Hi everyone! I've made a few posts about making my tbr for this readathon already, but I've gotten a few comments with people asking about the Magical Readathon (run by the YouTuber Book Roast), so I thought I'd let you all know a bit more about it and go through my tbr!

I've made a Storygraph challenge with all of the prompts if you want to have a look at them all, or you can find Book Roast's announcement video here. This is my favourite readathon of all time, so I really hope that if you've never heard of it before or if you've been thinking about taking part, you take this as your sign to finally join because I promise it's a real blast!

In case I don't explain anything well enough (which is almost guaranteed) there's also a Discord with plenty of people on it that would be more than happy to help you out with answering any questions or helping with prompts. You can find the Discord here

a (hopefully)short spiel about the magical readathon:

Dates: April 01 - 30 (your time)

The readathon is an RPG-style readathon based at a school, so you can create your own character with their own race (elf, human, etc.), look and guild, and you can also choose a career. So, as an example, my character is a human called Cooper Scamander, in their second year at Orilium, and their calling is to be a Hearthkeeper. The readathon is as interactive as you make it. You can earn points by attending (live or after it's finished) live streams and reading sprints, or you can earn points simply by participating in the readathon. With your points, you can go shopping in The Guild Emporium, and you can buy scrolls that will enable you to extend the readathon or help you work around a prompt, etc., or you could just buy a really cool chair. You can hoard points if you want to, but it's really not necessary. As of right now, there are 4 years of main schooling (novice, apprentice, adept, master), but G has just introduced post-grad, which is really exciting and enables you to be able to keep participating as the same character if you've been doing the readathon for 4 years (I'm only on year 2 lol). There are two main readathons throughout the year - the Spring Equinox (every April) and the Autumn Equinox (every September), but there is also sometimes Lightfall, which is in December and is Winter-themed.

After you've created your character and decided what your calling is going to be (mine is Hearthkeeper!), you can then see what your reading prompts will be. You can access the Google Drive with any and all information about the readathon here, but I'll try to explain it as succinctly as I can. In the Google Drive, you will find a document called Callings, which will tell you more about your particular calling and will also give you your prompts (basically, classes your character will take for that semester). Once you know your prompts/classes, you can go to the Syllabus, which will give you your reading prompts for the readathon. It sounds complicated, but I promise once you've got the hang of it, you'll get into a magical readathon rhythm!

This isn't conpulsory by any means but you can also log the books you read on this Google Form, which is a really easy way to track what you've read and for what prompt. It's also just a fun way to feel like you're a part of a community and to see what everyone else is reading. You can also see how many pages everyone has read for the readathon, which is always fun to see increase throughout the month!

An example of what the readathon will look like for my character with the Hearthkeeper prompts: • Alchemy - a reread --> Scarlet by Marissa Meyer (also part of my hoemance book club readalong) • Spells & Incantations --> currently on a best seller list - The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson • Elemental Studies --> temperature word in title (e.g. cold, warm) - Coldwire by Chloe Gong • Restorations --> ask for five 5-star recs & pick one - Malice by John Gwynne

A note: You can reread books you've already read, but you can't use the same book for multiple prompts. You can also make the readathon as easy or as hard as you would like. So, if you managed to already read all of your books early in the month or if you wanted to try and fulfil as many of the reading prompts from the Syllabus as possible, you absolutely can!

So, for example, my character could take and pass all of the required classes for the Hearthkeeper calling, but could then decide to do some extra classes/prompts for fun.

for example: • Astronomy --> top shelf (physically on top of your tbr) - This Princess Kills Monsters by Ry Herman • Conjuration --> first enticing book you see on social media - The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison • Artificery --> D6 roll for a series (e.g. 2 = 2nd in a series) - Go The Distance by Jen Calonita (I technically cheated for this one because I only had a D12 on me, so I rolled an 11, which made this prompt infinitely harder on myself, but oh well 🤷‍♀️)

here is my post for 5 star recommendations if you want some to add to your tbr + here is my post about books with temperature in the title, which also has plenty of recs

I thiiiink I've covered the main parts of the readathon, but if there's anything I forgot or that you're not sure about, please ask, and I'll try my best to answer! For now, I hope you all have so much fun learning about this cool readathon and possibly even participating for the first time, and I can't wait to discuss what we're all going to be reading throughout April in the comments!