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Alright, first off the standard challenges. Like last year I'll just recreate these again:

Historian Challenge
Graphic Novel Challenge
Subgenre Focus Challenge
Standalone Challenge
Explorer Challenge
Awards Challenge
Female Author Challenge
Short Story Challenge
Series Completist Challenge

And now fun part, picking out new slots for the BINGO challenge. Here's the card from the current year to remind us what we've just done:



The ones we tend to keep year after year since they already provide a good basic stretch across things we should all try to do when reading:
Alternate form
Anthology
Award Winner
New-To-You Author
Published before ??? (I'll pick some date)
Published in 2024
Book that was Free (since that's just the center square)
Translated from another language


And our list of existing suggestions, new ones always welcome

Genres:
High Fantasy
Hard Sci-Fi
Speculative
Space Opera
Epic Fantasy
Young Adult
Middle Grade
Urban Fantasy
Humour
Romance
Mystery
Apocalyptic / Dystopian
Optimistic / Utopian
Non-fiction SFF
Fantasy of Manners

Authors:
Female Author
Male Author
LGBTQ Author
Author of Color
By a favorite author
Indigenous
With a disability
Non-English author (kind of same as "Translated")
Indie Author

Features:
Female/Male/etc protagonist
Non-human protagonist
Some kind of fantasy creature (dragon, unicorn, demon, god)
Features some SF creature (alien, AI)
Features some kind of job (librarian, doctor, ruler, cop/detective)
Immortality
Time Travel
Distant Future/Past
Parallel/Portal Worlds
Alternate Timelines
Non-Western Country or Culture
Set in a real, non-English-speaking country
Military SF
Near Future
Social SF
Religion
Mythology
Fairytale / folklore
Colony
School
Lost civilization
Generation ship
Features a character with wings/tail/other unusual feature
Tech/Magic run amok
Bio/Nano-tech
Talking animals
Virtual Reality
A holiday (Christmas, Halloween, something specific to the world)
A station or an inn
Telepathy/Psychic
Invasion
Clone/Doppleganger

"Punks":
Steampunk/Gaslight
Cyberpunk
Silkpunk
Solarpunk / Clifi
Biopunk
Decopunk
Atompunk
Dieselpunk
Gunpowder/Flintlock Fantasy (not really punk but goes with the rest)
A punk character :D You know the kind with spiky green hair and piercings and probably in a band and stuff


"Metadata":
Number of pages
Short story/novella/novelette
Beautiful cover
Cover that is -some colour-
Debut novel
Standalone novel
Last book in a series
Omnibus
SF/F Translated from other than English
Made into a TV show or movie
Media Tie-in
Shared World (multi-author series)
Pre-20th Century SF/F
SF/F Graphic Novel
Complete a duology/trilogy
E-book / Audiobook
A special letter or word in the book title
Published in a certain month of the year
Prequel / Sequel

My choices for 2024 would be hard sci-fi, time travel, and based on a game

Based on a game...at first I was like, nah, sounds kind of hard...but then my eyes glanced over at the Myst trilogy I picked out for next year, and thought, what's the chance?!? Bring me the bluuuue paaaages....

The trick is not to do the reverse, where my first thought was Witcher, but it was a book first, game after :) Same with Metro 2033 which also popped into my head since I read the first book and needed an excuse to read the second.

Warcraft and Warhammer and Halo would all works...and Minecraft apparently? My brain went how can one write about about building blocks (I've never played BTW) but then there are a bunch of Lego movies so why not...

It all looks good to me! I'll be happy with whatever.

Andrea wrote: "Based on a game...at first I was like, nah, sounds kind of hard...but then my eyes glanced over at the Myst trilogy I picked out for next year, and thought, what's the chance?!? Bring me the bluuuu..."

Lol, sounds kinda hard shouldn't be that much of a negative - that's what I thought about elfpunk in this year's Bingo 😄 Just Warhammer, 40K, and D&D would have to be close to a thousand novels. There's plenty of novels based on computer games and board games as well.

Yup, we need a few "kinda hards" at least otherwise what's the point of a "challenge". And maybe my brain also fixated on video game, I mean I read a whole pile of D&D related books this year so that wasn't even remotely hard.

Other suggestions - Arthurian and Alternate History

You're not a secret telepath are you? I had those two in my head as possibilities :)

Too bad Alt History wasn't on this year's card since a bunch of people read Temeraire, but maybe that will be motivation to continue with book 2 (along with a million other options).

Andrea wrote: "You're not a secret telepath are you? I had those two in my head as possibilities :)"

Great minds ... 😁

I'll be putting together the new card some time this week-ish but there's still room to make suggestions, whether from the existing list or something new.

Here's a sneak peak at the 2024 BINGO card. I'll get the challenge itself set up in a few days, along with all the other ones, but you can already start thinking about what you'll put in each slot



- Female Leader (as opposed to a female lead) she needs to be an officer in the military, a president/prime minister, something like that, not just a lead character

- Features a Performer, ok what I really wanted to put here was Circus Performer but felt that was a little too hard, so you can pick any kind of performer but since we did musician this year will be added challenge to avoid that, aim for an actor, dancer, etc but if all else fails a musician counts too

- The spinoff series is where an author takes a minor character from his main series and gives them their own set of novels. There's lots of examples but a few that come to mind are Michele Sagara writing a couple books about Severn Handred, the Bean novels from Ender's Game, the Richard and Kahlan books by Goodkind related to the Sword of Truth.

Looks like a great card. I'm going to try again in 2024. This year went poorly for personal reasons, but I'm excited to get back to normal now! Definitely looking to see what other pick for Indie Author.

My challenge this year was more challenging than expected but more due to planning to read certain books but then getting distracted by something else, so I had to scramble to fill a few of the slots.

Next year's card starts with slots I know I can fill with what I picked out to read, but we'll see if I once again change my mind as the year progresses!

This looks like a good card, except I know I will NEVER read a book of more than 1,000 pages! So that square will be incomplete, for sure. A couple of the others will be a challenge, but I will give it a shot! I'll be looking for what others suggest for some ideas. Thanks for making this up for us! edited to add: I just spent a few enjoyable hours planning what I will read for this year's card!!

One trick for the 1K+ slot is if you're going to read say a trilogy anyway, see if there is an omnibus version and then pick that version from ŷ������ to read.

Indeed, I will probably go with a trilogy omnibus for my 1,000+ page selection, although I do have some Peter F Hamilton in my TBR pile, and they are sometimes over 1,000 pages.

I don't know what I'll do for 1k. I've been looking for omnibus editions, but the things keep coming in at 750-950 pages. I did find the Shannara trilogy, but I keep hearing mixed things about that. Anyone read it?

I guess I could reread LotR.

*cough* I've read the entire Shannara series this year, minus the last book which I'll be starting either tonight or tomorrow, including short stories and graphic novel.

The first book is basically Lord of the Rings with character and place names changed up, but a lot of the same plot point are exact matches. While some people suggest skipping it and starting with book 2, I think you do miss out on key characters and worldbuilding if you do that. The next two books Brooks got brave enough to venture out and do his own thing.

The series on the whole had a lot of ups and downs for me, at times Brooks would rehash plots and events (which maybe reading it 20 years after the original, rather than 5 months, it would feel more nostalgic than repetitive!) Thus I'll be giving away some books in the series, but keeping others, the first trilogy of course is a keeper because it sets up everything else that follows.

Other 1k suggestions I know of
- Several books in A Song of Ice and Fire (of course if you haven't read it already, and are willing to perhaps never find out how it ends)
- Two books in the Dandelion Dynasty by Ken Liu
- A couple Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan
- The Icewind Dale & Legacy of the Drow Trilogies omnibus by R A Salvatore

Hmm, I was going to recommend a few other books/omnibus but you're right, its hard to hit 1k actually. I believe we did 900 once before and that seems like it would have been easier, like I was about to suggest the Long Price Quartet but its 976 pages!

One thing that for sure would count is that even if the edition you have has less pages, if ŷ������ lists one with 1k+ you can still go with it. After all depending on hardcover vs trade vs mass market vs ebook you get all kinds of page counts.

Well, reviewing the card I'd say there's only 4-5 that are "hard" so hopefully the 1k slot wasn't overly challenging! I honestly thought the omnibus version would be easier to find! Worst case scenario...if you get really close (high 900's) I think you can cheat a bit, nobody is checking after all :)

I cheat on the translation one, by reading something directly in French rather than digging up an English version. Although some years I've read Italian books in French since there was no English version :)

More recommendations for good 1k+ books are welcome. I'm doing the Dandelion Dynasty ones if anyone is wondering. I won the first one through ŷ������ a few years back and now that the series is complete I'm grabbing this chance to read the rest.

Good ideas to do an omnibus. I hadn't thought of that. I look around and see what I may find. edit: I looked on a GR list "Omnibus Editions - Fantasy and Science Fiction" and found one I had marked to-read! So I'll give it a shot! Thanks!!

Several Sanderson books are over 1k pages, and Steven Erikson's Malazan series has at least one (I didn't dig through them all) with House of Chains

The added challenge though is that its rarely the first book in an epic series that has the massive page count, to get to House of Chains you need to get through 3 other large tomes!

It's 2024 for some people already so I went ahead and created all the challenges for next year. Enjoy!

The in-progress ones are still available if you scroll down the list for any last minute updates on those.