This year’s Brick & Mortar Winter Reading Book Bingo challenge included five squares to be filled with special bookish activities instead of reading books. Here’s what I did for each!
Visit library or indie bookstore: I went to Brick & Mortar Books to pick up my bingo card and buy a few books for the challenge. I also visited the Edmonds branch of Sno-Isle Libraries and went to the Lake Forest Park branch of King County Library System to get my KCLS card.
Write a book review: *gestures to this entire blog* By my count, I had written 26 reviews between starting the challenge and turning in my card on March 15.
Watch TV/film inspired by a book: I watched the first episode of the new Shogun series on Hulu. I’m not sure if I’ll finish it, because yes, the production quality is amazing, but my goodness is Blackthorn or whatever his name is just the worst. I also have a really hard time focusing on serious prestige dramas these days; they’re just generally too dark while living through dark times. Catch me watching Taskmaster instead.
Read while sipping a beverage: I do a lot of reading with a cup of tea at hand. Got some of my audiobook reading in while sipping hot cocoa, cocktails, or water, too.
Recommend a book to a friend: My friend Stephanie is trying to read even more non-fiction this year, so I gave her several recommendations of non-fiction books I’d enjoyed recently and thought she’d like. We swap recs pretty regularly!
I really liked the addition of activities to this year’s challenge, and the fact that there were five less books to read made it even easier to get a blackout while still keeping up with new releases that didn’t fit any of the prompts. Of course it helped that everything except for the TV/film one was something that I’d have done anyway. It’s not that I’m one of those annoying “Oh I don’t watch TV” snobs, it’s that I have ideological disagreements with pretty much all of the streaming services so I keep canceling them, and we can’t leave our dog home alone long enough to go to the movies.
I’m now enjoying a little lull between the end of Brick & Mortar’s winter challenge and the SAL/SPL summer challenge, maybe checking off a Nook & Cranny or Book Riot prompt here and there. Reviews will be slightly slower until late May, as you’ve probably already noticed.