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

@SpunkyKhakiScroller – I have The President's Hat on the bookshelf, I may just read it next! @DuPainDuVinDuFromage am I right in thinking that you read the original book in French?

Ouch @minsmum I’m so glad that you went to A&E. Get well soon 💐

Well done @Piggywaspushed

@FruAashild – I’ve also met Sandy McCall Smith. At one point, he and Ian Rankin lived in the same street (absolutely not the same street as my Mum and Dad lol) and JK Rowling lived round the corner. He was a very jolly man.

93 The Scandalous Ladies Football Club – Frances Quinn. How strange that @ChessieFL and I finished this book at the same time. Based on the true story of the first womens football club and the obstacles in their way. I enjoyed this, but agreed with Chessie that there could have been better male characters than the caricatures on display here. There are a couple of Frances Quinn books that I haven’t read and I’ll be looking out for them.

@Tarragon123 yes I did! It was simple enough for me to enjoy reading it, though I probably didn’t get all the nuances…it’s been ages since I read anything in French, these days I just want to completely relax outside of work instead of taxing my brain!

@ChessieFL I’m looking forward to the new Washington Poe but need it to come down in price a bit first. I really enjoy the Poe/Tilly team.

65. Deep Romantic Chasm - James Lees-Milne, ed. Michael Bloch

Years ago I read the wartime diaries of the young JLM, chronicling his time with the then-infant National Trust and his travels round the country persuading ancient cash-strapped aristos to donate their houses to the nation. They’re hugely enjoyable but this volume is from his much later diaries, after he married Alvilde, former Viscountess Chaplin. It's now the early 1980s, JLM is 70 and they're living in gracious surrounding on the Badminton estate.

He's just tremendously posh, and everyone he knows seems to have a title (both Debo and Diana Mitford pop up here). His main preoccupation is his infatuation with the young man who eventually came to edit all the diaries, Michael Bloch - the Lees-Milnes had what might be politely termed an 'open marriage' and his wife had often been, ahem, occupied elsewhere - the voracious Vita Sackville-West had been one of Alvilde's amours while 'Jim' had previously enjoyed a dalliance with Vita's husband, Harold Nicolson (during these diaries he's writing Nicolson's biography). But Alvilde was also wildly jealous, so much turmoil ensues.

Despite often feeling I was reading about people so divorced from my own sphere that they might as well have been on the moon, I found this weirdly compelling and often hilarious when JLM comes across as a kind of ultra-grand Mr Pooter. And you have to love someone so refined he doesn’t do anything as vulgar as drive, he 'motors' - and furthermore, puts his car in a 'motor house' not a 'garage' (the horror! How bedint, as dear Vita and Harold might say!)

56 . The Original by Nell Stevens

Grace copies great works of art.

Her cousin Charles, presumed lost at sea, returns, but is he really Charles or an imposter?

I enjoyed Briefly, A Delicious Life by the same author but struggled with this.

I found it very lacking in subtlety, very “on the nose”

I also thought it lacked that spark, that certain je ne sais quoi of a page turner. I dragged myself through it, found it hard work and have little to say to commend it sadly.

Comparisons are made to Sarah Waters on the cover and I don't think this is helpful to either author, frankly.

39. Silent Bones by Val McDermid

My 2nd VM book. I enjoyed it well enough but didn't like the ending, which was a big let down imo. I like her writing style but I dislike the way she acts as a Scottish tourist board promoter throughout the book eg "Karen pulled off the road south of Pitlochry at a cafe recommended by Hamiah. Nae Limits served an amazing eggs and avocado benediction but more importantly their coffee was the best on the road north". It's full of these plugs for Edinburgh pubs, hotels and cafes

How wonderful that so many of you have read or intend to read The President's Hat! I had no prior information about it when I read it - I read a lot of things to fit reading challenge prompts (this one was 'set in France and written by French writer') and have had a lot of nice surprises as a result.

Someone a few weeks ago asked about Dissection of a Murder? I am not sure if it was then subsequently reviewed.

Tripe really. It gets more fun to read when the trial begins but so many irritating elements : it's not believable (even though the author, Jo Murray, was a barrister) and it reads like a GCSE student's creative writing : lots of descriptions of hair colour (yes, usually blonde), muscles and stubble, clothes, attractiveness, casual ageism -everyone in their 50s is male and old and usually a pervert and a woman in her 70s who bangs on about the 60s like she was a grown woman- the timeline doesn't quite work , women all with unusual names (one at least has a reason) which are wrong for their backgrounds and ages (I give you Leila,Sienna, Davina, Demi, Danielle, Delilah). The male names are a bit better but really really would a posh judge have a son called Quinn?

It passed the time but I am bewildered by the high praise this has received. I saw the twists a mile off. And the title makes no sense , really. You'd think it was about pathologists.

That was me, Piggy. I DNF'd shortly after posting about it, so didn't bother reviewing.

I didn't get as far as the trial, but read a synopsis and was glad I hadn't stuck with it longer!

I think you made the right decision! The gushing reviews on Amazon are baffling.

94 The Star from Calcutta – Sujata Massey (Perveen Mistry 5) I managed to get this on a Kindle Special. Not 99p, but it was £2.19 or something. Well worth it. October 1922 Bombay. Bollywood is just starting out. One of India’s most famous actresses moves from Calcutta to Bombay. Her previous film company is looking to sue her after she leaves them. Perveen is invited to the latest film premier, but of course, there is a murder and she is very much involved. That is me now up to date with the series. No update on when book 6 is expected.

73. The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins and Sawyer Robbins

Self help book.

The general theory here is that we should accept that we can’t control other people’s thoughts and actions, and stop wasting time and energy on things that we can’t control .
Instead, we should be focusing on what we can control, which is our own thoughts and actions, and our response to other people’s behaviours. Often easier said than done of course.

An interesting read with some useful and thought provoking advice.

@StitchesInTime the changing your response thing is all very well and good, but if the other person stays a twat not feeling anger is impossible I find - I speak from experience

25. London Rules, by Mick Herron. I'm sure I'm the last to read this, hence no summary! I'm catching up on this and Joe Country ahead of the next Slough House tv series. Brilliant, as usual.

posting as there are a number of Kit de Waal fans here and the new book from her interviewee sounds good too!

dauntbooks.co.uk/shop/events/donal-ryan/

Yes, it’s definitely a philosophy that works better in some situations than others!

Especially as it’s not always possible to avoid people who seem determined to behave like twats.

40. Fair Play by Louise Hegarty Has anyone else read this? I can't say much about it without revealing the plot - well, "plot" is not really the right word for this book. It is certainly "audacious" and "ingenious" as the reviews suggest. It is extremely different. What can I say, I think I need to read it again.

66. Something Light - Margery Sharp

Rather Dated Bookclub latest. The very prolific Sharp features pretty heavily in the Furrowed Middlebrow catalogue and tbh I've given her a swerve up till now purely because I suspected her of quantity rather than quality, but reading this 1960 novel makes me see I was probably being unfair, as it was delightful. Her heroine is permanently-hungry Louisa Datchett, photographer of dogs, who finally decides that she's had enough of befriending men and ending up as general dogsbody to all her lame-duck male acquaintances: the time has come to get married.

Capers ensue, in which Louisa sets her sights on a series of eligible-seeming men. It’s all very much played for laughs but with a serious undertone, as Louisa is a single woman trying to support herself by working, and frankly having a tough time of it. But mainly this is intended to be a romp, and very delicious it is too.

@noodlezoodle I’m just finishing Joe Country, it’s so good. Sadly we don’t have streaming services so no chance of seeing the TV series.

The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett. Set in Mississippi in the 1930s, Birdie gets sent to the big town to ask her sister, who’s married into a rich family, for money to support the rest of them. When she gets there she finds the money has mysteriously run out and the husband is largely absent. Meanwhile she gets roped into helping out at the local orphanage, a gothic institution full of Dickensian horrors, where she bonds with Meg who is being particularly badly treated. When Meg’s mother reappears they hatch a plan, which I won’t give away, to raise money and liberate the girl from the orphanage. A romp, albeit a very implausible one.

Everything She Didn’t Say by Jane Casey. High hopes for this from many of us on this thread! Two detectives are called to an apparent murder scene in a cottage by the sea, where one young woman has vanished and the other is found covered in blood with no memory of what happened. Except officially there was only one person staying at the house and no one recalls seeing two women at any point. Very twisty and dramatic, I read the ending quite quickly and not sure it totally made sense though! I didn’t like it anything like as much as the Maeve Kerrigan books, but it’s the Maeve/Josh relationship which makes those for me rather than the mystery.

Whistler by Ann Patchett. Much read already I think! I adored this. It’s about a woman reconnecting with the man who was her stepfather for a few years in childhood and then suddenly left their lives. I thought the dialogue and characters were so rich and believable, and although some bits were slow and meditative, there was a surprising amount of plot and big secrets being revealed. To pick up the Ann Patchett chat, I’ve liked all her books apart from The Dutch House, which always seems very popular, but for some reason I found completely dull and unmemorable.

All In by Claire Powell. Set over a weekend at an all inclusive resort in Spain as a family try to reconnect and have fun, but naturally tensions arise. Very readable and well observed but nothing particularly special.

@GrannieMainland - I was also underwhelmed by The Dutch House

The thing about The Dutch House for me that I struggled with was the miserable existence she gave Maeve. #JusticeForMaeve @TimeforaGandT@GrannieMainland

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit@GrannieMainland - yes, maybe I just found The Dutch House a bit depressing (and not that engaging.....)

43, Katabasis by R.F Kuang
One of my £1 charity shop purchases, I was kind of keen to see what the fuss was about. I know someone who loved this book, and someone who hated it.

It's probably been reviewed lots of times, but it is about a Cambridge student Alice whose megalomaniac superviser suddenly dies, and Alice, a student of magic, decides to follow him to hell so she can bargain for his soul for her own career's sake. Unfortunately for her, her arch enemy and fellow student Peter, has the same idea.

As someone who has worked in academia her whole life, it did give me chuckles. I recognised a lot of themes, and writing a never-ending dissertation is the very definition of hell. I'm also not surprised so many academics end up in tiers of hell. Sadly though, I really disliked Alice, and the novel was an odd romp of long stretches of nothing and flashbacks. I think, sadly, it's actually not a very well written book, although I found the theme interesting and innovative. I also guessed the ending quite early on; the format is a rather tried-and-tested "hero in distress in an unusual (or hyberbolic) world which they don't understand with evil forces and last-minutes saves by wise old guardians". This is a book that could have been really good.

@Arran2024 that sounds interesting but the reviews are very very mixed. Was it an enjoyable read?

I also didn’t enjoy The Dutch House so have avoided other Ann Patchett books. Am I missing out?