In Bring Your Own Book, players take turns drawing prompts from the deck, then race to find the best phrase in their own book that satisfies the prompt.
Everyone has a book and sits in a circle. The cards are placed face-down in the middle. The starting player should also have a 1-minute timer. Each player gets four cards (with 5-7 players) or five cards (with 3-4). The starting player takes the top card off the deck, picks a prompt, and reads it aloud. Everyone except the Picker searches their book for text to match the prompt. They’re seeking for sequential text of any length: a single word, half of a sentence, a whole sentence, multiple sentences.
The first Seeker to find matching text announces “I’ve got it” and starts the timer. When the timer runs out (or every Seeker announces “I’ve got it”), each Seeker reads what they’ve found. Seekers who didn’t find text in time open to a random page and read a random sentence from it.
The Picker chooses their favorite submission and awards that Reader the card. After each round, the person to the left of the last Picker starts the next round. Once any player reaches three cards, everyone passes their book to the player on their left. This happens any time a player reaches three cards during the game. As such, it can happen as many times as there are players. It is quite possible for players to pass until they have their original book back.
The game proceeds until one player reaches the set number of cards. With 5-7 players, four cards wins it; with 3-4 players, it’s better to play to five.
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