Now let’s get into a book that doesn’t work regarding bingo strategy. Joe Granville’s How to Win at Bingo is revolutionary because it’s one of the earliest strategy guides.

This 145-page book advises readers to choose cards with optimal number combinations. Granville uses stats to suggest that 60% of the first-called balls have different last digits. For example, you’d avoid cards with numbers like 15, 35, 65, and 75.

Unfortunately, the bingo advice in this book suffers from the false theory that one can manipulate a random game. Bingo games feature random results and are therefore unpredictable.

You can’t choose winning bingo cards by looking at the numbers—regardless of what the questionable 60% stat suggests.

Affiliated with Gambling Times Magazine, this 194-page guide presents a mixed bag of information. The history, rules, gameplay, and terms sections are excellent.

On the other hand, the strategy section leaves something to be desired.

Snowden falls into the trap of discussing bingo systems and patterns. If interested, you can read this information for entertainment, but you’ll get the most value from the rules and gameplay sections.

You might also find the game’s history discussion interesting. This section visits sixteenth-century Italy when the government began running a bingo-themed national lottery to generate funds.

Snowden progresses through the centuries by covering bingo origins in France (1700s), Germany (1800s), and the US (1900s). The US portion details how toy salesman Edwin Lowe introduced this game to wider American audiences.  

Keep Grandma Off the Streets: Tales from the Bingo Hall isn’t a strategy book but rather an entertaining read.

It features 25 short stories about players and employees at a bingo parlor. Every story relates bingo to life and offers a mixture of drama and humor.

Matthew Del Mei generates ideas via his experience working in a bingo hall. He calls on his observations and experiences to compile one of the best non-strategy books about bingo.

Keep Grandma Off the Streets offers a refreshing break from the dry works throughout the industry. Consider reading this book between strategy resources to break up the monotony.

This work is also perfect for gaining perspective into the other side of the industry. You may have many bingo experiences as a player, but you can gain insight into what parlor employees experience through Keep Grandma Off the Streets.

This 2002 work covers the game’s basics and tips on how to win more often. It has been through three editions, with more information added in each version.

The Basics of Winning Bingo is a decent book if you’re a beginner. However, it has little value to experienced players—especially those seeking in-depth strategy.

Cardoza may be a blackjack expert, but he seems out of his element when discussing bingo. The famed author advises readers to play multiple bingo cards with vastly different numbers from each other.

The idea is that unique cards offer more chances to hit called numbers. This approach falls into the fallacy that there’s a semblance of strategy to choosing cards.

Erdrich is one of 30,000 enrolled members of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. She uses Chippewa characters in most of her novels and short stories.

The same holds true in The Bingo Palace, which focuses on the lives and dramas of tribal bingo employees.

You might find Erdrich’s perspective unique compared to other authors on this list. The Bingo Palace explores how a successful and expanding gambling parlor threatens sacred Chippewa land.

This book also focuses on a love story between Lipsha Morrissey and Shawnee Ray. Morrissey has returned to the reservation after being summoned by his grandmother, ultimately finding work at the reservation’s Bingo Palace.

The Bingo Queens of the Oneida: How Two Moms Started Tribal Gaming in Wisconsin is a 2014 nonfiction work. It doesn’t contain any strategy, but it could be helpful if you’re interested in bingo’s business side.

Hoeft’s work examines how Alma Webster and Sandra Ninham started bingo games in Wisconsin as tribal fundraisers. The Oneida women did so in 1976, long before tribal gaming exploded in popularity.

The book traces the historical struggles of the Oneida people, part of the Iroquois nations, since the revolutionary war and through their journey to Wisconsin.

It also chronicles the lives of the notable tribal members who helped worked alongside Alma and Sandra to essentially ignite a movement that would see more tribal bingo halls spring up across America.

In this novel, Author Jonathan Whitelaw creates a fun mix of humor, puzzle-building, and, of course, bingo—throwing you into a world where the numbers on the cards hold the secrets of a classic “whodunit” murder mystery. 

Set in the UK’s Lake District, you’ll join an unlikely duo of amateur detectives as they navigate the twists and turns of the bingo hall. 

At first, they aren’t the most likable characters, but they do start growing on you as the plot unfolds. 

Although the the book falls into some of the all-too-typical tropes of the genre and the 300+ pages make the story run thin at parts, I enjoyed the ride towards the big final reveal.