It’s April, which means this month is the first of three Dewey’s 24-Hour Readathons for the year (April 29th). I have been participating in all three events for the past 5 years. Essentially the concept is pretty simple, the readathon is international and challenges you to read as much (or as little) as you can over a 24 hour period, which an emphasis on books, snacks and reading buddies.

Initially there were a variety of challenges throughout the readathon, and many had prizes attached, but over the last year or so, leadership has changed and the challenges have dropped off… aside from a Bingo board and a photo challenge for Instagram. There are active readathon groups on Goodreads, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. There is also a Discord channel and probably groups on the other social media sites that are cropping up. I tend to focus on Instagram and Twitter personally.

Many of the participants are book bloggers, or others active in the book community. But there are a lot of people who are just passionate readers who found out about the event and have joined in year after year (the readathon started in 2007 and is named in honor of the founder).

The readathon runs for the same 24-hour period for everyone, so the start times are different for every time zone. In April and October, the event runs from 8am ET Saturday to 8am ET Sunday (that means for me, on the US’s West Coast, my time is 5am-5am). In the summer, the readathon is reversed and starts at 8pm ET Friday and runs through 8pm ET Saturday for the people who live in time zones that normally have them starting at crazy times like 1am. Because I am a night owl, the Reverse Readathon is my favorite event of the three… getting up at 5am is hard!

In the past I have done a running post on readathon day that I have updated every hour. This year I decided to take a different route and will be posting readathon themed posts each week leading up to the event (with extra posts the week of).

If you want to learn more about this readathon, or join in on any pre-readathon challenges, visit their website here.