Halloween Bingo is a punctuation point in my reading year. I like the focus it brings. I enjoy searching my shelves as I plan for it, playing with the graphics for presenting it, seeing everyone else getting into the spirit of the game and reading books that I otherwise might not have gotten around to.

Normally, with the game about to begin, I’d be impatient to start my first book. This year, i felt like I was having to rush to finish the books I’m already involved with or push them aside. When I thought about that, I realised that the Books Up Next section of my Saturday Summary posts might be causing me a problem. I’m essentially a mood reader but I get fascinated by stringing books into themes so I make pretty plans and then deviate from them. I’m a book magpie. I start off with a clear direction of flight and then drop out of the sky when I see something shiny. 

When I looked back over my ‘Books Up Next’ list, I found that several of them are still on my shelves, untouched because something else caught my eye that week. With Halloween on the horizon, I started to see the unread books as a set of broken promises and wondered if books ever huddled together on shelves, plotting revenge or if they faded like Keat’s knight under the thrall of La Belle Dame Sans Merci.

Either way, i wasn’t ready to make 25 new promises with the book spines of so many broken promises in my peripheral vision, so I revisited my Halloween Bingo Booklist and incorporated as many of the books that I’ve broken promises to as I could.

This is the booklist I arrived at.

NOW, I’m ready for the game to begin.