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

Gosh, amazingly I have read 18 on the Hay list. Not all of them brought me pleasure though!
Here are a few more of my current reads.
31 Departures. Julian Barnes. JBs latest/final book and the first that I have read. I couldn't really warm to it. And without being snotty I can't really review it, so I won't. I'm sure there is much more to it than I managed to encounter.
32 The Bee Sting Paul Murray Bold..I think. I really liked it. It's often been reviewed here, but it's a story of 20 years of the life of an Irish family from various points of view. One tragedy feeds off another but it's not just a misery fest. Lot's of readers haven't enjoyed the ending but it's not the sort of book that could ever be wrapped up in a neat final chapter and I thought the ending did it justice. Long and immersive. Give it a go.
33 The Colour Purple. Alice Walker. Bold Really enjoyed this and amazed that I hadn't read it before. Depicts the life of African American women in the early 20th century. Just a real eye opener. Not for the faint hearted, DV, fgm, incest child abuse, racism but actually mainly joyful because of the relationships binding everyone together.
34 Raising Hare. Chloe Dalton. Liked but not loved. A memoir of the experience of raising an abandoned hare in the British countryside in lockdown . I know I am disparaging the author, but it felt to me that she had been looking to write a book, then along came a leveret, which gave her a perfect subject. I didn't get a lot of soul, but lots of reviewers appreciated this distance.

Murder At The Spirit Lounge by Jess Kidd
If Kidd hadn’t shown herself previously to be an excellent writer then the mediocrity of this second in the Nora Breen mystery series wouldn’t have stung so much.
We see Nora still at the faded Gull’s Nest boarding house, taking early morning constitutionals to paddle in the wintry sea, considering how she is going to support herself in the future, blithely ignoring the attentions of Rideout and Hosmer (à la Stephanie Plum with Ranger and Morelli…..would have to be Ranger, since you ask ). A medium holds a seance, dies horribly and it quickly becomes apparent that all the people present that night are the target for a fiendish murderer, Rideout included. Nora being Nora, she inserts herself into the investigation as the victims are picked off one by one, a ghoulish glimpse of a serviceman the only common factor in the murders.
It’s as unappetising and stale as one of Irene’s breakfasts. Little of the spark from the first book remains. Characters ‘pad’ about, there is much pointless repetition of the awful catering at Gull’s Nest and wry observation of human foibles has become a mean spirited pisstake on many occasions ( the protracted ‘translation’ by Nora of an elderly woman’s witness statement because she chose to rescue her dog not her false teeth from a burning building being a particular low point). The denouement is preposterous, even for modern Cosy Crime.
Sad that the author of Himself, Things In Jars and The Night Ship has resorted to churning out mindless rubbish like this. I’ll be waiting until the third in the series is 99p or in a charity shop and then only to check if she’s bothered to develop Nora further or is set on phoning it in from now on. Maybe Siobhan McSweeney refused to narrate this one because it’s crap.

Oh dear, that's such a shame.

Hi all. Thanks for welcoming me back.
I've only read 2 books on the Hay list. Apparently I don't like to read anything remotely popular

I’ve only read 11 of them @BlueFairyBugsBooks so I feel a bit un-fun too! I'm not a Jilly Cooper fan (sorry to those on here who are but she’s just not for me), and alas, I'm also pretty meh on Wodehouse. Though I promise I do have a sense of humour!

I’ve read 18 of the Hay’s Pleasure List, which is a much better proportion than the recent Guardian list!

I abandoned A Little Life part way through as it was far too gloom inducing for my mood at the time. And I read one or two of Wodehouse’s Jeeves books years ago, but I can’t remember which ones now.

I do have a second hand copy of Pillars of the Earth tucked away on a bookshelf, but so far the sheer size of it has deterred me from actually opening it.

37. The Promised Neverland Vol 9 by Kaiu Shirai and Posuka Demizu

Action packed manga about a group of children in an orphanage who embark on an escape attempt after the horrifying discovery that they’re being farmed as food for demons.

In this instalment, the humans trapped in the Goldy Pond hunting ground find out more about the mysterious William Minerva and a possible escape route from the demon world to the human world, and put into motion a plan to turn the tables on the demon poachers hunting the humans in Goldy Pond.

@FruAashild It’s the slapstick/ farce aspect of Wodehouse (and Three Men in a Boat and any Shakespeare comdies) that I can’t get on with. Perhaps the humour is culturally so English that I as an Irish person can’t get it? Not sure but I’m with @EineReiseDurchDieZeit on this one.

I'm Scottish and have a friend who is English who doesn't like Wodehouse so I don't think it's just an English culture thing. But if you don't like slapstick or farce then I guess it makes sense you wouldn't enjoy it. It's comfort reading for me.

I think I’ve read 19 (like others, I’ve read the odd Jeeves but no idea if it’s that one!)

On the fence about Woodhouse but I'm a mixed race mongrel, albeit with a bit of a complicated upbringing which meant I was immersed in posh British culture via boarding school. I'm not really a fan of slapstick humour though, but I do find Jilly Cooper funny. My DM loves Cold Comfort Farm which is another of that rather dated marmite humour books I think.

@Tarragon123 I'm a tad younger in mid 70s. Maybe it was @BestIsWest?

I've got Departures in the TbR pile @Bunnyofhope but not sure when I'll get to it.

2 more for me

50. Edenglassie - Melissa Lucashenko. Edenglassie was the original name for Brisbane. This is set in two timelines. In the modern day, an old Aboriginal woman Granny Edie falls and ends up in hospital where we meet her activist granddaughter Winona and hear reflections on their lives based around a festival, also a ghost. The second timeline is in the 1850s when we follow a young man Mulanyan who is trying to make his fortune in early colonial Brisbane. I listened to it which I found quite hard to get into particularly as there's lots of aboriginal language. But it's a really interesting book which raises some great points about colonialism and the awful suffering of the First Nations. Almost a bold.

51. Celestial Lights - Cecile Pin. I loved her first book, Wandering Souls, but this is very different. It's about Ollie, an astronaut on a 10 year expedition to Europa and back. The narrative is split between Ollie's time on the spaceship and (much longer) flashbacks to how he got there. This was quite a quick read and I was interested to know how it all turned out but I never felt very emotionally engaged by it. A bit disappointing in light of how much I liked her first book.

I’m a few years older than 1969 (though my DD is also 33) . Like Wodehouse and Hitchhikers, never finished a Pratchett.

I have read 22 from the list. Re humour, it's not my favourite genre. I generally dislike black comedy like The Wimbledon Poisoner. But I do enjoy the Evelyn Waugh comedies and the one book that did make me laugh is The Diary of a Nobody.

Interesting @Tarragon123 what we think. I have been with dp a long time and I bought my house with mum's help and we moved in in 1998, but at that point I had some disposable income after years after university of jobsearching, benefits, private housing in Leeds, posh secretarial course, I moved down here and temped and so much was hard. When I met dp we talked on our first evening together about wanting babies, but I guess I didn't want them enough.

So that's how I ended up being 36 before trying for a baby, and my trying was not using contraception! So I got pregnant at 37, DS1 at nearly 38, positive pregnancy test at nearly 39, DS2 at 39.

@Stowickthevast I think you are quite a bit younger than me, but I will let you decide to respond or not!

Crosspost, before. @Stowickthevast, I thought you were younger than you are, and had children in your early 30s.

So that's how I ended up being 36 before trying for a baby, and my trying was not using contraception!

Isn't that the way most people get pregnant, by not using contraception and having sex? I know there's threads on here where people are charting this that and the next thing but I assume those are self selecting for people who haven't got pregnant as quickly as they expected.

I just listened to Entitled - The Rise and Fall of the House of York - Andrew Lownie on audio. It was quite gripping in a weird way, the pair of them are just awful! Sarah crashing from one desperate celebrity promotion to the next. Andrew comes across as being an utter, utter prick. (Obviously a lot worse than that, with his involvement with Epstein and all that goes with it.) But in his day to day life, at formal dinners with dignitaries, diplomats etc. I was cringing with embarrassment at his behaviour, and I wasn’t even there!

I’ve not really got on with audiobooks before, but I’ve realised that they’re ideal for books that won’t hold my attention, that I want to listen to whilst doing something else. My ADHD brain wanders off and does its own thing, or I pick at my skin. If I’m sewing or crocheting, that doesn’t happen. Whilst I really enjoyed listening to Entitled, I think I would have struggled to get through it if I was reading it.

So I’ve got three months of Spotify for free, but I’ve used up the hours, and the top ups seem quite expensive. Recommendations for audiobook apps please?

@Castlerigg try using Libby or Borrowbox with your local library. Or if your library doesn't support them or doesn't have a great selection, you can sign up for online library cards in other boroughs as well. I have cards in the London borough I live in, the one I work in, and the next county over.

@Castlerigg I found Entitled absolutely jaw dropping even before Epstein came into the mix. Such awful arrogance and grift!

I’m 44 and won’t hear a word against Pratchett, thought Hitchhikers was meh (because I was expecting something wonderful), never read a Wodehouse but remember Fry and Laurie being funny as Jeeves and Wooster.

I tried the first Discworld, it was a DNF and I’ve never ventured to any of the others because I HAVE to read books in order!

Genetically English, grew up in Wales, now in the Upside Down 😝

To be fair, the first two Discworld novels are a bit pants.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit Try Nation. It's not Discworld and is technically YA but it's my favourite of all his books.

I didn't read the first Discworld until I had read many others and it is not his best!

Jump in at Equal Rites or Mort and go throm there. The first couple are best seen as practice runs.

With Wodehouse, I don't really like slapstick or farce, I love Wodehouse's use of language. The plots are irrelevant, it's Bertie's narration I read them for.

“The Right Hon. was a tubby little chap who looked like he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say 'When.'”

I hadn't the heart to touch my breakfast. I told Jeeves to drink it himself.

Thanks @SpunkyKhakiScrollerfor the audiobook info. I’ll ask at my library.

I read a few Pratchett books years ago, and quite enjoyed them, except for the huge swathes of copied and pasted text (the description of the Discworld structure, for example). I tried to read one of them to DS a couple of years ago, and thought it was dire! And the footnotes were just annoying, and made it really difficult to just get on and read.