My Weekend Readathon

I had a three day weekend and decided to spend it doing as much reading as I possibly could.  It was my own little three day readathon.

I went the library and got myself a giant stack of books to pick through.

By the end of my three day break I had finished four books (three of mine and one chapter book with Bug) and started the two on the right.

Yes, yes Twilight is trash.  I still love it.  Sue me.

I love weekends where you have absolutely nothing planned and all you need are a good book and a hot cup of coffee to be happy.

Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon part two

My second attempt at the Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon.  You can see my first try last year HERE.

This one didn't seem quite as productive as the first one but I was still pretty proud of what I wound up with.

 My first goal was to get a big chunk of Twenty Years After by Alexandre  Dumas out of the way.  This book is 800 pages and it is so boring I feel myself falling asleep when I pick it up.  So I was extremely glad that I was able to do 300 pages of it.  It left me with about 100 pages left to finish it up which wasn't near as daunting as it had been looking.

I also picked up Witches! The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem by Rosalyn Schanzer from my library just because it had a pretty cover and was short.  It was a little dry and I don't see my ten-year old reaching for it (which seemed like the right age group for this kind of book), but I did learn a little big more on the Salem trials so it wasn't bad.

My least read book for the Readathon was The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis.  Bug and I are reading through the Narnia books and this is our next one.  She let me read about a chapter and a half to her and it made her ready for bed.

I did about 425 pages overall which is about the size of one largish book so I think this day was pretty successful. 

Booktubeathon

If I'm going to go all in on readathons then I might as well just do all of them I think.
I mean, normal people read until their eyes hurt, right?
Readathons are fun because I enjoy the challenge aspect and I like searching for books that go along with them.  Even if I don't actually end up reading them (and I didn't with the last one but I still read a ton of books so I'm okay with it), it's just exciting to see a happy little stack of books on my dresser that are waiting for me to read.
Booktubeathon is starting in a few days and even though I work every day that week they're short shifts so I'll still have lots of time left over to read, read, read.

The Challenges:

1) Read a book with blue on the cover
     I just checked out two new library books that both have blue on the cover so I could go with either one.   The Other Daughter is shortish and is a historical fiction which is a genre I normally fly through.  The Truth According to Us is on the longer side so I don't know if I want to use it for the readathon or wait until it's over.  It really just depends on my mood.  Sometimes picking a book is based on how I feel at that moment.

2) Read a book by an author who shares the same first letter of your last name
      I think I'm going to go with Cry Wolf because the book was a quarter and I want to read it and ship it on out.  Also it looks short.

3) Read someone else’s favorite book
     There's not many people I talk to in person about books so I don't actually know anyone's favorites but I do know my mom loves Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston books.  She's the one who made me start reading them and I enjoy them a lot now, too.  So I'm grabbing Brimstone.  I know it's part of a series and I've read a couple of them out of order already.  They are usually pretty good as standalones.

4) Read the last book you acquired
     Going to kill two birds with one stone and use my book from the first challenge for this one, too.

5) Finish a book without letting go of it
     This might be a readaloud with Bug since we read together all the time or I might pick up My House in Umbria if I have time because it's a tiny slip of a book.

6) Read a book you really want to read
     The easiest challenge for me.  I'm finally going to read A Thousand Splendid Suns.  I've been putting it off for ages since it's the only Khaled Hosseini book I haven't read yet and finishing all of his books makes me hurt.  It's time though since I want to do a reread of all of them in a row one day.

7) Read seven books
     I'm going to hold off on naming a book for this since I will be busy with work and I don't want to commit to another book.  There's a couple of library books en route to me that could work for this or I could just use the ones Bug and I read together.  

TBR Takedown Update

I started TBR Takedown a day early since I knew the last day I wouldn't have time to read much so even though I started it before I was supposed to, I still ended up reading the same amount of days so I'm calling it fair :D

The books I read for this readathon were:

       1:  Ink and Bone by Rachel Caine
       2:  Jane Eyre:  The Graphic Novel by Charlotte Bronte
       3:  Blue Exorcist Volume 1 by Kazue Kato
       4:  The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly by Stephanie Oakes
       5:  A Paris Affair by Tatiana de Rosnay
       6:  The Help by Kathryn Stocket
       7:  Frozen Fever by Walt Disney Company
       8:  Glitter Beach by Rosie Banks
       9:  Equestria Girls by Perdita Finn

My youngest daughter and I read aloud together every single night and even more when it's summer since she's bored during the day so we finished off three chapter books this week.

My reviews for some of them are under the links.  I'm not big on written reviews, I would rather babble on in your face for an hour but I try to at least do a tiny review for most of the books I read!

I actually didn't realize I had read so much until I listed them all out.   My two favorites were without a doubt Ink and Bone and The Help.  I couldn't put them down and you could find me many a day during the readathon sitting out on my back porch or in my recliner with them stuck firm in my hands.

During the week I also had a great time at my libary's Christmas in July sale.  All of the books in the used bookstore are half off so paperbacks are a quarter, hardbacks are fifty cents, and newish books are around one to three dollars.
I spent nine dollars.

Nine beautiful dollars well spent because LOOK at this pile.  A couple of these I've already read but I wanted my own copies since I'm cheap and use the library 95% of the time.  A few I've never even heard of but for being so cheap I couldn't pass them up!  There's a couple I plan on using for the Booktubeathon next week!

#TBRTakedown

I am going to try and do another readathon since I enjoyed the last one so much and this one is a weeklong one instead of a 24 hour one so I wanted to see how I managed.
Deciding which books to use for the challenges makes me so happy and even though I might not stick with my picks I had a lot of fun stacking them up on my dresser!

The challenges are:
1. First Book in a series
     My library has a small manga section (and when I say small I mean they have maybe 2 or 3 of any series I want to read) but I noticed they had a handful of the Blue Exorcist series so I figured it was worth a shot.  After I finished Death Note I've been wanting to start a new one.
2. Sequel Book in a series
      I preordered Go Set a Watchman and I'm dying to read it but I want to reread To Kill a Mockingbird first so I might wait until after the readathon to do those two.  To be honest the second book in the Blue Exorcist series might end up fulfilling this challenge since I went ahead and picked it up along with the first. 
3. Out of your comfort zone
       I tried reading The Help ages and ages ago and didn't make it past about fifteen pages because of the language but everyone I've seen who've read it proclaims it amazing and I would kind of like to watch the movie.  So I am going to try it again...
4. On your shelf over a year (or the longest)
       This one might change as well but I think I'm going to go with Peter Pan since I've had it for ages and I reallyyy want the beautiful interactive book from Barnes and Noble.  I figure if I have never even read it then I can't buy it yet.  But I really want it.  Or maybe I will pick up To Kill a Mockingbird because even though I've already read it I am planning on rereading it and it's technically been on my shelf for over a year.  I'm all about loopholes. 
5. Most recently hauled book
       Even though I told myself NO. MORE. LIBRARY. BOOKS. it didn't hold and as soon as I saw the newest Tatiana de Rosnay book I squealed like a little girl and snatched it up in my greedy little hands.  Fortunately it's more of a novella than a full novel so it shouldn't take me long enough to feel guilty about.

I got a few more library books yesterday and I hope I manage to get to them in the next week, too.  I picked up the graphic novel of Jane Eyre because it's my favorite book and I need to physically touch every version ever made.
There were also a couple of new releases I had on my TBR that I noticed the library had in so I went ahead and snagged them but I'm a little iffy on one (I don't want to support a well-known plagiarizer even if the plot sounds interesting). 
Here's to hoping it's a productive reading week!

Dewey's Wrap-Up

This was my first Readathon and I think I did pretty good!  We were really busy all morning with kid stuff so I didn't get to start reading until after lunch, but I kept at it all day and way up until around 3am.  Then after a few hours of sleep I got up and finished strong for the last hour.

My original pile changed a smidge from when I took this pic in advance.  I started The Beach House and just could not get past a few pages.  I managed to read three books start to finish and then a big chunk of one I've been working on for weeks.

Somewhere in Time Richard Matheson was my first pick.  I was a little disappointed in this since the synopsis sounded so interesting but it was pretty much just a 12 year old's fanfiction come to life.  It was full of plot holes and made absolutely no sense.  The writing was really easy to follow though so at least it was a quick read.

Because of Winn-Dixie was so short that I breezed through it while walking on the treadmill.  I wanted something quick and easy and light to break up the two bigger books and this was so cute.  I put the movie on order from my library because I told the girls about it and they thought it sounded interesting.

The Red Badge of Courage was the late night book for me.  I stayed up until three reading this pile of garbage and I've come to the conclusion that whomever decides what books are "classics" needs a foot in their face.  *don't even get me started on how idiotic Moby-Dick is*  This book was boring and all the characters were full of themselves and I hated every second of it.  So glad it's off my shelf.

 I also made some pretty good headway on Moby-Dick.  I wanted to try and finish it by the end but I had a little over a hundred pages left and was too exhausted to keep going with it.

I'm pretty proud of my tiny pile of books and I can't wait for the next Readathon to try even better.  I think I read around 800 pages since I'm including Bug and I's nighttime books as well.  Next time I think I might try for one large book instead of a bunch of short ones and see how I do.  I might try Anna Karenina.  We'll see.

Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon

I'm going to be participating in my first readathon ever with Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon next Saturday.  It starts at seven AM for me so I'm taking that as a good sign I can do it.  If it had started late at night or too early in the morning I wouldn't have been able to stay away for it and would have been demotivated.
I've already got a small stack of books that I think are doable for it.  I have a classic, a Newbery book, a book that's been on my shelf awhile and a book I want to read just because.

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo
The Beach House by Jane Green
Somewhere in Time by Richard Matheson

If I don't have Moby-Dick done by then (which I probably won't since I'm only 300 pages in right now) and I finish these four then I'm going to spend the rest of my time working on that beast.

Getting three of these books (minus Winn-Dixie since it belongs to my girls) out of my bookcase and into my rummage sale pile makes me very excited!