2023 r/Fantasy Book Bingo Challenge
Every year, the r/Fantasy subreddit issues a challenge: complete a bingo card filled with various science fiction and fantasy topics on it. As you can see, the topics are varied, but that’s the point.
The core of this challenge is encouraging readers to step out of their comfort zones, discover amazing new reads, and motivate everyone to keep up on their reading throughout the year.
The bingo period lasted from April 1st 2023 to March 31st 2024. I learned about the challenge around August, and decided to give it a shot even though I was getting a late start. I read a lot of SFF anyway, so I was sure that I already had some books that qualified. I thought I would complete the card fairly easily, but I couldn’t have been more wrong! As you’ll see below, I fell a few squares short. Finding qualifying books that were available at my library and met my own personal reading criteria was difficult. I ended up reading books hoping that I’d be able to fit into a square later. While I’m glad I took on the challenge, this made my overall experience unsatisfying.
I read around 40 books a year, and SFF generally takes up about half of that. Over the bingo period I found myself reading more SFF than normal, and that goes against one of the core sentiments of the challenge to step outside of one’s comfort zones. To do that, I need to read less SFF, not more. I appreciate what this challenge is trying to do, but for myself, I think I can accomplish those goals more natually on my own than by shoehorning my book selections into the bingo card. But even though I didn’t complete the challenge, I’m still proud of how much I finished and the books that I read.
Without further ado, my final bingo card:
Here are all the qualifying books I read during the bingo period:
| Title | Author | Finished | Squares |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas | 2023-04-01 |
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| Network Effect | 2023-04-19 |
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| This Is How You Lose the Time War | 2023-05-07 |
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| Time and Again | 2023-05-27 |
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| Death's End | 2023-06-19 |
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| Doomsday Book | 2023-07-03 |
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| 2001: A Space Odyssey | 2023-07-11 |
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| The Space Between Worlds | 2023-08-02 |
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| The Rosetta Mind: Book Two of the Rosetta Series | 2023-08-08 |
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| Avatar, the Last Airbender: The Legacy of Yangchen | 2023-08-15 |
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| Fugitive Telemetry | 2023-08-17 |
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| The Regional Office is Under Attack! | 2023-09-15 |
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| Reboot | 2023-09-29 |
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| Rebel | 2023-10-04 |
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| Dracula | 2023-10-10 |
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| The Sentence | 2023-10-30 |
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| House of Gold | 2023-11-07 |
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| Standard Loneliness Package | 2023-11-08 |
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| Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World | 2023-11-28 |
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| Akata Woman | 2023-12-11 |
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| We Could Be Heroes | 2023-12-20 |
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| Just Out of Jupiter's Reach | 2024-01-10 |
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| How High We Go in the Dark | 2024-01-19 |
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| Trail of Lightning | 2024-01-27 |
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| System Collapse | 2024-02-04 |
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| Rosewater | 2024-02-14 |
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| 2043... a Merman I Should Turn to Be | 2024-02-15 |
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| The Visit | 2024-02-24 |
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| Nova | 2024-03-07 |
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| Galatea | 2024-03-08 |
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| A Wizard of Earthsea | 2024-03-16 |
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| Lagoon | 2024-03-23 |
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