Frankly, I'd stopped counting Bingos the week prior to the end of the game. My main goal was finishing reading books.
I managed to finish one last Halloween Bingo book, The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins, about four hours after midnight, November 1st. It may not count towards Halloween Bingo in terms of timeline, but I count it as a personal success. Honestly, I could have ditched both The Haunted Hotel and Midnight Blue-Light Special, and inserted two short stories by Edgar Allan Poe to finish with a Blackout. I have a volume sitting on my bookshelf with randomly bookmarked stories I'm interested in. And his books would be able to fill the 'Classic Horror' square AND the 'Creepy Raven Free Space' just fine.
But I was stubbornly refusing to give up on The Haunted Hotel... which I managed NOT to finish before October came to an end, mainly because I'd been so exhausted from the past few evenings at work that I kind of just passed out after dinner and slept through until I suddenly awakened at 2:30 A.M. on November 1st and decided to just read.
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| le sigh... even the best laid plans have other plans in mind... |
But moving right along...
I cannot stop expressing how much I love these reading games at Booklikes, which have, more than once, brought me out of a full reading slump. This year my reading slump was probably the worst it's been in a very long time, starting up sometime in February... and continuing on until June when I tried to marathon Jayne Ann Krentz books... and then dipping again until right before Halloween Bingo started up.
So once again, a big thank you to Moonlight and Obsidian! I'm prepping myself for Halloween Bingo 2019 already!
While September was still a slow month for me, in terms of average books read (as well as quality), October was a month of wonders as I pretty much increased my number of books read times two.
September: 8 books read
October: 17 books read
Meanwhile, I also discovered a few new authors I'd love to continue reading from! In my book, that is one of the biggest pluses about Halloween Bingo--discovering new-to-me authors, and lots of new books to add to that ever-growing TBR!
In a nutshell, I decided to wrap up this post with some stats as well as The Good, The Bad, and The Meh--books I liked or loved, books that were sorely disappointing, and books that were just okay.
The Card
Nothing really changed from the last time I updated. Since I technically didn't finish reading The Haunted Hotel before the end of the game, I didn't earn that one last Bingo in the first column. It wouldn't have made much of a difference since without that middle square being read (which should have been the easiest one to finish), I'm short four Bingos and one Blackout.
But no matter!
I've got 23 books read and 23 squares completed with 7 total Bingos to appease me!
The Good
As I'd already stated, I discovered a lot of new authors I'm very interested in continuing to read from. While there were some pretty disappointing books these past two months, there were fortunately more than enough enjoyable ones to make up for it.
I found an author that made me super giddy to continue reading in Seanan McGuire's Discount Armageddon. I found a strong, intriguing, fast-paced cozy mystery with LynDee Walker's Nichelle Clarke series--three books of which I read for Halloween Bingo. Jasper Fforde is an author I've always had my eye on, and after reading The Big Over Easy, I will definitely be picking up more books by him. I enjoyed The Name of the Star much more than I'd expected.
Then there were my typical go to authors: Laura Griffin and Jayne Ann Krentz. Finally, Barbara Michaels is an author I'm still following since I started reading her in last year's Halloween Bingo.
The Bad
I think, in terms of quality of books read, September's reads were the more disappointing ones. I'd been looking forward to Nora Roberts' Circle trilogy, if only because I like her Romantic Suspense books, and because all three books potentially fit several possible squares on the Bingo Card. Unfortunately, I had a hard time getting into them and they felt repetitive. How I finished them was a bit of a miracle in itself.
Same goes for Get Well Soon by Jennifer Wright, in that I think I probably would have abandoned it if not for it being a Flat Book Society read that I stubbornly wanted to finish. The Splendour Falls was only easy to finish because I listened to it as an audio book during my drives to work and back. Secret Admirer's only good point was that it was a quick, bite-sized read.
The Meh
These books were neither excitingly awesome, nor were they really terrible. My favorite of these might actually be Spinning Silver, if only because the writing is wonderful. But the drag of the story, and the chaos of the multiple first person POVs kind of played a disadvantage to it, so I couldn't quite love it, even if I didn't dislike it.
The "I Don't Know Where to Put This One"
Because I'm still reeling from the ending weeks later and still cannot say whether or not I liked it... for reasons.
Yeah... I don't know how to feel about this one. I still feel kind of blindsided, but I'm not sure whether it was a GOOD feeling of being blindsided (if that even exists), or a bad way...
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