#the52bookclub2026
📚💙
24th Read - 20th Prompt ~ Day of the week in the title
Wednesday's Child by Yiyun Li
🌟 🌟 🌟🌟
Insightful poignant stories, beautifully written with lyrical prose.
Yiyun Li brings memory, grief, regret, reflection, & experiences to life in a thoughtful & thought-provoking way
#the52bookclub2026
💙📚
Read 23-Prompt 5~ Features a conspiracy
Dark Age by Pierce Brown
🌟 🌟🌟🌟 ½
With supposedly perished beloved characters who survive(but not everyone😢), unvarnished cruelty of war, horrendous actions of heroes & honour of evil men, I devoured this 752pg high octane thrilling book
No. There are parts which are the characters thinking/reflecting which don't use them, but the conversations all have quotation marks. 🙂
#the52bookclub2026
22nd Read- 32nd Prompt~ publisher starts with the letter B
💙📚
Circe by Madeline Miller
🌟 🌟
I love fantasy but Circe was not my cup of tea
A fairytale for adults with an unrelentingly miserable main character
2 stars for impressive research & inventive retelling of Greek myths
#the52bookclub2026
21st Read- Prompt 43~ Goodreads Rec
💙📚
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
5🌟
I was completely invested in Sadie, Sam & Marx. I ached, smiled, & worried with them. Their love, mistakes, traumas, Macbeth's soliloquy towards the end (I wept). Wonderful! Bravo!
#the52bookclub
20th Read -36th Prompt ~ Award Winner From Last Year
💙📚
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
🌟 🌟 🌟
I'd have liked a less rushed & more ambiguous end. However, there were beautiful passages of writing dealing with climate apocalypse devastation, especially the bit with the whales
#the52bookclub
19th Read -Prompt 25~ Red Herring
💙📚
The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
A compulsive read! 3 Lighthouse keepers vanish from their offshore light in 1972, with the door bolted from inside. 20 yrs on, an author tries to unravel the mystery by interviewing the partners left behind
Absolutely the GOAT in snooker. It's a privilege to watch Ronnie O'Sullivan play.
What a feat the 153 break is!
#the52bookclub
18th Read- Prompt 16~ Deus Ex Machina
📚💙
The Physics of Star Trek by Lawrence M Krauss
4 🌟
Joyful look at what's feasible, probable + impossible by the laws of physics (i.e. transporters)
Nice examples; reversing polarity of a reflector shield, finding a stable wormhole, omnipotent Q
#the52bookclub2026
17th Read - 7th Prompt ~ Title starts with P
💙📚
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E Butler
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
Beautifully written, Lauren's unique POV & her new religion guide the reader through survivng the chaos, sorrow, and violence of a bleak dystopia.
'The only lasting truth is Change'
#the52bookclub
📚💙
Prompt 30& 31~Related Authors
15th Read-Sidney Chambers & The Shadow of Death by James Runcie 🌟🌟🌟
16th Read-Salt on your Tongue by Charlotte Runcie 🌟🌟 this would appeal to those into mindfulness. I enjoyed the folklore best.
Her father's book is cosy charming 1950s crime detection.
Interior page of novel showing a letter in handwritten font
#the52bookclub
14th Read - 42nd Prompt ~ Interior handwritten font
💙📚
The House at Helygen by Victoria Hawthorne
🌟 🌟 🌟 ½
I devoured the mystery of 3 timelines at Helygen House. Was this ghost story, a murder mystery, or a tale of intergenerational trauma? However, I found the final ⅓ melodramatic
#the52bookclub
📚💙
12th Read
Prompt 45
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel 5🌟
13th Read
46th Prompt
Thomas Cromwell by Tracy Borman 3.5🌟
Wolf Hall is a masterpiece! I was absorbed in the rise, life, sorrows, intrigue & mind of Cromwell
I enjoyed filling in missing pieces of Cromwell's life with Borman's book
#the52bookclub
💙📚
11th Read - 50th Prompt ~ Set in a castle
Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu
4🌟
Written in 1871, a generation before Dracula, I enjoyed this creepy gothic vampire tale. Sinister and spooky with a building level of threat and dread, the way Le Fanu revealed events was very satisfying.
The roof timbers in Saint Mary’s Collegiate Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)
The roof timbers in Saint Mary’s Collegiate Church Youghal which have been carbon dated to 1170. Likely built by shipwrights so essentially an upside down boat. www.patrickcomerford.com/2021/08/sain... #speirgorm
#the52bookclub2026
💙📚
10th Read - 13th Prompt ~ #Bookface
Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano
3.5 🌟
I was invested in William & the Padavano sisters finding the way their stories unfolded addictive reading, but the style of 3rd-person pov left an emotional distance between reader & character
#the52bookclub
9th Read- 6th Prompt ~Starts with "O"
📚💙
Oxygen by Nick Lane
🌟 🌟 🌟
I was gripped by the 1st half: genesis of life + evolution of diversity when O² levels fluctuated through geological eras + the Last Common Universal Ancestor. Sadly my brain got boggled in biochemistry of ageing.
#the52bookclub2026
💙📚
8th Read- 49th Prompt~ 800s Dewey Decimal System
Butter by Asako Yuzuki (895.636)
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
I ate yummy rice with butter & wondered if Rika would fall under Kajii's manipulative spell. Unsettling, fascinating, luscious with butter & challenging societal norms ~ inspiring writing
#the52bookclub2026
7th Read - 27th Prompt ~ 2 or more authors, 1 pseudonym
📚💙
Losing You by Nicci French
🌟 🌟 🌟
Perfect pulp fiction for a 3 hour train journey. Nina's panicked search for her missing daughter Charlotte was credible with well conveyed urgency and peril.
A pacy compelling read
On our way there too. Can't wait!
#the52bookclub2026
5th Read- 35th Prompt~secret identity
Golden Son
4🌟
+
6th- 14th prompt~Character List
Morning Star
5🌟
By Pierce Brown
💙📚
Red Rising 2 Golden Son is an ultra fast-paced twisty read. Morning Star is a masterpiece! Every plot point, character twist, looming threat, come to fruition
#the52bookclub2026
📚💙💉
4th Read - 12th prompt = Genre Defining
This is Going To Hurt by Adam Kay
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
Blisteringly honest, darkly comic, sincere, based on Kay's diary as he worked 97 hour weeks as an NHS junior doctor. Eye-opening jawdropping, painfully funny, deserves all the rewards it got
#the52bookclub2026
💙📚
3rd Read - 48th Prompt = Related to the word 'Nemesis'
Arms of Nemesis by Steven Saylor
🌟 🌟 🌟
Rome, warts & all, as Gordianus must find a murderer to save the lives of 100 slaves who will die if he doesn't. I saw the red herring coming, but a well plotted, enjoyable mystery.
#the52bookclub2026
📚💙
2nd Read - 44th Prompt = Literary Device: Personification
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
Brilliant, clever, pacy, awe-inspiring Sci-Fi. Ryland is a really relatable genius, the only hope for the survival of billions. A ripping read, full of twists, turns & dilemmas.
#the52bookclub #the52bookclub2026
📚💙
My 1st read for 1st prompt
In an ancient civilisation
Pompeii by Robert Harris
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
Following the investigation of Aquarius of the aquaduct when the water becomes sulfurous & runs dry, we viscerally feel the awe & approaching doom as Vesuvius blows her top
My #2025readingchallenge
52 #books for 2025
📚💙
52nd: Knowing what we know by Simon Winchester
Fascinating look at how we transmit & gain knowledge; what it means, how it began, whose contributions are compelling, how modern dissemination impacts us. Full of delightful stories & nuggets of knowledge
My #2025readingchallenge
52 #books for 2025
💙📚
51st Read: Red Rising by Pierce Brown
I want to know what happens next!
First of a fantasy/sci-fi series, with underdog hero, Darrow, who carries his grief & the weight of his people's fate as he infiltrates the ruling Golds' academy. A cracking read!
My #2025readingchallenge
52 #books for 2025
💙📚
50th Read: The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen
This Victorian Gothic book is fascinating, horrifying, intriguing, & chilling, written as vignettes revealing the presence of 'Pan'. I loved the final tale: a trippy wild journey for both narrator & reader
My #2025readingchallenge
52 #books for 2025
📚💙
49th Read-An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong
A @tpwky.bsky.social rec
Magic journey of sensory perception from our usual 5 to wonderous ultrasound, echolocation, tetrachromancy, electric & magnetic fields
This is amazing! When I studied #archaeology & celtic civilization in the 90s, it was speculated that any mythological cat references were late prehistory/early medieval based on domestic cats! But look! We had native wildcats! #IrishMyths #Cats #IrishHistory