Tips & Tricks for Completing BookTubeAThon 2014

So excited! BookTubeAThon is back for a second year running, I did it last year, you can read my wrap up post here. For those of you who are asking ‘What is BookTubeAThon?’, it’s a week long reading marathon created and hosted by booktubers (YouTubers who talk about books) Ariel Bissett and Raeleen Lemay. It was a great success last year, with reading challenges, Twitter Sprints and lots of talking and excitement. This year will be bigger, as I’m pretty certain other booktubers are going to be involved with posting content to the official BookTubeAThon Twitter and YouTube page.

I’m going to get right to my hints and tricks in a moment but first here are the reading challenges for this year!

1. A book with pictures
2. Start and finish a series
3. A book with red on the cover
4. A book someone else picks out for you
5. A book from the genre you've read the least this year
6. A book to movie adaptation
7. Read seven books/Read an average of 300 pages a day

My number one tip if you’re interested in hitting all the challenges is to double up on challenges! So pick books that fit the criteria for 2 challenges (No more than two though, you can’t pick a book that satisfies 3 or more challenges). Believes me, this WILL make it easier to complete. I recommend going through the challenges and pick out the books you want for each challenge. These don’t have to be set in stone, I’ve already gone through mine and picked out books but I know these could change, due to the library not getting them in on time or even just losing interest in a book I picked. I’m going to go through each challenge now & give my thoughts on them.

A book with pictures

This is just so vast, there’s so much to choose from! You could go from something as simple as a Dr Seuss book, to maybe an older children’s book like a Roald Dahl one that has pictures peppered through it. You could choose something like a manga or graphic comic or even non-fiction with photos (fashion, art, nature etc.).

Start and finish a series

This one is probably the hardest!! I suggest going with something with only 2 books (or 3 even) and ones that are relatively short or quick to read. Now is not the time to pick up the Game of Thrones series!! You could also go with a children books here, one that just popped into mind is Charlie and Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.

A book with the colour red on the cover

This has to be one of the easiest to tie in with the other challenges! I had a hard time picking out a red book!

A book someone else picks out for you

For this you can ask for recommendations, get someone to pick from your Goodreads TBR list or pick a selection of books (5 would be a good number) and get someone to pick from that pile. I will agree with Ariel and say don’t read something you don’t want to read, it’ll drag you down trying to get it finished. So if someone picks a mystery and you don’t like them, get them to pick something else. I tied this in with the red cover challenge, laid 5 books with red in the cover in front of my boyfriend and got him to pick.

A book from a genre you’ve read the least this year

This is good and bad. It’s bad if you know what genres you’ve barely read but have no interest in that genre (I’m guilty of this when it comes to sci-fi). If that’s the case with you, again I suggest not forcing yourself to read that. Just pick a genre you enjoy and that you haven’t read much from this year. On the other hand, this is a good challenge if you like to do just that, challenge yourself. Never read manga? Now’s the perfect time to try it out! (and also tie it in with challenge 1!). Don’t read a lot of non-fiction? Give something a whirl.

A book to movie adaptation (watching the film after)

Again I think this is really easy to tie in with others. I know Chloe is thinking of doing the Divergent trilogy and then watching the film, it ties in nicely with the series challenge (as would Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!).

Read 7 books/Average 300 pages a day

Not much you can do about this one but read! I’m going to aim for both (just because 7 books can be easily done by reading 7 graphic novels!). In order to keep on track of the page goal, I suggest bringing a book everywhere with you. EVERYWHERE! Use idle time to read, even if it turns out to be 5 mins here and there, it adds up. So read if you commute by public transport, read waiting in doctor’s office, read if you’re meeting someone and they’re running late. Bring a physical book with you if you want though I find that if you have a smartphone, using an e-reader app is very handy. Also, use audiobooks, so if you’re out running or driving or generally you’re just busy but not able to read, at least you’re being productive. I would suggest that if you decide to listen to an audiobook, don’t do it in one go. Read a physical book alongside it, using the audiobook to break things up or when you’re able to multitask!

Finally make sure you’re having fun! Forcing yourself to do something really just makes it a chore. Join in on Twitter Sprints if that’s your thing, do the video challenges if you want, chat to people on Twitter who are also doing the challenge. Getting all the challenges completed is great but it’s not the end of the world. If you don’t read a lot as it is but want to join in, maybe set your own challenges? It could be something as simple as saying you’ll complete one book in the week if it usually takes you two weeks. Or it could be picking one or two of the official challenges and doing them.

I will probably do a post Sunday with the books I’m planning on reading and then I’ll do a wrap up post when it’s all over.