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

I will look into Alan Bennett's earlier diaries, as this book sounds interesting but it's ridiculous to buy or even take up space in the reservation queue at the moment, I have so much else to read. Will wishlist in case a deal, and because I use my wishlist to remind me what I'd like to borrow as well. I'm trying to stop adding reservations, would like to reduce my library book TBR piles. But I have made reservations for Jess Kidd's 2nd Nora Breen book. I'm quite happy to wait a while for reservations now, because my current reading pile is out of control.

I think we've talked about Rainbow Rowell here. Definitely Eleanor & Park, YA but in my opinion crossover and excellent. I've enjoyed 2 or 3 other books by her, but not quite so much. Her latest novel Cherry Baby is in the deals today. Was 99p. From the description expect that it won't be highbrow but it will be an intelligent henlit book, a good read about relationship dilemmas.

Thanks for that @elkiedeeI’m the one who intermittently screamed READ ELEANOR AND PARK at a few posters, Cherry Baby is on my Wish List so thanks

If anyone's looking for a good read and doesn't mind paying a little more than 99p, E&P is also not that expensive on Kindle - at £2.99 (best price in 30 days) just now. I don't know how many library copies are still in circulation and they may be in young adult or even children's sections.

When I say crossover, it's about teenagers and was published as YA, but I think a lot of adults would enjoy it. Whereas I read a novel by Jacqueline Wilson recently, billed as an adults' novel, a grown up sequel to a children's book. I didn't hate it, but found it frustrating as the first person narrator was a 32 year old child, both her narrative voice and her actions and decisions.

Oh I loved Eleanor and Parkso will check that out!

I did too. Lovely book.

I must have got lucky with no Alan Bennett fans in our library district @Terpsichore. Twenty holds ahead of you is a long old wait.

Three more reads:
#15. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. A re-read that needs no introduction. (Although - spoiler alert - in the unlikely event that there’s anyone on a 50 book thread who doesn’t know the plot!)
My God Rochester is a total Gaslighter, what with the mad wife he’s hiding in the attic (Nothing to see here, I just keep a deranged, homicidal servant on my staff for shits and giggles) and the shenanigans with Blanche Ingram all in the name of arousing Jane’s jealousy. Reader, she should have run a mile.
I also found the religiosity of the St. John section a bit wearing, but given he’s a total PITA, I think Charlotte may have been having a subtle dig herself through the medium of fiction - what with a Curate for a father and living in a parsonage.
I do love a happy(ish) ending though and this is a great book.

#16. Frankenstein by Mary Shelly. Two classics on the trot. Having never read this before I was surprised by how different it was to most of the adaptations.
The creation of the monster for example is very matter of factly done - no half mad scientist complete with maniacal laughter and lightening strike channeled into the lifeless patchwork body parts, simply:
‘It was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.’

I’m glad I’ve finally got round to reading this, it’s pretty amazing that Shelly devised this gothic horror at the age of 18, it’s a part of the collective psyche now but I do envy the contemporary readers who didn’t know where this was going, what a wild ride!

#17. Seascraper by Benjamin Wood. I came into this with fairly low expectations expecting a stream of consciousness type of narrative. Actually I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of plot and the growing sense of unease.
Not a bold but a good read - and short which helps my book count!

And on the topic of Frankenstein

37. Is This Working? - Charlie Colenutt

Thanks to @PermanentTemporary for alerting me to this. Colenutt is a young historian who specialises in the history of work, and had the idea of an updated version of the Studs Terkel oral history classic Working (which I think I’ve got somewhere on the tbr pile).

Anyway, this is a fascinating read, especially if (like me) you’re nosy about other people’s lives. None of the interviews is very long but just enough, I think, to give a deft portrait of each person, what they do and how they feel about it. A great window into other worlds.

Checking in so as not to fall off the thread - still making pathetically, painfully slow progress with The Children’s Book - which I’m enjoying more I have to say but just making suck slow work of it.

Been distracted by some big things going on at work, and by binge watching The Other Bennett Sister in bed when I should be reading, plus fell into a new podcast series so I’ve not been spending as much time on reading either.

Thanks! I’ve reserved it on BorrowBox for the 16th of June! Looking forward to it.

34. The Girl and the Stars by Mark Lawrence

This is set in the same world as Lawrence’s Red Sister trilogy, and follows Yaz, a young woman in the ice tribes.
Her life changes dramatically when her brother is judged as unfit for life on the ice and thrown down the hole for discarded, broken children, and Yaz jumps down after him on impulse. It’s a whole other world down there instead of an immediate death sentence, but filled with ancient secrets and new dangers.

My biggest problem with this book is that it’s too long since I finished the Red Sister trilogy, so I’d forgotten some of the details of the world building and it took me a while to get that all sorted out. This one’s the first in another trilogy and ends on a bit of a cliffhanger.

35. Promised Neverland Vol 8 by Kaiu Shirai and Posuka Demizu

Manga. The plucky orphans continue on their quest to evade man-eating demons and find a way to escape to the human world.
There’s more peril in this installment as the next clue they’re looking for is in a demon hunting ground.

36. Frozen in Time by Ali Sparkes

In 1956, Freddy and Polly’s scientist father is experimenting with cryogenic suspension and testing it on his children.
In 2009, Ben and Rachel are at a bit of a loose end in the school holidays when they stumble across a hidden bunker in their back garden, and accidentally reanimate the two frozen children inside.

This was good fun. There’s the whole mystery element of what happened to Freddy and Polly’s father, and whether that poses a risk to the children now, and then there’s the whole time slip / culture shock aspect with Freddy and Polly suddenly being 50 years in the future and having to adapt to that. Some of the 1950’s attitudes from Freddy and Polly felt a bit exaggerated sometimes, but it was still interesting to read.

I love Studs Terkel's work.

There is a book called Chinese Lives from the 1980s which has been compared to Terkel, which my mum and dad and others translated from the original Chinese to English. I read a lot of the "stories" - interviews - as they came off the printer from the Amstrad. Eventually I looked for Studs Terkel. Other oral history books in a similar style are by Tony Parker (secondhand) and more recently Svetlana Alexeivich has interviewed Russians about experiences of several wars including WWII and Afghanistan, Chernobyl, the collapse of the Soviet Union.

@elkiedee that's so interesting, love the image of the pages coming out of the Amstrad!

@DesdamonasHandkerchief great Frankenstein find. DD has just finished doing get GCSE on it, it's a great set text to do. I think the question was about how the monster develops through the book.

I've been having a slow reading week but just finished one.

48. Good People - Patmeena Sabit. I think this was one of the books people thought may be listed for the Women's Prize. It's about an Afghan family in the States, but is told in a reportage style so each (short) chapter is someone from a neighbour to various members of the Afghan community, friends of the children and police reports, filling in the story. The parents come to the US with nothing and the father makes his fortune. He is determined that his children will have the best possible life, particularly focused on his eldest daughter who he says will be a judge one day. The main events start when Zorah, the eldest daughter, is in her late teens and is rebelling against her family's strict rules. I thought this was very well done, you never hear from the family themselves, just the gossip and you never get a confirmed truth about what actually happened. But it raises interesting questions.

Piranesi - Susannah Clarke

I thought I'd hate - or DNF - after the first few pages of this but ended up persevering and loving it. It's quite hard to describe what happens without spoilers so I'll just say it's beautifully written and the way the plot unfolds is wonderful. I also really warmed to Piranesi, who narrates throughout. One of the reviews is that it will stay with the reader for a while, and I think that will be the case for me too. A bold.

The Sunne in Splendour - Sharon Kay Penman

An absolute bold. I loved this. I’m a fan of histfic about the wars of the roses, so have a fair library, but for some reason this has been unread on my kindle since 2012.

It is 900-odd pages long so it’s quite the read but it’s very engaging. It follows the lifespan of Richard III but focuses throughout that chronology on different characters (his brother Edward, his wife Anne). SKP manages to make everyone believable and sympathetic, despite dastardly actions, whilst remaining consistent with known history.

If you like this era and you haven’t already, strongly recommend reading this!

22 - An Unlikely Visitor - Joanna Cannon (ARC)
This book deals with every parent’s worst nightmare — a missing child — but also explores loss in quieter ways too, especially the ache of growing old and the harsh reality of losing someone you’ve spent a lifetime beside.
Despite the difficult content I would class it as an easy read because Cannon’s writing is so warm, readable and relatable. At times it was slightly sweeter and more sentimental than I usually like, but there were still many genuinely moving observations about love, family, loneliness and grief.
The opening pages about the dying ash tree almost finished me 🌳💔 even though the story had barely begun!

I noticed Eleanor and Park on my kindle the other day and wondered when and why on earth I downloaded it - mystery solved.

The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain

A women at the beginning is mugged and her discarded bag (minus her phone and purse) is later found by a male bookseller who sets on a mission to find the owner by eventually going down frankly stalker behaviour. However if you read this as a unrealistic book version of a rom com there was alot to enjoy.

The Director by Daniel Kehlmann

Shortlisted for the international book based on a very fictionalised life of the German director G.W.Pabst mostly focusing on his time in Nazi Germany during the war. Each chapter is from a different character and a different POV so you dont know where its going or what each chapter is going to say. This will be a bold but is one that need to sit with me for a while.

The Vanishing by Tim Krabbe

At least two films have been made of this story about a mans girlfriend who seemingly disappears in the time she left their car at a garage to grab a drink. This is a very short book told in a matter of fact way and is a very effective horror.

The beginning of the world in the middle of the night by Jen Campbell

A collection of short stories some of which were better written than others.

This is one of my favourite books of all time. Next year, I plan to do a reread of all her books - I have read most but not all and I am looking forward to it so much!

46. Book Lovers by Emily Henry - I read this as a quick read for a reading challenge and it met both those goals. Sadly, it met nothing else. I am clearly not a romance reader because I found this far too long, repetitive, and needing a good 50-100 pages cutting off. Ironic for a book about book editors. I read widely, across various genres and don't ask much from a book. Just characters that behave like real people and writing that is neither turgid nor full of itself. One of the main characters is a super smart New Yorker who is clearly dysfunctional and traumatised by life events. It takes her 350 endless pages to figure out she needs therapy. Ugh!

38 . Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth

Sisters Sarah and Juliette take a road trip round Scotland for Juliette’s birthday. In flashback, Sarah believes her English teacher is in love with her and makes poor decisions.

So it’s a great title and from such a title I had expectations of wild debauchery and for it to be quite provocative and it isn’t really.

I thought there were flashes of excellent writing and it was a page turner but I also think that teacher/pupil crush stories have reached saturation point. It’s all a bit old hat

The most arresting it gets is quite close to the end when there’s a page of Sarah’s GUM clinic visits and it had me thinking that the author should have dropped the schoolteacher plot altogether to focus on Sarah’s promiscuity

Not bad but not what I was hoping for from this book with this title

Sounds like a great plan!

Three new reads- 2 of which were very short.
A Woman’s Story by Annie Ernaux
This is the story of the life of Ernaux’s mother written over the first year after her death. Ernaux tries to tell the story objectively, and occasionally breaks the fourth wall in talking about the writing and grieving process. The tone is quite cold as she attempts to do this and I left the book feeling I had just read a surface description of her mother and that there were definitely unplumbed depths that we didn’t get to know- maybe that was the point- we never can know, but I also had no idea if Ernaux actually liked her mother- loved her and grieved her yes but not sure about liked. This is all a very roundabout way of saying I don’t know if Ernaux is for me- a bit like Joan Didion- both write beautifully but coldly I find.

The Cut Up by Louise Welsh
The latest outing for antiques auctioneer Rilke who finds the dead body of a client dead on the doorstep of the business with an antique hat pin in his eye. This isn’t the best of the trio but it’s still great, looking at the seedy side of Glasgow, gay life over time and friendship. I listened on audio, again brilliant narration by Alan Cumming.

The Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
Set up as a folk horror tale this is really more of a story about the every day horror of a small man, frustrated by life and trying to make himself feel more important by the bullying and persecution of others. Told from the point of view of Silvia, the daughter of the aforementioned bully, as her family join a university experiment of trying to live as iron-aged people. It’s the complicity in this short book that made me angry.

gay life over time

@ÚlldemoShúl , that was my favourite bit, young pups who take it on themselves to lecture their seniors about what it means to be queer, when those people had been out for decades, often in the teeth of public hostility.

62. The Birds of the Air, Alice Thomas Ellis
An unseasonable RWO, as the centrepiece is a very unenjoyable Christmas Day. Mrs Marsh is hosting both her adult daughters, one of whom is mourning the death of her son, and the other is struggling with her husband, an adulterous bully, and her two children. I didn't quite know how to respond to this - it's a comedy, but about very unhappy people. I do find the author stylistically appealing, although there are a few jarring comments (it was published in 1980). It was short and bracing. The author's teenage son died two years before this was published, and I'm guessing there's a strong autobiographical element.

OOh, I love it when I go to look up a book talked about here, knowing I want to read it, to add it to my Kindle wishlist on Amazon, then thinking I'll see if libraries have it, and I already have it. This time it's Louise Welsh's The Cut Up - I loved #1 and enjoyed it before reading #2 after a 20 year gap between them. So now I just need to get round to #3 before I have to reread all 3 because of my bad memory.

47. The Searcher by Tana French - I really enjoyed this. It's not really a thriller in the conventional sense. It is much more about the characters, the atmosphere, and the relationships. Retired Chicago cop, Cal Hooper, moves to rural Ireland to lick his wounds after a bad divorce and disillusionment with his career. He hopes for peace and quiet, he gets a 13 year old, Trey, who convinces him to look for a missing brother. Cal and Trey are so well written and voive actor, Roger Clark, brings them to life so vividly. The rural Irish village, the pub, the people, and the sense of menace also feel so real. Highly recommended especially as an audiobook. I already have the next one lined up on Borrowbox.