The 52 Book Club: 2025 / 2026 Challenge discussion

WEEKLY CHECK-IN
August 5, 2024 -- Week 32

Happy August! It's a new month! What books are you prioritizing / hoping to read this month?

1. Finishing Erasure
2. Finishing The Iliad
3. Re-read If Cats Disappeared From the World
4. Read The Catcher In The Rye for classic book club

Groups - committed reads:
1. How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair
2. The Secret Life of Sunflowers by Marta Molnar
3. East of the West: A Country in Stories by Miroslav Penkov
4. Breaking the Dark by Lisa Jewell

Others: for challenges
5. It Would Be Night in Caracas by Karina Sainz Borgo
6. Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench
7. The Eyes of the Amaryllis by Natalie Babbitt
8. Weirdo by Zadie Smith
9. Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

1. Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood
2. The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu and Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts by Joshua Hammer
3. Birding with Benefits by Sarah T. Dubb (started reading last month so more of a "To be Finished")
4. The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center (Hopefully)

Half Moon Street by Anne Perry—currently reading, part of my quest to read all Anne Perry’s Charlotte & Thomas Pitt mysteries
The Scarab Path by Adrian Tchaikovsky—book of the month for a group I moderate
Knight's Shadow by Sebastien de Castell—book of the month for a different group I moderate
Gifts by Ursula K. Le Guin—book 1 in a series. Book 2 is a book of the month for September so I need to get up to speed
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks—an ongoing nonfiction book; I only read a chapter here and there.

The Murderer's Daughter by Jonathan Kellerman
The Witch's Daughter by Paula Brackston
Exposure by Ramona Emerson
The Lost Coast by Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman

Finishing The Real All Americans: The Team That Changed a Game, a People, a Nation, then something that will fill the last prompt I need to finish the 2024 Summer Reading Challenge (#20 - set in a country that wins a gold medal in volleyball). After that, The Road, The Women, and maybe Blood on Their Hands: Murder, Corruption, and the Fall of the Murdaugh Dynasty

Finishing - Weirdo by Sara Pascoe for the Olympic challenge.

To read - Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon & Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood for two book groups.

I've 5 other books to start for the Olympic challenge - I'm so distracted by watching the actual Olympics!

Finishing - The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Finishing - A Game of Retribution
To Read - Wish You Weren't Here (last book I have to read to complete this challenge :D)

I just finished After the Storm by G.D. Wright for prompt #42 - author debut in the last half of 2024.

With this book, I've finished the challenge! I had great fun with this. The prompts were specific enough to make it interesting and challenging but also left plenty of room for interpretation. This worked well for me since I read a lot of nonfiction.

Finishing Deacon King Kong by James McBride - This month's book club.
Finishing Elatsoe by Darci Little Badger
The Stationary Shop by Marjan Kamali - Next Month's book club.
The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff
A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

My goal is to continue knocking out prompts in order as they come up. The first half of the year, I was cherry picking prompts, and now I need to fill in the gaps.

1. I just finished Sea of Tranquility for prompt #16.
2. Next up is prompt #17: A nominee for the Booker Prize. I'm reading Such a Fun Age to complete that prompt.
3. The next prompt would be #18: An apostrophe in the title. I'm still undecided, but I think I may go with Trickster's Choice by Tamora Pierce. I've been wanting to do a reread of this author's works, and this seems like a great opportunity to start!
4. And then my next prompt jumps to #21, written by a ghostwriter. I need to find a book to fulfill this prompt, but I think I may pick up Britney Spears' memoir, The Woman in Me.
5. I also checked out Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach. I loved reading her book Stiff back in high school, and a librarian recommended it to me while I was picking up other books. I will use Fuzz to fulfill prompt #31: a personal phobia, as it includes rats. Unfortunately this will be out of order of the rest of the prompts, but that's fine! I've already started it and it's too good to let go back into circulation without finishing first.

Now that we've had our first (beach) volleyball gold medal winner, I'm going to read Roosevelt's Beast by Louis Bayard, which takes place in Brazil. (Sorry, Canadians)

I've been in a reading slump and finding it hard to want to fit in time to read, but I have several books lined up for this month.

- Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
- The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty
- Bewilderness by Karen Tucker
- Anyone's Ghost by August Thompson
- Betty by Tiffany McDaniel

Only one of the books listed is going to be used towards the challenge, but I'll be happy to get through any other book this month.

I need to finish (Re)Presenting Wilma Rudolph - it's a biography which isn't my preferred genre so it's been slow going - and then The Girl with No Reflection and A Sorceress Comes to Call are next on my tbr list.