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

Count me in for Middlemarch (She piped up from behind her total reading slump!)

I would be up for a Middlemarch readalong! Ideally in Jan when the Les Mis one finishes.

I might join on a Middlemarch readalong too. It's heftiness has always startled me, but I am tackling Anna Karenina, and I have thought about doing Vanity Fair too so why not!

The New Year would be a good plan - let’s feel the fear and do it anyway! (having read it I can promise it really isn’t scary, just quite long. But good!)

I would also be up for a Middlemarch read along. I have read it once, about 30 years ago and after a few false starts couldn’t put it down but now I can’t remember anything about it.

Great idea - I’d be up for a Middlemarch read along too! Though I failed misérablement on the Les Mis this year.

I'm just having a quick flip through my ancient Penguin copy (complete with A-Level underlinings and earnest notes 😂) and the chapters are quite short. I don’t think two a week should be a problem. We could even do more than 2 but let’s leave the fine details till nearer the time.

I’m also in for Middlemarch. I’m still catching up with Les Mis, so NY seems good for me.

I read and loved Middlemarch 20 odd years ago. I would like to read it again but I am absolutely rubbish at sticking to readalongs…

@VikingNorthUtsire I absolutely hammered the audiobook of Middlemarch over about 3 or 4 weeks if I remember correctly. It was about 35 hours long - so a bit less than Bleak House, around half the length of Les Miserables and only 5 hours longer than Riders . Looking forward to savouring it at a more leisurely pace next time.

I feel like an oddball to say I didn’t love Middlemarch but I think rereading in a readalong might help me find the love!

I'd join a readalong for Middlemarch too. I've read it twice before, the last time was two summers ago. There's only one bit that I thought was a bit of a snooze (something about medicine). Compared with Hugo waffling on in Les Mis, however, it's really not much :) I always enjoy readalongs and hearing other people's opinions on a book.

Ooh exciting! January would work well for me too (and it’s a relief to learn that it’s much shorter than Les Mis - just shows that anything is possible in short chunks!)

58 Telling Tales - Ann Cleeves Second in the Vera series. It has a contemporary setting (published 2005) but seems much more old-fashioned, which seems to be the general feel of most of Cleeves’ books. This one centres around a family in a village near Hull - they’re clearly a bit odd but we’re never quite sure exactly what everyone’s secrets are until the end. The daughter of the family is 25 with a husband and baby, but she’s clearly still haunted by finding the body of her best friend 10 years earlier; then the convicted murderer kills herself in prison - and turns out not to be the killer after all. So whodunnit??

This was good with plenty of characterisation and took the time to build a proper picture of the village and its residents. My only niggle with Cleeves books is that [potential spoiler…] her murderers tend to be statistically unlikely, which gets annoying after a while.

I’m also up for a Middlemarch readalong. I’ve never read it and it’s always been on my ‘I really should read that at some unspecified point in the future’ mental list so annealing would make me actually do it!

I would join a Middlemarch readalong. I read it for uni 25 years ago but suspect I would enjoy it more now.

I would rather eat my own deep fried eyeballs than read Middlemarch again.

That’s OK, Remus, you have permission to sit this one out while the rest of us read it 😂

I wouldn't go that far but I'd rather deep fry my eyeballs. I just won't eat them.

I read Middlemarch over 30 years ago and liked it but I think I'll appreciate it more now I'm a grown up.

. The Last Journey of William Huskisson sounds really good @Terpsichore

<have never read Middlemarch but am crap at read alongs>

I read Middlemarch for the first time relatively recently and wasn't wowed by it although there were parts I enjoyed. Maybe I should try it again.

Were there mutterings about an Oliver Twist readalong too at one point?

Harking back to the earlier debate, I enjoy Agatha Christie - especially a dysfunctional family with a large house. Not so keen on Tommy and Tuppence.

I might sit this one out too. I don’t have quite the visceral reaction that some do 😊 but Middlemarch never really appealed and my TBR isn’t going down as quickly as I’d like (in part due to all the great recommendations on here).

I’m away for work and it’s hectic but I don’t want to fall off the thread so just quickly dropping in to say I finished Super-Infinite by Katherine Rundell on the journey down and really enjoyed it, even as someone with only the most cursory knowledge of Donne.

It was a RWYO after seeing it discussed on this thread maybe last year of the year before, glad I finally got round to it.

I read Middlemarch as a student (not for my course) and although I somehow finished it, thought it was deathly dull.

I'd like to give it another go and am definitely in for a readalong next year. (Argh, 'next year' is a bit scary, how on earth are we in September?).

We were supposed to read Middlemarch I my first year at my grammar school but the whole class found it do dull we rebelled and they changed our set read for the term.