Yes, you read the title of this post correctly. I attempted to read seven books in seven days. Spoiler alert: I was super close! The week was insane and besides getting a major head start on my yearly reading goal, I was sleep-deprived, over caffeinated, and incredibly behind on laundry. It was all worth it! How did I do it? I participated in the Winter Biannual Bibliothon.
The internet is filled with read-a-thons, many of which are sponsored through a special sect of video makers on YouTube called Booktubers. From The Reading Quest to Dewey’s 24 Hour Read-a-thon, there are so many exciting challenges held every month online and all you have to do to participate is pick a challenge, gather up your books, and start reading!
I’ve always wanted to participate in online read-a-thons and made sure to mark my calendar for the first big challenge of the year, the Winter Biannual Bibliothon. Check out the Bibliothon’s YouTube Channel here!
This week-long read-a-thon is held twice a year by a group of Booktubers and includes seven reading challenges, video challenges, giveaways, twitter reading sprints, and Instagram challenges. Participants can be as active or passive as they want during the read-a-thon and there’s no cost or sign-up to worry about.
Here were the seven reading challenges and my selections for each one:
- Read the group book: OTHERWORLD by Jason Segel & Kirsten Miller
Every Biannual Bibliothon, the hosts choose a book that everyone can read together then watch or participate in the Live Show on YouTube to discuss it in a similar fashion as a book club.
- Read a sequel
I chose Curtsies and Conspiracies by Gail Carriger, the second book in the YA Steampunk series, Finishing School.
- Read a book you’ve never heard of before
As a librarian, I’ve heard of a lot of books so to really make sure I picked a book blindly, I used a number generator and a blindfold and went randomly into one of our shelves. I chose the book, The Doldrums by Nicholas Gannon.
- Read a book about mental illness
I chose a book that’s been on my to-read list for years; Ten Days in a Madhouse by Nellie Bly.
- Read a book that was mentioned in another book/movie/show, etc.
In the movie, The Jane Austen Book Club, a character recommends the book Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin so I thought I’d give this one a chance.
- Read a book under 200 pages
My original intention for this challenge was to read A Room with a View by E.M. Forester, but I ended up reading Library Wars: Love and War by Hiro Arikawa and Kiiro Yumi. More on what happened there in my wrap-up below!
- Read a backlist title
This just means to read a book published before 2017 so I picked Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling, published twenty years prior in 1997!
How Did It Go? (a.k.a. The Wrap Up)
Day 1 – Saturday, Jan. 20
Fifteen minutes after midnight, I started reading Ten Days in a Madhouse by 
Nellie Bly. You might not have heard of this book because it was published in 1887! Nellie Bly was an amazing investigative journalist who feigned mental illness for ten days so she would be committed to an asylum. She discovered horrific things while she was there and opened the conversation about quality of care in institutions.
By 1AM, I’d gotten half-way through the book before responsibility took over. I had work in a few hours and needed to sleep! I finished Ten Days on my lunch break and was off to a great start!
Stats:
96 pages read
1 book finished
Day 2 – Sunday, Jan. 21
A day off from work and I was ready to read! The Left Hand of Darkness seemed like a complex book that would need a lot of attention so I dived right into it the moment I woke up. I immediately realized that I hated this book. I’m so sorry if you’ve read it and liked it, but for me, it was so convoluted and offensive and just ugh. I even had to read chapter summaries BEFORE reading each chapter just so I could understand what was going on.
I wanted to actually read each book I’d picked for the challenges so I crawled through this book to finish it. It took most of the day, but by 7pm, I’d finished Left Hand of Darkness, ranted about it for nearly an hour, then proceeded to throw it on the floor. It still counts though!
Side note: Hopefully it’s unrelated, but the author Ursula Le Guin actually passed away the following day. It’s totally unrelated…right?
Stats:
384 pages read
2 books finished
Day 3 – Monday, Jan 22.
After the strain of the day before, I was losing a little steam, but I was excited to start reading The Doldrums, a book I’d never heard of before and went into without expectations. I tried to get a little reading done in the morning, but after working most of the afternoon, I had to read the majority of the book at night. The book was decent, not terrible, but not the best, and I was pretty weary by the end of the day. I finished the book, but the initial thrill of the Bibliothon had gone. Uh-oh!
Stats:
748 pages read
3 books finished
Day 4 – Tuesday, Jan. 23
Not only was I pretty tired from the past few reading days, but I felt a cold coming on (thanks, Kansas!) and I was super busy all day. With yoga training in the morning and work all afternoon and evening, I didn’t have time to even open up A Room with a View until 9PM. Thank goodness this book was small. I could do it!
By page three, I was falling asleep. The book may have been good, but it was not capturing my attention hard enough to keep me reading. I decided to forgo my hope of reading all seven intended books and picked up another book instead. Library Wars: Love and War was interesting and quickly paced enough to get me through. While I probably won’t continue the series, it was a really fun story and even more fun to look up the anime and live action movie made in Japan!
Stats:
934 pages read
4 books finished
Day 5 – Wednesday, Jan. 24
I definitely wasn’t feeling 100% for most of the day. Whether a cold or allergies, my energy was zapped, and I was stressing over my ever-growing to-do list. Thankfully I knew what to expect in terms of pace, character, and content with the sequel challenge. During my lunch break, I read a chapter of Curtsies and Conspiracies, but after getting some bad news about the loss of a friend, I didn’t read again until later that evening. As a motivator to finish the book, I did a few reading sprints (reading as fast as one can within a set amount of time). I managed to get through the book which definitely wasn’t as good as the first in the series. We were coming into a Bibliothon low point.
Stats
1244 pages read
5 books finished
Day 6 – Thursday, Jan. 25 
I barely read a thing. Besides feeling sick both physically and emotionally, I had so much work to do that reading took a back seat. I managed to read about 10 pages of Otherworld at night before falling asleep with the book on my face.
Stats:
1254 pages read
5 books finished
Day 7 – Friday, Jan. 26
The last day of the Bibliothon was here, and I came out guns blazing! After my morning meeting, I went home and did nothing but read. Otherworld, while flawed in some ways, was a really quick read and I was able to finish it by 12:30pm. I had to be at my second job by 5pm so with the time I had left, I dived into my seventh book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
The problem for me with Harry Potter, especially the first book, is that I can’t read it fast. I like to savor it and even re-read entire passages while imagining Jo Rowling in her coffee shop, scribbling words on a napkin. I’d gotten through half the book before work, and when I got home, it was 10PM. I had two hours left and eight chapters to go. I tried my best, but when midnight hit, I was on page 244 of a 320 page book. So close and yet so far away!!
Final Stats:
1843 pages read
6 ¾ books finished
Lessons Learned
My experience with the Winter Biannual Bibliothon was a roller coaster, but despite the challenges, it was definitely the most I’d ever read in a single week. I managed to get through 7 books (I finished Harry Potter after midnight of course) and read books that I might not have given a chance otherwise. For future read-a-thons, I would probably consider picking smaller books and picking books that I had more information about. I also have totally learned that it’s okay to stop reading a book if it’s not working for you.
There are so many read-a-thons going on this year online! I’ll make a blog post in the future with a full calendar for you in case you want to participate, and I’ll share my future reading wrap-ups with you. I’ve got my sights set on tackling a 24-Hour read-a-thon next!
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Alyssa, this is awesome. I had no idea there were online read-a-thons so I’m looking forward to learning more. Way to go!