Our Library Reading Challenge

Our local library is running a reading challenge for adults from the first of March through the end of May.  I'm excited.  They usually only do kids' reading programs, so this is a fun new twist.  There are two parts to the challenge.  First, read 4 books, get a candy bar.  Read 8, get a nice water bottle.  Second, play bingo!  Read books to match a variety of categories (a different one in each square). When you finish a line, you get a raffle ticket for a bigger prize (they aren't telling what it is yet).

So, I'm pretty sure I'm overthinking this - ha - as I always tend to do.  I went through my shelf of books waiting to be read, and tried to fit something in each category.  I actually made a copy first, so I could keep the original for when I come to a final decision. ;)

But that was getting messy and it was hard to tell what went where, so I made a sticky note for each book and stuck it to the square I hope to put it into.  That way, if I decide to read something else, I can jockey everything around and make it work.  One book often fits into several categories - such a fiction, a book that's been at the bottom of my to read pile, a book by an author over 30, New York Times best seller, a book that's been made into a movie.  You get the point.  One book could easily fit into all those categories.  So with the sticky notes, I can shuffle and read what I really want to read.

So far these are the books I've pulled to read. Several of them I would not otherwise be reading, but they fit the categories.

I've finished one of them, and am in the middle of the next.  I had started out by trying to pile them into bingo rows, but that got too confusing (if I was missing a book, etc) and I didn't have room to store five piles of books.  And this is only 18 of them (19 in the picture but two are for one category and don't fit elsewhere, so one won't get read).  Eventually I will have read 25.  And I'm sure this pile will change when I find something else I really want to read, or my book club books that have to be read get thrown into the mix.  There will be four more of those before this game is over (two of them are included here or there would be 6).

Okay, I'm going to stop now because I'm really starting to sound OCD.  Happy Reading!