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

We both sound very similar.

Btw Sunday is red, isn't it?

I don’t see colours or anything, but I do have a very active imagination. A writer could just say there is a castle at the top of the hill and I can see it based on whatever else I have been told, the tone of the story etc. in contrast, when places or people are described extensively I find it hard, I still can’t quite see the swap in Where the Crawdads Sing because it was so overwritten (also looking at Victor Hugo). I often have my own view of what people look like in spite of the description. If a man is described as attractive and blond and blue eyed I will still imagine him dark because that’s my default attractive (though I appreciate many blond haired, blue eyed people).

I’m a very visual reader, yes, it’s like watching a film.
It’s so disappointing when a film or series doesn’t live up to what I’ve imagined. Though it’s great when it’s better (Rivals).

I agree Kate Atkinson has been diminishing returns with her last few books - a shame as Life After Life is in my all time top 5 or 10. I’ll still definitely read the new one at some point.

Interesting chat about visualising characters etc as I don’t really do it and have sometimes wondered if I have the condition where you can’t ‘see’ anything in your mind - but it’s impossible to really know what anyone else means when they say they see things and how it compares to my own brain. It certainly hasn’t affected me or my enjoyment of reading in any way, although as a child I got particularly bored with descriptive passages because I just didn’t care what a character or landscape looked like. Maybe I was just impatient for more plot!

I can’t quite remember where I got up to with reviews but my latest books are…

The Night Stairs by Erin Kelly. A decent thriller though not one of her best. Set across different time periods at a crumbling Catholic girls boarding school where the pupils are obsessed with ‘the spins’ - a mysterious illness causing dizziness said to have started with a medieval nun who fell pregnant. Nowadays it’s recognised as a mass psychological incident, and every so often there’s an outbreak at the school as the girls collectively manifest symptoms. The research here was a bit heavy, though very interesting! The story itself centres around a death that took place during an episode in the 90s, and how secrets from that time come to light in the present day. Enjoyable but I found the twists a bit obvious and not very shocking.

Kin by Tayari Jones. Following two young black women and best friends, Annie and Nicey, as their lives take different paths through the early segregated 60s. Both have lost their mothers and leave their small town, Annie to Memphis where she heard her mother might be, and Nicey to college in Atlanta where she falls in with a wealthy society family. Really well written and emotionally deep as you’d expect from Tayari Jones. I was particularly interested in Nicey’s journey through the emergence of black colleges and the black middle class in the south. I did feel both characters sounded the same and I struggled to distinguish their voices, and the ending was a bit abrupt.

Games: a love story by Anna Maria Volkova. I read this because it was billed as a smart literary romance but it was absolutely not and I wish I hadn’t picked it up. Supposedly a love story between a young left winger and an older Russian banker. I have no problem with reading a formulaic romance once in a while but this was mainly them having tedious arguments about the economy as foreplay and then the woman being strangled during sex. Horrible, avoid.

Book number 49, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte. I read this as a girl of 15 or 16 and could really only remember the romantic pining of Gilbert and Helen. Now in my 40s I read it with far more eye to realisim, feminism and subsequently felt enormous anger and frustration. It's my favourite Bronte, and I see it as far more important in terms of feminism than Jane Eyre.

Re: Kate Atkinson, I've always liked her books. The Jackson Brodies tend to blend into one, and I'm sure there's one I haven't read but reading he descriptions I can't tell which. I did enjoy Death at the Sign of Rook, but as an entertaining diversion from other books I as reading, not as a literary masterpiece. I loved Behind the Scenes and Life After Life. I haven't read God in Ruins but I do have a copy so it's part of my RWYO.

@GrannieMainland There’s a simple online test you can do to give you an idea of whether you have aphantasia (inability to see things in your mind’s eye) just google aphantasia apple test. I’m still not 100% convinced, as you say it’s hard to know what people mean when they say they picture things, but I think I do, and like you I sometimes get bored with descriptions.

I can switch off with descriptions occasionally and rarely have a mental picture of what a character looks like but I’ve just done the aphantasia apple test and I don’t have aphantasia. It could be lazy reading in my case, or just that I never care about fashion, hairdos etc so I don’t take that stuff in as much (in terms of the character description) I mean I’ve read a gazillion Harry Bosch books but my only picture of what he looks like is the tv series- and I’d read loads of them before that existed and didn’t have a mental picture then either.

@MamaNewtNewtI’ve seen the test and I think I can picture an apple, but I have to concentrate on it quite hard if that makes sense. The image wouldn’t just pop into my head if someone said ‘Apple’. I guess it’s on a kind of spectrum.

Enjoying all the chat on this thread! A few more from me:

A History of Britain in Ten Enemies-
Terry Deary

History for adults by the writer of Horrible Histories. This was so accessible and filled in loads of gaps in my knowledge. He has a couple of other books for adults I'll be looking out for. This would make a great gift for teenagers interested in history, with the proviso that it's pretty gory in places.

Service- Sarah Gilmartin

A celebrity chef in a Michelin star Dublin restaurant is accused of sexually assaulting his female employees. Told from the pov of the accused chef Daniel, his wife Julie, and an ex-waitress, Hannah. What I found most horrifying about this wasn't even the crimes Daniel is accused of but his constant objectifying of women, again and again- every woman he meets is reduced to their bodies- he can't recall the name of his (13!) year old son's girlfriend but does recall that she once wore a pair of denim shorts. When he thinks back to the day he met his wife, his first memory is that she had 'great tits' but the woman sitting next to her had better legs. Eventually you come to realise he barely sees women as people. Plus some lovely casual misogyny thrown in- when his sister in law stops talking when he holds up his hand he wishes that 'they all worked like that'; when he hugs his wife, he thinks about how women were created to comfort men. I suppose the focus of this book isn’t so much sexual assault itself but the attitude towards women that allows it to happen. The setting of the restaurant felt incredibly real and it made me wonder how much of that kind of behaviour and misogyny flourishes in those places. One that'll stay with me for a long time.

Hooked- Asako Yuzuki

Set in Tokyo, neurotic uber-successful saleswoman Eriko becomes a bit too taken with Shoko, the writer of a half-arsed 'wife blog' and becomes determined to establish a friendship. Then it all gets intense. Shoko writes about how, despite being a stay at home wife, she refuses to use all her spare time cooking and cleaning, instead spending her days at coffee shops, buying in takeaway, pursuing random interests and generally luxuriating in her free time. It's a contrast to Eriko, who spends every waking hour in the pursuit of some productive goal. As their relationship disintegrates, it feels like a question of whose life approach is better- they envy and disapprove of each other in equal measure.

I thought this was great. Initially it seemed to be heading towards the standard single-white-female crazy stalker territory, but it's a lot deeper and more compassionate than that. I don't think I've ever read a book as focussed on female friendship- at a few points, it raises the question of whether the stereotype of women as being bitchy and gossipy in their relationships is actually true or a myth created by the patriarchy to devalue female friendship and suggest that women are too stupid to support each other. There are a couple of WTF moments, but in general I'd say this was a bold for me.

@Theretheretheir appreciated your Service review - it hit a nerve. 14 year old DD’s reports about how a minority of her male peers discuss and treat girls is depressing. For some this objectification and mysogny starts young. Reports of ‘bus talk’ are particularly grim.

@TimeforaGandT hope you enjoy the re-read! And I hope your work and family difficulties improve soon too,

Re. picturing what you’re reading about, I definitely do this, and it can be annoying when the image in my head turns out to be wrong (eg some new information means the drive has to be on the other side of the house, or whatever)! But once I’ve seen the film / tv adaptation I find it very hard to picture anything other than what I’ve seen on the screen.

134. How to Resist Amazon and Why - Danny Caine
A Kansas bookseller writes about community bookshops and why we need them

135. Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop - Alba Donati
A book about a bookshop that I didn't love (possibly lost something in translation) - more of a series of blogposts than a book.

136. We All Live Here - JoJo Moyes
Reliable Moyes fiction about a woman reconciling the reappearance of her father in her life, shortly after her stepfather (who raised her) has somewhat moved in by stealth following the death of her mother. Also, she's trying to produce something for her publisher.

137. Queen James - Gareth Russell
A bold. Interesting and informative book about the life and times of King James I/VI - including (but not exclusively about) his relationships with male 'favourites'. I must steal The Palace by the same author from my mum at the next opportunity!

Also, I now plan to read The Scapegoat (aka What Villiers Did Next) and watch Mary & George on Prime.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum was the first of hers I read, and I absolutely loved it, but was a little less enthralled when I re-read last year. I'd still class her as up there with my favoutites, but I do understand what others mean about diminishing returns. I have enjoyed all the Brodie books, but none have quite come close to the first 2 or 3. I also quite enjoyed Transcription and Shrines of Gaiety at the time of reading, though very little from them has stuck with me. So I expect I'll find the new one a little long winded and confusing in parts, but I'll enjoy it well enough if it's anything like those.

I'm not sure I quite have aphantasia, I can picture some things, sometimes - but I have to really actively try - and any kind of motivational stuff that requires me to visualise things just doesn't work. Beautiful, descriptive writing can also leave me quite cold, I'm terrible for just wanting to get on with the story!

That's grim @Owlbookend I have daughters and one is hitting the pre-teen years- I still haven’t watched Adolescence as I don't think I can handle it. Maybe that's the wrong attitude though and pre-warned is pre-armed- when I was reading Service the thought crossed my mind that all women should read it to arm themselves with the knowledge of how some men are perceiving them. I wonder how much the manosphere shite is a reaction to #metoo. That gives me some hope- I'm not a fan of social media but I do think it's allowed women to connect and there's a language available to young women now that wasn't there when I was that age- things like gaslighting, micro-aggressions, mansplaining. I particularly enjoyed the campaign that explained to men why they should stop telling women to smile. I was told that so often in my 20s that I came to believe I had a really grumpy face so it was a vindication to discover the problem actually wasn't with me!

Returned it to Amazon? I have occasionally returned a book bought by mistake but I didn't know you could return them once started?
I've enjoyed the Jackson Brodie series but I think I missed the last one. Life After Life remains the pinnacle.
I'm sure I don't have aphantasia but I have been known to skip pages of descriptions. I do it much less now than when I was younger and mainly in books I'm not fully enjoying.

@Theretheretheir I have teen dds and they don't have many illusions about how men act. They sometimes try and imitate the man-spreading on the tube just to see men's reactions!

I have Hooked and need to get to it. It does soundb like it's exploring similar themes to her previous book Butter.

I never read Shrines of Gaiety after the reviews on here. Like others, I loved her earlier books.

98. The Wolf Tree - Laura McCluskey. This is a detective book set on a secluded island in Scotland, run by a religious community. Two detectives from the mainland go to investigate a young man's apparent suicide that may be murder. I liked the setting of this and the story unwound in a satisfying and original way but the main detective really annoyed me.

99. Sublimation - Isabel J Kim. Picked this up for 99p in this month's deals. It has an interesting concept. When you leave your homeland, you create another "instance" of yourself who stays behind. The book follows Soyoung who lives in Seoul and her instance Rose who is in New York. The book starts with the death of their grandfather and Rose coming back to Seoul for the first time in 20 years to meet Soyoung. I liked this, the plot moves along pretty fast and it's well woven in, with interesting retellings of famous stories with instances added. A lot of it is written in the second person singular which did make me feel a bit like I was reading a Choose Your Own Adventure book fir a while but I got used to it. Eine you may like this if you're still in a rut.

I don’t see images in my head, although it’s only relatively recently that I realised this isn’t the norm.

The BBC Middlemarch adaptation (discussed up thread) is being shown on BBC Four - first two episodes tonight, with an intro by Andrew Davies.

I hsve watched Adolescence. i have mixed feelings about it but i think one of the things it illustrates well is how blind some parents are to the realities of teen life. I knew some of the lads on the bus who now loudly discuss women/girls in grim terms as preschoolers/young kids. Im pretty sure their parents would be shocked and have no idea. It is just some lads - this isnt some anti-boys post - DD has boys in her friend group. I have lots of lovely men & boys in my life. In some ways things are the same as when i went to high school in the 80s/90s. You think things get better over time, but it seems uneven progress. Sorry for the tangental feminist musings.

I dont 'see' images when i read either. Im not sure if i dont try to or csnt. Ive never really thought about it before. Off to google the non-visualising thing ....

So I was today years old when I discovered that some people don't picture what's happening in their mind's eye as they read!!!

Hope you're ok @VikingNorthUtsire

I think I’m somewhere in the middle of the aphantasia / vivid images spectrum.

I can see images in my minds eye, but it’s the equivalent of squinting at something in a dim room without my glasses on. All a bit colourless and blurry and lacking in details. I can’t do vivid visualisation no matter how hard I try.

I think I see things happen in my head as I read - although if I’ve seen an adaptation that’s all I can see in my head. I often find it frustrating if I’m reading frenetic, confusing scenes - like for example a battle or fight, and can’t visualise what is going on clearly because the writing seems confused. OTOH description writing often bores me, like Hardy’s interminable countrysides 🥱

Recent Reads:
#34. So Late In The Day by Claire Keegan. Another beautifully told, spare story from Keegan (who I recently realised I was conflating with Clare Chambers in my head and marvelling at her range and productivity!) This throws you into the story of a young irish man named Cathal who’s facing a difficult long weekend on his own, and slowly reveals why that is the case.

#35. Homework: A Memoir by Geoff Dyer. Highly recommended by The Times this is an autobiography by an author who is a four years older than me and I recognised many of the details of growing up in the 60’s and 70’s. However the level of detail he goes in to is a little wearing and many of his obsessions - Football cards, Airfix Models, Prog Rock, beer and getting to third base (I’m paraphrasing here he isn’t so polite) with any female he can, is very male centric. It felt overlong and it took me a while to finish as I wasn’t in any great hurry to pick it back up.

He did, however, remind me of one vivid childhood memory that had been lost in the mists of time - anyone else remember those fold out cardboard triptych scenes (underwater, castles and battle scenes, rolling fields, jungle, space to name just a few) that came with several sheets of transfers that had to be rubbed over with a pencil or similar to transfer the characters to the triptych and populate your chosen scene? Aaarh good times, simpler times!