Musing Mondays–Bookish Bingo!

October 20, 2014 by bookmammal 22 Comments

Click here to play along!

Musing Mondays is a weekly meme hosted by MizB that asks you to muse about one of several “bookish” questions… or you can just ramble on about anything you like that pertains to books! You can join in by clicking the graphic above. Go ahead–it’s fun!

Here’s my musing for this week–

I saw this bingo card on kwizgiver’s blog a few weeks ago and thought I’d see how many squares I could fill in with books I’ve read so far this year. Ready? Here we go!

More than 500 pages: We Are Not Ourselves by Mathew Thomas weighs in at 640 pages. I read part of this as a library book and part on my kindle, so luckily I didn’t have to lug it around with me!

Forgotten classic: I haven’t read any classics this year—just about everything I’ve read this year was published in the last year or two.

Book that became a movie: I haven’t read anything this year that became a film—but I did read a book ABOUT the movie industry—Pictures Of A Revolution by Mark Harris.

Published this year: Some Luck by Jane Smiley—it was just published on October 7. It’s the first book in what will be a trilogy and I loved it!

Book with a number in the title: 1963: The Year Of The Revolution by Ariel Leve.

Author under 30: Katie Heaney is in her mid-twenties and wrote the memoir Never Have I Ever –I thought it was OK, but I’m about 25 years older than her intended audience.

Book with a non-human character: I don’t usually read books that have inanimate objects as main characters—but the graphic memoir Relish by Lucy Knisley had a lot of food and recipes in it, so I’m going to count it for this category!

Funny: I Work At A Public Library by Gina Sheridan is a collection of very short vignettes and quotes from library workers. If you’re a booklover, parts of this book are laugh-out-loud funny. One of my favorites—a library patron wants to know where to find autobiographies of dragons.

Female author: Curtis Sittenfeld sounds like a man, but SHE is the author of several novels including Sisterland, which is about adult twin sisters who grew up sharing psychic powers. I liked this book a lot more than I thought I would.

Mystery: Big Little Lies by Lianne Moriarty probably wouldn’t be considered a hard-core mystery, but the plot kept me guessing up until the end.

One Word Title: Hidden by Catherine McKenzie was a great alternating point of view novel about a man (who dies in the first chapter), his wife, and a woman who may or may not have been his lover.

Short stories: Other People We Married by Emma Straub. I picked this up after I read her latest novel The Vacationers and was pleased to discover that several of that novel’s characters actually originally appeared in this short story collection!

Set on a different continent: The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters was set just outside of London. I adored this book!

Nonfiction: I’ve read a ton of nonfiction this year—but one of the most memorable was Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune  by Bill Dedman. Proof that truth is often much stranger than fiction!

First book by an author: Tell The Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka. What a wonderful, thoughtful, moving book this is! I can’t wait to find out what Rifka writes next.

Book I heard about online: I probably heard about the majority of books I’m listing here from my blogging buddies! I can’t pick just one!

Best-seller: Chestnut Street by Maeve Binchy was on the NYT bestsellers list for awhile.

Based on a true story: The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout is based on a hate crime.

Book from the bottom of my TBR pile: I finally got around to reading The Attachments by Rainbow Rowell. I liked it more than Landline, but not as much as Eleanor & Park and Fangirl.

Book your friend loves: I don’t get a lot of recommendations from friends—I’m usually the one who is recommending the books to them!

Book that scares you: I didn’t read anything that sticks out as being scary this year.

More than ten years old: I’ve hardly read any backlist this year (I’m actually working on a future post on this!) so I’ve got to leave this one blank.

Second book in a series: I used to read a lot of series books but I haven’t done so in ages.

Blue cover: The Vacationers by Emma Straub. I love this cover, and I loved the book!

So–my score is 19 out of 24 squares filled in–not too bad!

How about you? How much of the card could you fill in? Have you read any of my fill-ins? Please share!