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

Life After Life - Kate Atkinson

A reread. Ursula Todd lives many lives, and uses her ‘deja vu’ to try and make things better. Fabulous.

The Party - Elizabeth Day

Told in three separate ways - Martin being interviewed by the police following his friend Ben’s 40th birthday, Martin’s flashbacks to his schooldays as he got to know Ben, and the diary of Martin’s wife Lucy, written after the titular party. Ben is rich and charismatic, Martin is not - so why are they friends and what’s happened to lead to a police interview? I do like books about people being caught up in the life of someone more glamorous, so I enjoyed this - just felt the ending could have been more conclusive.

The Perfect Couple - Elin Hildebrand

The second of her books I’ve read, set on Nantucket featuring the super rich who have holiday homes there. This one takes the form of a murder mystery when the body of the matron of honour at an exclusive society wedding is found floating in the harbour on the morning of the wedding. The book flips backwards and forwards in time in each chapter , back to when the bride and groom first meet and forward to the events leading up to the death. It’s all nonsense but I really enjoyed it and will read more of her books. This is part of a series featuring the police officer looking into the case. I did want to know more about some of the more tangential characters in the story as it felt a bit unfinished as far as they were concerned.

This is going to be on telly soon!

@ChessieFL apols if you know this but One of Us is a sequel to The Party.

Thanks @SheilaFentiman yes the sequel is already on my wishlist for when it goes down in price. Didn’t know about the forthcoming TV version though so will look out for that.

Can’t remember the last book I reviewed here but I think it was The Pretender by Jo Harkin so my most recent reads are
The Hunger of the Gods by John Gwynne
Continuation of Shadow of the Gods. Added in more PoV characters that I could’ve done without but building to a decent tension so that I’m looking forward to the third.

The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams
Booker longlist- This had potential- a cold but interesting narrator in a dystopian world where plant life is taking back cities with two classes- academics and gardeners. Her relationship with her boss and her family is very combative. Everything is very choked- the emotions of the narrator, the city and the university setting but it becomes turgid and boring and the dialogue is not how any actual person has ever spoken. A dud.

All Them Dogs by Djamel White
Gangster novel set in Dublin where Tony has just returned after having to hide out in England for years after a gangland murder he committed as a teen. Now he’s back, an old friend gets him connected with a powerful crime family. I’m not into gangsters or drugs but there was a vein of tenderness in this fast moving and violent novel that kept me reading. It’s very different from the more philosophical and experimental nature of much of the list.

So far I’ve read 7 and DNFed 1 (Helen of Nowhere) and the order for me is:
The Renovations/ John of John = equal first
All Them Dogs
The Things we Never Say
May we Feed the King
The Palm House
The Vivisectors
(Helen of Nowhere)

You got nowhere with Helen, Úll.

I've reserved 'All Them Dogs' and 'John of John' in the library, but it will be a long wait for both.

I thought 'The Renovation' was really good. Glad to see you rated it highly too.

40) Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao. On a backstreet in Tokyo sits a peculiar ramen shop. While most passersby only see a place to eat, some who enter find a pawnshop where they can pawn their regrets. Hana is the owner's daughter, set to take over the pawnshop when her father's retirement. But on her first day in charge she wakes to find the shop ransacked, a valuable item taken from the vault, and her father missing.

Desperate to find her father and the stolen object before the pawnshop's unforgiving overseers do, she accepts the help of handsome stranger, Keishin, who walks into the shop that same morning. Together they journey through a fantastical other world to find answers, and avoid capture by the ominous Shiikuin.

I enjoyed this. It was very dreamlike, and I read it quite slowly to soak up the imagery. Sort of a cross between Studio Ghibli and Before the Coffee Gets Cold. I would have liked the author to have spent more time in some of the different magical realms, but I suppose it's better to be left wanting more from a story than feeling like it dragged!

@SpunkyKhakiScroller what do you think of it?

I am so glad you liked it @TheDonsDingleberries! I liked it a lot. I loved how visual the writing was and I also really liked the way it handled the themes of free will vs. predestination and what happens to the 'flawed' when you enforce a 'perfect' world. I always like books that look at what it means to be human. Totally with you on the Studio Ghibli-esque feel.

I hope you enjoy them as much as me when the holds finally come in!

Just catching up with the thread & I need to thank @StrangewaysHereWeComefor the photos of Anne Brontë’s grave in Scarborough on the last thread & also @FruAashild. Scarborough seems an appropriate for her, as the “watering hole” where Agnes Grey ends sounded very like Scarborough. I was there last year, but I didn’t realise her grave was there. I did like the park where the band plays in the middle of the lake (which felt very Victorian spa town) although sadly we didn’t manage to see a mock battle.

@AgualusasL0ver- I did enjoy your account of Haworth. I’ve only been there once many years ago & didn’t do any literary tourism. What I do remember is that the signposts on the moor were in what looked like Japanese, which is a real tribute to literary greatness.

78. Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid

Enemies to lovers ice hockey romance. With lots of very explicit gay sex scenes.
The “enemies” bit of the enemies to lovers theme is overstated here, as that’s more of an act put on for the benefit of everyone outside the relationship, than it is genuine antagonism.

Professional ice hockey players Shane and Ilya play for different hockey teams, and are viewed publicly as rivals, but in private, they’ve been meeting up for secret hookups since the beginning of their hockey careers.
They both have deeper feelings for each other, and are basically coming to terms with this and trying to work out how to have a longer term committed secret relationship.

A good light beach read for my beach holiday.

Big Little Lies - Liane Moriarty

I know LM is divisive on here, but I like her books (apart from Nine Perfect Strangers) and think this is one of her best. It’s also on Netflix but I haven’t seen that.

The story switches between now and extensive flashbacks, with anchor times at the top of each chapter eg “six weeks before the trivia night”

In the now, parents of the kindergarten children are being interviewed by the police about a violent incident on the night of the trivia quiz. In the then, we see the stories of various mothers as they progress from orientation day at kindergarten, when newcomer Jane’s son Ziggy is accused of bullying Queen Bee Renata’s DD Amabella. For me, a gripping holiday read 🙂

I agree Big Little Lies is a great holiday read. I also enjoyed the Netflix adaptation. I have read one other of hers that I didn’t get on with - can’t remember which one.
Currently reading The Green Road by Enright. A bit more ‘literary’ than my recent stuff. Still quite easy to get into though.

51 Fightback! by Dianne Hayter

This is an account of the role of the Labour right and, particularly, the unions in the electoral rehabilitation of the Labour party during the 80s and early 90s. One of the puff quotes on the back describes it as like a thriller. Unless you are a really massive 80s politics/Labour party nerd, 50 bookers, it is not like a thriller. One for very serious politics aficionados only (among whose number I cannot count myself). Did learn a few things, though.

52 Guilty by Definition by Susie Dent

Murder mystery amongst lexicographers by, er, Britain's foremost lexicographer. Martha returns to the UK to work at the Clarendon English Dictionary, where her sister, Charlie, was also working when she disappeared without trace in 2010. Then the mysterious letters with cryptic clues start to arrive. Can Martha and her team follow the leads before they themselves fall victim to the literary lawbreaker? Sorry, got a bit carried away. I didn't feel the tone of this quite worked, and (although expected) there was a bit too much etymological showing off for me. The ending was a bit silly, too. But it was an engaging mystery and the clues were clever.

@Owlbookend Was it Apples Never Fall? Because that was TERRIBLE

I enjoyed Big Little Lies (book and adaptation), I’ve only watched Apples Never Fall and that was as huge disappointment.

Might have been. Not sure - i did get to the end of whatever it was.

Days in the Caucasus Banine

This a memoir of Banine’s childhood in Baku and is funny, irreverent and amusing, I couldn’t put it down. It’s set at the beginning of the twentieth century so encompasses the Bolsheviks arriving in Baku and life changes rapidly for her oil baron family.

The (extended) family are all larger than life, the men anre mostly weak saps and her traditional Muslim grandmother was my favourite character, resisting change, insulting everyone and considering everything outside of a 50km radius as foreign. There were so many witty quotes, but as I was getting to end I thought it worth sharing one, about the great matriarch, as Banine leaves for Europe.

‘She said a Fatiha (prayer) in my honour, then dismissed me with a parting shot - don’t become a whore. She must have thought all her granddaughters had the requisite qualities for the profession, as she never missed a chance to caution us against this temptation.’

I do recommend, especially those who like gossipy narrators and things like Diary of a Provincial Lady, or the Caucasus, which is rendered wonderfully here.

However, I caveat this with an ‘of its time’ label. She is married at 15 to a 35 year old, people touch each other inappropriately all the time and it is insanely orientalist and even speaks about the Armenian/Azeri conflict is incredibly flippant terms which all made me pause and wince.

There is a follow up about her time in Paris, which I will buy and read when I go to Paris next year.

40) Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. A Pulitzer winning collection of short stories focused on the lives of Asian immigrants, culture shock, and isolation.

I listened to this on audiobook and, while the narrator was a bit stilted, the stories themselves were all very poignant. One character reminded me very much of someone I knew growing up who I haven't thought of in years.

My next book will be Cleopatra by Saara El-Arifi, a modern retelling of the Ancient Egyptian queen's life.

I really liked Apples Never Fall (that was the tennis one, right?). I think I was the only one on the thread who did though! 😄

@DuPainDuVinDuFromage i liked it too 🙂

I didn’t really rate Apples Never Fall either. However I did like Nine Perfect Strangers and I think I’m alone in that!!
I’m just about to start a reread of Big Little Lies before the sequel comes through from the library. I liked the TV adaptation although it moves it to America rather than Australia (and triggered a name change - the book was just called Little Lies until the TV version!)

I have just finished all the Quirke books, apart from the last one which was too expensive. When you read them like that it's quote obvious what damaged characters Quirke and his daughter are and that all the victims are sexually abused and exploited. Also how rarely the abusers, criminals,are punished. Depressing actually. I am finding it hard to concentrate as I now have the good drugs so everything is taking me ages to finish

I'm currently reading All Them Dogs and agree it's a page turner.

I have John of John to pick up from the library next week - I've read the first three chapters already, having found myself without a book and some free time to read something so i downloaded a sample. I can see why so many people love it.