2023 r/Fantasy Bingo Challenge: Initial Plan and First Impressions

Official announcement thread HERE

So! The beginning of April of course means it’s time for a new Bingo! New Bingo, exciting new plans, and a card that will probably look completely different in a year. Hopefully it brings me out of my slump. Having moderator privileges means I did some planning in advance again, but due to how some squares are, I waited for the official rec thread and general ability to discuss it openly to finalise my first choices. Like the last few years, I’m not trying for a themed card because I find it too restrictive to be fun, but my rough guidelines for this year are to do as much on hard mode as possible and to read more authors of colour.

We’ll see what it all looks like by the time I’m done!

2022 r/Fantasy Bingo Challenge: Conclusion and Thoughts

Official announcement thread with square definitions
My original plan
Date finished: September 29

Let’s pretend I intentionally waited to post the Bingo wrap-up until early April. Totally not started in September, forgotten, and finished at the last minute, no sir. But at least it’s finally done.

2022 r/Fantasy Bingo Challenge: Initial Plan and First Impressions

Official announcement thread HERE

So! The time for the new Bingo has finally arrived! The time when we excitedly, foolishly make plans, only for the card to look completely different when the turn-in time comes around. Having the moderator privilege of being able to peek at the card early means that I was able to plan in advance, so here’s my plan for this year. Like the last few years, I’m not trying for hard mode, or doing a themed card, or a double – just your ordinary Bingo, especially since I’m finding this year’s card a lot more difficult.

We’ll see what it looks like by the time I’m done!

2021 r/Fantasy Bingo Challenge: Conclusion and Thoughts

Official announcement thread with square definitions
Date finished: November 20

I really, really liked the 2021 card and I’m quite sure that this is the earliest I managed to finish a Bingo yet. For the last couple years, I know I always finished in March, and I’m not sure I managed much earlier before that either – especially the times when I did two cards. As much as I hoped it wouldn’t, writing this huge wrap-up still took nearly until the next Bingo.

Links, as always, lead to longer reviews.

2021 Wrap-Up: Statistics and Top Books

After the slump that was 2020 (and I’m sure I’m far from the only one), 2021 was again a fairly normal reading year. I finished Bingo earlier than ever, in November, and then easily reached my goodreads stretch goal of 69 books.

Now onto the stats and recommendations!

2020 r/Fantasy Bingo Challenge: Conclusion and Thoughts

Like every year since the beginning of the challenge, I aimed for the full card in 2020 as well. It seemed easy enough, no real curveballs in terms of squares. Then  I entered the Great Big Reading Slump of 2020, stopped reading SFF for months, and whether I’d manage to complete it suddenly seemed much less certain.

But, in the end, I did it, and I was very surprised to learn that despite all my troubles, I finished earlier than last year – March 7th compared to March 12th.

2020 Wrap-Up: Statistics & Top Books

This is a follow-up to my 2020 End of the Year Wrap-Up, which focuses more on what happened – now come the stats and recommendations.

I think we can all agree 2020 was a strange, strange year. I said in the 2019 Wrap-Up that the year was the best one for reading so far, had high hopes for the next year, and then…2020 actually happened. I ended up reading and reviewing far fewer books than before and was in a slump more often than not.

Regardless, this is the first time I managed to get the stats out before February, so that’s something!

Top Ten Tuesday: The Last Ten Books I Abandoned

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish and is currently hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.

I’ve always been a huge advocate of DNFing books. Reading shouldn’t feel like homework – if a book is dragging to the point where every page feels like a huge amount of effort and it doesn’t look like things are likely to improve, why bother and torture myself further out of some bizarre sense of obligation? I know there will be no feeling of accomplishment on the other side, just anger at the time I wasted slogging through bullshit that could have been spent reading a book I’d actually enjoy.

Still, making this list made me realise I don’t DNF as much as I thought – there were a few spells where I quit essentially everything I started, but they (thanks fuck) don’t happen terribly often. Now, onto the list itself!

2020 r/Fantasy Bingo Challenge: First Impressions

The r/Fantasy Bingo is a yearly challenge run by Lisa (Way Too Fantasy) that takes place on the r/fantasy subreddit from April to April. It’s pretty much the only reading challenge I regularly participate in, and I’ve been doing it since the very beginning. And I honestly love the 2020 card. It’s much easier than the 2019 one, while still having plenty of squares that’ll take me out of my comfort zone.

This year was the first when I experienced the one advantage of being a moderator: the ability to plan your card a little in advance. So this is technically my second draft. Like in 2019, I’ll again be doing only one non-themed card, and I tried to give priority to books I either already own or can borrow, to the point there are only two books on it that don’t belong in this category.

But as they say, no plan survives contact with the enemy, so it will be interesting to see how will the completed card compare to this list a year from now.

2019 r/Fantasy Bingo Challenge: Conclusion and Thoughts

So. The end of March also means the conclusion of my favourite reading challenge, my sixth in a row. Unlike in 2018, I decided to try for only one card. The reason for that was twofold: first, doing a double two years in a row burned me out. I wanted to have the freedom to read random shit again, and not worry about how every book I read could fit on the damn cards. But also, the new card was difficult. Cyberpunk? LitRPG? Tie-In? Afrofuturism? Local author?! I doubted whether I could cobble together one card, much less two.

In the end, I finished on March 12th, with more than enough time to spare 😄