The new year is in full swing, and Chelmsford Library has a new reading challenge! This season we are challenging readers with Book Bingo (see the full card below.) Patrons who complete any five squares are entered to win a prize. Here are what our librarians are reading this winter for the challenge.

Check out a cookbook and try a recipe:

Smitten Kitchen Keepers, by Deb Perelman

Deb Perelman is the author of two best-selling cookbooks; one of the Internet’s most successful food bloggers; the creator of a homegrown brand with more than a million Instagram followers; and the self-taught cook with the tiny kitchen who obsessively tests her recipes to make sure that no bowls are wasted and that the results are always worth the effort.

Here, in her third book, Smitten Kitchen Keepers: New Classics for Your Forever Files, Perelman gives us 100 recipes (including a few favorites from her site) that aim to make shopping easier, preparation more practical and enjoyable, and food more reliably delicious for the home cooks.

Read a book with a blue cover:

Beautiful World, Where Are You, by Sally Rooney

Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart.  They worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?

Read a book that’s won an award:

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, by Shehan Karunatilaka

Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida—war photographer, gambler, and closet queen—has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the serene Beira Lake and he has no idea who killed him. In a country where scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers, and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts with grudges who cluster round can attest. But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali. He has seven moons to contact the man and woman he loves most and lead them to the photos that will rock Sri Lanka. This winner of the 2022 Booker Prize is not one to miss.

Looking for more suggestions for the challenge? Ask a Librarian!

Winter reading BINGO sheet: