When it comes to choosing what to read next, I’m a bit of a mixed bag.

To a certain extent, I am a mood reader – choosing my next book by how I feel at the time BUT in recent years I have started enjoying setting monthly plans to try and follow. (Try being the operative word!)

I’m not overly strict about sticking to them – which lets me mood read still – but I like making them so I have a bit of a target.

If nothing else, it makes my ridiculous TBR feel more managable!!

It is easy, though, to always pick the shiniest, newest book on the shelf, meaning that some stories have sat waiting their turn for… years.

And that’s where book prompts come in.

From the Beat The Backlist Bingo to the Magical Readathons, having a prompt to follow means I pick things I perhaps wouldn’t otherwise.

I can still shoehorn in my new shinies, of course, but if the prompt says ‘A Book Beginning With A’ then I have to find one beginning with A. (I have exactly one book on my unread shelf at the moment beginning with A, so that was a fairly easy choice!)

Some prompts are nice and generic, ‘Read A Fantasy’ or ‘Has a Red Cover’, but others are very specific and require a bit more hunting: ‘A Moon On The Cover’ or ‘Has between 350 & 390 Pages’.

Using a couple of prompts a month, I am slowly making my way through my TBR more evenly than I was – some new reads and some that were the new and exciting ones back before I got distracted by something shiny…