Bee and I attempted, and that’s the key word, to participate in WhittyNovels’ Cramathon this summer, which happened from the 10th-13th July! There were a number of challenges to complete, but the main goal is to read as many books as possible to contribute to your Goodreads Reading Challenge.

Without further ado, here’s how we did. Spoiler alert: it’s not great!

Read a…:
1. Children’s Book
Bee: ‘The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe’ by C.S. Lewis (and half of ‘The Horse and His Boy’.) We own all of the books, but I only remember having ‘The Magician’s Nephew’ read to my class in Year 4. About time to read the whole series, nearly ten years later?
Maddie: ‘Tales of Beedle the Bard’ by J. K. Rowling. I’ve never actually read the whole thing through, with all Dumbles’ annotations too, because I hadn’t finished the HP series during my first read. It was lovely to get to appreciate it again, and seeing how much I love fairy tales, this one was perfect!

2. Hardback
Bee: Attempted to read some of the stories in ‘My True Love Gave to Me’, edited by Stephanie Perkins, but the book is kind of huge (and pink, therefore, cute.)
Maddie: Sneakily, I used ‘Tales of Beedle the Bard’ for this as well! Haha! There wasn’t a rule against doubling up!

3. Two Books in 24 Hours
Bee: Narnia books and my graphic novel choice. Short books = easy win!
Maddie: ‘Pretty Little Liars’ by Sara Shepard and Beedle again. (Gosh, that guy just keeps popping up!) I really enjoyed PLL, it was the perfect book to read because it was relatively short and the storyline was so addictive, I couldn’t stop! This is definitely a series I’ll continue this year.

4. Graphic Novel
Bee and Maddie: The only graphic novel we own and haven’t read was ‘Marceline and the Scream Queens’, so we both read that one! It was really lovely for Marce and PB to be the main characters for a change. The art style was super simple and the colour palette was adorable. If you like ‘Adventure Time’, would totally recommend!

5. Book in Verse
Ooh, neither of us managed to do this one because we don’t own any. Definitely going to have to look into it though! It sounds so unique!

6. Novella
Maddie: After reading ‘These Broken Stars’, I decided to read ‘This Night So Dark’, which is the prequel to the series, before the Icarus crash. Overall, I was a little disappointed at the ‘extra information’ we were given, or the lack of it! Hopefully, the next book in the series will impress me more!

7. At least 5 books
Unfortunately, I only got to read 4 books over the Cramathon because I only started on the 11th, so was a day behind, and then on Monday was with friends on a day trip, so didn’t have much time to read. However, I really enjoyed the challenges and the Cramathon I did get to participate in, so I hope to participate again fully in the Christmas season.