Hello readers! Today I am going to show what I will be reading for the Fall into Reading-athon. However, I want to make a quick update first. I am not going to post a wrap up this week because I didn’t even finish one book! I started and listened to a good chunk of Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson and I was struggling so hard to wrap my head around all the characters and the world. It has kind of sent me into a reading slump. I have decided to stop listening to it and buy a physical copy so I can read it with my eyes because I still would love to read it.
So, this readathon was created by Booktuber Completely Melanie and she does one every season. I first participated in this readathon in the summer and I really enjoyed doing so! It runs from the 21st to the 27th and the link will be at the bottom as always!
I am not going to let myself go into a reading slump so my plan is to pack in a lot of contemporary books to get back into my reading before I go anywhere near another fantasy novel. Please let me know below what you are reading for this readathon if you are participating.
1. School’s in Session: Read the group book or buddy read a book.
– The group book for this round is Autoboyography by Christina Lauren. I have never read a book by them before and I know it is on Scribd so I will be picking this one up for sure. There will be a live show where Christina Lauren will be making an appearance and I am so ready to watch it!
Synopsis: Three years ago, Tanner Scott’s family relocated from California to Utah, a move that nudged the bisexual teen temporarily back into the closet. Now, with one semester of high school to go, and no obstacles between him and out-of-state college freedom, Tanner plans to coast through his remaining classes and clear out of Utah. But when his best friend Autumn dares him to take Provo High’s prestigious Seminar—where honor roll students diligently toil to draft a book in a semester—Tanner can’t resist going against his better judgment and having a go, if only to prove to Autumn how silly the whole thing is. Writing a book in four months sounds simple. Four months is an eternity. It turns out, Tanner is only partly right: four months is a long time. After all, it takes only one second for him to notice Sebastian Brother, the Mormon prodigy who sold his own Seminar novel the year before and who now mentors the class. And it takes less than a month for Tanner to fall completely in love with him.
2. Online Learning: Read an ebook or listen to an audio book.
– Turtles All the Way Down by John Green. This one will be a reread for me. I have been wanting to reread it for a long time because I don’t remember much about it but I do remember loving it when I did read it.
Synopsis: It all begins with a fugitive billionaire and the promise of a cash reward. Turtles All the Way Down is about lifelong friendship, the intimacy of an unexpected reunion, Star Wars fan fiction, and tuatara. But at its heart is Aza Holmes, a young woman navigating daily existence within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts. In his long-awaited return, John Green shares Aza’s story with shattering, unflinching clarity.
3. Current Events: Read a book on a topic that has affected the world in the last 5 years.
– March Book Three by John Lewis and Anderew Aydin. This one may seem like a stretch because it doesn’t take place in the last five years. However, this comic book series covers the life of John Lewis and the things he has faced in his life based on the color of his skin. To me, this is still relevant. There is still racism and police brutality and wrongful murders of so many African Americans in America. This will also help me finish out a series that I have been needing to finish for a long while.
Synopsis (of book one): March is a vivid first-hand account of John Lewis’ lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation. Rooted in Lewis’ personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement. Book One spans John Lewis’ youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., the birth of the Nashville Student Movement, and their battle to tear down segregation through nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins, building to a stunning climax on the steps of City Hall. Many years ago, John Lewis and other student activists drew inspiration from the 1950s comic book “Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story.” Now, his own comics bring those days to life for a new audience, testifying to a movement whose echoes will be heard for generations.
4. Get lost in a corn maze: Read a book with yellow on the cover.
– Beach Read by Emily Henry. I started this book on Sunday. Even though it is more of a romance and I don’t tend to love romance books, I do really love it so far. It seems like an enemies to lovers type of romance and it is really funny so far.
Synopsis: Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast. They’re polar opposites. In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they’re living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer’s block. Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really.
5. Pumpkin Spiced Lattes & Apple Picking: Read a book with a fruit or beverage on the cover or in the title.
– When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon.This is a book that I have known of for a long time and have heard both good and bad things about it and I am excited to see where I stand. There is an iced coffee on the cover.
Synopsis: Dimple Shah has it all figured out. With graduation behind her, she’s more than ready for a break from her family, from Mamma’s inexplicable obsession with her finding the “Ideal Indian Husband.” Ugh. Dimple knows they must respect her principles on some level, though. If they truly believed she needed a husband right now, they wouldn’t have paid for her to attend a summer program for aspiring web developers…right? Rishi Patel is a hopeless romantic. So, when his parents tell him that his future wife will be attending the same summer program as him—wherein he’ll have to woo her—he’s totally on board. Because as silly as it sounds to most people in his life, Rishi wants to be arranged, believes in the power of tradition, stability, and being a part of something much bigger than himself. The Shahs and Patels didn’t mean to start turning the wheels on this “suggested arrangement” so early in their children’s lives, but when they noticed them both gravitate toward the same summer program, they figured, Why not? Dimple and Rishi may think they have each other figured out. But when opposites clash, love works hard to prove itself in the most unexpected ways.
6. Trick or Treat: Read a Spooky Book.
– The Family Upstaris by Lisa Jewell. I don’t know what this book is about but I read a book by Lisa Jewell in August and I really loved it. I assume there will be some type of spooky vibes as it is a mystery/thriller novel and I just so happen to have just bought this book so it will be perfect for this prompt!
Synopsis: Soon after her twenty-fifth birthday, Libby Jones returns home from work to find the letter she’s been waiting for her entire life. She rips it open with one driving thought: I am finally going to know who I am. She soon learns not only the identity of her birth parents, but also that she is the sole inheritor of their abandoned mansion on the banks of the Thames in London’s fashionable Chelsea neighborhood, worth millions. Everything in Libby’s life is about to change. But what she can’t possibly know is that others have been waiting for this day as well—and she is on a collision course to meet them. Twenty-five years ago, police were called to 16 Cheyne Walk with reports of a baby crying. When they arrived, they found a healthy ten-month-old happily cooing in her crib in the bedroom. Downstairs in the kitchen lay three dead bodies, all dressed in black, next to a hastily scrawled note. And the four other children reported to live at Cheyne Walk were gone. The can’t-look-away story of three entangled families living in a house with the darkest of secrets.
Fall into Reading-athon annoucement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l36fEjwYz20
Seasonathon Twitter: https://twitter.com/SeasonAthon
My Original Post: https://allithebookgiraffe.wixsite.com/allithebookgiraffe/post/fall-into-reading-athon-tbr
Hello everyone! Today, I am going to be showing you what I read for the Fall into Reading-athon along with what I read for the last three days of the month. I only finished 3 books during the readathon, and one was a DNF. https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1589881197l/52867387._SY475_.jpg
For the first couple of days, I was reading Beach Read by Emily Henry (4 stars). This is an adult romance about two people named January, who write romance, and Augustus, who writes literary fiction, and they decide to swap genres. They spend some time together teaching each other where they get their inspirations from.
I think it took me so long to read because there wasn’t any intrigue. I know, this is a romance so there won’t that type of plot but I really need one to motivate me to keep reading. I wish there was more in the book about writing the actual books. The MC’s book seemed really interesting and crazy. I think some of the characters were really well written and others were left in the dust. The grief parts in this book literally had me in tears as I lost my own father six years ago. Overall, it had me crying and laughing through the whole book along with the MC and I did enjoy it.https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1503002776l/35504431._SY475_.jpg
The second book I read that was a DNF was Turtles All the Way Down by John Green. This book was a reread. I read this right after it came out the first time and I decided to reread it because I remembered I loved it so much and I couldn’t remember anything about it other than this one hand sanitizer scene. I cannot tell you what I liked about it before and I didn’t really like any of the characters, especially the best friend character. I didn’t really see why the MC and her friend even cared so much about the guy who was missing. It would literally make my skin crawl every time the focus was on her cut on her finger. As a fellow Hoosier, I also felt like I was being beaten over the head with Indiana references. https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1568668515l/44156814._SY475_.jpg
The last book I finished was during the last Becca’s Bookoplathon 24-hour readathon and that was The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell. This one has three different perspectives but the main one is about a girl who is an orphan. She was found in her crib as a baby in a house with her two dead parents, a mystery third man, and her two teenage siblings are missing. It takes place twenty-five years later when she finally inherits the massive 12-bedroom home she was found in, and the plot unravels from there.
I managed to read this entire book and a bit of another one during that time. This is my second book by Lisa Jewell this year and in general. The first one was Then She Was Gone. In both books I read by her, I started out thinking I knew exactly what the plot twist was going to be and both times, I was completely wrong. I really enjoyed The Family Upstairs but not as much as Then She Was Gone. I didn’t think the ending was realistic. When I say that, I mean the main characters reaction to the information we were given and then the actual end. It just was tied up too quickly and didn’t make much sense for me. However, I still loved it and I am looking forward to more books by her in the future.
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After I read The Family Upstairs, I got a package with Way of Kings by Brandon Sandersoninside. I tried to listen the audiobook earlier this month of Way of Kings and it just was not working for me. I haven’t really read a book quite like this before so I was not prepared for all the characters, species, and overall world. From what I read online, there are 14 different POVs through the book. I have read Game of Thrones but I feel like it was easier because I have seen the entire show. So, I went ahead and just bought a copy of the book so I could read it physically and hopefully grasp everything a bit better. I ended up getting around 285 pages done during the readathon and I finished the month at about 360 pages. I am doing much better this time around with it and I am enjoying it while not trying to rush myself through it. I do feel like Sanderson has a habit of explaining things that don’t need explained and not explaining things that should be explained more. I also wish there were more chapters in Shallan’s POV because I really love her character but I know she comes back really soon.
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The last book I started was after the readathon and I only got 106 pages into and that was A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor by Hank Green. As a person who dislikes sci-fi, I wish there was more sci-fi. I don’t think the POVs are very different from one another, which makes it difficult to read for me. Needless to say, I am taking these last two books into my October TBR. I am going to push through this one so I can see how I feel in the end of it all.
Overall, I didn’t have a great reading month but I think this readathon went well. I did rekindle my love for physical books again in these last two weeks. Comment down below and let me know if you have read any of these books and what you think of them and I will see you in the next post!
My Original Post: https://allithebookgiraffe.wixsite.com/allithebookgiraffe/post/fall-into-reading-athon-wrap-up
Alli the Book Giraffe 
