Let's Read More Playfully❣️
SUMMER CAMP WEEK 3 -- Book Bingo!
It’s Week Three of Summer Camp for Beauty Hunters. Weekly posts will focus on Play, and Reimagining R&R. Jump in at any time! Summer Camp is for paid subscribers, but free to all subscribers through July 2 (this post). After that, you can upgrade to a monthly subscription.☀️
Dear Beautiful Camp-Going Friends,
Welcome to Week 3!
This week, let’s kick up our heels, push a few boundaries, and have some fun reading.
Last year I participated in Seattle Public Library’s Adult Book Bingo, a summer offering that treats the reading citizens to a fun way of stretching their reading habits and discovering new books and genres.
Book Bingo added a delicious pant and scramble to my entire reading experience. I posted this beautiful bingo “card” on my fridge and it worked me all summer. I wondered about the square I could check off with the book I was currently reading, and this made me think more about themes; I chose my next read on whether it would fulfill a category (kept me from overthinking selections); I strategized over which “bingo line” (is that a term?) I would go for (suspense!). The bingo squares followed me around like a reading pal, they played with me and stretched me all summer long.
Hands down my favorite category, which changed the way I read and got me reading books I never would have, is READ WITH A FRIEND.
I tapped our Beauty Hunter pal Liz, chose a book from the New York Times Book Review, and off we went. The book was The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride. It wasn’t an easy read in the beginning but I checked in with Liz, she kept me going, and by the end we were practically crying and exalting at how the writer rendered beauty in the swirl of so much despair. Also, there’s a lot of humor here. Highly recommend.
You know those “I’ve been meaning to read” books that get under your skin and stay there, like an ongoing prickle? The OLDER PROTAGONIST turned me toward Celine: A Novel, by Peter Heller, and I had the pleasure of checking off two boxes.
It’s like a “race” with yourself and the bingo card.
Off the bingo grid: I checked off LOCAL AUTHOR with friend and mentor Claire Dederer’s Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, highly recommend.
Ready to play your own book bingo?
Here are four options for you to play along, read on:
Join SPL’s Book Bingo 2024 (website with reading recommendations here). There’s also a Teens’ Book Bingo here.
This bingo card encouraged me to read Biography of X by Catherine Lacey because it’s over 400 pages (ONE BIG BOOK) and I am loving it, unlike anything I’ve read or would read. I applied the Read With a Friend from last year, and enlisted Beauty Hunter Claire Jackson. This is my new favorite way to have a book club!
2. Here’s a little Bingo Card I made for you, based on some of my favorite categories:
Make your own with this Bingo Generator. Try it with a friend, or family member. Fill in the squares however you like—pass them out.
If you’re a niche reader, no problem: Let’s say you like history, you could fill your squares with different time periods or people. If you’d like to knock off books on the best-seller list or recent releases you could number them by Top Sellers from a certain week and power on through.
If you’d like me to make you a bingo card, send me the following info:
1. Last five books you read and ones you liked.
2. Two sentences of the books you like to read.
3. How many book categories you’d like in your bingo card.
Now, go read, have fun, report back. xo
Suggest your recent favorite reads and recommendations in Comments.
Share this with someone you love
—