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

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit what was the book you recommended to ma a while back about The West Wing?

Hope you get your diagnosis and feel better soon @EineReiseDurchDieZeit

29) The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Aging screen legend & fan of wedding cake, Evelyn Hugo, requests an audience with little known magazine writer, Monique. Assuming Evelyn wants to garner some publicity for an upcoming charity auction, Monique is blindsided when instead Evelyn asks her to write a warts and all biography.

I'm quite late to the party, but I really enjoyed this. Evelyn is a complicated protagonist and pretty ruthless throughout, but also a realist and survivor. We're told early on that Evelyn has already outlived everyone she cared about by the start of the novel, but it's still heartbreaking when she describes losing the three main loves of her life.

There was a twist which I wasn't sold on and felt a bit unnecessary, but this didn't impact my enjoyment of the story.

Sorry to hear you’re in that horrible limbo state, @EineReiseDurchDieZeit, and I hope it gets resolved soon.

Dare I admit I'd never even heard of Yesteryear? Maybe I'm living under a rock 😳 Currently reading the Alan Bennett diaries (finally got my hands on them!) and have an Alba de Céspedes in the queue, but nothing actually finished. I’m afraid John Lanchester's See What You Made Me Do is looking likely to be a DNF…

31 None of this is true - Lisa Jewell
Was it you @EineReiseDurchDieZeit who recommended me the audiobook? Or at least pointed me to it as I was looking for books where Nicola Walker narrates.

I enjoyed this overall, it wasn’t hard to predict where the story was going, the twists were fairly obviously signposted (not least by the title itself) but it was still well done and I found myself quite gripped. Not my usual genre really, I’ve read the odd ‘psychological thriller with female unreliable narrator’ type and they’re not unenjoyable though usually quite forgettable. I do think the audio performances/ format elevated this, though again it’s not my normal preferred style, I usually like just one narrator telling the story well without bells and whistles, but this really worked.

💐 @EineReiseDurchDieZeit Hope you get some news soon & that it is the best possible in the circumstances.
Im back in the sick bay after breaking a bone. Much looked forward to holiday is now going to be a very different experience. Can’t even hold a physical book at the minute🙁Was getting on so well with The Names, but that has now ground to a halt. Let’s just say I’m trying to be stoical about this new setback … I do know that much worse stuff happens every day. Don’t want to be the thread’s resident misery though. I’m sure i can get back in to some audio books or something.

@BestIsWest What’s Next? by Melissa Fitzgerald and Mary McCormack

@AliasGrape yes it was me, it’s definitely flawed but it’s a great audiobook

@Terpsichore I was surprised by how shallow and lacking in plot the John Lanchester was. A good idea quite half arsed. I’d say it’s worth finishing but the end is crap.

Thanks for all the good wishes

That sounds nasty @Owlbookend

Oh @Owlbookendsorry to hear that. I once broke my ankle on the very first day of our holiday.

Oh no, @Owlbookend 😖 - can you get one of those book deckchairs, would that help at all?

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I've put the Lanchester to the back of the current queue and if I can get round to it before the Borrowbox loan expires, I'll have another bash.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit hope you get some news soon and that it’s of the good variety.

@Owlbookend when I broke my ankle I leaned heavily on audible books, just comfort rereads for me as I was off my tits on painkillers after my op. Hope you are on the mend soon.

@Owlbookend Sorry to hear about your injury.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit Hope you get some information soon, and that you can then get the medical support you need.

Mary Portas, I Shop, Therefore I Am: The '90s, Harvey Nicks – and Me

I have very little knowledge about fashion but enjoyed this memoir of working at London department store Harvey Nichols.

I have read Shop Girl, Mary Portas' 2015 memoir of her childhood, family life and earlier career, but my memory of it is quite hazy after 10 years. She had worked her way up from a Saturday job at John Lewis, through Harrods where she worked in window displays, then a management role at Top Shop. In 1989, at 28, she was recruited as Head of Visual Merchandising and Store Design at Harvey Nichols, managing 18 staff and 27 windows. Management at the store want "window displays that will get the place talked about", that will help it to compete with Harrods and attract tourists with money to spend.

Mary has to deal with a range of eccentric, challenging and difficult characters above and below her. There are colleagues who want to carry on working in the same way they have for years, fashion experts who know all the designers, and I enjoyed reading about how Mary eventually made friends with daunting figures like the Fashion Director, Antonia There is lots of sexism and snobbery. On the other hand, Mary has to manage some really outrageous display staff, including one who likes to work in the nude (in the shop windows), and sometimes deal with some serious complaints. She recounts all this in a gossipy, witty conversational style.

While her career is a priority, Mary Portas also writes about her personal life, retelling the story of losing her parents and their family home, giving up on a place at the prestigious drama college RADA at 18 for family reasons etc. In her late 20s and 30s, Mary also marries and has children - not only is she the first woman in her particular role, now she is asking for maternity leave. She then has to deal further with senior management who don't want to talk about money.

This is a very personal story of one woman who has been very successful. It would be interesting to compare this with a story of what it is like to work in a store like Harvey Nichols for many of the ordinary women and men there. It is an enjoyable and amusing read though.

Astrid Lindgren: The Woman Behind Pippi Longstocking by Jens Andersen
Actually, I first discovered Astrid Lindgren through all About the Bullerby Children (also known in English translation as The Children of Noisy Village), an omnibus collection of three volumes of short stories published by Puffin Books in the early 1970s, about a group of Swedish children who live in the same farming community and play together. I also read Lindgren's most famous stories, the Pippi Longstocking trilogy. Both trilogies were published at and just after the end of World War II. A few years later I read The Brothers Lionheart, a more serious novel perhaps aimed at slightly older children/teenagers and published in 1973. I have only realised as an adult that these books were just a few of more than 30 children's books by Astrid Lindgren, and acquired a couple more.

This biography by Jens Andersen, published in Denmark in 2014, is apparently the first study of Astrid Lindgren to be published in English translation by Caroline Waight. It is published by Yale University Press and offers a detailed account of Astrid Lindgren's long life, the conflicts between expectations of a woman in early 20th century Sweden and her own aspirations, and how she dealt with becoming an unmarried mother at 19, establishing and continuing a career and the emotional needs of her children, herself and others.

I was really interested in this story of Astrid Lindgren's life and work. The writing style, or the translation, is very clear and readable, and the life story is fascinating. Astrid Ericsson left school at 15 to become a trainee journalist on the local newspaper, but her initial success was interrupted by an unexpected pregnancy. She found a foster family in Copenhagen, Denmark, to take care of baby Lasse for a few years and started a new relationship, and by 1931, she had brought Lasse back to Stockholm and married Sture Lindgren. In 1934, she had a daughter, Karin. She had claimed she had no intention of being a writer but did publish a few magazine stories, and finally some stories she had been telling her daughter became a book for her daughter's 10th birthday in 1944, and a year later were published as the first volume of Pippi Longstocking.

In 326 pages, Jens Andersen describes Astrid Lindgren balancing literary success and family life with a busy day job editing children's books by other authors, growing fame and a huge correspondence with readers that came with it. She became an important public figure whose views on real children as well as those she wrote about were taken seriously. So were her other political views and actions.

This book is a hardback, printed on very good quality paper. It is illustrated with black and white photographs throughout the text. Most of these appear to be the Lindgren family's own pictures, but some are not - there is no separate list of photographic/other illustrations or credits. There is a short list of selected English titles only of books by Astrid Lindgren published between 1944 and 2007 - it is not clear whether publication dates are original, or English language, or where books were published. The bibliography, Sources, is of titles in Swedish, or possibly other Scandinavian languages, as the author is Danish - but this is not obvious. The index includes significant people in Astrid Lindgren's life, many of her well known books, and illustration listings in italics. I expect all these decisions were made by publishers who wanted to keep the book accessible to general non-fiction readers.

Overall, an interesting book, and I would love to be able to consult it while rereading/reading some of the author's work, but am returning it to the library for now.

Couldn't help but think physical books might be better for leaning on, especially your average TBR pile. Bit wobbly mind.

I'll get my coat.

Sorry to hear that @Owlbookend I second the audible idea and just nonsense you’ve seen before on Netflix

Heal well, @Owlbookend

For @EineReiseDurchDieZeit and @Owlbookend - hope your respective medical issues sort themselves out as quickly as possible.

Oh gosh, lots of misfortune on the thread! Sending to all who are in the wars.

I've been missing from the thread for ages with various things keeping me occupied but I have been reading. Apologies for the mammoth post, I've tried to be brief.

9. RWYO. Anne's House of Dreams, by LM Montgomery. Delightful as always.

10. Don't Stop: Why We (Still) Love Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, by Alan Light. This felt like it could have been a long article rather than a short book. It's a strange structure as well - the first part is a potted history of Fleetwood Mac, the second part a chapter for each song on the album, and then the third part more of an analysis - but much of this had already been done in part two so it felt quite messy.

11. The Gods of New York: Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the Birth of the Modern City, 1986-1990, by Jonathan Mahler. The blurb says it more succinctly than I could: "A sweeping chronicle of four years in 1980s New York, a crucible that would transform the city and leave it more divided than ever—a rollicking, real-life Bonfire of the Vanities featuring larger-than-life personalities of Donald Trump, Spike Lee, Ed Koch, Al Sharpton, Rudy Giuliani, and countless others." Hoo boy. This was extremely dense so it took me weeks to read, but it was very well done. It's interesting to find out that Trump has always been the same - there's a part where he tells the local Republican party he isn't going to run for president, then gives a rambling speech with talking points including "We should have these countries that are ripping us off pay off the $200 million deficit", proposes invading Iran - "a horrible, horrible country" to seize their oil fields, then says "If the right man doesn't get into office, you're going to see a catastrophe in this country…like you're never going to believe". Not quite a bold but very good.

12. The Poisoned King (Impossible Creatures), by Katherine Rundell. Follow up to the first Impossible Creatures, this is fabulous.

13. RWYO. Plain Bad Heroines, by Emily M. Danforth. I've had this for ages and there were a flurry of positive reviews earlier in the thread so I bumped it up my list and I'm glad I did. Very funny, clever and interesting, although goodness me it was long.

14. The Death of Us, by Abigail Dean. A couple in their thirties suffer a home invasion by a serial offender. Decades later, he is finally caught, and we learn about the fallout from the crime. This is told through two timelines, and multiple points of view. It's very disturbing and absolutely brilliant.

15. The Storm, by Rachel Hawkins. Very entertaining gothic thriller set on the Alabama Gulf Coast. As per the blurb, "St. Medard’s Bay, Alabama is famous for three things: the deadly hurricanes that regularly sweep into town, the Rosalie Inn, a century-old hotel that’s survived every one of those storms, and Lo Bailey, the local girl infamously accused of the murder of her lover, political scion Landon Fitzroy, during Hurricane Marie in 1984." Another dual timeline and multi-POV story. There are two big twists, which I did figure out, but I think that's because the breadcrumbs were very carefully laid.

16. RWYO. Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir. Stellar (pun intended). My kindle says the average reading time for this book was 10 hours, but it took me twice that because I read all of the science bits - I'm assuming not everyone did. But it's funny, lovely, and slightly too involved, hence not a bold.

17. RWYO. Bella, by Jilly Cooper. Comfort read that hasn't aged well and is wildly unrealistic, and yet I love it so.

18. So Old, So Young, by Grant Ginder. Yet another story told from multiple points of view, this follows 6 friends over 20 years, and is framed around 5 parties that they all attend. This won't be for everyone because it's quite rambling and much more character driven than plot driven, but I loved it.

19. RWYO. Want You Gone, by Chris Brookmyre. A brilliantly tightly plotted Jack Parlabane thriller.

20. London Falling, by Patrick Radden Keefe. No introduction needed! Brilliant. I almost DNF after the first two chapters, when I was thinking 'this kid is appalling and this is some very lax parenting'. I'm very glad I didn't.

21. Perfection, by Vincenzo Latronico. A satirical novel following Anna and Tom who are 'digital natives' living in Berlin. Somehow Latronico manages to give an enormous amount of detail while at the same time telling us very little. This was cleverly done and he paints a very vivid picture, but I was left being unsure who he was so angry with. Anna and Tom, social media, Europe, late stage capitalism… who knows?! However I've upgraded it to a bold because it's really stayed with me.

Sorry to hear @EineReiseDurchDieZeit and @Owlbookend that you're having tough times - hope things improve for both of you soon.

@Terpsichore - you're welcome to share my rock since I too had failed to clock Yesteryear

Whilst I enjoyed A Place of Greater Safety, it didn't suck me in the same way as the Wolf Hall trilogy and I found the characters/politics/parties more difficult to keep track of (even though I did the French Revolution at A level....). Still an excellent read.

Sending hugs to both @EineReiseDurchDieZeit and @Owlbookend, hope the tough times get better soon x

Hope the recovery goes well @Owlbookend , and @EineReiseDurchDieZeit I hope you get some news soon, and that it’s good.

@SheilaFentiman yes a couple of books would have been fine for the overarching storyline, it was at the end of the second one that I started to get irritated!

Oh no @Owlbookend. Hope you still manage to enjoy the holiday. I once broke 3 bones 3 days into a two week holiday and spent the rest of the holiday lying on the bed. It was my first holiday with a Kindle and I remember being so grateful for it.

Thanks @EineReiseDurchDieZeit.

@Owlbookend Hope you manage to find a way to read and enjoy your holiday despite the injury.
@EineReiseDurchDieZeit commiserations. I hope you are not too ill while you await diagnosis. I too am waiting to see a specialist. The NHS wait is about ten months and while it's not life threatening it's been ongoing since Feb and is a bit rubbish plus I have had to cancel my holidays. Again.

I had a run of DNFs so moved on to an easy re-read.
Fall of Giants by Ken Follett.
Welsh miners embrace communism during the Russian revolution.
First of the trilogy covering the 20th century from around 1912 to the 1960s.
Told from perspectives in Wales, London, Germany, Russia and USA. Well developed characters who have a minor role in history or a connection to real historical figures. A bit like Cynthia Harrod Eagles approach.

I get a weekly email from Bookbub and I've just downloaded 12 books because I didn't already have 65 on my kindle TBR.

I’m under a consultant @NotWavingButReading for something that keeps coming and going. I need to see him urgently and I’ve been told he has no availability - what I’m supposed to do I’m not sure

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I don't know whether this is helpful and you may have done it but could you ring the secretary and outline your problem? I'm under rheumatology and they are seldom available but the secretary will sometimes pass on a message and come back with advice.