Practice English Speaking&Listening with: March Mystery Madness 2020 Announcement | The Fifth Anniversary Edition

Hi there! I'm Jen. This is Remembered Reads. And this is going to be an

announcement video for the 2020 March Mystery Madness mystery-themed readathon.

And excitingly, this is the fifth anniversary of March Mystery Madness!

March Mystery Madness was created by Elizabeth from LizzieFaylovesbooks

and Troi Towel back five years ago and in the second year they were joined by

Di from disis19 hearts. And in years 3 4 & 5 a whole hosts of extra hosts have

been added to encourage people in different subsections of booktube to

think about the various subgenres that fall into mystery reading. Because if you

don't like whodunits or you don't like thrillers there's actually quite a bit

more to the category and the overlapping genres that can be considered mysteries

that people don't necessarily think about there are after all pieces of

literary fiction that have mystery elements that would count, thrillers of

not only the domestic thriller type but political thrillers and military

thrillers also could be considered mystery. And of course traditional

whodunits run the gamut from the hard-boiled pulpy

style to the very light cozy style and everything in between.

And of course mysteries can be found in every format you don't need to read a

full novel - if you want to read a short story right that's participation too.

There are all kinds of comic series that also fall into the category. There's a

lot of variety that you could be enjoying. As always, I will link to the

official social media channels below as well as to all of the channels of the

creators and the hosts who are involved. Because this is the fifth anniversary,

there is a set of number five and fifth themed prompts now you don't have to

participate in these prompts, they're just for fun. If you read one mystery in

the entire month, you're participating. If you choose to read nothing but

mystery is in March you are *definitely* participating! But if you are the kind of

person who loves extra prompts or reading challenges we have some prompts

for you. One prompt is to read the fifth book in

a series now a lot of traditional style mysteries do come in series that can be

almost endless. For example if you think about Sue Grafton's alphabet series this

obviously not the fifth one because it's W but he is for evidence that would be a

great example of something that you could do for this one. If you were

reading short stories, you could read the fifth short story in a collection. Or if

you're reading comics in floppies you could read issue five in a series.

Another prompt is a book with five words in the title. So something like The

Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie, that fulfills it. And I think a

lot of traditional mysteries are titled in this style so it will be fairly easy

to find other ones like this. Another prompt is to pick up a book with a page

count that's divisible by five. So for example Whitewater Terror from the Nancy

Drew Files series is 150 pages. So you could wander through a library or

bookstore and just take a peek at the page counts and find something that

would fulfill that one. I would just like to take a moment to enjoy the pure '80s-ness

of this cover for a moment while I'm holding this up. Because that is actually

really hilarious. Another challenge would be to pick a

book with the word either 5 or 5th or the number 5 in the title. This is again

not the right book in the series to fulfill it but be John the Eunuch

mysteries by Mary Reed and Eric Meyer each start with a number, so 5 is for

Silver, the book that's immediately before this one that I'm holding up

would easily fulfill this prompt. And frankly, because a lot of books will

have the volume number on the cover this would be an easy one to tie together

with the fifth book in the series prompt. Because if something says "volume 5" on

the cover, there you go double up on that one! Another prompt is to pick a book

that was first published in a year that's divisible by 5. In that case, this

book Six for Gold does actually fulfill that prompt itself. This is from 2005. And

again this is another one where you can scan through your books , the books

at the library, the books of the bookstore just to specifically look at

the copyright dates. Technically the rules are that it has to be first

published in a year divisible by five like this one but I think if you were to

cheat and pick a book that had just had an edition published in a year that's

divisible by five I don't think anyone's going to complain. Another prompt is to

read a book that's published in the fifth month of the year, which is May. I don't

tend to pay close attention to publication months, but if you receive

review copies from publishers, or if you request review copies through net galley

this would be a great way to get some of those off the list if they're being

published this May. And finally, since the fifth wedding anniversary gift is wood,

this prompt would be to pick a book with a tree or something else wooden on

the cover. I think there are a lot of cozy mysteries that have historic wooden

buildings so there would be one. I think there are a lot of mysteries set in

rural areas where someone has wooden duck decoys on a shelf on the cover that

could count. And if you don't have any of those things the very easy way to

fulfill this prompt is just to read a physical book, because most physical

books - unless you happen to have a very odd or antique cloth or leather book - are

printed on paper, which is a tree, which is wood. So there you go! Whether you are

an avid mystery reader regularly or not I hope you'll be joining us for this

fifth anniversary of March Mystery Madness. It is always great fun to get all

those mysteries out of your system if you're not a regular reader of mysteries

but you have some on your TBR, it'll be great. Anyway, that's it for now. Ciao!