50 Books Challenge 2026 Part Six

[Southeastdweller]

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

• Grown-Ups - Marian Keyes

Picked this up in a charity shop, fairly sure I’ve read it before. A good read - three very different women are married to three brothers and over the course of six months, lots of complicated family stuff happens, as is the way of a Keyes book.

Oh no, Piggy! Send a tiger round to the colleague immediately!

Good plan!

31- Intermezzo - Sally Rooney

The story of two brothers grieving their father’s death, their - complicated - relationships with women and their equally complicated relationship between themselves.

I wanted to like this but the way it was written telling the older brother’s story was almost designed to keep you at a distance. I think it was to show his chaotic state of mind but it was hard to follow in places and didn’t allow me to be fully immersed in his story. It’s a shame as some of the ideas about family and relationships are interesting.

But I was glad to get it finished as I go away today and didn’t want to lug an almost-read hardback with me. I have packed eight books. I have two children. How many of those books will actually get read?! (They’re books that if I were alone I would easily read, and probably more on top…)

I’ve just finished The Island of Doctor Moreau by HG Wells, which I thought was brilliant. It’s actually a very unpleasant and upsetting horror story but it’s a classic of its genre and insidiously disturbing and thought-provoking.

I also just finished The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter which as most people probably know is a collection of dark, feminist gothic takes on traditional fairy tales. I read it when I was about 12 or 13 and loved it then - in fact it had a huge influence on me - and I liked it a lot this time around too.

That was my 44th book of the year.

I have fallen off the RWYO wagon as was tempted by some Kindle deals and am now working my way through the Quirke series :

49 Christine Falls - John Banville
50 The Silver Swan - John Banville

Set in 1950s Dublin, Quirke is a pathologist who ends up embroiled in murders. He has a complicated private life/family history and a weakness for booze and smokes like a chimney. Easy reads but reflective of the period in which they are set in terms of language and attitudes.

2 new reads for me. One which I thought I would enjoy first
May we Feed the King by Rebecca Parry
This sounded right up my alley- a curator setting up scenes for tourists in a castle becomes fascinated with a king who lived there in the past. We get the curator’s POV and also a narration watching the king’s life. Both POVs were far too distant for me. I didn’t feel we knew either of the characters. I think this may be part of the point the author is trying to make but it made it unenjoyable for me despite being able to see that the book was clever and well-written.

The second I expected to hate from widespread reviews but my Libby hold came in so I decided to give it a go anyway.
Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
We all know what this one’s about by now. Tradmom influencer Natalie finds herself back in time living as an actual pioneer woman. The last quarter of this is preposterous and Natalie is an appalling human being but I found it entertaining in the first half (though the modern day story was much more engaging than the past one). Anyway it was enjoyable silliness but still made a couple of decent points about the expectations on women in life.

Emma's Equilibrium. Wadhera Arvind
I really really should have DNFd this one. So I'm not recommending it at all. The speech was wooden, the writing was clunky and the story was frankly disturbing.

Emma is an English teen, born in London then moves to Sussex. Yer inexplicably calls her mum Mom. I knew some areas of the UK do so, but I'm sure London isn't one of them. Shes somewhat of a horse riding prodigy and gets a scholarship to a school in Canada. It's the late 70s/ early 80s at this point. She's raped by a male friend, but never tells anyone, which is believable. She gets married, rides in the Olympics. Then 2 men break into her home and she's brutally raped, including sodomy and left for dead. They move to Belgium where she raises her 2 sons. One of them grows up to be a rapist. No idea why that was such a theme. There's a massive storm that is only above her house, weird. Then she has a brush with death. As in literally sits and chats with him. Decides not to kill herself. Then they all go off to watch the tennis and presumably live happily ever after.

I think there was meant to be a deep message in there. About reaching Equilibrium and whatever. But I didn't get it.

And I usually try not to post spoilers. But I don't recommend this book so it won't matter. Hopefully.

I'm on my way home atm from our holiday and managed to read a total of 10 pages of my book since Monday 🙈 although, it was a fairly active holiday, we visited three theme parks and i find it hard to read in the car due to motion sickness.

Ok that was meant to quote @Iamnotaloggrip but didn't work for some reason

Late to the party with The Names. I liked it more than I thought I would even if I found it a bit contrived. In real life someone like Bear would probably annoy me! Its a tender book and thought provoking. I dont think it is any better than Rachel Joyce or David Nicholls , quite similar really in concept and execution. I can see whybits so popular. Having just read The Benefactors and The Correspondent, I'd put this third.

Any Irish people comment on whether Irish people say 'wrench' for spanner and 'riffling' fir rifling? Or is it just creeping Americanisms? Hate to say it, but I think riffling is the new 'padding'.

A quick Google tells me riffled isn't an American version of rifled. This I never knew . Never seen rifflled until recently and it's now pretty ubiquitous.

@Piggywaspushed I’m half Irish I’ve not been home in a long time however what I have noticed in the past with slang is that some is Irish unto itself, some matches UK slang and some matches US slang

Ive been seeing "riffled" everywhere! I wasn't sure if I'd been spelling rifled wrong my whole life, or if it was an Americanism

See also: scarfing down food, when I'd say scoffing.

I would say scoff, but I have seen scarf

Google suggests that rifled and riffled mean different things. My phone doesn't recognise riffled as a word.

I’m Irish and can’t remember if we used wrench or spanner in the past. But spanner is used as a great insult. Like tool only more specific.
I have no idea what’s going on with riffled. I’ve actually ended up questioning myself about whether I’ve read/ used rifled wrong all these years!

I dont think ' you spanner!' is unique to Ireland!

Ive seen scarfing down food too. I'd say wolfing food down is the closest? Scoffed the lot, is more about secrecy or taking others people's share? Who scoffed all the posh crisps?

Spanner is so 80s!

It’s always been riffled in my family. As in a quick search for something “She riffled through her handbag for a tissue”. Rifled would be more like “She rifled through the drawers quickly, looking for her mother’s jewelry”

The DSes scarf food, they also yam it. I would say “wolf” for both 😀

I’ve always associated ‘rifled’ with ransacking (‘the burglar rifled through her handbag and stole the car-keys’) and ‘riffle’ with eg fanning the pages of a book or papers. There seems to be dictionary support for both going back a reasonable distance in time, so we can all relax!

I’m Irish and have never heard of riffling.

Wrench is commonly used as a term for spanner where I am. I’m in my 50s and growing up wrench was the term we’d have used.

Google tells me I’m wrong and that spanner is the term used in Ireland like in the UK…but that’s not been my experience.

ETA Just asked DH (also Irish) what term he’d use and he said wrench too.

69. A Small Death in Lisbon by Robert Wilson - Caveat that I don't read much crime and when I do, it's usually a historical or a social novel that happens to be about a crime. I usually bounce straight off of anything that is too violent or graphic.

I picked this up because when I am on holiday, I like to read a book set in my holiday destination. It definitely scratched that itch because a lot of it is set in Cascais and Lisbon and many of the roads and places I have been exploring this week feature in the book.

It is also a very well constructed and well written book. It is ambitious and wide ranging and expertly ties up the many threads in a complicated and challenging plot. While I didn't particularly like it, I wanted to finish it and find out who did it and why. I can definitely see why it has won awards.

The trouble is I found it relentlessly bleak and brutal. None of the characters are likeable and most are violent and morally repugnant. The violent and graphic sex scenes are numerous and though they are not really gratuitous—they do serve the plot and help establish character - by the end I was wondering if all of them were really necessary. It felt like a very male view of violence and sexuality.

I admired the craft but I didn't really enjoy the experience of reading it.

I missed the talk on wrenches and spanners. They are different tools to me. (English). Wrenches are adjustable. Spanners arent.

Coming back to the riffling/rifling. Ive only ever heard rifling until recently, and that's been very few times. So didn't really realise they had different meanings. So it seems that I've just never come across the word riffling until recently rather than it being a new thing.