The 52 Book Club: 2025 / 2026 Challenge discussion

This category is for a book containing a historical event you know little about. Which event have you picked? How did you find your book choice?

Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson

I picked Gertrude Jekyll's Lost Garden. I wanted to pick a book I already own and I don't know a lot about Gertrude Jekyll

I had no idea about the sinking of the SS Montevideo Maru, so sad

The Girl Puzzle: A Story of Nellie Bly

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka

Completion Post
I read The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper as I knew next to nothing about the women murdered by Jack the Ripper (and turns out what I thought I knew wasn't based on fact). I very much enjoyed the author's writing style as she gave a lot of information regarding the norms of the times to help those without a strong historical knowledge base (like me).

The Lincoln Sisters by Jennifer Chiaverini. Recommended by my daughter. Historical fiction through the eyes of Lincoln/Todd families especially during the Civil War.

Who Cooked the Last Supper?: The Women's History of the World

Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Try My Seneca Village by Marilyn Nelson. A book of poems. About a Black village where part of Central Park now is.

Madhouse at the End of the Earth by Julian Sanction. "A true survival story of an early polar expedition that went terribly awry."

This is a GoodReads Giveaway win for me.

I'm reading The Dig by John Preston The Dig

I read The Dream Daughter by Diane Chamberlain and one event in the book is an attack at Pleiku in the Vietnam War.
https://cdnbookworm.blogspot.com/2021...

The Familars by Stacey Halls. I had intended it to cover #16 (set before 17th century) but I learned a lot about the Pendle Witch Trials so switched it. Really good read and historically accurate

The Lincoln Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill America's 16th President⁠—and Why It Failed is a great book. Not only is it about an assassination attempt while he was still the president elect, but it's about the beginning of the Pinkerton Agency and the first female detective in the US.

The Moonlight School by Suzanne Woods Fisher. I have read a few books about the Packhorse Librarians of Kentucky, but I had never heard about the Moonlight Schools, which were classes held in the schoolhouses at night to teach the adults how to read. This book was fantastic!

Completion Post:

Just finished reading: "The Shadow King" by Maaza Mengiste (★★★★☆), it is a historical fiction centering on Hirut, a servant girl, set in the backdrop of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 during the Second World War.

Mengiste's narrative is wonderfully written as she is a master of characterization, and her characters reveal just who they are by their actions. She depicts both a servant girl’s low status and the ferocity of her spirit, which allows her to survive betrayal by the married couple she serves and her eventual imprisonment.

Death du Jour whilst i have heard about cults such as Jonestown and Waco cults Kathy Reichs explains a lot about the operation of there cults and their members and the endings of these and other well known cults, against the backdrop of her murder mystery.

for this prompt I'm going to read Beneath the Tamarind Tree: A Story of Courage, Family, and the Lost Schoolgirls of Boko Haram by Isha Sesay

I read The Mountains Sing by Nguyen Phan Que Mai

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

Glass Houses

Very intriguing read, with the usage of flashbacks. I enjoyed the plot of present day murder trial and how the author then transitioned back to tell the back story of how we came to the trial. This style added to the character development and gave us insight into their present day involvement in the trial and the sub plot. I was very surprised with the ending and how the author also tied up all angles of the sub plot.

References Prohibition and makes use of those methodologies in present day drug smuggling.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

I just finished Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann. A very sad but interesting recounting of the 1920 murder of many of the Osage Native American tribe.

Amanda wrote: "I just finished Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann. A very sad but interesting recounting of the 1920 murder of many of the Osage ..."

That was a great book. I was especially upset to hear that Oklahoma means "red people" right now. Not that we'd change the name of a state, but boy was that offensive.

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson examines The Great Migration highlighting 3 people who fled the Jim Crow South. It is 543 pages(excluding Notes), but it is excellent.

My pick for this one is The Stationery Shop of Tehran. I got to know about the 1953 Iranian Coup D'Etat.

The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina. It's based on the aftermath of a tsunami hitting Japan in 2011. The titular phone booth is also a real place in Japan. It's a beautifully written book about love and loss.

I chose The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. I know next to nothing about 12th century England.

I read An Extraordinary Union by Alyssa Cole, it was set during the American Civil War. 3 Stars

I read Helena. Evelyn Waugh, about Constantine the Great's mother. She is said to have discovered the true cross, among other things. It was a three star read for me.

I read Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. It's about the Nigerian Civil War.

My choice for this was the
Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys

https://titlesurfingwithtraci.blogspo...

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Completed: August 13, 2021

I read "They Called Us Enemy" by George Takei

I read "The Children's Blizzard" by Melanie Benjamin. It is about the great midwest blizzard in 1888 that happened right when school was letting out and a brave teacher that saved her children. I did not know about this event before reading the book. It was an excellent read.

Thank you for sharing - saved to read

An Officer and A Spy would suffice for this prompt. It’s fiction but it’s based on the Dreyfus affair that was the precursor to World War 1. The book contains a dramatis personae of all the major players involved which are not fictional characters.