Play Book Tag discussion

2020 is already full, so I'm not going to be too ambitious about challenges! Instead, I'll just note a few and see how far I get, particularly the PBT challenges which are always such fun.

I mostly want to get through a lot of my 'owned TBR' pile. Book magpie though I am, even I have now become guilty about the number of books that I own that I haven't read yet.

In priority order, let's see how this goes:
1. A book for each monthly tag - joining back in with the core of this wonderful group.
2. BINGO!
3. Poll Ballot - lining up those electoral college votes.
4. Pottering with Popsugar - where a book in another challenge fits a Popsugar prompt, I'll slot it in. Then in about September, I'll see what's left, and judge whether it's worth pushing to deliberately fill the other prompts.
5. Booker Bedlam - despite five longlist purchases this year I managed to read a grand total of zero so far (see 'owned TBR' reference above). Doesn't take much to improve that record...

PBT monthly tags

(trying to learn the months in te reo Ma'ori at the same time and getting annoyed that I can't see how to do macrons in GR script land ... using apostrophe as symbol for long vowel instead, sigh)

January (Kohita'tea) - thriller. The Woman in the Window; Old Bones
February (Hui-tanguru) - survival Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith Into the Wild
March (Poutu'-te-rangi) - journalism
April (Paenga-wha'wha')
May (Haratua)
June (Piripi)
July (Ho'ngongoi)
August (Here-turi-ko'ka')
September (Mahuru)
October (Whiringa-a'-nuku)
November (Whiringa-a'-rangi)
December (Hakihea)

BINGO

B I N G O
1970 1980 1998 2003 2017
1978 1987 1997 2001 2010
1977 1984 xxxx 2000 2016
1973 1988 1991 2009 2014
1974 1981 1994 2008 2012

Poll Ballot challenge

This year's equivalent of a cultural challenge - I get to learn a little bit about each state that I read for! I confess I had to look up some of the abbreviations ... and some of the geography was a bit approximate (oh, Minnesota is all the way up *there*!...)

* in italics = read but review not posted yet

Alabama (9) - civil rights
Alaska (3) - Inuit
Arizona (7) - Grand Canyon
Arkansas (6) - education
California (55) - Hollywood - The Woman in the Window; The Princess Diarist
Colorado (9)- Rocky Mountains - Old Bones
Connecticut (7) - Constitution
Delaware (3) - business - Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
District of Columbia (3) - presidents
Florida (29) - Disney
Georgia (16) - antebellum
Hawaii (4) - volcanoes
Idaho (4) - nature - Daughter of the Forest
Illinois (20) - comedy
Indiana (11) - auto racing
Iowa (6) - politics
Kansas (6) - weather
Kentucky (8) - horses
Louisiana (8) - southern gothic
Maine (4) - Stephen King
Maryland (10) - Navy
Massachusetts (11) - witches - The Binding; Clean Sweep Sweep in Peace, One Fell Sweep, The Magicians
Michigan (16) - Great Lakes
Minnesota (10) - vikings
Mississippi (6) - blues
Missouri (10) - pioneers
Montana (3) - wildlife
Nebraska (5) - farming
Nevada (6) - gambling
New Hampshire (4) - hiking Into the Wild
New Jersey (14) - mafia
New Mexico (5) - extraterrestrials
New York (29) - Broadway
North Carolina (15) - Appalachia
North Dakota (3) - paleontology
Ohio (18) - industry
Oklahoma (7) - Great Depression
Oregon (7) - ecology
Pennsylvania (20) - Amish - Sworn to Silence Pray for Silence
Rhode Island (4) - sailing
South Carolina (9) - pirates
South Dakota (3) - frontier
Tennessee (11) - country music
Texas (38) - space - Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void
Utah (6) - Mormon - Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
Vermont (3) - libraries - The Library Book
Virginia (13) - FBI Remnants
Washington (12) - coffee - Death by Coffee
West Virginia (5) - mining
Wisconsin (10) - cheese
Wyoming (3) - western Love Drunk Cowboy

Pottering with Popsugar

1. A book that's published in 2020
2. A book by a trans or nonbinary author
3. A book with a great first line
4. A book about a book club
5. A book set in a city that has hosted the Olympics
6. A bildungsroman - The Magicians
7. The first book you touch on a shelf with your eyes closed
8. A book with an upside-down image on the cover
9. A book with a map - Daughter of the Forest
10. A book recommended by your favorite blog, vlog, podcast, or online book club
11. An anthology
12. A book that passes the Bechdel test
13. A book with the same title as a movie or TV show but is unrelated to it
14. A book by an author with flora or fauna in their name - The Princess Diarist
15. A book about or involving social media
16. A book that has a book on the cover
17. A medical thriller
18. A book with a made-up language
19. A book set in a country beginning with "C"
20. A book you picked because the title caught your attention
21. A book published the month of your birthday
22. A book about or by a woman in STEM
23. A book that won an award in 2019
24. A book on a subject you know nothing about
25. A book with only words on the cover, no images or graphics - Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
26. A book with a pun in the title
27. A book featuring one of the seven deadly sins
28. A book with a robot, cyborg, or AI character
29. A book with a bird on the cover
30. A fiction or nonfiction book about a world leader
31. A book with "gold," "silver," or "bronze" in the title
32. A book by a WOC
33. A book with at least a four-star rating on Goodreads - Old Bones [bizarre but true - it's on 4.13]
34. A book you meant to read in 2019 - The Woman in the Window
35. A book with a three-word title - Love Drunk Cowboy
36. A book with a pink cover
37. A Western - Love Drunk Cowboy
38. A book by or about a journalist - Into the Wild; Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
39. Read a banned book during Banned Books Week
40. Your favorite prompt from a past POPSUGAR Reading Challenge

Advanced

41. A book written by an author in their 20s
42. A book with "20" or "twenty" in the title
43. A book with a character with a vision impairment or enhancement (a nod to 20/20 vision)
44. A book set in the 1920s
45. A book set in Japan, host of the 2020 Olympics
46. A book by an author who has written more than 20 books
47. A book with more than 20 letters in its title - Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
48. A book published in the 20th century
49. A book from a series with more than 20 books - Salvation in Death
50. A book with a main character in their 20s - Clean Sweep

Booker Bedlam

tba

Kate(or shall I call you Katrine now?-Yes I like the sound of it-very British(and I love all things British!) Tell me, is it pronounced
Ka-treen or Ka-trina?

Any-who(not a typo-Mid-Western U.S. slang)-I thought about including Pop Sugar this year using the same concept-you have convinced me-and I am stealing your name for it. I am assuming "pottering" means something like "dilly-dally"?

Ha - yes my name is Scottish. It’s pronounced Katrin (exactly like Katherine but with a hard ‘t’ rather than a ‘th’). So it’s actually super-easy but the ‘e’ on the end fools everyone.

I get some hilarious variants on it but Katreen is the most common. Add a NZ or Aussie accent to ‘Katreen’ and it’s like a chainsaw ripping through teak. But I’ve never shortened it except for online nicknames - instead I’ve just learned to answer to everything - including ‘hey you’...

Pottering is kind of gently playing about. Or yes, dilly-dallying

...then dilly-dally I shall!

I used the exact same dilly dallying strategy this year .org for pop sugar and for another group’s bingo.
It works really well. Will do it again this year

Good luck with the challenges and the learning of Maori months (such long names. I’m imagining they are actually descriptive - like “the time rain makes the leaves glisten’ or ‘the time snow melts from the mountains’ but maybe it’s much less romantic than I imagine)

KateNZ wrote: "Ha - yes my name is Scottish. It’s pronounced Katrin (exactly like Katherine but with a hard ‘t’ rather than a ‘th’). So it’s actually super-easy but the ‘e’ on the end fools everyone.

I get some..."

Your name looks very similar to Katrina, which is a derivative of Katherine, so that must add to the confusion.