Time to share the Book Bingo card I’ll be trying to complete this year. As with my last card, this one was randomly generated from a list of over 200 different challenges. Here’s what I got.

Despite all that variety, I managed to get two tiles related to the Locus Awards. (Even better, I’d managed to get the same misspelling on both of them, and almost posted a card looking for ‘Locust Award’ winners). I also got the Military Science Fiction challenge again, which shouldn’t be a problem for me. If nothing else I can continue the Honor Harrington series. To go with that, I also got asked for a non-fiction book about war on the very next tile. Seeing that made me a bit bummed I’d read Sun Tzu so recently, but my Dad is ex-army and has a room full of war books. Some of which have ended up on my bookcase, so I won’t have any trouble with that one. 

Last year I made the rule that whilst I could usually only use each book for one tile, I could use alphabet challenge tile books for other things. I never used that rule, and for simplicity I think I’ll scrap it, and not allow myself to use any books for multiple tiles.

There also isn’t a designated Free Square in the centre like on normal cards. Instead I can put the Free Square over any tile. Last year, I used the Free Square to nope out of reading about magical swords, but this year there isn’t anything that jumps out as particularly troublesome. *Shudders at the Saturn/Jupiter Square, and my 5 and 8 point letter tiles.*

Whilst some are challenging though, it’s a card full of stuff I want to read about and I already have a lot of ideas for how to fill some of these tiles. I’m going to see how I go without a free square.

If anyone would like to use this card, let me know; it’ll be fun to see what different people come up with for some of the more obscure challenges. I’m also happy to fire up the randomizer again if anyone wants their own unique card. Feel free to place whatever rules and restrictions you like if you use my cards for your own book bingo challenge.

Happy Reading Everyone,

~ Lauren

P.S. Does anyone think the term ‘uplifted’ on the Dolphin/Chimpanzee tile is too restrictive? I know there are plenty of stories with smart Dolphins or Chimpanzees that have explicitly been uplifted, but does that exclude stories where they have naturally evolved to a more mentally advanced state or the source of their intelligence is unclear or magical? I feel changing it to ‘sentient Chimpanzees and Dolphins’ opens up a whole can of worms about animal cognition and the nature of personhood.