Themis-Athena's Garden of Books

The King is dead -- long live the King!  Halloween Bingo may be over, but the fun and games on BookLikes sure aren't.

Eh voilà ... here's your playing card for this year's festive tasks game:

As in previous years, the game lasts from November 1 through December 31.

Like an Advent calendar, our festive calendar this year has 24 ”doors“, behind each of which hides the square for one particular holiday falling (with one exception) into the game period.  Some of these holidays you’ll recognize from last year’s game, some are new.

With each of the 24 holidays included in the festive calendar, one book reading task (typically, coming with several alternative choices) and four non-book tasks are associated: As in previous years, completing either the book task (in any of its alternative incarnations) or any of the non-book tasks suffices to complete that particular square / door.

Like in last year’s game, however, completing more than one task per square / holiday will earn you a corresponding number of extra points.  You can earn up to five points per holiday / square (1 for the book-related task and 4 for the non-book-related tasks).

As a general rule, we will be “opening” the festive calendar’s doors on the dates on which the respective holidays occur.  “Opening” a door will reveal the holiday hiding behind that door and the associated book and non-book tasks.  An exception will be made for the seven holidays at the end of the calendar period (after December 16), which we will be naming – and for which we will be revealing the associated book tasks – right at the beginning, so as to allow for sufficient time to complete those books.  The non-book tasks for the holidays occurring after December 16 will be revealed on December 16.

You have the option to replace up to two holiday-related tasks (for different holidays), either books or non-book tasks, by using the book joker card.  To use the book joker, read a book for any of the holidays on the card that are already unveiled at that time.

Finally, like last year, we will be using the number of total points accumulated by all participants as a basis for the amount we’ll ultimately donate, on behalf of the BookLikes community, to one or several book-related charities.

We'll be reposting the rules in the Bingo group and open a "Questions" thread -- if you do have questions, please post them there.  Thanks in advance!

(ETA: See thread here:

http://booklikes.com/thread/4498/24-tasks-of-the-festive-season-card-rules-mode-of-play-and-questions)

Let the games begin!!

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P.S. -- IMPORTANT NOTE: If you intend to use an image of the playing card in your own posts, you're going to have to copy and save the image at the top of this post here. 

The "door opening" technique involves some fancy coding (all courtesy of MbD), which basically means that what is going to appear as one seamless card in our posts from now on is actually going to be a bunch of individual images all sitting snug right next to (and above and below) each other, so wherever you right-click on "copy", you're only going to be copying that particular fractional image.