I guess since it’s May and the Seattle Arts & Lectures/Seattle Public Library Summer Book Bingo is starting next week, I should finally get around to recapping the Brick & Mortar Books 2024 Winter Reading Challenge Book Bingo.
Whose idea was it for me to recap these things anyway?
Oh, that’s right, it was my idea.
Over all, I’m glad I participated in this winter challenge because it was a good way to start off the year. It encouraged me to go ahead and dig into some of the books I already own, rather than saving them for summer challenges. It got me to try some books I wouldn’t have otherwise considered, for better or for worse.
Brick & Mortar Books never posted what prizes they decided to offer for this challenge, so I have no idea how many prizes were awarded or how good they were. There was no participation prize. You could get up to five entries, one per bingo row, and there was no special benefit to getting a blackout. I’d like to say that if I had read the rules closely enough to realize that, I might not have gone for a blackout and would have spared myself the misery of Ascendance of a Bookworm and Pinocchio, but I think we all know that’s a lie. I do these things for the challenge, not for the prizes, so of course I’m always going to go for a blackout.
I feel like the prompts were well-chosen. There were only a few that were pretty specific (such as the PNBA Award Winner and Signed Our Author Wall prompts) and most could be interpreted in a variety of ways. I especially liked the inclusion of prompts that seemed to fit the winter reading theme, such as ~COZY VIBES~, Takes place in Winter, and The Cover is BLUE.
For the most part, I was able to fit books I already planned to read anyway into this challenge, and unfortunately, two of the books I might not have read otherwise were real duds. But I might not have read We Are Not Strangers if not for needing an author who had signed the wall at Brick & Mortar, and that was a pretty good one. Importantly, this challenge helped me knock 3 books off of my physical TBR, four if you count the one I read for the blank space, which was a really strong start to the year. I was also able to pair a lot of the prompts from this challenge with those from the two Nook & Cranny cards, so I made good progress on all three challenges in those first two and a half months of the year.
Chances are, if Brick & Mortar Books runs this challenge again next year, I’ll participate again. I’d probably even consider it if they do a summer challenge, though I probably wouldn’t go for a blackout since I’ll be focused on SAL/SPL’s challenge. I mean, if nothing else, it gives me an excuse to make two trips to Brick & Mortar (one to get my card, one to turn it in) and you know I love an excuse to go to the bookstore.