After many years of not participating in reading challenges, last year I jumped on board with Random House’s Reading Bingo challenge. This is definitely the kind of challenge I can get behind, because it allowed me to read what I already read, instead of requiring me to find a dozen books about nautical vampire unicorns. (Actually, I kind of think I would TOTALLY love a dozen books about nautical vampire unicorns. Can someone pretty please write those for me to read?)
And so, I did pretty darn good, if I do say so myself, with the Reading Bingo challenge. See, here’s my score card:
I read the following for each marked off square:
- A forgotten classic: Till We Have Faces (C.S. Lewis)
- A book that became a movie: Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn)
- A book published this year: If Hemingway Wrote Javascript (Angus Croll)
- A book with a number in the title: The Best Place to Be: Expo 67 and Its Time (John Lownsbrough)
- A book written by someone under thirty: Allegiant (Veronica Roth)
- A book with non-human characters: Runaways: Parental Guidance (Brian K. Vaughan & Adrian Alphona)
- A funny book: The Inimitable Jeeves (P.G. Wodehouse)
- A book by a female author: Maggie Stuart: The Last Rite (Jen Frankel)
- A book with a mystery: Let Loose the Dogs (Maureen Jennings)
- A book with a one-word title: Divergent (Veronica Roth)
- A book of short stories: Smoke and Mirrors (Neil Gaiman)
- A book set on a different continent: Bath Tangle (Georgette Heyer)
- A book of non-fiction: Designing for Emotion (Aarron Walter)
- A book you heard about online: Exposure (Kim Askew and Amy Helmes)
- A book based on a true story: Alice I Have Been (Melanie Benjamin)
- A book at the bottom of your TBR pile: The Night Circus (Erin Morgenstern)
- A book that scares you: Cthulhu Lives! An Eldritch Tribute to H.P. Lovecraft (Salome Jones)
- A book that is more than 10 years old: Jeeves and the Tie that Binds (P.G. Wodehouse)
- The second book in a series: Insurgent (Veronica Roth)
- A book with a blue cover: The Fault in our Stars (John Green)
The Green Gables Readalong
This year I am going to be participating in two challenges… though one of them isn’t really a challenge and something I would love doing anyway. It’s Lindsay‘s Green Gables Readalong, where each month we read one of the eight books in L.M. Montgomery’s charming Anne of Green Gables series.
While I’ve read these books countless times, there are some that I haven’t picked up in over a decade. There are others (I’m looking at you, lovely Rilla of Ingleside!) that I am completely obsessed with and read on a yearly basis. But this sounded like the perfect opportunity to spend some time with Anne Shirley and her family, as well as enjoy it with some other readers on social media.
You should totally join in on this with us. Seriously.
Reading Bingo – The 2015 Edition
This year’s Reading Bingo Challenge was just announced today and it looks like it’s going to be awesome as well. It’s focusing on Canadian books and authors, which should make it very interesting – maybe it’ll make me finally attempt something by Margaret Atwood, or one of the Giller books (which I don’t think I’ve ever read at all).
Also, there are a bunch of squares that can be used for the Green Gables Readalong. Say what? Let’s see, we’ve got A book set on the East Coast (um all of them), A book by L.M. Montgomery (again, all of them) and A Canadian novel that was adapted for screen (Anne of Green Gables, definitely). And I supposed you COULD do A book by a Canadian author (but not Margaret Atwood) as well, even though one of the other squares is specifically for L.M. Montgomery.
So I’m planning on getting some Marshal McLuhan, maybe some Murdoch mysteries, and some Will Ferguson in there as well. You know. Awesome Canadian stuff.
Again, you should join us on this. It looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun, and it definitely has the opportunity to expand one’s reading selection. (And, if you join in, you can totally follow along with the fun on twitter with the #ReadingBingo hash tag. Woo!
What about you?
Are you joining in on any reading challenges this year?
