Whew! I could not have picked a crazier week to attempt a readathon – I’ve had to squeeze reading into the nooks and crannies of my schedule, but I’ve still managed to find a bit of time each day, which is important to me. I even managed to read on my lunch break twice, which I’m sure made me look anti-social but luckily I could not care less about coming across as the weird book-reading girl. Literally everyone who works at Microsoft is a nerd in some way. I’m in good company.

I’ve also shifted up my TBR a little bit. I’ve read way too many amazing reviews of An Ember in the Ashes in the past week or so to ignore it any longer, so it’s earned a spot in the stack of books I am trying to finish for this readathon. In fact, it’s almost replaced everything else, since it’s so long.

My goal is to read The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (TGWCFIASOHOM, if you will) first and then to power through An Ember in the Ashes this weekend. If I can do all of that, I will be 100% satisfied with myself. If I can’t, well… that’s okay too.

I haven’t actually read anything yet today, but I didn’t get home from work until almost 8pm and then I decided to go running because I had pent-up ‘i just sat through a five hour meeting’ energy. I needed to relax a bit by writing this blog post (because working relaxes me, yes, I’m strange) and then I’ll start reading.

Current progress overall:

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell: Done! (323 pages)
The 100 by Kass Morgan: Done! (323 pages – weird, they’re the exact same length)
Rebel Belle by Rachel Hawkins: Put on hold.
The Utterly Unintersting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant: Listened to 2 hours of the audio book
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland: Just started.

Why are all of my book titles so long? These are abnormally long.

I decided to participate in my own challenge, even though I obviously can’t win. Today I had the honor of hosting the Bout of Books challenge, and I have a fantastic time reading all the book haikus people sent in over the course of the day. It was a lot of fun, and now I want to do it too. I literally just finished reading Attachments by Rainbow Rowell and I’m a big goopy mess on account of how great it was – but there is no time for book hangovers in a readathon. So I am affording myself enough time to write this blog update before diving into Rebel Belle before bed.

My haiku about Attachments by Rainbow Rowell:

Beth and Jennifer
write extremely long emails.
So, when do they work?

I’m a little bummed it took me 3 days to finish this book, but I can’t even really be annoyed because I loved it so much. If I don’t read all five of the books on my TBR, well, life goes on. I’ll replace them with a few graphic novels on Sunday so I still hit the number. Yolo!

Here’s my day 3 update:

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell: Done! (323 pages)
The 100 by Kass Morgan: Listened to 6 hours out of 7
Rebel Belle by Rachel Hawkins: Just started.

Hope everyone else is doing well with their readathons – please feel free to leave me a comment and let me know how you’re doing, or send in more book haikus! Go nuts! I love them.

Today’s blog post is going to be a little bit different, because today… I am hosting a challenge for Bout of Books 13! To find out more about this read-a-thon, check out their website and consider joining in! Because – good news! If you catch this blog post in the next 2 hours – there’s still time to sign up! But if it’s already Wednesday where you live… you’re probably too late. I’m sorry! 🙁

This challenge is only for participants, so if you’re feeling left out, you should consider doing it next time!

For those of you specifically here for the challenge, here it is: Write a haiku about whatever book you’re reading right now.

Here’s one I’ve written about Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, as an example/a bit of inspiration:

Boy Wizard. Harry.
His school is cooler than yours.
But no internet.

Feel free to tweet your haikus as well, to share them with the world!

And of course, it wouldn’t be a proper challenge without a prize, would it? The winner of this challenge may choose a book up to $15 from Book Depository and I will get it for you! 

If you’re participating in the read-a-thon, good luck! And if not… what are you doing?! Grab a book anyway!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I don’t know if I’ll be writing blog posts about every single day of this readathon, but I will be updating here and there, especially if the challenge for the day makes sense to write a blog post!

I think today, the first day, is my busiest day of the readathon. Not the best way to hit the ground running, but I will manage. I had to work today (9-5) and have a writing workshop that begins in 45 minutes. I’m writing this from the cafe where we meet, before anyone else has gotten here. In the small breaks I’ve had today, this is what I’ve managed to accomplish:

The 100 by Kass Morgan: Listened to 1 hour out of 7
Attachments by Rainbow Rowell: Read 57 pages

I plan to go home and read a bit more of Attachments tonight, but I also have a video to edit, so I’m not sure how much more I’ll get done. I’m still feeling confident about the rest of the week, though!

Today’s challenge is by Writing My Own Fairytale – Bookish Survey.

1. How do you organize your shelves? There is very little rhyme or reason to my shelves right now. I have two – a big one and a smaller one. The smaller one has mostly my favorite books, organized mostly by author and whatever seems aesthetically pleasing. The bottom shelf of this one is entirely Harry Potter and its companion novels. The large shelf goes (from top to bottom) 2 shelves of books I haven’t read yet, arranged mostly by size and by hardback vs. paperback, then a single shelf of books I plan to read soon, then the next one down is comics and graphic novels, then the bottom is childhood books and older books in a state of disarray.
2. What is one of your favorite books that’s not in one of your favorite genres? Hmmm. Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix. I don’t read much horror but I really loved that book.
3. What is the last 5 star book you read? I believe it was Forgive Me Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick. That or Saga Vol. 4.
4. What book are you most excited to read during the read-a-thon? I am dying to read Vicious by V.E. Schwab. I’m purposefully reading it last, to use as motivation.
5. What book do you recommend the most? Recently? Probably either Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs or Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. I’m a pusher.

That’s it for today! How are your readathons going? Remember you can still participate in Bout of Books 13 if you sign up by Tuesday night (at midnight, I think).

I am participating in not one but TWO readathons this week, and I wanted to let you know what they are in case you want to join in!

The first one is called Bout of Books, which runs from Monday the 11th to Sunday the 17th. This one has pretty loose rules; you basically set your own goal and then can participate in the challenges along the way if you so choose. I’m actually hosting Wednesday’s challenge here on my blog, so make sure to stop back and see what it is!

Then on Friday the 15th – Sunday the 17th (it overlaps, which is actually kind of nice – double motivation!) I’ll also be participating in #CrushYourTBR, which is also a pretty casual TBR meant to encourage people to get through the books on their shelves at a quicker rate than normal. It’s great.

I’ve got a pretty over-ambitious TBR for the week, but I plan to start bringing a book to work and reading on my lunch break, which will help. I might not get through all of these, but by george I’m going to try.

I’ll likely be tweeting about the readathon experience over the course of the week, so make sure you’re following me on Twitter if you want to see my updates. It should be a lot of fun, and I’m dying to start. There are some books in that stack I’ve been meaning to read for months, so it should be great.

Let me know if you’re participating, and what you’re hoping to accomplish. Happy reading!

Okay I am a little late on actually making a blog post about this, but better late than never, right?

I am participating in Bout Of Books! It’s a readathon that’s happening right now, as we speak – it started on Jan 5th and it goes all the way until Jan 11th. I thought this was the perfect way to kick off the new year and get a few books under my belt early since I am attempting to read 50 books this year.

Here are the books I set out to read:

These were/are my goals:

• Read all three of these books
• Don’t watch any Netflix

Pretty simple, right? Here’s how I did:

I read The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks on Monday and Tuesday, finishing Tuesday night. I also started Ready Player One on Tuesday night, which made me think this readathon was going to be a breeze. However! Wednesday and Thursday were bad reading nights for me… though I still managed to squeeze in a few pages on each of those nights. Not much. About 40 pages total across the two evenings.

Friday I powered about 100 pages through, then I read 150 pages on Saturday and I finished up Ready Player One today (Sunday morning).

That book was amazing, but intense. I ended up needing to take a little break (which turned into going for a 3 mile walk with Joe that included stopping for margaritas) and starting to play a game called Hatoful Boyfriend (which is a dating sim for pigeons and yes, it will be on Team Hypercube). After that I finally cracked open The Night Circus, but after the trip Ready Player One took me on, I just wasn’t totally ready to dive into another book.

So, I’m about 30 pages into The Night Circus, nearly a book short of my goal – but happy. Because I also listened to about eight hours of All The Light We Cannot See over the course of the week, in my car. So really, I’m still leagues ahead on my reading challenge for the year, which is the important part.

I’m excited for this year. I’m excited for all my new books, and how I finally feel like I’ve carved reading back into my life in a big way, and I don’t even feel like I’m “making time” anymore. I just have reading time, even if it means other things are back-burnered or put on hold.

Oh – that reminds me. I also stuck to my goal of not watching any TV this week. It’s been 7 days since I watched anything on my television, on Netflix, etc. I’ve only watched a very small handful of YouTube videos, as well. I’m proud of myself.

But now… I think I am going to reward myself with an episode of Gilmore Girls. Shhh.