Summer Roadtrip Essentials (Summer Biannual Bibliothon Day 7 Challenge)

Today is the final day of this round of the Biannual Bibliothon. It’s been a crazy week of reading, social media, and blog posting, but today it comes to an end. I’ve had so much fun and made some cool new friends this week. I’m so glad to have spent the last week obsessing over books with all of you, and I can’t wait until next time.

Of course, I still have some bibliothon fun coming up in the future. Tomorrow, I’ll be posting a recap of my reading during this week, so look forward to that. I’m also going to try to get reviews up for all the books I read this week, but that will probably take a while. I’m hoping to post one a week, in addition to my usual posts on Tuesdays.

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Okay, enough announcements. The bibliothon is not yet over, and I’m getting ahead of myself. Today’s blogger challenge comes from Emily over at Emily the Book Nerd, and it asks two questions: what are your summer roadtrip essentials, and what books are you dying to read by the end of the summer?

Let’s start with the essentials. When I go on a roadtrip with my family, one of the first things we do is get snacks—usually something like sunflower seeds or pistachios (or red Twizzlers—they’re a guilty pleasure of mine). We bring water, a GPS, and, for me, usually way too many things, which I never end up using much. For example, when going on a roadtrip, I will bring a notebook. Sometimes I will bring my laptop (or a tablet, whatever works). And, of course, books. I wouldn’t be a book nerd if I didn’t lug far too many books than I’m actually going to read on vacations with me.

These days, I’ve gotten a lot better at knowing myself. I only pack one or two books, knowing that I probably won’t end up reading any of them, instead of packing ten and not reading any of them, like I did when I was a kid.

On the topic of books and summer, let’s move on to the books I would like to read before school starts back in… a month? Yikes.

First of all, I definitely want to get to all the books I had on my TBR this month, as well as the ones on my bibliothon TBR. I’ll just list all the ones I still have left to read here: Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire, A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab, Walk on Earth a Stranger by Rae Carson, The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton, The Wicked Deep by Shea Ernshaw, and An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir. (Note: By the time you’re reading this, I will hopefully be finished with/very close to finishing The Wicked Deep and The Belles, but this post was written a few days ahead of time, so I’m putting them here just in case.) If you want to know more about any of these books, you can check out my July TBR (here) and my bibliothon TBR (here), where I give little descriptions of each one.

That’s a lot of books by itself, and I’m tempted to say that’s all I want to read for the rest of the summer. But I am an overly ambitious kind of person, so there are a few more which, at the moment, I feel like reading. By the time I post my August TBR, though, things might have changed.

In the interest of making this post not forever long, I’m just going to list two or three of the ones I’m most excited for.

1. The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken

I have owned this book forever, and I keep meaning to read it, but I haven’t gotten around to it. With the movie coming out really soon, I want to finally make myself read this book, and then possibly continue on with the series. It’s about kids with powers. It seems very much like something I would like. I don’t know why I haven’t read it yet.

 

2. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling

I actually chose this book as one of the books in the bibliothon pick 3 books and read one challenge, but I ended up reading Scythe by Neal Shusterman instead of this one. I do still want to get to this book very soon, though. I’ve seen all the Harry Potter movies, but I’ve never read the books, and I really want to change that.

 

3. The Wrath and the Dawn by Renée Ahdieh

I’ve been wanting to read this book since I first heard a booktuber talk about it. But I haven’t read it yet, and I actually don’t even own it. Luckily, my local library has a copy, so if (when) I read it, I’ll probably just take it out of there.

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Those are some of the books that I most want to read before the end of the summer. Will I get to them? Who knows. I hope so.

Thanks for reading, guys. I’ll be back tomorrow one more time, for the bibib reading recap. See you then.

-Ariel