Posted December 29, 2025 by Haze in Reading Challenges / 0 Comments
I have loved and completed The 52 Book Club Reading Challenge in 2024 and 2025 on the blog these last couple of years, and I see no reason to stop participating for 2026 too! I’m excited for these prompts and looking forward to seeing what books I end up reading for them.
The 52 Book Club’s annual reading challenge is made up of 52 unique prompts. The goal is to match one book to each prompt, for a total of fifty-two books over the course of the year. Prompts are related to everything from specific titles, to cover designs, authors, genres, settings, themes, characters, etc. (Think of it like a giant bookish scavenger hunt!) We encourage participants to try books outside of their regular reading comfort zones and push themselves to read more, read differently, and get creative with it!
Visit The 52 Book Club to find out more and join the challenge!
Below is the 52 Book Club’s list of prompts for 2026. These prompts are linked to Goodreads Lists of books that fit each prompt. I copy and pasted them from here, for easy access, and so I can link to each prompt with the books I finish.
The 2025 Goodreads Lists:
- Set in an ancient civilization
Kangaroo word on the cover – The Heavens May Fall by Allen Eskens
Written without quotation marks – Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn
Has a dust jacket – The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Featuring a conspiracy – The Will of the Many by James Islington
Title starts with the letter “O” – Operation Bounce House by Matt Dinniman
Title starts with the letter “P” – The Perfect Marriage by Jeneva Rose
A three-syllable word in the title – The Guise of Another by Allen Eskens
Featuring a natural disaster – The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub
Spans a decade or more – The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
Requires suspension of disbelief – Replay by Ken Grimwood
A genre-defining read – Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Audio Collection by Arthur Conan Doyle
Bookface – Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley
Includes a character list – The Strength of the Few by James Islington
Subtitle with a comma – The Mind-Gut Connection by Emeran Mayer, MD
- Deus Ex Machina
Author’s bio mentions their dog – Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Provokes strong emotion – Educated by Tara Westover
A nosy neighbour character – The Good Sister by Sally Hepworth
- Day of the week in the title
Written in the 1800s – Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Audio Collection by Arthur Conan Doyle
Spotted in a TV series or movie – Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Audio Collection by Arthur Conan Doyle
Grumpy sunshine trope – My Friends by Fredrik Backman
Uneven number of chapters – Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett
Includes a red herring – The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins
Title in a serif font – Brigands & Breadknives by Travis Baldree
- Two or more authors, one pseudonym
- F
rom a series at least eight books long – A Parade of Horribles by Matt Dinniman
- Set in the Arctic or Antarctic
Author related to another author – Never Flinch by Stephen King
Author related to author in prompt 30 – Horns by Joe Hill
Publisher starting with the letter “B” – The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston
A standalone fantasy novel – The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi
- Inspired by the top-grossing movie the year you were born
Character with a secret identity – Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub
Award-winning book from last year – Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green
- Started on the 26th of the month
Domestic fiction – Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
A book that cost you nothing – We Met Like This by Kasie West
Author’s first and last name start with same letter – Cover Story by Mhairi McFarlane
A guide to… – Start Where You Are by Sabrina Pace-Humphreys
- Includes a handwritten interior font
A Goodreads recommendation for you – My Husband’s Wife by Alice Feeney
Literary Device: Personification – Strange Houses by Uketsu
Biographical fiction – The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont
- Non-fiction about character in prompt 45
A diacritical mark on the cover – Dare to Lead by Brené Brown
Related to the word “Nemesis” – Better Than Revenge by Kasie West
From the 800s of the Dewey Decimal System – The Hummingbird by Stephen P. Kiernan
- Set in a castle
Includes a map – Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King
- Published in 2026
Tags: 2026 52 book club, 52 book club, book challenges, reading challenges
Posted December 23, 2024 by Haze in Reading Challenges / 2 Comments
I finished the 52 Book Club’s 2024 challenge and really loved the prompts and how it made me read out of my comfort zone, so I’ll be doing it again in 2025! There were some books I loved, and some I didn’t like so much and only read because of the challenge, but that’s the fun of it and the reason I want to do it again! You can find a list of 2024’s prompts and the books I read for each of the prompts here.
The 52 Book Club’s annual reading challenge is made up of 52 unique prompts. The goal is to match one book to each prompt, for a total of fifty-two books over the course of the year. Prompts are related to everything from specific titles, to cover designs, authors, genres, settings, themes, characters, etc. (Think of it like a giant bookish scavenger hunt!) We encourage participants to try books outside of their regular reading comfort zones and push themselves to read more, read differently, and get creative with it!
Visit The 52 Book Club to find out more and join the challenge!
Below is the 52 Book Club’s list of prompts for 2025. These prompts are linked to Goodreads Lists of books that fit each prompt. I copy and pasted them from here, for easy access, and so I can link to each prompt with the books I finish.
The 2025 Goodreads Lists:
A pun in the title – The Crêpes of Wrath by Sarah Fox
A character with red hair – Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Title starts with letter “M” – The Measure by Nikki Erlick
Title starts with letter “N” – Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Plot includes a heist – The Art Thief by Michael Finkel
Genre One: Set in Spring – Dragons of Spring Dawning by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
Genre Two: Set in Summer – The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
Genre Three: Set in Autumn – Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
Genre Four: Set in Winter – Dragons of Winter Night by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
Author’s last name is also a first name – Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry
A prequel – Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins
Has a moon on the cover – Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
Title is ten letters or less – Guillotine by Delilah S. Dawson
Climate fiction – The Terror by Dan Simmons
Includes Latin American history – Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas
Author has won an Edgar award – In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Told in verse – The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
A character who can fly – The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna
Has short chapters – Shark Heart by Emily Habeck
A fairy tale retelling – A Sorceress Comes To Call by T. Kingfisher
Character’s name in the title – Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley
Found family trope – The Love Haters by Katherine Center
A sprayed edge – The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst
Title is a spoiler – Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson
Breaks the fourth wall – If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino
More than a million copies sold – The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman
Features a magician – Oz: The Complete Collection by L. Frank Baum
A crossover (Set in a shared universe) – Revival by Stephen King
Shares universe with prompt 28 – Joyland by Stephen King
In the public domain – The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Audiobook has multiple narrators – Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Includes a diary entry – The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon
A standalone novel – A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
Direction in the title – East of Eden by John Steinback
Written in third person – The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan
Final sentence is less than 6 words long – 1984 by George Orwell
Genre chosen for you by someone else – Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
An adventure story – Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett
Has an epigraph – When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
Stream of consciousness narrative – Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
Cover font is in a primary color – Vicious by V.E. Schwab
Non-human antagonist – Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Explores social class – Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
A celebrity on the cover – Every Tool’s A Hammer by Adam Savage
Author releases more than one book a year – ‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King
Read in a “-ber” month – Taste by Stanley Tucci
“I think it was blue” – Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers
Related to the word “puzzle” – Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts by Kate Racculia
Set in a country with an active volcano – Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Set in the 1940s – The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
300-400 pages long – The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo
Published in 2025 – Swept Away by Beth O’Leary
Tags: 52 book club, book challenges, reading challenges