The time has come for the Dusting off the Shelf Read-A-Thon to end! This lovely event was hosted by the wonderful blog Books & Cleverness, you should definitely go check her blog out!

This was my first time ever participating in a read-a-thon, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. It’s been a great learning experience because I’ve figured out a lot of what works for me and what doesn’t as far as reading with specific goals in mind. So how did I do on the challenges? Let’s take a look!

Challenges:

• Read a book set in the past: I completed this challenge by reading 1984 by George Orwell, which I absolutely loved.
• Read a classic: Unfortunately I did not complete this challenge. My original plan was to read This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald, but I tried reading Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights instead because it caught my eye. However, I got about fifty pages into it and decided that I just wasn’t in the mood for that type of book. I set it aside for later and picked something else up.
• Read a book written before 2010: For this one I read an old favorite of mine: Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta, which was published in 2006. I originally wanted to read The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom, which was published in 2003, but I just wasn’t in the mood for it at the time.
• Read at least 100 pages a day: I came close to completing this challenge, but not quite. I read around 1300 pages instead of 1500, so I was a bit off.
• One that you’ve been neglecting: I completed this one too! I read Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, which I really enjoyed and had been neglecting for months.

As you can see, I had a hard time staying loyal to my TBR pile for this read-a-thon. I veered off and read We’ll Always Have Summer by Jenny Han as well and right now I’m reading Pathfinder by Orson Scott Card. I realized during this read-a-thon that I’m not good at following TBR piles. In the future I’ll definitely be more vague with my TBR lists!

I think that this read-a-thon was a success for me! I completed three out of the five challenges and read a total of four books, which is more than I would have normally read in two weeks. For my first read-a-thon, I actually didn’t do too bad!

Thanks again to Emily at Books & Cleverness for hosting this awesome event!

How did you do in this read-a-thon? Do you have any tips for me that I could use in my next one? How are you with following TBR lists? Let me know in the comments section below!