Author Archives: Dee

I mentioned in my introductory post (i think) that it was really weird starting Readathon at 3pm in the afternoon – but after 8 hours, I think I could get used to it. If I was at home, then hour 8 would be around 4pm and the long night would look so daunting ahead (especially at hours 18-24) – but right now, its 11pm and I’m still going strong. Although this could be because I pretty much slept the day away until festivities kicked off….

In hours 5-8, I finished listening (with minutes to spare in hour 8) to Plan for the Worst (Jodi Taylor) – after 11 books in the series, I didn’t think Ms Taylor was going to be able to surprise me, but i didn’t see that reveal coming. Now I have to wait for book 12 which doesn’t come out until next year (insert stamping feet temper tantrum). I started The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 (Garrett M. Graff) – I still remember where I was on 9/11 (A freshman in college at Virginia Tech) – so its a) hard to believe that its been nearly 20 years and b) still very shocking to read some of the memories of the day (from transcripts of calls from the planes; to memories of key political figures at the time and the every day workers in the World Trade Centers). I’m attempting to listen to the audiobook of His Only Wife (Peace Adzo Medie) – this is Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine book of the month for October – I had previously tried to read it but didn’t get very far – so hoping the audiobook is better. I also made some progress on Joe Rochfort’s War (Elliot Carlson) – I’ve been reading this at like a chapter a night, but readathon is a good way to make some more progress. And finally, I made some more progress on Sleep Tight (Anne Fraiser); as well as starting Take Two (Mia Masters/R.Ramsey).

Books Read During This Time:
Plan for the Worst - 2hr 58mi/104pgs
The Only Plane in the Sky - 53pgs
His Only Wife - 3 pgs
Joe Rochfort's War - 27pgs
Sleep Tight - 41pgs
Take Two - 104pgs
Total Pages Read/Listened: 332pgs

Its crazy how fast the first few hours of Readathon always seem to go. I feels like I honestly just started reading/listening – but here we are at the end of hour 4 and officially 1/6 of the way through the 24hrs.

During this first 4 hours hours, I managed to listen to 3 hours and 4 minutes of Plan for the Worst (Jodi Taylor) This series is one of my favorites because it has a nice blend of romance, humor, historical events all wrapped up in time travel (although St Mary’s will never actually admit to time travel, they just observed periods of historical significance in contemporary time). This is book 11 in the series and its one that i always eagerly await the new release. I also finished up Hers to Keep (Serena Akeroyd) which i borrowed from Kindle Unlimited. I also read 64pgs of Sleep Tight (Anne Fraiser).

Books Read During This Time:
Plan for the Worst - 3hrs 4min/108pgs
Hers to Keep - 166pgs
Sleep Tight - 65pgs
Total Pages Read/Listened: 339

If you are participating in Readathon – how you doing so far? Have you finished any books?

Every October, I eagerly start checking the Dewey calendar to see when the next Readathon will be – so that i can make sure i set that date aside. This October, being that I’m deployed, I wasn’t sure if that was going to be doable – since if we were underway, then its working 7 days a week but in port, I could potentially swing it. Thankfully the stars all decided to alig and we have been in port in Crete, Greece and will be here for a little bit longer. We were also lucky enough to be given liberty out in town (being that we had been isolated to prevent the spread of Covid since end of September) – so right now I’m chilling in my AirBnB – enjoying a kitchenette and a queen size bed for the first time since mid-July when I left Norfolk

Books In Progress
- I have something to tell you - Chasten Buttigieg (audiobook)
- Plan for the Worst - Jodi Taylor (audiobook)
- Flood - Andrew Vachss (kindle/TBR pile)
- The Librarian of Auschwitz - Antonio G. Iturbe (kindle/library)
- Joe Rochefort's War - Elliot Carlson (print)
- Sleep Tight - Anne Fraiser (kindle/TBR pile)

Other Books On Readathon Pile:
- The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 - Garrett M. Graff
- The Rookie - Kimberly Kincaid
- The Heartbeat Hypothesis - Lindsey Frydman
- The Light Over London - Julia Kelly
- Seven Signs of Life - Aoife Abbey

Who else out there is participating in Readathon? What is on your pile? What book are you most excited about?

Free: The Future of a Radical Price
Author: Chris Anderson
Rating: ☆ ☆ ☆
Dewey Decimal Challenge: 658 General management

Description:
Far more than a promotional gimmick, Free is a business strategy that may well be essential to a company’s survival. The costs associated with the growing online economy are trending toward zero at an incredible rate. Never in the course of human history have the primary inputs to an industrial economy fallen in price so fast and for so long.

Just think that in 1961 a single transistor cost $10; now Intel’s latest chip has two billion transistors and sells for $300 (or 0.000015 cents per transistor – effectively too cheap to price). The traditional economics of scarcity just don’t apply to bandwidth, processing power, and hard-drive storage. Yet this is just one engine behind the new Free, a reality that goes beyond a marketing gimmick or a cross-subsidy.

Anderson also points to the growth of the reputation economy; explains different models for unleashing the power of Free; and shows how to compete when your competitors are giving away what you’re trying to sell.

Review:
Its been a while since I’ve dabbled in my Dewey Decimal Reading Challenge. Not that I haven’t been reading any non-fiction, I still probably average a book a month – but I definitely fell into my comfort zone of biographies since I stopped blogging. So a SRC (Seasonal Reading Challenge) task to read a non-fiction book that had been shelved as Economics seemed like a good way to get back to it.

Free is a word when it comes to services that we think a lot about. For many of us, we use many free services every day – especially if you are on social media – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram are all free. For the readers among us, Goodreads is free or my other often used site MyFitnessPal (where there is a free and a premium option). Most recently Strava, a running/cycling app, announced that many of the benefits that used to be free were now going to be exclusive to members (for $4 a month) – but the number of people I observed who talked about no longer using was significant. Chris Anderson’s book talks about how services can offer, what are oftentimes robust, services for free. How they can pursue funding with limited costs and other economic benefits.

Honestly, many of the things he touched on, I had never really considered. I’ll admit (guiltily) that I spend a significant amount of time of Goodreads most days which is a prime free site for readers; I’ll also admit that I pay the premium fee for MyFitnessPal (mostly because it allows a slightly greater level of customization that I enjoy). This book made me things about free, nearly free and services that cost. It was kinda dry at times (but honestly that is just economics in general for me – i think i went through 5+ books for this task – all borrowed free from my library – before settling on this book).

Overall 3 stars.

Wow – its hard to believe that my last post here was in April 2019 – which means, that I officially didn’t blog for over a year.

Its not hard to explain why – a combination of multiple reading slumps (I think i actually went close to 2 months without reading any kind of romance which i think is a record for me); demanding civilian job and training for my third Ironman (we’ll just say that day didn’t go as planned) – and now prepped for a military deployment for a year. But i’m back! i can’t promise that I’ll post every day or even every week but i’ll do my best!