Reading Rush 2020 TBR

Next week it is finally time for the annual Reading Rush, hosted by the lovely Ariel and Raeleen, and for the first time I am planning on fully taking part in this readathon.  I have actually kind of taking part in this readathon in previous years, but I’ve only ever done it myself without sharing my progress or participation, and so I’m super excited to actually document and join in with it this year.  I’m also hoping that by sharing this both on here and on my Instagram, I will have a level of accountability that will motivate to read these books and really try to complete all of the challenges.

That said, this TBR is a very ambitious one for me.  As someone who averages a book a week, trying to read seven books in seven days seems like quite a challenge, which is why I’ve tried to choose books that are either short or easy to get through to give myself the best chance of completing my entire TBR.  Quite alot of the books on this list could also work for multiple challenges, meaning that if it came to it I could always double up on challenges based on the books that I do end up reading.

So here are all the books on my TBR for the 2020 Reading Rush.

I was born in November, so my birthstone is a Citrine, which means I have to choose a yellow book for this challenge.  Unfortunately I don’t own that many books with yellow covers, and those that I do own I don’t think I would be able to get through in the space of this readathon.  So, whilst I have picked a book that has a yellow cover, that being The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon, I am going to be doing this prompt slightly different and only reading 100 pages of it during the Reading Rush.  This is both because there is no way I could get through the entirety of this book in a week, and because I am currently buddy reading this one with some lovely people on Instagram, and so I will be using the 100 pages I have to read for that to complete this challenge.

This prompt was so much easier to find a book for than the first one, as I own so many books that start with the word ‘The’.  Therefore I had pretty much free reign on this one, and so I had to choose a book I’ve been excited to read ever since it was released, The Deck of Omens by Christine Lynn Herman.  I really loved The Devouring Grey when I read it last year, and because of that I’ve been anticipating reading the sequel for so long that I am super excited to return to this world whilst also completing one of these challenges.

As someone who almost always reads the book before watching the movie adaptation, this challenge was so hard for me to think of a book for.  I have tons of books on my shelves that have been adapted into movies, but I have already watched almost none of them, leaving me with very few options.  In the end I decided to go for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, a classic I have never read despite my name, and so this is perfect opportunity to correct that.

This one is such a fun and unique challenge, whilst also being one that could have made this readathon that much harder had I chosen a big book or one that I know would take me a while to get through.  However, after reading this prompt the first book I touched happened to be Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo, one that I am both so excited to read and that shouldn’t take too long to read as it is written entirely in verse.  I’ve heard such good things about Elizabeth Acevedo’s writing, and so I cannot wait to dive into this one next week.

For this one I knew I needed to pick a fairly short book to give myself the best chance at completing this challenge, and so Sam & Ilsa’s Last Hurrah by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn.  Not only is this book a very short 211 pages long, but it is also one of the five lowest rated books on my TBR which I am reading for a post I did a while ago, so by reading this one I’m sort of killing two birds with one stone.  I am planning on reading this one in my garden, at my boyfriends house and at work, so hopefully with all those places to choose from I can read this book entirely outside of my house.

Almost all of my reading is either YA or fantasy, and so for this one I thought it would be a good idea to try and read an adult contemporary novel as I rarely pick up those kind of books.  As I have both just received this book and am interested in watching the TV adaptation, Normal People by Sally Rooney seemed like the perfect pick for this prompt.  Furthermore, it is also a pretty short book at only 266 pages long, plus I’ve heard a few people say that this book is addictive and easy to just fly through, making it perfect for a readathon.

As I live in the United Kingdom, I once again had quite a few options for this one as alot of the books I read tend to be set in the US, which is a different continent to where I am.  However, I decided to try to avoid that and instead pick a book that doesn’t take place in Europe or North America, and so I had to go with Wildcard by Marie Lu, which is set in Tokyo.  I read Warcross nearly two years ago now, so it is well past time for me to finish this duology, and that added with the fact that Marie Lu’s writing is so easy to get lost in makes this one the perfect choice for this prompt.

Are you planning on taking part in the Reading Rush this year?  What books are on your TBR?  Have you read any of these – what did you think?

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