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 ladies @SheilaFentiman and @ChessieFL that’s another purchase for me then!

Thanks for the new thread @Southeastdweller

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
23. Young Knights of the Round Table by Julia Golding
24. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
25. The Nobody People by Bob Proehl
26. The Every Other Day Diet by Dr Krista Varady & Bill Gottlieb
27. The Promised Neverland Vol 7 by Kaiu Shirai and Posuka Demizu
28. The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu
29. Wolverine: Origins Vol 4: Our War by Daniel Way, Steve Dillon & Kaare Andrews
30. Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint Vol 1 by singNsong
31. Lies Sleeping by Ben Aaronovitch
32. The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
33. Our Bodies Their Battlefield by Christina Lamb
34. The Girl and the Stars by Mark Lawrence
35. The Promised Neverland Vol 8 by Kaiu Shirai and Posuka Demizu
36. Frozen in Time by Ali Sparkes
37. The Promised Neverland Vol 9 by Kaiu Shirai and Posuka Demizu
38. Gate to Kagoshima by Poppy Kuroki

Checking in - thanks southeast.

Thanks! Handmaid's Tale and Taiwan Travelogue purchased.

Thanks southeast

Here's my list:

• Lethal White – Robert Galbraith
• Revenge wears Prada – Laura Weisberger
• Bookish: How reading shapes our lives – Lucy Mangan
• Maurice & Maralyn – Sophie Elmhirst
• Menopausing – Davina McCall + Dr Naomi Potter
• Crazy Rich Asians – Kevin Kwan
• Troubled Blood – Robert Galbraith
• There are rivers in the sky – Elif Shafak
• East of Croydon – Sue Perkins
• Notes on a nervous planet – Matt Haig
• Learn Italian – Paul Noble

DNF - Making it up as I go along – Marian Keyes

• The Ink Black Heart – Robert Galbraith
• The Light between Oceans – M L Stedman
• Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow – Gabrielle Zevin
• Went to London, took the dog – Nina Stibbe
• The Wedding People – Alison Espach
• Home Fire – Kamila Shamsie
• Fallout – Eleanor Anstruther (ARC)
• Project Hail Mary – Andy Weir
• Eat Bitter – Lydia Pang (ARC)
• Death at the sign of the rook – Kate Atkinson
• An unlikely visitor – Joanna Cannon (ARC)
• Summer at the French bakery – Jo Thomas (ARC)

Still listening to Ducks, Newburyport and have way too many other books on the go at once. I never learn!

Just placemarking for now, I don't think my list has changed since the start of the last thread!!

51. Carl's Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman - second part of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. Great literature it is not. But there are good things there apart from the incredible one-more-chapter momentum. It looks at the shallowness of modern media and the manipulation and vested interests behind it. And it has quite sweet moments of found family and doing the right thing. And then you get a boob joke or an unnecessarily gory scene. I have played RPGs in my time and I am enjoying this series but it really needs a good editor to trim the gore and adolescent male gaze. Then again sometimes you wonder if the book itself is not a master manipulation of the reader. Just enough vulgarity to hook the adolescent gamer bro, just enough heart that the former-gamer mum doesn't throw it across the room. I will continue the series if and when my library gets it.

31 Cold Earth - Ann Cleevees Another Shetland murder mystery, and this time Jimmy Perez is starting to fall in love again. You know what you're getting with these - slightly awkward dialogue, a decent story, familiar characters and a great sense of place.

50.The Hanging Shed, Gordon Ferris
51.Bitter Water, Gordon Ferris
52.The Corinthian, Georgette Heyer
53.Pilgrim Souls, Gordon Ferris
54.Ghosting, Jennie Erdal
55.The Years of Travelling Anxiously, Tom Sykes
56.Gallowglas, Gordon Ferris
57.The Dangerous Stranger, Simon Mason
58.Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women against Themselves, Sophie Gilbert
59.The Killing Time, Elly Griffiths
60.The Infamous Gilberts, Angela Tomaski
61.Sceptred Isle, Helen Carr
62.The Birds of the Air, Alice Thomas Ellis
63.The Examiner, Janice Hallett
64.Frederica, Georgette Heyer
65.The Great Escape, Annabelle Thorpe
66.Perfection, Vincenzo Latronico

And most recently:
67. Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: China's Stolen Children and a Story of Separated Twins Barbara Demick
I thought this was great reportage. I skimmed some of the earlier chapters describing the one-child policy - as she explains later on, much of this was written in libraries during lockdown, so it's not new. The book becomes more compelling when she talks about the experience of this individual child being grabbed from her loving family and adopted by well-intentioned adopters from the US, and the author's own involvement in bringing the twins back into (rather awkward) contact. The author was very compassionate to all involved, not least the adopters who thought they were saving a small child from a terrible fate only to realize later that they were unwittingly complicit in something considerably less noble. It's fascinating to read about how quickly China has changed over the course of the last two decades. The author reflects on the ethics of her own role in the telling the story. This feels like a book that needed to be written.

68. The Book in the Cathedral: the Last Relic of Thomas Becket, Christopher de Hemel
Very short account of how the author used his expertise to link a psalter to Thomas Becket as its previous owner. Ah, to be able to tell at a glance that a manuscript is clearly Cistercian, or to associate the handwriting with a particular century and monastery. Pleasing to partake in this rarefied atmosphere, but probably best enjoyed in small doses such as this one.

69. Pagans, James Alistair Henry
Who has killed the Celtic ambassador and why? Crime fiction set in an alternative history featuring a very disUnited Kingdom. It felt like the author was having a lot of fun with all the details of this society.

34 The Pun Also Rises by John Pollack

A short and sweet history of the pun and punning, together with some explanations of why they amuse and occupy us. This was interesting and informative; I particularly liked (and was reasonably convinced by) the author's explanation of how double meanings and punning contributed to the development of language, especially the move from symbols to alphabets. Quite a few nice puns thrown in, plus an interesting portrait of London's coffee houses, some of the most famous of which were right by where I work.

Thanks for the new thread - I do like seeing everyone's lists!
Here's mine:
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
27. Love Untold by Ruth Jones
28. The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine
29. The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy
30. It’s Not Summer Without You by Jenny Han
31. We’ll Always Have Summer by Jenny Han
32. The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller
33. Broken Country by Claire Leslie Hall
34. The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce
35. The Story of a Heart by Rachel Clarke - much reviewed here already. Very good indeed. Sobbed.
36. The BBQ at Number 9 by Jennie Godley - I think this may have been discussed already, social-climber/local snob Lydia hosts a BBQ on the day of the Live Aid concert. Rich with 80s detail (some of which felt a little shoehorned in to me), and well-drawn characters. An easy, well-structured read.
37. Albion by Anna Hope - Philip Brooke's family gather for his funeral at his sprawling Sussex estate. It's a family drama, but also deals with themes of climate change and rewilding, and colonialism and slavery. I found it got off to a slow start and was a bit hard to follow who was who and how they all fitted together. But once it got going I was drawn in and the author really builds the layers of character and story well. I don't think it'll be a bold (which I'm leaving till the end of the year), but a solid 4 star read.

39. The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht edited by Susan Dalgety and Lucy Hunter Blackburn

A collection of essays that tell the story of a five year campaign to protect women’s rights in Scotland.

41. The Loved and Envied - Enid Bagnold

Read for the Rather Dated Bookclub. More thoughts over on the main thread, but this was an interesting introduction to an author who, I suspect, isn't read that much these days. The action takes place amongst a group of (mostly English) fabulously wealthy upper-crust types living in France, with the stunningly beautiful Lady Ruby Maclean at the centre. At 54, her glory is barely dimmed, but 'time's wingèd chariot' hurries near, and amongst her circle a preoccupation with ageing and death is basically the over-riding theme. Bagnold based Lady Ruby on her closest friend Lady Diana Cooper, and at times I did feel this was something of a very long act of worship at the shrine of a famous beauty. To be discussed, no doubt!

Thank you for the new thread southeastdweller.

22 This, My Second Life by Patrick Charnley
Jago Trevarno is a lad living in Bristol and working on the boats when a shocking health event occurs. After he recovers a little, he moves home to Cornwall. He’s been away two years but the big changes are in his mind. He finds kindness in extended family and the people he grew up with, but a distant threat gets unexpectedly closer, until he realises he will have to face up to it.

I enjoyed this, especially the descriptions of Jago’s process of recovery. The plot is distinctly thin and unconvincing and to be honest I would have preferred it if the author had stuck to his sensuous and lyrical descriptions of Jago’s world.

The Ministry for the future by Kim Stanley Robinson

I don't know how to review this.

It sat on my kindle for ages and along the years I decided it was some kind of futurology non fiction. I started reading it on a plane in April and the first chapters are set in India in a heatwave where millions of people die. I had a discussion with the friend I was on holiday with about this heatwave, and didn't we think we'd remember it? Even taking into account the fact sometimes our news only reports things happening to white people?

Well, once I re-connected to the internet I found out this is definitely a fiction book, and the heatwave that killed all those people hasn't happened. Yet. Although the May temperatures last week suggest it's maybe a matter of time!

After craftily drawing me in, the book goes downhill a little. It's written from a few different points of view. I couldn't identify them all. I could figure out the main characters. Sometimes there are quote marks for speech but mostly not. Sometimes the chapters are minutes of a meeting. It's all a bit weird.

The Ministry For The Future is set up after the Paris climate agreement to try and get the world to action the agreement and there are some really clever ideas about how we might tackle climate change and some writing about things we already do like re-wilding.

The plot is thin and meandering, and you never get to know the characters but I think that was done on purpose. It was both fascinating and boring. I could hardly be bothered to pick it up (I think I read about 4 or 5 other books whilst slogging through this) but I also really needed to know how it finished. So contradictions all round. Not entirely sure if I recommend it or not. Overall pleased to have read it and pleased to be done with it I think!

That sounds weird and interesting @RazorstormUnicorn . I think DH likes his books so may see if he's read it.

53. Groundskeeping - Lee Cole. Picked up in a deal last week because of a rave review from Ann Patchett, I didn't really gel with this. It reminded me a little bit of Lily King. The narrator is Owen who is doing groundskeeping at a uni in Kentucky so he can do a free creative writing course. Owen comes from a poor Southern family and lives in his granddad's basement. He meets a woman who is teaching a writing course and is about to be published. Her family is originally from Bosnia but are now well off and she went to an Ivy League uni. The book is mainly about Owen's writing, he's writing the book we're reading pretty much, and about class. It's set in 2016 just as Trump is being elected. I just found it a bit meta with no real plot, and a lot of navel gazing.