One of the most exciting moments of the year has finally come. The BookTube-A-Thon has arrived!! And that means I’m not doing anything besides reading during an entire week. Now that is what I call a vacation. From the 30th of June to the 5th of August, the bookworms all around the world gather for one mission: read together.

The challenges have been revealed over two weeks ago, on the BookTube-A-Thon YouTube channel. Since then, I’ve been looking around my owned books to try and find the right books to fulfil the challenges without buying any. Once that was done, I calculated the total amount of pages I have to read and how many I have to read per day. I even estimated how much time I should spend reading per day! When it comes to doing the maths, I don’t joke around. The only thing I have left to schedule is my sleep, which probably is easier if I don’t change it around.

I’m also thinking to do the BookTube-A-Thon in a different time zone than mine, mostly because I never take advantage of the first 7/8 hours of the readathon. And if I just start reading 2 to 3 hours early at least I can read before going to sleep. I even thought about using the Australian time zone which would mean I’m starting to read at 3 in the afternoon. Either way, I’m going to read for 7 days straight either if I start earlier or not.

The Challenges

1. Let a coin toss decide your first read.

For this challenge, I knew I had to choose two books with at least one thing in common. The first that came to mind was two books of the same length, which can be a little tricky, but then I spotted my two recently-bought Rainbow Rowell‘s books that I still have to read. And a light bulb lit up above my head. The coin will decide which Rainbow Rowell book I’m going to read! My two options are Carry On and Eleanor & Park, the first one being the national side of the coin and the second the monetary side. The only thing left to do is toss the coin. And the winner is…

…drum roll, please….

…Eleanor & Park!
I can’t wait to start the readathon with this book. I’ve missed Rainbow’s stories so much. Is it the 30th already?

2. Read a book about something you want to do.

This is one of the hardest challenges to archive, mainly because there are so many things I can choose I don’t even know where to start. But then the lords at Book Depository* emailed me saying there was a price drop alert of one book in my wishlist, Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa. The book is set in Japan and follows a young man working in a confectionary shop selling dorayaki. Meanwhile, he meets a sweet old lady, and a friendship starts to blossom just like the cherry trees. The same three reasons that got me interested in this book are the same ones that fulfil the challenge. Japan, dorayaki, and cherry tree blossoms are the top things I want to try in Japan, as well as travelling there. So if this isn’t a perfect fit, I don’t know which should be.

3. Read and watch a book to movie adaptation.

I haven’t fully decided yet witch book is going to fulfil this challenge. So far, 5 books on my TBR have movie adaptations, one of them I already saw (The Great Gatsby), which gives me plenty of options. Probably, I will choose what I want to watch when the moment comes, but for now, I’m picking Agatha Christie‘s book And Then There Were None. Although, this book has a movie adaptation from 1945 and a miniseries from 2016 that seems very interesting. I’m still going to wait until I’ve read my 2nd option (read next challenge) and then choose which one to go with.

4. Read a book with green on the cover.

Here comes the tricky part. It turns out I don’t own many books with green on the cover, not even John Green – because his books have “green” on the cover *thinking I’m cleaver*. From the options I have to choose from, only two books could fit this challenge: The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (a bit of green in the water) and And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. Since I want to read Agatha’s book for the movie adaptation challenge, I’m left with The Talented Mr Ripley. Although, if the story happens to captivate me I might switch it around.

5. Read a book wearing the same hat.

From the moment Ariel announced this challenge, I immediately knew what hat I was going to wear. First of all, I don’t have many hats to choose from, and second I’m not going to wear a beanie in the middle of summer. So, I pick my only summer hat to keep me stylish while reading. Then I remember, to avoid making a fool out of myself, I’m going to try and read this book outside to justify wearing the hat. When it actually came the time to choose the book, I wasn’t particularly excited. I wanted to read something summery to match the outfit, sadly, I don’t have any or at least none that I can finish in a week. So this book was chosen because it was my last option. Like Water to Chocolate by Laura Esquivel is by far my first choice although I’m hoping to dribble over the recipes while snaking some chocolate cookies – also it seems perfect to read while PMSing *trying to be funny again*.

6. Read a book with a beautiful spine.

Since the point is to highlight the beauty of a well-designed spine, I wanted to stay away from the ones that have the same design as the cover or is a continuation of the cover. At that point, I didn’t have a single book for this challenge. I even thought about going to the bookstore and look at the shelves to buy the book that must appeal to my aesthetics. Although, I already spend money on books for this readathon, and I couldn’t do it again. So I was back at square one. Then I remembered Library of Souls by Ransom Riggs. I still have to finish that book, the spine has its own design independent from the cover, and it’s beautiful. Being the biggest book in my TBR, I’m only scared that I can’t finish it during the readathon.

7. Read seven books.

This challenge has become a veteran. It doesn’t matter what book you choose as long as at the end of the week you have successfully read seven books. Since I was trying to keep my books short to make it easy to complete every challenge and I already have a 400 pages book (Library of Souls), The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald looked like a nice option for this challenge. Despite my edition being a smaller one, the story itself doesn’t seem to be very long either, so I guess it is a safe bet to complete this year BookTube-A-Thon.

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