 today's video where I will be doing a 12-hour read-a-thon for quite a while. I keep thinking about my days off and when I can do it and actually get a lot of reading done, but it just doesn't really work well with my schedule, with when I need to go to bed for work versus when I get up in the mornings and things I have to do throughout the day. So I decided that today I was going to do a 12-hour read-a-thon starting at 9am and going until 9pm. There are things I do need to get done today that are not reading related, so I won't be able to spend exactly 12 hours reading, but I'm certainly going to do my darnedest. So I have two books that I'm currently reading. The one I am physically reading, which you saw is Rune and Rising by Leigh Bardugo. A huge reason why I wanted to do the 12-hour now rather than try and do it 24 hours later is to finally get through this book. I'm 150 pages into this book, so if I could finish this today, that would be amazing. That's my number one goal, and like I said, the whole reason why I'm doing it is because I really want to just sit down and finish this book so I can move on to some of the other books that I have physically that I can't get an audiobook for. I've been really wanting to read those, but because this is due to the library in less than 10 days, I would really like to just get this done and out of the way and be over with it. Starting to pick up a little bit, but we'll see. Now, I will have a very exciting activity going on today, and so I will be listening to an audiobook probably before, maybe after. And the audiobook I currently have is The Crown's Game. This is on my Spring TBR. This is the first book off my Spring TBR that I wanted to read because there was the potential it could give me winter vibes. So as the weather here has started to warm up, but it is expected to snow in a couple days, I wanted to have some cozy winter vibes a little bit just so I would feel less bad that spring has taken so long to get here, although these couple of days have been absolutely wonderful. Anyway, I'm not here to talk about weather, I'm here to talk about books. So for those of you who don't know, this takes place in an alternate Imperial Russia, and Russia is under threat of the Kazakhs. There are two magical people, two enchanters in the kingdom, but only one can help the Tsar and rule. There is The Crown's Game, the game that is hosted by the Tsar for the two enchanters and whoever wins becomes the enchanter to the Tsar, and the other person is supposed to die. And of course, one is male, one is female, so I am getting a lot of night circus vibes at the moment, like Russia night circus vibes. So I like the night circus, so I am starting to like this already. I'm a little ways into it, I'm not that far into it yet, but this is the audiobook I will be listening to when I am out doing my errand. It is 9.46 already, I read a chapter of Ruin and Rising, because those chapters are long. I've already gotten started with that, I will eat some breakfast and then continue with the reading. I have to leave around 2. It'll be quite a few hours, so I'll be listening to The Crown's Game as much as possible. However, during my appointment, I don't think I'll be able to listen to an audiobook, because I'll be in too much pain to concentrate on the audiobook, so that will probably be a couple hours of time that I will lose and end up watching something else or listening to music or just something that isn't reading, but we'll see how it goes. Oh, the neighbor's cat just pounced in front of our window. I don't have a cat, but my neighbor's doing that cat goes outside quite a bit now that the weather is warming up, and so I am finally getting my furry friend fix. Hey, hi friends. So it is almost 12.30, it's like 12.20 something, I don't know, it's almost 12.30. I am just barely over halfway, runen rising. I was able to get some other things done, like I had two impromptu interviews today, so that was very fun, and that did take up quite a bit of my time, but yeah. So I have made a lot of progress. I've read like 70-80 pages today, or at least since I updated you this morning, because technically I read before I did the intro clip, and it's getting better, I would say. It's not as slow as the second book was, but I still wish it was going a little faster, and it was a little less repetitive, and things like the romance subplot and certain other things I'm just like, hurry up, I really want to know the answer to, and so that's kind of what the driving force is. I want to know how it ends, because I know this is the ending. If this wasn't the ending, I would have such a hard time. I'd be so done and over it. So it's going better than the second one, but I still think the first one was the best, and this needs to get better, in my opinion, but yeah. So I've got about an hour and a half, a little under two hours before I need to go, so I don't know if I'm I don't think I'll get it finished. I really wanted to try and get this finished before I left for the appointment, but I don't think that's gonna happen. I'm going to sit here and keep reading. I just thought I should give an update, but I'm gonna try and get as close to being finished with this as I can before the appointment, so that when I come back I can just finish this and move on to my next physical read. I am so ready and excited to move on to my next read, and then also too, if I do finish this tonight, I can finally return this and the other book I got from the library, which I read a long time ago, so I can finally return the books to the library, so that might be another thing I do today as well. I will keep reading and catch up with you guys later, probably before I go to the appointments. I ended up getting like a half-hour phone call from my boss, which was really great. We got to catch up on some work things. So I have just reached chapter 15. There are 18 chapters. I've got another like 80, 85 pages or so. I'm going to get ready to go to the appointment, so I will be switching over to my audiobook of the Crowns game. I'll listen to that on the Metro. I'm gonna bring this with me just in case we end up having to wait for whatever reason. Just in case, who knows, I'm gonna bring this along, but after the appointment, when I come home, I will most likely be able to finish this slash I will as long as I don't get distracted by board games or something. So I am going to keep reading all the way up until 9 o'clock if possible, but really, like I said, my main goal is to finish this book. It would be great if I could keep reading. I think I already know the next physical book I'm gonna continue, and that's gonna be a book that I already started. So I see you. I'll get there. So hopefully I can at least keep going on that book, kind of just refresh my brain on what was happening in that book. I'll let you know what it is if I get to it. But yes, I made progress. I'm liking the storytelling in this a little bit more. We're getting a little more history, a little more background, and I'm really enjoying that aspect. I think that being sprinkled through the story is really starting to help with how slow-paced it is. I kind of just read a pretty big twist and a pretty big major event happened. So I am intrigued to keep reading, which is good, but I think really what's motivating me the most is that I'm so close to the end and just having it be done. It's definitely better than the second one, but I still have quite a few critiques for it. So yeah, all right, let's go. Lovely listening to my book. It'll be a little bit, but it'll be fun. Here we go. I'm so excited. It's 5 at night. We just got home from love it so much. I'm really happy with how it turned out. I'll put in some footage of what it looks like. So I got a hummingbird and blackthorn flowers on my right side, on my rib cage. Both of these have large meaning to me, but I really wanted to just keep it simple, keep it not plain, but just kind of beauty in the simplicity. I'm really happy with how it turned out and I'm very happy. Now for the reading update. So I managed to finish Ruin and Rising in my tattoo appointment. While I was waiting for him to do some finishing touches, I finished this book. I'm reading it 3.5 out of 5 stars. You know, it was better than the second one. I think it picked up pace in the second half of this book and I liked the storytelling elements in there and I like the explanations. I still wish we had gotten a little bit more detail on how exactly their magic worked and there were just a couple of things I think could have done a little better, could have been a little more cleaned up, but overall I think it's 3.5. It's pretty good just because I really did enjoy that ending. So yeah, I'm pretty happy. The main goal of this was to finish this book and I did, so I'm very happy with that. And then I also got to chapter like 21 in the Crowns game listening to an audio book which is about, I'm about one-third of the way through, so it's really nice that I'm starting to make progress on this. Hopefully I can have it done soon so I can move on to some more warmer spring reads. So I will continue to listen to this on audio, but I have about one more hour left in this 12-hour read-a-thon. So I will probably pick up Curse of the Specter Clean by Jenny Aldernoke. I have previously started this one and I've been itching to get back to it. It is Female Indiana Jones set in Ireland. This is one that I, like I said, have started. I really want to pick it up again. So this is probably what I'll focus on. I won't finish it or anything like that, but I still say it was a pretty successful 12-hour read-a-thon because I did not want to read Rune and Rising and it was so long, but I did it so I am very happy. Alright, so it is after 9 o'clock which means my 12-hour read-a-thon has ended. It was really fun doing this impromptu read-a-thon and I would love to do this for a 24-hour, sometime in the future, maybe over the summer depending on things. I had a lot of fun. Let me know if this was enjoyable for you. Again, just to reiterate, I finished Rune and Rising. The whole point of this. It was great. I can finally return it to the library. I got a third of the way through the Crowns game on audio and I picked up where I left off in Curse of the Specter Queen. I did read a couple chapters. I am almost 100 pages into it. I forgot how far into it I was, but already things have happened that make me really appreciate all the research the author has put into this novel already. So I'm really excited and once I get going on this, I'm not going to be able to put it down. I know that and I'm ready for it finally. Thank you all so much for watching. Like I said, if you liked this video, let me know by giving it a thumbs up. Otherwise comment down below if you're interested in more read-a-thons like this or just more vlogs from me in general. Whether it's a 24-hour or a weekend or week-long vlogs, I would be interested in doing those. It would definitely help encourage me and my reading more on a daily basis, physical reading and not just audiobooks. Otherwise, follow me on all my bookish social media which is linked down below and I will follow you back and we can chat about books. Otherwise, feel free to subscribe as well. I post on Sundays and Wednesdays, but until I see you all in the next one, I wish you happy reading!