Category Archives: Reading Events

Hours 21-24 Update

I DID IT! well, almost…aside from my unplanned nap this afternoon (pretty much all i remember was reading and then I was out of it) and a slight doze around 6:45 (maybe 15 min or so) – I read or listened to books for the entire day. I honestly never thought I’d be able to do that, but I guess if there is a will (and lots of coffee, chocolate and soda), there is a way! I had a great time participating and can’t wait for the April one to roll around – my goal is to try and do with NO naps – so we’ll see 😉

I’m going to post more of a summary post tomorrow when I do my “It’s Monday, What Are You Reading?” update; but here is the end of event survey – so you guys can see how much fun I had (and decide if you want to play along in April when the next one is held!)

End of Event Survey
Which hour was most daunting for you? I think end of hour 22 and 23 were the hardest for me – so the 6:45 to 7:15am time period…I’m actually normally up then (since I get up at 4:45 most days) – but the being awake and not being asleep kicked my ass. I think I dozed off for a few minutes here and there towards the end.
Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a Reader engaged for next year? I didn’t have any of them this time, since I’m waiting on his new book to be released but Matt Reilly’s military thriller books would be great read-a-thon reads because they are literally a continual roller-coaster. Unfortunately, I likely won’t get my hands on his new book until Christmas and will probably have it read before the April read-a-thon and i’m not a re-reader (or very rarely am I a re-reader)
Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next season? I wanted to cheer people on more, but found the mobile version of the website, where the participations were listed to be really hard to use – I couldn’t easily access the table on my phone which was how I did the majority of my cheering/participation (aside from my periodic blog posts).
What do you think worked really well in this year’s Read-a-thon? Last time i did the read-a-thon, I tried to update every hour, but I was spending more time updating than reading; this time I opted for every 2 hours (most of the time) and even had some 4 hour updates. i think the 4 hour updates worked the best for me and that’s probably what I’ll use next time
How many books did you read? I finished 9 books during the read-a-thon; 3 of them I had read portions of prior to starting and a 4th, I had read a chapter of the night before; 5 of them were completely new during the read-a-thon
What were the names of the books you read?
Why Do You Say It? – Webb Garrison – non fiction
A House Without Windows – Nadia Hashimi – cultural fiction
The Sweetness of Honey – Alison Kent – women’s lit/romance
Rescued – Stephanie St. Klaire – romantic suspense
Sweet Possession – Maya Banks – erotic romance
All About Seduction – Katy Madison – historical romance
Perfectly Ms Matched – Tamra Baumann – contemp romance
Worth the Risk – Jamie Beck – contemp romance
Welcoming the Bad Boy – Annie Rains – contemp romance
Which book did you enjoy most? It took me a while to get into it, but I ended up enjoying A House Without Windows; as well as Worth the Risk.
Which did you enjoy least? Rescued – it had really high ratings on Goodreads but just didn’t work for me.
How likely are you to participate in the Read-a-thon again? heck yeah, i’ll be back in April 🙂
What role would you be likely to take next time? I think I’d like to cheer lead a bit more and maybe come up with a mini-challenge – but folks are so creative with the ones that were posted that I don’t know if i could do the same…

Hours 17-20 Update

So i opted to not do an update at the 18hour point because I hadn’t finished any books in the preceding two hours (although I had made some pretty significant headway) – but I have good news to report now, I just finished (like maybe 5 minutes ago) – the one book that I had made it a goal to finish during this Read-a-thon – A House Without Windows – written by Nadia Hashimi.

I read one of Dr Hashimi’s books a few months ago (she is a pediatrician that works in DC), and so when I was looking at the list of authors who would be attending the National Book Festival in DC and saw her name on the list – I thought it was a good opportunity to read another of hers. Set in Afghanistan, A House Without Windows is a book with the main thrust of the story is the criminal case surrounding an Afghani woman accused of killing her husband and the Afghani born, US trained lawyer who is hired to defend her. Before the beginning of the readathon, I’d read about 100 pages of it, so I was hoping to be able to finish it – but realized quickly that it wasn’t going to be a book that I could easily binge read – it was one that was better read in segments throughout the day (in fact, I just had just finished reading a part of it when I took my unanticipated nap this afternoon). I’ll be posting a review later on, but I can safely say, this was a 4 star read for me and one of my favorite of the read-a-thon.

As well as finishing up this book, I started yet another one by a new to me author, Annie Rains – Welcoming the Bad Boy – which I picked up on Amazon the other day during a sale (thank you book bub for letting me know about it being on sale!) I also started reading an autobiography of one of the top triathlon coaches in the US, Surfacing by Siri Lindley – I haven’t gotten far into it yet, in fact, barely touched on her athletic potential and she definately had a lot of drama in her family life, so I’ll be interested to see where it goes.

The Final Stretch:
My next blog update will be at 8am and the completion of the read-a-thon – when I’ll do a summary of everything that I read and listened to over the previous 24 hours. But my goal for these next 4 hours is to finish up at least 1 of the 3 books that I’m currently reading and then hopefully for my last push, read The Curse of Tenth Grave which is the book I’ve been keeping off to the side as my reward for doing well during the Readathon!

Hours 15-16

Whoo-hoo – this is the first time in my attempts at the RAT that I’ve made it to hour 15-16, although, since I did take a nap this afternoon, I’m not sure if that actually counts…anyways – thanks to said nap this afternoon, I’m feeling strong and with 8 hours left – maybe I’ll make it to 8am, who knows…

Hours 15 and 16 saw me finish up two more books – one a non-fiction and the other a contemporary romance. I found the non-fiction etomology book to be interesting (and since it fit a challenge I needed to finish it) – but i don’t know if I would rush out to read more books by the author in the future. But I do know for sure, that I’ll be reading other books by the contemp romance author (Tamra Baumann). I really enjoyed Perfectly Ms Matched by her – it was a solid second chance romance, although I will say, I think Chad needed to grovel a bit more 😉

The next 2 hours:
I’m giving myself the goal to finish up A House Without Windows by the end of the read-a-thon – so I did some quick math and I need to read 3-4 chapters each hour in order to finish it – which is totally doable (and I did knock out 8 chapters in the previous 2 hours). Its not a book that I can easily sit and binge read because it requires thought/processing – so i’m content with taking my time on the read.