Hey everyone! Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve done a TBR post, hasn’t it? Now that I’m back home, I’m ready to start doing regular TBR posts again. This one is for the Series Crackdown readathon, which starts on May 24th and runs through June 2nd. I’m sure you’re going to see a lot of readathon posts like this one over the next few months; I am woefully behind on my Goodreads challenge, and summertime is the perfect opportunity to try to catch up. I’m planning on doing as many readathons as possible during that time.
The creator of this readathon, Mel from The Book Moo, kindly provided this cool little graphic to put your TBR in (and also the image I’m using as the featured photo for this post, though I edited it a little), so if you just want to know the most basic form of my TBR for this readathon, just look at this and disregard the rest of the post. Each of the squares stand for one of the 8 reading challenges, and as you can see, you can use one book for as many challenges as you want.
However, as usual, for most of the challenges, I had several different options. The TBR I put in the boxes is the one I think I’m most likely to actually complete, so it’s my minimum goal, but I have some much more ambitious goals I’m going to try for if I get through that original TBR.
I think this will make more sense if we just start going through the challenges, so let’s get into it.
Challenge #1: First book in a series
This one isn’t a complicated one. I just bought Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor, which is the first book in a duology everyone seems to be obsessed with, and so I decided to read it. I have a lot of other first books in series I could get to, but at the moment, this is the one I’m most interested in reading.
Challenge #2: A Sequel
For this one, I chose Once We Were by Kat Zhang. I read the first book in this trilogy a while ago and I liked it, but even though I have owned the other two books for a while, I just haven’t ever gotten around to reading it. Now is the perfect opportunity, especially considering the next challenge.
Challenge #3: Last book in a series
I chose Echoes of Us by Kat Zhang, the third book in the trilogy I talked about earlier. This book, and the last one, kind of ended up on this TBR out of necessity. As I was compiling a list of books I could read for each of the challenges, I discovered that out of my entire physical TBR, I only own two books that are the last book in their series (well, technically 3, but the third is Deathly Hallows and I’ve only read the first two books; there was no way that was going to work out).
I ended up choosing this book over the other one because I’d already started its series, and so I could use the challenge of reading the first book in a series for a different book. Plus, these books are much shorter, which just works better for a readathon in general.
Challenge #4: A Long Series
This is where I start straying from that TBR image a little. I chose Prisoner of Azkaban on the image, because, well, the Harry Potter series is pretty long, at 7 books, and I do of course plan to read that book (as you can see from the image, I chose it for literally half of the challenges, so if I don’t read that book, I will utterly fail this readathon), but if I still have time before the readathon ends, I would like to get to The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson, which, while it’s technically only part of a four book series, it’s a companion series to the original Mistborn trilogy, and eventually the Mistborn world is supposed to have at least 7 more books set in it; I think all that counts as a long series.
I would have put The Bands of Mourning onto the TBR graphic, but then I realized I don’t know where my copy of the book is. So if I end up having the opportunity to read it, I’m going to have to look for it. I didn’t want to put a book on my TBR without knowing if I would actually be able to find it to read it.
Challenge #5: 10+ years old
I only have a few books on my TBR that are over 10 years old, and the one I chose for this challenge was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling. One of my other options was The Lord of the Rings, which I have in a giant, single-volume version. I know I need to read that someday, but, well… it probably won’t be this time around.
Challenge #6: Popular series
I went with Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman because I read Scythe such a long time ago, and if I don’t read this book soon, I’m going to have to reread in order to fully appreciate what’s going on. I honestly might still need to. I loved the first book in this series, so I don’t understand why I haven’t gotten around to this book yet, but this is my chance to fix that. (Though, if things seem to be going badly during this readathon, I might decide to cut this book out and just count Strange the Dreamer for two challenges)
Challenge #7: Been on my TBR forever
Once again, I chose Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, but I could also go with The Lord of the Rings or Ender’s Game or Inkheart. Maybe I’ll end up reading one of those instead; who knows. I know that right now I’m more in the mood for Harry Potter than any of those others, though.
Challenge #8: Film/TV adaptation
I have a lot of options for this one, just like the last one, but just like the last one, I went with Prisoner of Azkaban. If I have time at the end of the readathon, I might read any of those other books I mentioned for the last challenge, because any of those could also count for this challenge. Or I might read The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken. We’ll see how things go.
As it stands, I’m hoping to read 5 books in the 10 days of this readathon: Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor, Once We Were and Echoes of Us both by Kat Zhang, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling, and Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman, but I might end up reading anywhere from 4 to 8 different books, depending on how things go.
Either way, I’m sure this will be a wild ride, so be sure to come back on the 3rd or 4th of June, when my recap for this readathon will most likely be going up, and see how it all went.
Thanks for reading! I’ll see you soon.
-Ariel