Halloween Hay Ride Readathon

Welcome to the Halloween Hay Ride Readathon!  I’ve been planning this readathon for the past few months and I’ve been so excited to share it with you because I know that so many of you love to read as much as I do.  With that in mind, I wanted to create some sort of readathon that we could all together during the month of October.  I know that we all love different genres and we all read at different speeds so this readathon is designed to suit each person individually and just be a little bit of fun.

Here’s how it’s going to work.  First, you’ll take a look at the map above and decide which Halloween trips you’d like to take during the month of October.  You don’t need to follow the trail and you can start anywhere and jump locations.  Each stop on the map will give you a different book prompt and to discover your book prompt, you can refer to the legend below.  If you usually read one book a month, you’ll only stop off at one location at on the map.  Seeing as this is a readathon, though, why not try to push yourself and do one or two more?

To complete the readathon, you need to read a minimum of one book, but there is no stopping you if you’d like to cover the enter map during October.  Anything that is listed on Goodreads as a book will classify as a point so this includes short stories, anthologies, graphic novels, works of fiction or non-fiction, etc.  Any genre counts so long as you meet the book prompt contained in the legend.  Audiobook versions also count for a point.

The readathon will officially start on 1 October 2020 and it will run until 31 October 2020.  From today you can start planning your “to-be-read” list and select which books you’ll be reading.  Once you’ve decided on your reading list, please will you leave the list of places you’ll be visiting on the map along with the name of the books you’ve chosen for the prompt in the comment section below.  If you’ll be following along on Instagram, please use the hashtag #ArumLileaBookClub for all of us to see what you’re reading and where you currently are on the map.

Let’s dive a little bit deeper into the book prompts:

These book prompts are fairly understandable but let me unpack each prompt a little bit more below to avoid any confusion and to get you excited for selecting which ones you’ll be completing.  If you’re looking for ideas for which books to pick for each book prompt, here is a list of some of my favourite recommendations and you can find more ideas in my Arum Lilea Book Club posts.

Sweet Shop

Any book choice made for this stop on the map must have a title that begins with an “S”.  The options are endless!  Fiction or non-fiction, you can go for your badge.  I’ve read some really great books in this category so here are a few of my recommendations:

1. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
2. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
3. The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
4. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
5. The Seven Sisters by Lucinda Riley

Dress up shop

I’ll leave this one to you.  Revisit a childhood favourite, discover a new one or fall in love with a contemporary retelling.  I’ll most likely be reading Alice Through The Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll because I’ve actually never read the second instalment of that tale!  It’s often quite amazing how much you learn when you go back and read the Tales of Winnie the Pooh or Peter Pan.  Some of the life lessons explored in those stories are real gems for life in general.

Pumpkin spiced lattes

This one I’ll also leave entirely up to you.   What book has been sitting on your shelf for too long?  Is there a book you’ve been meaning to read for such a long time and never had the opportunity to?  Any genre, any length, anything your heart desires.  Read an enchanting story or something educational.  Go, on.  Now’s the time you’ve been waiting for!

Pumpkin Patch

Personal growth, on all levels, is something we’re all striving for and, to me, it’s enlightening to learn from other people’s experiences.  It’s entirely up to you whether you’d like to read a fiction or non-fiction book for this category.  The book you pick could be something along the lines of an autobiography, a motivational book which will inspire your own personal growth (these books are sensational), or a fictional coming-of-age story.  Here are a few of my favourite recommendations for this book prompt:

1. All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
2. Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
3. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
4. Becoming by Michelle Obama
5. Educated by Tara Westover

Hay Ride

Find a cover with a botanical element on it and enjoy it.  Absolutely any topic and any genre can be explored in this prompt so long as there’s a fruit, leaf, tree, flower, vine, grass or any type of plant on the front cover.  They don’t need to be a centre point of the cover and could even be as small as the publisher’s logo so you really have free reign on this one.  Here are are two of my recent reads that fall within this category:

1. The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
2. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Trick or Treat

If you could book yourself a holiday to absolutely anywhere in the world right now, where would you go?  Discover a foreign country by reading a book set within this location.  The Maldives (Something in the Water by Catherine Steadman), Russia (A Gentleman In Moscow by Amor Towles), Italy (Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan), or anywhere else.  Where will you go?

Haunted House

Within this book prompt, you can read anything within the horror, thriller or mystery genre.  Think Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie.  I read a wide variety of genres but a thriller is often one of my favourite reads.  Here are a few of my recommendations for this book prompt:

1. Verity by Colleen Hoover
2. The Missing Years by Lexie Elliot
3. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
4. Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris
5. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

I hope that you enjoy this Halloween Hay Ride Readathon with me.  I’m so excited to be able to do this all together and follow along with everyone.  Let me know if you’d like me to share the list places I’ll be visiting on the map and the list of books I’ve chosen to read for this readathon in another blog post.  I haven’t chosen my book prompts just yet so I’ll be starting this at the same time as you are 🙂 Have fun everyone!