It’s time for … Halloween Bingo!

Yeah! I am really excited because today starts the Halloween Bingo! We were playing this for the last couple of years over on BL, and I am just so glad that it could be salvaged from the ruins of the site. Many thanks to Christine, Obsidian and Char for organizing this! We are playing over on GoodReads now but since it will dictate a lot of my reading for the next two months I will also share it here.

The rules are pretty simple: everyone is given a personalized card with 25 bingo spaces (out of an available 60 or so). The theme is Halloween, so all spaces have something spooky and can be filled with Horror, Suspense and/or Supernatural reads. Every day – like in a normal bingo game – a square is called and if it’s on your card, you can cross it off. However, in order to call BINGO, you need to read a book for each space in the bingo. It sounds more complicated than it is now that I try to explain it. One book can only fit a single space, so this takes some planning.

Without further ado, this is my beautiful card for 2020, and I have been trying out something new from the block editor – so you can use the slider to see which book I selected for each space (more on that after the picture) :

It’s nice, isn’t it? We are getting a head start but with which prompt to start? With my luck it will be the last space to be called, probably. I might resort to the random number generator to choose a book for me, because I am thrilled (pun intended) to read all of them. The good news is that they almost all were already on the TBR in one way or another (Yes, my TBR is that large and the stuff of nightmares) so I didn’t end up buying a lot of books just to fit the prompts. I did get a copy of the Graveyard Shift (but that was free on Amazon, so that hardly counts, does it?) and Wuthering Heights was on Project Gutenberg.

A closer look at the bingo spaces

All book covers link back to GoodReads for more info about each book.

• Gothic: Frankenstein – Mary Shelley. A real Gothic classic which I have been planning to read for ages.
• New release: The Pursuit of William Abbey – Claire North. It is published on Nov 12 2019, which is after Halloween last year.
• Grave or Graveyard: Graveyard Shift – Angela Roquet. I was looking to fill this prompt, when I came across this book which was free on Amazon, and it has Graveyard in the title so it fits well.
• Demons: Prosper’s Demon – K.J. Parker. A Tor novella I am looking forward to reading.
• Psych: The Girl on the Train – Paula Hawkins. I am finally going to read this, a couple of years after everyone else.

• Deadlands: The Boy on the Bridge – M.R. Carey. I read the Girl with All the Gifts earlier this year. This one is set in the same world, but is supposed to be a standalone, if I have understood correctly. Contains Zombies.
• Doomsday: Oryx & Crake – Margaret Atwood. I have been meaning to read this series for a while, after reading The Handmaid’s Tale and Hagseed. Apocalypse books are normally right up my alley, so I have high hopes.
• Monsters: The Tropic of Serpents – Marie Brennan. The follow up to A Natural History of Dragons. It will feature dragons, which some will see as monsters.
• Aliens: Binti – Nnedi Okorafor. I bought this recently in a small shopping spree. According to the list in the GoodReads group, this should fit in with the Aliens prompt.
• Modern Masters of Horror: Horns – Joe Hill. With this prompt I was thinking Stephen King, but I don’t own that many of his recent (after 2000) books which I haven’t read. So, I have settles for Horns.

• Spellbound: A Discovery of Witches – Deborah Harkness. Contains witches, and another book I have had for a couple of years.
• Creepy Carnivals: Carnivalesque – Neil Jordan. Changelings and a creepy hall of mirrors. Sounds spooky.
• Free Square: Down World – Rebecca Phelps. Any horror, supernatural or suspense novel. I went with a recent ARC I got. It is pitched as a mix between Stranger Things and Dark, so I am curious.
• Sleepy Hollow: We Have Always Lived In The Castle – Shirley Jackson. My first book by Shirley Jackson, it is set in New England. I am really looking forward to this one.
• Terror in a Small Town: Maniac – Harold Schechter. A non-fiction for a change about a school shooting (real terror) in the 1920s in a very small town in Michigan.

• Black Cat: The Black Cat – Edgar Allen Poe. After scrolling through my TBR looking for a black cat, in the end I just typed it in the search bar and this short story popped up. I haven’t read it, but apparently it is like The Tell-Tale Heart.
• Cozy Mystery: The Ice Maid’s Tale – Mandy Morton. I don’t read a lot of Cozy Mysteries, but I happened to have this one as an ARC. The wordplay in the title suggests it is going to be very cozy. Apparently part of a larger series, I am supposing I can just start somewhere halfway into the series.
• Murder Most Foul: The Mysterious Affair at Styles – Agatha Christie. Here I smartly combine our Agatha Christie group read and the bingo, so fingers crossed the square will not be called before October 😉
• Halloween: Something Wicked This Way Comes – Ray Bradbury. I moved this book around a lot between different squares, but eventually a book taking place on Halloween was the most difficult to find, so here it is.
• It was a dark and stormy night: Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë. From the suggestions for the square I found this book, and got it from Project Gutenberg.

• Film at 11: Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but will first read the book and then maybe try to watch the movie.
• Full Moon: Life As We Knew It – Susan Beth Pfeffer. On my TBR for ages. Big moon on the cover, and an apocalypse caused by the moon.
• Vampires: Switchback – Melissa F. Olson. I’ve read the first book some time ago, and still had book Two and Three. Contains Shades = Vampires
• Southern Gothic: Beautiful Creatures – Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl. A recommendation for the Southern Gothic square. I added the series to my TBR a long time ago, hope I will enjoy it.
• Trick or Treat: The Inspector of Strange and Unexplained Deaths – Olivier Barde-Cabuçon. It was rather difficult to find a book in which the characters dress up, but this is set at the 18th Century French court, so I guess everyone is dressed up with the giant dresses/costumes and wigs?

So, these are my reading plans. Now I will grab a cup of tea and start reading a book. I used the random number generator and it will be: Carnivalesque.

I will bring some regular updates and will make sure to let you know when I make a BINGO!

Are you joining for Halloween Bingo? Have you read any of these books?
– Make sure to let me know in the comments!