Week Long Readathon Wrap-Up 2018

Hello Everyone!

As some of you may know if you follow me on Instagram (@TheOriginalBookDragon), I recently did a week long readathon because I have an ambitious TBR for this summer and wanted to get some books checked off of the list. I also have just not been in a great place lately and reading always makes me feel better, so I thought dedicating an entire week just to reading and spending time with myself was a good way to go. My main goal for the week was to just enjoy myself and read for me, but I did want to set myself the challenge of trying to read 7 books in one week. I’m not really a fast or slow reader, but I do get tired out quickly and can get distracted, so that was quite a challenge.

Here is the TBR that I set myself for the week:

1. Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo (I had already started this one, so it wasn’t reading the whole book. I had 199 pages left)
2. Asperger’s Rules by the Imagination Press
3. Raven Queen by Pauline Francis
4. A Place Called Perfect by Helena Duggan
5. Poems of New York by Elizabeth Schmidt
6. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
7. Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard

I mostly ended up sticking to this TBR, but I decided on day 4 that trying to read Red Queen was probably too much, so I switched Red Queen for ‘Women & Power: A Manifesto’ by Mary Beard. Now you know what my plan was going into this self-hosted readathon, I want to tell you all a little about what it was like day to day, where and what I read and what I thought of the books:

Saturday 28th July

As I mentioned above, I had already started Crooked Kingdom, so my only goal for this first day of the readathon was to finish it. I had 199 pages left, so I was originally intending to read those pages in 2 sittings of 100 pages each, but I ended up reading the whole thing in one go! Needless to say I absolutely loved this book and the ending left me in tears as well as very satisfied. I am going to be doing a full review for the Six of Crows duology though, so I will tell you more about how I feel about it there. I haven’t yet decided whether it is going to be spoiler-free or not though.

Sunday 29th July

I had family coming over in time for us to go out for lunch on Sunday, so I wasn’t expecting to get much read, but I actually managed to fit in 2 whole books and started a 3rd! The first book I read was Asperger’s Rules, which to be honest was pretty disappointing. I only gave it 2.5/5 stars and that was being a bit generous if you ask me. I am autistic myself, so I was hoping to get something out of this book, but I found that is was written in quite a childish way and was clearly aimed at younger children. It also didn’t have any information to give me that I wasn’t already aware of, so I wasn’t that impressed.

I then started Raven Queen by Pauline Francis though and I was much more impressed with that. I didn’t have very high expectations because it appeared to be quite a childish book and I was originally told it was middle grade, but it actually wasn’t. I’m not sure what age group it would fall into, but it was a historical fiction that I would personally say is better suited to children aged 10-15 (ish, it depends what your reading level is). At first I wasn’t so sure because there is a big focus on religion, which I don’t usually like in books, but as I read on it bothered me less and less until it didn’t bother me at all because it is a historical fiction and religion was a big part of people’s lives in the 1500’s. Despite the fact that I knew what the ending was going to be because it is based off of a real event that I have studied at school, it still had me sobbing. I think this is a great book to read to try and get into the historical fiction genre and just a great book overall.

After my family had left later on in the day, I had some time before bed and I was still in a really big reading mood, so I read about 30 pages of Poems of New York, which I also enjoyed. It was a very different style of poetry than I am used to reading, so it took some getting used to, but I did enjoy it.

Monday 30th July

I didn’t really read much on Monday because it was my Dad’s birthday, so we went out to dinner again and went to the cinema, which took up a large chunk of my day. I did read another 20-30 pages of Poems of New York in the cinema foyer whilst we were waiting to go into the movie though.

Tuesday 31st July

Up until Tuesday I had done almost all of my reading at home, so I decided I wanted to get out of the house and go and read somewhere else for a change of scenery. I decided to go to the library at 8 in the morning because it is always quiet around that time and I had the whole place to myself, which was really lovely. I sat in my favourite chair in the corner by the window and finished reading Poems of New York in the piece and quiet. I did start reading A Place Called Perfect in the library, but by that time it was started to fill up a bit, so I decided to go home and continue reading there. I did exactly that and ended up finishing the rest of A Place Called Perfect in one sitting because it was just so so good!

Wednesday 1st August

I really enjoy reading outside, but I don’t enjoy it so much around where I live because I tend to run into a lot of people I know, especially around this time of year when the weather is nice, so I decided to go to work with my dad and read around where he works, which is about 40 minutes away from where I live. I started off by sitting in the park just around the corner and started and finished Women & Power: A Manifesto by Mary Beard in one sitting. I really enjoyed this book as it was very insightful and drew a lot of knowledge from ancient Rome and Greece which I love. It was also very funny, which I wasn’t expecting, but thoroughly enjoyed.

The next book I started was The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, which I managed to read 10 chapters (162 pages) of in total. I haven’t yet finished it, but I really enjoyed the bit I have read and I have learnt an awful lot from it. I will be doing a book review on it as well when I have finished it, so look out for that later this month.

Thursday 2nd August

I actually didn’t end up reading anything at all on Thursday because I had a hospital appointment that I had to go to, which was incredibly stressful and left me feeling really bad, so I just really wasn’t in the mood to read.

Friday 3rd August

I didn’t read very much on Friday because I still wasn’t feeling great after Thursday, but I did start a new book called ‘The Secret Library’ by Oliver Tearle, which I really enjoyed. I didn’t read any more of The Hate U Give though because I wasn’t feeling up to reading something quite so heavy.

Overall I managed to read 6 and a half books (1449 pages) in 5 days because I didn’t really read for the last two days, which I am SUPER proud of! I never would have thought I’d be capable of reading that many books in such a short period of time because I do have a lot of other things going on and get burnt out quickly, but I did it! I didn’t quite achieve my goal of 7 books, but had I not been feeling bad on Thursday and Friday, then I know I definitely would have and probably moved onto and 8th, so I am happy knowing that I could have done it if the extenuating circumstances hadn’t gotten in my way.

I actually found this readathon to be easier than I was expecting because, as I mentioned, I tend to get burnt out quickly, so I thought that would be a real issue like it has been in the past when I have done 24 hour readathons, but doing this over the space of a week meant I had time to do other things in between reading, which helped me to break things up and not get burnt out. The last two days were really hard, but that was due to other reasons that I didn’t feel motivated to read. Since I have enjoyed this week so much, I have decided to make it a yearly thing. I am hoping to make is a bi-annual thing, but I don’t know how well that would fit in with my school life yet, so we will have to wait and see, but I can commit to doing this every summer at least. Have you ever done a readathon? If not would you like to do one in the future or is it not really your thing?

Goodbye for now!

Over and Out