Celebrate 2025 Summer Book Bingo!
May 22, 2025
Our Executive Director, Rebecca Hoogs, reflects on the beginning and evolution of the beloved summer reading program. . .
Eleven years ago, at an event with Judy Blume, Seattle Arts & Lectures and The Seattle Public Library launched Summer Book Bingo. The idea was the brainchild of Ruth Dickey, our Executive Director at the time, who very rightly thought that adults also deserved the joy and pleasure of a summer reading program with a board to track your progress and the lure of a prize at the end. (Who else remembers the temptation of a personal pan pizza fueling their summer reading?). Linda Johns at The Seattle Public Library heard of the idea, and a beautiful collaboration was born.
Since then, the program has grown, evolved, and is now wildly anticipated by readers around the region. We are so excited this year to expand the collaboration to welcome the King County Library System to the partnership, across 77 library sites. Each year, over 1,500 readers of all ages submit their boards to be entered into the prize drawing, but we know that many more are playing along. And of course, the real prize is reading: giving yourself the time and permission to sink deeply into a book, to sink into many books! Perhaps the experience is an escape. Perhaps it’s an education. One bingo board, with its 24 prompts designed to spark curiosity, joy, and connection, can hold both. The choice is yours!
People sometimes ask us how we choose the prompts, or how the squares have evolved over the years. We choose them, first and foremost, with lots of input from you! On the back of each board there’s a place for you to write in a category idea for next summer. Then the library staff and SAL staff get together look at all the ideas, share their own, and also consider what might be happening in our world at a particular moment that we want to shine a light on. We love to encourage folks to read new genres, to consider lived experiences outside of their own, and to engage with their community (such as our local library workers, local bookstores, and with SAL!). We love categories that are experiential and that get people reading together, recommending books to each other, and talking about what they read.
Above all, the squares are designed to be endlessly flexible and open to your interpretation. We want there to be lots of options in the SPL and KCLS catalog, and lots of ways for you to interpret each category. There are no wrong answers; reading is the answer.
In a time when funding for libraries, museums, and the arts and humanities is being cut or challenged, it feels ever more important to support our libraries, to support writers who are bringing us both truth and joy, and to gather in community to feel the power of books to move and educate us. Gathering to talk about books, devoting time and attention to ideas, to curiosity, to creativity, to debate—this is important work. And we do this work together at SAL through our events—and through Summer Book Bingo.
To get you started, here are a few books for this year’s categories that I am looking forward to reading myself or that I would recommend to you.
- PNW Nature – Street Trees of Seattle, An Illustrated Walking Guide by Taha Ibrahimi. My family and I just got this book and we are excited to read it together and to take walks around Seattle this summer.
- Found Family – The Safekeep by Yael Van der Wouden. This twisty work of historical fiction is moving, romantic, and thrilling. I stayed up way past my bedtime reading this one!
- BIPOC Historical Fiction – James by Percival Everett. If you haven’t read this one yet, put it on your list! I read it in physical form, but I’ve heard that the audiobook is stellar. (Yes, audiobooks totally count as reading!)
- Humor – Good Material by Dolly Alderton. This novel started out heartbreaking, but became funnier and funnier as it went.
- Censorship – The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Coates writes so movingly about the experience of going to South Carolina to a school district where his books are being banned.
- SAL Speaker, Past or Present – Lovely One by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. There are too many books I could recommend in this category, but I can’t help but recommend that you read Justice Jackson’s memoir. She kicked off our season last year!
- Intergenerational Friendship – The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong was just chosen for Oprah’s Book Club. Vuong is coming to SAL on June 1! Tickets are almost sold out in person, but online tickets are still available.
- One Big Book – The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese. This is truly a big book, and truly worth the investment! His talk at SAL last year was one of my favorites ever.
- New to You Format – Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls. If you haven’t yet tried a graphic memoir, let this be your opportunity! Feeding Ghosts by local artist/author Tessa Hulls just won the Pulitzer Prize!
- Great Escapes – The Pairing by Casey McQuiston. The Pairing is a very spicy and totally addictive romantic romp through Europe. Recommended if you love books featuring travel, food, and queer romance!
I hope you will be inspired to give yourself the gift of time, and I can’t wait to hear what books you will be recommending to me by the end of the summer.