Last year around the end of July, I heard a lot of buzz about “The Reading Rush.” I googled it, only to find out that it had already started and I had less than four days to finish seven books. I’m good, but not that good. This year, I heard the buzz towards the beginning of July and I was ready. What’s that you say? You don’t know what The Reading Rush is? It is a crazy-fun-addictive reading challenge that makes you stay up waaaaay too late on school nights! According to their website:

The Reading Rush is a week long readathon for book lovers all around the world. For one week readers gather together to read as much as they possibly can and to participate in challenges and giveaways online. Starting in 2019 the Reading Rush introduced a website, in order to allow anyone taking part in the readathon to track their reading statistics and come together in a central place.

The Reading Rush started as the “BookTubeAThon” in 2013. Ariel had been poking around the bookish internet and stumbled upon some readathons. She thought it would be a really fun way to bring people together on BookTube, and ran to Raeleen to help her run it. Together they thought up some reading challenges and posted videos on their channels announcing the dates for the first week long YouTube readathon. In the years that have passed it has grown in size to a point where thousands of participants take part every year to read as much as they can during the week of the readathon.

I excitedly signed up on the website and started reading through all of the message boards. I’ll tell you what, some of those people are not messing around. Just like in writing, there are “planners” and “pantsers” (you either plan what you are going to do, or fly by the seat of your pants) and the planners there have it down to a science in order to get every badge and maximize their chances to win prizes. With a nod to my writing style (planner) while acknowledging the craziness of my life, I attacked the Rush as a planning pantser.

My bag from the library is full of due dates staring me down and I never know when another book is going to drop into my Libby app, so my reading order is often decided by my fear of overdue fines.

My challenge was to try to marry their badges with my current due dates in the face of my work schedule and family commitments. NO PROBLEMO!!!

2020 Challenges:

1/ Read a book with a cover that matches the colour of your birth stone.
2/ Read a book that starts with the word “The”.
3/ Read a book that inspired a movie you’ve already seen.
4/ Read the first book you touch.
5/ Read a book completely outside of your house.
6/ Read a book in a genre that you’ve always wanted to read more of.
7/ Read a book that takes place on a different continent than where you live.

Okay, so it was kind of a problemo because I didn’t have any purple books, no books related to any movies (seen or unseen), how was I going to find time to read an entire book OUTSIDE of my house???, and the only books I had that were set outside of North America were my Philippa Gregory books and they are each over 500 pages long and I’ve seriously been reading Three Sisters, Three Queens for a month now and I’M STILL NOT DONE.

It’s All About the Strategy

In reading through the challenge boards, I discovered several useful strategies. For example, decide at the beginning of The Reading Rush that you’ve always wanted to read more poetry books less than 30 pages. Badge #6 DONE!!!!! Another helpful strategy: Be very careful to ensure that the first book you touch is the color of your birth stone, starts with the word “The”, and is set on a different continent than where you currently live. Slightly more complicated, but talk about killing multiple birds with one stone! As a rookie, this seemed a little like cheating, but by the end of the week I was desperate and will admit to cozying up to this strategy.

Next year, I’ll have it down, though. I’ll decide that I want to read more poetry books less than 30 pages, then I will have a poetry book that starts with the word “The” that is the color of my birthstone, and it will be the first book I touch, it will have inspired a movie that I’ve already seen, all of the poems will take place on a different continent than where I live (is that even possible????), and I will read the whole thing outside of my house!!!!!

Of course, next year the challenges will change.

More Than Just Some Pretty Badges

In addition to the 7 official challenges, there were some fun, unofficial ones. The Reading Rush also hosted a book club, Twitter Sprints, Live Read-ins, and helped connect book lovers across social media platforms. Other people earned badges for the sprints and read-ins, but I did earn a badge for my Bookstagram ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

All in all, I completed five books and I included my efforts on Three Sisters (gotta get that badge!!!). I read over 1500 pages, added way too many books to my TBR, and earned 5 of the 7 official challenge badges.

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• You Should See Me In a Crown by Leah Johnson is purple like my birthstone, amethyst, and the first book I touched in my library bag
• Doll-Baby by Laura Lane McNeal (dropped into my Libby account on the first day of the Rush… technically the first book I touched?)
• In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado… if you look back at my reading goals, I had a goal to read more memoirs/autobiographies so BAM!!!!
• The Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate… if I must state the obvious, it begins with “The” AND it was beautiful so I gave it five stars
• Miracle Creek by Angie Kim (no badge for this one, had to get it read and turned back in)
• Three Sisters, Three Queens by Philippa Gregory is set in England and Scotland which is not where I live. And in case you are wondering, I STILL haven’t finished it. I am literally dying.

What a Rush!

I had a blast doing The Reading Rush! My family might not have enjoyed it as much as I did (I may have ignored them for the entire week). That’s okay, I feel like I was setting an example of setting and achieving GOALS. I loved connecting with readers from around the world, hearing about what they were reading, and the crazy things they were doing just to be able to read. I cannot wait to do it again next year. Who’s with me????

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