It’s fun to Bring Your Own Book
We’ve always enjoyed reading books in our family.
As parents, we loved reading to our kids at bedtime (and they loved seeing how long they could keep us reading).
And as they’ve grown, they’ve continued to enjoy reading books.
Jaden and Caleb in particular absolutely devour books. I don’t know where they got their ability to speed-read, but they read circles around me.
So when we got a recently released game from Gamewright that involves books, we were anxious to play it.
And now that we’ve played it, we can confirm that Bring Your Own Book is a fantastic game for families.
How to play Bring Your Own Book
There really isn’t much to explain about how to play the game because it’s so simple.
And if you’re familiar with games like Apples to Apples, then you’ll already understand the basic objective and flow of play.
But before starting, each player needs to do like the name of the game says and bring a book to play with.
It can be any type of book – and often, the wider the variety, the more fun the game. Players will use passages from their books to win cards during the game.
The objective of the game is to be the first person to collect a certain number of cards (4 cards in a 6-8 player game or 5 cards in a 3-5 player game).
Players take turns being “The Picker” – in which they take the top card from the deck, pick one of the two prompts on the card, and read it aloud. Here are some example prompts from the game:
- Part of a love letter
- Lyrics from a lullaby
- Overheard at a sporting event
- Words scribbles on a sticky note at the office
- Don’t open an email with this subject header
Then the other players search through their books for a passage that fits the prompt. Depending on the prompt, players can find text of different lengths to fit – whether it’s a word, a phrase, a sentence, or more.
Once a player has found something, they shout out that they’ve found one and the timer gets flipped over. Now the rest of the players only have 1 minute more to find something.
When the timer runs out, all the players take turns reading aloud what they’ve found. If a player didn’t find anything, they may just turn to a random page and read something aloud.
Then the Picker chooses their favorite answer and rewards that player with the card.
The role of The Picker then shifts to player to the left of the previous picker and another round begins.
Also, whenever any player collects a second card, players pass their books to the player on their left. That way, players aren’t stuck with the book they begin the game with. It’s a great twist during the game to be flipping through a book you’re less familiar with looking for good passages.
Once a player has collected the set number of cards, they win the game.
And that’s all there is to it.
It’s simple, straightforward, and we enjoy it a lot.
Game Play Variants
The rulebook for Bring Your Own Book also includes a few suggestions for variations on the basic game play.
One variant is to allow The Picker to search their book for a fitting passage as well. Then the Judge becomes whoever is last to find a selection.
Another suggested variant is to let everyone select the winner each round. After players have found their selection, count down from 3 and then everyone points to whom they think found the best passage for the prompt on the card.
With such a simple family game, it’s also easy to add your own house-rules to best suit how your family enjoys playing.
Can the whole family enjoy Bring Your Own Book?
The beauty of Bring Your Own Book is that everyone in the family can enjoy playing. The game doesn’t involve any strategy or anything difficult to understand.
The recommended age on the side of the box says 12+, but we think that’s way too high. As long as players can read, they can play.
One of the things that makes the game so enjoyable for families is having a variety of book styles in play at once.
We’ve played with biographies, teen novels, history books, self-help books, business books, children’s books, and motivational books. And I think next time we play; we’ll pull out some cookbooks, computer manuals, and art books and see how it turns out.
What we like about Bring Your Own Book
I’ve already mentioned a few reasons why we enjoy Bring Your Own Book so much.
The first reason being that everyone in the family can play – and that everyone in the family enjoys playing.
It’s also such a casual game that we haven’t yet even played at a table. Instead we just sit around wherever it’s most comfortable. In fact, the first time we played the game was outside in lawn chairs.
We also love having a variety of books in the mix to bring in more creativity in our selections. And because the books shift between players during the game, it also spurs discussions around the books themselves.
I’ve found out more about the books Brooke enjoys reading and have even added a couple to my “to read” list. Likewise, I later found Caleb reading a book I’d brought out for one of our games.
One of the funniest examples of this was after our first game. I had chosen John Adams by David McCullough as my book and had won quite a few cards with passages from the book. So when we pulled out the game the next night, which book did Caleb bring? Yep – John Adams.
We also like that each card has 2 prompts to choose from. That way, The Picker can choose whichever option they like – whether they’re looking for something challenging or humorous.
Sometimes the time limit seems like a downside of the game as players may have to rush to find something to fit. But we’ve also found that many hilarious responses have come from picking random pages and pointing to selections after the time has expired. Sometimes it’s been a dud. But many times we get a good laugh out of it.
With the prevalence and ease of reading digital books, another thing we like about Bring Your Own Book is that it’s much better played with physical books. Sure you could play it with digital versions, but it’s so much easier to flip through a book physically with your eyes quickly scanning for good passages to use.
How does Bring Your Own Book score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?
If it’s not apparent yet, we’ve had a great time playing Bring Your Own Book. It definitely scores very high on our “let’s play again” game meter.
Once we got the game we didn’t waste any time diving into it. While only 3 of us were there to play our first game, we quickly introduced it to the rest of the family. And we’ve played it many times since.
Bring Your Own Book now has a prominent spot in our game closet because we want it to be easy to grab when we’re after a light game we can all enjoy playing together.
We highly recommend you get a copy of Bring Your Own Book for your own family.
Thanks Gamewright for yet another great family game!
