It’s Time for an Adventure: I’m officially joining the Pondathon!

What is the Pondathon?

The Pondathon is a co-operative and story-driven readathon hosted and run by CW from The Quiet Pond. The aim of the Pondathon is to read books and collect points to protect the friends over at The Quiet Pond from the encroaching malevolent forces that threaten our friends in the forest. Have fun participating in the Pondathon readathon by joining one of five teams, each with a unique way to collect points and signing up! You can also follow the story of the Pondathon as it unfolds, and participants can also complete ‘side quests’ during the readathon to collect extra points. The readathon takes place from January 24th 2020 to March 7th 2020. More information about the readathon can be found here.

Information about Joining the Pondathon

1. To join the Pondathon, simply sign up anytime between January 18th 2020 to March 5th 2020.
2. Choose a team, create your own animal character for the Pondathon and create a character card!
3. Create a blog post, bookstagram post, booktube video, Twitter thread, or whatever medium you wish, with ‘#Pondathon’ in the title or your tweet. Share the character you have created and your character card!
4. Link back to this post so that others can find this readathon and join in.

Share your updates on your blog/bookstagram/booktube and social media. You are more than welcome to tag @thequietpond or @artfromafriend on Twitter or Instagram in all your updates! We’d love to see all of the beautiful and awesome characters that you create!

My Pond Character

My Pond Character Wen Xiu is actually named in honor of…me! Wen Xiu (pronounced ‘when-show’) is my Chinese name and roughly means grace with literature. Sort of. But it ended up being very fitting for me as an English major, and the perfect name for my little guardian librarian panda! We’re loudly and proudly Team Sprout, whose mission is to spread the word about diverse books, and we can’t wait to help our team captain throughout the Pondathon!

My Pondathon TBR

While I don’t have a complete TBR yet (there are so many diverse books I’m excited for I barely even know where to begin), luckily a lot of my TBRs for #StartOnYourShelfAthon and YARC 2020, which are other readathons hosted by The Quiet Pond, overlap with my mission to read and discuss as many diverse books as possible. Here are just a few of the books that I’m most excited to read next!

Steel Crow Saga by Paul Krueger

I got this book for Christmas and I’ve been DYING to read it ever since, but I’ll be sitting on my hands until February, which is when I’ll be reading it with a group of people. It’s marketed as ATLA meets Pokemon, aka the book of my dreams, and I can’t wait to be able to talk about it with others!

The Dragon Republic by R.F. Kuang

Soo I gifted a signed copy of The Dragon Republic to myself for Christmas…and I have absolutely no regrets. I know I need to wait for the right moment to read this particular book, and by right moment, I mean when I have time to give myself a proper mourning period, because I know it’s going to absolutely wreck me. And I couldn’t be more ready.

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Full Disclosure by Camryn Garrett

I’ve been following Camryn on Twitter for a while now, and just from that, I already know I’m going to love Full Disclosure. I’m hoping it’s a book I can recommend to professors and students alike, and I don’t expect it to disappoint!

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Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Several of my friends included Gods of Jade and Shadow in their favorite reads of 2019, and it’s got such a gorgeous cover and premise I’m fully prepared for it to become a favorite of mine as well.

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Only Mostly Devastated by Sophie Gonzales

Sophie was actually the first author I ever talked to directly about getting an arc for her book, which makes it all the more special to me. I’m so excited to dive into this LGBT retelling of Grease in all of its contemporary glory! (And keep an eye out for a special interview with Sophie too!!)