The Tome Topple Readathon is created and co-hosted by Thoughts on Tomes and runs from midnight on Friday 7th February to 11:59pm on Thursday 20th February whatever timezone you are in. The aim of Tome Topple is to read the big, intimidating books on your TBR – books that are 500 pages long or more. Though if you’ve got a book that’s 490 pages then who is going to judge you for including that. Plus, as different formats of books (ebooks, hardcovers, paperbacks) often have slightly different number of pages, as long as one of the formats is 500 pages or more, then it counts even if your edition doesn’t quite hit the 500-page mark. For more information on the readathon check out Sam’s announcement video.

Tome Topple usually runs a couple of times a year but it’s been ages since I’ve properly taken part. This is down to me focussing on my shorter books, not having the time, and that the majority of my super long books still live at my mum’s and I only keep a dozen or so books with me that I plan to read sooner rather than later, and tomes don’t generally fit that category.

Love in No Man’s Land by Duo Ji Zhuo Ga (512 pages)
Gemina by Amie Kaufman ad Jay Kristoff (659 pages
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch (501 pages)
Hawkeye: Avenging Archer by Jim McCann, Duane Swierczynski, David López, Manuel García and Paco Diaz Luque (480 pages)

I’m going to be listening to The Lies of Locke Lamora on audio which is 22 hours. I’ve had the ebook on my kindle since 2013 and I actually started it way back then. I got to page 158 and from what I remember I did enjoy it but then it was the Christmas break and I don’t really read that much of Christmas so I just put it down and haven’t picked it up since. The Lies of Locke Lamora is definitely the tome that’s been on my TBR the longest.

Gemina is probably the second longest tome on my TBR, I bought it after reading (and really liking) Illuminae in 2016. Unfortunately, the copy I got from the Book Depository was humongous, so that put me off reading it. I still don’t understand how my copy of Illuminae has 599 pages and looks like a regular sized book, and my copy of Gemina has about 50 pages more and is the size of a textbook. Must be a different edition but I don’t see myself keeping this copy of Gemina once I’ve finally read it.

Love in No Man’s Land was a Christmas present and it is my read for Tibet for my Read the World Project. It’s an epic story of family and while I do want to read it, Tome Topple will give me that push to read it sooner rather than later.

Hawkeye: Avenging Archer is a smidge under the 500-page target but I thought I’d put it on my TBR so I’d have something that could break up some of the potentially heavier reads.

As it is the tenth edition of Tome Topple there is a bingo card of prompts and based on my TBR I could cross off six squares if I managed to read them all which would make me a scholar. But we shall see how the readathon goes though as this is a very ambitious TBR for me.

Are you taking part in Tome Topple this time? If so I would love to see your TBRs. And if you’ve read any of the books I’ve mentioned here, it’d be great to hear your thoughts on them. There’s also reading sprints on Twitter and there’ll be challenges on Instagram so it should be a fun couple of weeks of reading.