Hey everyone! Today, I’m coming to you with (very tentative) TBR for the Fantasy JourneyAThon, created by Eliza from Dusk Angel Reads. It started on the first day of May and runs until May 31—so yes, I am coming a little late to this party, but since it’s a month-long readathon, I’m not terribly behind.
I’ve never done a month-long readathon before, but I’ve been wanting to do one for a while now, and this one looked like it would be fun. It’s a map-based readathon where your goal is to get from one side of the map to the other by following one of several different paths and stopping at locations which each correspond to a prompt. You have to complete each challenge in order, but you can also choose to join one of five different teams, each of which gives you a different special ability that can help you on your journey through the map.
There’s a lot more to it that I’m not going to get into here, but if you’re interested, I would recommend that you go read Eliza’s announcement post. It gives a lot more information about all the rules and reading challenges and whatnot.
As for me, I’m just going to get right into the TBR. Please note that I’m a member of the Shadow Walker team, which gives me the ability to jump from one path to another on the map, and I’m planning on using it.
Here’s the map. The goal is to get from Haroyell (at the far left) to Nialas (at the far right):
Haroyell: Read a first book in a series.
I’m going with The Cruel Prince by Holly Black. I need to read this book soon, before it falls into limbo like most of the other books on my physical TBR have. Everyone seems to love this series, and everyone seems to love this author in general (I’ve never read one of her books). I hope I like it too. The cover is beautiful for sure. I have the white version pictured above, but I’m partial to the black Barnes & Noble edition.
Dupressa: Read a short book (less than 250 pages)
Since I primarily read fantasy, I don’t own very many short books, so this prompt was a bit of a challenge for me, but I think what I’ve decided on is A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The copy I have (the Barnes & Noble classics edition) is exactly 250 pages, which I’m hoping still counts. If not, I do have one other book I could use for this prompt. Honestly, though, it’s kind of sad that, as far as I can tell, I only have two books on my entire physical TBR that are 250 pages or less. Once this whole quarantine thing is over, I’m going to have to fix that (in this house, we love making up excuses to buy more books).
Garon: Read a book from your favorite genre
Like I said, fantasy’s my favorite genre. I have a whole bunch of books on my shelves that I could pick for this challenge, but the one I’m leaning toward right now is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling. I read book 5 back in March, right before everything started going crazy and my major reading slump started. I really want to keep my momentum going with this series, especially since I’m so close to the end. This book is big, though, and while that normally wouldn’t bother me, I’m determined to do well in this readathon, and I have some other books later on in this list that are also huge. So… I might end up reading a different book for this challenge, but I guess we’ll find out when we get there.
Denasa: Read a book that has a blue spine.
The Kingdom of Back by Marie Lu! Not only does it have a blue spine, it has blue all over! I put this on my TBR for the readathon I participated in last month and didn’t end up getting around to it, but I do still really want to read it. I actually have a surprising number of books with blue spines, so if I get to that point and I don’t feel like reading The Kingdom of Back, I’ll have plenty of other options.
At this point, I’m using my Shadow Walker special ability and jumping from Denasa to…
Tryllin: Read a book featuring royalty.
And this is where my TBR gets a little ridiculous. I have a couple of options for this challenge that would probably be more reasonable length-wise, but the book that I’m hoping to use for this challenge is Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson. I’m currently in the middle of rereading the Stormlight Archive in preparation for the fourth book, which is supposed to come out in November this year. This is the second book, and since I already started it last month, I really don’t want to push it off till June just because of this readathon. I’m on page 346, but there are 1,080 pages in the book, so I basically have two entire normal books’ worth left to read. There’s a lot going on in this series, but it does feature royalty in a pretty prominent role.
Nialas: Read a predicted 5 star read.
This is kind of a hard one for me, because I don’t really like making predictions about what books I’m going to love. Obviously, I hope I’ll love every book I read, but I try to go into every book with somewhat of an open mind. Sometimes I feel like predicting what book will be five stars is a great way to make sure that book won’t be five stars, just because my expectations will be sky high going in. Sometimes you can’t help it, though, and you just have this feeling about a book.
Some of the options I have for this book are The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes and Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. I don’t really know yet whether I’m going to go for one of those or for another book, but like I said for half of this TBR, I guess we’ll see when we get there.
And that’s it for today’s post! I’m hoping to get to six books, which is more books than I’ve read in a single month in a very long time. I’m a little nervous, but I’m hopeful that the gamified nature of a readathon like this will help to motivate me to get through all the books, even though I have a couple of pretty long ones.
Are you participating in the Fantasy JourneyAThon or any other readathon this month? If not, what books are you hoping to get to? Let’s chat down in the comments!
-Ariel