O.W.L.’s Magical Readathon TBR.

The O.W.L’s Magical readathon is a month long attempt to read as much as possible. This is the third year that it has been running, although this is only my first time partaking.

I don’t normally take part in readathons, because I am notoriously bad at them (by which I mean that I forget to read). However, considering current global circumstances, I feel that I have no excuse not to join in. And so I have chosen the following TBR.

A list of the challenges and everything can be found at magicalreadathon.com.

I have decided to work toward the Wandmaker career, as I feel this is something that would interest me if I lived in the magical world. I am also going to attempt the short courses for Legal Defence of Fantastic Beasts, and Animagus Training.

So, firstly, the courses for Wandmaker are Ancient Runes, Arithmancy, Care of Magical Creatures, Charms, and Herbology.

Secondly, the courses for Legal Defence of Magical Beasts are Care of Magical Creatures and History of Magic.

And lastly, the courses for Animagus Training are Arithmancy, Potions, and Transfigurations.

At this point I feel like I may as well be doing all twelve subjects, considering I’ve already chosen to do eight of them. Haha. As it is, I’m going to begin with the five for Wandmaker, and see where we go from there.

(Please be aware that normal I don’t read more than maybe three books per month. I think the most I’ve ever managed in a month is six. Still, this is going to be a big challenge. But there is currently nothing to stop me from reading the entire month. Lol.)

Wandmaker.

Ancient Runes – read a book with a heart on the cover or in the title.

For this book I have chosen Theatrical, by Maggie Harcourt. This is a YA contemporary set in a theatre. I don’t really know much about this story, but I picked hte book up as mostly a cover-buy a short while ago, and it looks cute and easy-going.

Arithmancy – read a book outside of your favourite genre.

The book I have chosen for this is The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells. I don’t often read classics, and rarely read sci-fi. I also chose this because I recently realised this is set near where I live, which quite interested me. Haha.

Care of Magical Creatures – read a book that has a creature with a beak on the front.

For this one I have chosen Nevernight, by Jay Kristoff. I started trying to read this a while ago, but only managed the first chapter. I felt encouraged to read it because one of my favourite BookTubers, PeruseProject, read it recently and said she enjoyed it.

Charms – read a book with a white cover.

This was fairly difficult for me to choose as I have so many books with white covers that I haven’t read yet. But I ended up choosing One of Us is Lying, by Karen M. McManus. I have been putting off reading this book for a long time because I found out what happens at the end. But I still feel like reading this book, especially because I own the sequel, and think it would be a waste not to read both books.

Herbology – read a book that starts with the letter M.

I didn’t have many books to choose for this, but ended up choosing another book that I’ve owned for a long time, and feel somewhat obliged to read. And that book is My Name is Victoria, by Lucy Worsley. I don’t really know much about this book, but I believe it is historical fiction about Queen Victoria.

If a subject is included in more than one course then you only need to read one book for that subject. Therefore I only need to read three extra books for my chosen short courses.

Extra Courses

History of Magic – books featuring witches / wizards.

I found it quite difficult to choose a book for this challenge, especially as most books I own with magical characters don’t specify them as witches or wizards, so I wasn’t sure if I wanted to include them. In any case, I ended up choosing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. This is the next book in my current reread of the series which I think I started at the beginning of last year. This is fairly unfortunate as it usually takes me months to read this books as it is so long.

Potions – read a book that is less that 150 pages.

For this book I decided to choose a graphic novel as it would be really easy to get through quickly, and I acquired a reasonable amount of graphic novels as presents last Christmas. The one I have chosen is Postal, by Matt Hawkins, Bryan Hill, Isaac Goodhart, and Besty Golden. I honestly don’t know anything about this story. I added it to my wishlist months ago, and since then have forgotten everything about it. But hopefully it will be a quick and enjoyable read.

And finally:

Transfiguration – read a book which includes shapeshifting.

For this book i have chosen a book in a series that I started a while ago, and haven’t continued in a long time. That book is The Trials of Apollo: the Dark Prophecy, by Rick Riordan. This is a book set in the Percy Jackson universe, about the god Apollo who gets turned into a human.. I feel that counts as shapeshifting. Haha. Not sure if that might be cheating, but there is a lot of magic, and I’m sure there are other characters in the series who shapeshift.

Anyway, after that rather long post, hopefully I will be able to read a lot of these books. I worked out that if I read all of them then I would reach a total page count of 3205. And that seems like a lot!

I will try to keep you updated on how my reading is going, but if you are interested, my GoodReads is here.

Until next time…

Love, Bobbi. Xx.

Photo of me in my new Weasley sweater that my mum made me!

My Reading Habit.

2017 – I read 38 books
2016 – I read 31 books
2015 – I read 16 books
2014 – I read 9 books
2013 – I read 9 books
2012 – I’m pretty sure all I read was the Harry Potter series, but I also had a feeling that I read that series twice in a row just because I could.

When I was a kid, I used to read quite a lot. I don’t remember exactly how much or how often I read, but I did get through quite a few books in my childhood. Some of my favourite authors were Jacqueline Wilson, JK Rowling (obviously, lol), I read the Sleepover Club series, Horrid Henry, Sideways Stories From Wayside School…

I read quite a lot, but then when I was a teenager I lost some of my interest in reading, mostly because I was hanging around with friends who didn’t particularly like to read very often. That made me feel as though I didn’t need to read either, which is a total shame.

At university I was studying Creative Writing, and we were encouraged to read as much as possible, mostly for research for our stories but also to help us keep in the mind of writing and different ways that stories could be written. This is why my reading really began to increase.

I graduated university in 2015, and my reading seemed to double after that, possibly because I seemed to have more time for reading, or maybe because I was starting to realise what types of books I really enjoyed. I also found that watching BookTube videos helped encourage me to read more, because there were so many people talking about all the different books they loved, and it really gave me a whole new passion for reading  (this is also when my number of book purchases dramatically increased as well).

A few months ago I decided to try my hand at starting a BookTube channel myself. So far I have only produced a few videos, and I’m still trying to work out a filming and editing schedule that fits around my irregular work schedule. But I’m beginning to find that I want to read more so that I can have more to discuss in my videos.

My BookTube channel is part of my self-improvement because I’m trying to make it a regular hobby. I started my channel in the middle of November last year, but I’ve only produced about six videos since then. I really want to have a regular schedule, but it’s tricky when I work different hours and days each week.

Aside from my BookTube channel, another thing that is encouraging me to read more is that a few months ago I managed to encourage my friend Anya (fuelledbybooks.wordpress.com) to get back into reading. I have found that talking to her about how much reading we are getting done, and doing a buddy read or two each month has really encouraged me to try to read books faster.

This year I am trying to read 50 books. So far I have read 24, so I’m ahead of schedule right now. Hopefully I can keep this up, and maybe even exceed my goal.

I will try to keep you updated every so often on how my reading is going.

Until next time…

Love Bobbi. Xx.