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

maybe just save the podcast to listen at a later date? That’s what I did with WintheW- which I haven’t listened to yet. I just saved it on YouTube

The Winter Guest by Sarah Moss
Out later this year and a slight (even by her standards) 128 pages. If you like vaguely sinister stories set in deserted hotels on the West Irish coast on Christmas Eve then you may like this. I would rather have seen it as a long story in an anthology, tbh and it ultimately failed to all hang together satisfactorily. I read an ARC so there was still a fair bit of grammatical editing to do, but I suspect the finished version won’t have any speech marks and there’s a lot of speech. I preferred the female character - she was very loquacious à la Bennett’s A Woman Of No Importance.

51 . It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell (audiobook)

Another audiobook because I can’t seem to physically read

Jane returns a lost dog, and realises with a shock that the house the dog is from is a house she ran from one night in her twenties scared something bad would happen to her.

It is clear to Jane that something about the situation doesn’t add up and she starts digging.

This is a great audiobook. All star cast led by James Norton and Lesley Sharpe. As good an audiobook as None Of This Is True and Don’t Let Him In

As a book it is flawed. Stuart, one of the main characters, doesn’t add up. He starts off one way and ends up another. His entire persona never feels like a real person who exists, in the choices he makes and the things he does.

Jane is a minor character from Don’t Let Him In and her Nancy Drew ways (not to mention the overall timeline) are a bit unbelievable. I wonder if Jewell is going for a shared or ongoing universe.

When all is said and done, it’s well worth your time if you enjoyed either of the two others

I can’t edit the bloody post but it’s 46 not 51

83 Operation Sunshine – Jenny Colgan RWYO. This was fairly dire. Jenny Colgan’s books are usually fairly breezy, nothing too taxing, but this was another level. Lazy characters, rubbish plot. I don’t know why I bothered to finish it. The only good thing I can say is that is was RWYO and it has been added to the pile of paperbacks to drop off at Oxfam tomorrow!

34) The Cut Throat Trial by The Secret Barrister

The Secret Barrister has a long standing blog and books featuring some of their trials. Now they have written their first novel.

It's a great concept as it takes us through the trial of three young men accused of murder by following the various days of the trial and seeing everything from the perspectives of the three defendants, their barristers, the prosecutor and the judge.

The plot is excellent, with a good twist. And it is fascinating to see how the court process works. I'm more used to the American system from watching series like The Good Wife and Matlock (it's a very long time since I saw Crown Court!).

I skipped past the summing up sections, because it's just repeating everything we know, and so although it's an important part of the coury process, that didn't translate so well in a book imo.

It shows how the process is what matters in law, not the truth.

Anyway, this is a definite bold from me.

The House in the Woods - Mark Dawson

First in a series about private detective Atticus Priest, a former police officer with a touch of the Sherlock Holmes.

We open on Christmas Eve. DCI Mackenzie Jones - who is a woman, name abbreviates to Mack, which my brain insisted on reading as Mark for a long time - is called to a house in the woods where most of the Mallender family lie dead, apart from Ralph, who called it in. Most of the book runs parallel with Ralph’s trial, with Atticus employed by Ralph’s wife to try and secure last minute evidence to acquit him.

Took a while to get into but I enjoyed it. I might read more in the series.

My last couple of holiday reads- such a relaxing week away- I finished 3 (including 1 audio) read 1 novella, 1 children’s book and read another 2 (and started another that I’ve yet to finish but hope to this week). Altogether a satisfying week’s reading!

The novella was The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante, Leda, the mother of grown up daughters who live overseas spends the summer at the beach. She becomes obsessed with a Neapolitan family who are there every day, in particular a mother and daughter. This leads to complications and to her thinking over her own life. Leda is unlikable but interesting and a lot of themes are explored including work, marriage, class, motherhood (and the loss of self in motherhood) and self image. I found it fascinating and found Leda very real as a character.

I also read thread favourite Barbara Pym-Excellent Women. This was a social commentary in a comedic tone but with a lot of bite. I won’t summarise as I’ve no doubt I’m one of the last to read it, but I enjoyed it more than I expected to and really liked Mildred as a character.

40 The Secret Hours - Mick Herron I felt like re-reading this after finishing the Slough House series (I first read it early last year, before starting on Slough House). Having first read it so recently, I thought I would just flick through it and not count it on my list, but it was such a rich and absorbing story now that I know the Slough House world and characters that it turned into a full re-read and this time gets a bold from me.

It tells the back story of some key characters, taking place in early 90s Berlin, via the framework of the bureaucratic and doomed Monochrome inquiry into potential misdeeds by MI5. Both the present-day section and the flashbacks are excellently done and it fleshes out the world Herron has created while still being a great story in its own right.

32 Just Send Me Word by Orlando Figes. Following on from our discussion recently about epistolary novels, this is an example of epistolary non fiction - the (edited) letters between Svetlana, living in Moscow, and Lev, who is serving a 10-year sentence in a Soviet gulag during the 1940s and 1950s. This is an interesting and moving account of a relationship which survives against all the odds.

33 Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka. Recommended upthread by @TheDonsDingleberries, this is the fictional account of Ansel Packer who is on Death Row and facing imminent execution for a series of murders. During the course of the book, we find out about the nature of his crimes and the background that led him to that point. Could things have turned out differently for him? This is so so good. I thought Kukafka did an amazing job of giving us some sympathetic feelings about Ansel's difficult childhood, while not shying away from the awfulness of what he had done. A bold.

25 Last Man Off by Matt Lewis
A short, gripping account of a 1998 doomed voyage on the Sudar Hadid, a fishing vessel in the South Atlantic. Lewis was on board as an Observer. What I was struck by was the familiarity of some of the events and characterisation having read The Perfect Storm. It’s not in the same league as that book and changes viewpoint rather oddly but gives a visceral dose of insight into the danger of that life.

36. Case Histories by Kate Atkinson I'm almost sure I have read this before but usually I don't forget books? But I predicted the outcome early on and the names of the people seemed familiar so maybe I have.. this is the first Jackson Brodie novel, and it's comfortingly similar to the others which i think I have read but can't quite remember (apart from the one where he gets his dog)? Similarity is not a negative, by the way, the all stories of the series blend nicely together and the character development is nice, though I haven't read the books sequentially. I'd describe the books as literary crime fiction; the characters are on the foreground and the crime mysteries propel the character build. But the story is gripping, highly readable and great for summer holidays

Just finished Pagans by James Alistair Henry. I kind of enjoyed it but I wanted to like it more than I did, if that makes sense. I loved the clever premise and the world-building but the plot was predictable and formulaic and only one of the characters (Drustan) actually grabbed me. If Drustan is back for the next book I’ll read it, but Aedith didn’t capture my interest enough.

Now reading Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid which is an easy summer read. As it’s set in the professional tennis circuit in the 80s and 90s, a period when I was obsessed with tennis as a teen, I’m really enjoying that world. But also there are lots of elements that just don’t ring true - players talking in press conferences in ways that never happened and would never happen; claims that Soto was routinely serving at 120mph in the 80s (the best women players were serving 90-105mph then) and a younger player claiming she’s never heard of Carrie Soto, who is supposed to be the most successful player of all time and who would only have retired when the younger player was about 12 or 13.

My issues with it are similar to my issues with Daisy Jones and The Six by the same author. It’s a good, atmospheric read with memorable, flawed characters but it doesn’t know quite as much about the world it’s set in as it really needs to.

53. There’s No Turning Back - Alba de Céspedes

Thanks so much to @cassandre for putting me on to the author and to this outstanding novel, her first. De Céspedes was writing in the 1930s, the time of Mussolini, and this book was banned when it came to the regime’s attention, although it sold extremely well. Its crime was to depict young women daring to question orthodoxy and transgress the boundaries laid down for them: although to us it might not seem so extreme, the mere notion of living their lives as they chose was viewed as unacceptable.

In Rome, eight young women forge friendships while they live at a sort of religious boarding-house, the Villa Grimaldi, run by nuns. They’re there to study for their degrees; though most are in their 20s, they’re still cloistered overnight and lights are extinguished at a set time, but to all, they feel as though they’re poised on a bridge, about to go forth into their real lives.
We follow their stories in a kind of free-form tapestry, dipping in and out of each one - for some there’s little drama but others go through turbulent emotional events, and one has a closely-guarded secret. I won't say more as I'd love others to read this: the writing is excellent (as is Ann Goldstein's brilliant and idiomatic translation) and I felt compelled to keep reading.

It reminded me a little of Mary McCarthy’s The Group and in terms of the institutional setting, of Muriel Spark's The Girls of Slender Means - though it’s not comedic at all, but a serious and impressive work, amazing for a first novel. Highly recommended.

30 - Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day - Winifred Watson
Written in the 1930s, this is the story of a down-at-heel middle-aged (though she only turns out to be 40 which to me is not quite middle-aged!) governess who gets sent to work for a glamorous nightclub singer by mistake. There is lots of drama across the course of a day that Miss Pettigrew has never before experienced - she is thrilled and it changes her life.

This was a decent bit of fun, not too heavy while dealing with relationships and the position of women at the time.

Back with a Borrowbox read that I had to finish today before it expired.

54. Look What You Made Me Do - John Lanchester

I almost made this a DNF and tbh that might have been better. A story of revenge, of a very modern type, full of horrible people. The one who suffers most is just about the only genuinely worthy character. Not really for me, although I have enjoyed this author’s books in the past.

Great review @Terpsichore . I know that De Céspedes has been popular on the thread but tbh the comparisons with Elena Ferrante put me off. Your review made her sound much more like my kind of thing :)

39 Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir

I haven't read The Martian or Artemis, or seen any of the films based on Weir's work. This was my first experience.

Many of you will already know the basics of the story of this one although I will avoid spoilers. Ryland Grace, a disappointed research scientist turned middle school science teacher, wakes in an unfamiliar and futuristic dormitory. He doesn't initially know where he is, or why he's there, but as his memory returns, he gradually remembers that he is on a mission TO SAVE HUMANITY.

I liked bits of this. It's funny, and hopeful. There are numerous situations where Grace has to cobble together a scientific solution to a problem, and it was fun to see science written about in this creative and inventive way. I shamefacedly admit to knowing very little about science (our school science teaching was woeful and unfortunately, no amount of listening to The Infinite Monkey Cage seems to have made up for that), and I didn't always follow what was being described, but apparently it's all real science, and carefully explained.

I disliked: the aw-shucks, modest, only-a-hero-against-his-will White American Male protagonist. The casual stereotypes that make the other background characters unlikable or quirky (the Russians drink too much! The "Africans" are incompetent and corrupt! The scary female boss is...well, bossy and female). The way that, despite the humour, it all takes itself incredibly seriously - this is, after all, a book about one very special guy who is going to perform heroic tasks in space to save not just the earth and everyone on it, but also other planets too. Forgive my cynicism but I found it hard to get on board.

40 Set My Heart to Five, Simon Stephenson

Another day, another quirky and humorous work of near-future science fiction. Comparing this to PHM was useful in understanding why I hadn't really liked the previous book much.

In this universe, humans have locked themselves out of the internet through their own stupidity, and Elon Musk has blown up the moon. Unpleasant and unpopular jobs are done by a population of humanoid bots, indistinguishable on sight from humans. Bots are generally unpopular with humans - treated as slaves, they are also met with disgust and fear, encouraged by a popular film industry in which bots are always the baddies.

It's okay, though, because bots don't have feelings. Which is why our narrator, Jared (a bot), freaks out when he finds himself crying at a sad film, and facing the prospect of being destroyed with unfamiliar fear. Is he developing feelings? And what does that mean? (he knows, unfortunately what it will mean - at best he will be "wiped" - at worst, incinerated).

Jared is a complete nerd, with an awful sense of humour, which is one reason I liked him a lot. I can imagine that, as a narrator, he is marmite - he loves puns and has silly repeated catchphrases which sound awkward and (to me) endearing. When he sets out on his own very big adventure, he is not trying to save humanity (humans come off pretty badly in this vision of the near future, although there are good ones, and Jared is not anti-human). He just wants a chance to show people that bots should be treated kindly, and that a bot with feelings is not an abomination.

Lightweight, likeable silliness with a pleasing level of emotional heft and some understated underlying questions about what makes us who we are.

41 Flesh, David Szalay

'Karl says you were in the Army,' Mrs Nyman says.
'Yes.'
'How was that?' she asks.
'How was that?' The traffic is moving again and he has to focus on it for a minute.
'Yes,' she says.
'It was....' He wonders what to say, what sort of answer she's looking for. 'It was okay,' he says.
'It was okay?'
'Yes'
'What does that mean?' she asks.
'What does it mean?'
'Yes.'
'It means... it was okay.'

Finished this morning and still mulling it over. Istvan, our protagonist, is a man of few words - spending time in his company is like spending time with a teenage boy. He says very little, and what he does say is often just 'okay' or 'fine' (see above - in his time in the army, he saw active service in Iraq, witnessed a friend killed in an attack and was awarded a medal for his bravery in trying to save him. 'It was okay'). As well as being taciturn, he's often passive, doing things that are suggested to him - his infrequent acts of agency occasionally coming accompanied with a burst of violence. His life is full of dramatic events but there are probably only a handful of times where we see him make a conscious choice about anything of consequence. As the title suggests, much of the book is given over to what Istvan's body does - the eating, the smoking, the work, the sex.

Sometimes, rarely, Szalay lets us see into Istvan's head, where there are complex thoughts. After one such insightful passage, his wife asks him what he's thinking about. 'Nothing,' he replies.

The cover of this book is festooned with quotes from critics and other writers: "astonishing", "brilliant", "a masterpiece". I'm not sure that I saw this, quite. It's certainly made me think (and I could probably write a decent short essay on the differences between this, where you see so little of the main character's inner thoughts, and PHM where there's a constant stream of inner monologue). I can see why it won the Booker but I think I will be glad to move on to something less sparse.

Project Hail Mary is one of those that is a much better audiobook than it is a book

59. The Ritual by Adam Nevill

Well, this was grim.

It starts out with a hiking trip that’s already going wrong. We’ve got four middle aged men on a multi-day hike in a remote part of Sweden, it’s raining constantly, one of them’s sprained his knee, one of them’s got bad blisters, they haven’t told anyone in Sweden their planned walk route or their planned return time, and of course they’re well out of any mobile phone signal area.
And then they decide to take a short cut through a forest, so now in addition to the above problems, they’re hopelessly lost, because guess what? You easily can’t walk in a straight line through an old growth forest. Plus they’re now running low on food and water.

All of which is bad enough for the hikers, and would probably have been enough adversity for a different sort of novel, but that’s when things start to get really grim, because it turns out the forest is infested with monsters, cultists and Satanists who fancy a bit of human sacrifice.

So, overall, grim, bloody and not recommended.

32 Why be happy when you could be normal - Jeanette Winterson
Listened on audible, narrated by Winterson herself, and it was an absolute joy. I loved this.

I thought I had read Oranges are not the only fruit, I know I've read something set in the north of England featuring an evangelical Christian family, and so I wanted to try this. The details didn't ring bells though, and actually I think I've just kind of absorbed bits and bobs of the story through osmosis/ it being referenced elsewhere. So I do want to go back and read that now. Plus more of Winterson generally.

This will be a bold for me this year.

I thought I'd read Oranges but I think I'd picked up the basics from the 90s BBC adaptation (RIP Charlotte Coleman).

Big JW fan here

I wonder if your northern Christians book might have been The Friday Gospels by Jenn Ashworth? That's about a family in Lancashire who are LDS and whose son is a missionary.

46. A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin
Another read inspired by the Book Club podcast. Fantasy is not usually my thing. I did enjoy this unwieldy fantasy but I am not sure I will read another. It was unnecessarily sprawling and long and I didn’t feel that the bits I did enjoy were worth the pay off of sitting through a whole load of politics about large numbers of people I couldn’t keep track of. I really liked certain characters and there were storylines I would have happily read a book about. But this was a good 3 or 4 books interspersed with each other and with no real conclusion.

47. Trebizon books 1-10 by Anne Digby
I can’t quite bring myself to count each of these books individually. This was a comfort re-read. Rebecca is a 1980s boarding school tennis prodigy whose main problem is whether she will manage to get a poem into the school magazine. Each novel is just focused on one problem- be that whether they will win the hockey sevens or whether Sue will win her music scholarship. They are easy nostalgia.

49. The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers
Cora meets Sam at a baby group and starts an imaginary affair with him which, at times, intersects with their real lives. She makes friends with Sam’s wife who then has an affair of her own and their lives become more complicated. I enjoyed this.

50. Ordinary Saints by Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin
This was a definite bold. I thought it was beautifully crafted. Jacinta is living in London and is forced to confront her and her family’s past when her parents contact her to tell her that her older brother is being considered for cannonisation. Ferdia died in his early 20s when he was training to become a priest in Rome and his parents and the church are deciding whether he might be a saint.

This was just brilliantly handled with the complexities of Jacinta considering her own life and her sexuality and how this influences her thoughts on the Catholic Church and whether her brother is corrupted by his association to the Church. The anger, grief, alienation, reconsideration of the past are brought together thoughtfully and delicately. I loved this.

52. Sandwich by Catherine Newman
A family are at the same New England beach house they visit every year. The children are now in their early twenties and their mother tries to preserve the moment while remembering the past. Initially I thought I was going to hate this but Rocky had just enough of a sense of humour to stop me wanting to punch her. I liked the relationship between the mother and her daughter.

53.Look What You Made Me Do by John Lanchester
Reviewed a lot up thread. I agree with other assessments- characters were unrealistically unlikeable. I don’t massively get revenge of this type as a motivator...

I strongly recommend Weight by Jeanette Winterson @AliasGrape

@Tarahumara Orlando Figes is my guilty academic crush (there a many reasons this is a bad thing, but I still go a bit silly, though in his presence I am incredibly stoic). I remember when he was writing Just Send Me Word (I studied at Birkbeck) and it was really interesting hearing him talk about Lev and Sveta. @Terpsichore I picked up an Alba de Céspedes at the last meet up (from Cassandre i am sure) and I think I am out of my reading slump enough to make a start soon. Looking forward to it. (Though @VikingNorthUtsire I wasnt aware of the Ferrante comparison, I have not got on with Ferrante so far, though I still believe it is a time and place issue and that I will).

60. Exit 8 by Genki Kawamura

This was rather odd. A man is on the Tokyo subway, gets off his train, and then gets stuck in a repeating loop of corridors.
There’s a sign with some advice about how to exit, but there’s a lot of looping around and around, and not getting very far. There’s a few unsettling bits, but mostly it left me feeling a bit confused.

The novel’s based on a video game of the same name that’s also been made into a film. Maybe it works better as a video game. It didn’t really work as a novel for me.