Bout of Books — Day 2

Bout of Books Day 2 :: 20 August 2013

When it comes to reading, Tuesday was a total bust. I was running slow in the morning and didn't read anything before work. I had no free time during the day—not even time to read at lunch—and didn't pull any books out until bedtime. Needless to say, I didn't read very many pages until the book fell out of my hand! Total pages for the day: 7. Yes, 7.

Today looks like it may not be much better. Fortunately, I will be flying tomorrow evening and will have uninterrupted time to read. (I am hoping that I don't fall asleep on the flight!)

Start:

• Flesh of the God, page 4
• A Killer Read, page 96
• Little Fuzzy, page 7

End:

• Flesh of the God, page 11
• A Killer Read, page 96
• Little Fuzzy, page 7

Bout of Books :: Day 1 summary

Books read today: 1
Books finished today: 0
Pages read today: 7
Total books finished: 1
Total pages read: 367

Bout of Books — Day 1

Bout of Books Day 1 :: 19 August 2013

I started out the first day of the week-long Bout of Books read-a-thon by recording the starting position in books which I had already started reading. That, and recording a new “current” position each morning, will allow me to report exactly how many pages (or page equivalents in eBooks) which I have read each day.

Monday was a travel day for me, so I started reading Fuzzy Nation on the Kindle app in my iPhone when I hopped into the car for hubby to take me to the airport. After clearing security, I settled down in the Admiral's Club to wait and got a little bit further along in the book. On the airplane, I had to shut off all electronic devices during take-off and landing, so I spent that time reading A Killer Read, but returned to the iPhone as soon as the “all clear” was given.

Upon arrival, I drove directly to the work location and spent the entire afternoon working. I grabbed supper on the way from work to my hotel, so was very glad to get checked into my room and settle down to more reading. I finished Fuzzy Nation and immediately started reading Little Fuzzy, the original “Fuzzy” novel by H. Beam Piper. Although I read it many years ago, I wanted to re-read it right away so I could compare it to Scalzi's re-telling of the story.

Start:

• Flesh of the God, page 4
• Fuzzy Nation, page 46
• A Killer Read, page 68

End:

• Flesh of the God, page 4
• Fuzzy Nation, page 303 (finished)
• A Killer Read, page 96
• Little Fuzzy, page 7

Bout of Books :: Day 1 summary

Books read today: 3
Books finished today: 1
Pages read today: 360
Total books finished: 1
Total pages read: 360

My goals for Bout of Books 8.0

This will be the fifth time I've participated in Bout of Books. The last time (Bout of Books 6.0 in January of this year), I ran out of steam posting and quit after Thursday. I didn't stop reading—I simply stopped posting about it. So, my primary goal this time is to stick it out for the entire week and to post regularly.

One thing I really like about Bout of Books is the community of readers who participate. There are some who blog all during the week and others who post tweets. I've pretty much stopped using Twitter, but I may think about re-activating my use of it during the week—particularly since my tweets are echoed over to Facebook.

My objectives during the week-long Bout of Books read-a-thon are:

1. Post regularly
2. Visit the blogs of at least 10 other Bout of Books participants—at least 4 of which are blogs that I don't regularly follow
3. Participate in at least one challenge
4. Read as much as possible, documenting the number of pages (or page equivalents) that I read each day.

I'm near the beginning of several books, so this is an excellent position to be in at the beginning of the read-a-thon. Yesterday, I stopped by the library and picked up a copy of Black Magic Sanction by Kim Harrison. I'll be reading it at the end of the week since I don't want to carry it with me on my business trip and take the risk of losing it. During my travels, I'll be reading A Killer Read by Erika Chase, a paperback that I will be sending to fellow BookCrosser and BookObsessor BooksnBeer. This is my “printed on paper” book that I can read during take offs and landings. Other books I'm taking with me are electronic books. Two that I've started reading are Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi and Flesh of the God by Lauren Haney. (Yes, that's right—I have already started three of these books. I routinely read more than one book at the same time.) On Tuesday when I post the Monday results, I'll include my starting position in each book as well as the number of pages read in each one.

Bout of Books 8.0

The 8th Bout of Books read-a-thon starts tonight at midnight. I had almost forgotten about it when I received a reminder notice on my cell phone. So, I need to pull together a reading (and blogging) plan for the week. The last Bout of Books that I participated in was 6.0 in January of this year. The server hosting my primary reading blog is offline, so I'm moving things to LiveJournal for the week-long event.

Update 2 Jan 2014: I'm copying all book-related posts to the restored reading blog.

At this very moment, there are 435 readers who have signed up for Bout of Books 8.0, I should be #436 unless there's someone else signing up at the last minute. I'm looking forward to visiting a number of blogs to see what people are reading this week. Many of the participants will also be tweeting about their experiences, but I don't think I'll be using Twitter much this week. If you're interested in following tweets, search for or track the tag #boutofbooks.

In case you're wondering:

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 19th and runs through Sunday, August 25th 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 8.0 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team

What I've Been Reading

At the beginning of each year, I tend to join lots of reading challenges. This year, I've tried to limit myself to only a couple of them. The primary challenge is hosted by Goodreads and is simply a challenge to set a goal for the number of books to be read. Since 150 books a year involves enough of a challenge without being totally unreachable, that's what I signed up for again this year. So far, I've completed 50 books, which Goodreads calculates to be 2 books ahead of schedule.

The second challenge that I am working on this year is to complete some of the series which I have started. This challenge is being run at BookObsessed. I picked 9 series that I wanted to focus on this year. If I finish those (or at least read all the books which have been published so far), then they will total 59 of the 150 books I'm striving for. So far, I've only read 5 of these 59, but I also started 8 new series this year and have read further into 7 other series which were not on my original list.

We just returned home from a three week combined business and pleasure trip. It involved a cross-country road trip (from Texas to Virginia and return) with side trips to Washington, DC, and Birmingham, AL. During this trip, I read 9 books and listened to 8 disks (of 9) of an audiobook. I used much of the time in the car to read. Here's what I was reading during the last 3 weeks of April:

1. The Bishop at the Lake by Andrew Greeley
2. The Archbishop in Andalusia by Andrew Greeley
3. Arcane Circle by Linda Robertson
4. Kitty Goes to Washington by Carrie Vaughn
5. The Siren Depths by Martha Wells
6. Delete All Suspects by Donna Andrews
7. Be Still My Vampire Heart by Kerrelyn Sparks
8. All I Want for Christmas is a Vampire by Kerrelyn Sparks
9. A Bicycle Built for Murder by Kate Kingsbury
10. A Week in Winter by Maeve Binchy

My regular reading blog is offline for a while. I've had it—and a bunch of other web stuff—hosted with a friend who has been running servers for years and years. His wife was the business manager, and after she died about 18 months ago, his billing did not go out and many of his customers (myself included) didn't think about making our annual payments for the web hosting. Then, earlier this year, his "day job" ended and he lost his Internet connection a week ago. Now that emergency bills have been sent out, I'm hoping that things will be restored soon. In the meantime, I'm going to have to post more over at Livejournal.

Update 2 Jan 2014: Now that my reading blog has been relocated, I'm restoring all the book-related posts from Livejournal over here.

#boutofbooks 6.0: status updates

I'm planning on using this single post to hold my read-a-thon status. I'll just update every day with the statistics and observations. I posted my goals yesterday morning. I'm still reading the book which I started on Sunday morning, but I should finish it fairly soon.

Updates

Monday, 7 January: I took I Am Half-Sick of Shadows to bed with me at 12:30. Starting on page 74, I read for about 1/2 hour before falling asleep. Since Monday was a normal work day, I had to squeeze in reading time during my lunch break and then could get back to it at the end of the day. When I turned in, I was on page 162, accounting for 88 pages read during the day. I also hung out on Twitter for a little while during lunch since the Twitter Chat was going on during that time.

Wednesday, 9 January: Tuesday was such a bust when it comes to reading that I didn't even get around to updating the blog. I only read 34 pages, and when you consider that I average over 900 pages per week, I have a lot of reading to do the rest of this week to keep up with that pace. I did finish I Am Half-Sick of Shadows this morning before work. That allowed me to start another book during lunch, Singer of Souls by Adam Stemple. By bedtime, I had read 106 pages in this book, taking my total for the day to 203. I'm really looking forward to the weekend when I don't have to go to work and I can spend more time reading. And, of course, I'd like to visit a lot of blogs to see what others are reading.

Thursday, 10 January: Another day when I didn't read as much as I would have liked. Working sure cuts into one's free time. But I do have to admit I like having a good income. It lets me do interesting things with the free time that I do have. Most of the reading that I accomplished was during the meal breaks. I read Singer of Souls on the way to and from lunch, during lunch, and during supper. We went to supper pretty late and it was dark out, so I read more in Blame It On the Mistletoe which is on my Blackberry. At the end of the day, I had read 64 pages in Singer of Souls and approximately 13 pages in Blame It On the Mistletoe. (Actually, it was 219 locations in the Kindle book, but that translates pretty much to 13 +/- pages.) I didn't have time to get into Twitter or visit blogs. Guess those will have to wait until the weekend.

Monday, 7 January

Number of books I've read today: 1
Number of pages I've read today: 88
Number of books completed today: 0

Tuesday, 8 January

Number of books I've read today: 1
Number of pages I've read today: 34
Number of books completed today: 0

Wednesday, 9 January

Number of books I've read today: 2
Number of pages I've read today: 203
Number of books completed today: 1

Thursday, 10 January

Number of books I've read today: 2
Number of pages I've read today: 77
Number of books completed today: 0

#boutofbooks 6.0: goals and starting position

The time has come. The Bout of Books read-a-thon is now on its 6th iteration and I've signed up to participate again. This will be the fourth time I've participated in Bout of Books and you can tell that I enjoy it since I keep returning. I've labeled all my posts from previous events, and you can read about my past participation by checking my Bout of Books tag. In this first post, I'll lay out my goals and then I plan to post periodic updates throughout the week. In case you're interested, here's the official information:

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, January 7th and runs through Sunday, January 13th 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 6.0 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. -From the Bout of Books 6.0 team

One of the notable characteristics of Bout of Books is the use of Twitter to communicate with particpants. The organizers send periodic encouragement via tweets with the #boutofbooks hashtag. And, there are three “chats” scheduled to take place on Twitter.

My Bout of Books Goals

My Targets

My only real goal is to spend as much time reading as I can and to have fun!

Time Devoted to Reading

This time, Bout of Books is taking place during an ordinary work week, so my reading will be confined to meal times and the evenings before I go to sleep. I'm hoping that the weekend will give me plenty of time to devote to reading—but that will depend on whether I have any family activities that I need to participate in.

Books to Read

I'm lining up a couple of books that have a high likelihood to be read during the week. I reserve the right to change my mind at any time. These are a mixture of books which I owe to fellow readers over at BookObsessed.com and some high-interest books, many of which are in series that I have started and want to read further in. First up are books that I've already started reading and hope to finish this week:

• I Am Half-Sick of Shadows by Alan Bradley—4th in the Flavia de Luce mystery series; checked out from the library; starting on page 74
• Blame it on the Mistletoe by Joyce Magnin—4th in the Bright's Pond series; a free eBook that I picked up from Amazon and which I have loaded onto my Blackberry; starting at location 821, which is about the middle of chapter 5
• The Book of Love by Kathleen McGowan—2nd in the Magdalene Line series; an audio book on 18 CDs; starting at disk 7, track 13; I probably won't finish this book since I only listen when I'm alone in the car

And then the books that I will probably start reading this week:

• The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers—a book which Candy won in a swap at BookObsessed; I need to mail this book by the end of the month
• Singer of Souls by Adam Stemple—a book which has been on my TBR stack for several years
• Vicious Circle by Linda Robertson—first in the Persephone Alcmedi paranormal series; I owe the first 3 books to Wendy from a virtual book box at BookObsessed; need to mail all 3 books by the end of March