Dewey's 24 hour Read-a-thon October 2014 Edition

It's time for the Fall Edition of Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-thon! *throws confetti, shakes pompoms, puts on a tiara* This year I booked myself for a 5K before I knew when the Read-a-thon was, but that's okay, there is time before and after, and I'll be getting colorful with a friend, so it will be an awesome day!  I just couldn't skip a Dewey's! Good luck everyone!

Updates: (See what I'm reading at the bottom)

Wrapup - I actually ended up having a family emergency and never really got more read during the read-a-thon, but thank you to everyone that commented, and I hope to see you all in April!

11:00 am - Done with Foundation, it was a quick prequel to the Enclave series, and time to head to the races!  I will be out until this evening, so I hope everyone enjoys their day and I'll see you later!  Next up, The Dalai Lama's Cat.

9:00 am - first read done!  I really enjoyed Silent Blade and highly recommend it!  Next up Foundation by Ann Aguirre another fantastic author, her Sirantha Jax series is one of my all time favorites!  Also time to start getting ready for the day!


7:00 am - Good morning everyone! My cat Fergus wanted to make sure I didn't miss the read-a-thon (he wanted to eat), so he kindly woke me up 15 minutes before my alarm went off!  I'm going to start off with Silent Blade by Ilona Andrews and see if I can finish it up before needing to get ready for my Color Run 5K today.

Opening Meme:
1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today? Kansas, USA

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to? I've got a bunch of novellas ready to work through today, but I have one called the Dalai Lama's Cat that I'm interested to get into.  I've also got Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to read, season appropriate, and I've never read it before.
 
3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?  I think we're going out for fish and chips after our 5K so I'm definitely looking forward to that, but I may need to secure myself something decadent for later tonight!  A chocolate, peanut butter, Butterfinger concrete sounds pretty good!
 
4) Tell us a little something about yourself!  I started doing the Read-a-thon in April of 2010, so that makes this my tenth one!  *throws more confetti* I have 3 cats, several giant fish (goldfish/shubunkens) and a very tolerant husband who is amused by my bookish insanity. I am on the board of my company's employee funded charity foundation, and was able to bring in our local library foundation to them for some funding.  Did I mention I love books?  Yeah, I kinda do. ;)

5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?  As I realized in the last question, this is my tenth time for the read-a-thon, so I've done a few different things, one of the ones I'd recommend, if you haven't ever been awake at the end of the read-a-thon, trying getting some sleep in the middle so you can be awake at the end at least once, because it feels really awesome to be there at that finish line, but not so special to feel exhausted the rest of the day!  Get up at least an hour maybe two before the end, then you can go back to sleep when it's over! ;)

Alrighty, back to reading, trying to knock out Silent Blade before it's time to get read for the 5K!


Currently Reading:



Finished:

Wonderfully Wicked Read-a-thon - October 17-27th, 2014

October is a super busy month for me, but that doesn't mean I can't squeeze in four more read-a-thons. Yes, I said 4. Quatro.  Dewey's 24-hour Read-a-thon is October 18th, and then two more take place in other reading groups I'm a part of in Bookobsessed and Bookcrossing.  All between October 17th and November 4th! The first of these is the Wonderfully Wicked Read-a-thon hosted by our friends at My Shelf Confessions from October 17th -27th.  Head on over there to see what all they have planned and sign up to join us!  We'll be using #WWReadathon to chat on Twitter. Let's get some TBR's knocked out, shall we?

Currently Reading:



Finished:



That's it for this time around! Thanks to our hostesses! I'm looking forward to the next one!

Sleepy Hollow: Children of the Revolution by Keith R.A. DeCandido

Sleepy Hollow: Children of the Revolution by Keith R.A. DeCandido
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was excited to find out I had won this through Goodreads Giveaways, I enjoyed the first season of the show and was interested to see how a novel would compare.

I was pleased at how the author portrayed Ichabod's personality because that is the highlight of the show for me, how he deals with the modern day. I wasn't disappointed, he continues to be thoroughly confused and frustrated by how we do things, why we've named them what they are, and delights in informing Abbie and the crew of their misinformation. He is somehow endearingly arrogant, noble, sarcastic and witty, and that's why we love him.

The plot was also interesting, bringing in many historical facts (and fictions) which is the other draw to the show for me. I always like it when the author details at the end which portions of the story are historical fact and which were added for the story.

It was a good supernatural, historically based story and I would definitely recommend it to fans of the show. Those who have not watched it may be somewhat confused or not as drawn in without that background information as a starting basis, but that's to be expected in a tie in novel.


View all my reviews

Seriously Series - 3rd Quarter Check-in

It's time for the 3rd quarter Seriously Series Check-in!  Let's see how I'm doing. 

Declared Levels:
Series Started Before 2014: Seriously Spectacular Series Star - 2nd level achieved "Seriously Serious"
Series Started in 2014: Semi-Serious  - not even sorta serious at this point.
Series Re-Reads in 2014: Semi-Serious - 100% Done!

Books since last check in - 8 - I really thought I'd done more than that!
Series since last check in - 4

So how am I doing total series and total book wise?

Total Series 12/22 = 55% 
Total Books 26/44 = 59%


It's pretty clear I'm behind, and I thought about paring my list down, but I kind of felt like that was cheating, so I'll just keep going and see how far I get. Anything is more read than I had before I started, so I win no matter what!

Into the Home Stretch!

Here are my 8 from this check-in:

Frightfall Read-a-thon Sept. 29 - Oct. 5, 2014

It's time for the Frightfall Read-a-thon hosted by Michelle @ The True Book Addict on her Seasons of Reading Blog. We're going to celebrate Fall and get our scary on from September 29th - October 5th. Come and join us!  Just clink on the picture above to be taken to the sign up page.

I just received the perfect book from a Goodreads giveaway, so I'm going to start with that first:



If I make it through that one, then we'll see what else comes up!

Progress:

10/4/14 - Still working on Sleepy Hollow and hope to finish it by tomorrow, but I've also finished some audiobooks in the meantime:

Tackle Your TBR Color Challenge

This has been a great read-a-thon for me so far, I met my meager goal of 400 pages yesterday with a few days left! I saw others doing this challenge on Twitter and thought, oh color! I can do that! lol!   Instructions: 1. Pick a color. 2. Find five books with covers almost completely in that color (they need to be at least 2/3 that color). 3. List the books or paste the pictures of the books online in a post on your blog or on another site. 4. Then come back here and leave a link to where you posted in comments (so we can all see) and in the rafflecopter for the giveaway.

I chose yellow for a couple of reasons, because my husband really likes yellow and it's never been one of my favorites so I rarely choose it for anything.  I always go for the red and purple and pink flowers in the spring and he wants yellow!  So that's why I went different this time and chose it!

I stuck with titles that I either have read, do own, or plan to read at some point, so here you are, an odd collection of yellow covers! Actually I think I do own all of these except for the Red Herring Without Mustard, but I have started the series, so I'll get to it eventually.

Tackle Your TBR Read-a-thon Sept. 8-20, 2014

Hey look! My friend Elsi found us another read-a-thon! Head on over to Wishful Endings if you'd like to join us!

We'll be using #TackleTBR to conversate on Twitter.

I'm going to keep my goal simple at 30 pages per day x 13 days = 390 so we'll round up to 400 pages. It doesn't sound like much, but lately there have been days when I didn't read at all!  *cringes, waits for sky to fall*

Progress:

9/08: pages: 50
9/09: pages: 40
9/10: pages: 44
9/11: pages: 30
9/12: pages: 18
9/13: pages: 22
9/14: pages: 50
9/15: pages: 63 finished Magic Bleeds, started Book of Iron
9/16: pages: 46
9/17: pages: 62 finished Book of Iron
9/18: pages: 54 started Enclave
9/19: pages: 52
9/20: pages: 44

Running total: 575, avg per day: 44

Currently Reading:




Finished Reading:

Bout of Books 11

*Flails* It's time, it's time, IT'S TIME! *flails some more* It is time, my friends, for Bout of Books 11! I NEED this. I am 7 books behind according to my Goodreads challenge, and I want to catch up.  I've been a real slacker lately, *cough* computer games *cough* and I am shamefully behind in my reading.

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, August 18th and runs through Sunday, August 24th in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure, and the only reading competition is between you and your usual number of books read in a week. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 11 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team

Goals:

1. Read!
2. Have Fun!
Stretch Goal: Catch up on the Goodreads Challenge (7 books behind)
3. Don't beat myself up if I don't achieve the stretch goal!

Currently Reading:



Finished:




Wrap Up:

I didn't get my stretch goal, but I'm still happy with what I did. I got through 6 books, and about halfway through the last one. I call it a win!

Wicked Wildfire Read-a-thon - July 14-24, 2014

It's time for the Wicked Wildfire Read-a-thon, hosted by our friends at My Shelf Confessions!

My reading has slowed to a crawl, according to Goodreads I'm behind by 3 in my goal for the year, and I also really need to make some progress on my Seriously Series challenge.  It's the only challenge I've signed up for this year (even though it's so hard to resist all the shiny challenges at that time of year) and I'm still behind on it!  (Self: you had one job...)

If you need to boost your reading this summer, come along and join us!  Or just join us anyway, the more the merrier!



Goals:

Finish Dreamfever by Karen Marie Moning
Finish listening to Fallen by Lauren Kate
Listen to So Long and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams
Read a seriously series title (TBD) - Started Offspring by Steven Harper

Currently Reading/Listening:



Finished Reading/Listening:

Seriously Series 2nd check in

We're into Summer and it's time for the second check in on the Seriously Series Challenge. Above are some of this quarter's reads. Below are my status bars for each section.


Series Started Before 2014

Series = 8/19

 

Total Books = 14/32

 

Series Started In 2014

Series = 0/2

 

Total Books = 1/7

 

Series Re-Reads In 2014

Series  = 0/1

 

Total Books = 3/5

 

I'm almost at  41% of the way through the total number of books on my list, so I've fallen a little behind here at the halfway mark!  I'm behind by 4, so the question is, do I adjust the list or just try to read harder, on the list, rather than you know, other books not on the list!  For now I think I'll keep it as is and see what I can do in the third quarter.

How is everyone else doing?