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

46. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe - Fannie Flagg
I saw bits of the film when I was 12 years old and it left a powerful impression. I have wanted to either watch it or read it ever since and finally have. With that kind of inflated expectation going into it, the book didn't really have a chance of meeting it though it is undoubtedly good.

It is a book of its time. A story about a community and a way of life in the southern USA in the 1920s-30s seen through the filter of 1980s USA. Which is itself a historical framing now and no longer contemporary as it was on publication. I can see how it's treatment of a lesbian romance and interracial friendships would have been modern if not groundbreaking in 1987 but the world has moved on and it lands somewhere between twee and uncomfortable.

But it is a warm, kind, joyous novel and I am glad I read it.

Having read Moby Dick for a book group as the choice of a man who later went on to choose a Hemingway novel, I agree with this! (and he's still wittering on approvingly about Moby Dick to this day, some years later)

Just another note on Fried Green Tomatoes. I looked it up and they completely straightwashed the lesbian relationship in the film, which makes me appreciate the book even more. Clearly things were a lot less inclusive in the 90s, which shouldn't come as a shock to me as I was a teenager then. Amazing how far we have come in a (middle-aged) lifetime.

I finished a couple more (and DNFed a couple too)

First the DNFs- A Rising Man by Abir Mukhergee I wanted to love this because I adore the Persis Wadia books by Vaseem Khan which are also Indian historical crime, but this one was a bit too slow for me and I didn’t love the main character.
The second SNF was Jane Harper’s new one Last One Out- didn’t care about the characters at all. Whole story up to 30% looking backwards- so why not just set it at that time?

And the ones I did finish
What We Can Know by Ian McEwan
Dystopia set almost 100 years ahead of now where academics (in an England now formed of a set of islands as seas have risen) are looking into the a famous poem which has been ‘lost’. They learn of the poets family and friends who are mainly obnoxious, as are the people researching them.
the second part dips back into the past.
McEwan plays with his familiar theme of perspective but this one is no Atonement. The first half is dry and I almost DNFed more than once. The dystopia seems as if it should be much further ahead in the future as they talk of 2019 as if it were 500 years before rather than 100. It shows little faith in young people or the people’s understanding of the past and I found the whole thing very bleak. The pacier second part was not enough to make up for the first.

My second finished book The Hand that First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell was also split into two halves but this time it was more successful. There are two storylines- Lexie in the 1960s who is trying to find her way in the world after moving to London and Elina and Ted who are new parents. It took me a while to get into the Elina and Ted storyline (though it was all about the confusion and exhaustion of new parenthood so the mothers on here would relate more than me who has no children) but the Lexie one grabbed me straight away. Will keep reading O’Farrell’s back catalogue and looking forward to her new one.
Edited as I forgot to name the book. Menopausal much 🙄

@TerpsichoreI don’t know that I even care enough to find out the ending in the Jane Harper

37 . My Husband’s Wife by Alice Feeney (audiobook)

Eden Fox goes for a run, when she returns home she finds herself unable to get in and another woman declaring that this is HER home and HER husband

I’m not really one for HE’S BEHIND YOU type books, but I’m always looking for well read audiobooks and chose this solely because of the narrators; Richard Armitage and Bel Powley.

When it comes to Richard Armitage’s participation, his acting was too similar to his acting in Don’t Let Him In by Lisa Jewell

When the first twist happened I felt like Oh OK great! I thought this novel was writing a cheque it couldn’t cash but everything made sense. And then there’s an additional twist and then another and it’s a bit OH FUCK OFF, like THAT would happen.

It was a good yarn, a great audiobook, but suspend your disbelief

I’m watching series 2 of the Slow Horses series and the way they have changed the story has made me realise how very clever the original was…I’m upping the book to a bold. Can’t understand why they took an excellent book and completely rewrote it for the tv show, especially after they stuck so faithful to book 1 in the first series!

Is that the one about the pilot, @DuPainDuVinDuFromage? I did it the wrong way trying, and agree the book was very clever. I guess too complex to work in a short series.

@ÚlldemoShúl I read the Ian McEwan last year. I thought the world building was really interesting but the actual story was rather dull. I find it hard to care about any of the characters.