To Read-a-Thon or not ?

Last night, I was looking at the list of participants in Random House of Canada's Olympic Readathon and noticed that my BookCrossing pal Azuki had signed up. I decided to see what she had posted about the read-a-thon and noticed that she had something interesting to say about them in general:

There are so many read-a-thons nowadays it has lost some of its allure – after all, if you are joining a read-a-thon week after week, you are just basically reading at your normal speed. A faster speed maybe, but that is your new norm.

For most read-a-thons, I don’t see them as a challenge to read more/faster/longer than normal. Rather I like the fact that they focus on a community aspect—in particular, the recording (and bragging) about what we’re reading. Prior to read-a-thons, this reading blog had become nothing more than a place where I listed the books that I had read. Just a list. No reviews. No discussions. A rather dried-up excuse for a blog.

Now that I've been participating in a number of read-a-thons, I’m at least posting about them. I still am not comfortable writing and posting reviews, but what is here on my blog is a bit more interesting.

Additionally, I’m enjoying the occasional challenges and the chatting that takes place on twitter. Right now I'm engaged in the Olympic Read-a-thon, and I've signed up for two other read-a-thons in August. The Summer Wrap-up Read-a-Thon starts on Saturday, 4 August, and ends on the same day as the Olympic Read-a-Thon, and Bout of Books 5.0 will begin the very next day after the other two read-a-thons end. I may be burned out on read-a-thons by the end of the month.