2026 - 50 Books a Year Challenge

Raven Black by Ann Cleeves finished, book 1 ✅ detective crime stories are my favourite genre and I find her books very easy to read.
Still struggling with Together by Julie Cohen, it is a story which goes backwards in time and I almost don’t want to know what the “secret” is.
Next audiobook on the go is The Midnight Secret by Karen Swan. This is the last in a series of four books following the lives of four women who were evacuated from St Kilda in 1930.
I use World of Books to buy second hand books, I have found some bargains, particularly useful for my book club as I never know if I am going to enjoy so don’t want to pay the full price. Borrow box is great but I sometimes have to wait months for a book to become available.

Our library offers free downloads on Borrowbox, Libby, ÜLibrary and CloudLibrary. All well and good, but I do miss the days when we also had a real library within walking distance (both our local ones have closed down). I buy my “proper” books from our local hospice shop, which offers them for an amazing 3 for £1, on the basis that they’d rather sell books than pulp most of them, as other local shops do. If I need a certain book for my reading group, I normally use WOB or a local book shop, though I’ve had to resort to Amazon for our latest pick, Elif Shafak’s There are Rivers in the Sky.

I loved Hamnet and saw it at Stratford
Waiting for the film to come near here

SueDonim

I loved the book Hamnet. I lived in that era for the duration, it drew me in so much. I haven’t seen the film.

There’s another Kindle book by Maggie O’Farrell on offer on Amazon today called After You’d Gone. I liked Hamnet, so I’ll give this one a try too.

Susieq62

Please can I join this thread? I loved Lessons in Chemistry , read it twice!
Just about to start Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton
I am an avid reader too
Thanks

Susieq62 I thought Raising Hare was a sheer joy, and bought it for my daughter's birthday. I highly recommend for animal lovers. Hope you enjoy it.

Bit if a slow start. Still reading my first book this year. Spending too much time out walking and cycling to get fit for a walking holiday in April and cycling holiday in May. Not out cycling today due to the white stuff. Unfortunately, not enough for the sledge.

I have loved reading ever since I learned to read. I have always had a book 'on the go'. But nowadays I usually only read at bedtime so it can take me a month to finish a book. For this reason, if a book doesn't grab me, I won't persist with it. I love modern thrillers by Coleen Hoover, MJ Arlidge, Nicci French, Harlen Coben,Jackie Kabler. And I love Lesley Pearse books too. Just finished The Housemaid by Frieda McFadden, which I'm looking forward to watching at the cinema.

I'm reading The English Soul by Peter Ackroyd. Bet no one else is!

SuzieQ62 I loved Raising Hare. It was a birthday present last year and once I started reading couldn't stop. I felt it was a lovely, gentle book and would recommend it. I hope you enjoy it.

1 Beautiful Ugly Alice Feeney (Audible)

Psychological thriller. Somewhat far fetched, but that element kind of goes with the territory of the genre. Grady Green is a moderately successful author on the cusp of his latest book becoming a best seller when his wife goes missing whilst driving home at night, stopping to help a woman lying in the middle of the road. In the aftermath, Grady's life goes to pot, grief stricken, he's suffering from writer's block, unable to keep up the mortgage payments, Abbie was the high earner of the partnership, his publisher proposes he temporarily relocate to a sparsely inhabited Scottish island where she has a cabin he can live in whilst he's there. She suggests the move will help him recharge and set about focusing on the book he has abandoned. Off he goes and whilst there he is to encounter a woman who looks like his wife, and also a chain of unsettling events that crank up the tension. Secretive, mysterious, weird, the inhabitants of the island he gradually realises are all women. Women who prove to be subliminally malevolent. A closed community a bit similar to those portrayed in The Wicker Man.

I was thinking I couldn't possibly read 50 books a year , but then decided I probably do without realising it. I read on a kindle , often put recommendations on the wish list then wait for a price change !!
I revisited Wolf Hall over lockdown when I'd given up on it some time before. I was so glad I did, reading it when there was time to fully escape into the Tudor Court . I then went on to download the next two books in the Hilary Mantel trilogy and lose myself in the extraordinary mind of Thomas Cromwell for a while.
My suggestion which I have already suggested on another thread is a lovely pre Christmas read to save now for next year .
The Housekeeper by Leona Grace Its a gentle , warm spooky mystery story set on the wild coastline of Scotland.
Also A terrible kindness by Jo Browning Wroe , begins traumatically in the aftermath of the dreadful Aberfan disaster but then becomes a beautiful uplifting story of a young man as he moves on from his involvement with it.

Book 1 The Singer's Gun by Emily St John Mandel

Everyone Anton Waker grew up with is corrupt. His parents deal in stolen goods and his first career is a partnership venture with his cousin Aria selling forged passports and social security cards to illegal aliens. Anton longs for a less questionable way of living in the world and by his late twenties has reinvented himself as a successful middle manager.

Then a routine security check suggests that things are not quite what they appear. And Aria begins blackmailing him to do one last job for her. But the seemingly simple job proves to have profound and unexpected repercussions.

10/10

#1. Silent Bones by Val McDermid.

How wonderful to find this thread!
I’ve been keeping a record of my reading, as an aide-memoir more than anything else, for several years now. In 2025 I read 89 titles.
Two I’d recommend from last year are Andrew Miller’s The Land in Winter and The Pretender by Jo Harkin.
I finished Sally Carson’s The Crooked Cross on NYDay, it’s going back to the library as the new(ish) Richard Osman is arriving there for me.

Good morning from a snowy Northumberland !! I have read “The Island of Missing Trees “ by Elif Shafak
“The Daughter” by T M Logan and “ So Late in The Day” by Clare Keegan
All good , but I didn’t like “The Housemaid “ by Freda MCFadden
No heading into “ Rising Hare” as I am snowed in
Have a good day fellow readers !

For lovers of crime books, the author of some good reading is currently a contestant on Traitors, by the name of Harriet Tyce. She used to be a criminal barrister and is the daughter of a judge so knows her subject, and I thought she was brilliant on the Traitors in taking down Hugo at the round table (those who watch the programme will understand what I'm talking about.)

I have just finished reading a book by one of the victims of the Post Office scandal: 'Signed, Sealed, Destroyed' by Scott Darlington. I had already read Nick Wallis's book, which contains all the information, but it was good to read something shorter and more personal. Scott describes the sequence of events from his perspective including the problems with the process and the emotional impact. It is an excellent read.

Well I bought my hardback notebook this morning to write down recommendations and the books I am reading.. I am going to order The River Kings from the library today. It sounds just my cup of tea

Still cracking on with The Forsyte Saga. A re read after watching the tv series with Damian Lewis from early 2000s.

I loved The River Kings HelterSkelter1
Hope you do too.

Together by Julie Cohen, book 2 finished ✅
Robbie and Emily have lived a happy life together for many years but there is a secret to their relationship. The book goes backwards in time until they first become a couple and only then the secret is revealed. Not at all what I was expecting. Unfortunately I missed today’s book club so didn’t get to hear the opinion others
Next book should be an easy read. Cragside by L J Ross, book 6 in the DCI Ryan series

#2 Baxter’s Requiem by Matthew Crow
Mr Baxter is 94 years old when he finds himself in Melrose Gardens Care Home following a fall down the stairs. He’s a retired teacher, a raconteur, a bon viveur, but not a good patient. Melrose is his worst nightmare, but there he meets Greg, a young man who has suffered a great loss and is lost. Baxter takes him under his wing and together they embark on a journey to the war graves of northern France. As Baxter shares his memories, Greg begins to see that there’s more to life than endurance and he has his whole life ahead of him.
This was a lovely little book, one I found in the withdrawn books in my local library. 8/10

I'm also reading the River Kings, #Helterskelter1. Really interesting and has taught me a lot about the Vikings that I didn't know. Should be finished it within the next couple of days and well worth the read.

Well I started my January book club book on Sunday, and have just finished it!
It was What the Shadows Hide, by M J Lee, a police murder whodunnit, and held out no great hopes for it.
How.wrong I was - a great page turner with twists and turns to the plot, difficult to put down.

Book no 2 this year: Pandora's Jar - Women in the Greek Myths. A Christmas present from DD. We share a love of Greek mythology - I gave her a book about Penelope, the wife of Odysseus.

Book 2 The Coast Road by Alan Murrin

This is a debut novel and I will definitely be looking for more books by this author. It's beautifully written and the characters are very relatable.

It's set in 1994 in County Donegal, Ireland, and people are gossiping about Colette Crowley - the bohemian writer who left her husband and family to be with a married man in Dublin.

Returning to pick up the pieces of her old life, Colette meets with many challenges. Her husband, to whom she is still married, denies her access to the children which breaks her heart. She enlists the help of Izzy, a married mother of two.

This book covers the scandal, hypocrisy and the stigma of divorce in Catholic Ireland in the 1990s.

I recommend this book and give it 10/10.

1. My Family, David Baddiel

A “no holds barred” depiction of a very unconventional family. Poignant in parts, hilarious in others. I listened to the audiobook, read by the author, which I think may have added to the enjoyment.

2. The Hawk is Dead, Peter James

I found the last Peter James I read - I Follow You - a bit underwhelming, but this one I thought got him right back on track (literally, as the book opens with an attack on the royal train). The premise is crime committed in Buckingham Palace, and it had a real sense of place. I found it extremely well researched and written and I thoroughly enjoyed it.