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

Thank you for the warm welcome all! The longest wall in my living room is all book shelf and there are far more on there that I haven’t read than I have. I like to think of it as future potential 😂

@BeaAndBen have you moved on to books 2 and 3 after the Poppy War?

Ooh, treat yourself to the Georgette Heyer, @BeaAndBen I'm living in her world this year.

Welcome @VanGoSunflowers

Point Blank. Tana Collins
This is the first book in a new crime series, but I think it might be a spin off from the author's previous series.
Set in Scotland and primarily about a man who gets shot on his doorstep at point blank range for no reason. It turns out that a previous case saw the woman who used to own that house murdered and her husband imprisoned for the crime. Ballistics show that the same gun was used in both crimes.

This was really good, the author managed to give enough backstory to all of the characters without it feeling like we're being spoon fed. The repeated mentions of real historical cases, such as the murder of Jill Dando, felt a little OTT at times, almost like the author was trying to prove that she knew her crime history. But overall it was a good, solid read.

Lisa Doyle Is Absolutely Fine. Mo Fanning
In a drunken moment of madness after her bestfriend announces her upcoming wedding, Lisa announces her own engagement over Instagram. Only Lisa isn't engaged. She doesn't even have a boyfriend. So she hires her gay flatmate who is a failing actor to play the role. This was mad, funny (and at times there were stupid errors that may have been because I read an ARC and they've been corrected in the final version). Whilst I've never been mad enough to invent a boyfriend, as the one who is always single at weddings and parties, I can kind of understand why she does. Good lighthearted fun.

A Million Miracles Roberta Kagan
This is the final book in the series, 'A Million Miracles', and whilst the first 2 were ok, I dont recommend this one. I looked back at my reviews for books 1 and 2 and said that you have to suspend belief a little, well with this one its just totally implausible.

Over the 3 books, Pitor Barr along with his wife Mila and son, is imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto. Pitor and Jakup, the toddler son, both look very aryan, and Jakup is stolen by a guard to be sent and raised as a German. Mila is killed. Pitor escapes, murders a Nazi officer who he conveniently looks like and goes off to find Jakup. In the final book Pitor manages to find Jakup, who is being looked after by a woman he slept with previously, kill the guard who adopted him and then walk into Auschwitz with the dead Nazi over his shoulder and bury his body in a pile of other dead bodies. The timeline was also a bit wonky!

Welcome @VanGoSunflowers I haven't read The Poppy Wars but I think Babel is quite popular and has similar themes. I didn't love it but I know plenty of people did.

60. A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf. I've never read this before so did it for Ben Reads June challenge. It's Woolf's essay about women and fiction written in 1928. I really liked it and found it both exhilarating in how far women's rights have come in the last 100 years but also slightly depressing in the still existing inequalities. It probably still helps to have an inherited income and room of one's own in order to be a writer!

61. Let Me Go Mad In My Own Way - Elaine Feeney. This is a book about Claire who goes a bit deranged with grief after her mother dies, breaks up with her boyfriend and moves to the family home in Ireland. It has an odd structure where the main part is written in the first person from Claire's Pov but then we get flashbacks to 100 years before when the family are living in poverty. We also get an extended flashback to Claire's childhood, and then it switches back to modern day but in a third person perspective. It's a bit distracting, although I guess it's showing the inherited trauma through the generations. There are some side characters who seem a bit irrelevant and the ex boyfriend who comes to Ireland has basically no character. There's also an odd bit where Claire gets obsessed with trad wives which doesn't really contribute much to the plot. I gave this 3* but now writing this review, feel like I was too generous!

I thought Notes on an Execution was excellent - not an easy read but managed to hold various different truths - telling the stories of the victims alongside the horrors of the murderer’s early life and the barbarity of the death penalty.

I’m glad you are feeling better @Tarragon123

I’ve also been in hospital with my baby, all fine now luckily. I read Heated Rivalry when I was there and think that, like Off Campus, they must have made a much smarter and more interesting TV series compared to the book. It was perfectly fine as romances go, but it’s hard to see why it got picked for filming over all the others out there…

Grannie glad to hear baby is ok

@Stowickthevast I have Babel on my list! I think I may need something a bit lighter after finishing the Poppy Wars before I go on to it. I have always wanted to read a Room of One’s Own. I tried to read Mrs Dalloway once but couldn’t get through it because of the writing style - think that’s more a reflection of me than VW though!

Really unproductive at the moment, fell asleep with an audiobook on again and not sure where I got up to. Can’t read an actual book to save my life - this is a very weird year for me compared to previous years my numbers are SO low - I know it’s not about the numbers but I’m not reading at all and I don’t know why

Comfort Eating - Grace Dent

I love Grace’s restaurant reviews and work on masterchef. This was fine but slight - a quick read (and the exact opposite of Ultra Processed People, except on the subject of Proper Butter 😀)

Sorry you’re having a weird reading year, Eine. It’s so frustrating when you hit one of those patches; I was in it myself a few months ago. Fingers crossed, I seem to be plugging on again now and have got to….

48. Craftland - James Fox

I think it was possibly @RomanMum who reviewed this positively upthread - I caught it being read on R4 and it duly went on the wishlist. Fox travels the country in search of the country's dying crafts and trades (he gets a telling-off from some professionals for describing them as craftsmen) that were once ubiquitous. Examples include dry-stone walling, knife- and scissor-making, bodging (ie chair-making), tanning, watch-making and letter-carving. I enjoyed reading about all this, although it’s quite dispiriting to think about a country which once teemed with all these skills as ordinary, everyday realities. Now most are virtually extinct - the words 'he is the last person now carrying on this tradition' crop up regularly throughout the book - and while I accept that, for example, not many people need hand-made cartwheels any more, it seems quietly heartbreaking to me that we’ve almost entirely lost touch with our connection to our own past history in which such things were vitally important.

Solidarity - I do the falling asleep thing with an audiobook all the time. I am trying to listen when travelling or doing chores, but I’m not always successful.

I was surprised that I enjoyed this one so much when I read it, but a lot of her early experiences resonated with me.

I can't listen to audio books, my brain doesn't process them at all. Which is why I only use them to fall asleep to, and therefore don't count them in my reading list.

Perilous Journey To Freedom Marion Kummerow
Book 3 in the Escaping The Reich series. This one sees an escape over the Alps from Austria to Switzerland. It was really tense, metaphorical edge of the seat stuff, and whilst the characters are fictional, people really did risk their lives escaping this way. It's not full of successes which adds to the realism of the subject. This is a really good series where the full extent of the horror of the Nazi regime is just in the background, in a menacing slightly sinister, but not overly in your face of you see what I mean.

No, only Book One had been written when i read it and by the time Two and Three came out it had been so long I'd forgotten quite a lot so I didn't go back.

I liked Babel and am looking forward to her new one.

Another one who falls asleep to audiobooks, so I tend to only listen to “re-reads” where I already know the plot 😀

Finished my number 26 - Vile Bodies - Evelyn Waugh this and Decline and Fall had been languishing on my kindle for years, I just couldn’t get into them at all I kept getting bored and giving up. Listened to Decline on audible in the end and found myself enjoying it so did the same with this one. Brilliant narration for both, and helped me find a way ‘in’ to the text which on the page was doing nothing for me for some reason.

I do tend to fall asleep to audio books if I listen in bed - I put it on 15 min timer then extend it if I’m still awake, occasionally have to do a bit of back and forth the next time but generally this works ok. I really like them for driving, ironing and when I’m having a spell of insomnia too.

I can only do audiobooks when I am walking, driving, or doing embroidery. Otherwise I just tune out or fall asleep. Has anyone read Hekate? It's a future book for my book club and and just discovered it's in verse form. Wondering whether I should try it in audiobook format to try and recreate the bardic tradition. I have fond memories of an English professor reading The Iliad to us in a dramatic baritone.

I can’t pay attention to audiobooks either. I think there was only one I remember listening to and really taking it in and it was by Dr Chatterjee

Book 38: My Work Is Not Yet Done by Thomas Ligotti. Very, very dark, existential philosophical horror set in an American office. Very clever and very sinister. Very vitriolic.

Book 39: Don’t Let Him In by Lisa Jewell. Decent psychological thriller about women who find cross paths with a psychopathic con artist. Nothing groundbreaking but an enjoyable easy read to race through; Jewell does this sort of thing well and the portrayal of the con man was done well with a convincing narrative voice.

34 Entitled: the Rise and Fall of the House of York - Andrew Lownie This has taken me ages to get through but then it contains an overwhelming amount of information. Not particularly well-written, but like everyone else I was reading it for the gossip and scandal rather than its literary merit. Quite a slog to get through the extensive details of exactly how much taxpayers’ money was spent on each helicopter trip etc, but it’s clearly very well-researched and the final chapters are particularly illuminating. My main takeaways are that Fergie is needy and a bit crazy, Andrew is a boorish dullard, and they are both absolute champion grifters. The level of entitlement is jaw-dropping and it’s shocking that it went on so long (and into the next generation as well).

Hope you get your mojo back soon Eine. I often fall asleep to audiobooks but I see that as one of their benefits. I just set the sleep timer and accept I’ll have to register to bits. Like others, I find I pay most attention when doing housework or going for a walk or commuting.

I’ve finished a few more shorties. I’ve been mostly focusing on current book club read Ulysses which is over a few months and is taking up a lot of my reading time, but I’ve been threading in a few around it and now that summer break is beckoning, I’ll be able to read a lot more soon.

Of Cattle and Men by Ana Paula Maia
Connected to the International Booker shortlisted On Earth as it is Beneath, this is another short, beautifully written book that is brutal and highlights the violence of men. In this case set in an abattoir. Not for the faint-hearted but I found it an excellent read (just thinking I may have reviewed this already- oops)

A Murder of Quality by John LeCarre
The second George Smiley book, in which Smiley is asked by an old friend, who worked with him during the war, to investigate a letter from a woman who claims her husband is trying to kill her. When Smiley arrives at the very exclusive public school where the husband was a teacher, he discovers the wife is already dead. Short and interesting murder mystery. The next one after this is when the Smiley books turn to espionage- I got them all in 99p deals some time ago and have enjoyed the first two. I hope I enjoy the spy ones as much.

Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector
I’ve heard a lot about Lispector and have been dipping in and out of her short stories for a while. This is her last novel and it’s less than 80 pages so more of a novella. It tells the story of Macabea a poor Brazilian girl who is trying to improve her life. But it also tells the story of Rodrigo- the writer who is writing the story of Macabea. This book was a strange one and I’m not sure I totally ‘got’ it tbh. I have another of hers which I’ll try soon to see if it works any better for me.

Edit to say I also have 2 DNFs- Writers and Lovers by Lily King, I loved Heart the Lover by the same author about the same character but couldn’t get into this one at all. Probably a me and a mood thing so may return to it at some point and Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer - I thought this was about the murder of two people by members of a Fundamentalist polygamous Mormon sect, but actually it’s more about the history of Mormonism- both mainstream and fundamentalist and I’ve read a lot about this before and wasn’t interested in reading more.

Villa Coco - Andrew Sean Greer

A lovely summery book set in Italy, with a young man going to work for an elderly lady, Coco. He thinks he’s there to catalogue all her antiques, but throughout the summer he’s never sure why he’s really there - but he does learn about himself along the way. Made me wish I was on holiday in Italy to read it there!

A Killer Plot - E C Nevin

Cosy crime with a group of authors/publishers solving the murder of a publishing assistant in a Cecil Court bookshop. Enjoyable.

Curious and Impossible Things Before Breakfast - Rebecca Front

Two books of anecdotes and observations from the actress. I have read both before, but enjoyed the reread. Front writes well and while my life is nothing like hers there were some things I identified with.

Something To Live For - Richard Roper

Andrew is lonely until new woman Peggy starts at his work and he realises he’s missing out on what life’s got to offer. While this is a nice story in its own right, what I liked about this is Andrew’s job - he works for the council and is responsible for arranging funerals for the people who die without any family or friends. I don’t really know how accurate it is but I liked reading about Andrew’s days at work. It sounds like a really interesting (albeit sad) job.

People Pleaser - Bryony Gordon

One day 44 year old Olivia Greenwood decides she’s fed up of trying to keep everyone else happy and decides to just do/say what she wants from now on, with interesting results. I liked this - the message gets a bit heavy handed at times but I liked the character of Olivia and it was fun to read.

*40 Scaffolding - Lauren Elkin

I bought this in the National Theatre bookshop when the 50B met there last summer. Set in an apartment in Paris at two points in time (1972 and 2019) it follows the lives of two married women - Florence and Anna who have more in common than just living in the same apartment. There's quite a bit of psychoanalysis as Florence is studying it and Anna is a psychoanalyst. There's also quite a bit of sex, mostly adulterous. It felt very French! I suspect this is quite a Marmite book. I liked it although it took me a little while to engage with it.

Just catching up on the thread…

Welcome @VanGoSunflowers

Hope all is now well @Tarragon123 and @GrannieMainland

Nice to see you @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie , hope things are going better for you!