The Reading Rush 2020

It’s that time of year again! It’s Reading Rush time!

I know I’ve only joined in this once before, but I enjoyed myself so much last year I have literally been looking forward to this all year. Add to this the fact that The Reading Rush team have gone all out this year, and I’m hardly able to contain my excitement.

So what’s new this year? They had a few hiccups with the website last year, so they’ve upped their game with the layout and the forum and it’s really running smoothly. The badges now linkup with the forum so you just click on the badge and fill in a post to earn your badge, and it’s all added to your profile.

They’ve joined ranks with the Book Depository and are offering a 10% discount on certain books.

My favourite updates are some of the merch. They’ve created a reading journal for the challenges. Of course I already have my own journal, but I’ve still purchased the PDF version to see what some of the ideas are (and I’m pretty certain the actual journal wouldn’t have shipped to me in time)

The big thing I’m really excited about is The reading rush coin. It’s essentially a medal for taking part in the reading rush challenge, and I LOVE that idea!

My brother and his wife are keen runners and they have a myriad of medals hanging on their walls from all the races they’ve participated in, and I’ve always wished I could win medals for reading. So now the opportunity has arisen and I’m excited for it.

This may now start a whole trend for me of making medals for the reading challenges I complete.

So, to the badges.

I’ve spent a while choosing my books, and the final list is completely different to the one I started with but here it is.

• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (Movie to book)
• Reef by Romesh Gunesekera (Birth stone color)
• From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming (First book you touched)
• A Country to call Home by Various (Least read genre)
• The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway (Different continent)
• The Pearl by John Steinbeck (Outside of your house challenge)
• The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx (Book that starts with The )

I’ve learnt from last year, and i’ve chosen smaller books in order to fit in more prompts, and i’m especially proud of my choice of ‘A Country to Call Home’ as this not only fills the ‘least read genre’ prompt (It’s a poetry book, and I’ve been meaning to read more poetry) but it also fills the ‘Body of water’ prompt from the Popsugar Summer Reading Challenge, and the ‘Anthology‘ prompt from the main Popsugar challenge. Three challenges with one book. Go Me!!

So, here we go for Reading Rush 2020, looking forward to the Twitter sprints, and Instagram challenges, and i’ll keep you updated through the week. Bring on the ‘Book Party!’