The Magical Readathon is a readathon hosted by G from Book Roast, with two main, month-long readathons each year – one in April and a follow-up one in September. It’s pretty detailed, so I recommend just checking out the announcement video below if you’re interested! But essentially, you pick a magical career and then read a certain number of books according to prompts that are given!
As September is still a couple of weeks away and pretty much anything could happen between now and then, I’m making this post as a “these are the books I’m considering” sort of thing, which I’ll refer back to when I make my September TBR. (There will be other books I need to add to it beyond the readathon books, since you can’t count books you started before September 1st or will finish after September 30th and I have a couple books that are multi-month reads.)
If you think I should definitely read one book over another, feel free to let me know!
So let’s take a look at my career!
For the “Lexomancer” career, I need to read 7 books in September according to the following prompts! (For “Q” you need to read the “O” and “Q” prompts; for “D” you also need to read the “D” prompt.)
Spells and Incantations
O: DICE ROLL PAGE COUNT – 400S
For the first prompt, I had to roll a dice and then find a book with the page number to match (e.g. 1 = 100-199, 2 = 200-299 etc.). I rolled a 4, so I need a book with 400-499 pages.
I have a couple options here and currently don’t really have a preference, so it’ll come down to my feeling and what other books I have on my TBR when I come to make my September TBR at the end of the month. Because of that, I’ve added a variety of genres:
- The Mars House (480) is sci-fi;
- Yumi and the Nightmare Painter (479) is fantasy;
- The Moon in the Palace (400) is historical fiction;
- and Red, White and Royal Blue (421) is contemporary/romance.
Q: RELEASED IN 2025
The second prompt is to read a book released in 2025. For this one I actually have distinct preferences, but they depend on a couple of factors so I’ve still got options.
My preference for this prompt is The Second Death of Locke, as I’m super looking forward to it. However, I have an ARC for Fuchsia War, which I need to read before the 12th, so if I haven’t started it by the 1st, that could also end up being the pick.
Apart from that, Locke doesn’t come out until the 23rd, so if it looks like the end of September will be busy, I could do A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping or Awake in the Floating City instead since they’re both already out.
Inscription
Inscription requires three prompts, so let’s go!
O: PRIME NUMBER OF LETTERS IN TITLE
The first prompt is to read a book with a prime number of letters in the title (e.g. a title with 1, 3, 5, 11, 13, 17, 19…. letters). Once again, I am armed with options!
I don’t necessarily have a preference here. Once again, some variety, but also some conditions.
- Green Island (11) is a book that I am determined to read this year, so it’s a strong contender unless it sneaks in sooner (unlikely, but you never know).
- 그 여름 [The Summer] (3) is a longish Korean short-story – it’s short, but if I’m still reading two books in Korean at the start of September, I’m unlikely to pick this one. This is actually a bilingual Korean-English edition, but I’ll only read the Korean.
- The Way of Kings (13) is a book I really want to read, but it’s also massive so I’m wary of putting it on the readathon TBR in case I need more time to finish it.
- Enter the Water (13) is a novel told in verse, so it should be a quick read – it’s a good option if the other books are all feeling a little too intimidating.
Q: VERTICAL SPINE TITLE
The second prompt is to read a book where the title on the spine is written vertically rather than horizontally. (I have included any books where the writing looks the correct way up when stacked vertically and incorrect when stacked horizontally.)
For this one, I didn’t have as much choice because I really didn’t want to go rummaging in a billion boxes to find books that fit the prompt (none of my books are on shelves atm), so I just had to go through the ones that were on top and had spines showing. I ended up with four options that I hadn’t already started:
- The Will of the Many by James Islington
- Ocean’s Godori by Elaine U. Cho
- 異人茶跡1 [Formosa Oolong Tea 1] by 張季雅 [Kiya Chang]
- The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
I’m most excited about The Way of Kings, but as I mentioned earlier it might be a bit long for this readathon. If I finish 魔幻時刻 [Magical Instances] this month, I might pick up 異人茶跡 [Formosa Oolong Tea] Volume 1 as my Chinese book for September. If neither of those options work, I’ll pick one of the other two.
D: ANIMAL ON THE COVER
The final prompt for inscription was to read a book with animal on the cover.
Here I have picked a variety of easier books that I could read!
溫柔的白熊 [The Gentle Polar Bear] is a graphic novel/manhua with mostly pictures and not a lot of writing. That being said, it is in Chinese, which would slow my reading down significantly. If I finish 魔幻時刻 [Magical Instances] before the end of August and don’t pick 異人茶跡 [Formosa Oolong Tea] 1 for the previous prompt, I might pick this one. If not, I could also read Following the Moon, which is an illustrated self-help/philosophy type book.
Alternatively, I could read some short, healing Japanese fiction – We’ll Prescribe You A Cat – or go for a romantasy with The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love.
RESTORATION
O: SINGLE POV
The first restoration prompt is to read a book told from a single (rather than multiple) POV.
At the moment, I think I want to pick Emily Wilde for this prompt, but if not then I have a couple of other options too. If I’m still in the mood for Emily but I’ve already read it (unlikely but you never know), I could read The Honey Witch. I also have a YA fantasy option, Of Jade and Dragons, and a slightly longer more complex fantasy option, The Justice of Kings.
Q: RANDOM COUNTRY GENERATOR
The final prompt was to use a random country generator to come up with five countries and then pick a book published in one of those countries to read.
I may have cheated a little bit with this one because I’m not really supposed to be buying new books that much, so I made my own random generator with just the countries that I own books from or that I had already planned to read from because they were on the Storygraph Reads the World challenge for this year. That still gave me 35 options from all the continents except Antartica though!
In the end I spun and got Brazil, Egypt, Iceland, Australia, and Singapore – each of which I have exactly one option for.
- For Brazil, I can read Stubborn Archivist, a literary fiction novel about a girl growing up between cultures and the single identity she forges from them.
- For Egypt, I can read Love in the Kingdom of Oil, a modern classic by the same author as Woman at Point Zero, which I read for my IB English class when I was 17 and loved. I don’t own the book, but Egypt is also on the Storygraph challenge for the year, and this is the book I was thinking of reading.
- Like Egypt, my Iceland pick is not owned but would work for the Storygraph challenge too. Hotel Silence is a contemporary novel about a man whose life is crumbling but surprisingly gets a second chance when he buys a one-way ticket to a chaotic, war-ravaged country.
- The Inland Sea, my Australia pick, is both a pick I own and one I need to read for the Storygraph challenge. It’s a novel about a 911-operator’s self-destructive unravelling and the gradual worsening of the climate crisis.
- Finally, from Singapore, we have Red Dust, White Snow, a very short sci-fi novel about an office worker receives a mysterious device promising to transport her to a parallel universe, which she then finds herself visiting in her dreams.
Question Time
Are you planning on participating in the readathon? If so, what career are you going for?
If you’ve read any of these books, feel free to let me know which ones you think should make my final TBR!
Keira x
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