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

Interesting discussion about book snobbery.
I have struggled this year to read anything challenging. That leaves me with either no reading or easy comfort reading and I've opted for the latter. So I do feel a bit embarrassed about much of the stuff I read and don't post about them. I do love reading every post and review and add many to my wishlist. It's just when it comes to reading I have stuck with my reliable genres. I like a bit of chic lit. Current modern favourite is Beth Moran. Like @elkiedee I quite like a second chance or empty nester - Fiona Gibson's The Mum Who Got her Life Back was a good one.
Never got into the Richard Osman books though DS(28) is a fan. I also love a historical romance or rags to riches. Val Wood is a favourite partly because she lives and writes about Hull which is near me.
Not so keen on cosy crime but I like my crime to be gore free and not too violent. Just DNFd a Val McDermid because of that. Shame because I like her writing.

@NotWavingButReading have you tried Sally Page? Very much of the “second chance at 50ish” ilk!

Same @NotWavingButReading. Maeve Binchy is about my limit at the moment. Although I find it easier to listen to more challenging things on audio for some strange reason.

The Lilac Bus - Maeve Binchy
Short, interconnected stories about a group of people who catch the weekend minibus from Dublin to their small home country town. Typical Maeve Binchy.

Edited I sometimes don’t post about the things I read or reread in the name of comfort but I’m going to include them all from now on in the spirit of this lovely thread.

I really want to read reviews of comfort reads please! When life is tough, I am keen to be enfolded in the cinnamon-and-clean-sweat-scented embrace of a good romance novel, and would trust you all to recommend good ones.

@BestIsWest I love Maeve Binchy and have re-read a few in the last year or two. I don't remember The Lilac Bus but that's probably because I read it so long ago.
I've tried and tried with audio books because it seems so logical to do two things at once but my attention drifts so quickly and so often it doesn't work for me. I stick to podcasts, usually politics.
@SheilaFentiman no I haven't, thanks I've bought a 99p one to try!
@VikingNorthUtsire will do then!

Have you read You Are Here by David Nicholls? I like his books anyway but this one still makes me smile when I think of it. They are making it into a BBC series with Claire Foy and Matthew Macfadyen. I really hope they capture the dislike of long distance walking the main female character displays

Oh wow fab casting for You Are Here @MaterMoribund, like both of those actors and can see them in the parts. I’ll look forward to that.

I have also bought a 99p Sally Page.

I agree with @VikingNorthUtsirewould live to read the reviews of comfort reads- police procedurals or epic fantasy are my go to comfort reads but always interested in finding something new.

I like a good comfort-read but they’re so often disappointing. I used to buy kindle books for my mum and this was her favourite genre - I'm struggling to think of the ones I really enjoyed too.

I have and I liked it a lot. Actually you've reminded me that I have the Romeo and Juliet one on my Kindle which I haven't read yet.

I'm also intending to try out Abby Jimenez and Elin Hilderbrand after reviews/recommendations from this thread. And re-read some Maeve Binchys!

I really enjoyed Sweet Sorrow @VikingNorthUtsire, I don’t think it was as well received as some of his books but I felt it was very evocative of first love. But I am a huge One Day fan, which often gets a bit of a pasting on these threads, so maybe I just like DN’s writing.

A recent comfort reading.

The Summer Everything Changed by Sian O’Gorman
Pure chic lit with all the ingredients. A broken heart, a mystery, misunderstandings galore and a wedding ( not the protagonist).
Rosie was dumped without explanation by a man she thought was the one. Then her mother died and she took over running the family hotel on the Irish coast. Ten years later she's in a bit of a rut and her sister persuades her to open the hotel as a wedding venue. Most of the book surrounds the wedding weekend and it won't be a spoiler if I say the wicked ex features.
Contrast this with The Wedding People which has a very similar setting. This book was fun and funny and joyful whereas I found the Wedding People dreary and shallow.
Perfect light comfort reading.

I fondly remember The Only Boy For Me by Gil McNeil too. It’s from 2009 but it was a lovely story in the chick lit genre.
Also, Odd One Out and Spencer’s List by Lissa Evans.
For a little more ‘bite’ I enjoyed Jenny Eclair’s novels.

The best comfort reads ever imvho:
Jane Austen
Bill Bryson
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
King’s Dark Tower series

Children’s books including:
Ballet Shoes
Charlotte Sometimes
Tom’s Midnight Garden
The Little Women and What Katy Did books

Can you say more about your preferences? I ask because I quite like romantic novels. There are literary novels with romance, but I quite like romantic novels that no one would claim to be literature, and might well be comfort reads, but have intelligent and interesting characters and a variety of issues and settings. I like family sagas, and again some enjoyable ones from the 1980s are being reissued at bargain prices.

For 10 years or so from 2010 Choc Lit offered contemporary and historical romance novels with lots of offers on Kindle books. Choc Lit has been swallowed by a company called Joffe and some of the books occasionally appear as freebies or very low cost, or are offered as part of a set, sometimes 4 or 5 books for 99p, or £1.99.

Some of the writers are now being published by Boldwood Books. Piatkus is a another Little, Brown imprint. Or Headline's publications include lots of romance.

A lot of the authors I like write about quite middle aged characters. Some like Marian Keyes, Rowan Coleman and Jenny Colgan have kind of grown up with me. Jane Loveridge and Jo Thomas also write about middle age and "second chance" romances - Jo Thomas tends to set her books in other European countries or islands. Jane Loveridge also sets books in southern England in lots of pretty rural locations, but as well as country cottage stories, she has written a romcom about a woman who works as an adviser trying to help people to return to work. The York and Leeds offices merge and she has to work with a man relocated from Leeds. She has also written books that introduce a little fantasy and magic in to the story.

I'm feeling very sad today, and in need of comfort reading myself as I'm coming up to the 10th anniversary of my mum's death, and I'm thinking of my memories of 10 years ago today. October is also the month when several of my extended family and friends died in various years (of course people die in all months but October and March do seem to be the months for particularly large clusters of losses).

Grief truly isn't something to get over, it's something I think that we have to learn to live with, especially at my age, but that's not the same as being over it.

elkiedee

for romance try Abby Jimenez

@NotWavingButReading – how about Elin Hildebrand? I really enjoyed The 5 Star Weekend. Or maybe Sara Sheridan? I’ve enjoyed a couple of Sally Page as recommended by @SheilaFentiman

@elkiedee hugs. Thats tough and I hope that you get some solace from your comfort reading.

106 The Grey Wolf – Louise Penny (Three Pines 19). I feel that LP is running out of ideas. Chief Insp Gamache uncovers a terrorist plot and cant trust anyone, except for Jean-Guy and Isabelle. This is not the first time that LP has had Gamache not trusting other members of the Surete. But I’m puzzled, because he had a clear out quite a few books back. So why cant he trust anyone? So not my favourite book in the series.

@Tarragon123 just started watching Three Pines on Prime, which televises the first (which I read earlier in the year).

One of the things I like about this thread is the variety of books reviewed, so I don’t think anybody should shy away from reviewing anything. I’ve picked up loads of recommendations from here both highbrow and otherwise, and a lot of my reading is comfort/cosy so I hope the variety of reviews continues!

@elkiedee . I know what you mean. No time limit on grief at all.

@elkiedeecondolences. Anniversaries are tough. My dad died in May when the crab apple tree was in flower, the tree is always a poignant reminder. Did you mean Jane Lovering? I've read a few of hers, often set in Scotland, dual timeline? Can't find a Jane Loveridge?

It fills me with so much joy that I am not the only one who reads highbrow and lowbrow books with equal pleasure. No one looks at me askance regardless of whether I review Dungeon Crawler Carl or The Year of Magical Thinking. It's a very safe part of the internet and I am so glad I discovered it this year.

@elkiedee 🤗 I hope your comfort reads bring you solace.

Thinking of you @elkiedee

@elkiedee sorry you’re having a tough time. I hope the comfort reads are some help for you. My ultimate comfort read is Lord of the Rings, but agree that Bill Bryson never fails either.

Finally came to the end of my mammoth audiobook (started in May I think?)

35 The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York - Robert A Caro

A properly monumental (66 hours in the audiobook version!) biography of a man I’d never heard of, but who did more than any other individual to shape the city of New York- for good and bad. A fascinating deep dive not only into the long and impactful career of this complex man, but also into the social and political history of the 20th century city. It’s the mark of its quality that I was a bit disappointed to reach the end - it was published in 1974 (when Moses was still alive) and I’d love an updated version (Caro is still alive at 90 - would love to hear the stories he has to tell!)