my copy has the Gustave Dore illustrations which are exquisite.

No.24 - Solace House by Will Maclean. Reading this one at the moment and I absolutely love it so far. I also adored The Apparition Phase by the same author and was worried this one wouldn't live up to that but it definitely does. It's about a group of misfit students in the 1990s who have a summer job clearing two old properties, one a house and the other a residential psychiatric home, of junk. We have an unreliable narrator and apparently a haunted house, but haunted how, and by what? Deeply unsettling, nostalgic, slow-build horror/ghost story crossed with dark academia.

EineReiseDurchDieZeit · 12/05/2026 17:43

@BauhausOfEliott A Killing In November was time for a rant about class depictions for me

EineReiseDurchDieZeit · 12/05/2026 18:08

@Piggywaspushed

I’ve read 11 of that list. Only 2 bolds!

SheilaFentiman · 12/05/2026 18:10

I think I have done 3 - The Talented Mr Ripley, The End of the Affair and Catch-22. Possibly a couple more (I read a bunch of classics as a teen when they were the Kindle Daily Deal of their time at £1 a pop Grin)

Benvenuto · 12/05/2026 18:36

I’ve read The Return of the Native and The Left Hand of Darkness & DNF as few more.

I’m wondering why The Return was selected as I would put Tess, Far From The Madding Crowd & The Mayor of Casterbridge ahead of it (& I can’t imagine them putting 4 books by Hardy on the list) - that said it’s a long time since I read Hardy, so I probably need to reread some (especially as I can’t remember the pivotal role the adder plays in The Return …).

I’m usually a bit underwhelmed by these lists, but then I clicked on two of the books & decided they look intesting!

Happy belated birthday to @ChessieFL- that haul looked wonderful (so much of my reading is on my Kindle, which is great but it just doesn’t have the appeal of a stack of new paperbacks).

Piggywaspushed · 12/05/2026 18:49

I'd guess we'll get another Hardy.

EineReiseDurchDieZeit · 12/05/2026 18:51

Yeah @Benvenuto Return is not up there for me with the Big 4

Tarahumara · 12/05/2026 18:52

I've read The Go-Between, The Left Hand of Darkness, Catch-22 and The End of the Affair. My favourite of these is The Go-Between.

Benvenuto · 12/05/2026 19:07

EineReiseDurchDieZeit · 12/05/2026 18:51

Yeah @Benvenuto Return is not up there for me with the Big 4

Edited

What’s your fourth Hardy?

ÚlldemoShúl · 12/05/2026 19:09

I’ve read The End of the Affair, The Road, the Line of Beauty, A Farewell to Arms and My Antonia. My favourite was The End of the Affair

Tarahumara · 12/05/2026 19:24

I really should try The Road one day.

EineReiseDurchDieZeit · 12/05/2026 19:29

Benvenuto · 12/05/2026 19:07

What’s your fourth Hardy?

You’ve forgotten Jude! I wasn’t a fan but it’s one of his main ones

Swipe left for the next trending thread