Anne and I love readathons so we’re always on the lookout for one we think would be fun. As always, we take part in the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge but we also love short, week long readathons that make us shove our noses in books more than we would normally. This time the week long readathon is the Reading Rush (find their website here).
You can find out all about the readathon on the website I linked above, but here’s the quick and dirty version. There are seven prompts which I’ll list below. You can tackle the prompts however you want. If you can find one book for all seven, then go for it, if you’d rather do one book per prompt, you can do that. If you care, the website has badges for completing certain tasks, but the most important part of this is to read. Physical books, audio books, graphic novels, it all counts. As our own personal rule Anne and I usually count a book we’re already in the middle of for a readathon IF we have a good enough chunk of it left. You can find Anne’s blog by clicking here.
So let us get on with the show. What I’ll do is list the prompts below and then my planned book and then one or two back-ups. Anne and I have tried to plan out our readathon books before and since it doesn’t always works out, we figured some back-ups wouldn’t hurt. Here we go.
Read A Book With Purple On The Cover
My Pick: Welcome to Night Vale by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor
This is based off the popular podcast of the same name. I tried to read this last year but ended up putting it down because I just wasn’t in the mood. I also hadn’t listened to the podcast at that time. Now I’m deep into the old episodes and ready to give this book another read (or listen as I have the audio book as well). I fully believe that I’ll enjoy this book a lot more with an understanding of Night Vale and it’s workings.
My Backupss: Chasing the Moon by A Lee Martinez, A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Miserable Mill by Lemony Snicket. Space Opera by Catherynne M Valentine.
Read A Book In The Same Spot For The Entire Time
My Pick: Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom by Sylvia Plath
This is a really short kids book written by the late Sylvia Plath. It’s so short that I almost don’t count it as a book but the booktuber behind Book Roast once said that “if it’s on goodreads it counts as a book.” So, using that train of thought, I’m counting this. This book is about a young girl whose parents put her on a train but there’s a catch. She doesn’t know where the train is going. She just knows it’s a place called The Ninth Kingdom, a place she’s never heard of.
My Backups: The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida,
A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Miserable Mill by Lemony Snicket
Read A Book You Meant To Read Last Year
My Pick: The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
This is a book that Anne has been trying to get me to read for a while now and I’m currently in the middle of it. I realize that I won’t be able to finish by the time The Reading Rush starts. Seeing as I have over two hundred pages left, and some of my choices for The Rush are shorter than that, I figure I can count this. This is a historical fiction book about two sisters in France during WWII and the different lives they lead. One works for the French resistance and the other is struggling to survive and raise a daughter while hosting a Nazi officer in her house (against her will).
My Backups: Good Guys by Steven Brust, The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, Welcome to Night Vale by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor
Read An Author’s First Book
My Pick: Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks
This a book of short stories written by 2 time Academy Award winner Tom Hanks. Each and every story was written on and involves a typewriter. I’ve been picking this book up, reading a story, and putting it down for a few months now so I figured I could use this readathon to finally finish it. It’s not that it’s bad. It’s not bad at all. None of the stories have grabbed me and kept me sucked into the book. I’m hoping that each day I can read a story or two in it and finish it by the end of the readathon. If I can’t do that, I have my backups.
My Backups:Welcome to Nightvale by Joesph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, Big Fish by Daniel Wallace,
Read A Book With A Non-Human Main Character
My Pick: Wonder Woman Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo
I’ve been wanting to read this book since I came out but some other book always jump in its way. Some of you may be wondering “but Bill, isn’t Wonder Woman a human?” The answer? No. In the current cannon she’s a demigoddess. So this book counts! This takes place before the origin story we’re familiar with. Steve Trevor wasn’t the first moral she’s saved. Before she’s taken the vow of the Amazon, Diana saves a mortal she finds adrift in the ocean and almost gets exiled for her actions. Now she’s tasked with helping the mortal she helped against the people who chase her.
My Backups: Redwall by Brian Jacques, Superman Dawnbreaker by Matt de la Pena, The Traveling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa.
Read A Book That Has Five Or More Words In The Title
My Pick: The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice Of A Thirteen Year Old Boy With Autism by Naoki Higashida
I almost didn’t use this one because the title of the copy we have is only The Reason I Jump. It’s only by the grace of the official subtitle that I can get away with this one. This is a nonfiction book where a young man with autism answers the questions he thinks people should ask about life with autism.
My Backup: The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life by Steve Martin, Alcatraz Versus The Scrivner’s Bones by Brandon Sanderson
Read and Watch A Book To Movie Adaptation
My Pick: The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald.
This was Turned into a movie in 2017 starring Emily Mortimer (The Newsroom), Bill Nighy (Love Actually), and Patricia Clarkson (The Green Mile) This is about a woman who opens a bookshop in a small seaside town finds herself at odds with one of the more prominent members of the community. The only ally she can find is an old recluse who may just be the help she needs.
My Backups: The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, Big Fish by Daniel Wallace,To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, The Princess Bride by William Goldman, A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Since the rules to this readathon says nothing about not rereading books, Mockingbird, Monster Calls, and Gatsby were easy choices.
So there are my picks and backups for The Reading Rush readathon. What did you think? Are you taking part in this too? If so, let me know what your picks are in the comments down below.