Friday, June 29, 2012

Progress toward goals

2012 Reading Challenge

2012 Reading Challenge
Elsi has read 84 books toward her goal of 150 books.
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So! (I just love to start sentences with "so".) The year is just about 1/2 over and I'm ahead of schedule to reach my goal of 150 books. I actually set a secondary goal of 50,000 pages to prevent myself from getting to the book goal through reading lots and lots of short books. As of 29 June, I have completed 84 books with 29,318 pages. 84 books is is 56% of the goal and 29,318 pages is 58.6% of the goal. I'm ahead of schedule, which is probably a very good thing since I'm sure there will be times this year when I won't be able to spend as much time reading.

Let me tell you about some of the books I recently finished reading.

I've been bouncing back and forth between books that I owe to book swappers at BookObsessed and books that just appeal to me. Owed books that I recently completed were Ghost at Work by Carolyn Hart, Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth, and Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life by Wendy Maas. I will be packaging them up and mailing to swappers in Florida and Nevada.

For fun, I have read two wishlist books on my Kindle which were sent to me by my book friends. Murder Past Due, the first book in Miranda James' Cat in the Stacks Mysteries was sent to me by Amber. I enjoyed it so much that I'm updating my wishlist to include the next couple of books in the series. Yesterday, I finished reading Slave to Sensation, the first book in the Psy-Changling series by Nalini Singh which was sent to me by Melissa. I have the paperback edition of the second book in this series and if it turns out as good as the first one, I'm going to add a lot more books to my wishlist since there are already 11 books published.

I love to read and I'm good at it. I wish I loved to write book reviews. Oh well! The upside is that I can use the time I would have been writing reviews for reading.

Ghost at Work by Carolyn Hart Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life by Wendy Maas

Murder Past Due by Miranda James Slave to Sensation by Nalini Singh

Monday, June 25, 2012

#WWReatathon -- wrapping it all up

Wicked Wildfire Read-A-Thon
 
Summary:
Total number of books I've read: 4
Total number of pages I've read: 1081
Total number of books completed: 3


I didn't post during the weekend, but Oh Boy! did I get some reading done. Normally, I spend Saturdays caring for my 2-year-old granddaughter, but her aunt stepped up and volunteered to keep her so that Nana could have a relaxing weekend. Of course, I dedicated the weekend to reading, but I do consider that relaxing.

I finished reading Ghost At Work on Friday afternoon, just a short while before we touched down at DFW. They had already announced that it was time to turn off all electronic devices, and that was the only paper book that I had with me, so I just browsed through the airline magazine for the rest of the flight.

Once I had my luggage in hand and was seated in the car on the way to dinner, I started reading Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth. This was a very pleasant memoir of the author's experiences when she was training as a midwife in London in the early 1950s. In addition to the stories of mothers and babies, she shared a lot of information about the poverty-ridden conditions in which she worked in the East End around the docks. I finished this book early on Sunday evening and then started reading Murder Past Due by Miranda James on my Kindle.

Murder Past Due is a comfy, cozy mystery featuring a librarian with a cat. And it's set in Mississippi as well. At the end of the day on Sunday—and therefore at the end of the Read-A-Thon, I was 49% of the way into this book. (The Kindle tells me that I'd be on page 143 of 294 if I were reading the paperback edition.)

So, all told, I completed three books and half of another during the week-long event. The number of pages read were approximately 1081. I say “approximately” since I read most (98%) of Lie Down In Green Pastures during the Read-A-Thon, in a Kindle book that didn't have full page numbers.

Lie Down in Green Pastures by Debbie Viguie Ghost at Work by Carolyn Hart Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth Murder Past Due by Miranda James

Friday, June 22, 2012

#WWReatathon -- it's day 3 already

I didn't read very much yesterday. I found little spare time during the day to read. Finally, after supper, I was able to finish reading Lie Down in Green Pastures. This was the 3rd in an excellent series by Debbie Viguie. According to her website, the next volume in the series was due out on May 1, but I can't find it listed at Amazon or at Christianbook.com. Apparently it's been delayed. I'm sure I'll pick it up as soon as it is available since book #3 ended on a cliff-hanger.

Currently, I'm reading Ghost At Work, the first book in a brand new paranormal mystery series by Carolyn Hart. I found a little bit of time to read this morning, so now I'm at page 68. With a flight from Toronto to Dallas this afternoon, I might just finish the book and get started on another one. This is the only paper book that I brought with me, so whatever I do choose to read after Ghost At Work will have to be one of the 1454 books currently on my Kindle.

1454? Yes. And that's not accurate, because I have at least a dozen omnibus editions on the device—including the 1st four books in George R R Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice series. (Which might be better known by the title of book #1 which HBO adopted for it's dramatization of the story, A Game of Thrones.) With that said, I really don't think I'm going to get started on Martin's books. I'll probably open one of the many cozy mysteries or paranormal urban fiction books sitting there, waiting for me to find time for them.

As Read-a-Thons go, I've not done a terrible lot of reading, but with the weekend looming, it should get better.

Thursday, June 21, 2012

#WWReatathon -- beginning day 2

As I expected, while confined in the airplane I was able to make some serious progress in the books that I am reading. I had just started reading Lie Down in Green Pastures by Debbie Viguie on my Kindle and was at location 125 of 4328 when the day began. I read steadily on the way to the airport and while waiting to board my plane and then had to turn the Kindle off for take off. That gave me the chance to begin reading a paperback copy of Ghost At Work by Carolyn Hart. Once we were up in the air, though, I went back to Lie Down in Green Pastures.

I'm now at location 3505 in the Kindle book and page 26 in Ghost At Work. I have to dash off to work, so probably will be at these exact same places when supper time arrives. I'll just have to see if there's any opportunity to slip in some pleasure reading during the day.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Wicked Wildfire Read-A-Thon

Wicked Wildfire Read-A-ThonJust a quick update to announce that I'm participating in the Wicked Wildfire Read-A-Thon on 20-24 June. All the official info as well as an opportunity to sign up can be found at the official web site.

I'm currently at the DFW airport, about to go find my plane for a flight to Toronto. That means, of course, that I'm going to have a couple of hours available for dedicated reading. I'll be back to post more updates.