Spring into Horror Read-a-Thon - Starting Post #SpringHorrorRAT

I had been humming and hawing as to whether I should join or not, but as you can see, I have decided to join.  I have decided not to read horror books, just due to the fact that its not a genre I don't read that much and it really doesn't interest me.  But I will be reading some mystery novels, with some general reading mixed in.

Here are my plans:

• Jane Eyre
• A Duty to the Dead
• 13 Ways to look at a Fat Girl
• Kindred (complete)
• Outlander
• The Residence
• The Cadence of Gypsies
• Jane Steele
• When Breath becomes Air

Happy reading to all that are joining.

#FrightFall Read-a-Thon - Sign Up

I should have gotten this up sooner, but with things being somewhat busy for me over the last little bit, it fell off the lists and I thought this would be a good time to put this up.  It is perfect timing as the weather has started to turn and today was the first day that really felt like it was fall.

My plans for this are pretty simple.  I am going to read Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King as my scary book, but have a number of others that I have to read as well.  Happy reading :)

3rd Annual Beat the Heat Readathon Sign-up

Beat the Heat readathon is hosted by Novel Heartbeat and Phantasmic Reads. 

Thought I would do this once again.  So here are the rules:

• The Beat the Heat Readathon runs from August 24th at 12:00 AM to September 6th at 11:59 PM. What does this readathon entail, you ask? Well, read as much or as little as you want – the main point is to READ! You set your own goal, and for three weeks you read as many books as you can/want to reach your goal!
• There will be mini-challenges throughout the Readathon for participants, along with a grand prize giveaway at the end!
• Sign up at Novel Heartbeat or at Phantasmic Reads. You may join whenever you like, but to be eligible for our grand prize giveaway, you must sign up by August 28th.
• To join, all you have to do is make a sign-up post – even if it’s just a “Let’s do this!” thing – and add your post URL to the linky below! You can put your goals and progress (will be required for the final giveaway) in your sign-up post, or you can make it separate. Totally up to you! (You are welcome to use the template we provide in the kick-off post as well.)
• In order to enter for the grand prize, you must have a post to keep track of your progress so we can see that you participated.
• Follow along on Twitter and share your progress with the hashtag #BtHReadathon!

I will have a post up closer to the 24th with the books I am planning on reading.

2nd Annual Beat the Heat Readathon Sign-up Post

Beat the Heat readathon is hosted by Novel Heartbeat and Phantasmic Reads. 

I don't know how I heard about it; probably a blog post I read in the last few days.

So here are the rules:

• The Beat the Heat Readathon runs from August 11th to September 1st. What does this readathon entail, you ask? Well, read as much or as little as you want – the main point is to READ! You set your own goal, and for three weeks you read as many books as you can/want to reach your goal!

• There will be mini-challenges throughout the Readathon for participants, along with a grand prize giveaway at the end!

• Sign up here at Phantasmic Reads or Novel Heartbeat. You may join whenever you like, but to be eligible for our grand prize giveaway, you must sign up by August 24th.

• To join, all you have to do is make a sign-up post – even if it’s just a “Let’s do this!” thing – and add your post URL to the linky below! You can put your goals and progress (will be required for the final giveaway) in your sign-up post, or you can make it separate. Totally up to you! (You are welcome to use the template we provide as well.)

• In order to enter for the grand prize, you must have a post to keep track of your progress so we can see that you participated.

Here are the books that I will hopefully work on:

• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
• The Cuckoo's Calling
• The Word Exchange

• The Circle

• Bittersweet
• The Lady and the Unicorn
• Mrs. Hemingway
• The Invention of Wings

• a history book that I need to read for a course I am doing online.

I am sorry for starting a little late, but I hope to post updates, in a separate post, either just before I go to bed or when I get up the next day.

Wicked Valentine's Read-a-Thon Wrap-up

Overall, it went pretty good. I finished How to be a Good Wife and Winter's Tale.  I also started reading Somewhere in France and got over half of The Luminaries completed.  But I didn't get around to reading Possession, Moon over Manifest, The Woman in White, and a couple others that I had hoped to read during the 10 day read-a-thon.

I am hoping that this read-a-thon allows me to get some momentum going forward, which it has so far.  Looking forward to next year.

Wicked Valentine's Read-a-Thon

I totally forgot about this until I checked my email a few moments; guess that is what happens when you get a little too obsessed with one's own issues.  But since this is a longer read-a-thon, I am not too late with starting this one a couple days late.

I have a number of books that need to get completed and some that I just need to work on, so here is the books that I am hoping to finish up during this read-a-thon:

• Winter's Tale

• How to be a good wife

Here are the books that I hope to work on:

• Flight Behavior

• Moon over Manifest

• Somewhere in France

• War & Peace

• The Count of Monte Cristo

• The Woman in White

I realize that its a lot of books to work on, but sometimes I like to have more scheduled than I am actually going to read. I don't know if I am going to participate in challenges or twitter chats, but I'll see.

End of the year Readathon: #ReadingCram

End of Year 2013 Read-a-Thon #ReadingCram is hosted by Jenny from Juliababyjen's Reading Room and Dana from Dana Square and will run from the 9th of December to the 22nd of December.

Why should you participate? 

1. To chisel off some of your TBR pile. 

2. Do all the fun challenges and win some prizes. 

3. Encourage others to read like a speed demon (and yourself) + reading with others is loads of fun. 

 So let's get in our last books of 2013 together in the #ReadingCram !

This is reason enough for me to participate! Also books off my tbr have been severely neglected. Here are a list of potential books I am hoping to read:

• War & Peace
• The Count of Monte Cristo
• Winter Solstice
• The Dogs of Christmas
• An Amish Gift
• The Light between Two Oceans
plus some others...

Holiday #readathon

There is a readathon starting at 12:01 am EST.  If you wish to join me and a number of others, you can still sign up.  There are a number of challenges that you can complete during the readathon that are mentioned on the sign up page, but I think I am going to just read, with a couple updates.

If you wish to join, you sign up here: http://www.whorublog.com/?p=2533

Christmas Spirit Reading Challenge

I love Christmas, especially the lead up and with a re-injured foot from an injury suffered a few months ago, I will have lots of time for doing some reading, especially of the holiday variety.  And I have always loved this challenge and have participated in the last couple editions of this challenge and I encourage you to join up, especially if you like reading holiday-themed books.  You can find the sign up here or by clicking on the photo above.

As for me I will be attempting the Mistletoe level:
1. I Am Half-Sick of Shadows by Alan Bradley (review)
2. The Dogs of Christmas by W. Bruce Cameron (review)
3. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (review)
4. Starry Night by Debbie Macomber (review)

And will also be doing the FaLaLaLa Films challenge as well.
1. Love Actually
2. The Holiday
3. A Christmas Story
4. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
5. A Christmas Carol (1951)
I don't know if I will do reviews of the films, but if I do, I will link them here.

But to kick off this reading challenge, will be hosting a readathon for the first weekend of the reading challenge.  You can find more information about the readathon here or by clicking on the photo below.  Hope you can join me there as well.

Ho-Ho-Ho Read-a-Thon Starting point

So it starts, at least in a couple of hours from now and since I re-injured the foot I injured about 3 months ago, I will be definitely reading this coming weekend.  I don't know how much, but I am hoping that most of the weekend will be taken up with reading with books, especially those of a Christmas/Holiday variety.  I do have to read The Good Earth, but that shouldn't take too much of my time.

Here are the books that I have selected:
• Call Me Mrs. Miracle by Debbie Macomber
• I Am Half-Sick of Shadows by Alan Bradley
• The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

I don't know how much I am going to get done of each book, but I am hoping to finish Call Me Mrs. Miracle and Half-Sick of Shadows.  I will likely aim to start reading The Snow Child instead of completing it.

Ho-Ho-Ho Holiday Read-a-Thon November 7-11

I really enjoy the Christmas season, so much so that when Starbucks announces that their red cups and Christmas drinks are out, I know that the Christmas season is close at hand.  I also enjoy Christmas-themed read-a-thons, as it usually gets me in the spirit and it also gets my book read count up, as the books are usually shorter than the vast majority of novels.  So when a holiday themed read-a-thon pops up during the summer months, I know that I can start to get into the holiday mode (well, the displays at Costco usually get me in the mood at times, even though they do appear in the middle of July). 

So back to the read-a-thon, its really easy.  All you have to do is sign up at Caffeinated Book Reviewer with your blog or whatever site you use to do your social media on (Goodreads, Tumbler, Twitter, Google+, Facebook, etc).  Grab the button and share.  Here are some more rules:

Read-a-thon Rules

• Link-up
• Before or on November 7 post a goals post to your blog. (if you do not have a blog post to another social media site such as Goodreads, Tumblr, Facebook, Google+ etc ) Be sure and link back to Jennifer and I.
• Grab the button and share !
• Participate in at least one challenge to be eligible for grand prize
• Tweet your progress using #HoHoHoRAT
• Challenge schedule and Grand Prize widget and rules will post on November 6th at 4pm (EST)
• Read-a-thon starts on November 7th 12:o1 am (your time zone) and ends on November 11 at 11:59 pm(your time zone)
• Challenges will start daily and remain open until 11:59 on November 11th.
• Grand Prize Raffle will be open until November 13th at 11:59 pm (EST) to allow you to submit entries.
• All winners of challenges and grand prize will be notified by November 15th.

Books have to be holiday themed or even books with a winter theme to them and I will be posting the books I will attempt to read/complete on Wednesday.  Happy Holiday reading.

Wonderfully Wicked Read-A-Thon Goals

I am starting this really late; totally forgot about this.  I realize that there still is another full week ahead, but I still feel as though I am late to the game.  But nonetheless here I go.

If you want to join, you can sign up for the read-a-thon at http://www.myshelfconfessions.com/wwreadathon/.  You don't need to have a blog to do it.  You can see the dates that it runs in the picture next to this post, but you have only about 4 more days to actually sign up.

Here are my goals:
• section for Northanger Abbey read-a-long at Unputdownables
• The Cuckoo's Calling (at least get into a considerable bit of the book)
• The Count of Monte Cristo (at least until about Chapter 42 or so)
• Book 9 of War & Peace
• start reading The Good Earth
• Longbourne by Jo Baker

I realize that its quite a bit of reading, but these are just goals and some of these are quite doable.  I will update each evening with a separate post.

#boutofbooks Day 6 update

Between seeing a friend and her new baby and seeing family and catching up on my recorded stuff on my PVR/DVR, I got maybe about 2 hours of reading completed.  And it was the few chapters I needed to read for my read-a-long for Wives and Daughters this week.  I suppose it didn't help that I was feeling rather tired this afternoon and by the time I got home from dinner this past evening, I really didn't feel like reading.  I am hoping to get a bit reading in tomorrow, but due to the fact that there are some things that I want to watch, I don't really know how much I will get read, since I am reading along this particular book with audio (maybe I'll save it for the week instead).  But there are other books I would like to read that don't have any sort of audio attached with the book.

#boutofbooks Day 5 update

Today was very productive, reading wise.  Even though I only read one book during the course of the day, I did manage to get Dearie completed.  I am thinking that either tomorrow (Saturday) or Sunday I will be writing book reviews, as Dearie needs to be returned because its a library e-book and I only have a little over a week with book on my device, but I do need to get the other books that I haven't reviewed yet reviewed.  But there are still books that I need to read, so my guess is that I am going to work on book reviews on Sunday evening or on Monday. We will see.

#boutofbooks Day 4 update

I had a great morning reading session, but the rest of the day didn't really turn out that great in terms of reading.  Tomorrow (Friday) should be better day of reading.  I got a good portion of the Julia Child biography and am really enjoying the book.  Till tomorrow. 

#boutofbooks Day 3 update

Even though I didn't read on the way home this afternoon, I did manage to read quite a bit this evening and got about 100 pages done of Dearie by Bob Spitz and since I have other books that I need to read, I am contemplating just reading that instead of the other books that I have on my list for this read-a-thon.  It is very tempting to read the same book tomorrow, but it is also tempting to read something else instead. If nothing else, I have time tomorrow to make that decision.  Right now, I am looking forward to getting some shut eye.

#boutofbooks Day 2 update

So I spent the morning hours sleeping and a good portion of the afternoon canoeing and hanging out with my parents, but I did manage to get in some reading, in which I finished reading A Game of Thrones.  I am hoping that I will get more done as I go on a short road trip, but that is all dependent on how tired I am during the trip and how much I sleep.  I sometimes read barely anything while travelling, but sometimes I read quite a bit.  And it depends on what I want to read as well.  But in any case, I will probably do quite a bit of reading in the coming days, as I am still recovering from a nasty ankle sprain/strain and I will need to stay off of my foot as much as possible.

Hope you all have sweet dreams and I hopefully will update in about 24 hours :)

#boutofbooks Day 1 update

Slow start to the read-a-thon, but once dinner had taken place, I was ready to sit down and read.  While I didn't read a lot, I did manage to move a little further along in the reading of A Game of Thrones.  And it looks like I will get it done tomorrow, provided I can get myself to sit down and read it.  I am hoping that I can read more books off my list tomorrow, but first, I need to head to bed a little earlier than I did last night (or morning, depending on how you view it).

Dog Days of Summer (#ddsummer) Wrap-Up!

Overall, it was a quite successful readathon, as I got two books completed during the course of the two days.  While they weren't big books, I did get them completed and that makes me happy more than anything, especially since the later of the two was a book that didn't really like reading (funny enough, I was looking forward to the book, but once I was able to start reading, my opinion of the book changed; reviews of the two books will forthcoming this week, at least that is the plan).    I was also able to work on a few other books during the past couple of days and I am hoping that I can get a few more completed during the Bout of Books readathon.

#ddsummer and #boutofbooks goals

Since these two readathons piggy back on each other, I felt it best to put both of them up at this time, instead of doing two different posts.  I will hopefully daily update Bout of Books before I head off to bed.

Here are the books that I plan on working and finishing this coming week:

Finishing:

• A Game of Thrones

• Call the Midwife

• The Dinner

Working:

  • Emma

  • War & Peace

  • Moby Dick

  • Dearie

  • The Light Between Oceans

  • Wives & Daughters (this week's section from Unputdownables)

  • The Lady of the Rivers