Cosmere Readalong Announcement 🧙

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]Hello one and welcome to a new video.

[00:00:03]Are you ready to come on another adventure with me?

[00:00:07]If you're ready for the title for this video, you shall see that another read-along is starting. It all started out with me wanting to reread Wheel of Time. We hosted that or I hosted that with a bunch of wonderful co-hosts over 2 and 1/2 years. We took a short read-along now for the past year with Vampire Academy and Bloodlines, which was a funny YA series, very nostalgic.

[00:00:28]And as a journey closes, we need to open a new one. And the next thing that we are going to tackle is the Cosmere by Brandon Sanderson, the man himself. In every single live show we were in Wheel of Time, I feel like we talk about that man. I mean, granted, he did finish up Wheel of Time, so it kind of makes sense, but still, it has been a long time coming. And I assume that most people know who Brandon Sanderson is, but apparently a lot of people haven't read his works or have read parts of his works and want to finish, and this is your push to do so. As per usual, as we have done with other read-alongs, we have a live show every second month. So, you have about 2 months to finish a book. And granted, these are big fantasy chunkers, so you need that time on you.

[00:01:11]We start out now in the theory for June and July, and the first live show will be done in August. And we are going to start out with, which can be a challenge, but also I think the best place to start because it was his published debut. We are starting out with Elantris, which is one of the works in the Cosmere, obviously. And this one will be our first tackle. It can be hard.

[00:01:38]And honestly, I have read this twice.

[00:01:39]And upon reread of it the second time I read it, it is one of my favorites. The first time I was a bit like, "Hmm." But I still did love it a lot. But like, now I'm so, so excited to get into it. So, like, even if you end up not like loving this one, we are starting on Mistborn next, which is my absolute favorite and was the first thing I read by him, and very, very, very excited to read those again for like literally the fifth time, I think. We are starting on Elantris. A bit about the reading order. I made a spreadsheet, which I will pop a picture of, and I'm going to link that down below so you can have the reading access to this if you're unsure where we are in the read-along. It is a lot. The dude has written a lot of things, and not everything he has written is in the Cosmere. The books, for example, the designs on them, especially the UK editions, are very similar. So, it looks like they are in the same like world.

[00:02:28]They're just by the same authors, like Steelheart, Skyward, all of those.

[00:02:32]They're not in the Cosmere, so we're not reading those. I have read them. They're incredible as well, but obviously we only keep it to Cosmere, but it can be a bit confusing. Someone is going to ask me when we are reading the Arcanum Unbounded, which I cannot pronounce.

[00:02:44]This is a short story collection of only Cosmere stories that he published a couple of years ago. We are not reading this as in you're not reading this whole thing in one go because this is different short stories that in a different worlds of the Cosmere because the Cosmere is many different planets all hang together and are in some universe, and we do have some crossover characters and crossover happenings affecting each other in a way, and they all are known to have like really, really cool and specific magic systems, which is one of the things that Brandon Sanderson is known for to write. But, we are never like reading this as like one entity. If you look at the spreadsheet again, you can see that I put in a lot of the short stories that belongs to the thing that we are reading, and this will give you extra information and a chance for you to read some of the short stories, especially the Stormlight ones.

[00:03:28]They are quite long and can be fun to in addition to like the actual Stormlight books. For example, though those, they focus on a specific character that you will get more information of that he doesn't have time in the 1,200 pages he writes in Stormlight. So, we are never reading this as in one book, but we are reading everything in it, but that is voluntarily because we are not doing a specific live show for one short story cuz uh we don't have time for that. We might mention that, but it's not going to be a dedicated live for it, which you will see in this budget. We're doing dedicated lives for the following books.

[00:04:03]And then the short stories might be mentioned. I'm not saying that it's obligatory for anyone to read, but if you want to full context and Brandon Sanderson do write a lot of shorts in general and if you want everything in the Cosmere, I do recommend you reading them and a lot of them are very very good. Specifically like Emperor's Soul is like a standalone novella, one of the most incredible ones I have read. There are also two other short stories, Shadows of Silence in the Horse of Hell and Sixth of Dusk that are like their own thing, but don't belong to a bigger book.

[00:04:32]I haven't read those for example, but I would definitely want to read them. All of those are in this budget, so I would just read them when you feel like they belong, but again, it's not going to be its own live. We are obviously going on a big adventure. If you look at this spreadsheet once again, we are finishing up in August 2029, which is quite a long while to and while we are reading, Mr. Sanderson is going to write more books cuz he writes very very fast and he publishes very very fast. And those will be added like on the end of it. So like even though it right now says 2029, whenever he's releasing something new or like you know the release date, I'm going to add it to this spreadsheet. So you're always going to know when that is happening. But at the same time, if he's like, we will catch up at one point, but >> [laughter] >> don't know when that's actually going to happen and then maybe we should do like separate lives in the future for the books that we haven't read as they're releasing. I did actually use a lot of time. I think it was in 2020 to catch up on the Cosmere and I was like when the secret projects he started to work release. Not all of those are in the Cosmere as well by the way, but obviously I've written up the ones that are. I read them like when I went in my hands cuz I was like all caught up on everything and then I fell behind and now I'm literally I feel like three books behind. Yes, three or four books behind maybe. And it happened so fast.

[00:05:48]And now it is what has been such a long time. I feel like I need to reread to read those anyway. And here we are. Love you obviously going to have some incredible hosts with us. Let's see who survives till the end, huh? Because we did do Wheel of Time.

[00:06:00]>> [laughter] >> Some of us are going to have live shows on our channels, and some of us are not, as is usual in these read-alongs. But it is going to be a grand time anyway. So obviously we have me. I am the host, the one who needs to survive it all. And then the I'm bringing back Becca from Becca on the Books. That was with us for Wheel of Time. And I am also in her Casual Book Club. So the Casual Book Club is also a live show every second month. And then this one will be the other month that Casual Book Club is not. So we are both stuck in a prison that we can't get out of. And Becca has incredible credible videos that obviously you need to check out if you haven't already. How would you not? Also had taking with me Emily, which was in Wheel of Time and Bloodlines. A great addition to the live show. It's going to be such a good time. And we also have Dab, who joined in on Wheel of Time as well, and has also been in Vampire Academy. And you should check Dab's channel out, which I will see link everyone down below. With me for Vampire Academy you also had Cecilia joining.

[00:07:01]Cecilia is one of my best friends, and she has not read any Sanderson before. I think some hosts have read some, but not all. So it's going to be interesting.

[00:07:10]But I know that Cecilia has read absolutely nothing of it. So it's always fun to have that addition as well. going to be a blast. And we also have Vishta also joining for Vampire Academy. I do believe that she has read quite a lot of Sanderson before, and she posts great videos on her channel as well. It's going to be great. I feel bad for her cuz she has to [laughter] wake up really early for the live shows. And then as a new addition for my own read-alongs we have Saf, who is also in the Casual Book Club. She wanted to join in on the Sanderson. She has not read any, I believe. We just talked a lot about it.

[00:07:41]Going to be a great addition. We are quite a lot of hosts, as you can see, but I know that some of them are not going to be there for every live, and some are yielding out for certain lives, for some books they don't like, etc. So, like, it's not going to be a full house every time, but even if it is, it's just going to be a blast and chaotic, and it's going to be great anyway. I know it's going to be a blast. For you to know where we're going to have the lives, obviously I've written up like each the month we have them in in the spreadsheet. I will try to update maybe spreadsheet with like the actual links.

[00:08:11]People go back and look in it, and like want to see the lives as we go. I'll also make a playlist. I'll try to post on my community page when we have live shows. I recommend following everyone, so you won't miss any lives. But, we will also have another Discord. We had a Discord for Wheel of Time, as well as One Book Academy, and there is now one you can join down below for this read-along, cuz we're read-along as well. Here I will always post the live show link, and remind everyone with a tag, etc., when we're going live. I do get that there was a lot of Discords to join, especially like within the book community, and it's annoying to get the notifications for all like everyone writing in a thread. I do recommend muting threads that you're not interested in. For example, if you only want there for updates for the live, you can right-click on the server itself, and mute everything except like tags, so then you will only get a notification when we post about the live. You can also mute individual threads if you just right-click on that specific thread. If you don't want a bunch of notifications constantly, I recommend that, because I have literally muted every single server I am in, unless I am hosting them, because I want to be there for updates and to check things out, but I don't necessarily want every single message, cuz that would be a lot if you're in a lot of them. So, I get that it's annoying to join a billion Discords, but that is my recommendation. And obviously on our socials, etc., when the live is closing in, we will post about it. But, be general, how like a distaff rule to be on like the second weekend of the month we're going to have the live show in. So, first live show is in August.

[00:09:39]I'm double-checking. Yes, and it will be on my channel. And here I would, for example, if you want to read the whole book of Elantris, which is the short story about only Elantris, I would read that for that live. Even though that short story is not necessarily the most important one, and that would probably be like in the second weekend of August unless there's something that hosts can't make it. We can move it around, etc. within the month. But again, if you follow us on socials, etc., or join the Discord, you will know when the live is ready. These are not the kind of books as Memory Army and Elantris have been to read the day before cuz they are much longer and it takes obviously much longer to read. But obviously, if you were here for Wheel of Time, you will have experienced the pain of reading a really thick book right before the live cuz I did do that occasionally for Wheel of Time the same day, and it was fine. I do recommend the audiobooks. They are pretty good. Not all of them are narrated by Kate Reading and Michael Kramer, but a lot of them are, especially like Misborn, all of them are read by only Michael Kramer, while Stormlight is read by both of them.

[00:10:34]They're the same narrators as Wheel of Time. I think they're pretty great. I think those artists are really good.

[00:10:38]Again, I do recommend those as well.

[00:10:40]Cosmere is an amazing amazing series, and obviously we have a lot of epic in it like the Misborn like saga is a big big epic, and then we have a time skip, and Stormlight, etc. is like the biggest epics, and there's going to be so many fun things to talk about because Brandon Sanderson is a master storyteller of plot twists and teaching you things that you think are in a certain way and then turning this on its head. He just is amazing at this and has made it hard for me to enjoy other books because I just like expecting like the level of smartness that he puts into his stories, and then I read other books, and it just never reaches that level. Obviously, you can't compare everything to Sanderson, but he just has this way of telling that I think he's a very very good at and it's just really really fun. I'm so so excited to dive in. Obviously, like the Misborn trilogy, especially the first one, I think I literally read five times or something, at least like the first one, and it's one of my favorite books of all time. So, that one's specifically I'm going to be very like in the details, I feel like. And then as we go like further towards the end, some of those I've only read once and some I haven't read at all. So, it's just going to be very, very interesting to see what you all think and to finally actually discuss these books after just mentioning them 150 billion times in both Casual Book Club and when we had A Wheel of Time. I do hope you join us on this adventure. If you have been curious to read them, if you've been wanting to catch up or want to reread this, this is your chance, guys. Know that some of you are going to stick with us till the end and it's just it's going to be a blast and I hope that you will have fun.

[00:12:12]>> [snorts] >> And not suffer too much. I don't think this is going to be as suffering as other things, but it's going to be great. Don't think I have missed anything. I think that covers it. I think it's going to be a blast. I didn't pick out the books for the thumbnail cuz I honestly have too many editions of the different books which I need to go through. At least I can finally show off all my stuff. This is my one chance, guys. This is my one chance.

[00:12:35]But again, thank you so much for watching this video. Thank you so much for joining us. Leave a fantasy-themed emoji down below and then you should see us all very, very soon for when we officially start. Obviously, you can join the Discord now and start getting hyped. And I mean, you could start reading a lot just now. It is a pretty thick book and August is going to come upon you before you know it. And then you should see us soon or see me soon.

[00:13:00]Thank you so much for watching.

[00:13:01]Bye.