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

I'm still ploughing through the Maeve Kerrigan series - i know I am way behind most of you , about half way through After the Fire but promising so far.

Also finished Entitled by Andrew Lownie. I'm sure everyone knows it's the whole sorry story of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor and his ex wife Sarah Ferguson, their entanglement with paedophile Epstein, Ghilane Maxwell, Chinese spies and other dubious characters from the world’s elite.
It’s well known story, but there were things didn’t know about both of their early lives and later on. I went back and forth between feeling sorry for them and then eyerolling at the next outrageous business misadventure or scam, Andrew was obviously struggling to find his place in life, and Sarah was troubled from the beginning, but the sheer waste of money and selfish behaviour and lack of critical thinking is what stands out.
I’m pretty sure there is more to the story to come out and Andrew certainly will face criminal charges in the future.
I would love to have been a fly on the wall for some conversations in the Palace for some conversations that have gone on about them over the years. Especially princess Anne. I bet she has a LOT to say.

I reviewed it a few years ago. Utter nonsense. Wonder what Tabby and Dominic will say? Hope they aren’t too gushing

Yes I’ve a few to catch up on for the next while for Tabby and Dominic (I bet Dominic loves it- he seems to like adventure stories) On my list over the next few weeks for their podcast are Brave New World, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Lolita and Lord of the Flies. I’ll never get them all finished in time, especially with the Booker longlist coming out on Tuesday but I’ll enjoy the attempt!

Recent reads;

#27 A Gentleman In Moscow by Amor Towles. I’m sure everyone is familiar with this story of a Russian nobleman who is condemned as ‘an enemy of the state’ and sentenced to house arrest in an upmarket Moscow hotel, where he spends the next three decades living an unusually varied life given the circumstances.
I thought this began and ended really well but sagged a little in the middle. That said I’m still thinking about it now so it definitely had something. I immediately watched the adaptation starting Ewan McGregor, which gave the Counts story a little more action and tension and was enjoyable too. Although when I was reading the book I imagined John Hurt, in his prime, as the Count and that, for me, would have been the dream casting.

#28 The Giver Of Stars by Jojo Moyes. Recommended by a friend this tells the story of an English woman who marries an American in the 1930’s and moves to his home in the Kentucky mountains. Everything is not as she had hoped however and she escapes her problematic home life by getting involved with the Eleanor Roosevelt travelling library initiative. She meets four other women and a man who make her life bearable, show her love and friendship and ensure that Kentucky becomes her home.
Not great literature but a good holiday read.

#29 Thirst by John Robins a biography by the comedian that predominantly deals with his relationship with alcohol and is really aimed at people who want to quit or cut back their drinking. (Maybe it will help me do the latter! Although I find I’m naturally drinking less as I get older anyway - best not dwell too long on my mid 20’s to early 30’s when I worked in the wine trade!)
It starts relatively lightheartedly but as alcohol begins to affect his life and relationships it goes to a darker place.

The saddest thing for me is that even after over
three and a half years without a drink he seems to be spending an awful lot of time thinking and longing for alcohol and I can’t imagine how hard it is to fight that craving every day.

It’s taken me a long time to get through this, there is a whole chapter all about the pain he’s in from an operation (or three - I was speed reading) on his arse, which felt like filler, and I could have done without tbh.

I wouldn’t recommend this book unless its central premise speaks to you. Although I know @nowanearlyNicemum was also reading this and felt more positively about it than I did so I’ll be interested to hear her review.

@Benvenuto I would so read that!

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I just searched for my review. There are several posts complaining of me complaining how boring it is whilst slogging through it and then my final review is, “I’m glad it’s over”!

@GrannieMainland – aw! I’ve just downloaded Yesteryear on BookBeat! I’ll see how I get on.

85 The Art of A Lie – Laura Shepherd-Robinson. Set in London in 1749 in a charming confectioner’s shop, Mrs Cole is grieving the murder of her husband. She hopes to be able to keep hold of her shop, which belonged to her father. Confidence tricksters are all around. Can she keep the shop and introduce the new fangled 'iced cream' to her customers?

I enjoyed this, particularly the twist. I was so certain it was going one way, but no. LRS kept me guessing.

Well done Eine. I think I had a similar review for Transcription a few pages back, also concluding it'll probably win the Booker. I'm putting my faith in Mary Beard to realise it's really a bit of nonsense and not longlist it! We can but hope.

I can’t find your review Sto

@ÚlldemoShúl The only ones I need to read are the Hemingway and My Brilliant Friend

Shit! For Whom The Bell Tolls is SIX HUNDRED pages!

I know- no chance I’m finishing it. And I didn’t even like the only Hemingway I have read (A Farewell to Arms) Starting Brave New World tomorrow

I got this when it was 99p but have been delaying reading it hoping it’s not long listed as it sounds a bit too Katie Kitamoura for me.

SAME! On both counts @ÚlldemoShúl - didn’t rate Farewell and was reminded of Audition

Latest reads:

Pied Piper: Nevil Shute.

The 'Rather Dated' Bookclub's July read, this book tells the story of John Sidney Howard, an elderly man, who, following a bereavement, decides to go to France for a fishing trip for the good of his health. The only thing is that it's the summer of 1940 and it's rumoured that the Nazis are going to invade France. This minor detail doesn't put off the veteran soldier and he proceeds to a remote village in the Jura mountains and enjoys the fishing and the peaceful surroundings.

When the Nazis do invade France, very shortly afterwards, Howard decides that he should go home and do his duty in whatever way he can. When the proprietors of the auberge ask if he could take their two children to safety, he feels he cannot refuse. And also, could he take the maid's child, after all, what's one more and she's so good with the little girl. Howard maps out his route towards to coast.

What follows is a nightmare scenario for Howard, as he and his little brood head full tilt into the war. Trains fail, roads get clogged with refugees and they learn to dread the drone of low-flying airplanes. This quiet hero stays calm and steers his little gang through the chaos until, many adventures later and picking up more children along the way, they eventually reach a place of safety.

I loved this book for the vivid description of these desperate times. This book was published before the end of the war, when victory was not at all certain. I love the authenticity of books like these. I also loved the frame of the story; the two men sitting in their club after the adventure ended and Howard relating how he had had a spot of bother getting out of France. The absolute modesty of the man! This was an excellent read and I'm definitely interested in reading more Nevil Shute.

There's a film!

The House of Boleyn - Tracy Borman

Fiction from an established historian. I enjoyed this. Sympathetic portraits of Jane Rochford and Anne’s father and grandmother, as well as the usual suspects, with Hever Castle being a character in its own right as Anne, Mary and George grow up and get drawn into court intrigues.

Latest reads continued.

The House on the Strand: Daphne du Maurier.

A reread. I remember enjoying this one many years ago and wanted to revisit it.

The story is set in 1960s Cornwall. Dick Young is staying in his friend's summer house on the Cornish coast. During his stay, he agrees to take part in an experiment and sample the drug that his friend Professor Lane has created. This drug has extremely dubious time-travelling properties. Dick, suffering from boredom and more than eager to escape the tedium of family life, is a willing guinea pig. He is entranced, when, after trying the drug, he is transported back to fourteenth-century Cornwall to experience life through the eyes of Roger the Squire who lived in the same house.

Dick becomes hooked to his time-travelling escapades to the point of becoming a stranger to his own family. He's so caught up in the lives of Roger and the beautiful Isolda, he becomes completely addicted to getting his fix, even at the risk of damaging his health and maybe losing his life as he has no control over his movements while under the influence of the drug.

I enjoyed reading this book again. The fourteenth century world is very well drawn and, like Dick, I enjoyed each installment of the feuding families. It is written in such a way that Dick's world does seem mundane by comparison and you could nearly understand his craving for adventure. I had forgotten the catastrophic event that happens mid-way in the book and how Dick reacted under pressure.

While it does require some suspension of belief (the science behind the drug most notably), I thought the book was convincing in its portrayal of the behaviour of an addict and the description of hallucinogenic drugs, common in the sixties (supposedly!)

This was an entertaining read and I definitely enjoyed it again. Du Maurier tells a good yarn.

Pleased you enjoyed Pied Piper, @FuzzyCaoraDhubh.

My latest - 56. The Bookseller’s Tale - Martin Latham

Alan Bennett mentioned enjoying this in his latest volume of diaries and my library had it so I thought I'd give it a go. Latham has worked in bookshops for many years and this is what you might call an anecdotal 'book about books', touching on lots of different topics. It’s generally light-hearted, with a good deal of interesting info and history in it, as well as Latham's own experiences: he’s worked for Waterstones for some years and in various branches had many famous customers - I definitely wish I'd been in his shop when Umberto Eco spent a day working there, incognito at his own request, and when Spike Milligan insisted on answering the phones.
It's really a book for dipping into at leisure, and the fact that I made heavy weather of it is entirely down to my own ineptitude. Life is being particularly annoying and slowing down my reading right now.

Latest reads continued.

Offenses: Constance Debré (trans. Jeffrey Zuckerman).

My library is featuring French writers at the moment, so I picked up this one and another book.

This is a very slim book, less than one hundred pages. It's short, sharp and bitter. It is based on an actual event where an unnamed nineteen-year-old man killed an elderly woman to steal her money and pay off his drug debt.

The story is skilfully told, where the facts of the case are used to make a commentary on the failure of society to provide for all its citizens, where the less well-off have no choice but to resort to crime, as they are being trampled upon by the people on top. The reader is urged to consider the degree of the man's guilt and to what degree they could individually be held responsible as part of the collective.

While I thought that the writing was strong and it packed a powerful punch and I found the subject matter thought-provoking, I'm not certain that I agree with it completely. It's suggests a lack of agency, that the young man was driven to commit the atrocity, that there was no other way. I think there's a moral choice, no matter who you are or where you're from. I found it interesting that the author herself is from a high-profile political family and is a lawyer by profession (and was presumably part of the system that denounced and punished crimes like these) before she became a writer.

Book 45 was The Girl In Red by Christina Henry. I mainly read this because I’d just read The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter and wanted to read a couple more fairytale retellings. The Girl In Red is inspired by Little Red Riding Hood - it’s basically Red Riding Hood meets 28 Days Later, with protagonist ‘Red’ making her way across 300 miles of a USA ravaged by a mysterious pandemic (which may or not be what it seems) to her grandmother’s isolated cabin in the woods. Instead of a Big Bad Wolf, Red’s potential predators are desperate survivors and militia groups who have obvious uses for young women.

I found it pretty underwhelming and it completely downplays the more interesting themes and symbolism of the fairytale; plus Red is two-dimensional cliche. The book really didn’t need to pretend to be a clever fairy story retelling.

43 Enchanted Creatures - Natalie Lawrence
Exploration of the psychological meaning of monster stories, spanning cave art to the present day. Managed to write 300 pages about how monsters are the outward projection of what we can’t endure in ourselves - somehow without referencing the Jungian concept of the Shadow once . Some interesting content but too broad to go into convincing depth on much.

44 The Story of Birds - Steve Brusatte
Brilliant popular science exploration of bird evolution from the palaeontologist, following on from his books on dinosaurs and mammals.

45 Land - Maggie O’Farrell
This was a bit good.

Wounded both physically and mentally by his childhood experience of the Great Hunger, Tomás is a skilled mapmaker working for the British forces. The conflict between his spiritual attachment to the land and his work in categorising it for the benefit of the occupying power has a devastating impact on Tomás and his four children. Using folkloric elements (which tbh I didn’t completely understand) to evoke a profound attachment to ancestral place, this is a powerful exploration of colonisation, diaspora, and generational trauma.

Did veer a bit close to melodrama in the second half with so many things going wrong for the family, but I think the quality of the writing lets her get away with it. O’Farrell can still overwrite at times in a way that pulls you out of the narrative, but on the whole the prose is beautiful and the authorial voice so much less intrusive than in Hamnet.

The last of my holiday reading. Back to work today so reading will slow down again.

An Unlikely Visitor - Joanna Cannon

Maggie is grieving the recent death of her husband Derek, as well as the disappearance of her daughter Jeanie 40 years ago. An unlikely visitor arrives and helps Maggie piece together what really happened to Jeanie. I really enjoyed this, but the idea of who the visitor is won’t be for everyone.

The Shadow Step - Mark Billingham

The third in the series featuring dancing detective Declan Miller, set in Blackpool. Here Declan is investigating a murder and a kidnapping linked to the drugs trade. I like this series - it’s not cosy crime but it doesn’t take itself seriously.

It Could Have Been Her - Lisa Jewell

I really enjoyed this and finished it in a day. Jane finds an abandoned dog, and when she returns it realises that the owner lives in a house where Jane had a narrow escape 25 years ago. This leads Jane to start investigating when somebody else linked to the house goes missing. This kept me gripped and I couldn’t work out where it was going.

Gone-Away Lake and Return to Gone-Away - Elizabeth Enright

A pair of children’s books about some children who find some partially abandoned houses next to a swamp which used to be a lake, and making friends with the remaining residents, an eccentric elderly brother and sister. Very evocative of times gone by (written and set in the 1950s but there’s lots of stories about life there at the turn of the century).

All In - Claire Powell

Jo and Dave have been struggling with their marriage, so they hope their family holiday to an exclusive Med resort, paid for by Dave’s brother, will help them. Needless to say, the trip is not a success. I enjoyed this, but I wouldn’t recommend it as one to read while you’re on holiday!

page 4 Eine

I don't like Hemmingway much and found For Whom The Bell Tolls rather dull despite reading it in Madrid many years ago. The only book of his I've liked is The Sun Also Rises.

His third wife Martha Gellhorn is a good writer though.

Pah! Films are for the weak ! 😂 (joking)

@StowickthevastFound it! Yes we certainly did feel the same!!