O.W.L.s Magical Readathon – April 2020

This April I have decided to join YouTube Book Roast’s O.W.L.s Magical Readathon for the first time You can check this year’s announcement for more information HERE.

It is a reading challenge she is organizing a third year in a row. I’ve been looking at it before but for someone who is not that much into Harry Potter YouTube fandom I had some trouble understanding how it works. In order to get a better understanding of how it all works and how I’m going to participate I will try to explain how I decided to choose books for the challenge.

First a little bit on this reading challenge as I understand it. There are two Harry Potter thematic reading challenges that are put up a year. First is the O.W.L.s Magical Readathon based on the Ordinary Wizarding Level Examinations from the Harry Potter books. They represent a sort of an entry challenge. There are twelve reading prompts based on the subjects at the Hogwarts school. These prompts are different each year and this year they are loosely based on the third book of the Harry Potter series.

The reader chooses the prompts from the list and finds a book that fits the the challenge prompt. Later on in August the subjects that were chosen for the O.W.L.s Magical Readathon will be eligible for the N.E.W.T.s Magical Readathon and the choosing of a magical career accordingly.

The O.W.L.s Magical Readathon lasts trough whole month of April. As I am new to this and since I am kinda drifting in my reading endeavors AND life in general – I decided to go with all the available prompts in a rather optimistic and arrogant push to read twelve books in April.

I’ve chosen my books and picked some of them from the from the already existing reading lists I made as much as I could since the twelve books is a lot for me now and I want to keep up with my other reading challenges as much as possible.

Here are my choices:

Ancient Runes – heart on the cover/or in title

Kitchen Princess Omnibus, Vol. 3 (Kitchen Princess, #5-7) by Natsumi Ando

Arithmancy – something outside my favorite genres (not romance or fantasy)

The Vegetarian: A Novel by Han Kang

Astronomy – read the majority of the book at night

Bite Me (Bitten, #1) by C.C. Wood

Care of Magical Creatures – creature with a beak on the cover

The Dark Prophecy (The Trials of Apollo, #2) by Rick Riordan

Charms – white cover

Ender’s Game (Ender’s Saga #1) by Orson Scott Card

Defence Against the Dark Arts – book  set at sea / coast

Children of the Spider by Imam Baksh

Divination – random TBR pick

Balzac i kineska mala krojačica by Dai Sijie ( Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse chinoise)

Herbology – title starts with the letter M

Maneuver (Men of Inked: Southside Book 1) by Chelle Bliss

History of Magic – book featuring witches / wizards

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Harry Potter, #1) by J.K. Rowling

Muggle Studies – contemporary

Fork In The Road by J. Coyne

Potions – book under 150 pages

Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Transfiguration – book with shapeshifters

Storm Cursed (Mercy Thompson, #11) by Patricia Briggs

Due to explicit nature of some of the books I will probably not enter my choices to the Hogwarts library form that readers use to count their books and participate in the community challenge. For now I’m opting to keep this challenge for myself alone in that regard. As for the N.E.W.T.s Magical Readathon I will have to see how I will do with this challenge.

Wish me luck?