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

Looking forward to Big Little Truths @ChessieFL , once it comes down* *in price / arrives on borrowbox.

Just popping in to show off my birthday haul - pretty good 🙂 (including three from the list I gave DH, and one picked out by my mum)

Time to Burn by Ellery Lloyd
Thanks @ChessieFL for the rec for this. I enjoyed it. I didn’t love the sections of ‘documentary’ and think it would have been better without them, but the story itself was interesting and it all rattled along nicely.

Happy birthday @DuPainDuVinDuFromage

Happy Birthday @DuPainDuVinDuFromage

63 . Black Summer by M W Craven

Washington Poe #2

Poe once convicted Jared Keaton of the murder of his daughter Elizabeth….so what to do when Elizabeth turns up, apparently alive and well

Another good outing for Poe, Tilly and Flynn. I can see myself binging these

Happy birthday @DuPainDuVinDuFromagelovely book haul

Happy birthday @DuPainDuVinDuFromage

Happy birthday @DuPainDuVinDuFromage. Enjoy your book haul!

Glad you liked Time to Burn Remus

Thanks everyone 😊

Happy birthday 🎂@DuPainDuVinDuFromage

Belated happy birthday @DuPainDuVinDuFromage!

Ive already read 97 books ( which is alot less than usual by now)

I like crime fiction
Apocalypse style books ( zombies to natural disasters)
Fantasy
And horror
I'm currently reading after the fall by Mike kraus and Justin Bell
I have read every book by Ian rob Wright, Christopher artinian , Mark tufo, rr haywood and Justin boote to name a few .

Hiya @Phoenixfire1988 I am also a fan of crime
fiction. Do you like Karin Slaughter books?

Happy birthday @DuPainDuVinDuFromage .

Welcome @Phoenixfire1988 this is a great place to find new recommendations – but also really, really bad for your purse.

I’m not a prize reader (well at least not current year’s books, I generally get to them some time later) but I’m intrigued by Black Bag and May we Feed the King.

After a fallow period, finally a couple of belters.

44… Pagans – James Alistair Henry
I’m studying the Saxon period and this had been on my wish list for a few months. Much read on here, this is a standard police thriller in some respects, but set in an alternative modern Britain where Christianity didn’t become the dominant religion and the Celts and Saxons are living side by side in an uneasy existence. The main characters are an odd couple who have to get along to solve the case, a Celtic diplomat who is found nailed to a tree on the eve of a tribal summit on unification of the kingdom. The world building was really detailed and believable, with the characters a mix of tribes and backgrounds. If you like the Rivers of London series you’ll probably enjoy this. I raced through this and am waiting for the next in the series which won’t be published for a year. More than likely a bold.

45… The Escape Artist – Jonathan Freedland
Again this has been reviewed on here, and thanks to whoever did, as it reminded me when I saw a secondhand copy to buy it. The story of Rudolph Vrba, a Slovak Jew who was deported to Auschwitz as a teenager and despite all the odds, managed to survive two years in the death camp before becoming one of the first two Jews to successfully escape. He made his way to freedom with the aim of telling the authorities the truth about the camps, and stopping further trainloads of European Jews blindly going to their deaths in the Nazi industrial killing machine. This was a deeply moving read in places, obviously given the subject matter, but also a compelling one. It looked at the rest of Rudolph’s life after the war, how his time in Auschwitz affected him and those around him. Another book I raced through, this joins my (mostly non-fiction) bolds for the year.

Happy birthday @DuPainDuVinDuFromage. Nice collection of books. Through The Language Glass is very interesting.

Happy belated birthday @DuPainDuVinDuFromage - great book haul!

79 The Central Park Five by Sarah Burns

The account of the 5 black and Hispanic teenagers who were wrongfully convicted of the horrific rape of a jogger in Central Park. The author did a good job of setting the scene (I hadn’t realised quite how crime ridden New York was at this point), as well as providing and overview of the racial politics at the time. She had also spent time with the 5, now young men, and clearly had a good grasp of the court cases, particularly the clearly biased Judge and the different, often woefully inadequate defence attorneys. But for some reason this just didn’t engage me and I often found it a slog to get through, I just can’t pinpoint why it didn’t work for, so maybe it’s just me.

80 The Locked Room by Elly Griffiths
81 The Last Remains by Elly Griffiths

The last two in the Ruth Galloway series. I really enjoyed everything about these books, with the exception of the two main characters - they truly are the Gavin and Stacey of the crime fiction world - irritating and everyone around them is much more interesting. It’s funny as the relationship between the main characters is one of the major draws of the Maeve Kerrigan and Strike series, but here I read the books in spite of this relationship. Anyway I need a new series to get my teeth into so I’m going to try the first Washington Poe next.

@MamaNewtNewt the Netflix TV series about the Central Park Five had me in absolute pieces. Particularly the after show where all the 5 were interviewed by Oprah. When They See Us it was called.

I dont think ive actually read her books I will have a look now though .
I have read
jd kirk
Jack garland
David J Gatward
Alex Smith
Martina Cole
Manda Sue heller
Wes markin
Justin boote is also crime fiction however they are based on actual case files which are referenced at the end ( I will warn they are dark and disturbing)

Happy belated birthday to @DuPainDuVinDuFromage- the books look lovely. A present of a pile of pristine books really is magical!

Long after everyone else I’ve just bought The Girl With The Louding Voice after hearing a rave review on A Good Read (I think generally liked on here too) and it’s 99p today.

96. A Test of Wills by Charles Todd - Read this for a weird reading challenge prompt requiring 'Two or more authors, one pseudonym'. A historical murder mystery set just after WW1. Inspector Rutledge is suffering from PTSD and is sent by a jealous colleague to investigate a case where the main suspect is a war hero and the main witness is a man with very severe case of PTSD. He hopes the case will either ruin Rutledge's reputation or send him over the edge. The mystery is interesting enough though the end came a bit out of the blue for me. The characters are quite well written and spiky unlike the stock characters mysteries sometimes have. And the inspector is an interesting character in himself. But overall, it was a sort of mid read. I would read another but I wouldn't go hunting for one. One issue may have been the audiobook narrator whom I didn't especially like initially and went on to find actively annoying!

79. How To Be Good - Nick Hornby

Book club read. Katie is a busy GP, married to David, ‘The Angriest Man in Holloway’, according to his byline in the local newspaper, for which he writes a column. He is indeed angry, sarcastic, given to voluble rants, and subjects the whole household (including their children, Molly, 8 and Tom, 10) to withering scorn 24/7. Katie is coping with this by secretly having a half-hearted affair with another man but hasn’t dealt decisively with what’s obviously an untenable way of life.
One day, having lambasted Katie for failing to fix his bad back, David returns home cured, after visiting a new-age healer called DJ GoodNews. He speedily undergoes a total personality change and, having brought GoodNews to stay in the family home, embarks on a mission to undo all his past wrongs and distribute money (and his children’s belongings) to the poor and homeless. He becomes Good, but intensely annoying. Katie finds herself wrestling with an existential crisis. Is she the good person she thought she was? Has David gone mad, or are his impulses worthy one? If they are, is she bad for not wanting to help him?

I must be a Very Bad Person indeed because I found this quite wearisome, despite the jacket blurbs telling me how sparkling and hilarious it was. I’m afraid I slogged through without cracking a smile, though I didn’t have to worry about how David and Katie compared in the goodness stakes because I thought both of them were pretty terrible - especially after an episode in which it becomes clear that their unhappy, stoical son Tom has spent his entire ten years of existence being treated with disdain and ridicule by his father, and his mother has apparently let this carry on without ever really concluding something should be done to stop it. Maybe this depressing picture of dysfunctional family life was Hornby’s intention, but I didn’t like it and found it profoundly unenjoyable. Not one of his best books, I don’t think.

@SpunkyKhakiScroller- I have the same challenge to do so was v pleased to spot that @ChessieFL’s recommendation of the Time to Burn would fit this.

It’s the first year that I’ve done a reading challenge & it’s taken me most of the year to get used to it & use it as a way to discover new authors & to tackle my RWYO pile.

Joyeux anniversaire avec du retard @DuPainDuVinDuFromage
The language book is on my Wishlist!

@DesdamonasHandkerchief I have The Wind in the Willows on my list this year. So many children's classics that come up that I have never read. Not got to it yet, I am engrossed in another long Turkish drama - I am calling it language improvement.

@DuPainDuVinDuFromage I think Rebecca is a masterpiece, but I did really love My Cousin Rachel - I am still not sure what I think happened.

@TimeforaGandT I am STILL catching up with Les Mis, but I am very far behind, I think my best hope is to meet you all at the end.

Happy Birthday @DuPainDuVinDuFromage - I have read the Guy Deutscher book and thought it was fabulous. I really recommend Sophia Smith Galer's How to Kill a Language too if linguistics interests you - her book is a different direction to Deutchser but I loved both of these.

@Terpsichore I think I read that many moons ago, wasn’t there a weird obsession with what postcode they are in? That’s literally all I remember of the whole book.