Read-a-Thon: A quick hour 4 update

Update at the beginning of hour 4

Reading Location: still at home on my couch

Currently Reading: Angel's Advocate by Mary Stanton

Total Pages read so far: 106

Total Time spent reading so far: 118 minutes

Other Readers I have visited: Two fellow BookObssessors: VeganMedusa in New Zealand and Dancing-dog in Tennessee.

Mini-challenges completed Back-in-the-Day Children’s Book Challenge

Finished Books: none so far

Comments: In the 3rd hour, I got myself a small snack consisting of a Granny Smith apple and some raw almonds. I should be good until lunch. Also, Hubby is watching NCAA football pre-game stuff on ESPN and I got distracted by a short feature on the Missouri-Colorado game which had 5 downs instead of the normal 4—which mistake by the officials cost Missouri the win. OK, so it wasn't reading, but I am better informed than when I sat down at the top of the hour. Otherwis, I'm making good progress through Angel's Advocate; looks like I'm reading about one page per minute on average. I'm going to pass on the mini-challenges for hour 2 and hour 3. Although I'm a big fan of Indie publishing, I'm not currently reading one right now and that appears to be the criteria for participating in this challenge.

Read-a-Thon: Hour 3 Update

Hour 3 Update

Reading Location: still at home on my couch

Currently Reading: Angel's Advocate by Mary Stanton

Total Pages read so far: 82

Total Time spent reading so far: 92 minutes

Other Readers I have visited: Life as List who was one of the featured participants during hour 2. I left a comment.

Mini-challenges completed Back-in-the-Day Children’s Book Challenge

Finished Books: none so far

Comments: I'm splitting my non-reading time between Read-a-Thon activities—such as visiting the blogs of fellow participants and entering a few of the mini-challenges—and BookObsessed—where I'm posting in a Read-a-Thon thread and playing in the Cozy Mystery Swap.

My Third Read-a-Thon

Time again for Dewey's Read-a-Thon. This semi-annual event draws together hundreds of readers all over the world as they dedicate 24 hours for serious reading, blogging about reading, and reading blogs about reading. For those of us who adore books, it's positively intoxicating.

This will be the third time that I have participated in the Read-a-Thon, and I'm hoping I've gotten just a little bit smarter and more organized. I'm using the same posting template that I developed for last April. That will allow me to copy it rapidly into a new blog entry and spend the minimum amount of time updating my blog and the maximum amount of time reading. There are a couple of family obligations at mid-day which will distract me and will somewhat cut into my total dedication to the Read-a-Thon, but families are important, too. Right?

By my clock, we start in approximately 15 minutes, so I'm going to quickly fix myself some breakfast, pop open a Diet Coke, and have my finger in my book ready to start reading right on the dot of 7am.

We Begin!

Reading Location: My house; the couch in the living room

Currently Reading: Angel's Advocate by Mary Stanton

Comments: I'm starting on page 9 in Angel's Advocate. I figured I'd begin this 24-hour marathon with the second book of Mary Stanton's fascinating mystery series. I finished the first book, Defending Angels, last night so I'm all revved up and ready to go. I've pulled out several high-interest books to change things around during the day. It's going to be important to avoid getting tired or bored, and I'm never timid to switch things up. And, since I have several books in progress right now, I'm hoping to finish a couple of them before 7am tomorrow.

BTT: Series

It's Thursday, so that means it's time for another Booking Through Thursday prompt. This week, bloggers are asked:

If you read series, do you ever find a series “jumping the shark?” How do you feel about that?

And, do you keep reading anyway?

I read series. I read lots of series. Right now, I can't think of a series where I've seen a definitive “jump the shark” episode. But if I run into one, I will not have a problem abandoning the series—particularly if I feel the stories are deteriorating, though it will probably take a couple of books for me to come to the decision that I'm not going to continue reading it.

I've said many times that I often decide what to read by what mood I'm in. This means that I will often step away from a series for quite some time before I return to it. Sometimes this is necessitated by the discrepancy between how fast I read and how slowly the publishers bring out books in a series. I read so many series that I have found it necessary to keep a master of list of the series I'm reading and my exact position in the on-going series so that I don't inadvertently buy a book that I've already read.

One other peculiarity is that I don't like to read series books out of order. Where this has become painful is with the free or deeply discounted eBooks that publishers have been giving away for the past year or so. I've got Persuader by Lee Child, the seventh in his Jack Reacher mystery series sitting on my Kindle, waiting until I can read books 2-6 and catch up to this point in the series and continue. Likewise, I picked up The Last Camel Died at Noon by Elizabeth Peters, sixth in her Amelia Peabody series, and I still need to read 2-5. And I was happy to take advantage of a “buy one, get one free” offer for Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand and Kitty Raises Hell, numbers 5 and 6 in Carrie Vaughn's Kitty Norville series. If I didn't already have so many books on hand which need to be read, I might just stock up on either Kindle editions or used paperbacks. But, I'm trying to be somewhat restrained in my book buying ...

Hopping around the Blogoverse

After last Friday's post announcing that I was joining the Book Blogger Hop over the weekend, I needed to do my part to visit the blogs of several fellow participants. I love visiting other bloggers' sites. The downside of that is how much I love reading other people's blogs. I could spend hours and hours reading about reading!

The first site I visited was That Bookish Girl written by Sarah. There, I read several reviews for PUF (Paranormal and Urban Fiction) novels. BAD Sarah! Tempt me to buy even more books! And, Sarah also reviews Young Adult fiction.

At That Bookish Girl, I discovered that there will be a Halloween Read-a-Thon the weekend of 15-17 October. Much as I might enjoy participating, I think my son's wedding will have priority. Maybe next year.

Two paths led to Lesley's Young Adult Books Reviewed site. Not only was she participating in the Book Blogger Hop, she's also the organizer for the Halloween Read-a-Thon. As her site's title says, she reviews YA books. These are a special favorite—particularly since J. K. Rowling revised the genre. YA books are now longer and more complex, making them—for me—much more enjoyable.

The last site I visited this week was The Bookish Snob where Belinda carries on a love affair with romance and paranormal fiction.

One thing that was surprising to me was that all three of these girls are relative newbies on the blogging scene. Belinda's first post was in May 2010, while both Sarah and Lesley started blogging in July. Another thing that they have in common is that they are enthusiastic bloggers and reviewers. They bring a lot of energy to the community and I wish them well.

Return to Book Blogger Hop

It's been three and a half months since I last participated in the Book Blogger Hop hosted by Jennifer at Crazy for Books. She's updated the process and now includes a question of the week similar to the Booking Through Thursday weekly meme.

This week's question comes from Elizabeth who blogs at Silver's Reviews.

When you write reviews, do you write them as you are reading or wait until you have read the entire book?

I never write a review before I finish reading a book. Actually, I don't write many reviews. I think it's because I keep flashing back to book reports in the fifth grade and how they ruined the pleasure I had in reading a book with the addition of the chore to write a report. And yet, I really appreciate a well-written review—particularly one which doesn't just reiterate the plot of the book but which also draws you in and makes you really want to read the book. Maybe I should work on this?

An on-going aspect of the Book Blogger Hop is that participants are asked to "hop" over to other blogger's sites and check them out. I will visit at least three other blogs and then post on Monday who I visited and what I saw. Meanwhile, if you're reading my blog because of the Hop, welcome.

BTT: Current

Laura is repeating a question from some time ago, but as she points out, for avid readers, the answer is continually changing.

What are you reading right now? What made you choose it? Are you enjoying it? Would you recommend it? (And, by all means, discuss everything, if you’re reading more than one thing!)

I try to keep the home page up to date with the books I'm currently reading. Even when I'm taking a break from blogging, I still update the home page regularly. So, if you take a look today, you'll see this:

Currently Reading

I only have space for four book covers in this section, so even if I'm reading more than four books at once—and yes that occurs from time to time—I'll list the four most "active" reads.

The first book in my list is The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. I'm listening to this book on unabridged CDs. Since the only time that I listen to it is when I'm alone in the car, I expect it will take me months and months to finish reading this book. I'm currently on disk 8 of 15, so I guess that means I'm about midway into the book. I'm enjoying it, and even though I have a print copy of the book available, I really like the reader, Paul Michael, so I'm going to stick with the audio book. I originally picked this book when I saw the CDs at the public library. It was taking me so long to read through the book—at most one or two disks on any day—that I returned the audio book to the library and picked up a used copy at the local recycled book store.

I'm an eBook junkie. (After reading any of my posts, does this come as a surprise?) So, on my Blackberry, I have David Weber's Field of Dishonor, fourth book in his Honor Harrington series. I purchased this book from Baen's online Webscriptions store. Reading on the Blackberry isn't something that I'll do for a sustained period of time. Rather, it provides me with very convenient access to a book at times when it might not be easy to pull out a paper or electronic book. It's probably obvious that I picked this book because I'm reading my way through the series and this is how far I've gotten so far.

For at least six months I've had a copy of The Warden by Anthony Trollope loaded on my Kindle. I'm somewhere in chapter 5 (of 21), but it's been quite some time since I read anything in this book, so I'm going to have to back up and do some re-reading to get myself back into the story. Trollope's writing is quite different from contemporary authors and requires me to pay more attention as I'm reading. I set myself a goal of reading at least two of Trollope's novels this year, so I need to buckle down and spend some serious time in Barsetshire. I have to rave about the version of this book that I'm reading. I downloaded it from MobileRead, and it is a very high quality eBook—much more so that some commercially produced books that I've purchased.

And the final book in my active list is Reap the Wild Wind, first in Julie Czerneda's Stratification trilogy. I am a real fan of Czerneda's books and I own a paperback copy of this book as well as a copy I purchased for the Kindle. I'm in the middle of chapter six and since this book is also on my Kindle, I'm going to have to resist the pull of this book on my flight home tonight and keep my focus on making progress through the Trollope novel.