Features | #5books7days Readathon Roundup
Last week I crossed off one of my 2016 reading goals by taking part in my first ever readathon! I opted for the #5books7days readathon which took place from 22-28 February and was hosted by @lottelikesbooks over on Instagram. As the title suggests, the aim of this particular challenge was to read five books over the course of seven days; here's how I got on...
Day One | pages read: 220
I kicked off the week with In A Dark Dark Wood (Ruth Ware, 2015), a thriller which centres around a hen party in the middle of nowhere. I was definitely off to a good start, reading around two thirds of the novel on day one.
Day Two | pages read: 265
On the second day I finished In A Dark Dark Wood, leading me to the conclusion that thrillers are the best genre for speed reading - I'll remember that for any future readathons!
I also started two other books, YA novel All The Bright Places (Jennifer Niven, 2015) and non-fiction title The 100 Most Pointless Arguments In The World... Solved (Alexander Armstrong & Richard Osman, 2013). Right from the beginning I knew I wanted to include a non-fiction title that I could dip in and out of between novels, so selected one from the five I vowed to read this year back in January's group collaboration. Of course, when I wasn't looking one of my rabbits thought it would be fun to chew on the book...
Day Three | pages read: 177
On day three I decided to focus mainly on reading a good chunk of All The Bright Places but also managed to squeeze in few chapters of The 100 Most Pointless Arguments. Despite making good progress on the first couple of days, at this point I was pretty sure I wasn't going to make it to five books!
Day Four | pages read: 145
On the fourth day I read another 100 pages of All The Bright Places, but also decided to pop The 100 Most Pointless Arguments in my bag and thanks to my lunch break at work ended up squeezing in a few more pages.
Day Five | pages read: 111
I decided that Friday's goal would be to finish All The Bright Places, leaving the weekend free to start a new read!
Day Six | pages read: 0
This was the only day of the week where I didn't manage to sneak in any reading! Instead I spent the day catching up with friends, visiting The Museum Of London's current exhibition The Crime Museum Uncovered. We also spent a good couple of hours perusing the shelves at Foyles, although surprisingly I didn't end up buying any books!
Day Seven | pages read: 288
On Sunday morning I finally finished reading The 100 Most Pointless Arguments - day 7 and only 3 books down!
Knowing that I wouldn't have time to fit in two more novels before the end of the day and the end of the challenge, I decided to pick up a novella. Whilst I must confess to being a little behind on my Rowell (having not yet read Landline or Carry On), I always love her writing style and the characters she creates so I took to my Kindle to read her World Book Day release Kindred Spirits. The story follows Elena as she queues to see the new Star Wars movie and I really enjoyed tagging along on her adventure.
To finish the readathon I made a start on a fifth book, Jenny Han & Siobhan Vivian's co-written Burn For Burn, managing to read 47 pages before the end of the day.
Despite not completing the full challenge of five books, I managed to read a total of
1206 pages over the week which I think is a pretty good result! Aside from other commitments taking priority, the thing I struggled with the most was actually sitting down to read throughout the day. Generally, I only read before I go to sleep or when I first wake up and I found it quite difficult to concentrate on reading at other times of the day.
If I were to participate in another readathon like this I'd definitely think more carefully about my TBR beforehand, which would also allow me to figure out how many pages I'd need to read each day to complete the challenge. As mentioned above, I think thrillers and shorter YA titles would be the best picks to ensure as much reading as possible!
Have you taken part in any readathons? What would be your top tips?
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