The Terror of Knowing

Hi everyone! You may have noticed I’ve been a bit quiet on the blogosphere in the last week or so, principally because of taking part in two readathons – The Book Junkie Trials and The Reading Rush (formerly known as the Booktubeathon). The latter took place this past week and I was focusing most of my energy on trying to read 7 books in 7 days, which is no mean feat. I prepared a TBR accordingly but, unsurprisingly, I didn’t quite stick to it. I did do little daily updates so I could compile them into a post so, hey, if you like stats, you’ll enjoy this post below. If not, I’m sorry, I’m hoping normal(ish) service in terms of blogging will resume in August. Until then, enjoy these shoddy attempts at diarising my readathon experience…

Day One

Day One of The Reading Rush. I read a bunch during commute to/from work and a little bit when I got home. My back was killing me so I found it hard to sit still in a position that didn’t exacerbate it so I’m sure that contributed to feeling slumpy and not reading much once I was done with work for the day.

Daily Total:
24 pages of Loki, Issue 1
75 pages of The Lies of Locke Lamora

Running Total:
Pages Read: 99 pages
Books finished: Loki, Issue 1

Day Two

I only read a little bit during my lunch break yesterday and wasn’t really feeling it on the train home from work because it had been delayed and was busy and the atmosphere made me quite queasy. I ended up going out for Thai food to celebrate housemate Liz’s dad’s birthday so I got home late and didn’t read anything before falling asleep!

Daily Total:
30 pages of The Lies of Locke Lamora

Running Total:
Pages Read: 129 pages
Books finished: Loki, Issue 1

Day Three

Let’s see if today can be better, huh? It’s stifflingly hot which will make work fun. I did ask for Friday off from work though so, if nothing else, I’ve booked time in for uninterrupted reading later on in the week. Yay!

Daily Total:
75 pages of The Lies of Locke Lamora

Running Total:
Pages Read: 204 pages
Books finished: Loki, Issue 1

Day Four

It was another stifflingly hot day at work and I think we all felt a little lethargic and groggy in the office. Even a mid-morning ice cream run to the local Tesco didn’t help matters, though the white chocolate Magnum I had was satisfying in the moment. In terms of reading, I read a decent bit on the train to work and then in my lunch but the train home I was sat near a small child who kept climbing on the seats and accidentally kicking my kneecap so I was more focused on fake smiling (‘this is fine’ I kept muttering in my head) than reading anything. Then we went to the pub quiz, which we… didn’t win. And I was so tired by the end of it that I went straight to bed once we got home.

Daily Total:
37 pages of The Lies of Locke Lamora

Running Total:
Pages Read: 241 pages
Books finished: Loki, Issue 1

Day Five

I have a random day off booked today so I have ALL DAY to read to my heart’s content. I made some solid progress with Lies of Locke Lamora (it’s SO engrossing) and I was able to take finally part in some of the reading sprints on Twitter too which helped matters along nicely. I also made a point of telling myself to pick Uprooted back up after hitting a rut with it several days ago. It is getting faintly ridiculous that I haven’t finished it yet.

Daily Total:
133 pages of The Lies of Locke Lamora
92 pages of Uprooted

Running Total:
Pages Read: 466 pages
Books finished: Loki, Issue 1

Day Six

At the time of writing this, I’ve done a bunch of house stuff this morning which means I haven’t read solidly through the day but thanks to yesterday reinvigorating what had been my waning interest in Uprooted I’ve finished up the book (yay!) and also ended up liking it a lot more once I’ve fell into the very slow rhythm of the story. I’m SO glad to have finished it, it’s been a hot minute since I started the book so it’s nice to see it come to its conclusion. Not sure if I have any more reading energy in me to read much else, but if I do I’ll start listening to Stardust because Neil Gaiman’s narration of his own books is just… to die for, his voice is so soothing.

Daily Total:
132 pages of Uprooted
57 pages of Stardust

Running Total:
Pages Read: 655 pages
Books finished: Loki, Issue 1, Uprooted

Day Seven

I made the mistake of leaving everything I needed to do (including one of the most doubled up books I had) until the last day so of course I hated myself for it. I bothered to make sure Liz and I sat down to watch Stardust (one of my not-so-guilty pleasure faves tbh) but I’d somehow forgot that it’s not the shortest of films (just over 2 hours!) so that ate into precious reading time. By the time I got into bed I was shattered and even though I tried to read Stardust, switching to my paperback instead of indulging myself with Neil Gaiman’s audiobook, I quickly realised it would be mathematically impossible for me to finish it before midnight. So… I failed, but I’m trying not to be too hard on myself about it because, hey, in the space of a week I still read a lot of pages and that’s something to celebrate!

Daily Total:
200 pages of The Lies of Locke Lamora
101 pages of Art Matters
52 pages of Stardust
112 pages of Giant Days, Volume 1
113 pages of Giant Days, Volume 2

Overall

Pages Read: 1233 pages
Books finished: Loki, Issue 1, Uprooted, The Lies of Locke Lamora, Art Matters, Giant Days Volume 1, Giant Days Volume 2

Even though I didn’t read everything I intended to (I’m still pretty crushed I didn’t get time to finish Stardust before the week was out), I’m still quite pleased with how much I managed to read in the space of the week. Yay for reading! I’m really glad to see Booktubeathon change and grow to include other online book communities and it’s definitely something I’m going to join in with again in the future!

Did you take part in The Reading Rush? Did you enjoy it? What did you read in the past week? Let me know in the comments below!

Goodreads | Twitter | Instagram