Is your new year's resolution to read more? Or do you want to push yourself to broaden your reading and try some new genres and authors? Take on the challenge and read 25 books in 2025! Our Reading(s) challenge bingo card has 25 different prompts to inspire your reading this year. And to help you further, we'll be posting blogs full of books relating to some of the prompts!
Download the bingo card here or pick up a printed copy in our shops.
Checkout our blog for recommendations for the prompts 'One-word title', 'An animal on the cover', 'Adapted into a show or movie', and 'Based on the cover'.
Prompt: Recommended by a Readings bookseller
Kim from St Kilda recommends:
Hunchback
Saou Ichikawa, translated by Polly Barton
'Hunchback is a small yet ferocious book; a wild and funny divulging of the inner life of a disabled erotic fiction writer. It offers succinct perspectives on accessibility and desire and even publishing, all within 94 pages!'
The blurb: Born with a congenital muscle disorder, Shaka Isawa has severe spine curvature and uses an electric wheelchair and ventilator. Within the limits of her care home, her life is lived online – she studies, she tweets indignantly, she posts outrageous stories on an erotica website. One day, a new male carer reveals he has read it all – the sex, the provocation, the dirt. Her response? An indecent proposal …
Araxi from Hawthorn recommends:
Gunnawah
Ronni Salt
'This debut author has clearly researched the importance and complexities of the Murray River … Shady deals, illegal growing of marijuana, greed and corruption, violence & murder, makes this an excellent crime thriller that carries a high degree of credibility for this critically essential resource.'
The blurb: When nineteen-year-old farmgirl Adelaide Hoffman applies for a cadetship at the Gunnawah Gazette, she sees it as her ticket out of a life too small for her. The paper's owner, Valdene Bullark, seeing something of the girl she once was in young Adelaide, puts her straight to work. What starts as a routine assignment covering an irrigation project soon puts Adelaide on the trail of a much bigger story. Water is money in farming communities, and when Adelaide starts asking questions, it's like she's poked a bull ant's nest. Someone will do whatever it takes to stop Adelaide and Val finding out how far the river of corruption and crime runs.
Grace from Chadstone recommends:
The Trees
Percival Everett
'Everett has been getting a lot of hot press lately thanks to his Pulitzer Prize win for James, which has been a bestseller for months. The best thing about these wins is getting to share the joys of an author’s previous works with new and eager fans.
The Trees is a wild novel. It’s blurb will have you bracing yourself for a dark exploration of horrific murders, and hard-to-swallow themes of racial violence in the Deep South of America. The last thing you’d expect is to be told that it’s funny. This is where you have to exercise that deep trust between bookseller and book-buyer … It will challenge you, entertain you, and it’s more than likely you’ll laugh or gasp out loud.'
The blurb: When hog thief Junior Junior Milam is found brutally murdered, the police of Money, Mississippi are stumped. When his cousin is found dead in the same gruesome fashion, it’s time for the MBI – the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation – to step in. Special detectives Ed and Jim expect resistance from the local sheriff, the coroner and a string of racist White townsfolk. What they don’t expect is an inexplicable mystery: at each crime scene a second dead body was found – that of the same Black man. A man who looks eerily familiar …
As similar murders are reported from Illinois to California, the detectives seek answers from a local root doctor who has been documenting every lynching in the country for years, uncovering a history that refuses to be buried.
Aurelia from Kids recommends:
Mexican Gothic
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
'Mexican Gothic is the perfect read for those who are interested in diving into the macabre and twisted but perhaps are daunted by the highly-esteemed nature of classics like Frankenstein, Dracula, or Edgar Allan Poe's short stories. Silvia Moreno-Garcia's eerie novel, set in 1950s Mexico, explores colonialism, female independence and abuses of power within the Gothic horror framework, in a way that will leave you chilled to the bones.'
The blurb: When glamorous socialite Noemi Taboada receives a frantic letter from her newlywed cousin begging to be rescued from a mysterious doom, it’s clear something is desperately amiss. Catalina has always had a flair for the dramatic, but her claims that her husband is poisoning her and her visions of restless ghosts seem remarkable, even for her. Noemi’s chic gowns and perfect lipstick are more suited to cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing, but she immediately heads to High Place, a remote mansion in the Mexican countryside, determined to discover what is so affecting her cousin.
Lian from marketing recommends:
The Usual Desire to Kill
Camilla Barnes
'I just finished reading The Usual Desire to Kill, a fantastic debut novel that perfectly captures the complex family dynamics across three generations of a deeply eccentric family of academics. Seesawing effortlessly between acerbically witty, painfully nostalgic and deeply moving, this gorgeously written book reminds me of an all grown up I Capture the Castle, and I highly recommend it.'
The blurb: Miranda’s parents live in a dilapidated house in rural France that they share with two llamas, eight ducks, five chickens, two cats, and a freezer full of food dating back to 1983. Miranda’s father is a retired professor of philosophy who never loses an argument. Her mother likes to bring conversation back to the War, although she was born after it ended. Married for fifty years, they are uncommonly set in their ways. Miranda plays the role of translator when she visits, communicating the desires or complaints of one parent to the other and then venting her frustration to her sister and her daughter. At the end of a visit, she reports 'the usual desire to kill'.
Mark from Hawthorn recommends:
John & Paul
Ian Leslie
'It's not about John OR Paul, it's about John AND Paul. Ian Leslie's brilliant refocussing brings us fresh-eared to the majesty and magic of the most important collaboration in modern art and then clear-eyed to the harrowing heartbreak of the decline.'
The blurb: John & Paul begins in 1957, when two teenagers in suburban Liverpool meet and decide to play rock n'roll together. It ends twenty-three years later, when one of them is murdered. In between, we see them become global stars, create countless indelible songs, and play a central role in shaping the modern world. Ian Leslie traces the twists and turns of their relationship through the music it produced and offers rich insights into the nature of creativity, collaboration and human connection. Drawing on recently released footage and recordings, this is a startlingly fresh take on two of the greatest icons in music history.
Claire from The State Library recommends:
The Mother Fault
Kate Mildenhall
'Set in a dystopian near future Australia, a mother will risk everything to save her children. A harrowing but addictive read with appalling plausibility.'
The blurb: Mim’s husband is missing. No one knows where Ben is, but everyone wants to find him – especially The Department. And they should know, the all-seeing government body has fitted the entire population with a universal tracking chip to keep them ‘safe’. But suddenly Ben can’t be tracked. And Mim is questioned, made to surrender her passport and threatened with the unthinkable – her two children being taken into care at the notorious BestLife.
Cornered, Mim risks everything to go on the run to find her husband – and a part of herself, long gone, that is brave enough to tackle the journey ahead.
Megan from Emporium recommends:
Under the Eye of the Big Bird
Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Asa Yoneda
'A fantastic series of interconnected speculative fiction short stories that present a world where humans are at near extinction and figuring out how to survive as a species. This is a different style of story for Kawakami, but as a fan of all her other writings, I enjoyed this immensely.'
The blurb: In the distant future, humans are on the verge of extinction and have settled in small tribes across the planet under the observation and care of the Mothers. Some children are made in factories, from cells of rabbits and dolphins; some live by getting nutrients from water and light, like plants. The survival of the race depends on the interbreeding of these and other alien beings – but it is far from certain that connection, love, reproduction, and evolution will persist among the inhabitants of this faltering new world.
Want more recommendations? Head into one of our shops!
