Let’s start this monthly update on my local library’s Book Bingo fund-raising initiative by showing you what my card looked like last month.

And here is how it is looking today:

I did say last month I needed to crack on a bit to get those stickers and there are seven squares filled and with one month to go it’s looking a bit more do-able.  What did I read to achieve win these stickers?  Proof I’ve read these can be found in my reviews which you can get to by clicking on the titles………….

Firstly, two of the squares were “Questions”- with a little less time to play with this year we threw in a few random Question squares and I devised a book related quiz.  When someone brings back a book they can opt to be asked a question from this list- get it right and there’s a sticker, get it wrong and they’ll have to try next time.  As I thought up the questions and my memory is not so bad that I’ve forgotten the answers this bit has meant I’ve had to have rapidly made up questions asked me.  I will let you know the questions on my list which have been causing the most problems for the participants.

What kind of author would not have been eligible to win the Bailey’s Prize for Fiction or the Orange Prize?

Which crime writer almost won the Grand National on “Devon Loch”?

I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to catch out any reviewsrevues.com readers with those two…….

Onto my books read.  The top line (flower sticker) was for a book I found in the teenage/young adult section of the library.  This one was also recommended to me.  Patrick Ness’ The Knife Of Never Letting Go – the first part in his Chaos Walking trilogy (could also have been “first in a series” but I had another one lined up for that).  Reginald Hill’s “A Clubbable Woman” is the first in the Dalziel and Pascoe series.  You may recall I had reservations about this particular title but readers have been urging me on, it seems I have just touched on one of the great British crime writers.  FictionFan kindly wished that;  “I hope you get as much enjoyment from the series as it has given me over many decades and many re-reads…”This book got me the flower sticker on the third row.

The tulip (?) on the second row covers an author whose names begin with consecutive letters.  We allow this to go in either direction so Charlotte Bronte is as valid as Charles Dickens (but not Jane Austen).  Feels like a literary party game when I describe it like this. Rupert Smith was my preferred author here and I read his “Man’s World.”

The piggy sticker covers “With a family member in the title”.  Perfect for this would be a couple of titles by David Walliams.  I chose “Awful Auntie.”  (Gangsta Granny would have done just as well, but someone had already borrowed that from the library).  Lastly I had to have a book lent to me by someone so thank you to my friend Penny for passing on her copy of Robert Seethaler’s “The Tobacconist“.

I felt more confident about finishing yesterday but I can see I am going to be distracted by the announcement today of the Man Booker Longlist – of which I have read just one, “Swing Time” by Zadie Smith.  Unfortunately none of the longlisted titles have five words or more in the title, nor can be found in the library’s saga section nor are they poetry and almost certainly all longer than 200 pages.  I suppose if I researched them a little more I might discover that at least one is set before 1700, but I already had something lined up for that category.

So seven squares down this month and six to go before the closing date…………….