Apparently, you can always find me in the kitchen at them, too…

Reading, most likely. Or talking about reading. Or talking about books. Or something I’ve read about books. Or drinking. At parties, that is. Anyway, I digress. I am late to books, shows, movies, authors, and all of these wonderful other things that I didn’t even realise there were parties for – there is always another secret and all that – or, in my case, discovery. I can now add another item to my ‘eventually found it’ list – I have discovered reddit – more than that, I have discovered lots of groups on reddit that talk about the stuff I like to talk about. Like books, and shows and movies and authors.

This latest discovery – the communities, or ‘subs’ of reddit – have proven to be a major distraction with plenty of temptations for driving my ‘to-be-read’ pile of books into the realms of more insanity than is already prevalent in my batshit-crazy-for-books lifestyle, and if that’s not exciting, I don’t know what is!! I found the r/fantasy sub and with that came plenty of recommendations, clubs, readalongs and another absolute gem – the Annual Book Bingo Challenge. The purpose of the book bingo, from what I can gather, is to take you out of your comfort zone, get you reading a wider range of authors and types of fantasy etc. I’m sure you get the idea.

Also, it is ridiculously challenging to actually try to plan for this thing! I trawled through the recs thread and came up with a couple of ideas, but I’ve also typed out the list of bingo square requirements and passed them on to the lovely people who work at my local Waterstones to see what they can come up with by way of ideas. They see me often enough to know if something is or is not in my comfort zone as well as whether I’ll take to something or not, so I figured I’d get their input and see what happens. I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with. There are a couple of books that I have already made decisions about, but the rest will be completely random in terms of the choosing, because they are choosing for me as are the wonderful members of the r/fantasy sub that have recommended some marvellous sounding tales.

As an additional challenge, I’ve decided to journal/blog about this experience 1) because I think it will be really interesting and 2) because I’m totally bonkers! The link to the bingo is now on the bar at the top and I’ll be updating fairly regularly soon. My Malazan Journey is still ongoing, and the bingo will also give me little breaks (that are much needed) from the series. So yeah, back to the bingo…

25 books, 25 different authors, 25 different requirements. From April 1st 2024 to March 31st 2025.

It’s going to be GLORIOUS!!!