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

22) Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte (DNF)

A collection of short stories about sex and relationships in modern life. The first two stories (Feminist and Pics) were really good, with lots of witty observations. However I couldn't get though the third story (Ahegao).

It starts well, but goes off the rails when the main character writes a plot summary for an adult film that he's commissioning from an OF actor to satisfy his sadistic humiliation kink. It was extremely graphic and cringeworthy, and I had to put it down due to secondhand embarrassment and revulsion. Which, now I think about it, might have been the effect the author was hoping for!

(I couldn't resist reading a section to my husband, who found it hysterical 😁)

I've read about 20 of the Pleasures list. I must admit to really liking Pillars of the Earth. It's not great literature but I found it great fun and I can see why it would be on a list to persuade reluctant readers to pick up a book.

For my sins @SpunkyKhakiScroller I will also admit to enjoying Pillars Of The Earth

So Janice Hallett is not gender critical? I have very mixed view on this and I don't like JKR very much as a human because I have disagreements over a lot of issues, and she is vicious on social media.

I think my biggest beef with Pillars of the Earth was not the chests but the chestnuts. I’d just finished reading about the Tradescants who introduced the Horse Chestnuts to Britain in the 16th century.

Sorry if I've cross posted something that I wrote earlier: I have tried to split posts and this is a response to the discussion above.

Most hated writer in certain circles in Scotland? - not JKR?
there is a Kate Clanchy book saga, and she's become hated and her career disrupted because she wrote about migrant children she taught to write about their lives in poetry/prose. I bought her book because I liked her others, and I always look at books about teaching and migrants etc etc. However, following the controversy I will probably continue to read her students' poetry on X or other social media, but I'm not sure that I'll read this book any time soon. Too stressful. Too many books, too little time. Perhaps if she has another novel published ever again, I'll read that.

I don’t really care if an author’s views align with mine but as soon as someone starts making pathetic sideswipes at other authors then they slip way down my TBR list. It’s a bit tawdry and attention seeking. Write about your views, keep it civil, persuade people with the talent you’ve been given. I’m not a reader who is ever going to purity spiral on your behalf, so you’re wasting your time.

I went and sniffed the books in Waterstones this morning but I was very good and didn’t buy anything, just took photos and added them to my Wish List 😇

Also notes towards a review I "owe" for the genuine privilege of reading of a new book by Amanda Craig - High and Low (From her Twitter posts - I do know about but don't recognise the change to X, Craig is gender critical, leftish liberal white feminist, backer of Clanchy, JKR and others, and noisier than I dare be online. I don't have a paid job or literary career to self sabotage, and I'm only a few years off 60, but no tweet is worth being "cancelled" for, for me. )

My own thoughts....

I also know of lots of writers whose views and values have developed as a result of the sex and gender - Amanda Craig's novels are mostly interconnected with recurring characters appearing a few years later, and she is a writer whose books I normally love. She is a very gender critical feminist, I'm not really, but it seems to have taken her into a down a road leading to othering and prejudice against asylum seekers/migrants. I think Hearts and Minds about a cross section of urban life here, with a range of issues facing characters, including various migrants is one of my favourite, and The Golden Rule helped pull me out of a reading slump in 2020!

Craig has reviewed children's books and written obituaries for her writer friends including Kate Saunders, another writer whose name alone would often sell her books to me.

Review fragments

But I found her latest novel High and Low challenging to read, especially the first half, as it features demonstrators outside an asylum hotel, between a council estate and privately owned housing. That mix of housing, gentrification is familiar across north London's zones 2/3, and many hotels near me are also used for temporary solutions for homeless individuals families, including "British" families and those with a long established right to be here. This novel goes too far for me in joining in blaming and demonising migrants for the situation they and we/the country is in. However, I liked the second half of this book a bit better, probably because it wasn't bogged down and I wasn't feeling angry reading it.

Further reading????

Other books by Craig I liked better, some of which I should have reviewed but haven't, include Hearts and Minds, The Lay of the Land, The Golden Rule. Other books by Craig - they nearly all interconnect - all, but I would like to go back to The Vicious Circle - this got Craig into trouble for basing a character on her ex from university days - he had successfully got a job as a books pages journalist - and David Sexton tried to sue her.

as soon as someone starts making pathetic sideswipes at other authors then they slip way down my TBR list

Absolutely. It's schoolyard bullying nonsense and I immediately think less of them.

Re: Pillars - It's a good shout for encouraging non-readers for precisely the reason it pissed me off (other than the boobs and flowing tresses).

It's got a lot of characters, and when it returns to one after say, 40 odd pages, there's a quick recap -
"He caught the eye of Mr Thingy, who he'd not seen since Thingy did that bit of Plot three months earlier."

I found it intrusive and bloody annoying because I am used to reading long books with lots of characters and don't forget who's who. But my Dad reads maybe 3 novels a year and he found it great for keeping track.

Thanks, this sounds interesting!

I've read six on that list and would argue that A Little Life deserves to be on the list because of how engrossing it is to read, so pleasurable in that sense.

I hated Hearts And Minds

Difference between authors bitching with other bookish people behind their back - on PM, public spats to full blown rows and pile ons on FB/Twitter etc, or authors debating stuff. Recently an author whose books I have loved or just not read yet died sadly young at 59 - I composed very careful "sad news" posts for online use and found others - there was a strong suggestion of a difficult last few years including self-sabotage. I didn't agree with a lot of her last posts because our values had diverged. I have also been blocked by another writer who has gone from Labour (maybe) via Tory to posting that she will vote Reform in a place where the tactical anti Labour vote is Tory still, but she has become a provocateur, and a lot of racist pro-MAGA stuff as well. I was blocked, after years of occasional spats on social media, over challenging her over Renee Good (this kind of thing is a complete waste of time with such people.

If she publishes her next book I might still buy a Kindle daily deal but ideally if I saw it in the library, I could pick it up first - I've only actually seen one nasty swipe which was very dating 2 or 3 books ago. Her writing is quite feminist, a and features vulnerable women and girls, predatory men and exploitative women, a cult - cue ref to Magic Grandpa (a "rather dated already" snipe) and are often obviously inspired by responses to true crime stories - from Madeline McCann to Epstein - controversial but not at all reactionary - that's why I like them.

Does Pillars mean a book by Ken Follett? - I see the appeal but your description of the style might drive me a bit crazier.

I have to agree on the inclusion of Pillars and even my hated A Little Life. Top books lists are not very encouraging to people who don’t want to read the classics. They repeat the same books again and again and can be very off-putting. I like the Hay list because it has loads of solid good reads that many people will enjoy- that makes it very worthwhile imo and I hope it gets plenty of publicity.

I applauded Furlong for his principles but did wonder if I had been in his shoes - parents have good reason to want the best for their children and that small Irish town didn't have the range of options for his family after Furlong standing up for his values.

20 of the Hay list for me, which is almost exactly the same as the proportion I've read of the Guardian list. I agree that the "pleasure" concept is a bit strange.

Re The Other Bennett Sister

We need a reaction for Interesting but different from my view. I thought the first section was way too long and liked the later part much better. I think the best Austen sequels or other such books have to offer not just another view of the same events in P&P et al - it's just a good starting point - but a new book still needs to have a new story. So does the title character.

Darkening Song - Delphine Seddon

Told from the alternating points of view of Alora, a sixteen year old pop sensation, and Eva who discovered Alora and became her manager, and telling how they each cope with what fame brings. I really enjoyed this although didn’t find the ending very plausible.

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox - Maggie O’Farrell

Iris receives a call one day telling her that a great aunt she’s never heard of needs
to be moved out of the care home she’s been in for 60+ years because it’s closing down. While I liked the storyline I found the writing style hard to read. It’s told from alternating points of view, but there’s no chapter headings or any other indication of changing so I found it very confusing when it switched and in many places it wasn’t clear for some time who was actually ‘speaking’. One of the points of view is an old lady with dementia and the way this was presented, with little bits of relevant information interspersed with lots of other irrelevant thoughts added to how hard this was to read. There were also several things in the book left hanging at the end which I found annoying. A shame because the issue at the heart of the book (women being confined to asylums because they acted in a way that would be fine now but against the strictures of the time) is interesting to me. I’ve read a couple of O’Farrells now and I just don’t think her style is for me.

A Family Matter - Claire Lynch

Another book where women were treated poorly in the past because they didn’t behave in a way deemed acceptable. In this book Dawn loses custody of her small daughter because she falls in love with another woman (this is 1982). In 2022 Maggie finally finds out why her mother disappeared. This is a short book, and it also jumps between different points of view and time but does make it clear so is easy to follow. I hadn’t realised that this sort of thing would still be happening in what is the relatively recent past.

Have to admit that I do like Pillars and am prepared to overlook its shortcomings for the story

I read Mansfield Park for A level. After being a bit disappointed to meet Fanny Price, compared to Elizabeth in P&P, I didn't really warm to her but the novel is very funny. I think I'd like confident, popular Lizzy as a friend but perhaps I'm closer to shy Fanny who observes rather than speaks (too) often.

It is a good A level book because there's so much to discuss - about outward beauty, popularity, the slave trade, so much substance.

Interesting. I am resisting the temptation to ask why unless you want to say more.

There was a lot of homophobia still in the 1980s. Plus in this case I think the father was really hurt and went to see an agressive solicitor and he didn't realise what was going on initially. And the Children Act which changed a lot of stuff and was meant to centre the interests of the child was in 1990, and I would like to think that this book had to be set in the 1980s.... at old jobs I have typed letters and memos about the Children Act many times.

Thanks for that visual image from another book geek.