50 Books Challenge 2026 Part Seven

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the seventh 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, the fifth thread here and the sixth thread here

Finished Lord of the Flies for Tabby and Dominic. Golding’s prose is lovely but because it’s an allegory the characters don’t feel entirely real outside the main three. Too pessimistic a world view for me too but I accept I’m not the intended audience with this one. DNFed Marcus Aurelius Meditations- I struggle with philosophy and this one has a bit too much god bothering and productivity guru inspiration for my taste. I’m quite slumpy at the moment (Flies is the only book I’ve read in a week which is very little for me) so maybe I should try it again another time.

I love Agatha Christie and love that I’ll never get through them all, especially as I keep reading the same ones. They are just so clever. Maybe it’s because I’m NOT very clever and can never remember whodunnit.
I’m longing for another Keneth Branagh Poirot outing. Maybe Evil Under The Sun (one of my favourites, I watched the Peter Ustinov version the other day)

Currently listening to Entitled (as I thought) and switching between a Harold Wilson biography and an Elin Hildebrand.

I love Agatha too, definitely my comfort read. I started reading them when I was about 13 and still have loads of my old Pan copies.

Dd1 has just had to read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd as her first text for English A level and I'm quite jealous that she gets to study it!

@ÚlldemoShúl the book I reviewed a couple of pages back, Go Gentle, was about a Stoic philosopher who was really into Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus. Reading it, I was thinking I'd quite like to read the source material. I did do philosophy as part of my degree but it was mainly 17th century onwards, with a smattering of Aristotle.

98 The Let Them Theory – Mel Robbins and Sawyer Robbins. I’m really not sure how the concept of ‘Let Them’ has developed into a book. Its very straightforward. Just let people do what they do and don’t let them wind you up. Easier said than done. I only finished it because one of my friends recommended it to me. I wouldn’t recommend. Just listen to an hour long podcast instead.

I’ve just bought Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams for £1.99 on the deals if anyone fancies that.

I think the Christie dislike must be a failure in me. I like the comedy of Dorothy Sayers and the way she almost forgets about the murder plot sometimes.

Never Whistle At Night: An indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

I think I picked this up for 99p when someone on here read it, but can't remember who.

In Oct 25 I read a collection of indigenous ghost stories that were not ghost stories at all. Not scary, just kind of local legends and not all that well told.

This much more what I was after except some stories were too creepy and bloody! Its taken a couple of months to read these as I can only read them in the morning, not at night.

All the stories are well constructed, a sense of place comes through and you get to know the characters enough to care about the next 10 or 15 minutes of what happens to them. Theres some amazing imagination and I think some retelling of old legends in a modern update.

If anyone is looking to be creeped out for Halloween, this would do it. I am glad to read something a bit different, but also now glad to be done!

@Benvenuto A bit late to chime in on Bronte biographies, but I thoroughly recommend The Bronte Myth, by Lucasta Miller. For more on Anne specifically, I enjoyed Take Courage, by Samantha Ellis.

73. The Last Journey of William Huskisson - Simon Garfield

An accidental RWYO, as this has been on my shelves for years, probably. An absolutely cracking account of the one fact many people know about the historic inaugural journey on the Liverpool and Manchester railway in 1830 - that Liverpool's MP, William Huskisson, became the first person ever to die in a railway accident.

This slim book is so much more than that, though; it’s a brilliant history of the development of the early railways, in parallel with an account of Huskisson's career in politics, and the fact that if anyone was going to have a railway accident, it was almost fated to be him - this was a man who spent almost his entire life either ill or recovering from various medical mishaps. The accident itself is explained with great sympathy and never (as it often is) as a slightly comic event. Should anyone be planning to read Middlemarch they’d benefit hugely from reading this first for the essential background. I have to say I could barely put it down - which says a lot for a book about what might sound, on the surface, a pretty dry subject.

I liked this a lot.

40.Wimmy Road Boys by Sufiyaan Salam
Khan, Immy and Haris, three young men in their early twenties, are up for a big out. They travel up and down south Manchester’s Wilmslow Road, an area largely populated by Asian-owned businesses, mostly restaurants and bars. While this is a largely joyous prospect, it’s clear from the outset that the night will end very badly.

This was great. Salam really gets under the skin of each character and the lads felt distinct and real from the start. There’s an amazing tension between the lairy night out, and the lads’ more hidden struggles around class, sex and sexuality, bereavement, family pressure, race, and the need to spread their wings and find independence. Sometimes it felt a bit meandering and unstructured, especially the depiction of shisha-fuelled hazes which lacked the brilliant energy of other sections, but the poetic and rhythmic prose was really beautiful and vivid. Despite its foreshadowing the sad ending didn’t feel predictable and was really moving. A bold.

Just finished Solace House by Will MacLean and had to read it within a day as the gothic horror of it all was too gripping*. Had to look at some reviews to check I wasn't misreading the ending as it is a bit ambiguous! Some have said the start is quite slow but I thought t grounded everything in reality - the creeping sense of things being not quite right was excellent and as a student slightly later in the 90s the group of students seemed plausible. My only issue was the protagonist never returns to the cave when Ella goes missing - surely this should be the first place you look when somebody goes missing!! Also, just don't take hallucinogens and visit creepy caves, never ends well....

*ultimately not as terrifying as The Twisted Ones by T Kingfisher which is pure nightmare fuel but very unsettling.

My review of Solace House was, “I thought it was really good, until it got really fucking bad” and I stand by that!

79. A Greyhound of a Girl by Roddy Doyle

This one’s a children’s book.
12 year old Mary meets her great-grandmother’s ghost (Tansey) when her grandmother is ill and dying in hospital.
Tansey died when her daughter was a small child, and has come back to see her daughter and help her, and to do so, she needs the help of Mary and Mary’s mother.

It’s very emotional in places, and the relationships between the characters are very touching.

80. Melmoth by Sarah Perry

I’m not entirely sure what I think about this one.

One night in Prague, Helen Franklin meets her friend Karel, and comes into possession of a strange manuscript centred around sightings of a woman called Melmoth. Melmoth is condemned to wander the Earth, bearing witness to wrongdoings, and attempts to lure the guilty away to wander with her.
It’s a compelling read, and well written, but the accounts of atrocities that the narrators are witnessing, or complicit in, make this an often disturbing book to read.

81. The Promised Neverland Vol 13 by Kaiu Shirai and Posuka Demizu

This manga series follows a group of children who’ve discovered that they’re being farmed as food by demons, and are now attempting to escape that fate.

There’s some tragic deaths in this instalment, and it looks like we’re now heading towards a new story arc.

46. What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez

This was a book shop impulse buy a few months back while I waited DC to choose a book with their book token. Someone here (I can't remember who!) Had recommended Nunez, an author I didn't know. I couldn't remember which was the recommended title so I picked this one at random. It took me about 30 pages to realise I knew the plot - the film The Room Next Door by Almodovar is based on this novel. It's a story of friendship, grief and dying, told by a woman who is barely an outline, and whose whole story we only know in relation to the stories of other people. A little like Rachel Cusk but less confusing and more accessible; a little like Strout in the way strangers' stories permeate and distract from the main narrative but more lyrical in tone. The narrator is caring for a friend in palliative care, a friend who she knows will ultimately take her own life instead of waiting for cancer to get her. While she cares for her, she lives in a state of anxiety as she never knows which will be their last day together.

I really liked this and would have loved it, had I not seen the film, which messed with my reading experience. Still - short, beautiful book and would definitely recommend.

@Terpsichore I am indeed planning to read Middlemarch! (I’m feeling a bit intimidated by it…would be good if there was a readalong I could join in with…). So I’ll look out for the Huskisson book as it’s a period I don’t know much about.

@StitchesInTime I read Melmoth a few years ago, I found it quite depressing and wasn’t a fan. Atmospheric descriptions of Prague though, if I recall correctly!

A Middlemarch readalong, @DuPainDuVinDuFromage? that is a very good idea….has there been one? I can’t remember. Would anyone else be interested in one?

I'm reading it very sporadically at the moment @Terpsichore . My plan was to read a chapter a day but I've been very haphazard. Am somewhere near the start of part 2, about 100 pages in. But I do hope to be finished by Christmas which is normally when read alongs start!

I keep promising myself to re-read it - it’s easily decades since I did, but I did really enjoy it!

I only read Middlemarch for the first time last year, but I would definitely be up for a readalong. It's that kind of book where you finish it and immediately want to start it again to pick up on all the layers and nuances.

I'd be up for a middlemarch read along!

For some reason, it was the one thing we were told to read in the summer before starting our undergraduate English Lit degrees. I remember blindly reading through as quickly as I could, to get it read, and then I don't think we particularly studied it or talked about it once we got there. So I have read it, but with zero appreciation.

I'd like to join a Middlemarch but probably after the Les Mis one as I am behind there.

Should we think about doing one - maybe later this year/early next?

Yes please ☺️ apparently it has 86 chapters plus a prelude and a finale. So 2 chapters a week would take 44 weeks - anyone who's read it recently, does that sound do-able as a read along?

I would be up for a Middlemarch readalong - it was a DNF for me many years ago. Given it was the critics choice by topping The Guardian’s 100 books list, there ought to be lots to discuss.

@bibliomaniathanks for the recommendations & I’ve added them to my wishlist. Amazon’s top review of The Tenant did make me laugh as it was very clear about just how rubbish all the men in the novel are!