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 am so glad! You should start with the first in the series though - The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi. There are only two so far but the second ended with a cliffhanger so more to come I am sure.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I do love it, yep, but don’t have much interest in short stories written by other writers tbh. I doubt I’ll ever bother with it.

Oh I see! I was kind of hoping you would have and then see what you thought. Never mind

East of Eden, John Steinbeck - this is billed on BookTok as the best novel ever written. It was alright, but it was quite messy, a tad self-righteous, needlessly repetitive at times and I'm not a fan of the monologue-esque type chapters thrown in.

Mad Mabel, Sally Hepworth - this made me chuckle. I really enjoyed it, not going to win any awards but an easy way to pass a few hours.

Good Bad Girl, Alice Feeney - bog standard thriller. Much of it was very predictable, but I whizzed through. I seem to be offended quite easily by the terrible penmanship of thrillers recently but this didn't offend me. So I quite enjoyed again.

Yes, I was.

1. Diary of a Beauty Editor - Sarah Jossel

Written by a Sunday Times Style columnist, this was an enjoyable look at beauty and skincare, which I am trying to focus on more these days :-)

Earlier I meant to post and forgot - one of the Booker longlist by an author whose name I don't remember hearing from before is a Kindle daily deal at 99p until midnight - The Renovation by Kenan Orhan. I haven't read any but this means I have 4 on Kindle from deals. One was on Waterstone's debut novel shortlist before I bought it last month, and I have a previous novel by Chloe Arjidis from the library - Asunder - I can't remember why but I must have reserved it originally when it was on another award list and sounded interesting, or because I saw an online review, but was surprised to find when looking at the list again that I'd already bought the longlist book

30 Knife by Salman Rushdie
After Rushdie was attacked and gravely injured by a presumably mentally ill and radicalised fanatic in 2022, he wrote this shortish memoir of his survival and (partial) recovery, including an imagined conversation with his attacker. There are flashes of the swaggeringly wonderful writer he once was, and I enjoyed reading it, but it isn’t a patch on Joseph Anton, his memoir of his post fatwa years, or anywhere near his best novels. It’s mostly about how happy he currently is with his fourth wife. That’s Ok by me.

Two quickies.

Heartstopper Vol 6 by Alice Oseman
The final volume in this YA graphic novel series about Nick and Charlie's love story. I was told by my teens I had to read this quickly so we could watch the film on Netflix.

The Giddy Limit: Twentieth Anniversary Book by Alex Leonard
I'm in Scotland so have bought a pile of Scottish books. This one is a collection of topical comic strips from The Orcadian weekly newspaper. This covers 2020 to 2025 so a bit of a pandemic flashback at the beginning and last year's excitement of the Island Games at the end among Cheemo, Sandy, Liz, Davo and Ivy's usual island adventures.

I knew it was ages since I finished anything but I was shocked to see the last thing I finished was on June 15th!

Anyway, this was #22, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, by Lori Gottlieb. Warm, witty and wise, I thought this was overly long but a very interesting insight into therapy and therapists, and she writes very well.

I’m at 50!

50 . Ask Not by Maureen Callahan (audio)

Subtitled The Kennedy Men and the Women They Destroyed this was an odd experience.

It’s all rather sordid and unpleasant, a litany of the various failures and indiscretions of anyone Kennedy or it seems vaguely Kennedy adjacent. A murder committed by a cousin by marriage is included which I thought was a stretch. The Kennedy men were arseholes though and it’s quite flabbergasting the way they are lionised. Ted! Ted died an eminent statesman and yet the shit he pulled! It’s interesting to wonder had JFK lived would he have been publicly brought low for thinking with his cock?

This book for me had two main problems - during the section on Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy there was a glaring and obvious error (I know a bit about Kick due to her being Mitford adjacent) A quick Google revealed that this book was the subject of multiple accusations of factual inaccuracy.

In addition, it is nasty in tone, lacking in balance and feels extremely partisan. Some of the ways women are described by the author are extremely misogynistic. It made me feel slightly dirty.,

Salacious and gossipy but not to be trusted

Congrats on 50, @eine!

Thanks!!

I have a biography of Kathleen Kennedy by Paula Byrne I've read one of her two biographical books on Jane Austen - excellent, and her biographies of Evelyn Waugh - quite good - and Barbara Pym - interesting but disappointing. But none sound vicious and all are backed up by lots of endnotes (indicating a serious approach to research).

Yes @elkiedee I’ve read Kick by Paula Byrne it was good. The factual inaccuracy I picked up on was the description of her FIL as the “Duke of Cavendish” he wasn’t he was Edward Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire. I don’t know what the other inaccuracies were but it seems there were many

Congrats @EineReiseDurchDieZeit🎉
I have a few Kennedy books including that one but haven’t got around to them yet. I’m really not getting on with non-fiction at all at the moment so I’ll try some of them some time!

@ÚlldemoShúl

Can I know what your other titles are please? Not that I need to buy anything !!

I’ve had my interested rekindled by the TV series Love Story : Carolyn Bessette and JFK Jnr which was very well done

I have these ones (as well as Ask Not)
John F Kennedy: An Unfinished Life by Robert Dallek
JFK : Public, Private, Secret by J Randy Taroborelli (he has one about Jackie too which is on my wishlist)
Grace and Power: The Private World of the Kennedy White House by Sally Bedell Smith (This is one of the oldest books on my kindle) and
JFK Jr: An Intimate Oral Biography by Liz McNeill and RoseMarie Terenzio
I can’t vouch for how good any of them are because I haven’t read them yet!

FYI Kingsolver fans

https://www.waterstones.com/events/online-event-barbara-kingsolver-in-conversation-with-rachel-joyce/online-events

Thanks!

Congratulations on your 50 books @EineReiseDurchDieZeit 🥳

I've finished The Renovation.
I really liked it. I'll have to think about it for a while before I write a review.

The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley
Like being stuck at a work do where you don’t know anybody and your new colleagues don’t want to bother including you or making you feel welcome. My next book needs to not incessantly use “he said” after every tiny bit of speech because this book got on my last nerve with it.
I plowed on because it’s short and Laura’s story was quite interesting, in a grim Aren’t Men Total Bastards? way. I suppose the point is that Putnam wasn’t like that, but it was difficult to get a flavour of what he was like from this pedestrian, arch prose.
Are all the Booker shortlist novels going to make me silently scream AND YOU CHOSE THIS PRETENTIOUS BOLLOCKS OVER LAND???????

Wow that was quick @FuzzyCaoraDhubh

You've inspired me to give it a go.

Well done on reaching 50 Eine

79. The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook - Matt Dinniman. Third in the Dungeon Crawler series, this time they're on trains which dragged a bit for me. Lots of descriptions of different train lines and intersections. DH says this is the worst one and the rest improve. Still going to take a break for a bit.

80. Yesteryear - Caro Claire Burke. Much reviewed trad wife goes back into the past book. Main character is too much of a caricature for my taste and the message of misogyny was a bit obvious. It dragged a lot in the middle but found the start interesting and the ending silly but at least kept my attention.

Lol @MaterMoribund probably!! I think Americans love all the pubs and crisps references which are just a bit basic for us Brits.

Putnam frowned, deep like an unknowable lake. “Oh. All the crisps have gone” he said. “That’s the sort of trick Shove would pull” he said. “Did I mention he forced me out of Sequence? A very ètrange cove, so mauve” he said.
I shifted in my seat, reminded of what an utter bitch my mother was.

<tiny scream>