Reading Plan and Challenges for the Year 2023

I'm getting old...

I'm getting old, I feel the unbearable pull to play community games and will follow that call by playing bingo galore. Book bingo, that is.

So, I pledged to participate in two book bingo challenges for the course of the year 2023: First one is "Spooky Bingo" with nine squares of costum horror subgenres (haunted house, gothic, witches, sf, translated, re-telling, zombies, historical, comedy) who have to be written by authors from marginalized groups such as women over 40 or indigenous, lgtbq+ or black authors etc.

The second bingo challenge is a little more elaborate and it is for my Shine&Shadow group. In it, I received a personalized bingo card and a list of 60 prompts corresponding to the numbers on the bingo card. The prompts include stuff like "read a book published in your birth month", "a book with an animal on the cover", "a book set on a plane or train" and so forth. I can reach three levels in this challenge; level one for marking off five squares in a row; level two for marking off two lines and finally, my goal, to mark off all the squares on my board. So I have a total number of 24 books I need to read for this and the preparation itself was a lot of fun, but at the same time a challenge in itself. There's going to be lots of books I otherwise never would have read, so I'm excited, let's see how this goes. I'm confident.

Another challenge I take part in is my usual A-Z book title challenge in which I will read a book for each letter of the alphabet. This one isn't as complicated and doesn't require much organizing in advance. I plan to fill in as I read my normal books and then towards the middle of the year see what letters are left and then chose my books accordingly.

Then there are my usual Shine&Shadow challenges - The Shine&Shadow Double Down where I mainly get the chance to read books that haven't been selected for the S&S group reads throughout the year as well as the Reading Rhythm, in which I read books that fit a song title. In the past year I actually attained the title of "Casual Listener" by completing my pledge of five books. My this year's goal is to complete 20 songs and thus unlock the "Super Streamer Mode", wish me luck!

Since I want to someday have read all the books I own in my shelves, I joined a thing called The Mount TBR Challenge in which you cannot read new books and try to finish books you already own or that are on your backlist. There are so many awesome new releases this year that it will be pretty damn hard to do well in this challenge, so I pledged for one book a month, twelve in total for 2023.

Can I please add that I successfully finished all the challenges I joined in 2022? Woohoo, yay me! My hopes are high for this year too.

Let's also take a quick look at my anticipated reads for the new year. I of course can't know all that's coming up, especially since Emily Hughes called it quits with tornightfire and there's no more yearly list of anticipated horror publications anymore... So I tried to gather my information from other sites and from what I could gather, here are the 2023 horror books I'm excited about:

How To Sell A Haunted House by Grady Hendrix, because, duh! It's no secret I am a big fan of Hendrix and I'm a sucker for haunted houses so this cannot go wrong, right?

Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward - I love the cover for this and my hopes for the story are high otherwise too. A psychological thriller set in a lonely cottage on the Maine coast, a killer of the past, an author who writes his last book. I hear words like "mind-bending" and "cleverly crafted" when talking about Ward and I'm sold already.

Don't Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones - You can tell I'm starting off with the no brainers when you see SGJ on top of my lists. I still haven't written my review on the first book of the Lake Witch Trilogy, My Heart is a Chainsaw, because I wanted to see how the story goes on and was waiting for this second book. And kept on waiting, and waiting, and waiting. 2023 is the year it is finally been released and we'll finally find out how life treats slasher super fan JD.

Piñata by Leopoldo Gout - I think it was last year that I reviewed Gout's Ghost Radio, which had its flaws (biggest one was that the main character and his girlfriend were asshats) but a good enough read overall. So I hear that his new book includes a possession and some old Aztec Gods. That's intriguing.

Maeve Fly by CJ Leede - Talking about main characters, Maeve Fly seems to be a little on the crazier side. Maeve Fly apparently follows an actress who likes to slip into the role of her favorite literary heroes? And for this one guy she decides to take on the role of Patrick Bateman, aka American Psycho. Sounds as freaky as the cover looks.

Lone Women by Victor Lavalle - I am a big fan of Lavalle's and I am always happy to see new projects by him: his prose is always and without exception of very high quality, his stories carefully thought-out and worth your time. I hadn't heard from him for quite some time, so I'm especially excited about Lone Women, a historical horror about a woman who carries with her a chest which in turn carries secrets.

There are no lists yet which comprise upcoming horror anthologies, novellas or collections and this is driving me crazy! This is exactly why I can't plan, I need to stay alert and rush off as soon as a good anthology is released because it's easy to miss them. Feel free to tell me if you hear of any good anthologies being published his year!

So, as you can see, I'm really hoping to put a substantial dent into my TBR list this year. Let's just hope that there's not too many good new releases because they're my weak spot and very hard to resist...

Have a great reading year whatever your reading goals are!