The 52 Book Club: 2025 Challenge discussion

10. A Book Based On A Real Person


There are so many incredible and fascinating people throughout history. This prompt is for a book based on a real person. You could choose a fiction or non-fiction read about a person at any point in history, who lived anywhere on the globe! This could be a memoir, biography, or fictionalized account of a real person.

Check out our Goodreads List for examples

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams

I just finished Ballad of the Whiskey Robber by Julian Rubinstein. This is an hilarious true story of a young man in Budapest who plays “pro” hockey, smuggles bear pelts, and goes on a robbery spree that defies the bumbling police force around the time of the fall of communism in Hungary. The audiobook is excellent.

Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart

Dear Cary: My Life with Cary Grant

It's a Long Story: My Life

The Personal Librarian

The Kingmaker’s Daughter by Philippa Gregory

I’m using Grandma Gatewood’s Walk by Ben Montgomery for this prompt. It would fit several other prompts as well.

I read The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory. There’s Catherine of Aragon.

The Iceman by Anthony Bruno. About serial killer Richard kuklinski. I listened to the audiobook and not only is the book written in an amazingly compelling way but the narrator is absolutely fantastic.

The Haunting of Alma Fielding by Kate Summerscale

I listened to Lillian Boxfish Takes A Walk.

Going to use this as a chance to finally read Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup.

Romanov Loved this book.

Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch by Rivka Galchen. Based on the real person Katharina Kepler (mother of astronomer Johannes Kepler) https://cdnbookworm.blogspot.com/2022...

I just started Diary of a Young Girl. It is one that I have meant to read for a while.

The Magnolia Palace by Fiona Davis

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

Will by Will Smith

According to one reviewer, Yara Zgheib wrote this novel to help her process her devastating experience of giving birth alone and isolated in the US after her husband was denied re-entry to the country by the 2017 Muslim ban. The book is so well written and utterly engaging, I read most of it in one sitting. 5 enthusiastic stars!

Shusaku Endo, Silence, 1966 -- based partly upon a Jesuit priest from Portugal who travels to Japan in the 17th c. during the banning and torture of Christians and the extent of apostasy among them.

My book club's next pick is Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake by Frank W. Abagnale
I think it will be a fun read and fit this catagory well.

I read Are You Borg Now? by Said Shaiye for my book about a real person. It's a memoir, but it's so much more. It's got pop culture references, it wrestles with immigrant and Islamic identity when you came to a new country as a small child, it has this back and forth that works amazingly well.

It's got Naomi Wildman. If you know who she is, imagine what it means to have a grown up refugee reference her in a book.

I loved it.



You can find more of my thoughts here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAOXt...

I read When the World was Ours my Liz Kessler

Week 10, Prompt 10.

I am reading Divine Lola: A True Story of Scandal and Celebrity by Cristina Morató . We are reading this wit my in person Book Club and I am not so excited to read it because I don't like the cover LOL I am so vain! But it also works with the prompt of the week so I can't complain!

For this prompt I have read Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai. The author used the real story of her life and created Ha, our main character, who has to run away with her family in Alabama and escape the Vietnam War.

A great story that I truly enjoyed. It's also written in verse.

Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart

Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart

Lighter than my Shadow. It’s a graphic novel about one woman’s journey to overcome her eating disorder. Powerful and moving

Leslie wrote: "Lighter than my Shadow. It’s a graphic novel about one woman’s journey to overcome her eating disorder. Powerful and moving"

I read this in 2017. It was indeed a great story!

The first book to read In this challenge was “Varför gråter inte Emma?”. A book about Emma and her two kids that get attacked by another woman. Sadly only Emma survived and this is her story about how she was able to move on and how her family handled the whole situation. A really sad story that was hard to get through.

I read American Princess: A Novel of First Daughter Alice Roosevelt.

The last 100 pages were better than the first 300. If I wasn't reading this for a book club I would not have finished! I did not like Alice at all until she hit her 40's. I loved her from her late 50's until her death. I wish the book could have been written more about the end of her life than the bratty, unhappy, horrid person she portrayed herself to be when she was younger.

I'm glad I stuck with it until the end because there are some incredible quotes from the end I would have missed completely!

I read I was Anastasia by Ariel Lawhon. Very interesting read!

I read The Tatooist of Auschwitz

I read The First Mrs. Rothschild by Sara Aharoni, 2 Stars

Cokie: A Life Well Lived by Steven Roberts

I read The Hollywood Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal. The true story of Leon Lewis and others of the LA Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation Council during WW2 were the foundation for this book.

I used My Invented Country

Based on Kick Kennedy

The Kennedy Debutante by Kerri Maher 2/22/22

https://titlesurfingwithtraci.blogspo...

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

The Book Woman's Daughter by Kim Richardson
3 stars

Cicero Trilogy by Robert Harris.
Really enjoyable and informative book, although I do feel a little cheated with it being three in one, but only counting for one on GR!

Emma wrote: "Cicero Trilogy by Robert Harris.
Really enjoyable and informative book, although I do feel a little cheated with it being three in one, but only counting for one on GR!"
I have added in book separately, even when I read a combined copy. I want to get credit for all the books involved!

Henry & June from a Journal of Love by Anais Nin

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - Taylor Jenkins Reid

She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs

Book is around 115 pages so easy day read but if you are a Dolly fan it does give a bigger picture outside view of her influence. Makes me wonder what Dolly would think of this book.

I read "Number the Stars," by Lois Lowry.

I read Hex by Jenni Fagan over the weekend. It is based on the real life Geillis Duncan, who was accused of witchcraft in 1500s Scotland. Really short 112 page book if you need a quick one!

I read "White Houses" by Amy Bloom

taste by stanley tucci

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid