Monday, June 1, 2015

BOTNS Book Bingo 2015

My Bingo card (mostly). I didn't save a pdf version so this is a recreation with the same categories but in a different configuration.

Even though I'm already doing three challenges for 2015 - Back to the Classics, the Nonfiction Reading Challenge, and the European Reading Challenge - my sister and I have agreed to do the Books on the Nightstand Book Bingo challenge as well. This lets me combine love of reading with my love of competing against my sister so I'm excited to get started.

We modified the rules a little bit to account for her class schedule, which worked out perfectly because our friend S later signed on to compete as well and she is busy with her thesis research this summer! So, rather than set Labor Day as our date to finish, we have set Labor Day as the date to get bingo and Christmas 2015 as the date to get a blackout. We also boosted the competitive aspect by agreeing to compete to see who could get bingo and blackout first. Winner gets lunch so we are taking this very seriously! 

I should also admitted, I suppose, that we complicated it more by exchanging the middle free square for a category picked by the other competitors. These categories, of course, ended up being huge challenges for the person who got them. My sister picked a "Young Adult novel" for me, knowing that it isn't a genre I frequently read (will I be banned from the world of book blogging by admitting this?). I, in turn, gave her the dreaded "Sports-related" category and told her she could borrow one of my many hockey books. Weirdly, she declined my generous offer. Poor S got stuck with "That you've pretended to have read." I suspect that we may all curse each other by the time Christmas comes!

My card is not bad otherwise, although I have already discovered that, even in my late twenties, it is very difficult to find a book "By an author born the same year as you." If anyone knows of a great author born in 1986, please pass along the information. My blackout depends on it! As some fairly extensive searching has uncovered, finding an author of the same age would be much easier if I had passed the thirty threshold. 

The only category I truly dread is the "Historical Fiction" square, since I find increasingly that I can't stand to read fiction that reflects the outdated gender roles that existed for much of human history. Conversely, I hate novels in which the female characters seem too out-of-their-time, since they strike me as substituting wishful thinking for historical accuracy. And, worst of all for someone seeking historical fiction to read, I don't enjoy books about kings and queens and the courtiers who loved them or at least slept with them to advance their own interests. This may take some digging.

Still, the project should be great fun. Any suggestions for any of these categories would be appreciated!

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