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

Sorry @Stowickthevast ! I am getting mixed up!!

Hi @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie sorry that things are still difficult

I’m about a third through the second Nora Breem and I don’t think its that bad? I’m certainly preferring it to the second Elly Griffiths time travelling one.

I’ve never read any Pratchett. Its never appealed to me. Maybe I should revisit?

61 The Cromarty Library Circle – Shona Maclean. I’m a huge fan of Shona Maclean, particularly the Seeker series and the stand alone book, The Bookseller of Inverness. I was very disappointed in this book. The great and the good of Cromarty set up a book club in 1831. None of the characters are particularly interesting and the baddie is so pantomime its laughable.

62 Careless People – Sarah Wynn-Williams. Much reviewed on here. Horrified at this book and at Sarah’s treatment at Facebook.

Good to see you @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie , hope things improve.

Pagans by James Alistair Henry Thanks MaterMoribund for recommending this mystery set in an alternative Britain where the Saxons are privileged and casual racism towards Celts is a daily reality. Saxon Aedith and Tribal Drustan must work together to investigate murders of members of an obscure sect.

I thought the satirical element was brilliant - the thought experiment of a different international power dynamic and its manifestation in local status is really wittily done. Also touches like the tattoo parlour, in a society where people’s lives are documented on the body, having the sacredness of the confessional. I must admit I wasn’t so carried along with the mystery itself, and found the book rather too long, but overall I thought it was a fun read.

I loved The Children’s Book (and Possession back in the 90s) and keep meaning to read more AS Byatt (I have The Virgin in the Garden sitting on my TBR shelf). I enjoy the history lesson aspect of the books and loved all the pottery stuff.

Him by JD Kirk a standalone thriller by the author of the DCI Logan series. A quick read, check your brain in at the door type scenario involving a dead husband and AI. I guessed Who Did It very early on but continued to see what nefarious deeds they would carry out to achieve their ends (probably twirling their moustache while they did them).
Perfect palate cleanser before tackling Benbecula.

Glad you liked Pagans @CornishLizard ! Next one due out next year, I think.

Like @TheDonsDingleberries , I just finished Perfection, by Vincenzo Latronico (book 66) and really enjoyed it. I have no hipster credentials, but still had a few moments of recognition that made me both laugh and cringe. It's told in quite a distinctive way - there's no dialogue and we don't learn much about two central characters - it's narrated as if by an anthropologist dispassionately observing a particular tribe, going about their tribal rituals. Short and refreshing.

I currently have Daughters of the Bamboo Grove and Pagans lined up as my next reads, and am optimistic about both given positive reviews on here.

Nice to see you @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie - hope things keep improving for you.

i have never read any Pratchett - it just doesn't appeal (and I have so much to read that does!)

I have Possession on my TBR pile and worry it's going to be hard work.....

34. Carrie Soto is Back - Taylor Jenkins Reid

Read as part of RWYO and followed on nicely from Malibu Rising which I read earlier in the year. Carrie is the most successful female tennis player of all time but her record is about to be broken so she comes out of retirement at 37 to try and hold onto her record. I liked that Carrie had attitude, was difficult and didn't seek popularity. Kudos to her father and agent for knowing how to handle her. I raced through this but can see that if you're not into tennis there's too much detail of each match played and tennis technique.

I found Possession very hard work @TimeforaGandT that said I did love The Children’s Book and I’m glad you got there with it @AliasGrape

Thanks all for the Pratchett discussion

2 more finished
Claudius the God by Robert Graves
Tells the story of Claudius’s time as emperor. The first half of this one was a bit slow but the back-stabbing and nastiness commenced again about half-way through and just never stopped. I like how Graves shows us that Claudius is not as wonderful as he makes himself out to be quite subtly. Enjoyed but not as much as the first. Have now ordered both full books to read at some time in the future. Jacobi’s narration was terrific again.

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas
I’ve always been quite dismissive of romantasy in the past, mainly because I don’t like romance (though I do like fantasy). So I thought it was time to give one a go. This coincided nicely with the Book Club podcast. It was definitely better than I expected. The prose is fine and the characters (apart from the heroine) are pretty one-dimensional- especially the main love interest and the villain. But it was pacy and fun. It had a great twist and the main heroine was quite likable. I enjoyed the read but I know they get ‘spicier’ after this and that’s not my cup of tea so I’ll stop here.

Thank you @EineReiseDurchDieZeit for confirming my suspicions. It's going to stay on my TBR pile for now!

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie it’s good to hear from you, really hope things get better for you and we are here when you feel up to it.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie good to see you, hope things improve for you soon.

I loved Possession - it's a good story and not hard-going if you skip the poetry (which I don't think is essential to read properly!). Also a big Pratchett fan, and quite enjoy Wodehouse, though I haven't read any of the latter since about 20 years ago.

The hay festival list is a bit of an odd mix! Some great books and some which I hated (A Thousand Splendid Suns and One Hundred Years of Solitude fall into the latter category - I'm probably a philistine). I think I've read 17 of them. Good to see Night Watch on the list - possibly the best Discworld book, though I think you need to read a few of the earlier books (especially the Guards sub-series) first as it goes back in time and we see lots of familiar characters when they were much younger.

Have finally finished my latest book:

30 The Six Wives of Henry VIII - Alison Weir A lengthy non-fiction which I've been reading for what seems like weeks, but so interesting that I didn't feel the need to intersperse it with non-fictions like I usually would. I knew plenty about Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn (though most of it was the gossipy type of knowledge from books like The Other Boleyn Girl...I was surprised to see how much was actually true!), but almost nothing about the other four, so this was a fascinating read and really enjoyable. A bold and highly recommended for anyone who is interested in the period.

My Name is Lucy Barton - Elizabeth Strout

Got this, and the others, for my birthday and I loved it. Lucy spends weeks in hospital where her mum, whom she hasn't seen for years, comes to visit her. They try to reconnect, with mixed success, while Lucy takes us back to her childhood of poverty and isolation, and how she managed to escape to a better life. I just love the way Strout writes and I'm already most of the way through the next one. Will try to ration the others so they're not over too quickly!

22. The Ending Writes Itself by Evelyn Clarke

This was reviewed on here by others earlier this week and given a thumbs down. I enjoyed it more thsn I expected. It is cleverly plotted, with a good nod to Agatha Christie, and it has a coherent ending. I am not entirely sure why there is such a buzz around it though. It's not THAT good. Well, actually, I guess it's because the publishing industry loves a book about the publishing industry. A bit like with Yellow Face.

I learned stuff I didn't know about publishing so there's that.

49. Confusion by Elizabeth Jane Howard - 3rd in the Cazalet chronicles. A reread after many years and a very rewarding one. What I love about Howard is how well she writes people. The POV moves around but each of the voices feels so genuine whether it is a 12 year old boy, a teenager desparate for life to begin, a young wife suffering from depression, a woman whose husband is MIA and is stuck in the limbo of being neither widow nor wife. It feels like these people are real people and they exist outside the pages of the book.

I also really liked reading about the day to day life of regular people during WW2. Not spies or soldiers or nurses or codebreakers. Just ordinary people trying to live in extraordinary times.

Perhaps not a bold but I do recommend the series highly

How lovely to see you @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie and sending lots of good wishes and the hope that things improve soon.

I have been reading quite a bit, and keeping up with the thread, but I am somewhat horrified to realise that I am TEN reviews behind. I will have to make them short!

39. The World According to Colour - James Fox

Wide-ranging exploration of the cultural importance and uses of seven different colours through history. I enjoyed this a great deal, although it feels a bit scattergun in some ways (no disservice to Fox's excellent scholarship and research, although the editing was surprisingly poor in a book of this calibre - 'confectionary' kept irritating me). In the acknowledgments at the end Fox mentions that he initially intended the book as a series of brief essays about colour in Western art, but it grew into a much bigger project - I suspect this accounts for the sprawling tendency. However I have to say that it’s full of great nuggets of information about colour, for example, the fact that a word for 'blue' is the last term for a colour to be developed in almost all languages, and some still don’t have a word for it at all.

38. Gate to Kagoshima by Poppy Kuroki

Timeslip novel. Scottish Isla is researching her Japanese ancestors in Kagoshima, when she wanders into a shrine and finds herself transported to 1877, shortly before the start of the Satsuma Rebellion, and manages to fall in love with a samurai (Keiichiro) in the midst of the chaos.

This was set in a period of history I know very little about, so that was interesting to read about. Although sadly not enough of the historical detail for my liking.

I feel less enthusiastic about the rest of the book. The characterisation of the lead characters felt very flimsy. And the ancestor that Isla’s travelled to Kagoshima to research shares the same surname as the author, which seemed like an unusual choice on the author’s part.

The bit I really disliked was the subplot about Keiichiro’s sister. It’s difficult to talk about why exactly I disliked it without massive spoilers, but it culminates in a sequence where Keiichiro abandons his fellow samurai to go home and have a very upsetting and traumatic conversation with his sister, and he’s straight out of that and immediately into an erotic scene with Isla 🙄 Which was a bit of a WTF moment 🙄 I know some people can be very good at compartmentalising their feelings, but really!

Anyway, on the whole it’s a fairly undemanding quick read although I’m sure there must be better timeslip novels out there.

I don't know. The thing is that on a forum, everyone who posts is kind of self selecting, and some sections of MN are scary and I try to avoid them.

Benbecula by Graeme MacRae Burnet
Mental illness, incest, family annihilation in the Outer Hebrides. Beautifully written tale spun out from sparse historical records.

I sometimes try to cancel reservations and bump myself down, if there are a few reservations but not something like 50 for one copy. But I have way too many library books, and am making very slow progress in the last two weeks. It's becoming a reading slump. Energy and stress, I suppose. The books I'm reading are good, but I really should have finished the two at the top of my pile with ease two weeks ago.

@Terpsichore interesting about the word "blue". Homer always refers to the "wine-dark sea", which I always find a bit of an odd comparison.

52. Solace House - Will Mclean. Reviewed up thread by @MaterMoribund, I wasn't quite as into this. It's narrated by Alex, a 19 year old student at the end of his first year who doesn't have anywhere to go for the summer, and ends up working with a group of other students to clear an old mental asylum and then a spooky house. The house has been owned by a hoarder and as they clear the house, they start finding increasingly weird things. I liked the atmosphere and nostalgia of this. It's based in the 90s at exactly the time I was at uni, and the music references - acid jazz, The Orb, Prodigy with some classic rock - are just what I was into. The debates are also very familiar. And I wrote enjoyed the central mystery. A couple of bits didn't work for me though. It was a bit overly long and I thought the characterisation was quite thin. Then we get some very long and detailed descriptions of trips. There's a theme of psychedelics Vs mental health going on. And there's some truly turgid poetry at the start of each chapter.

@Stowickthevast yes, he specifically mentions Homer. The absence of a term for blue in ancient writings led to a theory that people actually couldn’t see the colour - and this was seriously proposed right up until 1969 (!) when a linguist demonstrated that it was down to the development of language. Black and white were first to be named, then red, then green or yellow, and only then did a word for blue appear. Fascinating, isn’t it?!

Half term week means I fell off the thread again, just catching up so too late for many of the discussions, but I’ve enjoyed reading them all.

Hi @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie, good to see you again.

Hello to @BlueFairyBugsBooks.

WRT the Hay list, I’ve read 15 so a better proportion overall than the Guardian’s. Bemused by the inclusion of A Little Life and 100 Years of Solitude, but hey (Hay?), we all love different stories so what do I know? Re Pratchett etc I tried The Colour of Magic some years ago and didn’t get on with it, it sounds like this was the wrong approach so maybe I’ll try one of the other suggestions upthread. While I can appreciate comic novels, the only ones I can remember making me laugh out loud were the Tom Sharpe books as a late teen, and My Family and Other Animals.

Some of the comments and reviews on these threads have been priceless, better than any comic writing I’ve come across 😊

I’ll be back later to post reviews.

The ‘blue’ thing is interesting. Although there’s a word for it in Welsh (glas) it often means green as well in older contexts (grass is glaswellt for example).
There’s an interesting chapter on ‘blue’ in Through the Language Glass

I largely skipped the poetry @Stowickthevast but I guessed very early on why it was there and had a go at working it out. I did like Maclean’s indignation in the Afterword that people thought AI had written the verses when it was actually all his own (turgid) work! Gen X can churn out their own awful poetry without help, thank you very much and some of us spent a fair bit of our teens doing so
I’m a similar vintage to you and Maclean and I remember me and my boyfriend being the only people left in a three storey crumbling Hall for a couple of days when all the other students went home. We put Pink Floyd’s Echoes on repeat in the corridor of an evening and serenaded the sheep and possibly some ghosts…….