It’s one of my favorite times of year again! And this time, despite a precarious schedule and some potential work travel, I am very set on winning.

The Reading Rush (July 22-28) is the shiny new evolution of BookTubeAThon, the reading challenge I hold near and dear to my heart. BookTubeAThon, way back in 2014, was the catalyst that threw me headfirst into BookTube.

And that year was a dream.

After that, I’m pretty sure I failed year after year after year, but I had fun doing it. And truly, nothing will ever compare to that first year, when I read the entirety of The Selection by Kiera Cass in three days. What a time to be alive.

Anyway, there’s not much different for me this year, save for the massive rebrand the readathon hosts have undergone — that and my dogged determination to get back to my former seven-books-in-seven-days glory.

So here’s to the first year of The Reading Rush! Get yourself to the fancy new website where you can track your progress and earn shiny badges and whatnot. Exciting stuff, man. As a note, I’ll be hosting the Twitter sprints Thursday the 25th from 7-8pm. For those of you who’ve been around for previous BookTubeAThons, you know what that means…. *devious face*

Here’s my TBR and the challenges [two audiobooks not pictured]! May your days be filled with wonderful words and comfortable reading spots.

1. In The Hand of the Goddess by Tamora Pierce (purple on the cover)
2. The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling (Book to Movie Adaptation)
3. Alanna: The First Adventure by Tamora Pierce (meant to read last year)
4. My Almost Flawless Tokyo Dream Life by Rachel Cohn (over 5 words in title)
5. The Near Witch by Victoria Schwab (an author’s first book)
6. The Light Jar by Lisa Thompson (Same Spot the Whole Time)
7. Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor (Non-Human Main Character)

Are you doing The Reading Rush? What are you reading?

Listen, if there was gonna be even one good thing about my role being eliminated at work and needing to find a new job — it was going to be that I would actually have time to do Booktubeathon for serious this year. Because as I’m sure you’re all aware — it’s my second favorite book-related challenge on the Internet. The first of which, of course, being NaNoWriMo.

But get this. While I don’t technically have a day job I need to go to, Booktubeathon falls on the perfect storm of days I still will be quite crunched to actually read books at all, let alone seven.

Monday: Job interview that will take at least half the day
Tuesday: Doctor appointment in the morning, going into the office for something midday, then a hair appointment afternoon/evening
Wednesday: Nothing, thank goodness. I’ll be reading pretty much all day, when I’m not packing
Thursday: Why was I packing? Oh right, because I am spending the rest of the week in NYC. Which will be amazing, just – you know – ill timed. At least I have a long flight to read on.
Friday-Sunday: Doing NYC things, and trying to fit some reading in amongst it all

Basically, I’m doomed. Here’s my TBR:

I opted for a bunch of short books, thankfully, with a ratio of 3 actual novels to 4 graphic novels. The bottom two graphic novels I’ll be doing a coin flip over, as per the challenges. To find out about the rest of the challenges, watch the official challenge video. I also need to consider doing one of these as an audiobook, since I now have two days of commutes I didn’t account for. Plus I need to find time to watch the movie version of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas… yikes. This is going to be something.

But this is par for the course, with me. Nobody is surprised. If you want to watch me flail along during this challenge, be sure to follow my Instagram account!

As a fun little bonus, this week I have also created a series of lists with recommendations for things I like and use, like board games and cute stuff and even products I use to maintain pink hair. I’m an Amazon affiliate, so I do get a small commission if you end up buying anything, but I get asked so often for recommendations that this seemed like a good solution. I recently made one for writing, and while it’s not exactly made for readathons, there’s still a lot of stuff in there that applies. Like fuzzy socks. Man, I love fuzzy socks.

Okay, that’s all I’ve got. This was initially going to be a video, since I had this small inkling of a desire to make a video, but that was a fleeting idea. Then it took me another week to actually write this, because apparently, all content on the Internet is difficult for me these days.

Who else is doing Booktubeathon? Do we think Kristina will actually win this year?

I haven’t successfully won since the very first time I tried it, back in 2014. Coincidentally, that was the last time I didn’t have a full-time job taking up all my time.

If you want – leave a comment telling me what you’re most excited to read, or give me NYC recommendations!

Booktubeathon is upon us yet again, and I fear I have made a grave mistake this year. Actually, let’s take a step back.

So, as you all likely know, I am participating in Camp NaNoWriMo this month. I set a modest goal for myself, but writing 20,000 words in a month (arguably the busiest of the summer months) is still nothing to shake a stick at. I knew that attempting Booktubeathon and Camp NaNo in the same month would be a stretch, but I’ve never been one to look in the face of a challenge and back away. I welcome challenge. I thrive on challenge.

This was all well and good – totally doable – until I found out about the Marauder’s Marathon. This is a month long virtual Harry Potter themed marathon, which I, of course, signed up for because you can absolutely trick me into exercising if you disguise it as a fun Harry Potter fandom activity. Plus I am trying to be more active, so why not apply a NaNoWriMo-esque filter to running, to make it more exciting? 26.2 miles in a month? A whole month? No problem!

Problem is, it started on the 17th of July. While I was in New York, in oppressively hot weather. Listen, I’m as committed to pretending to be a wizard while I run as the next person, but I’m not going to start my running adventure in 90 degree weather. So here I am, finally home from NY, 5 days behind. But still determined.

Okay. Okay Kristina. Three marathon style events in one month. All overlapping for one chaotic week starting on Monday. Is this possible? You can listen to audiobooks and run at the same time. You can get up early to write. This is doable.

You can listen to audiobooks and run at the same time. You can get up early to write. This is doable.

Oh wait. Your friends invited you on a spontaneous trip to Las Vegas for one of their birthdays starting on the Saturday of your Week of Madness, and you can’t turn down a spontaneous adventure? AND your best friend gets married on August 9th and you’re not only in the wedding, you’re also planning the bachelorette party, which happens right in the midst of all of this?

Guys, nothing can save me now. I um… I may have over-committed.

BUT! Follow me on Instagram and Twitter over the next couple weeks to see if I survive, and in the mean time… here’s my Booktubeathon TBR:

The challenges:

1/ Read a book with a person on the cover: PAPER GIRLS by Brian K. Vaughan
2/ Read a hyped book: MILK AND HONEY by Rupi Kaur
3/ Finish a book in one day: DEAR IJEAWELE, OR A FEMINIST MANIFESTO IN FIFTEEN SUGGESTIONS by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
4/ Read about a character that is very different from you: HOMEGOING by Yaa Gyasi
5/ Finish a book completely outdoors: MEN EXPLAIN THINGS TO ME by Rebecca Solnit
6/ Read a book you bought because of the cover: THE WILD ROBOT by Peter Brown
7/ Read seven books: THE ONE MEMORY OF FLORA BANKS by Emily Barr

I forgot to mention… it would be so nice to have this weekend, this glorious Saturday and Sunday, to get ahead in writing, to do some solid running, cleanse my reading palate with some television, do laundry and relax and prepare for the insanity ahead – but I’m got another wedding tonight and won’t be back until tomorrow. *falls over and dies*

Wish me luck, and please let me know if you’re participating in any of the above challenges. Bonus points if anyone out there is crazy enough to do all three, like I am!

I have been excited for this ALL YEAR LONG and now it’s finally here… BOOKTUBEATHON!

Above is my TBR video. This is the video that explains the reading challenges and which books I’ve decided to read for each one. The overarching goal is to read 7 books over the course of the week, and due to my extremist tendencies (coughNaNoWriMocough) I obviously take this one the most seriously.

Here’s a photo of the books I’m reading. Aren’t they pretty? The phone represents the Jenny Han book, since I am audiobookin’ it:

Here’s my progress so far:

The Last Girlfriend on Earth by Simon Rich: 50% done
I Am Princess X by Cherie Priest: 50% done
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han: 15% done

I have successfully started 3 of my books (1 is an audiobook, 1 is a compilation of short stories and 1 is straight fiction, so I’ve been juggling all three pretty easily) and I’m feeling pretty good for my first day. At least on the reading front – as far as video and instagram challenges go, I’m failing miserably. I’ll start doing those tomorrow. Today I was too excited for the actual reading, and also having a day job AND a dentist appointment were not conducive to day one of a readathon the way it is.

I’m loving this week already. Stay tuned to my blog/twitter/youtube channel/instagram/basically everywhere for my reading updates. Also, don’t know what #BookTubeAThon is? Check out the YouTube channel!

Hello valiant blog readers!

I have been terrible at keeping this thing updated. I know. Every time I get busy this blog is the first thing to go, but it’s also one of my favorite things I do online! I don’t understand it! I’m gonna be better. I promise.

Anyway! Here’s what I have been up to since the last time I wrote a blog post, which was… early November.

The biggest thing for me was – I finished my 9th NaNoWriMo novel! It was a crazy month, with very little time for anything other than writing, but I DID IT. It felt amazing, and here’s my video documentation of the process if you want to know more about what it was like for me:

I also recently started up a book club on Goodreads if you haven’t heard about that yet. It’s called The Restricted Section and we’ve already got a great group of people involved! Our first book (for November) was Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore (which I loved) and this month we’re reading My True Love Gave to Me, a compilation of holiday themed short stories written by popular YA authors. I can’t wait to dive into it.

As for this month, I’m currently gearing up for Project 4 Awesome (that’s taking place December 12-13 if you wanna get involved) and then shortly after that is the Christmas BookTubeAThon! I can’t WAIT to find out what the challenges are; I love BookTubeAThon so much. I will likely be making daily videos and shoving everything else on my to-do list way down so I can knock out a bunch more reading before the end of the year.

It’s also going to be my birthday soon… I turn 27 on the 27th, making it my golden birthday! This will also set my well into my “late twenties”, which is something I am still grappling with, emotionally. Where did the time go? I honestly couldn’t tell you. I was too busy wearing footy pajamas and watching My Little Pony to notice how old I’ve gotten.

That’s sort of it, for now! I hope you’re all doing well and I will be back very soon with another blog post. Happy December!

So… I may have done something crazy.

What could you possibly done that’s so crazy, Kristina? you might ask.

I may have committed to attempting the Book-Tube-A-Thon starting on Monday, July 14th. For those who don’t know what the Book-Tube-A-Thon is (like me, 3 days ago), all the information about it can be found here. It’s sort of like NaNoWriMo, but for reading. This is scary for a number of reasons, but mainly because I already know I can handle NaNoWriMo, even if I undergo small amounts of insanity in the process.

But Book-Tube-A-Thon is terrifying. Book-Tube-A-Thon is the unknown. Book-Tube-A-Thon is gonna be GREAT.

The thing is – writing 1,667 words a day, in a vacuum, is pretty easy. It’s really the challenge of doing it EVERY SINGLE DAY that starts to make you lose your mind. But reading SEVEN BOOKS in SEVEN DAYS? Coming from a slow reader, well, let’s just say it’s going to be a challenge.

BUT I AM SO PUMPED.

I’ll be announcing my full TBR list in the first video check-in on Monday (oh, did I not mention? On top of reading seven books in seven days, there are also daily videos. With challenges. Sure, no big deal, next week is going to be a piece of cake) so make sure you’re subscribed to my channel if you want to witness the madness first hand.

I will end this blog post by revealing the first of my seven books, though:

The Selection by Kiera Cass! I’ve heard nothing but good things about this series, even if most of the people reading it were slightly ashamed by how much they liked it. Not gonna lie, I can be a total sucker for those kinds of books.

You’re probably wondering, after all this, why I am doing this. If it’s so scary, why do it? Well, I have a few answers for you.

1. “Because it’s scary” is one of my favorite reasons to do anything. It’s why this year will be Year 9 of NaNoWriMo, it’s why I have a YouTube channel at all, and it’s why cave hiking is one of my favorite new hobbies. Nothing helps you grow as a person quite like attempting something that terrifies you, and coming out the other side a victor. Or, alternately, failing miserably. Both are okay options! Both are good for you!
2. I’m really pumped on books lately, and the BookTube community seems amazing and welcoming and fun. What better way to try to assimilate myself with them than to tag along on their craziest adventure? I hope they like me. Fingers crossed they like me.
3. How ELSE am I gonna accomplish any of my reading goals this year when there are so many distractions everywhere? I love the idea of a militant reading challenge. I write the most during November and it really works for me. Why not try the same with reading?

I likely wont be blogging much (if at all) during the Book-Tube-A-Thon, but who knows. It’s only a week though, so be sure to check back after for my thoughts on the whole experience. And if it sounds fun to you at all… feel free to join in the fun! I’ll be talking about it a lot on Twitter, especially since it’s just perfect for #JulyReading.

See you on the other side! Two and a half more days before THE CRAZY BEGINS!!!