 legit. I woke up this morning and I thought it was Friday. It's Thursday. Welcome to today's bonus video. So this is an extra video that I am posting this week on my channel because I have a plan to post every Thursday like I always do. So subscribe if you haven't already and click the bell notification so that you can be notified on Thursdays when I post. But then also on days that I do bonus videos. So I'm doing a bonus video because like I said I have plans for what videos I'm posting on Thursdays but then I stumbled across this to read it on and I was like oh my word I really want to do it but I don't want to bump any of my videos back a week especially since this next coming one is surrounded by a holiday that will be coming up so I'm really excited to share that video with you. But enough about upcoming videos let's talk about today's video. So the desert read-a-thon is happening during the month of May I believe. It is a month-long read-a-thon and it is hosted by Esme and I will have the announcement video linked down below so that you guys can watch it and she is really great because not only does she have an announcement video and the TBR already up she posted them really early so that people could have lots of time to plan and decide but she also has a recommendation videos of other books that you can use for the read-a-thon in order to really get into the theme and the vibe of the read-a-thon. So the desert read-a-thon is obviously like I said happening during May and so what's really cool is that she is really into board games like I am which is so fun to like quick overview of my personal board game shell which is an absolute mess right now so just be warned. Like I said our game shelf is a huge mess right now because we just acquired a bunch of new games recently and we cannot fit them on here so we've got this row of games right here but then if you go behind there are a couple more games we got some of the wingspan oceans yeah so like I love her passion for board games like her passion for books as I can relate so yeah there's that yeah so when this read-a-thon was centered around a board game that she created based on her own TBR board games every month I was like oh my word not only is the theme super fun and something I want to partake in but the delivery and the aesthetic is gorgeous so I'm super excited how it's going to work is there is a board game and there is a link to a google drive where you can get the board game and the prompts and explain version of the prompts and you basically you roll a die and you kind of go around the board game all the way until you hit the middle or until you run out of time to read it's very much a read-a-thon where you can either read as much as you can whether it be like two or three books or like a thousand books if you could literally do that you can um well actually no I guess it would be just under 62 books because they're only 62 squares and some of them are like go back to this go forward to this role again so how I'm gonna do it is I'm gonna do all of my roles right now because May is gonna be a very interesting month for me I have my last day of classes May 3rd which means I have about a week and a half almost two weeks of exams um so I'm gonna be decently busy for the first half of May just kind of doing that but then also it's my birthday in the first half of May so I'll also celebrate a little bit um but then I'll have the complete second half of May where I'm only working so I should have a lot more time to read so I'm I'm gonna go through all the prompts today make a list of all the prompts um go through the books I selected for those prompts afterwards so that I can efficiently plan out so that I can complete the read-a-thon because I really like completing things I need to complete things um so that's basically how it's gonna go I am actually going to use a d20 sided die uh you can use whatever die you want or have or you can even use like an online die roller or random number generator she recommends somewhere between the six and 12 sided die um but I play dnd so I have a whole bunch of die I have of dice I have complete sets they're they're really pretty they're like great and so I'm going to be doing a 20 sided die because May is gonna be so busy it's the idea of I want to read books but I don't know if I'm gonna have the time so I want to complete the read-a-thon so I'm gonna try and go through it as quickly as possible and like I said before the n prompt number 62 is a desert themed book and I don't have a lot of desert themed books on books on my shelves um so not quite as many of these books will most likely be desert themed like they're obviously still gonna fit the prompt even if I have to stretch it a little bit because I'm only going to use books on my tbr that I own I'm not gonna be buying books for this read-a-thon and I probably won't be rereading because I have a bunch of new books that I need to read so yeah that's how it's gonna work let's get into the rolling so we're gonna go ahead and get started here I've got my computer has the little board and I'm using a figurine from gloom haven and I've got my kindle with the prompts right next to me and I will be using this d20 die it might be kind of hard for you guys to see the numbers but I promise I will let you know what they are I'm using this one though because it is golden kind of uh like the desert and it's got little flowers on the inside it was actually a gift and I love it very much so hopefully it will bring me good luck and let's start the rolling that's a five so we're off to a very slow start five and that will be a five star prediction I'm gonna be writing down all the ones that I get so that I can make a list and come up with my tbr and we'll go over all the books that I've chosen at the end of the video going through the prompts so first up number five is a five star prediction all righty then let's roll again that is an 11 yeah I just I don't know if it's ever gonna work um so that's gonna go 16 which is up there which if we go over here is a wild card ooh yes wild card that is amazing so I can choose whatever I want um plus there's no way I'm gonna know what I want to use my wild card on now so I will that's why I'm doing it all at the end natural 20 natural 20 all right so four on 16 that will get us all the way to 36 already which is way over here and that means I have to go to the other stay with me it says it's a random tbr book so oh my I don't know hmm random tbr I might just put all the books on my tbr into a random generator and I will select one that the internet randomly gives me looking good this is why I chose the d20 here guys and we got a five again so then that should bring us to 41 41 is rebelling 41 18 another big number that means I have to do math so 959 I believe if I can add that correctly 41 59 is yeah yeah I think that's it 59 book with sword fights that's gonna be a real interesting one I don't know if I have a lot of books with sword fights in them per se I'm also going to try to avoid doubling up but if I have to I will um yeah all right I'll figure that out in a little bit so I need a three or more in order to get to 62 the last space in the very middle so and I got a five so I'm up to 62 and 62 just is the prompt to read a desert book it's not even on the sheets because that's the whole point of this readathon and that brings me to a total of six books that I'll be needing to read in order to complete this readathon this May this was so much fun this video's sitting down because my tripod broke so I have picked out all the books from my tbr for each of the prompts that we just went through on the game board on my coffee table just a moment ago so I'm gonna go through and tell you guys about so the first one was a five star prediction and I'm going with the gilded ones by Namina Forna and I as soon as I heard the description for this and as soon as I like saw the cover for it I knew that I was gonna love this book so I'm predicting it's going to be a five star obviously I'm a little nervous because it's it's not small but it's not like big or anything and this is not my first readathon of the year but it kind of is because like I did a tbr video for another readathon and then proceeded to read like none of the books so it it was hard time so this is the first readathon of the year that I think I'm gonna actually be able to complete but I'm going to be starting it off with a thicker book which is slightly nerve racking so the gilded ones is about our main character who's goes through a blood spilling ritual and it reveals that her blood spills gold instead of red and so she is given a choice of either kind of be outcast from the village and like no one likes her because they're going to be like she's a demon blah blah blah or she can join an army for the throne I think how cool is that right so it's going to be like just a bunch of badass warrior women whose blood run gold and so I'm really excited so this will be the first one I'm reading because I will be reading them in order of the game board then the second prompt on my list was a wild card and so I'm going with with the fire on high by Elizabeth Acevedos and I chose this one for my wild card because even though it may not be like desert vibes per se I still think it'll have a lot of warm culture references and it's gonna have a lot of delicious food and heat different kinds of heat plus I just really want to read this book and it's gorgeous and it's got a lot of warm colors on the cover so I tried and then the third prompt for me it was a random book from my TBR and so the book that it ended up going with was Homegoing by Yag Yasi and I am very happy with this it's a nice short read so hopefully it won't take me too long to get through but it takes place in Ghana and it follows two different sisters who are raised in two very different lives and so one will marry an Englishman and live a life of luxury and the other stays in the village will be captured in a raid and so I think this is going to be a very powerful book and I mean yeah I don't I'm really excited to read this again it kind of has warm colors I don't know if it'll have necessarily too much desert vibes because it's in Ghana taking place in villages but we shall see then the fourth one on my TBR was a retelling and I actually was watching someone else's TBR video I was watching Jainz from the bookaholic I'll link her video down below and she is also going to be reading this book for a different prompt but she mentioned that it was a sleeping beauty retelling and I was like I did not know that and she also said that this book has major desert vibes which I also did not know so the book that we're talking about and we're going to read is Girl Serpent Thorn by Melissa Bouchardoust and I didn't know that this had major desert vibes I guess I didn't assume that by the coloration of the book which is like come on Laura come on it's also a sleeping beauty retelling apparently so I'm like oh that's perfect so and also it's not too big and I've been wanting to read this for spring so perfect yeah all right here we go then yes I do know that I've stopped giving summaries of the books I've talked about all of these books in other videos so at this point I'm assuming that people know what they are if not look it up on Goodreads cool the fourth one the fourth one for me was a book with sword fights don't know I don't think I have a book on my tbr with sword fights or at least that I am aware of so I chose a book that I think has the possibility of having sword fights but I also highly doubt that it actually does have them but I'm not going to know until I read it and so I will be doing to kill a kingdom by alexander crystal um I chose this one as the one on my shelf that is most likely to have a sword fight due to the fact that it's a siren who has to become human so I assume I'm hoping there are going to be pirates and then I'm hoping that those pirates have sword fights or I mean she also tails princes and takes their heart so maybe it'll be a story no I'm fairly certain that this probably won't have sword fights in it but if it but it's the most likely on my shelf to have a sword fight so it's a complete guess it'll get me ready for summer yep I'm going with it sorry might be a huge dress and then the last one is prompt number 62 and that is obviously to read a book with desert vibes and I have a clear winner for this one on my shelf it is the only book on my shelf that I bought knowing it has desert vibes and that is we hunt the flame by hafsefezal this is a bit of a thicker one but it's the last one on the tbr so hopefully I'll be so this book kind of follows two characters I believe one is the prince uh the son of the sultan and he's the prince of death or something and the other is a woman who dresses up as a man who's a hunter and she does this in order to feed her village and I believe there will be some hunt for an artifact I'm wondering if it's jinn related um because we hunt the flame and yeah I bought this book recently and I definitely I have so many books on my tbr that are desert themed but I don't own any of them except for this one this is the only book on my tbr that I own that is desert themed so obviously when I saw this I was like oh this is the book I'm going to reach for the end I just have to find a bunch of other books to get me there so I will be ending with this beautiful hunky desert book thank you all so much for watching I had an absolute blast playing the game and planning out this tbr let me know if you are interested in doing this readathon as well like I said I will have links down below to the announcement video and to the other person who I mentioned is doing this readathon as well again it's taking place during the month of May so if you're like me and you're going to be ending school in May it might be a great way to really kick off your summer with reading a lot if you have not already subscribed please do so I post every Thursday except the occasional bonus video which this video will be like the video if you enjoyed it let me know down below if you've read any of these books please let me know if there's a sword fighting to kill a kingdom please um otherwise let me know your thoughts down below I would love to hear with you guys and continue the conversation and chit chat with you in the comments otherwise I am also on other forms of social media like instagram and technically I'm on twitter but I'm not there super often um but I am on instagram every day so feel free to follow me on those as well and until I see you guys in the next video I wish you a happy reading