The 52 Book Club: 2025 / 2026 Challenge discussion

32. Includes a diary entry

A diary is a private record, where individuals recount thoughts, feelings, reflections, and daily events. It’s a form of autobiographical writing and may serve as a space for honest self-expression, memory-keeping, goal-tracking, etc.

For this prompt, we’re looking for any book that includes at least one diary entry (in any form.) The entire book may be in diary format (The Diary of a Young Girl) or it may contain fragments or sections of diary entries. As long as the book includes at least one diary entry, it counts for this prompt.

The title or subtitle may include the word diary, but it doesn’t have to. The diary entries do not have to reference the classic phrase, “Dear Diary.”

As a creative interpretation, the character may reference writing in their diary without actually revealing the contents of said diary.


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Forbidden Notebook Alba de Céspedes

bellissimo, letto quest'anno!

Options:

The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Piranesi

I’m assuming a personal journal is essentially the same as a diary. Given that, I would add My Vampire Plus-One by Jenna Levine to the list.

Leslie wrote: "I’m assuming a personal journal is essentially the same as a diary. Given that, I would add My Vampire Plus-One by Jenna Levine to the list."

Just got a copy of that!

The Emily Wilde series by Heather Fawcett is told entirely through diary entries if anyone is looking for a book for this prompt.

The third book in the series, Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales, is coming out in February and that's what I'm hoping to read for this prompt.

Remainders of the Day by Shaun Bythell

The Bell Jar

My choice here is The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky.

That Fine Line by Cindy Steel

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon has several diary entries by Martha Ballard

I will be reading:


It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover

HAPPY READING!!

Targeted: Beirut by Carr and Scott is my choice for this entry.

Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune

Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney

“Phantasma” by Kaylie Smith

I read Amy Tan's "Backyard Bird Chronicles" for this category.

One Perfect Couple by Ruth Ware

Generation Of Vipers by M.A. Green. Great gothic story with several entries from a personal journal.

Therapy by David Lodge is great for this. The whole book is journal entries!

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon

I just finished Peter den store by Tomas Blom yesterday, and remembered that I had a book about the Swedish side with Karl XII, and while paging thru it to see if it fitted a prompt, found a Diary entry.

Slaget vid Poltava by Olle Larsson

I read Bridget Jones’ Diary by Helen Fielding.

When the Moon Hatched by Sarah A Parker

i read The Frozen River

The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Lost & Found Bookshop by Susan Wiggs

The Last Party, A.R. Torre - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries for me!

I read The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon.

"Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up" by Alexandra Potter

I read This World Is Not Yours by Kemi Ashing-Giwa.

I read The Frozen River. A diary plays a prominent part in the novel.

For this prompt I read I Who Have Never Known Men

Captivated by Danger
Endiyah Carter

I read Horse Geraldine Brooks

What the Wind Knows by Amy Harmon (it is an historical fiction that inclues a diary entry to explain the events that did have great importance to Ireland gain the independece).

I´m curretly reading Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett

Dracula

I'm trying to read as much of my TBR shelf as I can this year - but also enjoyed finding the classics so I read this one. Excellent.

The most recent was “Anul in care nu am murit” by Carmen Uscatu.

I read Our Riches by Kaouther Adimi, published in the US as A Bookshop In Algiers. Lovely story based on a true story.

I'm reading Diary of a 6th Grade Ninja book 10: My Worst Frenemy

The Unselected Journals of Emma Lion 1-8. Just finished number 1. Plan to read all 8

I read "Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas" by James Patterson

Would anyone who read The Secret Place by Tana French consider it for this prompt?

Even though the Secret Place in the book is not totally private, would you consider the things on that board to be like diary entries? I have other prompts that would fit this book, but it struck me as an interesting interpretation.

TIA!

In Defiant: The POWs Who Endured Vietnam's Most Infamous Prison, the Women Who Fought for Them, and the One Who Never Returned by Alvin Townley, the author quotes diary entries. (Whats-her-name wrote in her diary that... type things)

Listened to 90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper. Great book! Every chapter has an epigraph at the beginning of each chapter, also. Diary entry is by his daughter near the end of the book.

“Wait for What Will Come” by Barbara Michaels is a great mystery with a little bit of the supernatural. It does have diary entries.