This year I participated in the 52 Book Club’s 2025 Reading Challenge. It is a self-led challenge and how you decide to participate is up to you.
There are 52 prompts and that is challenging, but of course each person can determine how many prompts they want to do. There is a guide that explains each prompt and there are lists on Goodreads with examples. I think I only skipped 5 of the prompts.
I liked that the challenge added more variety and unexpected books to my reading, but I did not read any book only because it fulfilled a prompt. The prompts either led me to books on my TBR piles (which are huge) or my own reading fit into the prompts.
So I will be doing the 52 Book Club’s 2026 Reading Challenge this year and see where that takes me.
These are the prompts for the 2025 challenge and the books I read for them:
1. A Pun In The Title
Come Death and High Water by Ann Cleeves
The Women by Kristin Hannah
A Meditation on Murder by Susan Juby
4. Title Starts With Letter "N"
Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
5. Plot Includes A Heist
The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg
[For Prompts 6-9, each Prompt had to be from a different genre.]
6. Genre 1: Set In Spring
Before Your Memory Fails by Tochikazu Kawaguchi [Time Travel]
7. Genre 2: Set In Summer
A Death in Summer by Benjamin Black [Mystery]
8. Genre 3: Set In Autumn
The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim DeFede [Nonfiction]
9. Genre 4: Set In Winter
A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson [Historical Fiction]
10. Author's Last Name Is Also A First Name
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
11. A Prequel
12. Has A Moon On The Cover
The Shanghai Moon by S. J. Rozan
13. Title Is Ten Letters Or Less
Here by Richard McGuire
14. Climate Fiction
15. Includes Latin American History
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
16. Author Has Won An Edgar Award
El Dorado Drive by Megan Abbott
17. Told In Verse
18. A Character Who Can Fly
Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett
19. Has Short Chapters
The Killing of the Tinkers by Ken Bruen
20. A Fairy Tale Retelling
21. Character's Name In The Title
Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout
22. Found Family Trope
Anxious People by Fredrik Backman
23. A Sprayed Edge
Can't Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne
24. Title Is A Spoiler
Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson
25. Breaks The Fourth Wall
Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson
26. More Than A Million Copies Sold
27. Features A Magician
Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb
28. A Crossover (Set In A Shared Universe)
The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout
29. Shares A Universe With Prompt 28
Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout
30. In The Public Domain
The Big Four by Agatha Christie
31. Audiobook Has Multiple Narrators
The Guest List by Lucy Foley
32. Includes A Diary Entry
Eight Days in May: The Final Collapse of the Third Reich by Volker Ullrich
(My husband chose the Genre: Nonfiction about World War II.)
33. A Standalone Novel
The Thursday Night Widows by Claudia Piñeiro
34. Direction In The Title
Star of the North by D. B. John
35. Written In Third Person
Death By Accident by Bill Crider
36. Final Sentence Is Less Than 6 Words Long
The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
37. Genre Chosen For You By Someone Else
At the Table of Wolves by Kay Kenyon
(My son chose the Genre: Alternate History, and he also suggested this Alternate History / Fantasy / Spy Fiction crossover.)
38. An Adventure Story
The Murder of Mr. Ma by S.J. Rozan and John Shen Yen Nee
39. Has An Epigraph
Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore
40. Stream Of Consciousness Narrative
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
41. Cover Font Is In A Primary Color
The Charm School by Nelson DeMille
42. Non-Human Antagonist
Exit Strategy by Martha Wells
43. Explores Social Class
Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death by James Runcie
44. A Celebrity On The Cover
Perplexing Plots by David Bordwell (Gene Tierney)
45. Author Releases More Than One Book A Year
At Bertram's Hotel by Agatha Christie
46. Read In A "-Ber" Month
Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood
47. "I Think It Was Blue"
Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
48. Related To The Word "Puzzle"
The Amateur by Robert Littell (Puzzle Piece on the cover.)
49. Set In A Country With An Active Volcano
Silent Parade by Keigo Higashino (Japan)
50. Set In The 1940's
The '44 Vintage by Anthony Price
51. A Book With 300-400 Pages
A Death in Tokyo by Keigo Higashino
52. Published in 2025
The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths
Pretty darn ambitious challenge.
ReplyDeletePatti, it does seem that way, but I never felt pressured when I was doing it. A lot of the choices were either books I wanted to read anyway or that had been read during the year and fit the guidelines. My record keeping throughout the year was haphazard so I did not know how many I had done until the end.
DeleteWhat an interesting challenge, Tracy! As Patti says, it's ambitious, but it sounds as though it really does encourage a person to read more broadly and to dig into the TBR.
ReplyDeleteMargot, it did seem to work that way. I read more thrillers than usual. I had planned to read Megan Abbott's new book because it seemed a good fit for me (and it was), but I read the books by Ruth Ware and Lucy Foley because they had been on the TBR a longish time (and they were not nearly as good).
DeleteYou and Neeru and Jerry House get my salutes for juggling so many books so regularly...
ReplyDeleteThanks, Todd. My reading is slowing down every year, but I still enjoy it just as much.
DeleteI am underread in so many areas, Tracy. I've only read eight on your list.
ReplyDeleteJerry, I think the same thing about you when I read about all the books you are reading. One thing that happened last year was that I read a lot fewer vintage mysteries, and that was once a big part of my reading. A good number of the books on this list were newer books, which is a big change in my reading. I will have to see if that trend continues or not.
DeleteThat's a lot of prompts! And they're fun...but I think I'd struggle keeping them all straight and matching up books to each one....probably not the challenge for me. ;D
ReplyDeleteLark, I will admit to getting confused at times. I treated it more like a game and had a few prompts that I was very interested in completing. I was harder to decide which book to use where, since some of them applied to more than one prompt.
DeleteWhat a fun challenge! I enjoyed going through your list. I see a few I've read and some others that I have on my TBR. Between Classics Club, R.I.P. and my book club, I don't need another challenge, but I'm still going to check out your link for 2026. Congratulations on how well you did on this,
ReplyDeleteKelly, the Classics Club books do require more commitment and compete with this challenge for sure, but I did read about 30 books other than the ones I read for this challenge so there is room for them. And at least for the 52 Book Club, I don't need to do a review for all of them. But I don't this challenge is for everyone, and it surprises that so many people participate.
DeleteGood luck on the 52 book challenge and great job coming up with books for so many of the prompts. I might choose 5 prompts myself that appeal to me.
ReplyDeleteKathy, the best way to approach the prompts is to just choose the ones that appeal and start with those. And that is the way I am starting with the 2026 challenge
DeleteWith many of the prompts, you need guidelines to understand what they are looking for. And various interpretations. It was fun and certainly led me in some new directions.
Wow you did well completing all these prompts with books you read. Some of them are tricky : an author's last name that is also a first name. Not sure I read one that has that recently. Good luck doing the challenge again.
ReplyDeleteSusan, Kristin Hannah (The Women) is another author that works for "author's last name that is also a first name." But I used that book for a character with red hair. I was disappointed because that character was very prominent in the story, but her red hair was just mentioned once or twice ... But the challenge did push me to read that book sooner rather than later, and I loved that book.
DeleteI hope I enjoy the 52 Book Club Challenge the 2nd time around. Two of the prompts are for books by two authors who are related, and I am sure I will pick books by Margaret Millar and Ross Macdonald (real name Kenneth Millar), since they were married and lived for decades in Santa Barbara. And I like their writing. They met in Canada, although only Margaret was born there.
Good luck for this year!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Ryan. I already have identified a lot of books I want to read for this challenge, but who knows how many I will actually get to in 2026. It will be fun trying.
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