Books

Thank you for running this! It was really fun to track through the year!

I didn't go out of my way to try to complete squares, just tracked what I read and what squares it would count as through the year. Overall, I finished with 19 squares completed and 34 total books read in the challenge timespan.

1A: Older Than You Are - Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare -
1B: Water, Water Everywhere - Tom Lake by Ann Patchett -
1C: What’s Yours is Mine - The Liar's Key by Mark Lawrence -
1D: Family Drama - The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah -
1E: It Takes Two - The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan, Brandon Sanderson -
2B: Plays With Words - Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin -
2D: Bookception - The Paris Bookseller by Keri Maher -
2E: Disability Representation - Age of Assassins by RJ Barker -
3A: Eazy, Breazy, Read-zie - Hex Education by Maureen Kilmer -
3B: Stranger in a Strange Land - Endurance by Alfred Lansing -
3C: FREE SPACE: One Less - I Am Legend by Robert Matheson -
3E: LGBTQIA+ Lead - Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah -
4A: Now a Major Motion Picture - Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman -
4C: Award Winner - Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver -
4D: Mashup - Piranesi by Susanna Clarke -
4E: Local to You - Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane -
5A: Debut Work - Educated by Tara Westover -
5D: Minority Author - Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride -
5E: Among the Stars - Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

There's probably a way to engineer a bingo here by reclassifying things that fit multiple boxes. I just put things in the better fitting or more interesting category.

• 1A: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd -- Agatha Christie. Missed Hard mode by 2 years. Old enough to read via wikisource. Everything else here was read in dead tree format.
• 1C: The Quantum Spy -- David Ignatius. Quantum computing, espionage thereof, and USA-China relations. Very Macguffin.
• 1D: Secrets to the Grave -- Tami Hoag. A single mother is brutally murdered. Her young daughter witnesses and survives the attack. Investigators wonder who the father is.
• 2C: Hannibal Fogg and The Supreme Secret of Man -- Tahir Shah. Hard Mode Published by and available free at http://secretum-mundi.com/
• 2D: The Cartographers -- Peng Shepherd. Hard Mode. About the 1930 General Drafting highway map of New York state, with the Agloe copyright trap. Additionally, includes a discreet, but significant shout-out to Ursula LeGuin's Lathe of Heaven.
• 2E: Boar Island -- Nevada Barr. A main character suffered a severe spinal injury (in a previous book, while mountain climbing with Anna Pigeon). She can walk with technological assistance. Boar Island was not designed for the mobility impaired; they move there for her teenage daughter's comfort, not her own.
• 3B: The Scent of Death -- Andrew Taylor. Hard Mode The narrator is a English clerk, assigned to New York City for the duration of the book, during the American Revolution. (I didn't look up the hard mode criteria, but assume it isn't this.)
• 3D: A Column of Fire -- Ken Follett. Follows Pillars of the Earth and World Without End in the Kingsbridge series.
• 4A: Gone Girl -- Gillian Flynn. I haven't seen the movie, but am told they made one.
• 5E: The Illustrated Man -- Ray Bradbury. Short stories, the majority of which involve extraplanetary travel, interstellar in some cases.
• AltA: Fatal Error -- F. Paul Wilson. I read Implant some years ago, but nothing of his recently or from this series. Order matters in this series; don't start here.
• AltB: Bones to Ashes -- Kathy Reichs. The author is a well-credentialed and academically respected forensic anthropologist who cares about getting the science right in her novels.
• AltC: Demon Crown -- James Rollins, ne James Czajkowski
• AltD: Inferno -- Dante Alighieri tr. Allen Mandelbaum. Hard Mode. I couldn't read it in the original Italian.

I planned out a full card...and then didn't finish it. Here's the "C" column books I read to complete my bingo:

1C - What's Yours is Mine: Alexandra Rowland - Running Close to the Wind

2C - Independent Author: Michelle West - Hunter's Redoubt

3C - One Less: Baroness Orczy - The Scarlet Pimpernel

4C - Award Winner: Larry Niven - Ringworld

5C - Institutional: Victor LaValle - The Devil in Silver

With a shout out to column "E", which I almost made it through as well. Thanks so much for putting this together--it was a lot of fun, even if I didn't meet my goal of reading all the books. I'm looking forward to planning my 2025 card!

Here was my list:

1A: Older Than You Are - Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees 1B: Water, Water Everywhere - The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton 1C: What’s Yours is Mine - The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids by Michael McClung 1D: Family Drama - We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson 1E: It Takes Two - Kill the Farm Boy by Delilah S. Dawson, Keven Hearne 2A: New Release - The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed 2B: Plays With Words - Ella Minnow Pea: A Progressively Lipogrammatic Epistolary Fable by Mark Dunn 2C: Independent Author - Swordheart by T. Kingfisher 2D: Bookception - The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard 2E: Disability Representation - Hawkeye Omnibus by Matt Fraction & David Aja 3A: Eazy, Breazy, Read-zie - Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman 3B: Stranger in a Strange Land - A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers 3C: FREE SPACE: One Less - The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy 3D: There is Another… - The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik 3E: LGBTQIA+ Lead - Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu 4A: Now a Major Motion Picture - Big Fish by Daniel Wallace 4B: It’s About Time - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald 4C: Award Winner - A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers 4D: Mashup - Manga Classics: Macbeth by Julien Choy, Crystal S. Chan, William Shakespeare 4E: Local to You - The Unlicensed Magician by Kelly Barnhill 5A: Debut Work - This Is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone, Amal El-Mohtar - A Change in Perspective 5B: It’s a Holiday - The Thanksgiving Visitor by Truman Capote 5C: Institutional - They Called Us Enemy by Steven Scott, George Takei, Justin Eisinger 5D: Minority Author - The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor 5E: Among the Stars - Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

Here's my list:

• 1A: Older Than You Are - The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson
• 1B: Water, Water Everywhere - The Bell in the Fog by Lev AC Rosen
• 1C: What’s Yours is Mine - The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré
• 1D: Family Drama - Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan
• 1E: It Takes Two - Roadside Picnic by Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky
• 2A: New Release - Crypt of the Moon Spider by Nathan Ballingrud
• 2B: Plays With Words - Dark Star by Oliver Langmead
• 2C: Independent Author - There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm
• 2D: Bookception - Malice by Keigo Higashino
• 2E: Disability Representation - Death in the Spires by KJ Charles
• 3A: Eazy, Breazy, Read-zie - Hold the Dark by Frank Tuttle
• 3B: Stranger in a Strange Land - On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers
• 3C: FREE SPACE: One Less - A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
• 3D: There is Another… - Auberon by James S.A. Corey
• 3E: LGBTQIA+ Lead - Weak Heart by Ban Gilmartin
• 4A: Now a Major Motion Picture - To Catch a Thief by David Dodge
• 4B: It’s About Time - The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed
• 4C: Award Winner - Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark
• 4D: Mashup - City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett
• 4E: Local to You - Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
• 5A: Debut Work - Neuromancer by William Gibson
• 5B: It’s a Holiday - Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge
• 5C: Institutional - Relic by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child
• 5D: Minority Author - The Spite House by Johnny Compton
• 5E: Among the Stars - The Last Gifts of the Universe by Riley August

Stats I thought were interesting: 10/25 were off my TBR pile; 18/25 hard mode. Most read category: horror, followed by scifi (including multi-genre works).

This was fun!