The Terror of Knowing

What is the most sensible thing to do when you’re in the middle of doing a long readalong of a super long book AND a readathon where you read only 500+ page books AND you have a backlog of book reviews and blog posts to write? That’s right- sign up for another reading challenge! (It made sense in my head, I swear. Yes, I may be procrastinating.)

I could not resist joining in with this one though because it looks like SO MUCH FUN and has a pretty gameboard and challenges and side quests and I’m basically a sucker for anything like this. “This” is #TheReadingQuest which was created by Aentee from @ Read At Midnight. All the amazing artwork that accompanies this challenge was created by CW of Read, Think, Ponder. Be sure to check both of them out because they have great blogs! The readathon runs from tomorrow, Sunday 13th August until Sunday 10th September – so we’re in this one for the long haul, guys.

The readathon is based round a challenge board, a bingo board if you will, and you pick a book to complete each square on your chosen path across the board. ‘But how do I chose my path?’ I hear you ask – well, you pick which Character Class to play as, and you start off on their quest path accordingly. There are 4 to choose from (Knight, Rogue, Mage, and Bard) and the challenges on each path reflect the chosen character type – i.e. on the Mage path you read books about magic and mythology. Just like the very best video games you can also branch off and complete side quests to earn extra points during the course of your quest. And once you’re done with one character’s path, you can then move onto the next one, and continue questing onwards! You earn experience points and health points as you go along – for a full run-down of these I’d advise everyone to go check out Aentee’s original post because she explains it better than I ever could!

As you can see above, this is the reading challenge board with the character quests around the outsides and the sidequests in blue on the inner squares, and I’m going to try my best to complete as many of the challenges as I can. I am going away for a week towards the end of the readathon so I’ve tried to pick some books which can be read on my Kindle (this would be a great excuse to finish some eARCs I have on there) and aren’t too long. However, I still think I’ve got a pretty big challenge ahead of me but, hey, if you don’t shoot for the stars, you wouldn’t get anywhere, right? (Right?!) Let’s take a look at my TBR…

I plan to start on the Knight path first, so here are my planned picks for each of the challenges:

• Book with a TV/film adaptation – Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
• Red cover – The Power by Naomi Alderman
• Weapon on the cover – Kong: Skull Island [novelisation of film] by Tim Lebbon
• Verb in the title – Doing It by Hannah Witton
• 1st book of a series – Casino Royale by Ian Fleming

If all goes well and I manage to somehow complete all of these, then I plan to advance with the Mage path next, here are my planned reads for that path:

• 1st book of a series – Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
• Set in a different world – Falling Kingdoms by Morgan Rhodes
• Based on mythology – The Gospel of Loki by Joanne M. Harris
• Contains magic – Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them [screenplay] by J.K. Rowling
• One-world title – Circe by Madeline Miller [eARC]

If by some miracle (spoiler alert: this definitely won’t happen), I make it through I’m going to read the following books for the Rogue path:

• One-world title – Circe by Madeline Miller [eARC]
• Published by a small press – Maresi by Maria Turtschaninoff
• Less than 500 Goodreads ratings – City of Circles by Jess Richards [eARC]
• Cover with a partially obscured face – The Girl of Ink and Stars by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
• A banned book – Animal Farm by George Orwell

If all stars align, the final path I’ll be taking is the Bard path and these are the books I shall be reading for each of the challenges:

• A banned book – Animal Farm by George Orwell
• Translated book – The Bat by Jo Nesbo
• Cover with striking typography – The Futures by Anna Pitoniak
• Fairy tale retelling – A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas
• Book with a TV/film adaptation – Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

As you can tell, I don’t anticipate making my entire way round the board because it’s pretty much near impossible for me to read that much ever, let alone during a time when I know it’s going to be getting busy in work and I’ll be away from home for some of it. Even so, I’m something of a completionist, so I like to have decided on a book for every single challenge for argument’s sake. However, it is quite possible that I might branch off during the main quest to do some mini/sidequests and these are the books I’ve picked out for those:

• Potions: book concocted by 2+ authors – Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples [whichever volume I happen to be up to at this point]
• Time warp: set in the past or future – Temeraire by Naomi Novak
• Expansion: companion novel/short story – A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers
• Mini-game: graphic novel/novella/poetry collection – Lady Susan by Jane Austen
• Animal companion: animal in title – Rat Queens: Volume 1 Sass & Sorcery by Kurtis J. Wiebe and Roc Upchurch
• Respawn: a previously DNFed book – Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
• Grind: book with 500+ pages – The View from the Cheap Seats by Neil Gaiman
• Multiplayer: buddy read a book – Tis Pity She’s a Whore by John Ford
• Open World: read whatever you want – Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Of course, I’m pretty poor at sticking to TBRs so I imagine I’ll undoubtedly deviate from my picks here; I have a few alternative choices in mind and jotted down on a piece of paper so I don’t go completely off-course with the readathon challenges though. Most of all I’m super excited to get started on #TheReadingQuest tomorrow. I plan to upload a separate post tomorrow which I will edit after each book I finish, and this is where I’ll keep track of all the points I accrue over the course of the challenge – it will be a great way to keep me accountable, and to make sure I don’t get confused along the way! Until then, let #TheReadingQuest begin…

Are you taking part in The Reading Quest? Please do let me know in the comments below if so because I’d love to check out your intended TBR and we can cheer each other on throughout the challenge!

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