50 Books Challenge 2026 Part Five

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the fifth 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, the third thread here and the fourth thread

Thanks for the new thread, @Southeastdweller. Back soon with the dreaded list!

Hello and many thanks for the thread!!

Some June deals of interest:

The Outsider by Jane Casey (about undercover cop Rob Langton)
Malibu Rising - Taylor Jenkins Reid
Artemis - Andy Weir (author of Project Hail Mary)
Women of Troy - Pat Barker
Say Nothing - Patrick Radden Keefe
Pompeii - Robert Harris
Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin
Faithful Place - Tana French

Good morning, happy Kindle sale day and thanks for the new thread @Southeastdweller.

Just finishing off Imogen -Jilly Cooper, the last of the ‘name’ novels. Whilst we encounter the usual Jilly problems, fattism, casual racism etc and the fact that the heroine is just 18 and the hero in his 30s (see also Rivals) this remains firmly my favourite of them. Imogen joins a party of sophisticated reprobates on a holiday to the South of France and has her eyes opened. As usual the descriptions of food and clothes are sublime and it evokes the heat of a sun and sand holiday so well.

Just bought John Lanchester - Look What You Made me Do for £1.59 in the Kindle sale.

Morning all! Thanks for the new thread @Southeastdweller

Here's my list:

1 Edenglassie – Melissa Lucashenko
2 All the Colours of the Dark – Chris Whitaker
3 Boymum – Ruth Whippman
4 Bramble Fox – Kathrin Tordasi
5 Salem’s Lot – Stephen King
6 Scattered – Aamna Mohdin
7 Hangover Square – Patrick Hamilton
8 Due to a Death – Mary Kelly
9 The Reckoning – Jane Casey
10 The Last Girl – Jane Casey
11 Factfulness – Hans Rosling
12 The Stranger You Know – Jane Casey
13 Recitatif – Toni Morrison
14 The Fire Next Time – James Baldwin
15 Whites: on race and other falsehoods - Otegha Uwagba
16 The Sparsholt Affair – Alan Hollinghurst
17 The Evin Prison Bakers’ Club – Sepideh Gholian
18 The Kill – Jane Casey
19 Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow – Gabrielle Zevin
20 A Woman of Substance – Barbara Taylor Bradford
21 Chosen Family – Madeleine Gray
22 The Secret Hours – Mick Herron
23 The Hallmarked Man – Robert Galbraith
24 The Silence of the Girls – Pat Barker
25 The Women of Troy – Pat Barker
26 The Voyage Home – Pat Barker
27 The Gift of Rain – Tan Twan Eng
28 After the Fire – Jane Casey
29 Mani – Patrick Leigh Fermor
30 Brother. Do. You. Love. Me – Manni Coe
31 Almost Life – Kiran Millwood Hargrave
32 Minor Disturbances at Grand Life Apartments – Hema Sukumar
33 Let the Dead Speak – Jane Casey

My List :

1. The Lamb by Lucy Rose
2. The Book Of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey
3. Sonny Boy by Al Pacino
4. The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine
5. The Names by Florence Knapp
6. Helm by Sarah Hall
7. Love Forms by Claire Adam
8. Patricia Brent, Spinster by Herbert George Jenkins
9. Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey
10. Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis
11. Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley
12. Paper Cup by Karen Campbell
13. The Wedding People by Alison Espach
14. The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
15. Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
16. The Favourites by Layne Fargo
17. John and Paul : A Love Story in Songs by Ian Leslie
18. The Trouble With Mrs Montgomery Hurst by Katie Lumsden
19. Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors
20. Last One At The Party by Bethany Clift
21. Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst
22. Death Of The Author by Nnedi Okorafor
23. Boy Parts by Eliza Clark
24. The Beginning Of The End (Apocalypse Z : Book One) by Manel Loureiro
25. On The Calculation Of Volume IV by Solvej Balle
26. The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne by Ron Currie
27. Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green
28. A Court Of Thorns And Roses by Sarah J. Maas
29. A Woman Of Substance by Barbara Taylor Bradford
30. London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe
31. Strange Houses by Uketsu
32. Say You’ll Remember Me by Abby Jimenez
33. Termush by Sven Holm
34. I’m Thinking Of Ending Things by Iain Reid
35. Homeschooled by Stefan Merrill Block
36. Tender Is The Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
37. My Husband’s Wife by Alice Feeney
38. Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth
39. Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe
40. The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell

Thank you @Southeastdweller
🤩

Thanks @Southeastdweller. I will be back later with my short list and latest reviews.

As for the Deals, I got

The Best Of Everything
The Door
2 by David Diop
and
Open, Heaven

I also got Strange Pictures yesterday I don’t know whether it’s still a deal

@SheilaFentiman - if you enjoyed the first one, it is worth saying next few Louise Penny's are nearly carbon copies. Although her detective gets even more perfect, because he's modelled on her late husband, so after a while it got a bit much for me.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit and @elkiedee - the book than inspired The Wire is The Corner, a collaboration between David Simon and Ed Burns.

Ed Burns was one of the homicide detectives Simon shadowed for a year for Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets. That was when Simon took a year's secondment from the news paper. (It was made I to an excellent TV series, Homicide: Life On The Streets)

Ed Burns left the police and retrained as a high school teacher - like the initially awful Pryzbylewski in The Wire. Burns and Simon's experiences in public high school and th paper were a bit part of the layer Wire series, of course.

I have read both. They are dense, they are pretty hard going emotionally at times because it's all true, but they are excellent books.

@BeaAndBen Homicide and The Corner both hit the charity shop they sat on my shelves for years unloved

Thanks for the new thread @Southeastdweller

I got the following in the deals:

The Elements - John Boyne
Look What You Made Me Do - John Lanchester

and from my wishlist
The Overstory - Richard Powers
The Best of Everything - Kit De Waal
Babylonia - Constanza Cosati
Migrations - Charlotte Mconaghy

but haven't looked through them all yet so may pick up some more!

I loved Homicide: Life on the Street (I worked at Channel 4 at the time it was first broadcast over here so I saw every episode and was totally hooked). All the characters were properly fleshed out and completely satisfying imho. I'm not sure whether it’s still on but I've seen it recently being re-run on one of the Sky channels. I've got David Simon's book too but somehow never got round to reading it! I’ll definitely remedy that but it’s a whopper.

Aw, that's a shame.

Thank you for the new thread, Southeastdweller!

I'm reading a couple of books at the moment, two slow reads; Quaderno Proibito (The Forbidden Notebook) by Alba de Céspedes, which is excellent. Also, Les Misérables, which is really good, although Victor Hugo can go on a bit at times. I've just read the Rather Dated Bookclub for June, The Loved and Envied by Enid Bagnold, which was a very entertaining and immersive read. Review below.

The Loved and Envied: Enid Bagnold.

This story is a fascinating view into the lives of a fading class of aristocrat expats living in France in the 1950s. At the centre of the circle is the beautiful Lady Ruby McLean, whose good looks dazzle those who meet her and keep her friends in constant thrall. This woman is the 'loved and envied' of the title. While others in her circle come to terms with encroaching old age and look back on missed opportunities and regrets over actions not taken and words unspoken, Ruby seems unaffected and lives a charmed life. However, her family life is complicated and her relationship with her daughter is very strained. The reader has the impression that Ruby's beauty is as much of a burden as a blessing and that it's something that exists almost separately to her.

I really enjoyed this book and read it quite quickly. I particularly liked the evocation of the times; the backdrop of the chateau and its estate and also the part of the story set in Jamaica. I enjoyed the interesting cast of characters, each one quirkier than the next and very unexpected. I never knew what was going to happen next in the story. There were plenty of twists and turns.

While I enjoyed the characters hugely, I felt that the central character was the least interesting one and was mostly only described in terms of her beautiful face.
(Although she does one significant act of kindness at least). It's interesting that the author drew on real people for inspiration in her books and that Ruby was based on one of her own friends. I can't help thinking that if she hadn't been writing about her own friend, she may have written Ruby in a less idealised way. However, this was a very satisfying read.

Just bringing my list over - books read since the last thread

38. The Pretender - Jo Harkin
39. The Original - Nell Stevens
40. Dusk - Robbie Arnott
41. Writers & Lovers - Lily King
42. Dominion - Addie E Citchens
43. Saraswati - Gurnak Johal
44. The Barbecue at Number 9 - Jennie Godfrey
45. Good Morning, Midnight - Jean Rhys
46. May We Feed The King - Rebecca Perry
47. Luckenbooth - Jenni Fagan
48. Good People - Patmeena Sabit
49. Son of Nobody - Yann Martel
50. Edenglassie - Melissa Lucashenko
51. Celestial Lights - Cecile Pin
52. Solace House - Will Mclean

I feel like it's been a good reading month - May We Feed The King and Edenglassie were also near bolds, and may end up being.

Thank you for the new thread southeastdweller. Here is my list so far:

1 To All The Boys I've Loved Before - Jenny Han
2 Vagabond - Tim Curry
3 Witches Abroad - Terry Pratchett
4 Legends and Lattes - Travis Baldree
5 The Housemaid - Freida McFadden
6 Last Night at the Lobster - Stewart O'Nan
7 Literary Noir 1 - Cornell Woolrich
8 Eleanor & Park - Rainbow Rowell
9 The School of Night - Karl Ove Knausgaard
10 Burial Rites - Hannah Kent
11 Across The Nightingale Floor - Lian Hearn
12 The Benefactors - Wendy Erskine
13 Gone Tomorrow - Lee Child
14 Heart The Lover - Lily King
15 Kingfisher - Rosie Kelly
16 This Is The Story Of A Happy Marriage - Ann Patchett
17 The Correspondent - Virginia Evans
18 The Best of Everything - Kit De Waal
19 Accidental Tourist - Anne Tyler
20 On Earth As It Is Beneath - Ana Paula Maia
21 The Mercy Step - Marcia Hutchinson
22 A Guardian and A Thief - Megha Majumdar
23 A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing - Alice Evelyn Yang
24 The Director- Daniel Kehlmann
25 Poirot's Early Cases - Agatha Christie
26 Strange Houses - Uketsu
27 A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
28 Future Homemakers of America - Laurie Graham
29 Jamaica Inn - Daphne du Maurier
30 Heated Rivalry - Rachel Reid
31 The Nineties - Chuck Klosterman
32 Three Days in June - Anne Tyler

Currently readin Kin by Tayari Jones, so far I'm preferring it to An American Marriage, and plodding on with the Les Miserables readalong also.

I paid a visit to Barter Books in Alnwick yesterday, pic of my haul attached!

Thanks southeast!

1 Psyche - Kate Forsyth
2 The Forgotten Forest - Robert Vennell
3 Did I Ever Tell You This? - Sam Neill
4 Raising the Sen-betweeners - Lisa Lloyd
5 What We Fear Most - Ben Cave
6 A Tale of Two Titties: a writer’s guide to conquering the most sexist tropes in literary history - Meg Vondriska
7 The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern
8 Cultish: the language of fanaticism- Amanda Montell
9 William Wordsworth - selected by Seamus Heaney
10 Oaxaca Journal - Oliver Sacks
11 The Greatest Nobodies of History - Adrian Bliss
12 Hunchback - Saou Ichikawa
13 Crypt - Alice Roberts
14 The Lost Rainforests of Britain - Guy Shrubsole
15 The Midnight Library - Matt Haig
16 The Wager - David Grann
17 Hero - Katie Buckley
18 Birds, Sex & Beauty - Matt Ridley
19 Witch Trial - Harriet Tyce
20 Heresy - Catherine Nixey
21 Ghost Wall - Sarah Moss
22 Creatures of a Day - Irvin D. Yalom
23 No One Would Do What the Lamberts Have Done - Sophie Hannah
24 Embers of the Hands - Eleanor Barraclough
25 Little Face - Sophie Hannah
26 A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
27 The Age of Magical Overthinking - Amanda Montell
28 Sedated - James Davies
29 Good Girl - Aria Aber
30 Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits - Emma Wilby

And recently finished:
31 The Last Death of the Year - Sophie Hannah
Latest in the Poirot series, murders in a Greek island idealistic community. Better than the Lamberts, but that’s damning with very faint praise.

32 Mother Tongue - Jenni Nuttall
Wanted to love this history of women’s words, but didn’t quite. I wanted more etymology and linguistics, this was more a feminist exploration of texts about women in the medieval and early modern periods.

Thanks @Southeastdwellerjust checking in- no list from me this time- it’s got too long!

Thanks @BeaAndBen - I did enjoy it.

I already have the second one (which I bought first, because Kindle deals) but I will look out for it getting repetitive/hagiographic.

Thanks for the new thread @Southeastdweller! Checking in: I’m back on RWYO with Spitting Gold.

Great haul @InTheCludgie - Luckenbooth was a recent bold for me, though I did live in Edinburgh for a few years so part of the delight was the nostalgia.

A Family Matter is also on the deals which I would recommend.

Will update my list tomorrow. I've been very restrained with the kindle deals - so far just Proto, about the spread of Proto-Indo-European, and a Georgette Heyer.

Currently enjoying Pagans, by James Alistair Henry, a crime novel set in alternative history version of the UK that never underwent the Norman invasion and remains split along Saxon/Celtic/Norse territorial lines. The author has a lot of fun with his concept.

Many thanks for the new thread @Southeastdweller.

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

Isabel Archer is the lady in question. An American in Europe, resolved to never marry. However...

This is a book I both loved and despised. I loved the huge amount of psychological content. It was like being inside the characters' heads at times. I also really enjoyed the descriptive passages; I was right there at the villa in Italy.

But as for the excessively long sentences - some of which I needed to read out loud to understand - well! James must surely have been paid by the word?!

@CrochetGrannySquare I had a similar experience with Wings of the Dove it certainly put me off Henry James

My books since the start of the last thread. A few bolds, and one-liner descriptions added.

30. An Awfully Big Adventure - Beryl Bainbridge : Stage-struck Liverpool teen Stella naively plays a part in tragedy

31. The Alamut Ambush - Anthony Price: Spy thriller swirling with intrigue between opposing Arabs and Israelis; the Brits are caught in the middle

32. Leaving Home - Mark Haddon: A writer/artist looks back at his difficult Northampton childhood with humour and candour

33. Fair Stood the Wind for France - H. E. Bates: elegiac wartime derring-do

34. Finding Time Again - Marcel Proust: Lifetime reading achievement unlocked

35. The Half-Crown House - Helen Ashton: Stately home family struggles with realities of 50s life

36. Last One Out - Jane Harper: Barely suspenseful Aussie whodunnit

37. Is This Working? - Charlie Colenutt: Thumbnail interviews build into an interesting portrait of working life

38. What Happened That Night - Nicci French: Detective solves a murder and a 29-year-old mystery in the space of one night

39. The World According to Colour - James Fox: Thoughtful and interesting cultural history of colour

40. Sky High - Michael Gilbert: Crime capers in sleepy 50s village; Mrs Artside & co are on the case.

Thanks as ever @Southeastdweller for keeping everything shipshape and Bristol fashion. Here’s my list so far:

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
19.The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett
20.The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
21.A Family Matter by Claire Lynch
22.The Fortnight in September by RC Sherriff.
23. Rodham by Curtis Sittenfield
24.Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald

I'm currently reading Precipice by Robert Harris and listening to The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden. The former is great so far, the latter less so.