2026 book bingo is here!
join @madame-ellunas-moonlit-readings book bingo discord server here!
and play along on storygraph here, thanks to @obi-wann-cannoli!
helpful tips:
- Only books finished in 2026 count for the sheet. You can start planning in December of 2025 and even start reading if you want but you better wait until January to finish that book before you cross it off your sheet.
- The bingo is designed to be played in such a way that every book you read will only be counted for one square. Even if you read a great science fiction manga with a bright pink cover that’s twice your age and comes highly recommended by your librarian, the idea is to pick just one square to cross off, not all five. The goal of this game isn't to fill the board with as few books as possible; it's to expand your reading habits with lots of unique books.
- In general, there are two guiding principles behind these prompts: having fun and trying new things. Hopefully those can go together as much as possible!
- If you're stressing about whether something does it doesn't qualify, or worrying about how fast you read, or sad that you might not clear the whole board or get a bingo, remember #1: this is for fun.
- If you're finding yourself reluctant to look too much outside of your usual kind of reading and try something new, remember #2: this is a good opportunity to read some stuff you might not ever read otherwise. Even if you don't find a brand new fave, at least give it a chance.
- Rereading books is fine, but I would personally recommend that rereads are not the majority of your squares in order to follow guiding principle #2.
- Fanfic does not qualify, sorry.
- Novellas are fine.
- Audiobooks are fine.
- Reading comics/graphic novels/manga for any of the prompts is fine. Please don't feel you can only count them for the square that's dedicated to them.
- This applies to almost every square. There's no limit on how many translated books, banned books, pink-covered books, etc, that you can read. (Frankly I would love to see an all-pink board.)
- The only exception is the TTRPG space. Feel free to try out more games, because there are a lot of great ones, but please don't use them for more than the designated space.
- I don't use prompts like “queer author,” “disabled author,” “author of color,” etc, because I find it can quickly become rather tokenizing. However, I do strongly encourage participants to be mindful of whose perspectives they are reading, and be cognizant of who’s underrepresented in their literary life. With all the love in my heart, there were a lot of extremely white boards last year. When’s the last time you read a book by a Black woman? A nonbinary author? An author who lives and writes in the Global South? The point of these questions isn’t to make you feel shame over your current reading habits, but to encourage awareness of the way that prevalent societal prejudices may shape your reading without you consciously noticing.
- Feel free to incorporate your own extra goals to help structure any efforts to read more diversely. For instance, BookTuber thisstoryaintover set up a 2026 reading challenge that includes reading at least one book by an author of color for every book by a white author. This may be a helpful idea for you to keep in mind if you're hoping to have a diverse book bingo, or you could go all out and try to fill the sheet with only books by authors of color (or queer authors, non-American authors, etc).
- Also: you can stack any other reading bingos or challenges with this! I know that I couldn’t stop you anyway, but I just want to be clear that that’s fine with me! I'd love to see any other bingo sheets or challenges you take part in this year so I can steal ideas lmao.
- If you have any questions about how to classify a book and the explanations below aren't helping, feel free to check in! My inbox is open for bingo questions all year!
- And as always, please please please tag this blog with any progress you're making, pictures of your sheets, or miscellaneous thoughts about your reading. I'd love to see :)
prompt explainers:
1. Short Story Collection: A collection of stories, which are short! They can be any genre you can think of, and many authors will in fact play with a number of different genres in the course of a single collection. Or, if you’d rather sample work from many authors, you can pick up a short story anthology. Some collections I’d recommend are Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties, ZZ Packer’s Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, Kim Fu’s Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, and Julia Armfield’s salt slow.
2. Microhistory: As a literary term, “microhistory” is used to refer to a nonfiction book that zooms in on the history of a single thing. A good example would be Jamie Loftus’ book Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs, which traces the evolution of the hot dog as a staple of American culture. if you don’t like hot dogs then there are also microhistories of butter, hair removal, vibrators, candy, jewelry, cleanliness, colors, cannibalism, salt, and almost anything else that you can think of. if it exists, there’s a historian who’s obsessed with it! You can find lists of suggestions here, here, and here, but don’t overthink it too hard. as long as you’re looking at a surprisingly specific history, you’re on the right track.
3. Librarian/Bookseller Recommendation: Why not ask for a recommendation from the people who think about books for a living? One of my favorite ways to discover new books is by asking an employee what book they’ve enjoyed lately every time I visit a new indie bookstore while traveling. Personally I strongly recommend striking up a conversation in person, but if that’s a big nope for you, then many libraries and bookstores also list staff picks on their website. You can also try the Indie Next List, a list of recommendations from indie booksellers across the US.
4. Non-European Fantasy: Any fantasy book you like, so long as it’s explicitly modeled on a non-European culture. That could be an alternate world fantasy, such as Tomi Adeyemi’s Yorbua-inspired Children of Blood and Bone, Tasha Suri’s Jasmine Throne, based on ancient India, or Fonda Lee’s Jade City, inspired by post-WW2 China. You could also look for a fantasy set in the modern world, like Darcie Little Badger’s A Snake Falls to Earth, which is steeped in Apache culture, or Zen Cho’s Black Water Sister, which is full of ghosts and spirits in modern Malaysia.
5. Main Character Isn’t Human: This book could be any genre, as long as it meets that one requirement. The MC could be a robot, a dog, an alien, or an elf, so long as they aren’t human. Maybe you’ll check out Martha Wells’ much-loved Murderbot Diaries, or take a walk through LA with the mountain lion star of Henry Hoke’s Open Throat. For the nonfiction enjoyers out there, you could check out Dr. Moiya McTier’s The Milky Way, which is narrated from the perspective of the galaxy itself.
6. 2025 Award Winner: You know, any book that won an award in 2025. It doesn’t matter what award; any prize will qualify! You can see recipients of some major awards here, or check out some others: the Lambda Literary Awards for LGBTQ+ works, the Ignyte Awards for speculative work by authors of color, the Romance Novelists’ Association’s awards for the best romance novels of the year, or the Transfeminine Review’s Reader’s Choice Awards for books by and about transfemmes. Hell, if you really need to scrape the bottom of the barrel, even Goodreads has awards. Go find yourself a winner!
7. Independently Published or Self Published: Did you guys know that just five publishing companies (Penguin Random House, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette Book Group) are responsible for 80% of books published in the US each year, and 25% of books globally? Check out their many, many publishing imprints here to see just how much of the market they have cornered. For 2026, I encourage everyone to break away from the Big Five and see what some small presses and independent authors are putting out! If you need some ideas about where to start, check out this list of over 250 independent publishers, complete with notes on what kind of books they put out!
8. College or University Setting: A book set (primarily) at a college or a university! That’s the only rule! Institutions of higher learning, dramatic as they are, span every genre, leaving you endless options: check out Ali Hazelwood’s collegiate athlete romance The Deep End, Tracy Deonn’s Arthurian urban fantasy Legendborn, Elaine Hsieh Chou’s grad school satire Disorientation, the magical 1830s Oxford of R.F. Kuang’s Babel, or the OG of dark academia herself, Donna Tartt’s The Secret History.
9. Literary Fiction: At Writer’s Digest, Michael Woodson describes literary fiction as “less of a genre than a category,” which “focuses on style, character, and theme over plot.” My recommendations include Raven Leilani’s Luster, The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi, and Melissa Broder’s Milk Fed, and Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar. You can catch some more recommendations in these linked videos from thisstoryaintover and What Rae Reads.
10. Blurb Buddies: This is one of my favorite additions to this year's book bingo, because it’s totally impossible to plan for. To find your blurb buddy, pick any other book you're reading for 2026 Book Bingo and find a blurb on the cover. (For those who may be unfamiliar, blurbs are those little quotes that hype the book up, often written by people whose books that are vaguely similar.) Find a blurb from an author you've never read, and go read one of their books. That's your blurb buddy!
11. A Book About Music: There are countless ways for a book to be about music. Maybe you want to read the biography of your favorite messy band, or the history of a particular genre. Or maybe you would prefer a magical, musical mystery set in New Orleans, like in Alex Jennings’ The Ballad of Perilous Graves, or country singers falling in love, as in Regina Black’s August Lane. Heck, maybe you actually want to read a giant coffee table book with the lyrics to every Beyoncé song cover to cover. What counts as “about” music is up to you; all I’m asking is that it plays some kind of central role in whatever you read. Find the song in your bookish heart!
12. Not Originally Published in English: I really hope it goes without saying that great books are published in every language. It’s totally fine to fulfill this prompt by reading a book that has since been translated into English–I know that’s what I’ll be doing, since that’s the only language I can read–as long as it was originally published in any other language on Earth. A couple of my favorite authors in translation are Mariana Enriquez (translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell) and Sayaka Murata (translated from Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori). You can get more ideas from the International Booker Prize, which is awarded annually to books translated into English.
13. Pink Cover: The cover has to be pink. Or at least mostly pink. That’s it!
14. Read + Play a TTRPG: You know what takes a hell of a lot of skill to write? Tabletop roleplaying games. You should read one–and, even better, you should play one. And don’t feel restrained to the most well-known games, either–Monster of the Week, Vampire: The Masquerade, and Call of Cthulhu are cool, but they’re hardly the only games out there. If you’re not in the mood to learn a lot of rules, why not check out a game like Lasers and Feelings or Time To Drop, or the many hacks of both games? You could play Dread, which uses a Jenga tower in place of dice or any other tools, or Let These Mermaids Touch Your Dick Maybe, which requires sticky hands and a dildo to play. No friends? No problem! Try a journaling game like Who Killed God?, Apothecaria, or Thousand Year Old Vampire. You could even give some fellow Tumblrinas a little love by playing games like @that-house’s Oh Fuck, The Killer! or @takataapui’s it is a beautiful day on the marae and you are a baby pūkeko. Hell, if you really want to be a suckup you could even buy Imagine Queer Worlds, the game I co-authored, which uses a deck of cards to help you brainstorm news norms for sexuality and gender in fictional settings.
15. Twice Your Age (At Least): This one will be a little bit personalized to every person who participates, since I’m making the very bold assumption that we’re not all the same age. I will personally need to find a book that’s (at least) 58 years old, which means that the MOST RECENTLY it can be published is 1968, but your cutoff date will likely be different. If you want to go way into the past and play it safe with something like Shakespeare or the Odyssey, that’s absolutely fine, or you could challenge yourself to find something from your exact cutoff year. Either is great, and that’s why the “at least” is there.
16. Historical Fantasy: For our purposes, this is going to be fantasy that takes place in the real world, during real historical events, with a dash of the fantastical mixed in. Think of Leslyle Penelope’s The Monsters We Defy, which brings spirits and curses to 1920s Washington, D.C.; Shannon Chakraborty’s Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, where 12th century pirates clash with monsters and magic; or Naomi Novik’s His Majesty’s Dragon, which adds (get this) dragons to the Napoleonic Wars. Once again: real history, fake magic. You got this!
17. 2026 Debut Author: You know, an author who’s publishing their first book ever in 2026. Show them some support! No idea how to go about finding debut authors? 2026debuts.com has you covered.
18. Challenged or Banned: If you care enough about books to participate in this bingo and you happen to live in the US, you probably know that we’re still mired by attempts to ban or restrict access to books from school and public libraries across the country. Some of the most frequently targeted books are those that deal heavily with trans and gay identities, racial inequality, and depictions of sexuality. In recent years, the three most challenged books in the United States were George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue, Mariam Kobabe’s Gender Queer, and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. I recommend learning a little about what’s being challenged in your area, especially since book bans don’t only happen in America, but if you’re unable to find anything specific to where you live, this list of books banned in Texas schools will give you over 2000 options to pick from.
19. Cultural Nonfiction: This isn’t strictly an existing genre name, so I’ve kind of invented it for the sake of this bingo. Basically, here’s what I want you to do: find a work of nonfiction about a culture that you’re not part of–it could be folks of a different nationality, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity, you name it. Any group that’s different from you in some way! If you, like me, are not a gay man, you might enjoy Jeremy Atherton Lin’s Gay Bar: Why We Went Out, following the history and significance of gay bars. Or, if you happen not to be Black and disabled, you may want to check out Sami Schalk’s Black Disability Politics, a history of ways that Black activists have incorporated rights for disabled people into the fight for racial justice. If you aren’t Filipino, I can recommend Anthony Christian Ocampo’s The Latinos of Asia: How Filipino Americans Break the Rules of Race. I’m trying not to predict my own bingo reading too much this year, but I think I’ll probably be checking out Gregory D. Smithers’ Reclaiming Two-Spirits: Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal & Sovereignty in Native America.
20: Gothic Fiction: This is self-indulgent, because I’m getting waaaay into Gothic fiction right now and I want to bring you with me. Gothic fiction is distinct from horror but has a lot in common with it–some of the earliest examples are Frankenstein, Dracula, and Carmilla, after all. This is a genre that doesn’t necessarily need real monsters, but is still obsessed with haunting, fear, and, often, the secret horrors hidden in very specific locations: think of Emily Brontë Wuthering Heights, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, the beautiful Manderly from Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, or the grief-filled 124 Bluestone Road in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Contemporary Gothic novels are also alive and well, including Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic, Isabel Cañas’ The Possession of Alba Díaz, and M.M. Olivas’ Sundown in San Ojuela.
21. Read It + Do It: Have you ever been so inspired by reading about someone else describing an activity they love that you decided to try it yourself? The goal of this space is exactly what it sounds like: read about something in someone else’s words, then do it. It could be as straightforward as following the instructions for a recipe or a crochet project; that’s totally allowed! Or you could, say, start walking more after reading Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust, get inspired by Jamaica Kincaid’s My Garden (Book) to grow your own plants, or let Christian Cooper’s Better Living Through Birding get you in the habit of identifying birds you see. You don’t need to be good at the thing or make it a lifelong habit, but at least try it once!
22. Science Fiction: For anyone brand new here, allow me to offer you a Wikipedia definition of science fiction: “Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is the genre of speculative fiction that imagines advanced and futuristic scientific or technological progress. The elements of science fiction have evolved over time: from space exploration, extraterrestrial life, time travel, and robotics; to parallel universes, dystopian societies, and biological manipulations; and, most lately, to information technology, transhumanism (and posthumanism), and environmental challenges. Science fiction often specifically explores human responses to the consequences of these types of projected or imagined scientific advances.” For your own reading, you could check out anything from the low-tech dystopia of Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower to the high-tech near-utopia of Becky Chambers’ The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, from the political sci-fi/fantasy blending epic of Xiran Jay Zhao’s Iron Widow to the contemporary horrors of Jessamine Chan’s The School for Good Mothers.
23. Manga, Comic, or Graphic Novel: The world is your oyster here, kiddo. There’s a big, big world out there outside of superhero comics (although Cliff Chiang’s Catwoman: Lonely City is great), so if that doesn’t float your boat then let’s get looking elsewhere! There’s a manga, comic, or graphic novel out there to suit every possible taste. As always, I heartily recommend Ryoko Kui’s Dungeon Meshi–all fourteen volumes.
24. Romance: Per the Romance Writers of America, a book has two central requirements to qualify it as a romance novel: a main plot that involves characters falling in love and figuring out how to make their relationship work, and an ending that is “emotionally satisfying and optimistic”--that is, a happily ever after (HEA). A book that just happens to contain a romance subplot won’t do, and neither will one where the characters are torn apart at the last minute for a tragic ending. ROMANCE. Some widely-loved titles from the last few years are Akwaeke Emezi’s You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty, Tia Williams’ A Love Song for Ricki Wilde, and Emily Henry’s Funny Story. You might also have fun browsing the micro collections curated by the romance podcast Fated Mates, which includes collections of books basketball romances, books with heroes who have spectacular mustaches, and one simply titled “Asian Romances That Fuck.”
25. Writer Bio/Memoir: Listen, I know what you’re going to say: “Obviously if someone’s written a memoir, then they’re a writer.” So let me clarify that this is specifically about people who are (or were) known for writing, who then wrote a memoir or had a biography written about them. They don’t need to be famous, but they do need to be some kind of writer–an author, an essayist, a poet, a journalist, a playwright, a ghostwriter–by trade. Think of bios like Susana M. Morris’ Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler and Caroline Fraser’s Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, or memoirs like Jesmyn Ward’s The Men We Reaped and Arundhati Roy’s Mother Mary Comes to Me.
jkottke