Everyone has their own book challenges that they participate in every year while they read, and the awesome thing about it is each one is a little different.  For me every January I set myself minimum reading goal for the new year.  Which is usually 5 more books than I read the year previous.  My hope is at the very least to read that many books before the next January, but ultimately to go over.  So far each year I've managed to just barely scrape in my goal.

Last year was a little different.  My roommate, also an avid reader, and I stumbled across Book BINGO which is put out every year by Random House Canada.  We thought it would be a fun way to motivate ourselves to not only read more, but to branch out and read different things. So ever the Girl Scouts we are, we set some ground rules.

1. It has to be a book you haven't read before.

2. Each BINGO gets a small prize of the readers choosing. (Totally got her to clean my car once.)

3. The book can be in any format: audio, ebook, or physical.

4. Whoever manages to Blackout first is the winner and the losers buys dinner.

Needless to say neither of us won last year, but she has quite the collection of my Little Ponies now.  So when 2015 dawned and we were ringing in the New Year with Netflix, takeaway, and our brand new kitten, we decided to play again.  Only this year we were going to make our own squares.

Each of us added our own squares as we went.  Which is why I have to read a Classic Romance and she had to pick of up a Graphic Novel.  Some of them we recycled from the year before because we enjoyed them.  Others are just for fun, like a book with a Green Cover.  One thing we wanted to do was Recommend a book to each other that we felt the other should read.  This year she chose Station Eleven for me and I chose Tommyknockers for her.  She said she wanted to read more Stephen King so I went with my personal favorite of all his books, the one that scared me the most.

So now it's almost July and according to Goodreads I'm four books behind on my goal, but I'm not worried.  Winter is coming and out here it's best to be inside with a good book.  As for BINGO, well, I'm currently on the winning side, but I know at any given time she'll come up from behind and take the lead.

I'm so close to finally getting a BINGO, but I'm having a hard time finding a book I either haven't already read, or really want to read, that was published in 1988.  Either way it's nice to be ahead while I can be.  It truly sucks that she can speed read some days

So here it is my 2015 Reading Challenge.  On New Year's Eve this year both of us will sit down and work on a new one for 2016.  I think I might make her read something Victorian in nature.