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

@RomanMum
I felt the same about Bel Canto, I have loved her other books especially The Dutch House but I felt I was missing something here, I wondered if I was just not in the right frame of mind for it

@SpunkyKhakiScroller that’s a shame about Hekate I’d just bought it and thought it sounded interesting! Oh well it was only 99p.

Im being incredibly cheeky even counting my latest read as it’s a short story, but I’ll take what I can get at the moment - had another gallbladder flare up, another hospital visit and whilst it didn’t end in surgery in the end it can’t come bloody soon enough! But even before that I’ve struggled to pick anything up since holidays.

So, rather sheepishly, my 37 is So Late in the Day - Claire Keegan which I was expecting to be short as in novella length like Foster but I think was about 40 pages in the end and I read it in under half an hour. Like all her work this is exquisitely observed, conveys so much in such brief, precise text, and was beautiful.

I saw that this is on sale as a collection of 3 stories but can only find it on American sites. I’d love to read the others.

@AliasGrape hope you’re feeling better soon

@SpunkyKhakiScroller also in Chapter 25!

Get well soon, @AliasGrape

71. Going Zero by Anthony McCarten

Thriller.

Tech giant Cy Baxter is beta testing his super spyware tech Fusion, which claims to be able to find anyone, anywhere.

Ten candidates, five professionals, five ordinary people, have been selected and designated as Zero 1 through 10. At the “Go” order, they’ve got two hours before the hunt starts.
Anyone who lasts 30 days without being caught wins $3 million. And if the Fusion team catches them all, Baxter stands to gain a $90 billion contract with the CIA.

Most of the focus shifts between Baxter (and his Fusion team) and Zero 10, Kaitlyn Day, one of the amateur participants.

It’s all fairly straightforward large scale hide and seek stuff to begin with, and somewhat similar to a higher stakes version of Channel 4’s Hunted. The Fusion team have access to a terrifying amount of personal detail on just about everyone, which is used to predict behaviour, courses of action etc, and access to just about every form of electronic surveillance imaginable. It’s all dressed up
in noble aims, but also disturbingly easy to imagine how badly that sort of thing could be misused in the wrong hands. I’m not sure if it’s the sort of tech that exists in real life (yet?), but it’s certainly easy enough to imagine real life intelligence agencies doing this sort of stuff.

As the story progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that Kaitlyn’s not as ordinary as she seemed to be at the start, and that she’s got a much bigger agenda than just the money. I guessed some of it, but the extent of it all surprised me.

Overall very entertaining.

Hope you feel better soon @AliasGrape

48 A Stocking full of Spies - Robin Stevens Latest in the Ministry of Unladylike Activity series, the follow-up to the Murder Most Unladylike series featuring the new trio of May, Nuala and Eric. The three of them end up at Bletchley Park where Hazel (and Daisy’s brother Bertie) are working, ostensibly to carry messages between the huts but also to try to work out who was responsible for shooting dead one of the workers on a night-time Home Guard exercise - and whether it was a murder done to cover up the identity of a spy. As usual, well-plotted and just this side of outlandish - very like an Agatha Christie (and in fact one of Christie’s wartime novels is a key plot point, which makes me think I’ll re-read it as it’s one of my favourites!). Very much a kids’ book but lots of fun, and I’m giving it a bold because it made me cry happy tears at one point, and almost made me cry sad tears at another.

Ohhh @ÚlldemoShúlI spent last weekend in all my local bookshops looking for The Renovation and could not find it anywhere (something to do with lesser known entrants not expecting to be listed so print runs happen late). Anyway, I’ve been staying with my dad this weekend as my
mum is away and I went for a break and popped into his local Daunt and it was there prominently displayed with all the rest of the long list. So I am now proud owner. I’m going to keep my hard copy rather than take it back and buy it on Kindle (if it is still 99p) because exile and Turkish politics are my bag, so delighted to see your review.

@Tarragon123 I would give up on Lost Lambs if I were you. It doesn’t get any better.

@VikingNorthUtsire it's true that the Harriet/Lord Peter romance runs through multiple Sayers novels, but I think Gaudy Night also works well as a standalone novel. Coincidentally, academic fraud does play a role in the plot, so there's a bit of resonance with the current Cambridge scandal about Jason Arday (which I've watched with increasing horror. Cambridge really messed up to say the least). Also, on the basis of your review I'm keen to read A Traveller in Time!

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie it's very true that Due to a Death is utterly bleak. The ending was dreadful in terms of tragic impact. I guess you could say it's at the opposite end of the spectrum to cosy crime. But I still admired it - I think it works as tragedy, though one could argue that the sheer number of deaths (human and animal!) is excessive.

@AliasGrape I'm also sending warm wishes for your recovery!

@Stowickthevast my RL book group sounds a lot like yours. We do discuss the book at the start (the discussion can be short or long depending on how intensely people felt about the book; disliked books can sometimes provoke more discussion than ones we liked), but then we go on to talking about our lives. The 'life' discussion is usually inspired by the book discussion (in very loose terms). I have always enjoyed the personal discussion as much or more than the book discussion because the book group is full of very interesting women, who are doing interesting things with their lives. Sometimes not many of us have read the book (I always read it: hello geekdom!) but the rule is that you can come along regardless of whether or not you've read it. When my DC were younger, I appreciated having a space where I could converse with women on topics that weren't necessarily child-centred (because most women in the book group aren't mothers, and outside the book group, most of my women friends were mums - no problem with that either of course; I'm a mum!). The book group has been going for about 25 years (!!!); I came 15 years ago and am still considered a newbie 😂

More recently I joined a new book group that started at my work (I work at a university). I imagined that lots of academic staff would be joining up, but in fact it's mostly non-academic staff. It's very stimulating as again, the members all have interesting lives (and there are a couple of men, gasp!). As an American and an oversharer I fear I've encouraged members of that book group to share about their lives as well 😳We vote on book choices and the winners are often less overtly 'literary', but every discussion has been interesting.

For really intense focus on BOOKS though, there is nothing like the MN 50-booker threads. 😂I refer to them frequently in RL, when sharing info in my RL book groups, and always with the utmost reverence ❤😉

Reading has been my favourite thing since I was a small child, and on these threads I've found people whose passion is similar to or even greater than mine.

A long review post to catch up on my Dorothy Richardson reading (all the 5 star ratings are going to skew my annual stats!). Feel free to scroll down as this is very niche, apologies.

47. The Tunnel, Dorothy Richardson 5/5
    The fourth chapter-volume in Richardson’s Pilgrimage saga. For a stream-of-consciousness novel, there is a lot of fascinating cultural detail about late 19th c. London (the heroine Miriam is apparently 21 in this novel, and it’s set around 1896). As someone who cycles as virtually my only form of transport, I loved Miriam’s discovery of the joys of cycling. Her two older women friends tell her about how they went out cycling round Russell Square at night in their knickers (I take this this means bloomers!) and how liberated they felt. ‘We came home nearly crying with rage at not being able to go about, permanently, in nothing but knickers. It would make life an absolutely different thing.’ And Miriam: ‘To be able to bicycle would make life utterly different; on a bicycle you feel a different person; nothing can come near you, you forget who you are. Aren’t you glad you are alive today, when all these things are happening?’ I cycle here and there every day wearing loose-fitting shorts and I take the ease and luxury for granted… it’s so interesting to look back at a time when this experience was a thrilling novelty for women. Other cultural references are to ABC cafés (a chain of cafés where single women could eat alone safely), hansom cabs (light carriages drawn by one horse that increased the speed and ease of travel across London), and Henry Irving (an extremely famous Victorian stage actor, who played the role of Shylock among others). This is also the volume where Richardson introduces Hypo Wilson (the counterpart of H.G. Wells).

48. Interim, Dorothy Richardson 5/5
    Miriam attends a lecture on Dante that thrills her and feeds her thirst for culture. Also, the house where she is lodging turns into a boarding house, and various foreigners arrive (including a set of young Canadian doctors) and further expand her view of the world.

49. Deadlock, Dorothy Richardson 5/5
    This chapter-volume is more dense and opaque in places than the preceding ones, but still very captivating. I joined the online reading group on Richardson for the first time for a discussion of this novel (I’ve finally caught up with their reading schedule!) and that helped illuminate some of the murkiness. Miriam spends a lot of time with a young Russian Jew, Michael Shatov, who has moved into her boarding house, and they engage in lively debate with one another. With his encouragement, she decides to translate some Russian short stories by Leonid Andreyev into English (though she seems to be working from German translations of the stories, rather than from the original Russian versions). As someone who teaches French-to-English translation to undergraduates, I found the descriptions of the process of translation very intriguing: it is a process of intense ‘listening’ to the text you are working with, but also a creative task. Hypo Wilson (aka H.G. Wells) compliments Miriam’s translations, but arrogantly dismisses the stories themselves, which she loves (I’ve taken a strong dislike to his character I fear).

50. Revolving Lights, Dorothy Richardson 5/5
    Like Deadlock, this chapter-volume (now set around 1903) is decidedly opaque in places. The first chapter is a good fifty pages long, and follows Miriam’s thoughts as she walks home from a lecture held by the socialist Lycurgan Society (the fictional counterpart of the real-life Fabian society). Miriam carries on engaging in intense intellectual discussions with her Russian Jewish friend Michael Shatov, and with her friends Hypo and Alma Wilson (H.G. Wells and Catherine Wells, who was a school friend of Richardson). These discussions are sometimes frustrating, but always intriguing. Miriam is trying to think through her ideas about Judaism and feminism, among other things, and the conclusions she comes to are not always palatable. That said, I was drawn to her determination and her boldness of voice. She holds her own in conversation with the sometimes disparaging Hypo. She is still not keen on men as lovers (there’s a wonderful passage about how London itself is a mighty lover whom no one else can compete with), and she thinks about how her nature is split between the two sides of her family: the Puritan nonconformists on her father’s side, and the noisy, cheerful rural culture that her mother grew up in. Incidentally, I’m starting to wonder which early 20th c. women intellectuals H.G. Wells DIDN’T have an affair with. There is Richardson apparently, and Rebecca West, and Elizabeth Arnim (who wrote The Enchanted April), and Margaret Sanger the birth control activist. What did all these extremely clever women see in him? Because on the basis of Richardson’s account, I’m not seeing the appeal, ha.