Magical Readathon Completed!

Many weeks ago now, I wrote about the Magical Readathon, and the OWLs I needed to ‘take’ to reach my chosen career. This has been by far the most exciting readathon I’ve ever done, and as soon as I realised it was nearly finished, I found myself searching wildly online for more to take part in. The prompts have been fantastic and the challenge for myself.

To my surprise, I ended up going way past the six books for the Curse Breaker career I’d chosen, and ended up reading… a book for every single prompt! That’s twelve books, double what I was aiming for. Some where short, but one was also over 800 pages, so I feel that balances out somewhat. This gives me the career of an Alchemist, with twelve OWLs, and six NEWTs for when that happens in October.

I will eventually get around to reviewing them all but for now, here is my list. I’m so excited to share this with you!

Ancient Runes – Heart Rune – The Queen of Hearts

Arithmancy – Opposite genre – The Donor

Astronomy – Mostly read at night – The Coven

Care of Magical Creatures – Creature with a beak on the cover – A Skinful of Shadows

Charms – White cover – One Of Us Is Lying

Defense Against The Dark Arts – Set near / on sea – To Kill A Kingdom

Divination – Random book from TBR – One Of Us Is Next

Herbology – Beginning with M – Milk and Honey

History of Magic – Witches – Book of Shadows

Muggle Studies – Book by a contemporary – Two Can Keep A Secret

Potions – Under 150 pages – The Yellow Wallpaper

Transfiguration – Shapeshifting – Crescent City: House of Earth and Blood

Phew! What a list. Honestly, I’m so very proud of myself. I’ve managed all this while being very ill, on top of homeschooling, regardless of my health, and despite everything else that’s going on, I read twelve books. It has been so easy to lose motivation right now, that actually being able to summon some up for the last thirty days is something I’m pretty proud of.

The focus of having a reading theme, and a reading schedule to keep to, has made it far easier. It was also interesting to see how my choices changed, intentionally and unintentionally, for several reasons. The main reason being that as I reached the end of the longest book on my list – House of Earth and Blood – I decided I wanted to do as much of the challenge as possible. At first this expanded to an extra book or two; I spent far too long at 3am one night deciding on a new career that my husband eventually had to remind me that it wasn’t a real career path and it was okay. Emotional investment, you say?

What was really superb was this allowed me to reread some comfort reads, read some books that have been sat waiting for ages, and some that have only recently come into my life too. Another mention to House of Earth and Blood as I had been slightly intimidated to make a start on it with it being so long, but I loved every single page. As I raved in my review, this book has become not only one of my top books of the year, but one of my top books of all time, and it would have taken me so much longer to get around to reading it without the kick up the bum that the prompts gave.

I also ended up reading all three books by Karen M McManus by sheer chance, after the selection of my TBR list that I put in as options for my Divination book (listing every single book I need to read would take longer than a month…!) resulted in me reading One Of Us Is Next.

Having recently realised just how much I love YA fiction, I found half of my books actually coming from the category, three fantasy, and three murder mystery. If Good Girl, Bad Blood had come out any earlier, I would have found a way to work it in I’m sure! Rereading the first two books of the Wicca series (Book of Shadows and The Coven) brought back waves of nostalgia, and I had to send a photo to several old school friends with a “You will not believe what I’m reading!” message.

The Queen of Hearts was a wonderful read that I wouldn’t likely have found myself reading without the challenges, so once again that positive little kick up the arse I mentioned above.

I found picking a book for Herbology difficult as it turns out I don’t actually own many books beginning with M, which made it even more interesting hunting one out. I ended up rereading one of my favourite poetry collections Milk and Honey at a time where I actually really needed the boost from it.

Overall, I’m so sad this month is over and would quite happily live month by month with different challenges. I wish I had known about this for the previous two years, and this is another reason why I’m so glad to have become a part of the book blogging community, finally knowing about readathons! I’ll now be reading endless ARCs until the first of October, ready to start all over again.