Winter BiBib Wrap-Up + Other Reading Challenges of 2018

My favourite read-a-thon of the year drew to a close yesterday and I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. I love how there are so many challenges that one can do – be it just reading, blogging, bookstgraming or vlogging. I really enjoyed the whole buzz it created and reading with a lot of different people from the book community. I took part in a Twitter sprint for the first time, hosted by my friend Sam from Will Read for Booze and it was a blast! I read dangerously for this one, often staying up past my bedtime like the rebel reader I am (I prefer the title book dragon though, because worms are so passé). Here’s a breakdown of all that I’ve accomplished with respect to this read-a-thon. I will later talk about some other reading challenges I plan to take part in, so without further ado, let’s get going.

First up, the reading challenges:

1. Group Book – Otherworld by Jason Segel and Kristen Miller: NA (because it was not on my TBR as I’d decided to skip it)
2. Read a sequel – A Gathering of Shadows by V. E. Schwab: PASS (4 out of 5 stars)
3. Read a book you’ve never heard of before – Murder, Magic and What We Wore by Kelly Jones: FAIL (I couldn’t find the time)
4. Read a book about mental illness – The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman: PASS (4 out of 5 stars)
5. Read a book that was mentioned in another book/movie/show etc. – The Yellow Wallpaper: PASS
6. Read a book under 200 pages – The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: PASS (4 out of 5 stars)
7. Read a backlist title – The Little Prince: PASS

As you can tell, I managed to complete 5 out of the 7 reading challenges, which is a bit of a disappointment because I managed to do them all last time. In all fairness though, I had very little time this week because work proved to be so hectic and the fact that I was doing blog challenges daily also ate into my reading time. I started with A Gathering of Shadows first, which didn’t pick up pace till around the 50% mark, so that added to my woes, making my progress very slow. I only finished all the three I did manage to read on Friday, the last day of the Bibliothon, and I’m kinda proud of myself for accomplishing all that in a single day! My favourite read was The Little Prince, which has a heart-warming story and really cute illustrations as well.

Coming to the blog challenges, I did 6 out of 7 of them. I missed Day 5, which is extra sad because it was a challenge I was really looking forward to and was most excited about. I’m going to link all of the posts here along with the host’s blog below so you can check them out if you’ve missed any:

Day 1: Snowy Day Reading List | Host

Day 2: Bookish Beverage | Host

Day 3: Favourite Winter Scene | Host

Day 4: Winter Fantasy Bucket List | Host

Day 5: Rewrite a Favourite Scene with Magic | Host

Day 6: Most Memorable Read of 2017 | Host

Day 7: Write a Book Recommendation | Host

For those of you who love stats, here’s a little round-up:

Total pages read = 628 pages

Average star rating = 4 out of 5 stars

Most successful reading day = Day 7 – Friday (371 pages)

Reading challenges success = 71%

Blog challenges success = 86%

That concludes the section on the Biannual Bibliothon. A huge thank you to all the people who helped bring this to life! I had a ton of fun and wish I could’ve done better. When it comes back in July for the summer edition, I hope I’m much more prepared. I want to try and participate in the Instagram challenges next time and also join in the reading sprints that take place on Twitter more often.

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There are a few other reading challenges that I want to take part throughout the year. If you’re familiar with my bookish goals for this year (if not, click here), you might recall that I planned to read more sci-fi as well as read more books written by Asian and Asian-American authors. To help me with those challenges, I’m going to be doing two book bingo challenges. One is called Science Fiction vs Fantasy Bingo 2018, hosted by Curiosity Killed the Bookworm. I ideally want to get to cross off all the squares, but that’s probably not a realistic scenario, so I’m at least going to try and get one line fully done. The other is the Asian Lit Bingo hosted by Lit CelebrAsian. Technically, it took place over the span of a month in May last year, but I want to use the same bingo squares to help me put more Asian books on my radar. I’m going to do this throughout the span of a year and hopefully complete all of them.

I want to update my progress on these challenges every month, which means I’m going to have to do some sort of monthly reading wrap-up. These will go up on the first Saturday of the following month and will also talk about my reading plans for that month. I’m planning to showcase my favourite posts from book blogs that I follow also in this space, so keep an eye out for this post if the content sounds interesting to you.

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Which of the blog challenges was your favourite? If you’ve not read my entries, which one would you pick to do over on your blog? Are you a sucker for reading stats, and if so, what’s the statistic that interests you the most? Let me know in the comments section below.