We’re officially three days away from the start of The Reading Rush (formerly known as the Booktube-a-thon). For those unfamiliar, The Reading Rush is a read-a-thon originated by Ariel Bisset and Raeleen Lemay that started in 2013 and has run every summer. The goal is to read as much as you can in the designated week, but other challenges are issued on top of that - seven themed reading challenges (with the bonus of attempting to read 7 books in the 7 days of the challenge), youtube challenges, instagram challenges, twitter reading sprints, and read-ins. I’ve attempted to participate the last three (maybe four???) years, but something has always come up (moving, travel, etc) that’s gotten in the way…but I’ve got a good feeling about this year. The Reading Rush has their own forums set up for the purposes of collecting badges and recommending books, but since bookishness is sort of at the heart of what we do here, I thought it might be nice to have a place for Mountie-specific encouragement! So! I’ve just about finished my TBR list, and I’d love to hear from anyone else that might be participating, or could be convinced to participate!
The 2020 Challenges:
Read a book with a cover that matches the colour of your birth stone.
Read a book that starts with the word “The”.
Read a book that inspired a movie you’ve already seen.
Read the first book you touch.
Read a book completely outside of your house.
Read a book in a genre that you’ve always wanted to read more of.
Read a book that takes place on a different continent than where you live.
I know I’m not going to be able to read 7 books next week (or any week of the year, let’s be real), so I did a lot of logistical gymnastics to arrange my TBR to hit all the fun challenges but still be manageable. What I’ve ended up with are:
Nimona (1, 4, 5, 6)- checks off the color and genre boxes, it’s something that I could read outside on my porch (so outside my house), and I picked it with a random choice generator so it’s “the first one I touched”
City of Bones (3) - I just watched this movie recently and I thiiiink the copy I’m borrowing from my roommate has the color I’m looking for on the cover
The Storyteller’s Daughter (2, 7) - It starts with “the” and is a retelling of the Arabian Nights folk tale, so I’m counting that as “taking place on a different continent”. Also fun story - I found this book because I adore this author’s Cinderella retelling, and the original cover would’ve been the right color for challenge 1…there was one seller I could find online with the right cover in stock, so I ordered it, but when it arrived it had different cover art. So it doesn’t hit the first challenge and it doesn’t match the other book from the series But! I’m still excited to read this book.
I’ll also be listening to the audiobook of Wild while I take my evening walks, but I used the random choice picker for my audiobook selection as well to give myself options for challenge 4…but this audiobook is 13 hours long, so I don’t know if I’ll be able to finish it in a week…
If anyone else was planning on participating (or was swayed through this post) I’d love to hear your reading plans, and would love to have some reading accountability buddies!
7 books in 7 days is impressive, I think my record in a single week is 4, I’m game to give it a try though.
Bonus is I can check off a few more for 2020 Reading Challenge - #47 by Sapphire
I guess a book I’m currently reading and likely to finish at the start of next week doesn’t count?
Read a book with a cover that matches the colour of your birth stone.
Scent of Magic
(which means I’ll have to read Touch of Power first)
Read a book that starts with the word “The”.
The Fifth Elephant (audiobook)
Read a book that inspired a movie you’ve already seen.
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Read the first book you touch.
TBC - I’ll flail at my shelf on Monday
Read a book completely outside of your house.
Read a book in a genre that you’ve always wanted to read more of.
Umbrella Academy vol2
Read a book that takes place on a different continent than where you live
First Overland - currently the only book I can see that isn’t set in a fantasy world
I’m about halfway through Nimona…and I decided to do the TBR video challenge! I haven’t done video editing in many moons, so I didn’t have a software ready and the free trial version I used would only export with a watermark…so my video is very amateur…but I’m happy with how it came out!
So I totally forgot the dates that this was happening so yeah, speed reading but I think only one of the books surpasses 300 pages and that one I’m leaving for last because it’s my new genre one and I’m not entirely sure about reading it.
Haven Fall by Sara Holland (closest thing i could get to aquamarine)
The Golden Compass (was banned in our household when it first came out because ya know, so I’m curious about what all the hype was about but honestly, whoever bashes against the Catholic Church is pretty cool to me and I’m saying that as a person who believes in God lol)
A Wrinkle in Time (I loved the movie, like rewatching material so yeah definitely, plus easy book to get through for tonight, only about 200 pages)
The Savage of Fortess (when you keep a box of unread books that you can shove your hand into and just choose something😁)
Muse of The Ghost (bringing it to the doc’s tomorrow and probably will read it at work if I haven’t finished it yet)
The Dead House (Horror, as a kid I hated horror movies and books (bad traumatic movie incident when I was a kid which is funny considering the show was suppose to be a comedy) as i grew up the movies weren’t actually scary and more predictable and it was funny to watch people’s reactions, i wanted to see how the books went)
The Elegance of the Hedgehog (takes place in Paris)
It rained all day today, so I couldn’t read my outside book, but I started The Storyteller’s Daughter last night before bed and finished that today. And I read half of Create Dangerously by Albert Camus (which I added to my TBR yesterday). It’s a bit heavy for pre-sleep reading, so I’m probably about to start City of Bones right now to get a little more reading in before bed.
@Sapphire You’re doing better than I am, I’ve only got 2 books done, I fell asleep reading Savage Fortess and finished it up this morning. I’m going to attempt to get through nearly all of Haven Fall tonight. My outside book is proving difficult because of how humid it is. I was entirely wrong in saying nearly all my books were under 300 pages only the first 2 were, go figure lol.
I’ve finished 3 books…one was a graphic novel and one was one of the tiny penguin modern essay bind-ups, so not giving myself too much credit there. But between those three I did knock out all but one of the challenges! So I’m working on City of Bones now - I think I’m about a third of the way through?
Alright @Tinker and @Sapphire, how did you do? Yesterday, i realized I had 4 books left and knew I wouldn’t be able to finish them because they were all more than 300 pages long so of course, I procrastinated in starting any of them. So today I dropped all of them and covered the last two goals of outside and different genre with a poem/quotation book as i’ve been meaning to read more poems and did it on my front porch it helped that it wasn’t longer than 100 pages. And that it was nighttime just after a rainstorm with crickets chirping and a minimal amount of eating/bothersome bugs. So I got 4 books done with all the goals covered that’s good enough for me. Honestly, should’ve figured the decompression time in between books would hit me harder than the time required to read said books.
Yaaaaas! I’m so proud of you!! Honestly that outdoor situation sounds IDEAL…I just noticed the other day that I got several ankle bug bites from my reading outside adventure
I also managed to read four books and hit all the prompts! I finished my last book yesterday and had intended to keep reading, but I had juuuuust scraped over the mark to get the “read 1000 pages” badge (the last one I was going to be able to get…I didn’t do the book club pick and I wasn’t going to get 7 books and all that)…so I took today off
Yeah, I sprayed my area before going out so that helps . Nice job on getting all of them done and getting all the goals. I’m proud of you for shooting for badges and doing the video challenge. Yeah definitely need some decompression time, doesn’t matter how many books you hit as long as hit all the goals you made for yourself.
@AugustAbel awesome work on getting the last challenges covered.
Sounds like you timed it perfectly, I 100% understand the fun of trying to get outside without being eaten by all the flying and crawling bugs. shudders
@Tinker you’ve done really well, especially picking up the extra challenges. Any change we get to see the video?
I discounted most of my books for the last challenge (Read a book that takes place on a different continent than where you live.), because fantasy. However this morning I realised that the Umbrella Academy is set in America and its the people not the locations that are fantasy, surprise topic achieved!
So my end total is 4.70 books read including Touch Of Power that didn’t tick off any of the 5 categories covered.
Failed to get birthstone and outside. Shakes fist at the rain Gods
@Sapphire Nice job despite not getting those last two, Touch of Power we’ll count as your birthstone just because you had to read that one first and yeah, can’t control the rain so you’re good on that one lol. I’m on for next year, hopefully I remember the dates next time before it is upon us.
But! I’m still excited to read this book.
. Nice job on getting all of them done and getting all the goals. I’m proud of you for shooting for badges and doing the video challenge. Yeah definitely need some decompression time, doesn’t matter how many books you hit as long as hit all the goals you made for yourself.