Thank you to everyone who participated in our Summer Bingo bonanza! We loved seeing you share your bingo cards on social media. Some of you even printed our a physical card to mark off – love that!
We had over 30 individual entrees! Many of you even submitted for all five bingos and we even saw full cards marked off.
As a thank you for playing, all participants will receive some special SBTB stickers to commemorate your bingo wins. We have also selected two players to receive a big ol’ box of books. Those participants are:
- AJ R.
- Lynn T.
If you participated, we’d love to hear about the experience.
- Which category did you find the most challenging?
- Do you have even more ideas for future space categories?
- Would you like to see this happen regularly on the site? (Seasonally? Quarterly? Every summer?)
- What was your favorite read from summer bingo?
Let us know your thoughts! And, as always, thank you for being part of such a badass and enthusiastic community!
I like bingos, I find it fun to see how my reading stacks up. I did not make a huge effort to find the last 3 prompts (Season in the Title/Character Name; Published in 2000 or earlier; Fantasy Romance with Water) and I skipped Reality TV on purpose because I don’t like reality TV.
I took the liberty of putting the bingo prompts into Storygraph (with credit and link back to your posts about it) and 70 people joined that challenge to some extent.
I forgot that I could enter my bingos for prizes, so I didn’t. But it was fun regardless! If you do it again, I’d definitely look at future prompts, and quite possibly put them on Storygraph (or join if someone else does it first).
I enjoyed the Summer Romance Bingo, so thank you! I would happily participate again; once a year in the summer works well for me.
I did five Bingos so avoided some topics like Reality TV and Fantasy Romance with a Water Theme, and Bar or Pub that did not appeal to me or looked challenging.
My favorite new read was JFH by Gigi DeGraham. My favorite rereads were Motel. Pool. by Kim Fielding; Lucky by Gigi DeGraham; and Winter Oranges by Marie Sexton.
Congratulations and happy reading to AJ R. and Lynn T.
I enjoyed Summer Romance Bingo – your categories were much more achievable than The Ripped Bodice’s – so I’d love to do it again next summer. I managed five bingos (with the free space, which I probably should have assigned a title). I ended up leaving Published in 2000 or earlier, Fantasy Romance with a Water Theme, and Flowers on the Cover until last. I think I would have DNF’d these three books if I hadn’t wanted to finish my bingo card so it did drive me to read outside my comfort zone. I was lucky that most of my reads naturally fell into a category.
I don’t know that I would consider it my favorite, but I do keep going back and rereading the final several chapters of The Charm Offensive (my Reality TV pick) – it had been on my TBR since it came out but I didn’t read it until it fit Bingo.
I wound up rereading all of KJ Charles’s books in order to see how many squares I could get, and how to allot them. Almost all her books could count as Second Chances and hordes of them are retellings. But there are only a few with Pets, or Water Fantasy, or Only One Bed, say. And the only one with star gazing is definitely the best fit for great outdoors, so that took some finessing. No Reality TV, which is to be expected, and no Season titles or characters, which surprised me, and of course there’s no way to consider her a new to me author, but it was a lot of fun shuffling and reshuffling them to get as many squares as possible.
Hey, I’M AJ R! (Unless there’s yet another AJ here, lol) How exciting!
I really enjoyed this challenge! I only had the chance to get two rows because I was doing this alongside a local library’s summer challenge *and* two year-long cards from a local bookstore. I was excited to be able to have another card to track the romance novels that I tend to read once I’ve filled up all the fiction-friendly squares from the library challenge.
To answer your questions:
I feel like “Published in 2000 or earlier” would have been a hard one for me, so I made sure not to go for any lines that would have included that.
Would love a category next time for Romance with Older MCs. Romance-adjacent non-fiction could be fun, too.
I’d really enjoy seeing this happen more often. Would especially enjoy a winter challenge, as I tend to stay indoors and read a lot when it’s gloomy 🙂
My favorite read from Book Bingo was actually one of my favorites for the year. I chose Triple Sec by TJ Alexander for the Bar or Pub prompt and it was just an absolute delight. The spicy bits were sizzling hot, the characters communicated well, and the bartender actually spent time making drinks that sounded delicious (cocktails were my pandemic hobby).
Thank you for hosting such a fun challenge 🙂
@dom I was one of the people doing to StoryGraph challenge you put up. Thank you so much for doing that – it made it possible for me to track completion without an extra step! I am a big fan of summer bingo since summer is when I have time to read a lot and it was nice to have some specific subgenres/tropes to get me outside my reading habits
I had a really hard time with the Fantasy Romance with a Water Theme, but I wound up just grabbing A Letter to the Luminous Deep from my public library as the other fantasy romances I tried just did not work for me.
I would love a disability or ace rep category in a future bingo. I find I really enjoy finding romances in both those categories and I have a bunch on my TBR. The bingo category is a nice shove to shop the TBR for things to read.
It’s hard for me to pick a favorite, but I did really enjoy A Letter to the Luminous Deep as well as Thank You For Listening (epistolary) and Something Wild and Wonderful (the great outdoors)
I really enjoy reading challenges like this, especially ones that last a quarter/three months. I think the board had a good mix of easier to hit and ones that were a little more specific to find. Love when it pushes me to pick up something that I’d been putting off and end up loving! I’d love to do another challenge whenever you decide to host one!
I did your challenge on The StoryGraph, and completed my final novel on the final day of the bingo. It would have been very annoying to have one uncompleted square left.
Yay. I love stickers. Thanks 🙂 my new water bottle is nearly empty
I love book bingos and I enjoyed playing this summer, even though getting Covid in July messed up my summer reading and made me more interested in comfort re-reads rather than trying to get prompts. I did manage to get 3 bingos, which I’m proud of (plus 2 more bingos in the other summer book bingo I did).
I thought the prompts were a good mix of general and specific. I’d like to have some representation type prompts – either character and author (i.e. trans character or indigenous author or bi4bi romance, etc).
I loved doing it on StoryGraph. I like seeing what other people are reading for each prompt. I do miss the camaraderie of doing challenges on the SBTB Goodreads private group, but StoryGraph makes it so much easier.