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

58. Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami (trans. Jay Rubin)

Toru Watanabe remembers a point in his younger life when, as a university student, he was obsessed by the beautiful but fragile Naoko. They're bound together by the past suicide of her boyfriend/Toru's friend, but their relationship never develops into a full-blown romance. With Naoko far away, battling with her mental health in a long-term residential facility in the countryside, and Toru studying in Tokyo, he meets a fellow-student, the effervescent Midori, who in film parlance would be classed as a manic pixie dream-girl. He’s unable to progress in either relationship, gripped by indecision and feeling bound to Naoko although she’s too ill to commit to him. Her eventual suicide leaves him on the threshold of a new stage of life, but we don’t know what it is, as Murakami chooses to end his narrative here.

This was a book club read and my first Murakami - essentially it’s a novel of adolescence, growing up, grief and depression. Everyone is struggling with loss of some sort. Toru is a lonely, alienated figure with virtually no friends, and even the sex, graphically described, seems distant and perfunctory. The Japanese setting worked for me (I'm fascinated by Japan) but in terms of the plot and characters, I'm not entirely sure this one was for me.

One Pair of Feet - Monica Dickens
As recommended on here.

I’m another one that has fallen off the thread, my reading has been really slow recently due to the World Cup and general summer business (and a little bit of phone addiction which I need to curb).

But here are two recent reads:

Beautyland, Marie-Helene Bertino

A girl grows up believing she is an alien, placed on earth to observe life here and communicate her findings to her home planet. She does this initially via her dreams and then a fax machine her mother finds. Her observations are funny and philosophical and by the time she reaches adulthood she has a substantial collection of correspondence. Eventually, after some gentle prodding from a friend who works in publishing, her observations are shared with the world.

I really loved this, thought it was tenderly written with love for the characters. I have a tiny gripe about a secondary character passing swiftly after a cancer diagnosis but I am probably just being triggered!

Perfection, Vincenzo Latronico

Oh this was fairly excruciating to read! As an ex-pat elder millennial I recognised, both in myself and my peers, a lot of the ambitions, anxieties and life choices of the characters in Perfection as they navigate their twenties and thirties in trendy Berlin. Brilliant satire, possibly a bold.

I’ve started Lonesome Dove which I’ve been meaning to read for a while now, somehow drought conditions seem ideal timing.

@MonOncle Lonesome Dove is such a great book

51 . The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

What it says on the tin. A Poirot investigation

I know this has been loved on the thread but it didn’t do anything for me at all. I tried it both in print and audio and struggled with it in both formats. I know that in many ways it’s “a first of its kind” but I found it rather dull and slow paced and I solved it easily by asking myself a simple question.

Not a patch on And Then There Were None which is the only other Christie I’ve read.

32.The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. Isabel Archer is invited by her aunt Lydia Touchett to travel from her home in Albany, New York, to stay at the Touchetts’ London estate. Bright and charming, she attracts a good deal of interest from a number of eligible gentlemen, including two marriage proposals, but she prefers to stay independent and wait for a more spiritual and emotional connection. On the death of her uncle she receives a vast inheritance, allowing her to marry for love, which turns out to be less of a blessing than a curse.

I rather enjoyed this. James really gets into the bones of Archer as a character. She’s charming and witty, but also sensitive, stubborn and independent. The disintegration of Isabel’s marriage felt painfully credible. There are big clues to the reader from the outset that Isabel’s marriage is doomed, but Isabel's own gradual realisation of the truth is sad and grimly fascinating. The Touchetts’ travels around the grand cities and countryside of Europe are also wonderfully evocative.

Excellent review of The Portrait of a Lady @StrangewaysHereWeCome I've a soft spot for this book.

Some great recommendations today.
I’ve placed a hold with Borrow Box for the Mark Hadden biography, and there’s a month wait on Libby for When The Cranes Fly South but if that’s only 99p atm I may just buy it on Kindle so there’s no pressure to read within a certain time frame. (And that is how I end up with dozens of unread kindle books!)
John of John not available anywhere foc so may splash out the £2 for that as it seems to be getting universally good reviews.

Just bought Mother Mary Comes to Me in today’s deals which has been reviewed positively on here. Nearly bought it at full price yesterday so glad I held off.

Thanks for the heads up @TattiePants also
boight!

I resisted reading The Wedding People but it came up in deals so I bought it to read on holiday. A lot of it stretches credibility but I liked it much more than I thought I would. It's less silly than its publicity suggests. Good sunbed read.

36 A Song for Summer - Eva Ibbotson

I think it was a 50 booker who put me onto Ibbotson’s Journey to the River Sea which I read last year and enjoyed, looking forward to reading it with DD when she’s a bit older. That led me to this, it was available on kindle unlimited and was quite a charming historical (WW2) romance. The introduction tells me she described her historical romances as being “definitely for old ladies and people with flu” and whilst I’m not currently either, I did enjoy this!

If you do buy a Kindle book at a more expensive price the day before it turns up on a deal, or even up to 14 days before, you can return it, and buy it again at the cheaper price. It says it might take a couple of days for your money to come through. The options don't say "because the price on Amazon just dropped" but I choose "found a better price elsewhere" - I'm sure I'm not the only one in these circumstances and I do think that Amazon has an annoying habit of putting rogue deals in - sometimes something is listed with loads of 99p deals or even as a deal of the day, and it's £4 or £5, and I wonder if they think someone will be click crazy, or looking when a bit tired or drunk. I don't drink but I admit to looking when I'm not entirely wide awake, and sometimes if I'm there's a few offers I'm more tempted to add something which I'm not actually sure I want to read - that's what I mean by going a bit click crazy!

I really liked When the Cranes Fly South @DesdamonasHandkerchief

I've just started listening to The Vivisectors and think it's going to be a pretty marmite one.

@AliasGrapeA lot of A Song for Summer is recycled into Eva Ibbotson’s children’s book The Dragonfly Pool. It’s one of her older children’s trilogy with Journey to the River Sea & The Star of Kazan. Dragonfly Pool was the last of the three that I read to my DC & we all enjoyed it immensely (somewhat guiltily in my case as I expect it could be deemed politically incorrect but it is very funny).

@TattiePantsMother Mary has just arrived on BorrowBox (I’ve had it reserved for months) & I am really enjoying it. I was feeling a bit jaded with prize lists, but this one so far is great & not a book that I would have read without the list.

44 The Spy in the Archive - Gordon Corera Non-fiction account of the life of Vasili Mitrokhin, KGB officer who ended up running the KGB’s archives (and copying much of them, then smuggling the copies out to the West just after the fall of the Soviet Union). Interesting story, though unfortunately the book doesn’t do justice to it - really not very well-written at all, and I found it plodding and dull. A pity because I enjoyed Corera in his podcast The Rest is Classified (although I stopped listening because his co-host is just too annoying - definitely won’t be reading any of his books!).

71. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan - much reviewed on here. I thought it was beautifully crafted and I admired the skill in saying so much with so few words. For me though, I prefer books with more colour and texture, worlds I can inhabit. It felt like an exquisite pencil sketch where I prefer oil paintings. I am interested in finding a more in depth book about the Magdalen Laundries now.

72. XOXO by Axie Oh - chosen purely to fulfill the X in my A–Z challenge, this is a teenage romance between a young cello player and a K Pop superstar. It took me back to my own early teenage reading of the Nancy Drew Case Files where handsome rock stars, cowboys and ski instructors would inevitably fall in love with Nancy and sweep her off her feet.. Xoxo is pure teenage wish fulfilment fantasy but it's so earnest and wholehearted that I found it inexplicably adorable.

Prize list lovers Black Bag by Luke Kennard from the Booker is on today’s kindle deals

Thanks @ÚlldemoShúl

Despite thinking I wouldn't read the Booker list this year, I've now got The Renovation and Black Bag on my TBR, and am listening to The Vivisectors. And had already read 4. I guess if Amazon keeps obliging, I'll get through them all!

Mother Mary is still my book of the year so far @Benvenuto @TattiePants

82. Wifehouse - Sonya Walger. The author of this is a friend of a friend and so I know some background to the story before I picked it up, which after reading it, I realised meant I actually knew the plot, so I'm not sure if that really helped. It's about Annie, an Australian housewife living in Connecticut who is married to Hector, an American actor. They gave 2 children, Vita who is 14 and Jackson who is 8. Annie isn't really happy in her marriage and feels overwhelmed by all the life admin. But tbh I couldn't help judging her. She doesn't have a job yet still managed to fail to get her children's presents ready for Christmas, feed them proper meals or actually do any parenting. Her best friend gives her some French lessons for Christmas and she ends up falling for the tutor. The title comes from her French description of herself as a "femme maison". We get more of get back story and abusive childhood as her mother dies and she goes back to Australia. There's some great writing here, although the plot sounds a bit chick lit, it's definitely literary fiction. But the main character is very hard to sympathise with. We get povs from Vita and Hector too which help. It was interesting reading this after Yesteryear although they take quite different routes.

eta - I guess the main take is that it's fine when men have affairs and leave their family but nut when women do.

Rogues by Patrick Radden Keefe is also
in today’s deals

That’s interesting @Benvenuto thanks! I really can’t wait till DD is interested in things other than fairies, mermaids and unicorns so we can expand our reading repertoire a bit! (I know it’s our job to keep trying different things but, as yet, unless there’s some variety of overly gendered sparkly magical creature involved she doesn’t really want to know).

I picked up Dominion in the deals today. No idea when I’ll get round to it, it may well become a RWYO of the future but I’ll try and get to it before that.

Was also looking at Black Bag but couldn’t decide if I cared enough about men to read it it would be my kind of thing. Has anyone read it? Be interested in hearing what people thought before I commit my previous 99 pence!

Oh and I missed Mother Mary in the deals yesterday but have some audible credits so I’ve spent one on that, I usually really enjoy memoir on audiobook so fingers crossed.

I’m in exactly the same boat but I’m not rushing through them- I have others I want to read too.

@AliasGrape The Cressida Cowell books are a great transition from fairies etc to more literary children's books.

Highly recommend the audio books of How To Train Your Dragon which are read by David Tennant and are properly funny. We've had a couple of great holidays listening to these when the kids were younger, and they're still their comfort reads.

Thanks for the heads up on Black Bag and Dominion