50 Books Challenge 2026 Part Four

[Southeastdweller]

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

@Terpsichore- including A la recherche du temps perdu as a single item is absolutely cheating. If they all love it that much then they should be able to name individual volumes.

My list:
Wuthering Heights (like a lot & on my list to reread)
Persuasion (adore & plan to reread - there’s a great podcast on it on In our Time)
1984 & Mrs Dalloway (read too young so need to reread)
Emma (like but Persuasion is better)
Bleak House (the third about Lady Dedlock is fab but Esther is really annoying)
Madame Bovary (dislike - she is bored & the book is boring)
P&P (adore)
Jane Eyre (my discovery of last year when I finally read an unabridged copy & realised what the fuss is about)
War & Peace (fab - wish I had joined this thread earlier for the readalong)
A la Recherche (pretentious cheating as it is not a book - I have read lots of it & like it (but it is yet another book about an inadequate man))
Middlemarch (read too young & need to reread)

What’s missing:
The 3 Hardy big hitters (Tess, Far from the Madding Crowd & The Mayor) - how can Jude be included but not these?
Les Mis & Notre Dame de Paris
Re Zola - my personal theory is he is far too low brow for the list (with all the s*x, violence & popularising science) but more realistically, I don’t think his individual works are well-known enough in English to make the list. It seems unfair that Proust was allowed to be entered as a series & not Zola as I suspect the same would have happened if Proust had had to split down.

Me too! You’re in my top 10 anyway. I was also surprised that Jude was the only Hardy.

8 for me in that last tranche (Wuthering Heights, 1984, Emma, The Great Gatsby, P&P, Jane Eyre, W&P and Anna Karenina).

25 in total.

I always find lists like that a bit annoying because inevitably I’ll have read something else by a featured author but not the named book(s). For example I have read Tess and The Mayor of Casterbridge by Hardy, but not the ones listed.

5 DNF (two of which - Persuasion and Wolf Hall - I do intend to go back to at some point. It just wasn’t the right time when I tried them originally).

I am also very disappointed that Steinbeck didn’t make the list. The Grapes of Wrath is an incredible book.

edited for typo

I have read a further 11 of the last 20, taking me to a total of 34:

Wuthering Heights - Possibly my favourite novel
Persuasion - Liked didn’t love
Moby-Dick - Another Uni set text, didn’t enjoy
Mrs Dalloway - Read for Uni again and bored by it
Bleak House - Read on Piggys excellent Readalong and thoroughly enjoyed
The Great Gatsby - Another set text but very much enjoyed this one
Pride & Prejudice - Sublime
Jane Eyre - Just finished a reread - enjoyable
War & Peace - Another absolute fave which I’ve read twice, the second time I even skim read the boring epilogues!
Anna Karenina - Didn’t bear comparison with War & Peace for me, can’t believe it came higher on this list
To The Lighthouse - Read along with Mrs Dalloway at Uni, it also bored me. Maybe too young to appreciate it

So many of the others are on my TBR pile. I’m currently reading Frankenstein, and have Dracula, Lolita, 100 Years of Solitude, Emma, The Go Between, The Talented Mr Ripley & The Wide Sargasso Sea in my sights. I really must get round to Middlemarch but find the size of it a bit daunting!

Of the new lot the only ones I HAVEN’T read are the Marquez, the Proust, War and Peace and Tristram Shandy

other observations Middlemarch and Bleak House both excellent, Madame Bovary was dull, Ulysses will never get those hours back!

27 for me. I’ve found it an interesting list (lots of ideas to read) not least because “great” seems to mainly to mean “serious”. I don’t find that particularly satisfactory as comedy takes as much (if not more skill to write as tragedy yet the only funny books I can spot are P&P (& possibly Emma); Vanity Fair, David Copperfield (& possibly the other Dickens).

I also think including foreign literature does skew the selection as if you are familiar with the literature of a particular language, then you start to think
”What about x”. I guess it does show which foreign language texts have made it into the English-speaking canon though.

I have read 13 of the last lot including The Great Gatsby which I read for the first time this week!, bringing me to 42 in total & 2 in progress. I would really like to re-read Beloved as I don't remember it very much.

@ChessieFL so interesting that Walk In The Park creates such different outcomes.

I just raved about it to a real life friend with fingers firmly crossed they fall into the camp of liking it!

I dnf Moby Dick, Wolf Hall, My Brilliant Friend

I salute you. I read Moby Dick for a book club and honestly it’s so dry and boring for really long stretches

That's a good point about comedy, there's no Wodehouse on the list despite him being a fabulous writer.

Ive read 32 of the Guardian list and DNFd an awful lot more. I’ve DNFd Anna Karenina so often it almost makes a category of its own. I don’t mind these lists - if you’re looking for a novel that has a serious reputation and offers something beyond the norm, any of these would presumably do something for you. I do remember feeling changed by some of these.

I’ve read 38 of the Guardian list. None of my favourite novels are in there*. Lots I found pretty tedious.

edited to add: oh, apart from Wolf Hall*

I’ve read 28 of the Guardian’s list and DNFd a few more.

I always come away from these lists feeling like I should be a bit more highbrow and serious in my reading choices.

I made a conscious decision to read more revered novels about 10 years ago which is why I made it to 53. I noted there are no Scottish novels here. A list done in Scotland would be different for sure!

If I had done this 15 years ago, I probably would have read about 8 - 10.

Yes @Piggywaspushed I would be the same- I’ve read 47 but I’d say even 5 years ago that would be around 10

I often think that. And then I think life’s too short, just read things that interest you. If that’s the classics then great, if not, so be it. There are several on that list I know I am almost certainly never going to read because they just don’t appeal.

@Piggywaspushed which Scottish books would you include? Scott and Stevenson?
I remember doing Confessions of A Justified Sinner in my first year of my degree but I don't think it's very well known.

I've read 28 of them - favourites are The Transit of Venus and My Brilliant Friend. I also loved Madame Bovary when I studied it as part of my degree.
Couple of DNFs. I've never read any Virginia Woolf and I think I might like her.

Latest read - I think book 33:
Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall We find out at the start of this that one of the main characters is on trial for murdering one of the others. We don't find out until much later who is on trial for what. It's a dual timeline love triangle - a classic 'what happens when the first love comes back'. There's some lovely writing about land and rural life, some complex characterisation and (I thought) a genuinely satisfying ending. I thought it was very good and have already bought a copy for a friend.

@StitchesInTime - I know what you mean about coming away from the 'best of' lists feeling like you should be more highbrow! But actually, I really enjoy contemporary novels, mostly at the lighter end of literary fiction, and I think that's fine!
(I had a three-month period of bed rest years ago and I thought I'd really 'catch up' with all the highbrow reading I hadn't done. I managed Midnight's Children (thought it was admirable, but not my favourite), and that was it! Next chance will probably be retirement - I hope to get through A Suitable Boy one day.

That's an interesting thought. Best Scottish novels probably include
Trainspotting (not that I've read it), Sunset Song, Lanark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Jekyll and Hyde, Treasure Island, The 39 Steps, Peter Pan, one of the Sherlock Holmes, The Wind in the Willows, The Wasp Factory ( I hate this book).

Don't think Sunset Song is read much out of Scotland, not sure about Lanark. Two of my favourite novels though.

Annie Knows Everything - Rachel Wood

I needed something light after a busy week at work and this fitted the bill. Annie manages to talk her way into a tech job she doesn’t understand and falls for her boss. I liked Annie and enjoyed this a lot more than I expected to!

@carefullythere A Suitable Boy is much more readable than Salman Rushdie.

@StitchesInTime@ChessieFLI think that part of being a really great writer is to engage the reader even if it is a challenging text. The mark of a true classic is that while it is of its time, it also transcends its time in that readers still are interested in it, are moved by it (whether to laughter or to feel sad), care about the characters &/ events &/ ideas & enjoy the writers’ skill in writing prose. That’s why P&P, Jane Eyre and Tess etc. are such classics because they meet this test & we can discuss them endlessly - it’s also why I am enjoying Les Mis so much. It’s not a reader’s fault if an author can’t tempt them to open a book.

@PiggywaspushedI would be interested too in which Scottish writers should be there - I found both Scott & Stevenson hardgoing when younger.

I think Sunset Song is such an embedded Scottish classic it would be on there in a Scottish compiled list. I have never actually read any Scott ! I love The Wasp Factory!