Take Back Your Shelves Readathon

Jenna at JMill Wanders is hosting the Take Back Your Shelves Readathon this holiday weekend! Since this coincides with the last few days of my own Big Book Summer Challenge, the timing is perfect! The Readathon runs from today through Monday (a holiday here in the U.S.).

Though its focus is on reducing that TBR pile, I will be reading just ONE book from my TBR shelves, The Many Lives of John Stone by Linda Buckley-Archer. I'm only about 80 pages into this 500+ page YA novel, so if I can just finish that, I will be very happy! I am also currently listening to The Summer Guest by Alison Anderson on my iPod, so I will work on that, too.

How much reading time I will actually get this weekend is anyone's guess! I pictured a quiet weekend with just my husband and I (he says he will participate in the readathon, too), but our older college-aged son has been home sick all week. That means the TV has been on a LOT, and we have been keeping him company watching our favorite shows together. We thought he had the flu (which, with his chronic immune disorder could be very serious), but we just heard today that he has strep throat. So, he's starting antibiotics, and we are hoping they will help to get him back on his feet. So, depending on how things go this weekend, the Readathon could be competing with either binge-watching TV or moving him back to college (or both).

Anyway, I'm going to try to read more than usual...and maybe even finish one last Big Book of the Summer!

Thanks for hosting, Jenna! Head over to the readathon sign-up page to join the fun yourself!

Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon Wrap-Up

The Readathon is officially over! It was so much fun! It is truly rare for me to completely take a day off from all of my responsibilities and that nagging to-do list and even rarer (never?) for me to spend an entire day reading, so I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I did the Readathon my own way (which the organizers assured me was just fine!), so I didn't read the entire 24 hours (nor even a full 12). I have a chronic illness that requires a lot of sleep, including a daytime nap, so I listened to my body and stuck to my normal sleep schedule - all-nighters are definitely a thing of the past for me. I did read until 10:45 pm, though, which is pretty late for me! So, there really wasn't anything difficult about the Readathon for me since I worked my reading around my normal routine for the sake of my health - nothing but reading pleasure!

My son and his girlfriend were here in the morning before they headed to the beach, so I took time to make a big breakfast & enjoy their company (but I listened to my audio book while cooking!). We had easy leftovers for lunch & dinner since my husband hosted a retirement party Friday night, so that worked out well. And I even took some breaks to watch TV with my husband, while we ate and in the evening. Hey, the kids were away for the weekend and it was Saturday night! I couldn't read right through date night.

So, what DID I read? Here's the run-down:

• 10 pages - I finished The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy by Rachel Joyce, companion novel to The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, which I loved. The follow-up was very good, too.
• 205 pages - I started Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz for one of my book groups and got a little more than halfway, which I count as a great accomplishment! It's an oddly entertaining book - a gripping thriller with a great sense of humor & irony, where clowns are the bad guys.
• 23 chapters - I continued listening to my current audio book, The Big Dark by Rodman Philbrick, whenever I needed to do something that prevented me from reading. I am LOVING this suspenseful middle-grade sci fi thriller about a solar flare knocking out all power on earth.

So, yay for me! I met my goals and thoroughly enjoyed my break from normal life and am now in the middle of two excellent books that I can't wait to read more of. I will definitely plan to participate in another Readathon...and once my youngest son is in college this fall, I will have more flexibility to read even more!

My husband started doing the Readathon with me (he's currently reading The Crossing by Michael Connelly), but this weekend was also the end of our cable company's Watchathon Week, and catching up on the entire season of The Walking Dead won out for him! He was seriously obsessed yesterday.

Did you participate in Readathon? How did it go? Are you asleep now?

sigh...now back to real life. I guess I better peek at that to-do list and see what is urgent...

Today is Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon!

(drumroll, please)....For the first time ever, I am participating in a 24-Hour Readathon! Woohoo! You can read all about Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon here and see who else is participating. I live in Delaware in the U.S.

In truth, my version will be more like a 12-hour readathon, with a break for my daily nap. Because of my chronic illness, I can't actually skip any of my usual sleep and stay up reading the whole time, like some do, but the organizers assured me this is just fine - everyone does it their own way!

In fact, I also don't have any special snacks planned - again, because of my illness, it's important for me to stick to my usual diet and meals. I've already spent an hour making & eating breakfast for/with my family (though I was listening to my audio book while cooking!) and was planning to make dinner, too...but we do have LOADS of leftovers from a retirement party my husband hosted for a friend last night, so maybe we will just eat chicken fingers, mini crab cakes, veggies & hummus, and chips & salsa for dinner again tonight!

I also don't have huge stacks of books to post for today - just the few I am working on right now, since I have a backlog and am trying to get to several books in time for their respective discussions in book groups - yes, I belong to too many of them! (but it's fun)

Even this meager pile looks like more than it is. I have about 10 pages left of The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy by Rachel Joyce (I just could not stay up one minute longer last night!), so my first goal is to finish that. Then, I am moving onto Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz for an online book group (I'm already behind on that discussion!).  I don't expect to completely finish that one today, but I hope to make some good progress. Readathon alumni recommended having some short, quick books on hand in case you get bored with one big book, so I pulled the shortest novel I could find from my shelves, Playing a Part by Daria Wilke, a teen/YA novel I've been meaning to read for too long.


Finally, I have my trusty iPod loaded with a new book that I started yesterday, The Big Dark by Rodman Philbrick, a gripping middle-grade novel about what happens when a solar flare knocks out all the power. So far, it is riveting & the book I am most looking forward to today. I will listen to this audio book when I am cooking or doing other necessary tasks today - squeezing out every bit of book time!

So, those are my plans. My husband is going to join me (to some degree) - he's reading now but says he MUST finish The Walking Dead today, too (Readathon coincides with our cable's Watchathon Week!). Now, I need to go finish up Queenie Hennessy - I'll check in later to let you know how it's going.

Have you ever participated in a readathon? Did you enjoy it?

2014 Murder, Monsters & Mayhem And Other October Fun!

Inspired by Tanya at Girlxoxo a couple of years ago, I adopted her tradition of reading spooky, creepy books during October to celebrate the Halloween season! I've been searching for some challenges, memes, or readathons to join along these lines and found a few that are just what I was looking for:

I discovered (again, thanks to Girlxoxo) that Jenn's Bookshelves hosts Murder, Monsters & Mayhem during October, so consider this my sign-up post!

I have already started my spooky reading month:

• I finished The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes, a novel about a time-traveling serial killer - a bit gruesome and seriously gripping!
• I also finished The Other Side of Dark by Sarah Smith, a teen/YA novel about a modern-day girl who sees ghosts, with a strong historical flavor. Fascinating and spooky!
• I am currently listening to Nightmares! by Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller on audio, a recent middle-grade release about a boy whose nightmares come to life. It's been excellent so far, especially since it's read by Jason, an actor.
• And I recently started Frankenstein, the monster classic by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, on my Kindle. It's great to finally read the original after seeing so many movie adaptations.

And, hopefully, there will be more creepy reads this month, too!

Two other ghostly novels that I read in September would be perfect for this month:

• The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo, a novel about the Chinese afterlife
• The Vanishing Season by Jodi Lynn Anderson, a teen/YA novel about serial murders that is partly narrated by a ghostly entity.

For more ideas on what to read this month, check out these older posts:

•  Top Ten Books for Halloween (2010 post)
• 13 Creepy Books for October, a list from BookPage 2013
• Top Ten Books for Kids & Teens/YA for Halloween (2010)

And there are two other fun October events I plan to participate in:

My Shelf Confessions is hosting Wonderfully Wicked Read-A-Thon from October 17 - 27. I have NEVER participated in a read-a-thon before, so I am looking forward to this one! Head over to the blog to sign up and join me.

Finally, Girlxoxo has come up with a Bingo for Spook'Tober game that looks like a lot of fun! I enjoyed Books on the Nightstand's Summer Bingo game, so I'm sure I will like this October version, too. Head over to Girlxoxo to print out your Horror Reading Card (aka Bingo card). No signing up for this one, just join in the fun!

What do you plan to read to celebrate this spooky month?