Announcing Quarterly Book Bingo

How to tackle a TBR pile? It’s the question that haunts many a reader, for loving books means that we feel that all of our paper children need our attention NOW. Most of the time, I let my mood guide me, but I’ve found that while that’s great for the books that are in my face by actually being on my shelves, it’s less effective for my Kindle purchases, library wish lists, and intended purchases.

To help remind me of books that might fall by the wayside, I’m going to try something I’m dubbing the Quarterly Book Bingo. Every three months, I’ll be looking to make sure my reads check off the categories below. Double-dipping is allowed – the point isn’t to stress but to make sure I’m paying attention to the full breadth of options I have available.

• A Classic – The definition of this is going to be entirely at my discretion, but the goal here is to read some of the oldies but goodies, especially some of the bigger influences in the sci-fi/fantasy space.
• My Sister Made Me – My younger sister has plenty of books she’s aghast I haven’t read yet, so I’m going to let her pick a read for me!
• A Standalone – Short and Sweet.  No series commitments here!
• The book that has been in my queue the longest – There are plenty of books gathering dust in my room, and most of them have a spot on my “reading queue” list on Goodreads. I’m going to see what book has been in the queue the longest and if I’m still not ready to read it, it might be time to unhaul it!
• Something off my Kindle e-reads – I always forget what’s in my e-collection, let’s not do that this year.
• A 2019 Release – Stay on top of new releases!
• A 2018 Releases – I still have 50 books that came out last year that I didn’t get to.
• A Pre-2018 Release – This is the category I’m most iffy on, since there will be a lot of overlap with other categories, but I’m giving it a shot for now, just to encourage reading my backlist.  This may disappear in future incarnations.
• A “Media Tie-in” Book –  This may not be the best title, but the concept I’m getting at are books that come from media universes that started outside the book world.  Star Wars is the biggest example, but also things like the DC Icons series, Disney tie-ins, etc.  I have a backlog of these I want to get to, because they’re always getting pushed down the list.

I’ll have a dedicated page to tracking my progress every quarter, and I’ll include updates in my monthly wrap-ups.  I may tweak the categories every quarter, depending on how well they are making me dig into my backlog.   Feel free to play along, or start your own bingo!  I love hearing how people organize their reading and look forward to seeing lists and goals for next year.