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

Congratulations on all the GCSE results, and to @AgualusasL0ver too!

@cassandre I hope your colleague’s possessions are turfed out of the kitchen in short order…I have visions of you sweeping paperwork off the counter while he looks on aghast 😄 I’m sure I’ve read a very similar storyline…think it might have been The End of Mr Y, by Scarlett Thomas.

Congratulations to all the young people who have got through their GCSEs successfully.

79. Shakespeare by Bill Bryson - not much to say about this one. A pleasant reread. Bill Bryson is reliably amusing. I read this for a reading challenge prompt which required a pair: a biographical fiction book and a non fiction book about the person in the biographical fiction. I chose Hamnet and this one.

Just wanted to congratulate @ChessieFL @SheilaFentiman and @Stowickthevast, my DS2 was also very pleased with his results!

Congratulations to your DS @Tarahumara!

Congratulations to all the GCSE sitters - exam results time is always v stressful.

Congratulations too @AgualusasL0ver - it will be nice to be back in familiar surroundings.

@cassandre - I feel your pain as have family experience of this. Good luck!

Sending congratulations to all the GCSE survivors and achievers 👏👏

67. The Nuremberg Women - Natalie Livingstone

This went straight on my wishlist as soon as it was published and I crumbled and bought a cheap copy on eBay, as my library didn’t have it and frankly any chance of a 99p deal looks remote.

The Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal of 1946 has been extensively documented, but rarely if ever has any historian considered the roles played in the proceedings by women. There were plenty of them there, though, playing some key parts, and Livingstone set out to bring them to the forefront, with portraits of 8 whose roles ranged from painting a now-celebrated picture of the 21 Nazi leaders on trial (Laura Knight); providing simultaneous interpretation in Russian (Tatiana Stupnikova); reporting as a German journalist who never quite managed to confront her own guilt (Ursula von Karndorff), and giving devastating evidence as a survivor of Auschwitz (Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier).

This is a powerful book and a great deal of it is difficult to read, in particular the account of Vaillant-Couturier's testimony. But it's an excellent piece of scholarship and a much-needed corrective to the overwhelmingly male narrative we usually see - I especially appreciated Livingstone's round-up of what happened to each of the women in the years after Nuremberg, which affected them all profoundly.

@Tarahumara well done to DS

@cassandre I'm also a university lecturer, and two years ago my department moved into a new building. Now no one has an office or an allocated desk, however senior you are. It's all hot desking and one small locker each, plus an open plan kitchen area shared by the whole department. That would be one (rather drastic!) way of dealing with your colleague!

Congrats to the various 50 book offspring on their GCSE results! Also congrats on the new job to @AgualusasL0ver . I have a job interview in 3 weeks which would involve moving about 60 miles away. Part of me is enthusiastically poring over options on Rightmove and the other part of me thinks that I'm over-reacting to DD about to head off to university, leaving me an empty-nester.

All the time on Rightmove is cutting into my reading time. I have decided to abandon three books by Nicholas Royle - White Spines, Shadow Lines and Finder's Keepers. They're about his interest in book collecting and the joys of trawling through second-hand bookshops. I expected them to be right up my street, but I found them surprisingly dull. "Firstly I went into shop x and found 3 books with the cover art by x showing xxxx so I paid £x and then I walked 2 miles down the road and went into shop y and found y books with the cover art by y showing etc etc etc".

Congrats to your DS too @Tarahumara 🎉

Congratulations to @AgualusasL0ver on the job 💐
Well done to everyone with young people completing GCSEs. Must be great to come out the other side. DD is going into Y10 so we are just starting out ... im a bit worried & we havent even started.

@Owlbookend we are in the same boat. DS is going is going to Year 10 as well.

My second also starting Y10. Not looking forward to the double whammy A level and GCSE year of 2028!

80. An Expert in Murder by Nicola Upson - I didn't really enjoy this. Far too much telling and not enough showing. The central mystery was fine and interesting enough that I finished it but I think it had aspirations above what it achieved. It seemed to want to be a social and philosophical historical mystery in the vein of Maisie Dobbs and the writing style just wasn't good enough to achieve it.

Congratulations to all on GCSE and job sucesses!

Fly Wild Swans - Jung Chang
This is a follow-up to Wild Swans and starts as Jung leaves China for England. It follows her for the next 50 years as she studies in the UK, writes Wild Swans and later a biography of Mao, and maintains contact with her mother and siblings who still live in China. I particularly liked the parts about her being a young student in London, her relationship with her mother and the memories of her father and the Cultural Revolution. There is quite a lot of detail about Chinese politics, particularly in the Mao biography section, which is a bit heavy going, but the alternating surveillance and and freedoms her family suffers or enjoys due to her working in the West are very moving. My feeling was that is it was not as compulsive as the original Wild Swans but it is a long time since I read it (in the 90s) and I rather wish I had re-read that first.

Congratulations on good GCSE and job news. My DS2 got his GCSE results last year, but chose a BTec style diploma course in Music rather than A levels. However, I think he was disappointed quite early on in the year, and he decided to leave just before the end of the year. I asked if they could offer "careers" advice on next options, and he came home from that appointment saying yes, it was very helpful and he wanted to have a go at doing A levels - History which was his best grade and two new to him subjects. So yesterday he enrolled at his new college - he and his dad arrived to find a queue round the block and it took them 6 or 7 hours and a lot of queueing to complete enrolment - eek!

Weighing in on the Ann Patchett Chat, I loved The Dutch House and got through Bel Canto but it didn't really do it for me. I will have to try one of her others before deciding if I'm a fan generally I think.

34. The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali This is one of the standout books for me so far this year. Beginning in 1950s Tehran, Ellie lives a comfortable life until the death of her father, which means she and her mother have to move to a tiny home in a poorer part of town. Ellie is lonely and living with her bitter mother who still dreams of her comfortable life in a better part of town. Not allowed to play with the local children because her mother thinks she is too good for them, Ellie dreams of having a friend. Her life changes for the better on the first day of school, when she meets Homa, a lively, happy girl from a "poorer" family her mother doesn't approve of. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in Homa’s welcoming home, skive school to go to the through the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming “lion women.”

But their happiness is disrupted when Ellie's mother remarries and they return to their previous bourgeois life. Ellie misses Homa but begins to enjoy her new popularity at the best girls’ high school in Iran, and her memories of Homa begin to fade. Years later, Homa's sudden reappearance in Ellie’s privileged world alters the course of both of their lives.

The two young women come of age in 1960s Tehran and pursue their own goals for meaningful futures, with the political turmoil in Iran building in the background.

I don't know much about the history of Iran, I can just about remember the fall of the Shah in the late 1970s, but found this a very interesting read and was certainly invested in what happened to Ellie and Homa.

@HagCymraeg Oooh I bought that accidentally and was put off by the cover, I’ll bump it up

I liked The Dutch House but haven’t read much else by Patchett. Goodreads tells me I read Commonwealth back in 2017, but I have no memory of it whatsoever and only gave it 3 stars so it clearly didn’t make much impact on me!

I read Lion Women earlier this year @HagCymraeg and I loved it too.

Paging @Southeastdweller as we are nearly ready for a new thread!

This thread has moved quickly! I’ve been immersed in the latest Alan Bennett book, which I’ll review next week. So far it is a wonderful read.

Anyway - new thread:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/5569385-50-books-challenge-2026-part-seven

@cassandre we had a senior prof who moved his books bit by bit to communal corridors when hus office got over full. He even brought a rickety bookcase from home.

Health amd safety finally gave him an ultimatum to remove them by the end of the week as they were a fire hazard and he was totally indignant.

Something about old entitled men in academia!

I'm sorry you have had to cope with this @cassandre 🌺 I remember you mentioned it on here before. I hope it's resolved soon. Health and safety regulations should be enforced as Pigtailsandall said and he should be made comply with them.

Congratulations on your new job @AgualusasL0ver 🌟 I'm delighted for you.

Well done to the 50-Booker offspring who got their GCSE results recently. 🎉 🎉🎉
It's a milestone.

Closed