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

Thanks all. I’ve read Talented Mr R and The Wedding People (the latter is absolutely not my usual thing but I found it surprisingly readable) but will check out the others now.

@Tarragon123I was very frustrated by The Women I said this to Piggy last year about it

@PiggywaspushedI wanted to pick up on what you said about The Women by Kristen Hannah. It really frustrated me, there was a better book in there trying to get out. Frankie was such a Mary Sue to start with and then it implausibly heaped misery after misery upon her seemingly for miseries sake! It was definitely schlocky as you put it

It was very heavy handed

Yeah, it all seemed a bit inauthentic to me.

Agree that the title is rubbish!

Remus, The Correspondent is a good summer read type book but you could hate it... hard to judge!

To add to The Women conversation every man she met fell madly in love with her too. And despite being called The Women, Frankie cared much more about the men in her life. There was definitely a decent book trying to get out and then eventually the same unlikely twist happened twice. Won’t try Kristen Hannah again.

People also rave about The Nightingale so many better WW2 books out there.

Meet Me At The Museum might suit Remus?

I’m so glad you enjoyed A Secret Painter, @Terpsichore! I have been pressing it on people so delighted to hear your positive review.

In fact I think it could even be read on a beach, Remus.

I wasn’t thrilled with The Women either. The Vietnam section was the most interesting but after her return it descended into a misery fest. I had issue with the name as well, that and the cover art put me off and I only started it because it was a book club read. It wasn’t the worst I’ve read but I was quite happy to pass it on.

I loved The Women - it was a bold for me, as was The Nightingale.

Latest read is The Mitford Affair by Marie Benedict

I read this so you don’t have to. It was awful. It’s a novel, but based on the real events of Diana and Unity Mitford becoming fascinated by fascism and Hitler. I do like a book about the Mitfords but this has many faults. Firstly there are factual errors (for example, it has Decca and Esmond attending a British Union of Fascists rally in 1934 - not only would they not have attended such an event, they didn’t even meet each other until January 1937). I know it’s a novel so there is artistic licence but I think when you’re basing a novel on real events you do need to have the basics accurate. Secondly, it’s written by an American so there are lots of Americanisms, including in dialogue, which is very off putting when it’s words apparently spoken or thought by a member of the upper classes in 1930s Britain. Thirdly, it uses three different perspectives, which is fine, but Nancy’s perspective is told in first person whereas Diana and Unity’s perspectives are third person and I found that difference jarring. It’s also very hard to read Diana and Unity’s chapters where they’re talking about how amazing and sexy Mosley and Hitler are (yes really). Lastly, it’s just not well written. The writing style is very tell rather than show. Part of me wishes I hadn’t persevered, but I did want to see how bad it got. Anyway, don’t bother even if you are a Mitford fan that will normally read anything about them.

It was a DNF for me. Sorry!

I did suspect...

@CornishLizard I’m looking for fiction really, I think

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit Read and liked the sample so I’ve bought it. Thanks!

Have started Villa Coco- definitely not a Remus book I don’t think @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie though I could be wrong as we are often opposites and I think that it is likely to be a DNF for me (despite beautiful end papers and signed by author birthday present from DH)

Latest Booker read Black Bag by Luke Kennard. I think this will be another marmite one but I really enjoyed it. It's about an actor who is hired by a psychology professor to come to lectures and seminars dressed in a black suit bag, where only the bottom of his legs and feet are visible. It's told in the first person from the pov of the actor who doesn't really know what's going on. There's some very funny observations and the relationship between him and his best friend is great. It does go off the boil in the second half and I wasn't completely convinced by the ending, there's also a strange relationship that I'm not sure added much, but I really quite liked it.

I've read 7 of the 13 now and am going to have a break as have read the ones I want that I have been published. On the whole, I've quite enjoyed what I've read.
Hits for me so far are:
May We Feed The King
Black Bag
The Renovation
John of John
The Things We Never Say

Meh
The Palm House

Miss
The Vivisectors

I don’t think Villa Coco or The Five Star Weekend look like Remus books tbh. I’ll try the samples though.

@Terpsichore In my opinion, The Women suffered from only giving Frankie's POV rather than giving different perspectives at varying points in time. For example:

During the war - We learn about the realities of life in Vietnam via Frankie, the naive new recruit who initially believed all the propaganda.

Immediate aftermath - Barb reconciles her pride in her service and love for her country with the hostile reception the troops got on their return from an unpopular war, and the racial inequality that led her to become a civil rights activist. Barb was by far the most interesting character, and I thought it was a real missed opportunity to not focus more on her after the war.

A decade or so later - Ethel didnt really have much of a plot line, but could have been developed to show the campaign for the formal recognition of the service women's contributions. Maybe also the effects of PTSD.

That would have been so much better than focusing on Frankie's relationship drama and multiple resurrections from the dead!

Best wishes to @minsmum& @MamaNewtNewt& welcome to @Theretheretheir.

Re The Women - I liked how it portrayed how grim Vietnam was, but the structure for me was the problem. The decision of her brother’s friend to stay in Vietnam for another tour made no sense with what we later learned about him & the ending felt contrived. I also think that writing a book that spans many years is a challenge for an author as it can drag in places. (This is something I noticed when reading A Town Like Alice as Shute cleverly deals with this by having the past events being told by one character to another which reduces the timespan of another).

I’ve just borrowed The Tenant of Wildfell Hall from BorrowBox as I now have BorrowBox on my phone so wanted something to read when out & about - I had planned to reread this at some point this year (partly as it has had good reviews on here and partly for the 52 Book Challenge) but borrowed it mainly because I don’t always find it easy to browse on BorrowBox. I’m enjoying it much more that I remembered (I liked it when younger but found the first few chapters not that interesting) - this time I was gripped from the outset & am racing through it.

Thanks all, it’ll be reet, as we say up north. I managed to finish The Ballad of Smallhope and Pennyroyal and have started the next one.

Work should have calmed down by tomorrow so I plan to relax with a coffee and work my way through the thread. My wish list needs to be replenished!

72. Frozen Charlotte by Alex Bell

This is a follow up to Charlotte Says by the same author, which I read not too long ago ago.

It’s set in modern times. Teenager Sophie goes to stay with her cousins on the Isle of Skye, shortly after the tragic and unexpected death of her best friend.

Her cousins house is the old schoolhouse from the previous books, and the creepy possessed frozen Charlotte dolls are back and causing trouble.

I thought that the dolls were creepier in the other book. In this book, the character responsible for carrying out most of the attacks is so wholeheartedly enthusiastic about it, that it gives the impression that they’d be the malicious and murderous sort even without any external influence from the possessed dolls.

36) A Good Person by Kirsten King. Lillian thinks things are going well with Henry, the man she's been seeing for 4 months. Finally she can imagine herself settling down with someone who's got their life together. Which is why she's stunned when Henry dumps her the morning after staying at his flat. Hurt and vengeful, Lillian gets drunk, sends Henry a bitter text message, and curses him with a hex that she finds on YouTube. The next day Lillian wakes to the worst hangover of her life, and the news that Henry has died violently. Now wanted for questioning, Lillian tries to clear her name and claw her way into Henry's family to be acknowledged as his grieving girlfriend as her life slowly unravels.

I enjoyed this, although it was far fetched. Lillian is absolutely not 'a good person,' and at times her delusional thinking makes it uncomfortable to be in her head. She sees herself as a fascinating, misunderstood heroine; but instead she's impulsive, transparent, and quite pathetic in a lot of ways. As her therapist says, Lillian is a narcissist with a victim complex. Yet a lot of her behaviour is driven by a deep need to be loved and found worthy.

Worth a read if you like fast paced action, and unlikeable protagonists.

Woop I made it to 50!

💐to @minsmum and @MamaNewtNewt . And @EineReiseDurchDieZeit I'm glad to see you reading. Lisa Jewell is like crack isn't she? so readable.

50 Mother Mary Comes to Me, Arundhati Roy

Much reviewed here already. Great book, but not for me. Her thoughts are wonderfully sharp and full of original ideas and observations, but something about her writing just doesn't land for me (I read TGOST when it won the Booker and felt exactly the same about that). Story-wise, I found AR's later life much more interesting than her youth or her relationship with her mother - although I can understand that if you had a mother like Mrs Roy, there would be an almost inescapable urge to write a book about her. I wonder how much artistic license there is at play.

51 Wifehouse, Sonia Walger

There seem to be no shortage of books about women' rage in the face of gender roles at the moment. Someone on Goodreads said about this one "It gave me everything Yesteryear did not" (and I see that @Stowickthevast also compared it to YY when reviewing). I haven't read Yesteryear yet, but my thoughts were "Well, I like this a LOT better than All Fours".

In Wifehouse, Annie is struggling with a disappointing marriage, the trials of motherhood and missing sense of self. In the aftermath of the death of her estranged mother, she embarks on an affair with Thierry, her French tutor, who is half her age.

I only know Walger as an actress but she's an Oxford Eng. Lit. grad and writes like one (in a good way). Her writing is fluent, and there are echoes of other unhappy women underlying Annie's story (can echoes underlie? Probably not. Anyway, we're talking your Emma Bovaries and your Anna Kareninas). There's an interesting article here about marriage and adultery and why she chose to write this book in this way: https://lithub.com/sonya-walger-on-writing-a-multifaceted-novel-of-marriage-and-adultery/

No-one in the book is particularly likeable. And I found that the later section of the book (particularly the London section) meandered about a bit and lost momentum. But generally speaking, I liked this. A lot more subtle than the premise would lead you to believe - and I liked the ending.

Congrats on the 50 books, @VikingNorthUtsire !

I've been on a 1970s crime spree:
109. Silent Witness
110. Grave Matters
111. Mortal Remains
112. Cast for Death
All by Margaret Yorke. An Oxford don turns amateur sleuth either in small English villages or on holiday in Austria and Greece. I'm not entirely sure why I read these so compulsively as they are all fairly standard examples of the genre. There's a recurring note of poignancy when characters wonder about taking a chance on love versus staying safe and comfortable in their existing life, a question which is never really resolved.

113. The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective, Susannah Stapleton
Non-fiction account of researching the life of an early twentieth century female detective in London, complicated by the subject's self-mythologizing and outright lying. There aren't huge great reveals in the end, but it sits quite nicely alongside crime fiction of the era, showing some humdrums truths behind the stories.