I missed National Readathon Day because I was taking part in the Little Free Library Festival (playing Tonks in a Harry Potter trivia game, post to come!) and I have missed many other readathons because I was involved in other bookish events. It has gotten to the point where my bookish events are keeping me from reading! And I am so behind!

So I’m doing a Readathon that I just saw posted on Instagram (you can find me there LindaBookMania) by the lovely Jenna called the Take Back Your Shelves Readathon. Fun, right? Now, I can do this. I can snatch some reading minutes this weekend. It’s a holiday weekend, right? And what else are we supposed to do on holidays but relax and be with our families or just do what we love? My husband has to work and I’ve got minimal plans. It is supposed to rain some. And I’ve got a huge TBR. Let’s do this thing! We’ll be hashtagging it with #tbysreadathon all weekend long!

My TBR is typically dictated by what books I have received for review and what has come in at the library. However, this month I have several new purchased books, which is quite exciting! I won a book in a Giveaway on GoodReads (I KNOW!) and it was The Star-Touched Queen! I also won a preorder a few months back in a Twitter chat, and that release was The Crown’s Game! So my TBR is looking might fine these days.

I also ran around buying books on Independent Bookstore Day (post to come, yes yes) and I got the whole Raven King series – SIGNED! Yep, I knew Maggie was going to be here for an event and that I would likely not be able to attend the event, and by buying the new release I got another hardcover half off, so I went all in and got the whole series. ALL SIGNED. (Blew my book budget for the year.) Yep, picked that up finally yesterday.

And the library has been very good to me – I have Wink Poppy Midnight and Into the Dim sitting here! And if I just need an easy read I have the next Tamora Pierce here, too – I love these books, they are like comfy old sweaters, you can just pull them on and don’t care how you look.

Admittedly, this is a bit heavy on the YA, but I love me a good YA fantasy, so I am not alarmed by that. However, IF I need a break, I can always reach for The Song Poet by Kao Kalia Yang which I am half done with and is just gorgeous writing all through! I love it. I know I’m going to cry at some point, maybe, but that’s okay. She always makes me cry. She is the loveliest person and writer that I just cannot wait to gurgle over this book on the blog (plus, there’s some giveaways that will be associated with that!).

Here’s a shot of some of my hopefuls for May – but I had to return A Gathering of Shadows before I could finish it (I will get back to it, my pretty), and I didn’t have the purchased and prize books at the beginning of the month. So things have changed.

And I have to finish Mischling by Affinity Konar, one of my BEA Show Daily interviews. It is heart-wrenching and after tearing through the first half I put it down to write the interview and have to be brave enough to pick it up again. It is fiction but based on the Holocaust so yeah, not light reading.

A bit of Kate DiCamillo (another signed from Indie Bookstore Day!) and a bit of humor on top there (that’s The Life-Saving Magic of Not Giving a F*ck), and possibly Welcome to the Goddam Ice Cube by Blair Braverman that I picked up at the spring bookseller meeting. Then I have some short stories by the fantastic John Jodzio to finish in Knockout and that would just about clean up my TBR! Wish me luck!

What’s on your TBR?