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

Dear Reader sounds great, added to my TBR. I also loved Bookworm though and I’ve finally bought Bookish today as it’s £2.99 on Kindle atm.

I’m a bit late to the new thread - and thanks for the new thread Southeastdweller - but here is my list so far:

1. The Obesity Code by Jason Fung
2. Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer
3. Is Heathcliff a Murderer? by John Sutherland
4. Can Jane Eyre be Happy? by John Sutherland
5. The Island by C L Taylor
6. Escape Room by Christopher Edge
7. Zero Days by Ruth Ware
8. The Last Odyssey by James Rollins
9. My Hero Academia Vol 5 by Kohei Horikoshi
10. The Chase by Ava Glass
11. I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
12. Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
13. How to Lose a Lord in Ten Days by Sophie Irwin
14. The Fast Diet by Dr Michael Mosley & Mimi Spencer
15. No One Would Do What The Lamberts Have Done by Sophie Hannah
16. Menopausing by Davina McCall with Dr Naomi Potter
17. My Hero Academia Vol 6 by Kohei Horikoshi
18. How Not To Be Wrong by James O’Brien
19. The Doctor Will See You Now by Amir Khan
20. The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
21. Onyeka and the Academy of the Sun by Tola Okogwu
22. The Promised Neverland Vol 6 by Kaiu Shirai and Posuka Demizu

and:

23. Young Knights of the Round Table by Julia Golding

YA book about a trio of changlings who’ve been brought up in Faerie and brainwashed into believing that humans are the enemy.

They’re sent on a mission to the human realm where they discover that things aren’t quite as they’ve been brought up to believe.
It’s all fairly nonsensical.

24. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

I found a receipt in this book while reading it, and turns out that I bought it in 2009 and hadn’t got round to reading it before now, which is slightly embarrassing. It didn’t take all that long to finish it once I started reading it either.

Anyway, the general theme is that, along with hard work (10,000 hrs minimum to become an expert in a skill, apparently), success owes a great deal to being in the right environment, having the right background, lucky opportunities and to the individual’s ability & willingness to seize opportunities when given the opportunity.

25. The Nobody People by Bob Proehl

About a group of people with superpowers have gone public with their abilities and the fallout from that as the government pass increasingly discriminatory laws. Not helped by a minority of superpowered individuals using their abilities for violence.

This has obvious echoes of X-Men comics, but it felt very slow paced and takes a very long time to get to where it’s going.

Thanks for the new thread southeast .

I have reserved Is This Working, Permanent.

Thanks @Southeastdweller for the new thread!

21 Rings of Saturn - WG Sebald

A reread for me of this wandering, meditative book which sets against the East Anglian landscape that was Sebald’s adopted home interweaving ruminations on place, history and nature. Like taking a walk with an interesting and very clever friend.

Feel like I’ve refound my mojo.
Finished 2 this weekend
60 A Family Matter by Claire Lynch
Short read told in two timelines- one in the present day which tells the story of Maggie and her father Heron who brought her up alone, and one in the 1980s where Dawn starts to build a new friendship. Eventually the two converge. I thought this was beautifully written and Lynch explored the themes and events with a lack of judgement unusual in fiction. The only thing that stopped it being bold for me was that we didn’t get to know Maggie very well I felt.

61 The Truth by Peter Temple
The sequel to The Broken Shore which I listened to a few weeks ago. This one focuses on Stephen Vellani, the Melbourne based boss of the last book’s protagonist. Vellani is investigating a number of crimes including the murder of a sex worker in a high profile recently opened apartment building while he also deals with his own family issues including his daughter’s descent into drugs. Great crime fiction. Pity he never continued the series.

Yay for mojo @ÚlldemoShúl

The Lynch sounds good!

I've reserved this too, Perm! I'll be interested to see how, post-Covidly, it differs from another very similar book I read a few years ago, All Day Long by Joanna Biggs.

(I say 'a few years ago' - it was published in 2016, but in my defence I don’t think I read it till quite some time later)

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit – ooops!! Lol

Has anyone ever been on a Book Themed Trip? I have just booked up!

Tombland by C J Sansom - Norwich - October 2026 - Books in Places

@Tarragon123 this looks so cool! I’m tempted by a few of the trips.

Ooh amazing Tarragon! I haven’t read the final one yet.

Not posting my list but I'm really enjoying my current read which is a police procedural by a writer I haven't come across before.

Thanks @Southeastdwellerfor the new thread!

Here’s my list - I started to write quick summaries as I enjoyed reading them on last year’s thread. Hadn’t quite appreciated how long they would make my list though!

1. The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt - computers replace an outdoor childhood
2. The Lady of the Tower by Elizabeth St John - a Jacobean noblewoman becomes mistress of the Tower of London.
3. The Ashes of London by Andrew Taylor - a young man meets an heiress when investigating murders at the Restoration Court
4. The King’s General by Daphne du Maurier - of love and the Civil War
5. The Fire Court by Andrew Taylor - more Restoration crime
6. The King’s Evil by Andrew Taylor - even more Restoration crime
7. After you’ve gone by Maggie O’Farrell - what led to a young woman being in a coma
8. This must be the place by Maggie O’Farrell - a man has a midlife crisis after listening to the radio
9. Invisible Agents by Nadine Akkerman - history book about 17th century women spies
10. The Lady of Hay by Barbara Erskine - medieval spirits create havoc after a young woman undergoes hypnosis
11. A Room Full of Bones by Elly Griffiths - a murder takes place in a room full of bones
12. Dying Fall by Elly Griffiths - a mysterious skeleton is found near Blackpool
13. The Outcast Dead by Elly Griffiths - the bones of a notorious murderess are found in Norwich
14. The Ghost Fields by Elly Griffiths - a body is unearthed in a WWII plane
15. The Woman in Blue by Elly Griffiths - a murder takes place in the pilgrimage town of Walsingham
16. The Chalk Pit by Elly Griffiths - bones and tunnels are found under Norwich
17. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin - childhood friends become gaming pioneers
18. Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell - a family man goes AWOL
19. Young Rachel Young by Gabrielle Zevin - women reflect on a political scandal
20. Bluff by Francine Toon - a girl goes missing in Fife
21. Killers of the King by Charles Spencer - what happened to the men who signed Charles I’s death warrant
22. Circle of Friends by Maeve Binchy - Bildungsroman in 50s Ireland
23. The Women by Kristin Hannah - a nurse volunteers for Vietnam
24. The Crowded House by Winifred Holtby - a shy girl grows up in Edwardian Yorkshire
25. A Schooling in Murder by Andrew Taylor - a ghost investigates
26. Yours for the Season by Uzma Jalaluddin - cross-cultural love in Alaska
27. Indignity by Lea Ypi - a woman researches her family history in the Albanian archives
28. Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguo or Is the Butler Boring?
29. The Ruffler’s Child by John Pilkington - Tudor crime with falcons
30. Nation of Strangers Rebuilding Home in the 21st Century by Ece Temelkuran - an asylum seeker’s memoir
31. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - single men of good income search for a wife
32. Blood and Sugar by Laura Shepherd-Robinson - crime amongst slave traders
33. Daughters of the Night by Laura Shepherd-Robinson - more 18th century crime
34. The Founding by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles - Yorkshire wool merchants found a dynasty
35. The Boundless Deeps by Richard Holmes - Tennyson and science
36. Death of an Ordinary Man by Sarah Perry - memoir of the death of the author’s father-in-law
37. Artists, Siblings, Visionaries by Judith Mackrell - biography of Gwen and Augustus John
38. Heiresses by Miranda Kauffman - how women profited from the Slave Trade
39. To be Young, Gifted and Black by Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason - memoir by the mother of a family of musicians
40. Daughters of the Bamboo Grove by Barbara Demick - Chinese twins separated by adoption
41. Nights of Rain and Stars by Maeve Binchy - tourists bond in Greece
42. The Mitford Girls: The biography of an extraordinary family by Mary S Lovell - as the subtitle says
43. Heartburn by Norah Ephron
44. A Symphony of Echoes by Jodi Taylor - time-travelling sequel
45. The Edge of Darkness by Vaseem Khan - in which Persis actually follows correct police procedure
46. With the Law on Our Side by Lady Hale - of the courts and our rights
47. Heart the Lover by Lily King - a student falls in love

Mister Pip - Lloyd Jones

This was my lucky dip at the meet up a couple of years ago. It’s taken me a while to get round to it (!) as I started it on holiday but didn't finish it and then had to restart.

Told from the POV of Matilda, a 14 year old living with her mother on an island where “rambos” and “redskins” are at war. Mr Watts is the only white man in the village, having come there with his wife Grace. He runs the school with only one copy of Great Expectations, drawing Matilda and her class mates into the story of Pip. A good read and the character of Matilda was great,

31. The Alamut Ambush - Anthony Price

Second in the series of espionage thrillers by this prolific writer (there are 19 of them) which I discovered last year. The action circles around a small group of operatives in British intelligence, with different characters in the foreground in the various books; it's not quite at Le Carré's level, but twisty and well-written.
This time the focus is on events that trigger an investigation into the fraught world of Middle Eastern politics as the British team try to gauge the motives of Arabs and Israelis in a complicated game of bluff and double-bluff….so complicated, I'm afraid, that I got totally lost and ended up little the wiser.

Totally my own fault, as I made the elementary error of reading this in chunks - not an approach that pays off with this sort of book. I'll continue with the series but make sure I'm more consistent in my reading next time…

Bringing over my list, including the most recent reads. (Am doing bolds at the end of the year.)
Books 2026

1. Gabriel's Moon by William Boyd
2. Nesting by Roisin O'Donnell
3. The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters
4. Waist Deep by Linea Maja Ernst
5. Culpability by Bruce Holsinger
6. Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis
7. The Artist by Lucy Steeds.
8. These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean.
9. Chosen Family by Madeleine Gray
10. Wreck by Catherine Newman
11. Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaughy
12. We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
13. The Tenant by Frieda McFadden
14. The Favourite by Fran Littlewood
15. Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Doerr
16. A Family Matter by Claire Lynch
17. One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Bookclub re-read)
18. Brawler by Lauren Groff
19. Three Days in June by Anne Tyler
20. The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers
21. The Eights by Joanne Miller
22. The Names by Florence Knapp
23. The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
24. The Weekend by T.M. Logan
25. Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin
26. Death of an Ordinary Man by Sarah Perry. Much discussed on here already. I thought it was very good - brilliantly written; it made me want to read her novels. Had to try to do discreet train-crying!
27. Love Untold by Ruth Jones. Enjoyable multi-generational tale of four Welsh women and their relationships with each other. I doubt I'll remember this one in a year's time, but it was a very nice way to spend a few hours on a train.

I hadn’t really planned to read Mother Mary Comes to Me but I've just snagged a signed first edition from a local charity shop for £1! 😳 #irresistiblebookbargains

Charity shops and free bookshelves are fatal, but I figure if I donate two and buy/take one then it's net positive...

@Benvenuto I love the quick summaries, thank you, and I will be stealing that idea for my own book records.

I have stolen your style @Benvenuto ! My list so far:

1. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz – two teenage boys form an intense, searching friendship in the desert
2. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir – a man wakes up alone in space and has to science his way out of extinction
3. Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid – astronauts, ambition, and emotional lives that don’t quite match the premise
4. The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon – a midwife investigates a death in a tight-knit colonial community
5. Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell – Shakespeare’s family life and the grief behind one famous play
6. What You Are Looking For Is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama – a librarian quietly nudges people toward better lives
7. The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard – the slow unraveling of an English family between the wars
8. The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain – a lifelong friendship shaped by restraint, repression, and Switzerland
9. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride – a community rallies around a missing boy in a divided town
10. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles – a count lives an entire life under house arrest in a grand hotel
11. Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo – a band of criminals attempt an elaborate heist with plenty of swagger
12. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows – letters reveal life, love, and resilience on an occupied island
13. Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill – fragments of a marriage under strain
14. Garden of Angels by David Hewson – a haunting Venetian mystery where the past refuses to stay buried
15. The Magicians’ Guild by Trudi Canavan – a girl discovers she has dangerous magical powers
16. The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth – the decline of an empire and a family (DNF)
17. The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason – a young doctor confronts harsh truths in a remote WWI outpost
18. A Curious Beginning by Deanna Raybourn – a spirited Victorian woman gets drawn into a mystery
19. Last Dance in Salzburg by Vivian Conroy – murder at a glamorous 1920s party (DNF)
20. The Café with No Name by Robert Seethaler – ordinary lives pass through a small Viennese café
21. The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley – time travel meets bureaucracy and uneasy relationships
22. First Time Caller by BK Borison – a cosy romance with adults behaving slightly like teenagers
23. The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths – a forensic archaeologist helps solve a murder in the marshes
24. The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey – a female lawyer navigates a sensitive case in 1920s Bombay
25. Geneva by Richard Armitage – a famous scientist becomes entangled in a tense, paranoid thriller
26. The Satapur Moonstone by Sujata Massey – more Perveen Mistry solving problems in princely India
27. Queens at War by Alison Weir – the women of the Wars of the Roses navigate power and survival
28. Holes by Louis Sachar – boys dig holes in the desert and uncover a cleverly layered story
29. Marking Time by Elizabeth Jane Howard – the Cazalet family adjusts to wartime realities
30. James by Percival Everett – a reimagining of a classic through a sharper, more subversive lens
31. The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty – a con artist is pulled into a world of djinn and politics
32. The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi – a woman builds an independent life in post-independence India
33. Independence by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni – three sisters navigate Partition and its aftermath
34. The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali – friendship and ambition across decades in Iran
35. The Bombay Prince by Sujata Massey – a murder case intersects with a royal visit
36. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion – grief examined with clarity and control
37. Green Rising by Lauren James – teens gain plant-based powers in a climate-changed world
38. Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty – politics, alliances, and escalating tension in Daevabad

@Benvenuto I have the mini-summaries too and will post them in the end-of-year round-up :-)

LRB podcast on Death of an Ordinary Man

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/sarah-perry-amy-key-death-of-an-ordinary-man/id734373360?i=1000763755652

Hello all, and thanks for the new thread @Southeastdweller . I'll add my list now, and will catch up on the chat shortly:

1.Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi
2.The Rest of Our Lives by Benjamin Markovits
3.Bournville by Jonathan Coe.
4.Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
5.Seascraper by Benjamin Wood
6.Shattered by Hanif Kureishi
7.Jump! by Jilly Cooper.
8.Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
9.Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: China’s Stolen Children and a Story of Separated Twins by Barbara Demmick
10.The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
11.Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë
12.Lying in Wait by Liz Nugent.
13.Black and British: A Forgotten History by David Olusoga.
14.Munichs by David Peace
15.Mount! by Jilly Cooper.
16.Unravelling Oliver by Liz Nugent.
17.Cuddy by Benjamin Myers.
18. Heart the Lover by Lily King

The Wedding People by Wendy Espach
Sailed through this undemanding bit of fluff and enjoyed it. Probably wouldn't have considered it without the suicide angle (which makes me sound a bit weird!) but that gave it an added bit of bite that romcoms don't usually have.
By coincidence I have just started watching the new Steve Carell dramedy, Rooster and the book had a very similar feel. Buoyed up by wildly unrealistic Niceness, I now face my working week

32. Leaving Home - Mark Haddon

The first super-bold of the year for me. It's mostly a memoir of growing up in Northampton in a family with two detached, ill-matched parents and of being an anxious and depressed child, but it's also very funny, brimming with Haddon's own artworks and family photographs (he's close to me in age so I recognise the look of those fading old photos so well). Haddon's mother was supremely un-maternal, a woman who'd never wanted children but dutifully produced two, and for Mark and (especially) his sister Fiona there was the consciousness that neither of their parents particularly enjoyed their company. There's so much here that's heartbreaking - particularly the descriptions of his parents' later years and deaths - and his honesty about his feelings and his own mental health struggles is direct and brave.

If I had a small criticism it would be that the second half of the book - when he moves away from his childhood and family to focus more on his own adult life - feels slightly disconnected, but I feel a bit mean saying that given it includes his account of needing a triple heart bypass, and the serious road accident involving his pregnant wife. Overall, though, I couldn’t have loved this more.

39. The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett - I enjoyed The Appeal by the same author and liked her clever 'tell a story via primary sources' approach. So I thought I might like this one too. But no, it was not to be. It was alright but it was trying too hard to be too many things and patting itself on the back for being so clever about it. Got bored halfway through but finished it for a reading challenge.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I tried to find your rant about it but couldn't. Could you point me to it?

Onto Empire of Gold, third in the Daevabad trilogy. Looking forward to this one.