Books Are Jazzy

Ophiuchus by Alexis Leriger de la Plante and Natasha Tara Petrovic was one of the books I read for ARC August. It's a graphic novel that is released today, August 27th, and I know I'll have to pick up a physical copy of this sooner rather than later!




The eponymous main character, Ophiuchus's life gets thrown off track when someone breaks through the gate that she has been guarding for ages, followed almost immediately by two robots who rope her into joining their quest to defeat an evil virus.

While the stakes of Ophiuchus are life and death, I really liked that the story was mainly focused on the emotional connections between the three main characters. My favorite aspect of Ophiuchus was the art style and how color was used to tell the story!

I can't wait to see more from these authors in the future, hopefully in a similar art style!

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

What are your favorite graphic novels? Let me know in the comments below!

-Laura

Back in late March, I found out about the Magical Readathon hosted by Book Roast on Youtube! As a lifelong Harry Potter fan, I jumped at the opportunity to pretend to be a Hogwarts student for a month. This is the second year of the readathon and my first year taking part in it!

The Magical Readathon is based around the exams students take at Hogwarts and is hosted in two parts: the first part, which are the O.W.LS, takes place in April and the second part, the N.E.W.Ts, takes place in August. And just like Hogwarts students taking their exams, you're meant to do the O.W.Ls readathon before you take the N.E.W.Ts.

There is a list of careers to choose from and your readathon experience and challenges come from your chosen career. My chosen career for 2019 is Seer - maybe next year I'll have enough time to attempt the daunting Alchemist career, which would have been my first choice. In order to become a Seer, I needed to take three O.W.L. exams (read three books), which were for the subjects Ancient Runes, Astronomy, and Divination and each subject corresponded to a different prompt. For Ancient Runes the prompt was to read a retelling, for Astronomy it was to read a book with "star" in the title, and for Divination it was a book set in the future. The books I read for these prompts were Echo North by Joanna Ruth Meyer, Ctaching Stars by Cayla Keenan, and The Towering Sky by Katharine McGee, respectively.

Isn't this description of the career stunning?

While for the O.W.Ls, I only needed to read one book per subject, for the N.E.W.Ts the number of books you need to read per subject is determined by the grade you need to achieve in that subject for your career. So, for the career of Seer, I need to achieve an Outstanding so I'll need to read all three books for that subject.

If all of this sounds confusing, you can find all the information for the O.W.Ls readathon here and the info for N.E.W.Ts readathon here!

After all of that, here are the prompts for my subject followed by the book I have planned to read for that prompt for the N.E.W.Ts readathon:

• Acceptable in Divination: Read a white book
• Runousopin perusteet by Mervi Kantokorpi, Pirjo Lyytikäinen, and Auli Viikari
• Exceeds Expectations in Divination: Read a short story or a collection of short stories
• Toil and Trouble: 15 Tales of Women and Witchcraft edited by Jessica Spotswood and Tess Sharpe
• Outstanding in Divination: Read the last book you bought / took from the library
• At the time of making my TBR this was The Merciful Crow by Margaret Owen, and I'll try to keep to that unless I grab something I absolutely have to read as soon as I get it. 

ARC August is an annual readathon hosted by Read.Sleep.Repeat., with the aim of helping book reviewers get through their piles and piles of unread ARC's (Advance Reader's Copies) during the month of August. This is the 6th year of the readathon, but the first time I'm taking part in it! You can read Read.Sleep.Repeat.'s original announcement for it here!

This year they have created a host of challenges to take part in during the readathon, including a word search, a crossword puzzle, and a bingo! Personally, I'm most looking forward to hopefully filling out the Bingo card as I read through some ARC's. Check out the empty card below!



I'll be posting pictures of the card on our instagram stories as I fill it out, and you can follow along here!

When I started making my TBR, I knew it would end up being way longer than what I'll actually have time to read, but I wanted to really challenge myself and see how many of these books I could read through during my last two weeks of vacation before I head back to college. And now, without further ado, my TBR list for #ARCAugust!





Are any of you taking part in #ARCAugust or any other readathons this month? Let me know in the comments below!

-Laura