Often, I spill here and there about a readathon I’m excited about. I can’t resist. I see a readathon, I see a challenge, I’m in. And the hardest, the better. Now, do I finish the readathons I started? No. So far, I’ve only had one completed readathon, but that doesn’t push me away to keep trying. When I saw on my YouTuber feed, in big bold letters, The Hardest Reading Challenge You’ll Ever Do, I knew I was in even before hitting the play button.

Qwordy is a channel I’ve never seen before, but that didn’t push me away from this challenge. And to be honest, I need to spend a little more time browsing the interwebs because there are so many reading challenges and readathons for every taste that comes from small channels, I could spend the whole year jumping from one readathon to another.

While Qwordy wasn’t lying when she said it was The Hardest Reading Challenge, the prompts are very versatile. There are barely any gender-bound prompts, which is amazing for me. Except for the read-all-genres prompt. As a mood reader, I need to have flexibility in a challenge. And the HRCYED offers just that. Sadly, I can’t complete this challenge with the books I already own, but it will force me to branch out and explore more than I already do.

And so here I am to say I’m taking on this challenge and bringing you all the stats for July. And of all the months that will follow until the 6th of July 2025. But first, a quick overview of the prompts.

The conquests and the failed attempts

One of the hardest parts of this challenge is to pace myself. I want to tackle all the prompts all at once, but I don’t need to. I have a whole year to go through. However, there’s one challenge I have to keep on top of: the new releases. This was the one that I had to prioritise. And the rest, I was hoping it would settle into place over time.

For the July release, I read Camp Lanier by Sylvester Barzey. I already have a review of the book here on the blog. It was a lovely horror novel. A strange combination of words just to say I really liked it. Then, I decided to tackle what was the hardest challenge of all, reading a book of over 500 pages in one day. I’m a slow reader. It will take me about 16 to 17 hours to read a book that long. That means I have to read every single minute I’m awake. I’m going to fail. Although, I have a secret weapon. The last book in the Illuminae Files trilogy: Obsidio. It’s 600 and something pages, so well over the mark, but most pages have illustrations and chat logs, so it would be quicker to read.

I chose my day. I sat down to read. And I read over 500 pages in one day! Except it wasn’t enough to finish the book. I was missing 75 pages when the timer went off. I should have tried harder to make more time for reading. I took this challenge for granted, and it blew up in my face. This was my best shot at accomplishing this goal. Now that I’ve failed, it will be so much harder since I don’t know what else I could read to fulfil this prompt. *chuckles* I’m in trouble.

But July wasn’t made out of failed attempts! I finished His & Hers by Alice Feeney. I read it for no particular reason other than buying it a couple of weeks ago. That’s what’s great about this reading challenge. I can read whatever I’m in the mood for because I can always use the book for a prompt. For the alphabet one, my name, the genre…

The progress

So far, I’ve made progress in the alphabet prompt with the letters C, E (from His & Hers since I read the Portuguese translation “Ele & Ela”) and O. I also used the letters C and O for spelling my name. Read the July release. Read three books in three different genres: sci-fi, mystery and horror. For the rainbow challenge, I crossed off the colour white for the book His & Hers.

Reading Obsidio will not go to waste since it’s written by an Australian author duo. It counts towards the other country’s prompt. In His & Hers, the protagonist is named Anna, which is the same name as a close friend. This challenge of finding characters with names of people you know will prove to be harder than I give it credit for. I mostly read English books, so you can guess there aren’t many names that overcome the language barrier to Portuguese.

• Read a 500+ page book in a day (0/1)
• A to Z challenge (3/26)
• 5 Books set in different countries (1/5)
• Spell your name in books (2/24)
• New release for every month (1/12)
• Complete the genre challenge (3/8)
• Complete the rainbow (1/10)
• 3 Books with protagonists with names of people you know (1/3)