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

24) Fundamentally by Nussabiyah Younis. Heartbroken from a recent breakup with her girlfriend, Dr Nadia Amin, an academic on the cusp of a lectureship, decides to take a sabbatical and accept a job offer from the UN. Her task will be to design and implement a rehabilitation and repatriation programme for ISIS brides in Iraq. Whilst at an Iraqi internment camp she meets Sara, a British-born Muslim from East London who joined ISIS at just 15. Nadia develops an immediate bond with Sara and is determined to get her released and allowed back to the UK.

This book was decent enough, although everything wrapped up a bit too neatly at the end for my liking. Without giving too much away, I found the solution to Sara's plight quite implausible. However the politics and backstage deals between the different humanitarianism organisations and government bodies were amusing.

I'm now about 40 pages into Hermit by Chris McQueer and really enjoying it so far.

I thought Fundamentally was TERRIBLE but I was very much the lone wolf there

Thanks @Terpsichore - I’ll look for it on BBC sounds. And @EineReiseDurchDieZeit - I’ve got a few audible credits burning a hole in my virtual pocket so I’ll probably grab that one. I’ve actually seen a few positive reviews of the book and was considering getting it anyway, though not normally my thing.

Glad you enjoyed Really Good, Actually - I think I went in cynically and stated that way for the first half but honestly there was a lot that rang true in there. I probably shouldn’t admit I had many similar karaoke based fantasies in which my perfect performance of the perfect song finally made my ex realise just how badly he’d effed up. Mortifying but they were very satisfying at the time.

We’ve all had THOSE sort of fantasies @AliasGrape

Oh, I can absolutely see it being a marmite book. It doesn't deal with the subject matter sensitively at all, and most of the characters were horrible people. I'm assuming (or possibly projecting) a great deal of gallows humour on the part of the author, as Younis was herself a humanitarian worker prior to writing this.

I'll be honest, if someone without her credentials had written it, I probably would have been put off by how flippant the book was at times. It was definitely not without its faults.

@TheDonsDingleberries I won’t copy over my review because it’s long but if you are interested it was posted on the 8th January

I really liked Fundamentally. I thought she did a great job of making a difficult subject funny and accessible without undermining it too much. Having worked in government, the bits with the Foreign Office were so close to the truth. It wasn't entirely successful, particularly her blind faith in Sara, but it was a bold for me.

Having been an NGO bod in a previous life, I did squirm in recognition at the conversation by aid workers about the unintended consequences of some of their attempts to help.

Fundamentally is next up for me so am finding this discussion worrying!

Especially since @EineReiseDurchDieZeit and I often like and dislike the same books!

I don’t want to ruin it for you @SpunkyKhakiScroller but my dislike was emphatic. Top of my top 3 worst this year

@SpunkyKhakiScroller if it's any consolation, I do think Fundamentally is one of those books where you'll know pretty early on if you're not going to like it. There's no real shift in tone, and character development is (in my opinion) minimal at best, so don't waste time with it if you're not enjoying it from the get go!

Two non fictions for my list:

27 Bookish by Lucy Mangan. As others have said, compared to Bookworm, this one is more about things going on in her own life, as well as about the books she has enjoyed reading. I liked that aspect of it.

28 Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy. Autobiography by the author of The God of Small Things, this focuses particularly on her relationship with her mother, but also has lots of really interesting chapters about her writing, her experience of being a Booker prize winner, her marriage and her political and environmental activism. Arundhati Roy is an exceptional writer and an extraordinarily brave woman. This is my stand out book of the year so far.

Me too

31 was Picnic At Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay. I liked it but not as much as I thought I would. I liked the creepy, dreamlike atmosphere of the Rock itself and the sinister undertones, and I loved the ambiguity of it and the symbolism. But I found some of the omniscient narrative voice irritating in its archness and very few characters are properly fleshed out. I think the (incredible) film is much better known now than the book.

32 was the fourth book in Simon Mason’s DI Wilkins(es) crime series, A Voice In The Dark. I’m racing through this series.

33 is currently The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain.

Thank goodness, my Kindle Unlimited 99p for 3 months subscription finishes on Monday. It hasn’t been great for my reading, as I’ve downloaded books I probably wouldn’t have spent 99p on individually 😀

Forgotten to update for a while.
23 The lighthouse library by Rachael Lucas
Meg house sits for her friend in a Scottish village on the coast after the death of her cheating husband. She meets an accountant turned forrester who is also starting life again. Note the library is one of those little free libraries not an entire library in a lighthouse which sounds amazing but would probably hard to build shelves for.

I love this series and find them very comforting.

24 Orbital by Samantha Harvey
The thoughts of astronauts and cosmonauts orbiting the earth several times.

This was for book club and I had already tried this and given up in the past so I tried the audio. My mind wandered. Beautiful writing but not for me.

25 The tips for teachers guide to cold call by Craig Barton
Useful short book for work

26 The code of the Woosters by PG Wodehouse
A man has to steal an 18th century cow creamer for his aunt.
This was my first Wodehouse and I listened to it. It was entertaining enough and some of the phrases did make me laugh.

27 The tips for teachers guide to mini whiteboards by Craig Barton

28 The expanded earth by Mikey Please
The humans have all shrunk to 10cm simultaneously. We follow a middle aged man at a campsite looking after a bunch of children. We also go back in time to the woman who was researching the oceans before it happened.

This is a first adult book by a children's author and it is quite childlike. There are beautiful illustrations throughout. Needed a bit of polishing but it's stayed with me.

How to Kill a Witch by Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditozzi About the Witch hunting craze in 16th and 17th century Scotland along with the authors’ campaign for research, pardons and memorials. Not cheerful but very readable - witty and, as they say, irreverent towards everything except the victims. The numbers involved are shocking - thousands of women executed. I realise I’ve been guilty of a huge failure of empathy - having vaguely known that witch-hunts happened, but not considered the actual practicalities of men being commissioned to turn up in villages, shave and strip women and examine them for devils marks (which can be found on anyone, a mole or skin tag will do), torture them into confessing and implicating others. It was mentioned in our A level Tudor history, but limited to the complacent observation that in this country witches were mostly merely hanged whereas on the continent they were burned - what a national accolade. It’s not all ancient history either - the legal opinion of one of the witch-hunters was quoted in the case that overturned Roe v Wade, and JD Vance has stood with people who claimed that witchcraft was working through Kamala Harris.

A really interesting and anger-inducing read.

Sometimes I consider leaving MN due to idiots and their posts, but then I remember this lovely thread and stay

@Cherrypi Did you read Code Of The Woosters for the Goalhanger Book Club? I tried and got nowhere

Ooh no. Thanks I'll look out for their podcast. Definitely think it'd be easier to listen to than read with the language.

@Cherrypi It’s been running now for a few months, one book a week, I enjoy it

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I have to say I rarely venture beyond this chat on Mumsnet. It seems like all the nice people hang here and the rest of Mumsnet is ruined by a bunch of posters who love to jump on OPs with nasty, judgmental takes, even when someone is obviously struggling and needs help. It chips away at any faith in humanity.

@CornishLizard- I’ve added the Witch book to my wish list as I was very struck by the modern references in your review. I don’t find witch hunting easy to read about as it is such a bleak subject, but you are right that it is part of our history that it worthy of more attention.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit- you’ve persuaded me to sign up for the Goalhanger book podcast. One of the many good things about this thread it that I’m never now short of having books to read - some of the books reviewed reviewers are on my RWYO list, so hopefully it will help me get round to reading them.

59 . The Glass Lake by Maeve Binchy - I read this at the time we were discussing the Guardian & Hay book lists and it would be a good choice for a list to tempt people to read. I started reading it as I needed something engrossing to read late at night and ended up finishing it the next day as I became so involved in the story. The opening is excellent as it is about a young girl in 1950s Ireland whose mother goes missing - the rest of the book wasn’t quite as good as the opening but it was still compelling. The author is very good at evoking that era especially its social rules and the consequences of breaking them . The characterisation is also good as the characters are both vivid and face the natural consequences of their actions - I do find the latter a real strength of Maeve Binchy’s writing. A bold.

60 . By Love Divided by Elizabeth St John - this was also engrossing. It is the story of a noble but impoverished family in the reign of Charles I where the 2 sons become Cavaliers and the two daughters marry Roundheads. The book is the sequel to The Lady in the Tower, which I read earlier in the year, but I found this much more satisfying partly because I now know the characters and partly because the shift to 3rd person narration suited the story much more that the 1st person narration of the first book. Another bold.

@Benvenuto really glad to see The Glass Lake was a bold for you, best Binchy

S is for Silence - Sue Grafton

Kinsey Millhone investigates another cold case - a young woman who disappeared in 1953 (the book’s set in 1987). Inevitably Kinsey solves the case. I liked this one better than some of the other more recent ones.