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

Thanks @VikingNorthUtsire - think we cross posted!

@VikingNorthUtsire if you go to Kindle deals and then scroll to the bottom of the page, they're should be a button that says "see all" and that usually works for me.
this is the link for me but I feel like the links are unreliable

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?i=digital-text&rh=n%3A205863640031&ref=lp3017941031sar

I'm a Kingsolver fan - my favourites are The Poisonwood Bible, Flight Behaviour, The Lacuna and Demon Copperhead.

@AliasGrape That kind of boo snobbery really gets my goat. We like what we like. I am very proud of my enjoyment of all of Fifty Shades of Grey and of War and Peace - sometimes a bit of Osman is just what you need.

That's what I love about this thread. A book is a book is a book, no matter the format, author or subject matter. "We like what we like" - exactly ☺️

I was going to post something similar including Fifty Shades can’t abide book snobbery

Ditto. Even when we do read the same things we have different opinions on them! I love the wide range of readers and recommendations we get here. Can’t stand book (or film or music) snobs.

I am thrilled I found An Infamous Army on the deals so my Heyer collection is complete

I hate the snobbery too, and am maybe a little sensitive to the fact that my attention span, appetite for 'challenging reads' and I suppose just brain power in general has been in decline the last 7 years or so (since having DD/ turning 40).

I wonder what it is that allows me to look past some flaws (that I can still see all too clearly) and still have a great time and enjoy, whereas others even within a similar genre I just can't get past them. So love a bit of Richard Osman, couldn't get into the Marlowe mysteries or whatever they're called, or most others in that kind of line. As I've posted before I've been enjoying a lot of romance lately - I want to say as long as it's 'well written' but truth be told some of the ones I really enjoy are not necessarily better written than some I've been unable to get past the first chapter. If a book is going to be a bit silly then it needs to not take itself too seriously, that's one of the factors I think. But ultimately it's just whether I'm having a good time/ enjoying the premise and storyline enough. I can forgive a lot of technical and plot issues if I'm invested enough.

I don’t recall much/any snobbery on here thh, just lots of somewhat robust opinions!

I got a Mary Stewart book in the deals, plus The Neverfear by Katherine Rundell. I’m wondering if I want to give the Wool/Silo trilogy another shot too, having not got further than a few pages previously. Opinions?

I liked the Silo trilogy @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie it wasn’t a bold though

@AliasGrape look at Abby Jimenez for well written romance

I got a bit bored by Wool Remus and by the TV show. I did buy all 3 but have never bothered with the second two.

Oh no, was a different thread! I don't mind the robust opinions, quite enjoy them in fact :)

I love the fact that on these threads we can slate a book we dislike if we wish but don’t make it into a character assassination of the reader or ‘type’ of person who likes it. The more acerbic reviews are often hilarious too. There are genres and authors that I can’t stand but there have been a few books repeatedly praised on here that I have tried because of the reviews and found I liked them after all.
I greatly appreciate the lack of raised eyebrows about my Monk Lit habit, for example

Because Prime Big Deals thingy is 6th and 7th October, some of the "non-daily" deals are limited time until 7th October not 31st. Not sure if a bunch of Kindle books will get Big Deals discounts.

I got
The Madwoman’s Ball
Venus Vanishing and
This Land is Your Land in the kindle deals - all were on my wishlist. I also got a couple of real books with Waterstones voucher - The Girls by John Bowen and Great Granny Webster by Caroline Blackwood which I’m pretty sure I saw on the short book recs thread.

I also finished two books
The Disappearers by Marlon James
My final Booker read. I listened to this one and it’s a graphic and brutal account of a homophobic attack and its aftermath in a group of men in Jamaica at the height of the AIDS epidemic. It’s very upsetting and very realistic in terms of the effects of trauma. Bold for me and I think it would be a worthy winner of the Booker. Trigger warning for graphic accounts of violence and sex.

I also read The Echo of Crows by Phil Rickman
This is the final Merrily Watkins book- a Church of England priest who is also the diocesan exorcist. It’s cosy crime crossed with folk horror and when it was at its best it was great. It even encouraged me to take a holiday along the English/Welsh border where it is set which I loved. Anyway, this one wasn’t great but the author was dying when he wrote it so it’s amazing he wrote it at all and for nostalgia value for what I loved about the series in its prime I gave it a 5 on storygraph but not a bold here. I would recommend the earlier books in the series though if folk horror/ gentle crime is your bag.

Yes, that's a good distinction @MaterMoribund : being snarky about a book one has oneself read is fine IMO (and reading other people's snarky reviews can be very entertaining I find). Being snarky about other readers' tastes, on the other hand, is just poor form.

Joyce Carol Oates put her foot in her mouth a couple of days ago by blithely declaring that it was fine for romance novels to be written by AI, because romance novels are 'formulaic fiction'. Unlike novels 'written by hand' (which presumably includes HER novels). She was very rapidly taken to task for this, and quite rightly so, by people who actually read romance novels. I like Oates a lot (she is good at putting internet mansplainers in their place) but I think she made a huge error here. Making grand pronouncements about a genre you don't actually read is never a good look!

(I can't resist mentioning the recent poster on the MN Booker Prize thread who helpfully came to the thread to tell everyone not to read the shortlist, because on the basis of her 'extensive literary experience' she knows that the prize list is always rubbish. Not that she had actually read anything on this year's shortlist, mind you. This sentence was particularly priceless: You may be less experienced than I and will find this out for yourself in due course. 😮😂@ÚlldemoShúl wrote a polite but pointed response about etiquette. It says something about how dignified the MN book threads are in that no pile on followed - everyone just went back to the conversation about the actual books.)

I've really enjoyed Richard Osman's books, though I didn't like We Solve Murders as much as I enjoyed all 5 of the Thursday Murder Club books so far. I haven't yet got round to borrowing this newest book (which I understand is in his second series).

Yes, they're a bit daft and clearly not totally realistic, and he does repeat the jokes. But I think that they're kind of lovely too. I like the way that the TMC 4 regularly lead the police detectives astray, and the way Osman plays with so many genre cliches. He clearly has so much fun writing them.

Another fun crime series I enjoy is The Three Dahlias series - 7 books so far by Katy Watson - think I've read 4 or 5, have at least one TBR and one on my wishlist (the ones I have have all come up as deals at some point, and there's no point spending more or borrowing the latest until I've caught up with what I've bought already. In the first 3 actresses of different ages who have played the part of the same Golden Age detective, Dahlia Lively, meet at a fan event in the author's old country house. Naturally there is a murder....

I've always read a mix of commercial and literary fiction, and again there is a range - Elizabeth Jane Howard was a literary writer who tried her hand at the family saga genre with the Cazalets. I love books published as classics reprints, which include a mix of quite serious literary writers and works clearly aimed at more popular audience and everything in between. Reprint imprints include Virago Modern Classics, Persephone, British Library Women Writers and the delightfully named Furrowed Middlebrow series.

I also like chicklit and what I call "henlit" - many of the authors of books I enjoyed in my 20s have grown up with me and so have their characters - my favourites include Marian Keyes and Jenny Colgan (who are slightly older and slightly younger than me respectively), and there are also quite a lot of "second chance romances", some featuring women in their 40s and 50s. I read a lot of historical fiction, some books more serious than others. It irritates me a bit when commercial fiction by men gets taken more seriously than that by women - I've enjoyed books by David Nicholls and I've bought a lot of Matt Haig's work and read at least two - I preferred How to Change Time to The Midnight Library - but I find the man who writes them a bit annoying

In the deals: The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford - think there are 8 though not all of the same quality - is 99p (I've bought it in a previous offer, years ago).

My own buys in the deals include

Anne Tyler, Saint Maybe
Tessa Hadley, Late in the Day
Marie NDiaye, The Witch (International Booker Shortlist, in translation)
Madeline Cash, Earth Angel (short story collection)

Non fiction

Simon Parkin, The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad: A True Story of Science and Sacrifice in a City under Siege

More

Agent Zo was on the 2025 Women's Prize shortlist I think - a biography of a Polish woman who helped the fight against the Nazis, and her later life in Communist Poland

I haven't read Richard Osman's books, not because I'm snobbish about the genre, but because I find it slightly irritating when someone who's already famous decides to write books and becomes a bestseller. It makes me feel sorry for the authors who don't have that advantage!

Thanks @cassandreI’m very conflict averse but it seemed to work thankfully.
Now contemplating if I should read or start watching The Traitors.

Sorry. A huge review dump...
59 Nothing Important happened Today. Will Carver. Bizarrely I liked this, enjoyed it almost, even though it is about scores of suicides. So it does come with a warning. It's disjointed reading, but we mainly focus on the victims, the perpetrator and and later on, the person collating the facts. I found it intriguing, novel and sinister. It's not scary as such but read at your own risk. I definitely want to read more by this author.
60 The Good Samaritan. Will Carver. I read this and the above in the wrong order. It would have been better to read them in the right order! So this book was slightly spoiled for me for this reason, but even given that, I felt that Nothing Important was better. Both books are a romp through a damaged society. This one follows a small time serial killer and his circle. All characters pretty much despicable. An easy and interesting read. Again, not for the squeamish.
61 Careless People. Sarah Wynn Williams This was good. She's a great writer. It was readable, engaging and the subject matter addictive. The book is a brave whistleblow regarding Facebook and it's senior management. God they all sound awful. My reservation is to wonder if Sarah herself is depicted too positively. I would have liked an addendum of the legal action against her since publication. Maybe that could happen in the future.
62 The Poisonwood Bible. Barbara Kingsolver. Lot's of reviews of this over the years, I have little to add. It follows a missionary family initially in The Congo and their subsequent lives and relationships in troubled times. I enjoyed the different writing styles of the sisters, the increasing irrelevance of the father to the plot and their lives - he deserved no different - and the way they all coped in different ways. It's a desperate story, very few heros here with everyone getting it wrong in their own way. The interconnectedness of all life and the balance that time and nature work to restore are important and insightful themes. I recommend it.
63 The Dalai Lama's Cat. David Michie. Audiobook version. Once I had got used to the idea that the cat was female, but the narrator was a man (the author), this was a lovely relaxing listen. We hear the story of a stray cat adopted by the Dalai Lama's household. Lot's of Buddhist moral stories follow. And everyone is happy in the end. There are many more in this series for those who like a thoughtful, gentle read.
64 The Daves Next Door. Will Carver. Bold. I seem to be addicted to this author. This is one of his stand alone novels and like all his others, is not for the delicate in spirit. Here we follow a disparate group of strangers who all end up in a particular train on a particular day. It's bleak, but also inspirational. And very very original. Fast paced and thought provoking. I loved it.
65 The Life Impossible. Matt Haig. Honestly I found this very forgettable. A lady changes her life via mysterious circumstances to a happy conclusion in the Balearics. Nice to see an older woman protagonist I guess, and vaguely uplifting but the story was weird (though I have been inspired to read about seagrass!) Sorry.
66 Poster Girl. Veronica Roth. I enjoyed this. It's a dystopian future setting, following the young ‘face’ of the deposed government as she explores her past and starts to come to terms with it. The author has previously mainly written for the young adult market and I can still see aspects of that in this novel. The leads are young, the storyline simple to follow, but overall it was an interesting read.

My deals purchases:

Pigs in Heaven - Barbara Kingsolver, I loved The Bean Trees but never read this follow up. Not sure whether to read the first again before this.

Also Demon Copperhead - I have it on audible but whilst it was on offer thought I’d grab the kindle version, with some books I benefit from being able to go between the two and this seems like one of them

The Raptures - Jan Carson - never heard if it before but it caught my eye

The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes - my dad loved Barnes, the only one I tried to read I did not get on with but it must be more than 20 years ago now so maybe another try is overdue

What I’m fancying right now is something Autumnal, October-ish. Not horror or full on scary, but a little bit witchy/ folklore inspired maybe? Atmospheric and seasonal. I could do my regular re-read of Wuthering Heights or maybe read The Night Circus again but I’d love any other suggestions people may have?

@AliasGrape Ink Blood Sister Scribe is kinda witchy.

I had to push myself through The Sense of an Ending, I hope it works better for you!