Whatever-You-Want-A-Thon 2021

In June I decided to join a new and exciting reading challenge called: Whatever-You-Want-A-Thon. You can check out my original post on it HERE and the YouTube announcement from the main creator HERE. This was the second time the challenge was on and the first time I was participating in it. I liked the idea of reading what ever you want and choosing how many books you want to read. There was a choice of teams to join in for the purposes of a friendly competition and offering various genre options. Readers were provided with a list of prompts what were optional and available for adding more points for each book read. Each book you read counts toward the reading goal every reader sets for themselves and each book read after the goal is worth double! In the honor of the Pride Month each book that had LGBTQ+ characters or theme had an extra bonus. Bonus points were added if the book was on the any of the ten hosts recommendation and favorite list provided for that purpose. In short there were so many options for you to gain points and feel good while reading the books for this challenge!

This proved dangerous for me. For whatever reason I decided to read TEN books! I was already doing my Bookopoly reading challenge with five books and for some reason I decided to make it double… Here are the books I put on my planned reading list for this reading challenge:

The Hedge Knight: The Tales of Dunk and Egg by George R.R. Martin

Lucky (Lucky Santangelo #2) by Jackie Collins

Mogla je biti prosta priča by Ajla Terzić

The Last Wish (The Witcher #0.5) by Andrzej Sapkowski

I Will Judge You by Your Bookshelf by Grant Snider

A Phoenix First Must Burn edited by Patrice Caldwell

The Lives of Saints (Grishaverse) by Leigh Bardugo

Dark Prince: Author’s Cut (The “Dark” Carpathian book 1) by Christine Feehan

All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries #1) by Martha Wells

Micah (Anita Blake Vampire Hunter #13) by Laurell K. Hamilton

How did I do?

From the ten books listed above I read seven in time for challenge and turn my results in. Each book was worth 100 by default and that comes down to 700 points. All the books were optionally worth more additional points for up to three prompts listed below. Most of the books I managed to squeeze in all three prompts for full 75 points extra. I got 500 points for all of those prompts combined. Only one book was LGBTQ+ related and gave me extra 100 points. My chosen team was Comrades of Chaos and the team genre was everything not covered by the other teams (not: middlegrade, epic/high fantasy, contemporary or fantastical/magical) This gave me a lot of room to maneuver and I scored another 125 points there. None of the books I’ve read have been on the lists of favorites from any of the ten hosts so I got no points there at all.

7 books = 700 points by default + 600 points for prompts and bonus + 125 points for team genre

This comes down to 1425 points!

One of the books I ended up DNFing and I did not count that one for any points at all. One book I did not finish reading by the end of the month so I did not count that one either. One of the books I did not even start reading and it was not counted for any points as well.

There were two books I added to my reading that were not on the planned list and I finished them in time to count them in for the reading challenge. Those were:

Školski knjižničar by Dinka Kovačević, Jasmina Lovrinčević

The Dynasty of the Dark Elves ( Elves Vol. 5) by Marc Hadrien, Ma Yi, Olivier Héban

For those I added 100 points each and 50 points and 75 points respectively for genre and prompt bonuses they fit in. This comes down to 325 points.

This brings my total score to 9 books and 1750 points! by the score chart at the beginning of this post I am a magician! I was surprised at the total amount of points and feel very magical with that score. The team that I choose did not seem to be that competitive and I was okay with that. I liked seeing this many content creators working together and having fun doing reading sprints and cooperating in general. While I am writing this post I did not get to see the team results and I am feeling high spirited. I am proud of my contribution for my team and was happy to participate as much as I did.

My thoughts on my experience in Whatever-You-Want-A-Thon 2021 reading challenge

What I loved most about this reading challenge was the amount of options to gain points for the books you are reading. In board games this is called a “point salad” approach and it makes for a more engaging experience. Different prompts and bonuses were available but optional. It gives a rather satisfying feel while choosing a book to read for the challenge and counting all the different ways you can score points for it. While I was choosing my books for June I did not focus on anything in particular but just added books that were available or part of some other reading project I am a part of!

The amount of freedom in choosing of the books and more importantly in choosing of the amount of books I planned to read proved dangerous since I got carried away and decided on a too high number right at the beginning. Ten was too much. I guess I wanted to make it challenging and set myself for a harder goal. I might have been able to finish all ten books and complete my planned list if the real life did not interfere and I had to set almost a week off for studying. I have also struggled with one book I had to not finish and it took me few days to decide to call it done then and there without finishing reading it. This DNFing books is something that is still hard for me to do and I am working on it.

I am very glad to have tried this reading challenge a have been inspired by the content creators and all the work they did for it.

At the beginning of the month I found a new reading challenge for June I wanted to participate in. Since the month already began I had to think carefully am I going to make it or not. The idea of this reading challenge is very appealing to me and it seamed as too good to pass on. Whatever-You-Want-A-Thon is created by Maddie from book browsing blog channel on YouTube and you can check her channel HERE and give her some love and support. The reading challenge lasts for the whole month of June and is a team challenge with five teams competing in reading goals they mostly set for themselves. Each team has two captains, their color, and their chosen main genre. These are mostly guidelines and are designed to offer readers direction and something to identify with in the team challenge.

The hosts are mostly the people whose content I have been admiring and watching for a while now. I was excited to see them all together collaborating on a project like this one. Since the books I read tend to come from many different genres and I consider my reading taste to be a bit eclectic I decided to go with the Comrades of Chaos team! The fact that the team captain for this team were the least known to me was even better and in accordance with the Chaos factor. Watching some content from my new team captains was hilarious and revealed that we might not be the most competitive team in the mix which is fine by me since my own goal is to challenge myself by joining these types of reading challenges.

How the challenge works is that you can choose to read a certain amount of books for the challenge and set your own goal. Every book you read wins you certain amount of points and every book you read above your set goal gives you double the amount of points. There is the Pride month bonus for LGBTQ content which is optional. All hosts have provided the readers with their favorites and you can choose to read those for more extra points as well – again this is optional and if the said favorites are a part of a series any book in the series counts as well! With ten hosts and many different genres there is plenty of options for those extra points to choose from. Team genre is also optional for earning points but as the title say – You can read whatever you want! Each book you read earns you points and counts but if you make the book fit into any of the categories you earn extra points.

There are fifteen available prompts to get extra points on the books. You can fit one book in one or more prompts. You get extra points for up to three prompts per book. The amount of options and choices for fitting my books in June has stumped me and I just made a pile of books to read without much consulting of the prompts – which is a first for me! It felt very liberating at the start but kinda intimidating since I decided to make my own challenge a lot more challenging that I had to.

How did I manage to do this?

I started big by adding all my books I already choose for June Bookopoly. That was five books and I felt I needed to make it more interesting by adding more books that were not part of the Bookopoly for June. I made a wonderfull decision to double my reading goal from five books for the Bookopoly with extra five books which got me to my reading goal for Whatever-You-Want-A-Thon – TEN BOOKS!

Here are my ten books I set my goal on for the Whatever-You-Want-A-Thon reading challenge:

The Hedge Knight: The Tales of Dunk and Egg by George R.R. Martin

Lucky (Lucky Santangelo #2) by Jackie Collins

Mogla je biti prosta priča by Ajla Terzić

The Last Wish (The Witcher #0.5) by Andrzej Sapkowski

I Will Judge You by Your Bookshelf by Grant Snider

A Phoenix First Must Burn edited by Patrice Caldwell

The Lives of Saints (Grishaverse) by Leigh Bardugo

Dark Prince: Author’s Cut (The “Dark” Carpathian book 1) by Christine Feehan

All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries #1) by Martha Wells

Micah (Anita Blake Vampire Hunter #13) by Laurell K. Hamilton

There were some last minute tweaks to this list and I only checked a few for actually matching some of the prompts. I’m going with chaos as my guide here! I have one third of the month already slipping past me and I have barely scratched the pile of books I made for myself. All the while my team captains are very active across all the social media platforms and there are some very cool videos to read along books to and talk about books in the challenge. Here is the list of all the team captains (in no particular order) and their YouTube channels so you can check them out if you are interested: